“Other women have cried buckets over you, but I won’t ever be one of them. I don’t care what you think of me as long as I survive you and learn from you.”
One thing she was sure of. When this was over, she would be more than glad to see the back of Lucas McDowell.
Lucas grunted as he flexed his arms, moving into his seventy-second push-up and trying to clear his thoughts. He was staying in the penthouse apartment of one of Chicago’s most luxurious hotels and there was, of course, a gym available to him, but he had his own private regimen he followed. One hundred push-ups for starters. Every night. No exceptions. After the emotional chaos of his childhood, discipline had been his salvation. Nothing was going to change that.
But clearing his mind to concentrate on his task was proving difficult. After he’d left Genevieve at her apartment with her six locks, he’d searched the internet and easily located the crime statistics for that neighborhood. Theft was a given, domestic disputes the norm. He growled at that. He knew better than anyone that domestic dispute sounded much too mild for all the horrors that tag encompassed. But that had nothing to do with Genevieve.
“Not your problem or your business,” he reminded himself. Control the situation. He repeated his mantra. Don’t let yourself get involved. Don’t let the situation have power over you. Because control was everything. It was the only thing that had kept him out of jail. It made life and success possible.
But in spite of his best efforts to stop thinking about Genevieve, when he tried to return to his task, he could still see the look in her eyes when she had told him that she had all those locks and asked him if he didn’t trust her. Somehow he was sure she wouldn’t appreciate him interfering in her life or suggesting that she might want to take her first paycheck and move.
It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing he ever did or wanted to do. Keep a distance. Never get too involved was his motto.
And yet, Genevieve Patchett’s naïveté, her dangerous situation, had kept him from completing a task he’d done every night for years. He was still stuck on push-up number seventy-two.
“Idiot. Get control of yourself. Stay out of this. Don’t do something you’ll regret.” With a groan, he forced himself to complete the push-up and all the rest of them. Having withstood the onslaught of doubts and come out ahead, he went to bed. A soft bed. A safe bed. In an exclusive hotel in an exclusive neighborhood.
“And everything is perfectly fine,” he mumbled. But in the middle of the night he woke from a dream in a cold sweat, his fears about why Genevieve was bothering him confirmed. Voices from a past he tried never to remember had pushed their way into his dreams. He’d heard his mother crying in the night. He’d felt his own failure, his inability to be what she wanted, and his own panic as she’d walked out the door, never to return. And after his father’s death when he’d been left totally alone, there had been other mother figures, women who had tried to help him and recoiled in distress at his wounded animal anger. Some had been nice; most had merely wanted to use him to gild their reputations; one society princess had called him her “street child” until she had a baby of her own, a better, sweeter child, the kind she’d always wanted. In the end, he had spurned all of them. And then …
Lucas took a deep breath, knowing that there was no use trying to hold back the next part. Because the next was the worst, the most damning incident. Then, there had been Angie, an innocent girl who had been savagely beaten by her father just because she had been involved with a reckless troublemaker like Lucas. He’d known what her father was. He’d selfishly and arrogantly ignored it, urged her to defy her father and stay with him. And she had paid the price.
Anguish rushed over him at the memory of a young woman who had suffered at the fists of a full grown man, a woman who had never fully recovered, he had discovered only a few months ago.
Lucas cursed in the night. There was the connection. Angie. Because he’d known the danger that had existed for Angie and he’d ignored it, downplayed it. Just as he knew the danger for Genevieve.
Don’t think about it. Don’t get involved. Don’t lose control. This is a different woman, a different situation, he told himself.
And the next day, he knew he was right. Genevieve and her situation were nothing like Angie. The Patchett princess got into his car wearing a pair of designer shoes, biscuit-colored slacks that would never survive the day and a gold silk blouse.
He studied her, and without thinking, he raised an eyebrow.
Genevieve stared back at him with just a tiny bit of defiance in her eyes. He was half-convinced that if he said anything about her clothes, she would sass him. But a second later, her cheeks turned pink, she looked away and he realized that he had been mistaken about the sass and the defiance. She was still just a little rich girl flailing around.
The fact that he couldn’t keep his eyes off the V of her blouse or the way that sweet pink flush made her seem vulnerable and fragile and … enticing was irrelevant. Wasn’t it?
Maybe. But once she was in the car, he was thankful that he had to keep his eyes off of her and on the road. It was a good reminder. Always keep your eyes on the goal, the job, on whatever got you to where you wanted to go. Goals were good. They kept a man from doing something he would regret later. And he would definitely regret doing anything … instinctive where Genevieve was concerned.
He glowered.
She was very silent. Maybe his glowering was scaring her.
Maybe he shouldn’t have hired someone he could scare so easily. And yet …
“Did you survive yesterday all right?”
He knew the minute she turned to him. “Yes. Of course. You even told me that I survived before I went home.”
“I know, but …” Damn, but he was bad at this sensitivity thing. “You were working hard. Muscles get sore. The next morning is sometimes tougher than the day before.”
Her sudden chuckle was soft, whisperlike. “I may have been raised a privileged debutante and okay, maybe I am a little sore, but I’ll get past it. Actually, it was rather nice … the feeling that I had actually used my own two hands to make a difference. So I’m fine, Lucas.”
Okay, she was fine. And he was looking like an idiot. This was not the way he usually treated his employees. What was it about Genevieve Patchett that threw all of his thoughts out of whack?
He needed to get his thoughts back in line, restore discipline.
He would. He’d made his last mistake. Genevieve, he reminded himself, was no Angie. He didn’t really have to worry about her. She was a pampered princess, and if she’d ever met him back in the day when he was a skinny, angry, dirty kid, she probably would have put her nose in the air and run the other way. Besides for the moment at least, she was his employee. He should be treating her as such. The job he had hired her for was too important, too meaningful for all this foolishness.
He turned his thoughts back to business, ignored the scent of her perfume. Why on earth was she wearing perfume when the smell of cleaning solution would overpower that delicate floral nonsense after a scant few minutes on the job?
“Before we get started this morning, I’d like to go over some paperwork with you, including your job description,” he said, pulling up in front of Angie’s House.
“All right. I’ll
