by Liz Ireland
Jayde stood there…dumbfounded. Lyle just quirked his mouth, crossed his arms over his chest, grinned…and watched her. Like this was a test. Maybe they wanted to see if she’d be rude to visitors. Maybe that was it. So, she went with her good Kentucky manners. “Um, hello, JOCK, nice to meet you. And thank you for saying I’m a…cute doll.”
A moment of electronic silence followed. And then—Jayde would have sworn to it in a court of law—JOCK turned to Lyle. “What is she—a virgin?”
Gasping, Jayde blurted out, “I am no such thing. How dare you—” She cut herself off, suddenly remembering that being a virgin wasn’t a bad thing.
“Cripes,” JOCK said sarcastically. “No need to yell, Jayde. You may speak in a normal tone of voice. I’m not deaf.”
Lyle chuckled and good-naturedly smacked Jayde on the shoulder, almost knocking her over. “Come on, Jayde. Don’t let him get to you. You got to show him who’s the boss, or he’ll walk all over you.”
Jayde recovered her balance and sought Lyle’s gaze, seeking encouragement, which he signaled with a thumbs-up gesture. She then bravely stepped up in front of the control panel. “You might not be deaf, big boy, but if you ever speak to me like that again, you’ll be a singing soprano and hitting the high notes in the national anthem.” She then turned to Lyle. “I’m sorry. I’ll get the hang of this, I’m sure.”
Lyle waved away her apology. “You already got the hang of it.”
JOCK cut in. “Of course she does, Lyle. After all, you did. And you have a single-digit IQ.”
Lyle’s expression was deadpan. “He’s quite the kidder, huh? Yeah, me and JOCK—we’re real tight.”
After that, Lyle took the time to explain the contraptions on the panel, the functions and workings of each Jayde hadn’t a prayer of remembering. In only moments, her head was spinning. Blessedly, Lyle gave her a thick three-ring binder that turned out to be a primer on operating all the gadgets in the house. With that safely tucked against her side, Jayde recapped for Lyle her understanding of the Hale domestic operations.
“Okay, so there’s a security system wired directly to the police. A pool service. A yard service. A pest control service. An electronic butler that is voice-activated and runs the whole house. A maintenance man who checks on things once a month. A maid who cleans everything once a week. And no cook, unless Mr. Hale is home for an extended length of time.”
“That’s right.” Lyle’s blue eyes were sincere and friendly.
“And Mr. Hale doesn’t live here more than a few weeks of the year.”
“Yes, Ma’am. When he’s here on business.”
Jayde nodded. “So, Lyle, what am I doing here? Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled—if not stunned—to be here. It’s beautiful and, I’m beginning to think, a great opportunity for me. But what exactly am I sitting? I mean, this house doesn’t need me.”
“Sure it does. So does Mr. Hale. See, he likes his homes to be lived in. He doesn’t like to think of them sitting dark and empty all the time. He wants someone on the premises who he can call and tell to get things ready when he’s coming home.”
Jayde frowned, considering Lyle’s words. “Gosh, that sounds…I don’t know, Lyle…lonely or sad, somehow. As if Mr. Hale is trying to hire himself a family. Does he have one?”
Lyle remained quiet so long that Jayde felt certain she’d spoken out of turn. She lowered her gaze.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Lyle said. “And no, he hasn’t got a family. Not anymore. You know, I hadn’t thought about it that way before. Is that how he comes across?”
Jayde shrugged. “Well, maybe. From what you’re saying, it does. But I haven’t met him yet. I wouldn’t think that someone who had all this would be lonely unless he chose to be.”
Lyle’s eyes widened a bit. “Wow, you’ve got a lot of insight in that head of yours.” Then he looked her up and down in a speculative way, adding, “And potential. It’s written all over you.” Without giving her a chance to ask what he meant, he went on with the business at hand, acquainting her with the surroundings. “I forgot to tell you. There’s a car in the garage you can use anytime you want. Just don’t take off for California or anything.”
Jayde could only stare, not believing her good fortune. “Don’t worry. I won’t.” Then, considering her opulent surroundings, she asked, “What is it—a Rolls-Royce?”
Lyle laughed…but didn’t say it wasn’t. “You also have a bank account in your name. Ms. Kingston, back in Kansas City, should have had you sign the signature card.” Jayde nodded. Lyle continued. “Good. Your salary and money for household and car expenses will be deposited automatically into the account once a month. And credit cards and a health card will be issued in your name, too.”
Jayde’s head was swimming with this sudden embarrassment of riches. All she could think of was how this money—her share of it—would help her family. “Mr. Hale is awfully trusting.”
Lyle didn’t laugh. “No, he isn’t. You’ve been carefully checked out. Once by the employment agency. And again by Mr. Hale’s own security team.”
Jayde frowned, feeling very exposed. “That was fast. I didn’t even know about this job myself twenty-four hours ago.”
“Yeah, they’re fast. But you’re also squeaky clean.”
Jayde stared at him. “That’s the second time in twenty-four hours I’ve been told that, Lyle. I’m beginning to think it’s another way of saying I’m boring.”
He grinned. “You’re anything but boring.” Then, he surprised her by adding, “In fact, I’m thinking you’re just what the boss ordered—if not what he needs. Imagine…Ms. Kingston sending someone like you.” Jayde wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but Lyle was still talking. “I guess you’ll find plenty of things to paint here, too.”
Jayde stared at him. How did he know that she was an artist?
Before she could get too paranoid, Lyle informed her, “Your artist’s easel. I carried it in. And you told me that a shipment of your work is supposed to arrive in a few days.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Relief coursed through her. “I forgot. Whew. For a minute there I was thinking maybe that security check you said Mr. Hale did—”
“Well, that, too. But don’t make too much of it. It’s standard for anyone who works for Mr. Hale. He just likes to know who he’s dealing with.”
“Don’t we all,” Jayde quipped, as she wondered what Ms. Kingston had gotten her into.
“WHAT THE HELL—?” Bradford Hale, newly arrived from Rome, shoved forward from the back seat of his limo, almost joining Lyle in the front as he gripped the leather and stared at his secluded house in the quiet and gated community.
At this moment, though, the entire neighborhood was anything but quiet. Because Brad’s home was surrounded by police cars with blue and red lights flashing in the deepening dusk. The courtyard gates were thrown wide and milling officers could be seen inside at the front doors. Security sirens, mounted atop the house, blared. Curious and, no doubt, irate neighbors, none of whom Brad knew, lined their own driveways, gawking at the Hale mansion and talking amongst themselves.
“Looks like something went wrong, Mr. Hale.”
“That would be my guess, Lyle. Just stop here and park. I’m getting out.”
“Yes, Sir.” Lyle angled the limo over to the curb and brought it to a smooth stop. He cut the engine and pulled an automatic pistol out of his shoulder holster, checking it over. “I’m right behind you, boss.”
“Be ready, but keep that thing out of sight.” With that, Brad jumped out and sprinted across the lawns, where he was stopped by a policeman. “I’m Bradford Hale. That’s my house,” Brad quickly explained. “What’s going on?” He checked the man’s name tag. “What’s happened, Officer Talbot?”
Officer Talbot lowered his arms and had to yell over the sharp wail of the sirens. “We don’t know, Mr. Hale. We can’t get inside to see. Or to turn the alarm off. It’s locked down tighter than a chastity belt on a virgin.”
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“Damn. I have a new house sitter inside. Is she all right?”
Talbot, a big, burly and competent-appearing man, frowned. “That would probably be the angry young woman inside, banging on the door, right?”
“I have no idea.” Brad turned to Lyle, who nodded as he surreptitiously holstered his weapon. Brad again faced the police officer. “Yes. That’s her. Maybe she gave a wrong command to JOCK and he locked the house down.”
“JOCK? That’s your security system’s computer brain, right?”
“Right. If you’ll allow me, I can go undo this. JOCK will respond to me.”
“I sure as heck hope so, Mr. Hale. We’re getting complaints here.”
Brad felt his neighbors’ accusing glares on his back. “I’m sure you are. Lead the way, officer.”
Once at the doors, Brad heard the pounding and the yelling on the other side. His expression turned grim. The poor woman had to be scared to death. That damned JOCK. The computerized butler was getting too independent. It wasn’t employees he was programmed to, well, discourage—it was old and unwelcome lovers, for lack of a better word. Brad decided that, over all, he was becoming a bit concerned by JOCK’s behavior. Was the artificial intelligence he possessed getting more real? Was the butler actually thinking on his own? Brad didn’t know if he should be excited by or afraid of such a possibility.
Either way, the truth was JOCK’s independent actions had already cost Brad two house sitters in the past year by pulling stunts such as this. No sense allowing him to get away with any more games. With Lyle’s bulk hiding him from prying eyes, Brad opened a small, artfully hidden panel to one side of the front doors and punched in a few numbers. What he feared he would have to do instead, though, was completely disconnect JOCK once and for all.
“All right,” Brad said, closing the panel and turning to Officer Talbot. “JOCK should unlock the door any second now—” A metallic clicking interrupted him. Then the front door swung slowly open.
Immediately, a slender brunette squeezed through the opening and flung herself outside. She looked around, hair wild and her eyes narrowed. She suddenly centered her attention, for whatever reason, on Brad. “I am personally going to kill that damned JOCK. That is the last time he gets around me, you hear me? If it’s the last thing I do, I will rip every one of his precious wires right out by the roots. You just see if I don’t.”
Shocked, Brad stared back at her and then looked over her head to Lyle, who grinned drolly.
“Told you so,” Lyle said. “You’re wrong about this one, boss. Meet your new house sitter. Mr. Hale, this is Ms. Jayde Greene, lately of Kansas City, Missouri.”
THAT EVENING WAS Florida picture-postcard perfect. The police were gone. The neighbors had disappeared. The sun had set beautifully in a manner worthy of applause. And even Lyle, after securing a lobster dinner for two—the two being Brad and his new house sitter—had been given the evening off. That meant Brad was now alone with Ms. Greene, and had been for the past couple of hours.
After she’d settled down, showering and changing into a more weather-appropriate dress, he’d invited her to eat out back with him on the lantern-lit flagstone patio. She’d seemed uncomfortable at first, but the enchanted surroundings, the good food, the wine and hopefully his company had finally worked their magic. She now appeared relaxed as she sat across from him at the wrought-iron table, a gentle wind carrying her perfumed scent his way.
Brad tried his best not to be intoxicated by her, but it was hard. She was an intriguing woman. Attractive. Funny. Articulate. Down-to-earth. And totally oblivious to him. Brad almost chuckled at the realization. No, he didn’t want her to come on to him. And no, he didn’t think he was irresistible. But he knew that to most people, his money was. Wealth was intoxicating—if you didn’t have the onerous responsibility of managing it on your own shoulders, that is. But Brad did and that was why he was determined—with this dinner invitation, this romantic atmosphere, and the wine—to see if he could make Jayde Greene show her true hand, so to speak. If she did, if she came on to him, or made him think she had any ulterior motives at all, then he’d fire her.
Harsh? Yes. But necessary. He needed to know what lay behind her sweet facade and the breath-of-fresh-air personality she had. Quite frankly, even despite her squeaky clean background check, he didn’t trust her. If she was a gold digger, then he wanted to know now. Because tomorrow he left for London and wouldn’t be back for months. So he had to know tonight if she was trustworthy and simply here for the job, as opposed to being here in the hopes of compromising him and, thus, his fortune. Not that his money was everything to him. It wasn’t. But it had proven, with more than one woman, to be everything to each of them. After a few such incidents, he’d become a little hardened, maybe a little jaded. But what else was he supposed to do? Remain a dupe for every opportunistic female out there?
It was no wonder he preferred to trust no one until they proved they could be trusted. Maybe his attitude wasn’t fair. If he was wrong, he’d be the first to apologize. But he had every reason to be especially wary of Jayde Greene. Because he couldn’t understand why Lucinda would send him someone like her to replace his last house sitter. This woman across the table from him was beautiful and ingenuous. Surely she was a plant, a gotcha, from Lucinda. She had to be. Lucinda Kingston hadn’t quite given up on him yet, he knew that much. So it would have made more sense if she’d sent him someone he’d instantly hate, just to make his life miserable. But she hadn’t, and Jayde was…well, wonderful. So far. Which could only mean she was probably a partner in crime with Lucinda, someone sent to make him fall hard for her just so she could walk away from him, leaving him face down in the dust. It’d be just like Lucinda, which was why they were no longer engaged.
But was it like Jayde? Was he unfairly prejudiced against her? Well, that’s what he didn’t know. And that was what he intended to find out. Tonight.
In her favor, Lyle seemed to think she was genuine. And Lyle wasn’t easily won over. In fact, Lyle was even more wary of unattached females than Brad was himself. A small smile claimed Brad’s mouth. That damned Lyle. Brad had often told Lyle that he acted more like a doting nanny than he did a driver and bodyguard. Brad wasn’t sure exactly when Lyle had decided that his boss was lonely and needed a wife. Maybe it had started five years ago…Brad shied away from that painful memory. He wasn’t going there, any more than he was going to seek a wife among his employees. Not that he needed or wanted a wife anyway.
Brad couldn’t stop himself from watching his new house sitter as she stared dreamily at the distant city lights twinkling across the bay. For all the attention she paid him, he could have gotten up thirty minutes ago and gone to bed. She wouldn’t have noticed. Brad grinned, employing a bit of self-deprecating humor. Did Jayde Greene think he was boring?
Brad lifted his wineglass and took a sip. Okay, so his new house sitter was, by all signs, totally unimpressed by him. All she’d talked about so far was art and fountains. And all he’d been thinking about as she spoke was how good-looking she was. She didn’t have the overtly seductive beauty you’d see on the cover of a magazine. No, she was more the girl-next-door kind of pretty. And she had a nice body to round out the package. But she was more than that. She had something else about her that really appealed to him and, alarmingly, it was getting around all his defenses. Something warm, something earthy and real that he hadn’t encountered in many years. Maybe she was everything she appeared to be. It was there in her laughter, in her inquisitive intelligence, in every artless yet seductive gesture she’d made this evening.
Suddenly, Brad realized that he wanted her to be the genuine article, the real thing. He really wanted that. After all his false starts and abrupt endings with women lately, he felt he deserved that. Just then, finally catching the drift of his own thoughts, Brad shifted on the cushioned wrought-iron chair and took himself to task over this apparent dent in his armor of aloofness. He blamed jet lag, the wine, his concern over som
e business matters, his own loneliness—Loneliness? Where had that come from? Lyle?
Brad instantly assured himself that he wasn’t lonely. He was a rock. One man unto himself, in charge of his world, a loner. He needed no one. To test that conclusion, Brad looked around himself now, trying to see his property through Jayde’s eyes. The manicured and sloping yard before them, complete with banyan trees and majestic palms, gave way to the fine sands and then the azure waters of Sarasota Bay. Moored here at his private dock, and even now bobbing gently in the swells, lay his sleek yacht, a fifty-foot Sea Ray. Pretty impressive stuff. Complete.
He was complete…so let the games begin. He glanced again over at the brunette who still sat in profile to him. She held her wine goblet in her hand. Her expression was serene. And she was essentially and irritatingly ignoring him while he wrestled with his demons. Smooth. Very smooth. Or genuine? Hell, he didn’t know. But he did know how to find out. “Still suffering a bit of culture shock, Ms. Greene?”
She turned to him, her doe eyes wide and dark. Oops. Perhaps he’d sounded as put out as he’d thought he had. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said quickly. “I’m just not used to being ignored, especially in my own home.”
“Ohmigosh, I’m sorry. I never meant to ignore you. It’s just that…” She smiled. “Well, yesterday I was freezing in a blizzard. And now, here I am, basking in Florida sunshine—well, starshine right now—and staring at a yacht. And tonight I had lobster for the first time in my life. So, yes, I have a bad case of culture shock, Mr. Hale.” Then she grinned. “Thanks to you.”
Fighting the melting effect of her smile on what he liked to think of as his cool and calculating heart, Brad hoisted his wineglass. “Here’s to no cure for culture shock, then, Ms. Greene.”
“No cure,” she said spiritedly, clinking her goblet against his and then sipping. As she lowered her glass, she murmured, “You can call me Jayde, if you like.”
