not only didn’t take offense, but he actually chuckled.
“I’m sorry, but my dislike for Mrs. Romani is such common knowledge around here that I sometimes forget most normal people don’t behave like this.”
“Why don’t you like her?”
Grant considered that. “It isn’t so much that I don’t like her. It’s more that she has an annoying habit of trying to control everything or run everybody’s life, or something.”
“She said approximately the same thing about you.”
He peered at her. “Really?”
“Yeah, she said you like to be the boss, you try to run everybody’s life and you always have to have your own way. So, she confronts you to more or less keep everything balanced.”
“Really?” he asked curiously.
“She doesn’t dislike you. I think she sees her belligerence as more self-defense than anything else. She doesn’t want to get swept up in the tidal wave. She sees you as being very…powerful, and not afraid to use that power.”
Carefully maneuvering the baby he held, Grant freed his right hand so he could rub it across the back of his neck. He didn’t know why it felt so good or so right to talk with this woman—actually, to confide in her as he’d never confided to anyone in his life—but it did. And he was too tired to fight it.
“I’m responsible for the lives of three babies, two brothers and now the wives of two brothers. We own the mill that employs fifty percent of the people in this county, and I’m putting in a shopping mall that will employ another thirty percent when it’s up and running. If all goes well, my construction company will pick up everybody who is left and even some people from surrounding counties. I don’t have time to stop and consider everybody’s feelings and everybody’s opinion.”
“Maybe you should.”
He stared at her. “How?” he asked incredulously. “Should I take a Gallop poll?”
She laughed at him again and his eyes narrowed. He should be angry with her for laughing at him. Instead he felt only breathless relief that he could actually talk about his burdens with an objective, independent listener.
“No, but you could try looking around every once in a while. Check for a grimace or a frown. Ask your brothers for an opinion here and there.”
“I do ask for my brothers’ opinions.”
“Do you take them into consideration?”
“Of course, I take…” He stopped. He honestly didn’t really know if he ever took his brothers’ opinions into consideration. He listened to them, then tossed them into the vat of information stored in his brain, which he assimilated in a certain fashion, then used to make decisions as he needed them.
“You don’t know, do you?” Kristen asked archly.
He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck again. What was he doing, confiding in a stranger? Yes, he knew it felt good to have somebody to talk with, especially someone objective, but this woman was only objective because she was a newcomer to his household. She was also an employee. No smart boss confided in his employees.
“No, I don’t know,” he replied. “And this conversation is over.”
“Can’t handle it?”
“No. It’s none of your business,” Grant corrected, rising and walking to a crib. “I’ve known you eight hours and I’ve already told you my deepest, darkest secrets.”
Following suit, Kristen also took her baby to a crib. “If those were your deepest, darkest secrets, Grant Brewster, you’ve got to get a life.”
The words sent an odd chill up Grant’s spine because they were exactly the thoughts he’d been having as he watched his baby brother get married.
Careful, cautious, he faced her. In her little pink sweater and a pair of loose-fitting jeans that knew exactly which parts of her anatomy to hug, Kristen Devereaux didn’t have a clue how much he really wanted to have a life—or at least some good old-fashioned excitement—with her.
Kristen seemed too damned young to have been married. She seemed too damned young not to have any family but a cantankerous old bat housekeeper she didn’t know. She seemed too damned young to be wise, and wonderful…and widowed.
Actually she was probably too damned young for him.
He took a long breath and blew it out. “Let’s go,” he said, motioning to the door. “Though the triplets usually sleep through the night now, there are no guarantees. There’s a monitor in your room and one in mine. First one to awaken has to get the kids. That’s the rule. So, I suggest that you go straight to your room and go straight to bed.”
Boy, he wished he hadn’t said that. Instant, graphic images of her sliding between satin sheets came to mind. He could see her hair fanned out on a pillow. He could envision her face softened in sleep. He could feel her nestled against him.
Oh, great! As if he needed to remind himself of the last image.
“Because that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to shower—” in cold water “—and then I’m going straight to bed.”
He said the last as he led her into the hall and more or less pointed her to the bedroom she’d been assigned.
But as he shuffled off as if his feet were on fire, Kristen dallied in going to her room. When she heard his door shut with a very distinct and final click, she pivoted and ran down the hall, down the steps of the spiral staircase, through the foyer and kitchen and to Mrs. Romani’s door.
It opened immediately.
“Well?” the gruff-voiced housekeeper asked as she granted Kristen entry.
“I think everything went okay. But I didn’t actually make up a story like you told me to. We started talking and before I knew it I was explaining that my husband and sister had died.”
Mrs. Romani gasped in horror.
“I didn’t go into any kind of detail and he assumed that because my family had died I’d come looking for a long, lost relative—you.”
“ He came up with that?”
Kristen nodded.
Mrs. Romani grinned. “Oh, that’s rich.”
But Kristen frowned. “I don’t like fooling him. I don’t like fooling anybody.”
“That’s why this is so rich,” Mrs. Romani said, patting Kristen’s hand. “ You never told him anything. He made assumptions. Now we don’t have to make up a story. We can more or less behave like strangers getting to know each other, which we are. And we also don’t have to worry that he’ll ask too many questions because you told him you lost your family, and he’s very sensitive about loss.”
Kristen licked her suddenly dry lips. “I know.”
“He confided
