“That’s usually what everyone thinks.” Cassie smiled sadly. “They’ll take the younger ones because they’re cute and cuddly. But the teenagers always have a more difficult time.” She grinned at him, tongue in cheek.
“After all, how many adolescents do you know that are easy to get along with?” she queried. “Usually they’re already struggling to find out who they are. Fitting in to a strange home is just another problem added to an already staggering load.”
Jefferson thought about his own teenage years. They had been difficult, all right. And he’d had the advantage of knowing that there would be food and the same place for him to sleep every night.
As he sat watching her slender form, slim legs tucked beneath her, Jeff could see the enthusiasm and concern Cassie brought to her job. He considered his own idea once more. Somehow he doubted that the small spitfire in front of him would welcome his idea just yet. He decided to hold off for a while. Perhaps once they got to know each other, Cassie Newton would be more amenable to the plan that was floating half-formed in Jefferson’s busy mind.
Jeff made it his business to go out to Aunt Judith’s a number of times during the next weeks. He made more than two dozen trips over the next three weeks to the stately old home, and not all of them were to do with settling Judith’s estate.
He was drawn to the family atmosphere that prevailed but his curiosity was piqued by the small, green-eyed sprite who played board games sprawled on the floor, drank coffee incessantly and squealed in delight when the children tickled her. Oak Bluff was as comfortable for him now as it had been when Judith was alive. More so. Now he felt an insatiable interest in the inhabitants that he had never experienced with his aunt.
With a little ingenuity and a few well-framed questions, Jeff managed to inveigle himself into the household routine without much fuss. Before long Bennet was relaying bits and pieces of information that were very enlightening when one was trying to understand Cassie Newton. He also learned more about her charges.
Friday afternoon he found Cassie alone in the library. He wandered over to the armchair and stood peering down at her, noticing the tearstains on her pale cheeks. She glared back at him impolitely.
“Do you ever work?” she demanded rudely.
“You forget,” he teased. “I have my own company. I’m the boss.” Jeff smiled. He had her rattled. That should help.
She raised her eyebrows as if to say, so what? Jeff grinned.
“It so happens that I just finished the graphics for a new computer system and I’m taking a break. How’s it going with you?”
She sat cross-legged on the floor. Some tight black material clung to her shapely legs and stretched all the way to her hips where a big bulky sweater covered the rest of her obvious assets. Her hair was mussed and tousled in disarray around her tearstained face.
“It’s not going, not at all,” she muttered, staring at her hands.
“I thought some of the kids had moved.” Jeff flopped into a big leather chair and propped his elbows on his knees.
“They have. Only David, Marie and Tara are left now. Tara has a place to go on the first of the month, but the other two.” Her voice died away as huge tears plopped onto her cheeks. “I just can’t seem to find anywhere for them to live. If nothing comes up, they’ll have to go into temporary care, or worse, the juvenile home. They’ll hate that.”
She slapped her hand against the newspapers spread out on the floor around her. Jeff felt the energy she projected buzzing in the air around him as she jumped to her feet.
“Why did Judith have to make those stupid rules?” she demanded, standing in front of him. “I could have tried to purchase the place outright if she had put it up for sale, but this way, even when I move out, there’s no opportunity to get it.” Her tone was disparaging. “A cat home, for Pete’s sake!”
Jeff grinned. He’d seen this side of her quick temper before and he knew there was at least one way to calm her down. He grasped her slim arm and tugged.
“Come on,” he urged. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Seconds later they were striding through the dense, musky woods. Cassie might be short, but she set a fast pace and Jeff was forced to move quickly to keep up.
She strode along the path muttering to herself, clad in a brilliant red wool anorak that left her long, slim legs exposed in their black tights. Cassie’s raven curls glistened like a seal’s coat in the autumn sunshine as they swirled around her taut face.
“Absolutely ridiculous,” he heard her mutter as she stomped on a rotted tree, splintering it in the crisp air. “People shouldn’t be allowed to waste valuable resources just because she wants her nephew married.”
Jeff picked up the pace, anxious to hear this.
“Can’t he find himself a wife?” she mumbled angrily.
“I haven’t really looked,” he told her and watched, satisfied, as her skin flushed a deep rose. “Are you volunteering?”
“I don’t want to get married,” she told him as she looked down her pointed little nose. “I just want the kids and the house.”
Jeff pursed his lips to stop the chuckle from escaping. “Isn’t that putting the horse before the carriage, so to speak?” he queried, teasing her. “You should probably marry me first before we start discussing children.”
Cassie stopped in her tracks at his heckling tone, which sent him colliding into her from behind. Jeff struggled to regain his balance, but they both went crashing to the ground anyway with Cassie’s firm little body landing squarely in his lap. He sat there winded while she scrambled off him, and wondered at the reaction her tiny presence always created.
Her giggles of sporadic laughter sent his head tipping back to scrutinize her laughing face.
“You look like you’ve landed in something particularly nasty,” she told him, chortling at his discomfort.
“It sure felt like it,” he muttered, dusting the pine needles from the seat of his pants. Her laughing green eyes stared down at him curiously.
“What did you mean?” Her soft voice was hesitant, as if afraid to hear the answer.
Jeff thought for a moment, rehashing their conversation.
“Aren’t you at all interested in volunteering for the position of my wife?” he asked, his voice teasingly serious.
But Cassie didn’t laugh as he had expected. Her haunting green eyes stared at him, assessing his meaning.
“Why would you need to hunt for a wife?” she inquired, walking slowly beside him, her earlier ill humor dissipated like a morning mist now that curiosity had taken over. “I’m sure there are droves of women who would eagerly offer themselves on the marriage block to the infamous Jefferson Haddon the fourth.” Her tone was softly disparaging but her companion seemed not to hear it.
“It’s the third. And there are hardly droves,” he drawled.
“Anyway, that’s not the kind of woman
