Donovan’s arm shot out. He steadied the tray, and with his other arm he steadied Anna, his hand at her waist.
She sucked in a breath. To her own ears it sounded loud, like a gasp. She knew her eyes widened.
“Are you all right?” Donovan murmured.
Quickly she righted herself. “Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” she murmured and somehow gave away the rest of the glasses of wine and found her way back to the kitchen.
She had lied. She wasn’t fine. The instant Donovan’s hand had rested on her waist, she had felt positively dizzy in a way she hadn’t when she was merely trying to get her balance.
“That must have been some grip you had on her, Donovan,” she heard a woman’s voice murmur. “She looked as if you had just invited her into your bed. What’s that about?”
“Oh, shut up, Kendra,” another woman said. Anna recognized the voice as that belonging to Susannah McGraff, a gorgeous and intelligent woman whose family had made a fortune in department stores. “Anna was clearly just embarrassed because she knew everyone had seen her stumble. You would have felt the same. Any of us would have.”
“Absolutely,” another voice said. Anna recognized it as the elderly man’s. “Thank you, John,” he continued, and Anna was glad that John, at least, was surviving the evening.
But she couldn’t hide in the kitchen forever. Linette was putting food on the trays and John had just told Donovan it was time to go into the dining room.
Anna waited to give everyone time to get seated. Then she and John picked up their trays and prepared to serve. With a little luck the evening and her ordeal would be over soon.
CHAPTER TEN
DONOVAN’S heart flipped when he looked up and saw Anna standing in the doorway carrying a tray that looked as if it weighed almost as much as she did. He’d been aware all night that she was nervous, and he was pretty sure she was afraid she’d somehow spoil his party.
Damn him for not making it clear that this party didn’t matter. The only point of this affair had been to stop spending so much time thinking about Anna.
He’d wanted to remind himself that he and Anna couldn’t be together. This party had merely been a diversion. But, somehow, he’d messed up the message, and here she was struggling to create the appearance that she’d been hauling heavy trays around all her life.
She took a step into the room.
He should stay seated. She wouldn’t thank him for calling attention to her.
She took another step, her head high. He knew she was strong, but the tray was completely laden. Her body wasn’t meant to take this kind of punishment.
Muttering beneath his breath, Donovan stood. He rose to meet her.
Her eyes widened. He saw her mouth the word no.
He frowned and leaned close enough to take the tray. “You promised you’d get help if you needed it,” he said, his voice pitched low and meant for her ears only.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re trembling.”
“This doesn’t look good for either of us.”
“Too bad. I’ll fix it. You just smile,” he commanded, taking the tray and carrying it the last few feet to the table.
“Can’t lose the woman who keeps this house running, can I?” he asked his guests. “The gears would stop turning without Anna. My gardener says the flowers bloom just for her.”
Her eyes widened. She gave him a shocked and flustered look. When she leaned in to take the first dish, he could almost swear that the word “liar” came to him on a breath of air, but that might have been his imagination.
Or maybe his conscience. Clyde did think Anna made the sun rise and set, but that last had been a bit of obvious exaggeration designed to make his actions seem understandable.
Not that it had worked. Kendra Williams was smiling knowingly and it was obvious that she would be spreading petty gossip tomorrow. He probably shouldn’t have invited her. He might have done it just so John could gloat a bit. Even Susannah was looking at him with a question in her eyes. As well as a hint of admiration.
She was an attractive and intelligent and goodhearted woman. A man would be a fool not to try to win at least her lust. But he looked at her and saw only a friend. His heart didn’t flip.
Still, he made an effort to smile at her and to engage the rest of his guests. For Anna’s sake he didn’t call attention to her again that evening. She stayed away, and they didn’t speak to each other except in the most necessary of instances.
The minute the door closed behind his last guest, however, and John and Linette had gone home, he headed for the kitchen. Anna was there putting things away, bent over a cabinet, her beautifully rounded bottom in the air.
Donovan groaned.
Anna whirled. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“I’m here,” he said simply. He didn’t try for more, because what he was thinking was that he was glad the guests were gone and he was alone with her. She wouldn’t want to know that any more than he did.
She fiddled with the handle of a cabinet. “I think it went well tonight. Your guests seemed entranced by you.”
“It went well,” he agreed. “Thanks to you.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“It’s true. You organized the whole thing. All I did was talk.”
“And be yourself. People like you. That’s important.”
Probably it was to most people, but to him it wasn’t anymore. He hadn’t cared one bit what anyone in the room thought of him. All his thoughts had been focused on this lady.
“Thank you,” he said.
She turned aside slightly, her hair brushing the curve of her jaw. “You shouldn’t have helped me with the tray.”
“It was heavy.”
“You’re not supposed to do those things. I am. You know that.” She looked at him, taking a step forward. Her eyes flashed. He loved that.
“Are you lecturing me?”
Anna froze. He knew what she was going to say.
“I’m teasing, Anna.”
“Maybe, but I was lecturing you. That can’t be right.”
He laughed. “It feels right.”
She raised her chin. “You told me that you were the boss, that you were in charge, and you were right.”
“I was a pompous jerk.”
“Then go on being a jerk.”
He shook his head. “You don’t sing anymore.”
“It seemed unprofessional.”
“Then be unprofessional. I don’t want you to change to fit some mold you think you should fit just because I tried to bully you.”
She laughed at that, then. “Are you sure you were really a doctor?”
Her words stopped him cold. “Why?”
“Don’t doctors have to give a lot of orders? To their receptionists and their nurses and their patients?” Her voice was soft. She gazed at him. “Don’t answer that.”
“Why?”
“Because you never talk about your past. It must hurt.”
“It does and yet…yes, I gave orders, but only when they were necessary. It doesn’t seem to be necessary for you, Anna.”
“Why not?”
He smiled sadly. “Because you have a tendency to do more than I would ask.”
“Do you miss it? Being a doctor?”
Donovan thought about that. “I miss it, but I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to. I gave everything to medicine and not enough to Ben. When he needed me most I wasn’t there for him as a doctor or as a dad. I wasn’t even with him the day that car came out of nowhere and took his life. I was working. He’d been visiting me but I sent him home with a friend instead of taking him myself. So, medicine is over for me. In a way, it robbed me of Ben. I can’t help wondering what would have happened—or not happened—if I’d taken him home myself. Does that make sense?”
She nodded. “Yes. I suppose I can see why you would feel that way, anyway. I’m sorry about your son. Terribly sorry.”
He took her h
ands. “Thank you. Me, too.”
Anna looked down at her palms resting in his. For a minute she seemed to lean closer to him. Then she quickly pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and he was pretty sure that she was apologizing for something else. Maybe even for wanting a child when he had lost his.
“It’s okay,” he said as she excused herself and left the room.
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay that he had lost Ben and it wasn’t okay that he was starting to ache for a woman who needed a child.
And he did ache. All night long he thought of her.
He wished he had done more than hold her hands. Yet he was grateful that she’d had the sense to pull away.
Next time…
“Don’t let there be a next time,” he warned himself. He hoped he would heed his own good advice.
The last thing Anna thought of when she went to bed that night was Donovan. The first thing she thought of when she woke up was Donovan, and she thought of him all day.
“Stop it!” she ordered herself, as if that was really going to help. The man had been in her thoughts since the moment she’d met him.
And last night…he’d looked like a dream. She’d wanted to warn the other women in the room away.
Ridiculous thought. Clearly he belonged to those women. He was one of them.
But when he’d taken the tray from her, his hands had touched hers for the briefest of seconds, and she’d thought the trembling in her knees would send her tumbling. How silly. Despite the fires that sprang to life when they got together, he had just been trying to help her.
She’d watched him last night. It was as if he had been untouched by what was going on around him. He had laughed and talked and charmed everyone. Yet he’d left his guests to help his housekeeper carry in a heavy tray. He wasn’t as invested in the party as he should have been. She hadn’t fully understood until they’d had that talk later. Then she realized what the problem was. There was nothing real in his life anymore. He’d left it all behind.
“There’s no fixing that,” she reminded herself. “It’s his choice.”
But she burned to do something to help him, to bring a little life and happiness back to him. Just for a short time.
“And you know what that means?” she grumbled to herself. “It means you’re in too deep. You need to back away, to keep your distance from him.”
Yes, and that was just what she intended to do. Keep her distance.
Three days later, Anna was starting to feel as if her nerves were completely shot. Because she didn’t want Donovan to feel bad she had gone back to her usual methods of keeping the house under control. She’d resumed her humming and singing, but in truth, it was hard. If she sang too loudly, the man might slip into the room and if he did that, she wasn’t completely sure she could trust herself to behave normally and not reveal the fact that she wanted to beg him to kiss her again.
The final straw came when she was scrubbing the tiled floor of the hallway. She worked her way down the hall until she found herself in the doorway of the sunroom.
A sound caught her attention. She looked up to find herself staring straight into Donovan’s eyes.
“I thought you were in the library.”
“I was.” But obviously he wasn’t anymore.
Anna tried not to think about the fact that she was on her hands and knees, that her clothes were damp and clingy or that she was staring up into Donovan’s eyes.
He frowned. “I don’t think I pay you nearly enough to do that.”
She gave him “the look,” the one that brooked no argument. “You pay me plenty.”
“You never said you were going to turn yourself into a scrubwoman. There’s got to be a better way.”
“There are numerous ways. This one works best. The grout needs cleaning.”
“Then we’ll get rid of the grout.”
She sat back in a kneeling position, her hands on her hips. “That would be a waste of money and this beautiful tile.”
“The tile is immaterial. Get up off your knees, Anna.” His eyes were dark.
Her heart skipped a beat. Oh, who was she kidding? Her heart skipped so many beats that had she been in a doctor’s office, he would have called for an EKG.
Anna’s first instinct was to argue. She knew what cleaning a house entailed, and it was her job. “Donovan, I—”
She had barely opened her mouth when he was across the room, reaching for her. His big hands found her waist and he easily tugged her to her feet. Dropping the cloth she was holding, Anna stumbled, falling farther into Donovan’s grasp.
“You’re very bossy,” she whispered weakly, embarrassed by her awkwardness and by her reaction to him.
“I know,” he said, slipping one hand beneath her hair and cupping her head. He gazed down at her, studying her as if he’d never seen someone like her before. “It’s my job.”
Then he lowered his head and covered her lips with his own.
Anna’s reaction was immediate and involuntary. She pushed her hands up his back and rose on her toes. Straining against him, she tilted her head to give him better access to her mouth. As if he needed help. Donovan was kissing her over and over. Nibbling, biting, licking.
“You make me crazy,” he said, his voice harsh. “I think about you too much, all the time. I imagine other men touching you because I know I shouldn’t be touching you at all.”
He kissed her again.
“Yes,” she said on a breath. She returned his kiss. “No. I mean no. I shouldn’t be kissing you like this. We don’t belong. We don’t fit.”
She pressed her palms against his chest to push away but ended up leaving them there, breathing in his scent, turning her head to feel more of him as he nibbled his way from her lips to her jaw, down her neck.
Anna shivered in his arms. “I’m not like this,” she said, whether to Donovan or herself, she didn’t know. And yet she was like this. With him.
“I know. I know. Do you think I don’t know that?” His lips scorched the side of her neck, made her ache. She twisted, trying to get closer to him. “I know darn well I should stay away from you, for your sake. I don’t want to hurt you. I really don’t want to hurt you, Anna.”
And, as if the truth of his words finally struck home, Donovan took a long, shuddering breath and set her away from him.
He studied her with dark, tortured eyes. He had done things and failed to do things in his life that filled him with regret. Anna knew that. Now she was one of those things, and she hated that, even though he was right about the fact that he could hurt her.
“It’s okay,” she finally managed to say, struggling to raise her voice from a weak whisper to a firm and affirmative and somewhat normal sound. She failed. “I’m all right,” she reiterated, succeeding a bit better this time.
“How can you be all right?” he asked angrily. “This isn’t the first time we’ve done this. It’s not what any woman should have to accept from her employer.”
Anna blinked, her eyes opening wide. “You think that was what I was doing? Accepting and fostering the advances of my employer because I need work?”
He made a slashing movement with his hand, cutting her off. “Of course not. I think I know you better than that. What I meant was—”
Now she was the one stopping his speech by holding up her hand. “I know what you meant. You meant that you hold all the cards, the power, the money and I’m at your mercy. You’re suggesting that I might be unwilling.”
His brows drew together and he didn’t respond.
Anna sighed. “You’re not saying anything because you know that I wasn’t at all unwilling. I’ve told you that I’m attracted to you.”
“Yes, and knowing that, I should never have taken advantage. A good employer doesn’t do that.”
“You don’t get to define being a good employer. I’m the employee. I get to decide.”
He let out a groan. “I hardly think that you were looking for a boss wh
o would back you up against a wall and put his hands and lips on you.”
As worried and chagrined and afraid of her own emotions as she was, Anna couldn’t keep from smiling just a little. “No, I don’t think that would have been on my list of desirable attributes, but…it happened.”
“Because I stepped over the line.”
“And because I followed you eagerly.”
Donovan stared directly into her eyes. “It would be best if you refrained from revealing such things to me right now. I don’t trust myself.”
“But I do,” she said softly. “At a time when you wanted to move ahead to the next step, you stopped, and if I’m not mistaken it was for my sake more than for yours. Thank you.”
Donovan leaned back against the wall. “Don’t thank me. It’s all I can do to keep my hands to myself right now. It’s very important that I do that, too. I can’t hurt you, Anna. I can’t.”
“I know that,” she admitted, softly. “And you’re right. It’s wrong for us to touch. I trust you, and I haven’t trusted a man in a long time.”
His eyes came open. “Why?” He looked suddenly alert in a way he hadn’t been before. The agony was gone from his eyes. This was the man who cared about people so much that he forgot his own needs and hurts.
Because he was that kind of man, Anna opted to tell him some things she had told very few people in her life. “I may have mentioned that my father deserted my mother and me when I was little. There’s nothing all that unusual in that. It happens all the time, but it did affect the way I thought of men. I think I was a bit too eager to be liked, perhaps less discerning than I should have been. Several times I got involved with boys or men who turned out to be less interested in me than they had pretended to be. They wanted more from me than I was willing to give and they lied to obtain my compliance.”
Donovan swore.
Anna shook her head. “I was naive, but not that naive. When it became obvious that I was being used, I walked away. Less trusting and less rosy-eyed but unscathed physically. At least until I met Brent. He was intelligent and funny, and he didn’t rush me. I fell like a rock. I loved him. We were supposed to be married. I was honest with him about the fact that I couldn’t have children. I moved to Chicago to be with him. At first, he seemed happy, but as the wedding grew closer, he began to withdraw. He started to say cruel things to me. Eventually he threw my childlessness in my face. It seems that while I was planning my move to Chicago he was busy meeting someone else, someone who could give him the children he had suddenly decided he had to have. At least that was what he said. I’m not sure the truth had anything to do with my childbearing abilities. I think…I think he just used that as an excuse and I think he knew he wanted out before I ever made the move. His lies and defection…I guess it was the last straw.”
The Maid and the Millionaire Page 9
