flattered her svelte and curvaceous five-foot-seven-inch frame, secured her permed hair in a French knot and waited for the verdict. Hers and his. Thinking of what she had to lose, tremors raced through her, and she groped her way to a chair. With three hundred and eighty dollars to her name, Telford Harrington would have to see reason or she’d have a problem.
She’d hung up most of their clothing when she heard the doorbell ring but, thinking that anyone who lived there would use a key, she didn’t move from the closet. She couldn’t. The colors of her clothing danced in a mirage before her eyes, and her feet would not budge.
Tara. She had to find Tara. If she’d gotten into something… She looked around for the child, didn’t see her and walked quickly toward the stairs in time to hear a deep male voice—one she wouldn’t likely forget—explain, “Well, hello to you, too, and who are you?”
“My name is Tara. What’s yours? Do you live here?”
“I certainly do.”
“What’s your name?”
Alexis raced down the stairs and stopped, for he had looked up in her direction, and from that distance, his masculine persona, strong and heady, jumped out to her. Lassoed her and claimed her. She shook her body the way one rids clothes of wrinkles and got a grip on herself. “My name’s Telford,” she heard him say to Tara, though he’d locked his gaze on Alexis. “I’ll be right back.”
He stopped before reaching her and stared into her eyes. She tried to look away, but couldn’t. He seemed to pull her to him the way a magnet captures steel, and she realized that she was closing the distance between them. Her whole body slammed on alert, tingling with a strange new vibrancy, with life, and a blaze leaped into his eyes. The expression burning in them nearly unglued her. She felt him then; oh, how she felt him! He rimmed his top lip with the tip of his tongue, bringing her back to herself and to a halt two steps above him. If she trusted her judgment right then, she’d swear that he shuddered as though tension seeped out of him.
“I’m Telford Harrington, and something tells me you’re Alexis Stevenson.” That didn’t sound as if he was happy about it, either.
She took the hand he extended and shimmered with awareness from her scalp to the soles of her feet. He jerked his hand away from hers as if she’d scalded him. What a mess! Maybe she’d better leave right that minute and take her chances somewhere else.
“Yes,” she said, as though leaving hadn’t occurred to her. “I’m glad to meet you.”
He remained there, a breath away, eye to eye with her though she stood two steps above him. “You didn’t tell me you had a child. If you had, I’m not so sure I’d have hired you.”
“You didn’t ask me, nor did you mention it, so I figured you didn’t think it relevant.”
“If you had three kids, would you still think that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what I’d think if I had three. I’m just thankful that I only have to support this one.” She said that pointedly to ring his bell of compassion, if he had any.
He looked down suddenly, and she saw Tara pulling at his pants leg. “Mr. Telfry, Mr. Henry said supper is ready, and I’m hungry.”
“Mr. Telford, honey,” Alexis corrected.
She held her breath while she waited for his reaction. Tara reached up for his hand, anxious, as usual, to get her way. “Come on,” she said, and he turned and let the child lead him down the stairs to the kitchen, where he stopped.
“Where’s the food, Henry?”
“We’re eating in the breakfast room tonight, Tel. New house rules.”
He walked to the breakfast room, still holding Tara’s hand, stared at the table and spun around. “What the… What’s all this for? You’re having a party? Before I get all the way in the house, I see the place looks and smells like a woman’s boudoir. Now…”
She lifted her chin. “I’m sorry. Should I have set the table in the dining room? That seemed so formal.”
“What’s wrong with the kitchen?”
“It’s the kitchen. Besides, that table has only three chairs. Why do you have dining and breakfast rooms, if you don’t use them?”
Tara tugged at his hand. “Can we sit down?”
“Yeah.”
“What about Henry?” Alexis asked him. “Doesn’t he eat?”
“Ask him.” He let his impatience show and picked up a slice of jalapeño corn bread.
“We have to say grace,” Tara said and bowed her head.
To her amazement, Telford bowed his head and waited. Realizing that he wouldn’t say it, she did, but she knew Tara would be disappointed.
“I don’t like the pepper, Mummy.”
“Then eat the potato and the pork chop, and remember, you do not complain at the table.”
“Sorry, Mummy.”
Telford looked at her, and she wasn’t sure whether the fire in his eyes bespoke annoyance of or delight in her presence, though she suspected it was not the latter.
“You’ve been here, let’s see, half a day, and in that short time, you’ve managed to get dust flying all through the house, change my furniture around as well as my eating habits, and you’ve got the foyer looking like a girl’s dormitory. Ms. Stevenson, this is the home of three adult men and one grizzly cuss. We don’t need this.”
She leaned back, squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “‘Wanted: a woman of taste, intelligence and refinement as homemaker for three brothers.’ That’s what your ad said, and I was expecting a man who could appreciate that in a woman.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t ask you to come here and change my life.”
“Not to worry,” she said in as casual a tone as she could manage, though she couldn’t get her heart to settle down or her nerves to reassemble themselves. “You’ll be pleased, and it’s only for two years.”
He looked toward the ceiling in an air of resignation. “Two years. We’ll talk after we finish supper.”
She’d thought they were talking about it right then. “Whatever you say, sir.” She emphasized the “sir.”
“Call me Telford, and no nicknames please. Henry calls me Tel, but that’s because he can’t remember that I’m no longer six years old. I don’t accept that from anybody else. What do you want me to call you?”
“Alexis is fine.”
“And you can call me Tara.”
She watched Telford carefully to judge his reaction to her daughter. He smiled at the child—composed and at ease in her new environment with the strange man—and her heart raced a little faster. He may be annoyed, but he wouldn’t take it out on her child.
“How
