he turned away, I was left outside Allen House with hand-me-down designer bags at my feet.
However, I was well used to fending for myself.
I gathered up my things and headed for the imposing front door. I faced two oversized slabs of carved cherry with black wrought iron fittings and inlaid beveled glass. But I hadn’t come all this way to be turned back by fine architecture. Besides, all the metal was pockmarked with spots of rust.
I prepared to dump my bags and wrestle with the door’s double knobs when one door opened with a moan of its hinges.
“You’re here, then. Let’s get you upstairs. I’m the housekeeper. You can call me Bethany.” A tiny middle-aged woman squeezed through the doorway and grabbed too many of my bags. The numbness that had claimed me since the authorities had brought word of my parents’ death was tingling around the edges like a limb gone to sleep but struggling to wake. We’d had a cleaning service come in once a week for a mad dash of housekeeping that was almost Olympic in its intensity when I was younger, but for years I’d taken care of the cleaning myself. I had no idea how to act with a servant who was carrying my luggage.
I shrugged out of my coat and looped it through the handle of my shoulder bag. I also tried not to gawk at the entryway ceiling that opened up to a cathedral rotunda extending all the way to the top of the house where a crystal chandelier hung in dull glory. Even though it could use a good cleaning, it was impressive, surrounded by a dome of stained glass. I quickly followed Bethany up a large staircase with an elaborately curved iron rail, dull marble exposed beneath the worn carpet treads.
I was tired, flustered and out of my comfort zone, so of course, the man from the terrace met us on the stairs. Bethany panted, “Shove over, Owen,” and continued on. He stepped aside, for her. But for me? Not so much. Though his hands were now in his pockets and he only looked down on me from one foot rather than fifty, I felt the same discomfort I’d felt in the driveway. Disapproved of. Summed up and found lacking. For someone more used to complete indifference as long as I kept quiet, it was…galvanizing. My pulse quickened. My spine stiffened.
“Owen?” I asked. Not because I was curious about his identity, but because I wanted him to get out of my way.
“Owen Ward. I’m the lawyer for the estate,” he said, and I found myself fascinated by the contrast between his hardened jaw, so lean and angular, and the apparent softness of his windswept hair. It was a darker brown than I’d thought at first when I’d been fooled by a halo of sun. This, then, was my grandmother’s heir. Her letter had been an invitation, but it had also clearly stated that I could expect nothing from her along those lines. I’d been mortified that she’d thought the statement was necessary.
I shuffled my grip on the shoulder bag and remaining suitcase I still juggled myself while his cool green eyes looked me over from head to booted toe. Hardened jaw or not, I was treated to mixed emotion in those eyes. Perhaps he’d been expecting me to arrive with my own lawyer or dueling pistols. Maybe I seemed too much like a fish out of water to be as threatening as he expected. Whatever the reason, he seemed more than a little bit interested in my appearance. The intensity of his perusal didn’t match the tension in his face. There was a glitter to his eyes, a spark of interest, that didn’t match the stiff way he held his body. Then again, those green eyes against a lightly tanned face and chestnut hair might have seemed more intense because of contrast and nothing else. He clenched his jaw even tighter as I looked at him, as if he needed to rein in whatever interest was trying to flare in his eyes.
“I’m Angelica Peters,” I said. I was fit from years of dancing, but the bags were awkward on the stairs and I was tired. My heavy shoulder bag slipped down my arm, pulling me sideways.
Until Owen Ward reached to lift my bag back up on my shoulder.
It was an automatic move. He didn’t consider it. He reacted to the bag’s fall and my sudden distress in trying to catch it. But as he did so, his hand brushed all the way up my bare arm and against the side of my neck, and I was stunned because the numbness—for a moment—fell away.
I breathed in and the scent of the old house, musty and sweet and shut off from the world, was secondary. It was Owen’s scent, a fresh and slightly spicy evergreen that woke my senses.
“Thank you,” I said, referring to the bag. His hand seemed to linger, but it probably didn’t, because he frowned. The frown drew my gaze to his lips and I couldn’t help noting that his lower lip was slightly fuller than the top. I blinked and tore my thoughts away from how ridiculously kissable that made his mouth.
“We’ll talk at dinner,” he suddenly ground out, and then he moved aside so I could pass.
I did so quickly, as eager to reclaim the comfort of my numbness as he apparently was to send me on my way. The unexpected thrill of my less-than-welcome arrival clashing against the sudden flare of attraction for a man who obviously didn’t want me at Allen House overwhelmed me after weeks of feeling completely, untouchably tepid.
I didn’t give myself permission to slow, then pause and turn back to watch Owen Ward walk away. It simply happened. Only he wasn’t walking away. He stood on the stairs watching me and so he caught me in my pause. What would have been a furtive glance at his retreating form turned into the momentary trap of our gazes meeting to hold and to hold some more.
I’m sure it was only seconds, but the distance between us seemed to narrow and become unaccountably intimate. He didn’t speak and I couldn’t. His intensity paired with the fact that I had noticed that tiny detail about his lips when I shouldn’t have made me feel even more awkward than before. Finally, he blinked and his intensity was shuttered. He turned away and I no longer had to fight the urge to look at his mouth. I turned also and continued after Bethany, but a connection had been forged. As we moved away from each other, it seemed an invisible elastic cord stretched and stretched until it would soon pull us back together with a decisive snap.
The house was shadowy and quiet. I ignored the confusing pull of Owen and hurried up the remaining stairs to find Bethany waiting on the landing of the second floor. Behind her at the end of a long hall, I saw another woman, possibly a maid, walk from one room into another. She looked our way as she passed, but was moving so quickly I could only make out a flash of pale skin, a gleam of cool eyes and long black hair.
“Oh,” I said, startled by the maid’s unnaturally fast movement.
But Bethany was already leading me to a different room and, frankly, not moving much slower herself. I chalked it up to my perceptions being sluggish after my trip.
Surely the woman down the hall hadn’t moved oddly enough to make me stare and blink and stare again, willing her to reappear and prove herself as ordinary as I should expect her to be.
Chapter Two
Remembering Owen’s suit and Victoria Allen’s pearl-encrusted locket, I did “dress for dinner.” I had packed a black sheath that soothed my nerves by being understated and elegant, but nonetheless off the rack. Trying too hard was something I’d had to learn not to do at a very young age. My parents had been perpetually distracted and occasionally annoyed. I guess I could have turned into a trick pony, but instead I’d learned to rate my own competence and achievements. It really wasn’t my grandmother’s fault if I suddenly felt like a five-year-old who wanted to show off my pirouettes again. I tamped down that feeling. Hard.
I finished with simple black pumps and a colorful scarf my father had once sent me from Paris. I had traveled little myself, but my parents had been gone frequently on business. The scarf had been a rare gesture of affection.
