“It’s occurred to me that I’ve been an insensitive male who probably doesn’t appreciate your efforts nearly enough,” Donovan said, standing in the doorway, the light filtering in behind him.
She shrugged. “People enjoy a meal more when the table looks better even if they don’t think about it. This one seems a bit sparse.”
“No problem. I can fix that.” He went to the china cabinet, pulled out another place setting and arranged it on the table. “Have dinner with me.”
Anna’s eyes widened. She took a deep breath. Had he thought she was angling for something like this?
“No, I’m fine. I just—”
“Anna, sit,” Donovan ordered. He was frowning, his eyebrows dark slashes.
She sat. But she wasn’t happy.
“I won’t bite,” he promised.
“I know that.”
“And I won’t kiss you again.”
She squirmed on her chair. “I know that, too.” But now that he’d mentioned it, her lips—and his lips—were all she could think of.
“You’re not supposed to eat dinner with your housekeeper,” she said suddenly, trying to get her mind off kisses and back on the topic at hand.
“Ah, I see. Rules.” He smiled.
She managed to glare even though her heart wasn’t really in it. “Rules have a purpose.”
“Do you always play by the rules, then?”
Anna thought back to how she had all but forced him to hire her for this job, and immediately dropped her pretend glare. “You know I don’t.”
“Don’t look so sad, Anna. You haven’t broken any laws.”
“I know. Why?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Why did you ask me to eat dinner with you?”
He leaned back in his chair and blew out a breath. “I have something I want to discuss with you.”
“A job evaluation? Or…maybe there’s some problem. Or…something you need me to do. Or…”
He held up one hand. “Nothing bad. Nothing that should concern you. Let’s just have dinner and then we’ll talk.”
It was a reasonable suggestion, but waiting made eating difficult. Anna had never been good at waiting.
“Does this have to do with the parties you’ve been going to? Your social situation? Maybe something that happened at lunch with the girls yesterday? Another employee? Do you need me to talk to Linette or John or even Clyde?”
Donovan put down his fork. His lips lifted slightly. “Let’s go sit on the deck,” he suggested. “I just have some questions. Not bad questions and nothing that would require you to admonish another employee. I don’t have any problems with the staff.”
Taking a deep breath, Anna studied his expression. Maybe this had to do with one of the women he had met recently. Bridget had told her a woman at the shop yesterday wanted Anna to ask some questions about Donovan’s likes and dislikes. He was obviously fresh meat and the interested women were looking for artillery. Maybe, in spite of his assertions that he wasn’t interested in getting involved, he’d met someone he liked. He was a normal man, after all. At least, he certainly kissed like one.
No, that was wrong. He kissed like no man she’d ever kissed before. He’d made her flare and burn and melt like a birthday candle.
Anna cleared her throat and forced herself to rise and stop—please, stop—thinking about Donovan’s physical talents. “Fresh air would be nice,” she agreed, and followed him out onto the deck.
A breeze blew off the lake and lifted strands of her hair, brushing them against her cheeks. She turned to Donovan, waiting.
“You were good with Frank today,” he said.
She ducked her head, wondering where this was leading. “He’s easy to talk to.”
“I’ll bet you were good with that little boy the other day, too.”
“Why are you saying these things, Donovan?” Her voice came out shaky and scared. At least that was how it seemed to her.
“You want a child. You want to adopt. Why?”
The question was like a lightning bolt slashing through the air on a sunny day. It caught her by surprise.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m just wondering how important it is to you, what your rationale is. It’s prying, I know.”
She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m not fond of discussing my past, but it’s not a secret. My friends and plenty of my acquaintances know, and since I twisted your arm to get this job, you deserve to know something of my motives, too. I didn’t have a glowing childhood. My father deserted us. My mother…wasn’t kind or loving. Fortunately, other people were. Neighbors. Friends. But they all belonged to other people, really. They weren’t mine in the way a parent should be.” She looked at him to see if he understood.
His expression was unreadable. She suspected this subject was hurting him, but he wasn’t backing away. “Your parents weren’t there for you. I’m familiar with that kind of nonexistent parenting. I was a workaholic and seldom available for my family.”
An ache went through her. “It’s not the same. You cared about them. My father didn’t care at all. My mother resented the fact that she had to raise me, so much so that she once told me she hated me.”
Anger flashed in Donovan’s eyes. “That’s criminal.”
She shrugged. “It’s the way things were. I survived.”
Donovan shook his head.
Anna raised her chin. “What?”
“You amaze me, Anna. It takes a strong and special person to get past something like that and not turn out bitter.”
“I’m not a saint or an angel. I am bitter, but as I said, I was lucky enough to have other parent figures.”
“And now you want to raise a child to attempt to stamp out the past?”
“No, not at all. The past is what it is. It’s gone, done. But there are children out there who need love, and I know better than many the importance of love to a child. I can give that. I want to give that kind of unconditional love.” She struggled to keep her voice steady.
Looking up, she saw that Donovan was studying her. He put down his glass and stepped closer, taking her hand.
“More prying,” he said. “May I ask…what steps you’ve taken to achieve your goal?”
She took a deep breath, tried not to think about how his hand felt, curved around hers. His fingers were long, his skin was warm. She felt protected. She felt that what she had to say mattered.
“I’ve done research online, at the library and by talking to adoption agencies.”
“But you haven’t taken the next step.”
“No. I’m not going to do this halfway. I want my child to feel secure, and that includes feeling financially secure. I’m saving every penny I can. I have to know that if I got sick for a while, I’d still have enough to cover our expenses. And…I don’t want to take a chance of the agency thinking that I might be a bad risk.”
He lifted her hand, turning it so that her work-roughened palm was visible. For one breathless second she thought he was going to press his lips to her skin. Instead he looked directly into her eyes. “I can’t see anyone thinking of you as a risk. You’re obviously dedicated and driven and giving.”
She laughed. “You only think that because I was so pushy about getting this job.”
He laughed, too, and she felt the sound echoing through her fingers as he brushed his thumb across her palm, his skin sliding against hers. Heat spread outward from where they touched, radiating throughout her body.
As if Donovan felt it, too, he released her suddenly. “All right, I’ve interrogated you enough. I should let you go.”
Automatically she turned. She was, after all, an employee and she had been dismissed, but one thing kept her from leaving.
“It wasn’t just idle curiosity, was it?” She looked back over her shoulder.
He pressed his lips together, then shook his head. “No. It wasn’t. A child is such a big responsibility. They feel so deeply. They need so much. I
just needed to know how much you wanted this.”
She bit her lip. “You were worried that a child might be shortchanged.”
“Another child,” he corrected. “I shortchanged my child, and I can never go back and fix that. Ever. As you said, the past is gone.” His words were low. His voice was tight.
Somehow Anna blinked and held back any response to what he’d said and what he was obviously feeling. He was flailing himself, and there was nothing she could say that wouldn’t sound trite or pathetic or wrong. So she gave a tight nod. “I understand. That makes sense.” Again she started to leave.
But he touched her, ever so lightly on her shoulder. Sensation slipped through her.
“I was wrong,” he said. “I was wrong to question your motives. I already know that you’re the right kind of woman for motherhood.”
She turned back to him then and touched his sleeve. What she wanted to say was that he was the right kind of man for fatherhood, too. She was sure that she was right, and yet…she was also wrong. He had once been the right kind of man for fatherhood. It was evident in everything he said, all that he did and the way he treated people. But he had left fatherhood behind. He didn’t want it anymore, and she couldn’t blame him.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Very much,” she added, a bit more primly.
He smiled then. “You’re welcome. Very much so.” And the smile traveled from his lips to his eyes. “But I wasn’t fishing for gratitude. That’s not what I want.”
Donovan’s smile relieved Anna’s concern, but it didn’t put an end to the tension sliding through her. She looked into that golden-brown gaze and instantly became aware that she was still touching him, linked to him. The heat of his body warmed her fingertips. She had a sudden and intense need to rest her palms against his chest. She remembered how his mouth had felt against her own and she wondered what it would be like to have his arms around her.
Her body jerked. She couldn’t think straight. “What were you fishing for? What do you want?” she asked, recalling his words. Her hand flew over her mouth. “I can’t believe I said that.”
He touched her cheek. His smile turned to a grin. “I can’t, either. And no, I wasn’t fishing for that, but I want it very much. You’d better go.”
She stood there, still frozen.
“Anna. Now. Please. For your own good, go.”
She fled and didn’t stop until she was in her room. Once there, she dug out every magazine she owned. No books. She didn’t have enough concentration for books. But turning the pages of the magazines, she saw black hair with a silver streak she wanted to touch. The too-pretty male models made her think of someone a bit more rugged, a man with eyes of golden-brown and fingers that…
Her heartbeat sped up. She flipped the page. A man held a woman in his arms, molding her body to his.
Anna let out a muffled cry, then threw down the magazine and lay down, pushing a pillow over her head.
Darn the man for being who and what he was. And as for herself, she was turning out to be every bit as bad as Dana Wellinton. Her heart’s desire might be a child of her own, but right now her body wanted Donovan Barrett’s touch.
Tonight was going to be long and tense, and tomorrow, when she would have to face him again…
“Don’t think about tomorrow,” she whispered to herself.
She did her best. She lay there, trying to get back to normal. Then a part of her realized that she was half-buried beneath a stack of magazines with a pillow over her head. The situation would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.
Slowly she sat up. She stacked the magazines and turned off the light. She took a deep energizing breath and forced her thoughts as far away from Donovan as she could.
“There. Almost better,” she said, but she knew it was just a matter of seeing the man again, or heaven forbid, touching him again, and she would go back to being a mess. This had happened before. She’d started having feelings for a man and she’d lost. But those times she had at least thought she might win. She’d had justification for hope of a future.
With Donovan there could never be any future.
Anna groaned at her own stupidity. Wanting a man to kiss you when there could be no tomorrow was just asking to have your heart trashed.
She closed her eyes, filled her lungs, tried to think logically.
Work, she thought. I need work. Lots of it. Far, far away from my too wealthy, too handsome, too not-for-me boss.
She might be the housekeeper, but tomorrow she just might add a page to her duties and help Clyde do some weeding in the garden. Surely if she was away from the house she would be safe from this ridiculous ache she had for her boss.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DONOVAN stared out the window, trying to decide the right thing to do. Anna wanted a child, and every day children were born to mothers who either didn’t want them or couldn’t afford to raise them. But adoption was still a long and complicated procedure, especially for someone struggling to get through it on their own.
She’d said that she’d done her research and he believed her. Anna was a determined woman. When she wanted something she went after it.
“No question about that,” he said to himself, remembering how she had rushed around the house from one task to the next trying to prove herself to him.
Anna was definitely dedicated to her dream of adoption, but she didn’t have access to all the information that was available. She wouldn’t be able to unearth all the private avenues there might be the way someone could who had access to primary sources.
Donovan ran one hand over his jaw. Some of those primary sources were doctors, ones he’d worked with, ones he’d been friends with. Those he’d left behind and hadn’t thought ever to see or talk to again.
He was no longer a member of the medical community and he didn’t want to be. He couldn’t be.
But Anna wanted to adopt a child. And she was alone.
For several moments Donovan just sat there, staring at the ripples on the lake. Boats skimmed over the surface. Birds glided and dipped on the breeze. The pristine-white of piers connected the green of the lawns and trees to the blue of the water. The tranquility should have been soothing, and it would have been if not for the step he was poised to take.
You don’t have to do this, he reminded himself. It’s interfering. That’s not your way.
But he remembered Anna’s smile as she spoke to Frank, the softness of her voice, the rightness of it all. Some people weren’t meant for parenthood, but some were.
He took a deep breath and plunged onward.
No matter her physical limitations, Anna was born to be a mother. It could happen. It should happen. If a constant source of money was all that was standing in the way…
He reached for the telephone. Money wasn’t all. Adoption could be a painful, twisting maze, fraught with disappointment, frustration and setback. Information was what was needed.
Punching in the numbers that would connect him, he waited for the past to rush in.
Ben. His practice. His home. Ben. His patients. Ben.
“Hello.” A young woman’s voice told him that Dr. Chez was in. Would he like to leave a message?
No, he wouldn’t. If he didn’t do this here and now…
“I know he’s otherwise occupied, but could you tell him that Donovan Barrett is on the phone.”
“I—I’m sorry,” the woman said. “But—”
“I’m a colleague.” A lie. He wasn’t that anymore.
She went away. In a moment the phone clicked to life.
“Don?” Phil’s voice was incredulous.
“Hello, Phil, how are you?” What inconsequential nonsense. He and Phil had gone to med school together. They had danced at each other’s weddings. He had thrown Phil out of his house when his friend had tried to get him to come back to work. Donovan had sent him a curt and formal apology in writing and had received a written acceptance in return. They hadn’t spoken since.
�
��I’m fine. Great, Don. And…you?”
Donovan felt a lump form in his throat. “I’m fine, Phil,” he said, trying to inject enthusiasm into his voice. “Really. Thank you for asking.”
He could almost hear Phil expelling a sigh of relief. “It’s good to hear you.”
“Same here, buddy. But hey, I know it’s a workday for you. You’ve got patients, and I have questions.”
“You’re coming back to the hospital.” The hope in Phil’s voice hit Donovan. How many people had he harmed or disappointed these past few years? He didn’t know. He knew he had raged. He remembered yelling, pounding things, throwing things, cursing fate. He remembered telling Phil to get the hell out of his business and out of his life.
“I—no, I’m afraid I can’t come back,” Donovan said suddenly.
A pause. “Is there a medical problem, Don? Do you need help?”
Donovan took a deep breath. “Not medical, no, but yes, I could use help. By that, I mean that I know someone, a friend, who is considering adoption. I want to make sure that things go smoothly, that the details are tended to. I need avenues, information, someone who’s kept on top of the latest legislation and knows the ins and outs and can help me help her.”
“Adoption, Don? You said this was for…”
“For a friend,” Donovan clarified. For a minute he was sure that Phil thought he had lost it, that he was going to try and adopt a child to replace Ben who was…utterly irreplaceable.
“She’s my housekeeper, Phil, and yes, she’s a friend. I’m not interested in adopting any children. I can’t, but maybe I need a cause, a chance to do something good.”
“You spent years doing good, Don.”
“Yes, I did. But I took it too far. It cost me too much. I can’t go there again, Phil. Don’t ask it. Just…can you help me with this? Open some doors, find out a few things. I guess what I’m asking is…would you? I don’t deserve your help but I’m asking.”
Phil laughed, a harsh, barking laugh. “Shut up, Don. You think because you threw me out when you were going through total hell that I would hold that against you? I’ve missed you. I’ve worried about you, and I’ve only stayed away because I thought that was what you wanted.”
The Maid and the Millionaire Page 7
