And if that was so, why was she reluctant to get to know the child? Jennifer wasn't to blame for what had happened between Paige and Austin. It wasn't even the child's fault that Paige had been conned into baby-sitting tonight.
Was she afraid, perhaps, Paige asked herself, that if she got to know Jennifer she wouldn't like her? Or was she afraid that she would enjoy Austin's daughter?
Paige put the drill back in her bag and dusted off her hands. "Get up this instant," she said with mock severity. "We can't read stories if you sit there till you're frozen to the floor."
Jennifer grinned, and the sudden glow of happiness in her eyes made Paige's stomach turn over in trepidation. What was she letting herself in for? A whole lot more, she suspected, than a few simple storybooks.
But it was too late to back out, she knew. Too late to have regrets. Too late to avoid getting involved.
She was afraid she was already in over her head.
The drill sounded as loud as a cement saw in the quiet apartment, but Paige had checked, and Jennifer was too sound asleep to notice. The child was curled around her stuffed dolphin, her dark hair tangled on the pillow and her mouth half open, and Paige suspected that even if she pounded holes in the wall right above Jennifer's head, the child wouldn't notice.
Because of the hum of her power screwdriver, Paige didn't hear the front door open, and she dropped a brass screw when Austin spoke. "I thought you'd be done with that by now."
She stooped to retrieve the screw from a crack along the back wall of the closet and cinched it into place. "I might have been if I hadn't read seventy-nine stories instead. At least it felt like that many."
"I forgot to warn you. She's starting to read for herself, but she'll still go through her whole library if she finds a-" He stopped as if he'd thought better of the word he'd intended to use.
"Patsy?" Paige asked gently. "That's all right. I'm sure the experience didn't hurt me. Would you hand me the drill, please?" She placed the bit against the next spot she'd marked and glanced over her shoulder at him. "Thanks for not laughing out loud at the idea that it was me-personally-that she was so eager to see tonight. I didn't anticipate having the reputations of baby-sitters in general depending on me. Has Jennifer honestly never had a sitter before?"
Austin shrugged. "I suppose not. There was always the nanny to depend on, you see."
"And who are you going to depend on now? Or is the nanny just on a well-deserved vacation at the moment?"
Austin draped his overcoat across the back of a chair. "If that's a pleasant way of telling me you didn't enjoy the evening..."
"I didn't expect to," Paige mused. "I'm not particularly comfortable with little kids. But as a matter of fact-"
"She's unusual."
"You can say that again. You've enrolled her at Larrimer Academy?"
Austin nodded. "It came highly recommended."
"It's probably the best in the city. A few of our clients have kids there, and we pick them up for appointments and lessons pretty regularly."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"I wasn't dropping a hint, Austin. Right now we've got just about all the work we can take care of. Hand me another hook, would you?"
"Your business is a success, then." Austin ripped a plastic packet and extracted a pair of screws. "Somehow I never saw you as an entrepreneur, Paige."
"Because I never had the drive," she mused, "or understood the importance of putting business before everything else. Which, of course, is why Rent-A-Wife is such a perfect job for me. I can choose the kind of work I do, the hours are flexible and only as intense as I want to make them-"
"Which explains why you're putting up hooks on Saturday night, I suppose."
She shrugged. "It's my choice. Maybe I'll take an afternoon off next week. How was the party?"
"That sounds like a loaded question."
"Because you think whatever you say will go straight back to Sabrina? That wasn't my intention. I imagine you attend so many of these things that it would take dancing girls jumping out of cakes to get your attention."
"One dancing girl looks remarkably like another." He sounded a little absentminded. “Paige, I've been thinking about what you said the other day, about me having plenty to apologize for."
She didn't look at him. Instead, she picked up a few of the coats she'd piled on a living room chair and started hanging them back in the closet. "Forget it. I was annoyed with you, and that just popped out."
"You don't want to be more specific?"
"Not particularly. It's water over the dam, anyway."
"You used to think I owed you something, Paige. You said as much, when you tried to blackmail me into staying in Denver because your mother was ill."
"That wasn't blackmail," she said irritably. "You'd promised to love and honor-"
"You, Paige - but not the dragon on wheels. And don't forget you'd made the same promise."
Paige's annoyance died away, replaced by a profound tiredness. No matter what she said, he wouldn't understand; he was incapable. "It's pointless to talk about this now, you know. Our marriage couldn't have worked, no matter what-it was only a matter of time before it broke up. So there's no value in dwelling on what happened."
"Still, you have a point," he mused. "About owing you, I mean. You worked in that department store - in a job you hated - so we could live on your salary while I got established."
She would never forget coming home from long hours on the sales floor, with feet so tired and achy she could hardly stand. But she wasn't the only one. "You were working, too," she pointed out. "And going to school at the same time."
"We were both making an investment, of a sort," Austin said thoughtfully.
"In a future that never happened." Paige heard the tinge of bitterness in her voice and forced herself to smile, trying to cover up the hurt. "Anyway, as I look back on it, the department store wasn't too bad. I got all kinds of discounts."
He looked faintly interested. "On things like china, as I recall. Do you still have all those dishes you bought at such a bargain when we got married?"
Paige bristled a little. "Yes, I kept the china. Just because it was a discontinued pattern didn't mean it wasn't pretty." Even though, because it holds memories of you, I felt like smashing every last piece of it.
"Even though we had trouble some weeks putting food on the plates," he said dryly, "at least we had pretty plates. That's really not the kind of thing I meant, however. Investments should pay dividends."
Was he proposing to pay her? To offer her money in order to soothe his conscience?
To have their life together reduced to financial terms left Paige cold. Everything she had done - every minute she'd worked, every meal she'd concocted from the sparsest of ingredients, every small luxury she'd done without - had been for love of him. And, of course, for the hope of a brighter future; he was right about that. But no amount of money could possibly compensate for those blasted hopes. Any kind of payment would simply reduce their marriage to a cash bargain, and it would reduce Paige to the status of a paid employee instead of a once-treasured wife...
And perhaps that was the way he'd always looked at it, she told herself dispassionately. Eileen certainly thought that Austin had never intended to stay with her, once the advantages of marriage had faded and once he was firmly established on his own path to success.
If that was the case, Paige thought, she'd just as soon not have it confirmed.
"You don't need to buy me off," she said.
"That's not what I'm doing. If I'd had anything at the time of the divorce, you'd have gotten your share."
Paige shrugged. "That was the gamble I took. I put my money in the slot machine and there wasn't any payoff. It wouldn't be fair to complain just because the next person who dropped in a quarter hit the jackpot."
"In other words," he said evenly, "marrying me turned up lemons."
"Too green and sour even to make lemonade with," Paige said. "If that stings, Aust
in-well, maybe it's just because the truth often does. In any case, if I took your money it probably wouldn't make you feel better and it would darn sure not make me happy. So why don't we just drop-"
The sonorous notes of the doorbell cut her off.
Austin glanced at his watch with a puzzled look and strode across the hall to answer it.
Beyond the half-open door, Paige could see only a gleam of red fabric, but she had no trouble identifying the voice. Feminine, sultry, suggestive...but what was the building super doing at a tenant's apartment at midnight?
"I don't know what I was thinking, Austin," Tricia Cade gushed. "I had such a good time at your party tonight that I forgot all about you having to take a babysitter home."
Paige was startled. Austin had taken Tricia Cade to Sabrina's dinner party? But he'd seemed so anxious to get rid of her the day he'd moved in...
Or perhaps he hadn't been turned off by Tricia that day, he just hadn't wanted any witnesses to his first confrontation with Paige. And though Paige hadn't thought the super was quite Austin's type... Well, after all these years, how would she know what kind of woman interested him? Even when she'd been married to the man she obviously hadn't known him as well as she'd thought she had, or she'd have suspected the existence of Marliss Howard. So how could she possibly predict his tastes now?
"I'll be happy to stay with Jennifer while you-" Tricia had stepped far enough into the hallway to see Paige, and she stopped dead.
"No need," Paige said placidly. "I have my own transportation." She tucked her screwdriver back into her tote bag and took her coat from the back of a chair in the living room. "Austin, please tell Jennifer I had a lovely evening."
He followed her into the hallway. "I don't much like the idea of you driving across town at this hour."
"You should have thought of that earlier," Paige pointed out. "Anyway, I do it all the time."
"I'd appreciate a call to let me know you're home safe."
"Tricia wouldn't appreciate it," Paige murmured. "And in any case, it's not your place to be worried about me anymore, Austin. That's all been over for years."
She walked away, her footsteps hushed in the carpeted corridor. And as she got into the elevator, she couldn't help but see that he was still standing just outside his apartment, one hand on the half-open door.
Paige dreamed that Austin came into her bedroom in the middle of the night
It was clearly the bedroom in her bungalow, with its ruffled white curtains and brass bed, and not the room they'd shared in the cheap student-housing development- so she knew, even while it was happening, that it could only be a dream. Still, in her mind she reacted exactly as she had so many times during their brief marriage-with arms upraised to welcome him, her body already tingling with desire before he'd even touched her...
She woke with a jolt. Her mouth was dry, her breasts ached, and her breath came in painful gasps, as if she really had been making love.
No doubt, she told herself, the whole sequence had been inspired because spending the night with him had been so clearly what Tricia Cade had in mind. Paige wondered if the woman had succeeded.
You don't care, she told herself. You simply do not care.
She reached for a magazine and turned pages without seeing what was on them until it was time to get up.
The coffeemaker was just finishing its cycle when Eileen wheeled her chair in from her bedroom at the back of the first floor. "You were very late last night. What were you doing?" she asked.
"Precisely what I told you, Mother. I was looking after a little girl for a client." It might not be the entire truth, Paige thought, but if Eileen didn't know the details-like the fact that the client was Austin-she couldn't make a fuss about them.
"I tried to call you. There was no answer."
"On my cell phone? That's impossible." Paige reached for the tote bag she'd dropped on a kitchen chair when she'd come in last night. Her phone was still in the side pocket, but when she pulled it out the display was blank. "Jen-" She stopped herself. She remembered Jennifer turning the phone on, after its fall. But the child must have switched it off again before putting it back in the bag. "I'm sorry," she said. "It was an accident, Mother, and I'll make sure it doesn't get shut off again. What happened?"
"I'm just glad I wasn't having a health crisis."
Paige felt a little chilly at the possibility herself. "That's what emergency services are for," she said, as much to herself as to Eileen.
Eileen sniffed. "I tried to reach you because that Ben Orcutt called again."
Paige wanted to groan. "About his dishes? I don't know when I'll get to him. It'll have to be tomorrow, I suppose, or he'll be reduced to eating out of a can with his fingers."
"Has the man never heard of disposable plates?"
"It's not that, Mother. I told you he's lonely."
"Right. If he calls again, I'm going to tell him to let the dishes keep piling up and just put out a welcome sign for the cockroaches. Then he'll have all the company he can handle. Did you bring the newspaper in?"
"I'll get it." "
By the time Paige came back from the front step with the bulky Sunday paper, Eileen had poured a cup of coffee and wheeled herself over to the table, and the telephone was ringing.
Sabrina, sounding bright and cheerful, said, "I'm glad to catch you, Paige. I tried your cell phone last night after the party."
"It was turned off," Paige admitted.
"I gathered that. You'll notice I'm not asking why-or because of whom. But just between us, darling, good for you!"
Paige dragged the phone into the next room, out of Eileen's earshot. "There was no man involved."
"Whatever you say, Paige. I have to warn you, though, next time, you're not getting off so easily. You should have seen the woman Austin brought to my party to fill the empty space you left."
"I have seen her."
Sabrina was silent for a moment. "Oh, that's right- she's the super at Aspen Towers, isn't she? Why didn't you warn me that he was bringing a vamp?"
"Because he didn't check out the idea with me before he invited her," Paige said dryly.
"That's a thought," Sabrina murmured. "Shall I suggest to him that next time he ask your advice?"
Paige knew very well that it had been only a matter of days since either Cassie or Sabrina had dealt with Ben Orcutt's dirty dishes, but the mess she faced on Monday morning was the most daunting she'd ever seen in his kitchen. "Looks like you've been having parties, Ben," she said as she filled the sink with suds and dug her favorite rubber gloves out of her tote bag.
"No, it's just me. I'm sorry to be such a nuisance, you know, but-"
"You're not a nuisance, Ben. I wondered, though, have you ever thought of inviting some of your neighbors over? Maybe they'd like to play cards in the evening or something."
"But that would just make more dishes for you."
Paige thought she saw his eyes brighten at the idea; more dishes meant more frequent visits from Rent-A-Wife... "You can serve snacks and chips straight from the bag," she recommended.
She had just plunged the first stack of plates into the steaming water when her cell phone rang. She swore under her breath, dried off her hands, and slipped one hand out of her rubber glove so she could manipulate the phone's buttons.
"Is this Paige?" The little voice was almost trembling.
"Jennifer? What's wrong?"
"The school can't find my daddy."
Whatever that meant, Paige thought. "How'd you manage to call me?"
"When I turned your phone on the other night, I saw the number light up."
"And remembered it?" The kid was a midget accountant, Paige thought. "What's up?"
"It's cold. I can see my breath."
"Yes, it's cold. It's supposed to snow in a day or two. It's Denver, and it's December. But Jennifer, we've had this talk before, and I'm a little busy right now, so-"
"No, I mean it's cold inside." Jennifer sounded desperate. "The h
eat won't run."
"You mean the furnace is broken in the school?"
She could almost hear Jennifer's nod. "And they want us to go home right away. But I can't go anywhere, because the school can't find my daddy."
That figures, Paige thought. Austin hasn't changed much-he's never there when he's needed. "I'll come and get you right away, honey." She clicked the phone off, gave the antenna a shove, and said, "I'm really sorry, Ben, but I have to go deal with an emergency. I'll be back as soon as I can."
"I didn't know you had a little girl."
'T don't," Paige said. She stripped off her other rubber glove and dropped the pair beside the sink.
"Odd," Ben Orcutt murmured. "It certainly sounds as if you do."
CHAPTER FIVE
THE Larrimer Academy was only a few blocks from Aspen Towers, but the two buildings could not have been less alike, Paige thought as she hurried up the sidewalk to the school, holding the hood of her coat with both hands so the gusty wind wouldn't blow it off her head.
Aspen Towers was sleek and painfully modern, all steel and glass, while the academy was housed in a Victorian mansion left over from the days when silver had been king in Colorado. Paige supposed it should have been no surprise that the heating system had broken down; it could well be as old as the house. Why replace something that worked quite adequately, she could almost hear the head of the school saying, when the money could be better used for new textbooks and improved equipment?
She found Jennifer in a classroom which had once been the house's front parlor, part of a small group of students who were bundled in their winter coats against the distinctly chilly atmosphere. The moment she stepped into the room, Jennifer threw down a crayon and ran to meet her.
The teacher in charge looked alarmed for a moment, until she recognized Paige.
"I'm taking Jennifer to her father's office," Paige announced, and the teacher nodded, obviously relieved to have one more of her students safely settled.
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