drooling on the shoulder of her jacket. Fine blond lashes formed crescents against his pink cheeks.
Struck by how oblivious she was to the drool and still expecting someone to show up and help, he handed her a bright blue Harry Potter backpack and started hauling out enough designer luggage to stock a small boutique. Not quite sure how to tell her that playing butler wasn’t part of the service, he grabbed four of the suitcases—one under each arm and one in each hand—and followed her up the rounded and sweeping stairs to the massive double doors.
Using the key she’d given him, he opened one door, picked up the luggage again and followed her inside.
“Just leave the bags here in the foyer,” she said, “and come with me, please.”
Her voice was hushed in deference to the sleeping child. She clearly didn’t want to disturb him. Or wait for Parker’s response. The tap of her heels echoed on white marble as she crossed the edge of the malachite-and-onyx sunburst tiled into the floor and passed the circular table in the middle of it holding an empty urn.
In the dim light, his glance left her back to skim the curved arms of double staircases, the crystal chandelier centered two stories above the table and the various and vast rooms visible through the open doorways.
Dustcovers concealed much of the furniture. Lamps were dark. The drapes were all closed. Yet what he noticed most was the heavy stillness that indicated an empty house.
With the sudden and unwelcome feeling that this particular assignment might not be as straightforward as he’d thought, he followed her toward a narrow butler’s door camouflaged by the paneling beneath one staircase and into a long equally dim hall.
They were clearly in the servants’ wing. The white hallway and the utilitarian rooms off it had an infinitely more practical feel to them than the areas furnished with the velvet side chairs he’d noticed in the formal dining room or the ornate bombé chest in the foyer.
After passing two rooms with twin beds, she opened one that held a neatly made double bed and a dresser at one end and a desk and small seating area at the other. Lowering her son to the mauve tweed sofa, she pulled a brightly knit afghan off its back and settled it over him. Her motions seemed almost unconscious as she pulled off his shoes, tucked the afghan over his feet when he stirred, then gently touched his head as if to reassure him before slipping back into the hall.
Considering how totally unmaternal Parker would have expected her to be, her easy affection for her son surprised him. Or maybe, he thought, it was protectiveness he sensed in her. Whatever it was, he found himself far more interested in why her smile seemed so uneasy when she moved past him and into the huge—and deserted—kitchen.
He was wondering where the devil everyone was when she flipped on the overhead lights and illuminated a room filled with what looked like miles of counters and glass-fronted white birch cabinetry. Stacks of dishes gleamed through the glass panes. Copper pots glinted from the rack high above a white-tiled center island the size of a boardroom conference table.
“You can stay in the room where I put Mikey. It belongs to the head housekeeper,” she said, her expression polite, her voice still low. “Rose is with my parents in the Hamptons for the summer. The rest of the staff is on vacation, too. Except for the stable master and his wife. They live above the stables. And the groundskeeper is in the cottage near the lake. Rose’s room has its own bath, and you’re welcome to use the pool and the exercise room downstairs if you’d like.”
Tess watched a frown pinch the dark slashes of Parker’s eyebrows as he glanced from her to the office alcove and the window above a table in the far corner where the staff took their meals. The man was difficult to read, a trait his profession seemed to demand, but he appeared far more interested in what surrounded him than in his personal accommodations.
In the space of seconds, it seemed to Tess that her paid protector had absorbed who was on the property, managed to take in the details of his immediate surroundings and just as thoroughly searched her. He’d no sooner noted the utility room leading to the back door than his scrutiny moved from the top of her head to the toes of her pumps. She could swear he’d missed nothing in between.
Had it not been for her brother’s recommendation, she would have felt far more uncomfortable than she already did at that unapologetic appraisal. Those arresting features gave away nothing of his impressions.
Feeling totally disadvantaged, nerves ruined the cultured poise she constantly strove to achieve. That poise seemed to come as naturally as breathing to her mom and her older sister, but neither of them had been cursed with the inner energy she constantly battled to tame. Even fighting fatigue from a week’s worth of sleepless nights stressing over her trip home, it was either pace or fidget. Since pacing seemed more dignified, she turned away to do just that. All that mute and massive muscle unnerved her, too.
“I assume you’ve done your homework,” she began, hating the position she was in, knowing no other way to address it. “So I imagine you’re aware of what was being said about me before I left.”
She turned back, met his too-blue eyes. He stood ramrod-straight in the arch of the hallway, one hand clasping the opposite wrist. “The majority of it,” he conceded.
Not caring to imagine what he thought of all that dirt, she tipped her chin, only to immediately check the motion. She couldn’t allow herself to get defensive with him. She needed him on her side. More important than that, she desperately needed an ally.
It seemed a true indication of how much she’d lost that she’d had to hire one.
At the dispiriting thought, she resumed her pacing. “You’ve worked for my brother,” she reminded him, arms crossed as she made her way up one side of the island, “so you know that people distort things to serve their own purpose. And you know that the press has a definite tendency to exaggerate.” Among other transgressions, real and imagined, her brother had been sued for support for a child that wasn’t his and blamed for a nightclub brawl that started after he’d left. If she remembered correctly, Parker had been with him that particular night. “I hope you’ve kept that in mind with anything you’ve heard or read about me.
“I also hope my brother is right about you,” she continued before he could ask why she hadn’t defended herself if what he’d heard wasn’t true. “Cord said I could trust you. I don’t know anyone outside my family that I can trust anymore,” she stressed softly, “so I had to rely on his judgment. That’s why I asked for you. That and a comment he made about you being up for just about anything.”
She turned again to face the man filling the space with his powerful presence, saw the faint lift of one dark eyebrow.
“I didn’t want to indicate my plans over the phone or the Internet, but aside from you being my driver and keeping me clear of paparazzi, there are some other things I need you to do for me. I hope you won’t mind.”
Parker had spent years learning to anticipate people and situations. Little caught him unprepared. Since he inevitably prepared for the worst, even less surprised him. He had not, however, expected the open candor of the woman giving him a cautious, almost hopeful smile or the isolation he sensed about her as she stood waiting for him to confirm or deny what her brother had claimed. He recognized that sense of separation, that sense of no longer being a part of the whole, only because in the past year he’d felt it so much himself.
Dismissing that unwanted thought, not appreciating the reminder, he studied her even more closely.
“You can believe your brother. You and your
