hadn’t known that, but, of course, it was the sort of thing Maida would do. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to ease the pain in his leg. With the crucial business deal pending, he’d had trouble keeping up with anything else lately, including second-grade parties. He should go in and get back to work, but still he lingered, watching Paula with his son.
“I’ll bet the kids liked those,” she said. “Maida makes the best cupcakes.”
Jason nodded, glancing down at the step he was scuffing with the toe of his shoe. Then he looked up at Paula. “Did you come here to teach me?”
“Teach you?” she echoed. “Why would I do that? School’s out for the summer.”
Jason shrugged, not looking at either of them. “My dad thinks I should do better in school.”
Shock took Alex’s breath away for a moment. Then he found his voice. “Jason, I don’t think that at all. And it’s not something we should talk about to Paula, anyway.”
Paula ignored him, all her attention focused on Jason. Her hand rested lightly on his son’s shoulder. “Hey, second grade is tough for lots of people. I remember how hard it was when I had to start writing instead of printing. My teacher said my cursive looked like chicken scratches.”
“Honest?” Jason darted a glance at her.
“Honest.” She smiled at him. “You can ask Aunt Maida if you don’t believe me. She probably remembers when I used to try to write letters to her. Sometimes she’d call me to find out what I’d said.”
She’d managed to wipe the tension from Jason’s face with a few words. Alex didn’t know whether to be pleased or jealous that she’d formed such instant rapport with his son. Paula seemed to have a talent for inspiring mixed feelings in him.
Her blond hair swung across her cheek as she leaned toward Jason, saying something. The impulse to reach out and brush it back was so strong that his hand actually started to move before common sense took over.
Mixed feelings, indeed. The predominant feeling he had toward Paula Hansen wasn’t mixed at all. It was one he’d better ignore, for both their sakes.
Paula stood on the tiny porch of the housekeeper’s cottage the next morning, looking across the expansive grounds that glistened from last night’s shower. The sun, having made it over the steep mountains surrounding Bedford Creek, slanted toward the birch tree at the end of the pool, turning its wet leaves to silver. The only sound that pierced the stillness was the persistent call of a bobwhite.
The stillness had made this secluded village seem like a haven to her when she was a child. She’d arrived in the Pennsylvania mountains from Baltimore, leaving behind the crowded row house echoing with the noise her brothers made. Four brothers—all of them older, all of them thinking they had the right to boss her around. Her childhood had sometimes seemed like one long battle—for privacy, for space, for the freedom to be who she was.
Here she’d stepped into a different world—one with nature on the doorstep, one filled with order and quiet. She couldn’t possibly imagine the Caine mansion putting up with a loud game of keep-away in its center hall. It would have ejected the intruders forcibly.
Paula glanced toward the back of the mansion, wondering how much Alex had changed it since his father’s death. The room on the end was the solarium. She remembered it filled with plants, but Alex had apparently converted it to a workout room. She could see the equipment through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Next came the kitchen, with its smaller windows overlooking the pool. She should be there right now, fixing breakfast for Alex and Jason, but Alex had made it very clear he didn’t want that.
Aunt Maida wasn’t going to be happy. The last thing she’d said the night before had been to fix breakfast. Paula’s protests—that Alex had told her not to, that Alex hadn’t agreed to let her stay yet—had fallen on deaf ears.
Maida’s stubborn streak was legendary in the Hansen family. Paula’s father was the same, and any battle between Maida and him was a clash of wills. She vividly remembered the war over Maida’s determination that Paula go to college. If not for Maida, Paula might have given up, accepting her father’s dictum that girls got marriage certificates, not degrees. Her dream of a profession might have remained a dream.
But Maida wouldn’t allow that. She’d pushed, encouraged, demanded. Paula had worked two jobs for most of the four years of college, but she’d made it through, thanks to Aunt Maida.
She leaned against the porch rail, watching a pair of wrens twittering in the thick yew hedge that stretched from the housekeeper’s cottage toward the garage. If only she could find a way to help her aunt, to help Jason, without being a servant in Alex Caine’s house.
She and Jason had played on the flagstone patio when she was his nanny. They’d sat in the gazebo with a storybook, and he’d leaned against her confidently, his small head burrowed against her arm. She remembered, so well, the vulnerable curve of his neck, the little-boy smell of him. He’d look up at her, his dark eyes so like his father’s, sure he could trust her, sure she’d be there for him. And then she’d gone away.
What am I supposed to do, Lord? If Alex said no, would she be upset or would she be relieved? Only the guilt she felt over Jason kept her from running in the opposite direction rather than face Alex Caine every day and remember how he’d kissed her and then turned away, embarrassed.
Infatuation, she told herself sternly. It was infatuation, nothing more. She would stop imagining it was love.
She remembered, only too clearly, standing in the moonlight looking up at him, her feelings surely written on her face. Then recognition swept over her. Alex regretted that kiss. He probably thought she’d invited it. Humiliation flooded her, as harsh and scalding as acid.
She’d mumbled some excuse and run back to Aunt Maida’s cottage. And a few days later, when she’d realized the feelings weren’t going to fade, she’d made another excuse and left her job several weeks earlier than she’d intended, prepared to scurry back to Baltimore.
The flow of memories slowed, sputtering to a painful halt. Her last clear recollection was of Alex lifting her suitcase into the limo next to his own, saying he had to take the commuter flight out that day, too. Then—nothing. She’d eventually regained the rest of her memories, but the actual take-off and crash remained hidden, perhaps gone forever.
When she’d recovered enough to ask questions, her parents had simply said she’d been on her way home from her summer job. If she’d remembered then, would she have done anything differently? She wasn’t sure. The failure had lain hidden in her mind.
Now, according to Aunt Maida, anyway, God was giving her a chance to make up for whatever mistakes she’d made then. Unlike most of the people Paula knew, Aunt Maida never hesitated to bring God into every decision.
Whether Maida was right about God’s will, Paula didn’t know. But her aunt was right about one thing—Jason had changed. Paula pictured his wary expression, the way he hunched his shoulders. The happy child he’d been once had vanished.
Of course, he was old enough now to understand a little more about his mother’s leaving. That traumatic event, followed so soon by the plane crash that injured his father, was enough to cause problems for any child. And he must know that his mother wouldn’t be coming back. Maida had told her the details that hadn’t
