he smelled like. And what his breath had felt like grazing the tenderness of her cheek.
If she had a choice, she would have cut and run. But she was desperate. She had absolutely no choice.
With her foot against the door he was too polite to slam, she said, determined, “I need this job.”
He contemplated that, and her, in silence.
“Really,” she clarified when it seemed as if he was not going to say anything at all.
“Well, you don’t qualify.” His determination seemed to match her own. Or exceed it.
“In what way?”
“You’re obviously not mature.”
“I guess that would depend how you defined mature,” she said.
“Old.”
“How old?” she pressed. “Fifty? Sixty? Seventy? Eighty?” She hoped she was pointing out how ridiculous he was being. Old was not necessarily a great qualification in a housekeeper.
For a moment he said nothing, and then one corner of that sinfully sexy mouth lifted, but not in a nice way. “Older than you.”
“I’m sure the human rights commission would have quite a bit to say about not being considered for a job—for which I’m perfectly qualified—because of my age,” she said.
The smile deepened, tickling across his lips—cool, unfriendly, dangerous—and then he doused it and lowered the slash of his brows at her. “Are you threatening me?”
It occurred to her that annoying him would be the worst possible way to wiggle her way into this job position.
“No, not at all. I’m just suggesting that you might have attracted a better response to your posting for an available position if you had said you needed someone highly organized and hardworking and honest.”
“All of which I’m presuming you are?” he said drily.
She took it as very hopeful that he had not tried to physically shove her foot out the door and slam it on her.
Not that he looked like a man who ever had to get physical to get what he wanted. That look he was giving her was daunting. Anyone less desperate would have backed down long before now.
“I’m desperate.” There she had admitted it to him.
“Your desperation is not my con—”
“I’m willing to guess you haven’t had a single response to that ad,” she plowed on. “Who would answer an ad like that?”
“Apparently, you would.”
“I’m not just desperate.”
“How very nice for you,” he said, his tone so sardonic it had a knife’s edge to it.
“I’m also highly organized and hardworking and honest.”
“You’re too young.”
“Humph. I think youth could be a great advantage for this position.”
He didn’t answer, so she rushed on.
“I will be terrific at this job. You’ll love me.”
He looked insultingly dubious about that.
How could she have said that? That he would love her? You did not want to even think a word like that in front of a man like this—who could make you feel as if he had kissed you by simply sighing in your direction.
“I’ll work for free for one day. If you’re not impressed, you haven’t lost anything.”
He frowned at her. “Look, Miss—”
“Nelson,” she filled in, using the name of the town she had just come through. “Brook Nelson.” There. A new name. She had used part of the city of Cranbrook that she had passed through on this wild ride, and part of the town of Nelson.
She held her breath, knowing from the tension she felt while she waited that she needed the new existence her new name promised her.
JEFFERSON STONE REGARDED his unwanted visitor. Something shivered along his spine when she said her name. He knew she was lying.
And she wasn’t very good at lying, either. In fact, she was terrible at it.
He allowed himself to study her more closely. Brook Nelson—or whoever the hell she really was—was cute as a button. She was dressed in a brightly patterned summer blouse and white shorts. She was a little bit of a thing, slender and not very tall. It looked as if a good wind would pick her up and toss her.
And yet when her hands had been pressed into his chest, he had been aware of something substantial about her. That little bit of a thing had set off a tingle in him—an awareness—that had been as unwelcome as she was.
Hard not to be aware of her, when those shorts ended midthigh and showed off quite a bit of her legs.
Annoyed with himself, Jefferson shook off the thought and continued his study of his housekeeper candidate.
It just underscored what he already knew: she would not do.
She had light hair, a few shades darker than blond, but not brown. Golden, like sand he had seen on Kaiteriteri Beach in New Zealand. That hair was cut short, he suspected in a largely unsuccessful effort to make those plump curls behave themselves. They weren’t. They were corkscrewing around her head in a most unruly manner.
Her eyes were hazel, leaning toward the gold side of that autumn-like combination of golds and greens and browns. She had delicate features and it was probably that scattering of freckles across her nose that made her seem so wholesome, even though she was lying about who she was.
There was something earnest about her. Despite her youth, and despite the shortness of those shorts, she seemed faintly prim, as if she would be easily shocked by bad words. Which, of course, was part of the reason she would be a very bad fit for him as a housekeeper.
Because of her size, Jefferson had assumed she was young. But on closer inspection, she looked as if she was in her midtwenties. Still, she was exactly the type you would expect to be peddling cookies for a good cause or wanting to change the world for the better or encouraging attendance at the annual Anslow high school performance of Grease, which would be dreadful.
And he should know. Because a long time ago, in a different life, he had been cast as the renegade in that very high school play.
Jefferson shook it off. He did not like reminders of his past life.
Besides, Brook wasn’t anything like the ideal person he had in his head for this job, which was gray haired, motherly but not chatty, and someone willing to stay out of his
