style="font-size:15px;"> Some instinct or memory of the little boy he had once been, some primal recognition of what goodness was and what was required of him made Jefferson slide his arms under her and tug her over onto his lap. Her hesitation—a sudden stiffening, a small resistance—did not even last a breath. And then she was snuggled into his chest, her curls tickling his chin, her tears washing through his shirt, her warm weight a puddle against him.
“It’s okay,” he said. His voice was rusty, unaccustomed to reaching for that gentle note. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe.”
Sweetheart? Desperation to make her feel better was obviously making him crazy. What was he doing calling her sweetheart? But somehow he didn’t want to call her Brook, to invest in the obvious lie she had told him about her name.
It added to his sense of craziness that making physical contact with his new housekeeper seemed to be becoming a regular event!
But, at that moment, the good did shine through. Because despite the sweetness of her curves, despite her warmth pooling against him, despite her designated role in his life, despite the lie of her name between them, she felt not like the beautiful woman that she was. She felt only like a frightened child, as he had once been. And he felt only like a person reaching deeply and desperately within himself for the decency to comfort her, as his grandmother had once done.
And so he stroked her hair and told her over and over again, in a crooning voice that he did not recognize as his own, that she was safe. He could feel the tension draining out of her, her muscles relaxing, her breathing becoming more regular, the hard pulsing of her heart slowing.
And she must have felt safe, because she finally said, her voice low and tentative, “You know how you said I’m not a very good liar?”
“Hmm?”
“My name isn’t Brook.”
He waited.
She sighed as if she were weighing the wisdom of what she was about to do. “It’s Angelica. Angie.”
He waited, again, to see if she would go on, if she would explain the necessity of the subterfuge to him, but she didn’t. In fact, he felt her relax totally, and then her breath came in even little puffs against his chest. Her hair had fallen forward, shielding her face, and when he tucked it back, he saw she was asleep.
He sat there for a long time, afraid to waken her. Finally his arm felt as if it was going numb. He wondered, as he worked his way out from under the slight weight of her, if she had ever truly been awake.
He settled her back in the bed, drew the covers over her and gazed down at her for a moment.
Her face looked relaxed, angelic even, the perfect face for someone named Angelica. He bent and kissed her cheek, as if she was a child he had tucked in.
And then he turned swiftly from her, embarrassed by his tenderness. “I hope,” he muttered, “neither of us remembers a thing about this by morning.”
She had a chance of that. He did not.
He glanced once more at the sleeping woman, then went quietly down the steps and closed the door to the turret room behind him.
Jefferson was aware of steeling himself against whatever he had felt in that room. It was one thing to be a good man. But it was another to care about others. To care about others was to invite unspeakable pain into your life. He would use this incident to shore up rather than lessen his resolve for their relationship to be professional only. He would withdraw himself, as completely as it was possible to do while they were under one roof. Withdrawing was something he was an absolute expert at. After the blow of Hailey’s death, he’d withdrawn quite successfully from the world for the past three years.
Though it was now late at night, he was aware he would not sleep. He went into his office and shut the door. He was in the middle of a contract to revamp the computer systems for the City of Portland. This was what he loved and this is what he could lose himself in: researching, planning and coordinating the selection and installation of the software systems that gigantic enterprises, towns and cities, corporations and businesses counted on for smooth and efficient operation.
He sat down at his computer and sighed with satisfaction at the reassuring world devoid of emotional complexity. This was his world: analysis. Numbers and graphs and statistics appeared on the screen before him.
“Two weeks?” he told himself. “That’s nothing.”
ANGIE AWOKE IN the morning, bright light embracing her. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. But the ceiling had a display of dancing light on it, the windows reflecting patterns off the nearby water. She remembered the lake. She remembered arriving at the Stone House. And finding this bedroom and surrendering to the exhaustion that had been building in her.
And then, she remembered last night.
She remembered the panic that had clawed at her throat as she woke up to see a man’s figure silhouetted in the doorway.
Disoriented, her fears and stresses must have been playing out in her dreams, because Angie had thought, Winston found me. She had reached for that lamp and attacked with full force.
But it had not been Winston. She hoped it had all been a bad dream.
But, no, it was all true. There was the lamp, with a large chunk missing from its glass base and the shade completely crumpled, lying on her floor.
It hadn’t been Winston. It had been a man she barely knew. It had been her new employer, Jefferson Stone.
Heat raced up her cheeks as she remembered him comforting her even after she had smashed a lamp over his head. When he had climbed onto the bed? That’s when she should have protested more convincingly that she did not need him! When he had pulled her onto his lap? That’s when she should have put the wall up and resisted with all her might.
But, no, instead, weakling that she was, she had surrendered into it, allowed herself to feel something she had not felt in months, not even with the police.
It was a sensation beyond feeling safe. Angie had felt protected.
Even if Jefferson hadn’t said to her, over and over, that she was safe, she would have felt protected by him. It was not his words that had comforted. Unlike her, he was incapable of lying about who he was. She had felt the truth that was at the core of Jefferson Stone. She had felt the great strength and calm in his physical presence.
She had felt he was that man—that one-in-a-million man—who would lay down his life to protect someone he perceived as weaker than himself, or vulnerable.
Fresh from terrifying dreams—not to mention months of uncertainty—she had not been strong enough to resist what he had offered. It was what she had wanted most since her terrifying ordeal with Winston had begun. To feel safe again in the world.
And after she had felt safe? After she had realized she was in a lovely bedroom at a house on a lake that most people would not be able to find, even with a map? Then she should have told him to go, released him from that primal duty he felt to protect someone not as strong as him.
