had been as busy with her career as he himself was. She liked what she called “nouveau cuisine,” which she did not cook herself. She had made horrified faces at the feasts he fondly remembered his grandmother providing.
“It is not healthy to eat like that,” she had told him.
And yet he could never remember feeling healthier than when his stomach was full of his grandmother’s good food.
Jefferson remembered, suddenly and sharply, he and Hailey arguing about this very kitchen.
“Double ovens?” he’d said, when they met the kitchen designer. “We’ll never use those.”
“The caterers will appreciate it when we entertain.”
Why had he argued with her about it? Why had he argued with her about anything? As they had built the house, it had seemed as if the arguments had become unending.
If a man only knew how short time could be, and how unexpectedly everything could change... Jefferson felt the sharpness of regret nip at his heels. Somehow, it felt as if Brook, nosing through his fridge, was the reason for this regret. He usually was able to bury himself in work. It prevented being bothered by pesky emotions and, worse, by guilt.
Brook closed the fridge door and opened the freezer side of the huge French-door-styled appliance. She stood with her hands on her hips for a moment, staring at the neatly stacked boxes of single-serving freezer foods.
“I’ll make that list,” she said, obviously dismissing everything in the freezer as inedible.
“You do that,” he said.
Apparently, she meant to make a list right now, while the lack was fresh in her mind. She found a piece of paper on the counter, and a pen. Her brow furrowed with concentration, and as she wrote, she muttered out loud.
“Chicken. Chocolate chips. Flour. Sugar...”
Chocolate chips. And flour. And sugar. Was she going to make cookies? Jefferson felt some despicable weakness inside himself at the very thought of a homemade cookie.
She had obviously been distracted from her request to see the house. “I’m expecting a call in a few minutes, so if you’ll excuse me,” he said.
Jefferson eased himself out of the room. His mouth had begun watering at the mention of chicken. Again, his thoughts went to his grandmother and platters of golden fried chicken in the middle of the old plank table.
It was a weakness, but he had no power to fight it. Besides, so what? She was signing on as his housekeeper, if she wanted to cook a few things, why shouldn’t he be the beneficiary? He’d be signing the paychecks, after all. There were no worries that she would be as good a cook as his grandmother had been. No one was that good a cook.
AS SHE WATCHED him go, Angie realized that, in her eagerness not to annoy her new employer with anything that could even remotely be construed as chattiness, she had not asked him his name. Now he was in full retreat and she didn’t know where his cleaning supplies were kept or where he would like her to stay.
Instead, she watched mutely as he stalked away, down a wide hallway, turned and disappeared from view. A moment later she had heard the slamming of a door.
Considering how unfriendly he was, Angie contemplated what she was feeling. She felt as if she understood his unfriendliness. Her new employer was a man who had lost everything.
For the first time in a long time—far too long, in fact—Angie was aware that it was not all about her. She had seen in his face that he would not brook any sympathy from her, and though her first impulse had been to offer some, she had listened to her instincts. There were other ways to let him know she had heard him and seen him. There were other ways to offer comfort. After the public humiliation of her broken engagement, she personally knew how hollow words could feel.
Her boss had become an orphan when he was six, and now he was a widower. She remembered the shattered-glass look in his eyes when he had revealed that about himself, and his quick rejection of what he had perceived as sympathy even though she had not said a word.
He didn’t want sympathy, and she did not blame him. He wanted to be left alone, and she did not blame him for that, either.
But he had let her into his house, and that was a gift to her. She would give him a gift, too. She vowed she would be the best housekeeper the world had ever seen. She vowed for the next two weeks, she would make her employer’s life a little bit easier in any way that she could.
Angie contemplated the feeling in her. It was nice that it was not terror. What was it?
She felt safe.
Maybe his unfriendliness even made her feel safer. Look where seemingly friendly male interest had landed her last time, after all!
But no matter the reasons, for the first time since she had bolted after finding that stuffed panda on her bed, she felt something in her relax. Really, the tension had been increasing for months, as it became more and more apparent Winston’s interest in her was not healthy.
Now, it was as if she had exhaled, after a long, long period of holding her breath. Looking around the neglected house, it felt extraordinary to have a purpose beyond her own survival.
With that exhale came a sensation of pure exhaustion, and she let her eyes wander longingly to the hammock that she could see through the kitchen window. But falling asleep would be no way to make a good first impression or forward her goal of making her boss’s life a little better!
She made herself focus on the task at hand. From the stack of leaning mail that had taken over the beautiful harvest-style kitchen table, she presumed his name was Jefferson Stone and that he was a business consultant who owned a company called Stone Systems Analysis. She made a mental note to sort the mail for him. Some was obviously junk, but some of those envelopes just as obviously contained checks and business correspondence.
The kitchen cabinets revealed a rather impoverished selection of food. As she went through the cupboards, her grocery list was becoming quite extensive, especially since the thought of cooking for him now was imbued with her sense of altruism.
After she had finished in the kitchen, she went exploring. Off the kitchen was a laundry room. When she opened the washing machine it had wet clothes in it that had been sitting so long they smelled dank. She found the soap and restarted the cycle. The soap was in a cabinet sadly lacking in the cleaning supplies necessary to keep a house. She retrieved her list and added a few more items.
Moving on, feeling like something of a snoop, which was ridiculous, she showed herself around the house. Though from the outside it looked as if it was only one level, she took a stairway off the kitchen that led downward to the next level.
It was not really a basement, but a beautiful above-ground lower level, set up for entertaining. It had a billiards table and a bar, but the cover on the table and the dust on the bottles at the bar suggested no one had entertained down here for a very long time. There was a huge TV on one wall. It looked as if Jefferson did watch that, as there were several smudged drink glasses on the coffee table and a bowl that contained the crumbs of potato chips.
