offer her something too generous, she’d go back to insisting she didn’t need any help and probably wind up in some fleabag apartment. “Minimum wage. But I’d like to get someone who can be on call if the job runs late, or stay as long as it takes….” Then another brainstorm struck. “So of course I’d throw in the guest room.”
Lucy stared at him in disbelief. “You’re making this up.”
“I’m not my brother!” Which was a stupid reaction, Conner knew. It was pointless to feel any flicker of hurt, because he shouldn’t care what this woman thought of him. “I’m offering you a straight, up-front deal,” he concluded. “You take care of the office work, and you and Emma can stay at the house until January fifteenth.”
It wasn’t going to be an easy sell, he knew as soon as Lucy folded her arms across her chest. “Why?” she demanded, glancing from him to Emma. “Just because she’s your niece?”
Because taking care of family was the kind of habit no one ever outgrew.
Because, like it or not, he’d spent a lifetime cleaning up after his brother.
Because if he turned his back on yet another responsibility, Conner Tarkington might as well check out.
“That’s partly it,” he told Lucy. After all, his responsibilities now included his brother’s baby. And as long as he didn’t allow himself any distractions from Bryan’s memorial, he could handle six weeks with a woman who made him feel more alive, more aware than he’d felt in a long time. “But I also want to get this foundation up and running, and I’ll need some help to get it done by January. So do we have a deal?”
She met his eyes, and the gaze lingered for a long moment before she drew a deep breath and reached forward to offer a handshake he wouldn’t have dared to suggest himself.
“All right,” she said as Con accepted her small, strong hand and felt the warmth of her skin radiate through every cell of his body. “Yes. We have a deal.”
Chapter Two
They had a deal, Lucy reminded herself two days later as she inserted another sheet of letterhead into the printer and watched The Bryan Foundation logo slide toward the tray. She gave Conner neatly typed letters, he gave her a paycheck and a place to stay. That was all.
Their deal didn’t require him to act like family, to enjoy playing with Emma instead of keeping a careful distance whenever the baby was awake. It didn’t require him to act like anything more than a housemate who traded cooking and grocery-shopping duties with her, and who didn’t go beyond the light conversation they shared during breakfasts and dinners at the kitchen counter. It didn’t even require him to answer a simple question like, “Why do you call this The Bryan Foundation?”
But every time she remembered his response to that question—“It’s a long story. Do you have the investor list?”—she found herself gritting her teeth. If he didn’t even want to tell her how he’d named a foundation which provided after-school care for children, there was obviously never going to be much of a friendship, here.
Not that she cared, Lucy reminded herself as she glanced at the baby carrier, where Emma seemed enchanted with the pulsing concerto she’d put on the CD player. Not that she even wanted to be friends with Conner Tarkington. It was just hard to share a house and a dining-room office with someone who stayed so remote all the time…except for that one, never-mentioned flash of awareness between them, the night he’d mentioned locking her door.
Then she heard the front door slam, which meant he was back already. “Lucy, can I Fed-Ex that proposal tonight?” Conner called, and she hastily turned her attention to the page emerging from the computer printer.
“They close at five-thirty,” she told him, and as Con came into the office he glanced at his Rolex watch.
“Damn, I guess not.”
But he said it calmly, the way he said everything else. Wednesday evening, when she had whooped with exhilaration over finally getting the new fax machine to send pages, he had barely nodded. And yesterday afternoon, when the computer swallowed the addresses she wanted and Lucy had burst into tears, his only response had been a quiet suggestion that she call someone to recover the data.
It was probably that very lack of emotion which made the man so incredibly good at business, Lucy suspected. And while she couldn’t help wishing he’d let himself relax once in a while, she had to admit there was something impressive about his detached professionalism, his innate confidence that things would go exactly the way he wanted. No one who dealt with Conner Tarkington would ever have to worry about him changing his mind or backing out of a promise.
She could handle her end of their deal just as professionally, she knew, the same as anyone he might have hired from the temp service. Although, Lucy admitted, as the CD player in the living room began a lush violin solo, maybe a temp wouldn’t answer phone calls while dancing to the Tarkingtons’ music collection….
Conner reached for the message slips she handed him, then halted momentarily as the violin’s melody soared. “Thanks,” he said, but in his voice she could hear a thread of tension. “What’s that?”
“I can turn it down,” she offered. Maybe Con was one of those people who couldn’t think with noise in the background, but the sound wasn’t loud enough to disturb Emma. “Or do you just not like music?”
He hesitated, and she saw his knuckles whiten as he tightened his grip on the messages. “It doesn’t bother me,” he muttered. “It’s just… Do you have anything else?”
“Practically everything,” she told him. “You should know, it’s your family’s collection.” But now that she thought of it, Lucy realized, over the past few days she hadn’t noticed him anywhere near the cabinet of jazz, big band, classical and contemporary CDs in the living room. “Are you sure you don’t mind music?”
Conner squared his shoulders, picked up the portable phone from the dining room table and then met her gaze straight on. “I’ve been on the board of the Philadelphia Orchestra First-Nighters,” he answered gruffly, “for the past six years.”
That didn’t really answer her question, but she sensed there was no point in asking anything more. Whatever bothered Conner Tarkington about music, it wasn’t something he intended to share with her.
“Good for you,” she told him instead, and noticed the slight relaxation of his neck muscles…as if he hadn’t expected such matter-of-fact acceptance of that curious tension. “That’s one more nice thing,” she offered, “I can tell Emma about her family.”
If he appreciated how easily she’d switched the conversation to neutral ground, he didn’t show any sign of it. “What, the Tarkingtons?”
“Well, you know, kids need to hear good things about where they came from.” Which meant never saying their father had been a scumbag…not that she could say such a thing to Conner, in any case. He seemed like the kind of person who believed in family loyalty, and that was all the more reason to remember her vow of speaking well about Emma’s dad. “I already saved the articles that talked about Kenny in the Phoenix Open.”
Crumpling the message slips onto his side of the desk, he set the phone down harder than necessary. “No kidding.”
“For when she’s older, I mean.” Emma would grow up hearing
