“You don’t sound happy about it.”
Dillon shrugged. “I don’t really want to work in New York again.”
“Too much crime?”
“Too dull. But the job was a step up, USA Bureau chief for NCN, Northeastern Cable News. So I told ’em I’d give it a try for one year.”
“And then?”
Dillon shrugged, knowing the management experience there was going to be worth its weight in gold to him later. “If I don’t like it, I’ll head back to the Middle East.”
“You sound like you think you won’t like it,” Hayley said, her brow arching in disapproval.
Dillon wasn’t about to apologize for his lack of domesticity or his love of adventure. “I’m going to give it my best shot.” He frowned. “It’s the house that I let my sister talk me into buying that I’m really uneasy about. It needs a hell of a lot of work to make it habitable, or so I’ve been told. I haven’t actually seen anything but pictures to date.”
Jade eyes sparkling, Hayley grinned and shook her head in silent bemusement. “Sight unseen, hmm?”
“Yep.”
“So why’d you buy it?”
“The investment, of course.”
“Of course,” Hayley said dryly.
“I’m planning to resell it at the end of a year’s time, when my assignment is up, and make a killing.”
“So where is this house?” she asked.
“Connecticut.”
“Connecticut,” she murmured wistfully. “I’ve always wanted to live there.”
Something about her expression, kind of like a kid with no money looking hungrily through the glass at the candy counter, got to him. It made him—he told himself firmly it was for Hank’s sake only he was feeling this way—want to make it possible for her to get exactly what she wanted. “Say,” Dillon said casually. “You wouldn’t be interested in the job as my housekeeper, would you?”
She merely rolled her eyes at the suggestion. “Thanks, but there’s no way I could commute back and forth from the city every day.”
Dillon shrugged, not so willing to be dismissed, even if his idea was a little crazy. “So you and the baby could live in,” he persisted. “Think about it. You’d have another entire year to get your future sorted out.”
She laughed, a rich melodious sound. “You’re kidding. Right?”
“No,” Dillon said. “You need a job, preferably one that will allow you a lot of time to spend with your baby, which mine will, and a nice safe place to live. You’re handy with a wrench. You seem to have a fair amount of decorating skill. At least I like what you’ve done with this place, sans moving boxes, anyway. You’re just what I need to make my house habitable. And my house is just the kind of place you need to raise your baby in and regroup.”
“Thanks, but I’m not interested in being anyone’s maid. I have enough trouble just cleaning up my own messes.”
“Hey, I’m not that messy,” Dillon protested automatically. Her delicate brow arched. He continued, “Besides, you’d be a lot more. You’d be decorating, organizing all my stuff, creating order out of chaos, making a home for me.” He grinned mischievously. “Or at least enough of one to get my sister off my back.”
“Your sister?” Hayley blinked.
“Marge.” Dillon’s mouth curved fondly at the thought of the sister he loved. “She thinks I’ve ruined my life, and she wants me to settle down for at least a year and try to have a real life, one that includes more than just my work.”
Hayley wrinkled her nose. “It sounds like what she really thinks you need is a wife.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Only thing is I’m not interested in getting married.”
“Well,” Hayley said pragmatically with a sigh, “that makes two of us.”
“So how about the job?” Dillon tried to imagine what it would be like to have a woman as beautiful as Hayley working as his housekeeper. Bringing him his paper in the morning, making him breakfast… Maybe he’d even get a glimpse of her in some sort of negligee and robe, if they were under the same roof.
“Think about the time it would give you with Christine,” he said persuasively. He figured he could handle a good-looking woman with a baby under his roof a lot better than he could handle the mustached, overweight, drill sergeant of a housekeeper his sister was pushing him to hire. Employing Hayley would ease his own guilt over Hank considerably. Even if he found her incredibly desirable, he wouldn’t act on that desire because of his past friendship with Hank.
“Dillon, listen to me,” she said with weary tolerance. “I know you think you’re trying to help, but my schedule is erratic at best these days. I sleep when the baby sleeps. I’m awake when she’s awake, even if that’s from three in the morning until dawn. I don’t know if I could have dinner on the table precisely at eight every night. Or even be awake enough to cook for you if you decided to have a dinner party.”
“I never give dinner parties,” he said flatly. “I only go to them. And as for schedules, my hours are erratic at best, too. Some nights I probably won’t show up for dinner at all.”
“Well, then I would be ticked off. If I went to all the trouble to cook the damned meal, I’d expect you to eat it.”
He grinned at her feisty tone, liking the warm flush of color that had come into her cheeks. “I knew there was something I liked about you,” he drawled.
They stared at each other in contemplative silence.
“What about salary?”
“What’s fair?” Dillon volleyed back, mirroring her own pragmatic, let’s-get-down-to-brass-tacks tone. “Room, board and say…ten percent of the profit I make when I sell the house at the end of a year? It’s not as if you don’t know me,” he continued when she hesitated.
“True. Hank spoke of you often. He said you were a well-loved boss, respected by all who worked for you.”
Which made his own betrayal of Hank all the harder to bear, Dillon thought. He should’ve known better than to have sent Hank into the fray. But how could he have known the barracks would be hit by shrapnel from an exploding missile? Dillon sighed.
Hayley was silent. Whether she was blaming him or not, Dillon couldn’t tell. Finally she smiled. “I guess I can trust you.”
Dillon grinned back. “Now you’re talking.”
“Add a monthly stipend of four hundred dollars for my personal expenses and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Four hundred!” he echoed, stunned.
“Do we have
