“He’s...very decisive,” she said with a brief glance toward the end of the table. “Seems to know what he wants.”
“That he does,” Perry agreed, shaking hot pepper onto his baked potato. “But what he wants is not always what he needs.”
“I see,” she said. But she didn’t see at all. Anyone as rich and successful as Zach Calhoun could surely get anything he wanted or needed. Case in point. He needed a housekeeper, so he’d gotten her, using his forceful personality and an outlandish salary. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been the next hapless female who’d happened to pull up in his driveway for whatever reason. To marry his foreman or deliver a truckload of gravel. It didn’t seem to matter. He was just looking for a warm body.
“I guess you heard what happened to your predecessor?” he asked.
“Do you mean...”
“I mean she ran off with our foreman, and no one even knew they were involved. Talk about the odd couple. It’s the biggest scandal to happen around here in a long time. No one understands why they left, why they had to run off. Why didn’t she just move in with him and stay here and keep her job?”
“I don’t know,” Mallory said. But she did know. It was because Mallory was coming to marry Joe. And he didn’t want to marry her. Not at all. He didn’t want to marry her so much that he took the housekeeper and left a good steady job just to avoid her. And that hurt.
“They’ll never find anyone like Zach to work for,” he observed, filling her water glass for her. “He’s tough but he’s fair. By the way,” he said bending his head so close his mustache tickled her ear. “Has anyone been given Joe’s cabin, do you know? Maybe you could put me on top of the list. Perry’s the name. Perry.”
“I’ll remember,” she said, leaning forward to avoid his hand on the back of her chair. Was it the housekeeper’s job to assign housing? To fend off lecherous old wranglers?
“You’re not worried about filling Diane’s rather large shoes, are you?”
Large shoes. Was that just a saying or did Diane really have big feet? “Well, yes,” she said, “now that you mention it, I am worried. I hear she was quite good at...what she did.”
“Good? She was the best. You had much experience?”
She took a sip from her water glass. “Yes and no,” she hedged.
He smiled as if he saw right through her. As if he knew she’d been hired off the street, or off the floor as it were.
“Yes, our boss appears to have everything,” Perry said, returning to the subject he’d begun. “And he does. Except in his personal life. I’m talking about a wife and a family, of course. You married?”
“No.” She glanced at the man at the end of the table. Up to now she’d avoided looking at him. Afraid of what? That he might have the power to see into her soul? Find out her secret? The man who oozed wealth and self-confidence was at that moment glaring at her. Even down the length of the table she could feel his disapproval. Of what? What had she done but nibble on some barbecued beef and listen to Perry gossip?
The conversation at Zach’s end of the table revolved around topics like shorthorns and Brahmans. So even at dinner he was all business. But he was all macho man, too. In control of his house, his land and his personnel. Except for one renegade ex-foreman and one ex-housekeeper. Was that the reason for the frown on his face? Or was it directed at her personally?
“Does he have a wife and family?” she asked.
“No,” Perry said, stuffing a large piece of beef into his mouth. “That’s my point. What good is all this land and money if you’ve got no one to share it with?”
Leaving Perry’s question hanging in the air, she stared at Zach, wondering if he felt the same way. If he did, there must be a ton of women who would jump at the chance to share this beautiful place. If they could ignore his acerbic personality, his male chauvinist ideas and his domineering manner.
Mrs. Calhoun would have her meals cooked for her, her bed made and acres of wildflowers and stables of horses to call her own. Or half her own. If he could talk an astronomer into being a housekeeper in one half hour, he could certainly talk any other woman into being his wife. If he wanted one. She wondered if he wanted children. She never had. Not until now.
At that precise moment he looked up and caught her staring at him. Their glances met and held for a long minute while the conversation dimmed in the background and the faces around the table faded. She tried to break the contact but she couldn’t. His intense gaze held her captive over bowls of creamed corn and platters of tomatoes. She’d already consented to be his housekeeper. What more did he want with her? Her stomach knotted with nerves and apprehension. She shredded her napkin in her lap without realizing it.
Just as she thought she might have to make an abrupt departure from the table to escape his brilliant blue gaze, his interest in her faded as the maid brought in coffee and plates of freshly baked spice cookies and someone asked Zach if he’d ever found his missing calves.
Before she’d left the dining room, two more people asked if they could have Joe’s cabin. She said she’d see. She’d say anything to get out of there and away from the aura of the presence at the end of the table. But just as she was the last to arrive in the dining room, she was the last to leave. Or next to last. Zach was still at the table, making notes on a paper napkin. Without realizing she was doing it, she held her breath and tiptoed past him.
His arm snaked out and grabbed her hand. “Not so fast.”
“What, what is it?” she gasped.
“Sit down.”
She sat.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Go ahead.” Her heart was pounding. Not from fear. From apprehension. Anxiety. Misgivings.
He pressed her hands between his rough callused palms. “Your hands are like ice.”
“Cold hands, warm heart,” she said lightly.
“That’s right I remember,” he said deliberately, letting his heated gaze follow the curve of her breasts and linger there. Her face flamed. She tugged at her hands. He held on.
“Just a warning. Stay away from Perry. He’s a lech. Unless you want to end up like your predecessor.”
“I don’t intend to run away with one of your staff,” she said coolly. Little did he know she was not the type to inspire such passion in anyone. The brief affair with Joe was her one-and-only fling. His interest in her had so surprised and flattered her she’d lost her normal good sense. Of course she could blame the three beers or the music or the fact that it was the night of her twenty-eighth birthday and she was still a virgin. A reluctant virgin. There was all that. And there was more. The need to prove she could attract a man like Joe.
“That’s reassuring. Who do you intend to run away with?”
“No one. By the way,” she said, looking down at his broad, work-hardened hands that still clasped her pale slender fingers. “Am I on duty twenty-four hours a day?”
“Of
