“Let me guess. She wants things often.” Natalie smiled at the thought of her imperious grandmother ringing a bell to make her mother jump. It would delight the old lady no end.
“Every other minute,” Laura concurred. “Coming, Mother. I’ll give you a call in a few days,” she said to Natalie. “Wish me luck.”
Natalie hung up and was silently wishing her mother luck when there was a knock on her front door.
She opened it to find Christo standing there, still in the dark trousers and long-sleeved dress shirt he would have worn to work. The top button was undone, his tie was askew, and he had his suit coat slung over his shoulder.
“Your mother says you run a rent-a-wife agency,” he said without preamble.
Natalie blinked in surprise. But she stopped herself before she wetted dry lips. “That’s right,” she said.
“Do you rent office personnel, too?”
“Office…”
“I need someone to take your mother’s place.” His jaw worked.
“I thought everything was under control?”
When he narrowed his gaze at her, Natalie shrugged. “I just got off the phone with my mother. She said she’d talked to you and that you said everything was fine.”
“I lied.” He dropped his jacket over the porch railing and raked fingers through already mussed hair. “They didn’t work out.”
“They?”
“The first one was bossy to the kids. Acted like she was some damn mother superior.”
Kids? It took Natalie a moment to realize what he was talking about. When she thought about Christo she generally still thought of him at her father’s firm, but of course he wasn’t there. He’d left not long after she had at the end of that summer to go off on his own—to start his own practice in which he focused on family law. Because of Jonas? She’d often wondered. But of course she’d never found that out.
Now he said, “I sent her back, and they sent me another one. One your mother hadn’t trained,” he added grimly. “And she cried.”
“She cried?” Natalie echoed.
“A lot. Every time she couldn’t find something.” He ground his teeth.
“Every time you yelled at her?” Natalie guessed.
“I didn’t yell. I was very polite.”
She bet he was. Icy politeness from Christo Savas would be far worse than being yelled at. “And she left?” Natalie guessed.
He shook his head. “I sacked her, too. And today they sent two others, but they’re hopeless. I sent them back. And the agency doesn’t have anyone else. Not until next week. Lisa can come on Thursday. She knows the office. She’s worked with your mother. She’s worked with me. But I can’t put the office on hold until Thursday. And—” he paused and rolled taut shoulders as if doing so would loosen the tension in them “—I can’t tell your mother. She’d come back.”
She would, too. Natalie knew it. “She might be glad to,” she ventured with a slight smile.
Christo’s brows raised. “She would?”
“Yes.” Natalie sighed. “But she can’t. She needs to be there. To get Grandma through this and capable of being on her own again.”
He grimaced. “That’s what I thought, why I lied. Why I don’t want to call her back. So…do you have someone? Just through Wednesday.”
“I’ll check,” Natalie said.
And there it was again, lighting his face—the heart-stopping grin that had seduced her once before—the drop-dead-gorgeous, Christo-Savas-thinks-you’re-wonderful smile.
“Terrific,” he said. “Just send her to my office tomorrow morning by eight-thirty. I’ll get her up to speed. Thanks.”
He knew it was a long shot, asking Natalie to supply a secretary. He didn’t want to ask her for anything. He’d been vaguely distracted ever since she’d taken up residence at Laura’s place.
Not that he’d seen her—except for when he’d caught a glimpse of her in the window of the apartment when he’d been sanding the bookshelves. But she’d disappeared instantly, as if she had no more desire to see him than he did to see her.
Good, he’d thought. But that had been before he’d run out of office help.
He couldn’t believe the agency didn’t have anyone else. More likely they just didn’t have anyone he wouldn’t make cry.
Laura never cried. Laura was as tough—and compassionate—as they came. There was nothing she couldn’t handle—not his most difficult clients, not cantankerous judges or demanding opposing counsels, not irate parents or Christo himself when his own mother or father breezed in to complicate his life.
If he’d thought he was doing Laura a favor, offering her the job as his secretary and office manager after her divorce, he soon discovered he was the lucky one.
She made his office run efficiently. She smoothed and soothed everyone she came into contact with. She got them to slow down, think clearly, take a deep breath.
“How do you do that?” he’d asked her more than once.
She’d laughed. “Practice. For twenty-five years I was a wife and mother. You don’t forget.”
Then she’d told him her daughter was creating an agency of temps who could do the same thing. “South Bay Rent-a-Wife, she’s calling it.” Laura had laughed and shaken her head.
“Your daughter?” The only daughter he knew was Natalie. The other child, he was sure, was a son.
She nodded. “Natalie. You must have met her the summer she was clerking at Ross and Hoy.”
Oh yeah. He’d met Natalie all right. But all he’d done was nod. “She’s a lawyer.”
“No. She dropped out of law school.”
“Dropped out?” He remembered how shocked he’d been at Laura’s words. And how guilty he’d felt. She hadn’t left because of him, had she?
“She always wanted to be a lawyer,” Laura said. “Was always her daddy’s girl. But when Clayton left—” She paused, and he’d thought she was just going to leave it there, but after a moment, she continued. “Well, Natalie decided she didn’t want to be like her father after all.” She smiled slightly. “She said she’d rather be like me—but get paid for it.”
Christo’s eyebrows went up. “Paid for it?”
Laura laughed. “She’s a savvy girl, my Natalie. She and Sophy, her cousin, tried it themselves first—worked as ‘wives.’ Now they run the agency and only step in when they have to. But she tells me her
