by Liz Ireland
For long silent moments, Brad couldn’t utter a word. He was too afraid he’d laugh out loud. Finally, more under control, he put his hands to his waist, his gaze darting from Jayde to JOCK’s control panel. “What in the hell is going on in here?”
“Nothing, Mr. Hale,” JOCK said smoothly.
“Everything, Mr. Hale,” Jayde shrieked. “Are you aware—” she swiped something sticky out of her eyes “—that this house is possessed? It is. It’s possessed. And JOCK is the demon. Go ahead. Ask him what he did.”
“JOCK, what are you up to now?”
“You should know, Mr. Hale.”
A frisson of guilt shot through Brad. But before JOCK could incriminate them both any further, Jayde advanced on Brad, wooden spoon raised. “What’s to know? And he calls this nothing? Look at this place. Look at me. All I tried to do was use the food disposal. And he—” she pointed the wooden spoon at JOCK’s control panel “and he switched it to reverse. All the food came back up. He just threw it up. Everywhere. I mean, I can’t believe this, Mr. Hale.” She stopped in front of Brad. Her dark eyes were wild, her hair matted. “I don’t know what idiot developed and programmed that thing, but he ought to be shot and left for dead.”
Brad arched his eyebrows…and took his lumps. “I did.”
She blinked, finally lowering her spoon. “You did? You shot someone and left him for dead?”
“Worse. I developed JOCK and programmed him. I’m the idiot.”
“You’re the—?” It was as far as she got. Her darting gaze searched Brad’s face…no doubt, for sincerity. Then, he could see his words sink in. Jayde slumped, then backed up a step, her gaze running over his face. “Of course you are.” Then her eyes widened. “Not an idiot. I didn’t mean that. I meant of course you’d be the person who’d create something like JOCK. I mean that in a good way, like wow, you’re smart. And creative.” She rubbed absently at her forehead. A chipped bit of lobster tail came away on her fingers. She wiped it on her dress. “I should have guessed.”
Brad shrugged. “No reason why you should.”
“Yeah, right. And I called you an idiot. Great. Boy, there’s nothing here not to like, is there? So…allow me.” With that, she raised her trusty spoon, giving herself a none-too-gentle whack on the head with it.
Instantly and utterly charmed, despite all his paranoia, by her self-deprecating humor, Brad said, calmly enough, “Ouch. Bet that hurt.”
“It did. And it should. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted me to leave.”
Not for a million years. For one shocking moment, Brad wasn’t sure he hadn’t said that out loud. It was bad enough to think it. The thought alone nearly leveled him. He liked her. He really liked her. This was awful…because it gave her great power to really hurt him, if she wasn’t who and what she said she was.
Somehow remaining outwardly cool, Brad crossed his arms over his bare chest and calmly looked around his ruined kitchen. Jayde joined him in doing likewise. Then she looked at him. Brad found himself idly noting that she was about half a foot shorter than he was. “I don’t want you to leave,” he heard himself say…much too sincerely. To lighten the effect of his words, he quipped, “Well, not until we get this kitchen cleaned up, anyway.”
IT WAS THE NEXT MORNING. Jayde marveled that Mr. Hale still hadn’t asked her to leave. Not after they’d worked hard to clean up the kitchen. Not after they’d again said their awkward good-nights and had separated, heading for their respective bedrooms. And not after he’d had a “reformatting talk” with JOCK about minding her. And not even after he’d packed this morning and had shared with her and Lyle the breakfast Lyle had brought in with him. Coffee, fresh orange juice and a sinful selection of bagels, croissants and muffins.
Seated at the granite-countered breakfast bar that faced the blue waters of the bay, they’d eaten pretty much in silence, except for the occasional and noncommittal comment. Someone said something about the weather. And how nice it was, she’d contributed, to be able to wear shorts in January. Then they’d talked briefly about where Mr. Hale was headed now. London, it turned out. Lyle was going with him. Stuff like that. But then…
“So,” Lyle said, as soon as Mr. Hale went upstairs for a suddenly remembered portfolio of some sort. “How are you and the boss getting along?”
Jayde leaned over toward Lyle, keeping her voice as lowered as his was. “Much better than I am with JOCK. He hates me.”
Lyle grinned. “He hates everyone. He’s got a bad circuit somewhere. I think he ought to be unplugged for good.”
“I can hear you both, Jayde and Lyle,” JOCK said.
Jayde glared, looking up and around, fully expecting JOCK’s embodiment to be either hovering overhead or standing nearby. Lyle sent her a conspirator’s grin, which she was pleased to meet with one of her own. She really liked this guy, like she would a brother, and felt she could tell him anything. “He kissed me,” she suddenly whispered fiercely.
Lyle’s eyes widened. “Who did? JOCK?”
Jayde smacked at Lyle’s forearm. “No, Silly. Mr. Hale. He kissed me. Last night. On the patio.”
Instantly sober, Lyle sat up, his hands gripping the counter’s edge. “Get outta here.”
“I almost had to,” Jayde assured him. “Not because Mr. Hale kissed me. Well, maybe partly because of that. But more because JOCK threw up and then that little vacuum-thing scooted out of that cabinet down there—you should have told me about that, Lyle—and anyway, it started revving back and forth on its little hose, trying to clean up the mess. And then JOCK—”
“Wait a minute.” Lyle gripped her arm. “What are you talking about? Forget the rest and go back to the part about Mr. Hale kissing you.”
Jayde shrugged. “All right. But there’s not much to tell. Last evening, right after we’d eaten, he just suddenly got up and kissed me.”
“Son of a—’ Lyle ran his fingers over his mouth and chin. Then he focused on Jayde. “What’d you do?”
“Well, what do you think I did? I kissed him back. And then he apologized and we talked about sexual harassment and how that wasn’t what had just happened between us.”
Lyle looked really confused. “Get outta here. He never.”
“He did so. Ask him.”
Lyle raised his hands up in front of him. “I don’t think so.”
“Since we all know how you don’t like to think, Lyle…” This, of course, came from JOCK.
Again narrowing her eyes—she was just itching for another confrontation with that little eavesdropping electronic busybody—Jayde joined Lyle in staring toward JOCK’s dark and gleaming control panel.
“…perhaps you’d like for me,” JOCK continued, “to run the videotape back to 10:00 p.m. last night and show you that your employer is indeed capable of lowly human emotions, the most base among them being the need for sexual gratification.”
“Sexual grat—?” Jayde vaulted off her tall stool. Stiff with indignation, and no small amount of embarrassment, she faced JOCK’s control panel. “Who are you calling lowly and base, you misbegotten hunk of nuts and bolts?” She couldn’t bear to think that she and Mr. Hale had been videotaped last night. Only now did she remember what Lyle had told her yesterday—there were security cameras everywhere.
“Easy now, Ms. Greene. I don’t think JOCK meant anything personal—’
“Yes, he did.” Jayde rounded on Lyle. “And you butt out. I’ll handle this. I don’t have five sisters and brothers for nothing.” Lyle held his hands up, clearly keeping out of it. Satisfied, Jayde turned on JOCK, pointing an accusing finger at him. “You come out right now, wherever you are, and fight like a man.”
“I can hardly do that, now can I, Ms. Greene?”
Jayde wasn’t accepting that. “Oh, so you’re all talk and no body, huh?”
“It’s hard to put anything past you, isn’t it, Ms. Greene?”
“That does it.” Jayde stomped over to the oblong and evil control panel set flush with the kitchen wal
l.
“Uh, Ms. Greene, I wouldn’t touch anything there, if I were you.”
Frustrated in the extreme, Jayde turned to Lyle and gestured wildly. “Well, what am I supposed to do? Just let him have his way?”
“I’m hardly the one you need to worry about,” JOCK said, causing Jayde to spin back toward the panel. “But perhaps you might like to put that question to Mr. Hale. I know you felt the sexual tension. I did. The current between you two came close to melting my circuits. And so I believe that was Mr. Hale’s intention—to have his way with you. Do you agree, Ms. Greene?”
“Oh, hell,” Lyle intoned in the background. “I know what he’s doing. I forgot about this. Here we go.”
Ignoring Lyle and gasping in outrage, Jayde prepared to sock the smart-aleckness right out of the contraption when someone behind her clapped a heavy hand on her shoulder. A thrill of surreal fear shot through Jayde. Had the electronic voice really taken human shape? Acting on pure instinct, she came around swinging—and clipped Mr. Bradford Hale right on the jaw. The blow knocked him flat to the kitchen floor. He hit hard. The man was out cold.
Following that, the room was deathly quiet. Then… “Ouch,” JOCK said. “That had to hurt.”
Jayde’s shock wore off and horror set in. She clutched at her painful knuckles and then dropped to her knees beside her down-for-the-count boss. Lyle almost beat her there and squatted on Mr. Hale’s other side. “Get some water or something,” Lyle finally suggested. “Wet a cloth. Cold water.”
Jayde jumped up, hurrying to the sink to do as he’d suggested. “Ohmigosh, Lyle, this is so awful. And I am so sorry. He startled me. And, oh, it’s just like Kansas City all over again. I can’t believe this.”
Lyle placed a bar stool cushion under Mr. Hale’s head. Then he stared up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Kansas City,” Jayde repeated, as if he should just know. Staring wide-eyed back at Lyle, she stood at the kitchen sink and ran cool water over some hastily wadded-up paper towels, which she then tried to un-wad. Not as easy as it looked on TV. “Almost the same thing happened there.”
Lyle frowned. “You knocked your boss out there, too?”
Jayde was nearly in tears as she fought the paper towels. “No. I wish. I stabbed him in the belly. But it was an accident. Like this was. I swear it.”
“Oh, hell,” Lyle said, looking as if he’d just witnessed a UFO landing. “You stabbed your boss in the belly? And here all Mr. Hale was worried about was you might be—Well, Mr. Hale is not going to like this at all.”
“I know,” Jayde wailed. She hurried back over to her fallen boss and knelt beside him, noting how handsome and angelic he looked, like a sleeping baby…except for the swollen and purplish bruise on his jaw. She couldn’t believe it. The mouth that had kissed hers last night so wonderfully well and deeply—and had kept her up most of last night remembering—now slacked open. The arms that had held her so tenderly last night were now limp on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor.
Worriedly, she rubbed the soggy paper towels across his forehead and over his cheeks. She then focused on Lyle. “He’s going to fire me, isn’t he? If he ever comes to, I mean.”
“Don’t say that.” Lyle looked really worried.
“I’m sorry, Lyle.” Jayde squeezed his hand comfortingly. “But he is, isn’t he? He’s going to come to and fire me. And there goes all the painting I wanted to do. And Paris and Rome. And now my family will think I’m a failure for sure. And here I was really starting to like it here. And you, too, Lyle. And him. A lot. I was really starting to like him a lot.”
Lyle’s expression became appraising. “You really do like Mr. Hale.”
It was so absurd, his picking up on that comment, given the present circumstances. She pointed down at her boss. “Are you serious? Look at him. In the cave days, this would mean we’re married. Yes, Lyle. I like him a lot. He’s very kind and obviously intelligent. Friendly. And, wow, what a kisser. I like him. But he’s going to fire me for sure.”
“Fire you?” Lyle shook his head. “After this, he’ll probably make you chief of his personal security team.”
Jayde blinked. “But isn’t that what you are?”
“Was. Past tense,” JOCK said…out of the blue.
Together, as if they’d rehearsed it, Jayde and Lyle turned to JOCK’s control panel, and said, “Oh, shut up.”
Just then, Mr. Hale stirred, showing signs of waking up. Thus galvanized into relieved action, Jayde helped Lyle handle Mr. Hale’s flailing arms. Then Lyle startled her by grabbing her arm, to get her attention. “When he wakes up, let me handle this. He’s not going to fire you. I won’t let him.”
“You’re awfully kind, Lyle,” Jayde offered, all hope of a secure future having flown. “And I appreciate it. But—
“No.” Lyle’s stare intensified, forcing Jayde, who now held one of Bradford Hale’s warm hands, to really listen. “Are you sincere and honest in being here, Jayde? Are you who and what you say you are?”
“Well, of course I am. But I don’t understand, Lyle.”
“You don’t need to. But I do. And I’ll make it all right, I promise. Just promise you won’t leave, no matter what JOCK says.”
Jayde frowned. What did JOCK have to do with this? “I promise. But what are you talking about, Lyle?”
“That you’re the one for Mr. Hale. He needs you. He doesn’t have anybody to complete him. He’s too rich and too scared to care. But you can make him. He’s been trying to find you for years, only he didn’t know it. And now, here you are. And I’m going to fix things. So let me handle it when he wakes up, okay?”
As confused as she was intrigued, Jayde stared at Lyle, not knowing what to think. “Okay. I guess.”
4
SHE DIDN’T WANT Bradford Hale to leave. It was that simple. She wanted him to stick around and take her in his arms again and kiss her the way he had last night. And she wanted him to keep kissing her…all over. And now that Lyle had planted the idea of the two of them being together into her mind, her body was saying told you so… and had been since last night. Hadn’t she ached all night for Bradford Hale’s touch? For his kiss, the sound of his voice, the feel of his body pressed against hers? It wasn’t as if she was easy, either. She wasn’t. But she did know what she wanted. And now…he was leaving.
And so Jayde stood at the opened gate to the Hale property and waved goodbye to the occupants of the black stretch limo just now tooling off down the curving road. The pronounced S-shape of the street forced the slinky vehicle to motor slowly past each lushly landscaped yard. Given the dark-tinted windows of the car, Jayde had no idea if her farewell was being acknowledged, or if it was even appreciated.
So, standing there overwhelmed by her yearnings, Jayde put the best face she could on her day. Okay, for one thing, she still had her job. For another, she didn’t care if Mr. Hale or Lyle waved back or not—because the two men were now off to Merrie Olde England and that was good, darn it. That meant, number three, that she now had the house and her time all to herself. So, as of this giddy moment—yippee, she grimaced—she was officially a house sitter to one of the richest—and one of the handsomest, most aloof—men in the country.
False cheerfulness had never become her. Jayde slumped. The terrible truth was she was here alone, except for JOCK’s dubious if not evil company. Lovely. But thanks to the three-ring binder Lyle had given her yesterday, she could handle him and also had a whole list of people to call on if something went hideously wrong with the house. So it wasn’t the responsibility of the place, that had her feeling…well, let down, somehow. Or disappointed, maybe—somewhat like she felt on those rare free days when she would be outside in the brilliant sunshine and painting and then suddenly the sun would be obscured by thick clouds and the light would be ruined and she’d have to stop for the day.
That was how she felt right now…as if the sunshine were being driven away in the back seat of the black limo just now disappearing around a bend
in the quiet street. Jayde planted her hands on her hips and stood there, a solitary figure in this world of privilege where she would never truly belong. Instant heartache. That’s what she was setting herself up for. She needed, right now, this minute, to get over what she was beginning to think of as an infatuation with her boss. The man wasn’t some rock star seeking fans. No, she needed to concentrate on what was important to her. Her painting. After all, wasn’t it one of the very reasons she’d accepted this position? Yeah, well, that and the threat of imminent starvation.
But still, her feelings for the man ate at her. Witness the giddiness in her belly, and the excitement that fluttered her heart. She couldn’t help it. Mr. Bradford Hale’s face and laugh and that breathtaking bare chest of his were deeply etched into her female psyche, right beside the remembrance of his kiss. The man was disturbing…in the most delicious of ways. But he was her boss. Her very rich boss. A man who could have any woman, probably including members of royalty, if he so desired. So the last thing she, Jayde Alyssa Greene from Kentucky, needed to have was very warm thoughts about her boss. She wasn’t in Mr. Hale’s league, and she needed to maintain her professional distance.
Well, England ought to be far enough of a distance, she decided as she finally stepped back inside the courtyard, closing the gate behind her and latching it. She turned around—and that was when it struck her. She was really here. In Florida. Standing in shorts and sandals in January in a sensually pleasing and jasmine-draped courtyard. Why, with Lyle and Mr. Hale gone, she could almost make herself believe this was all hers. The car, the money, the house, the pool, the boat. The safety, the security…the happiness. The fountain. With just a short flight of fantasy, she could convince herself that her paintings had financed all this.
Looking around, feeling the sun’s rays warm her bare arms, catching the scent of the bay beyond the house and hearing the calls of the gulls, Jayde gave a slow and wondering shake of her head. She’d done it. She’d made her own miracle come true. She was wealthy and successful.
