that wasn’t quite true. She caught a glimpse or two of him in the morning as he headed off to work while she was taking her time, deliberately not venturing out of the apartment, staying in to feed the cat and do some scheduling work on her laptop for the rent-a-wife business she ran with her cousin, while she incidentally kept one eye on the window so she could see when he had left.
In the evening of the second day she saw him down on the patio of the garden sanding the boards that had been delivered for her mother’s bookcases.
That had been more than a glimpse. In fact, she’d stood there, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight of a shirtless Christo Savas bending over a board, a sheen of sweat glinting across his bare muscular back as he sanded the wood vigorously, then straightened and smoothed his hand along the grain.
She’d lingered in the window until his cell phone rang and in answering it, he turned and his gaze lifted to meet hers.
Instantly, Natalie stepped back, face burning at being caught out ogling him. She nearly tripped over Herbie in her haste to retreat to the kitchen where she poured herself a tall glass of ice water which she drank right down.
She stayed well away from the window after that, not venturing near until the sun had set and the world was completely dark.
The next day she didn’t see him at all. She got back to the apartment shortly before suppertime, expecting that she might run into him in the patio and steeling herself for the encounter. But he was nowhere to be seen, and the boards were stacked in the garage, still awaiting stain.
The next evening she didn’t see him, either.
Her mother rang that night. “I would have called sooner,” she said, “but I didn’t want you to think I was hovering.”
Natalie smiled. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
“So how are things going? Does Herbie miss me?”
“Of course. But things are fine. Herbie is thriving. The plants are surviving.”
“Of course they are,” her mother said with quiet satisfaction. “I knew I could count on you. How’s Christo?”
“What?” The unexpectedness of the question made Natalie’s voice crack.
“I wondered how Christo was coping,” Laura said. “I know you aren’t feeding him dinner, but I thought you might have talked to him, found out how things are going.”
“He doesn’t appear to be starving,” Natalie said drily. “So I assume he’s getting nourishment.” But then, because she knew her mother would wonder at her edgy tone, she said, “I really haven’t seen him to talk to, Mom. Only once, the day I got here.”
“Well, I hope things are going all right at work,” her mother said. “The temp who usually helps out is working elsewhere. So I had to train another woman before I left. It should be fine,” she said, but her voice trailed off and she sounded a little worried.
Natalie steeled herself against it. “You’ll have to ask Christo about that,” she said briskly.
“I have,” Laura said. “I called him tonight. He said everything was under control.”
“Then you should believe him.”
“I know. I do.” A pause. “But he sounded—I don’t know—stressed. I hope he’d let me know if it wasn’t all right,” Laura added pensively. “Oh, drat. There’s the bell again.”
“Bell?”
Her mother let out a weary sigh. “Your grandmother has a bell. She rings it when she wants something.”
“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.”
