Loe raamatut: «Expecting...»

One

Mallory pressed the throttle all the way to the floor and willed her small, overloaded car to climb up into the San Rafael Mountains above the university town of San Luis Obispo. Her tires shook and the engine knocked, but that was nothing like the way her hands shook and her knees knocked together. Just a small attack of nerves, she told herself. Understandable, considering this past week she’d quit her teaching job, given up her apartment, packed her meager belongings into her car and was on her way to start a new life. A new life. Oh, Lord, was she ready for this?

She forced herself to look at the scenery, to observe the cattle grazing peacefully beneath majestic oak and stately sycamore trees that dotted the hills on either side. As she passed the sign for the Santa Ynez Valley Ranch she was hit with another panic attack. If the road hadn’t been so narrow she might have turned back. Instead she pointed her car toward the imposing California ranch house with the tile roof and the massive overhanging eaves. At the end of the tree-lined entrance, she took a deep breath and got out of her car.

Before she could force herself to walk to the front door and lift the brass knocker, a white-faced calf came charging around the side of the house with a man on horseback in hot pursuit.

“Hey you, get out of the way,” he shouted.

Mallory froze with fear. He told her to get out of the way. She told herself to get out of the way. But her body didn’t get the message. She stood there, rooted to the spot, her arms out in front of her as if she could stop the runaway calf. She couldn’t. She frightened him though. Almost as badly as he frightened her. The animal took one look at her and bolted off in another direction. Reining up, the man glared down at her.

“I thought I told you to get out of the way. You’re lucky you weren’t run over.”

Mallory shaded her eyes, looked up into a sun-bronzed, granite-hard face with flashing blue eyes, and shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, but...”

“You’re sorry? You would have been even sorrier if a one-hundred-fifty-pound calf had plowed into you. Sorry and unconscious, to boot.” He looked over his shoulder and shook his head. “She’s gone. Just like the other ones. Do you know how many of these mavericks I’ve lost in one morning?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “I know absolutely nothing about cows. I’m just a...I mean I’m here to—”

“I know why you’re here,” he said, dismounting and removing his hat. “I just didn’t expect you so soon. The hell with the cattle. This is more important. Come on in,” he said turning on his heel and walking toward the massive oak front door.

Mallory blinked. So he knew who she was. Then they were even, because she knew who he was too. Everybody knew who Zachary Calhoun was, the biggest cattle rancher in the county, maybe the whole state. Famous for being almost as tough and successful a businessman as his uncle who’d left him the ranch.

It was cool inside the classic Western house, thanks to the thick adobe walls covered with native American weavings. Huge brown leather chairs flanked a massive stone fireplace, the kind you see in ski lodges. Mallory could imagine curling up in one of those chairs with a good book. Or a good man. Which brought her to the reason she was there. It was time to forget the furnishings and ask—

“Now,” he said, waving her to a straight-backed chair next to an end table while he leaned against the wall and observed her with his penetrating blue eyes. “We don’t have much time, but I need to get a little more information about you.”

She bit her lip. She’d heard he was brutally frank. That he didn’t mince words. “I’m not sure...I don’t know what you already know,” she stammered. Not everything. Please don’t let him know everything. Not yet. Not today.

“I know you’ve had some experience. You’ve done it before, but on a smaller scale.”

“That’s not true,” she said hotly, getting to her feet. “I’ve never...this is the first time I’ve ever—”

He raised his hands to stop her from continuing. “Never mind. At this point it doesn’t matter. I’m desperate. You’re hired.”

“What? Wait a minute. This is a mistake. I’m not here about a job. I’m here to see your foreman, Joe Carter. He and I...we’re...”

He gave her a cynical smile laced with pity and cut her off. “Sorry, lady, you’re a day late. The son-of-a-gun left yesterday. Ran off with the best housekeeper I’ve ever had, that’s why...”

Mallory stared at him. He was still talking, at least his mouth was still moving, but the words were a jumble of sounds. “No notice...irresponsible...unexpected,” she heard him say. The blood drained from her head, and the room spun around, as the herbal tea she’d swallowed for breakfast came up and threatened to choke her. Her legs refused to support her any longer, her knees buckled, and the varnished wide-planked floor rose to meet her with a resounding thud. And everything went black.

Zach moved fast, but not fast enough to catch her before she fell. Instead he had to scrape her up off the floor, sweep her into his arms and lay her out on the cool leather couch. He clamped his lips together to keep from blurting out a string of expletives and sat next to her, vigorously rubbing her wrists.

“Wake up,” he ordered. “Come on, sweetheart, tell me you’re okay. Say you’ve been sent by the agency to take Diane’s place.”

Her face was cold and still as a statue. A lump was forming on her head. Cattle he could handle. Sick, well, nervous, skittish, he knew what to do with them. They rarely fainted. And never cried. Women on the other hand were a mystery to him. He’d had little experience dealing with them. His mother had left him to be raised by his uncle. His wife had lasted about six months before she took off. Since then he’d avoided getting involved with the fairer sex.

But his woman problems weren’t over yet. Yesterday his superefficient housekeeper ran off with his foreman, and today a strange woman passed out in his living room. One minute she was standing there, glowing with apparent good health, her long smooth legs in khaki shorts and her white camp shirt buttoned snugly over lush full breasts. If he hadn’t noticed these details then, he couldn’t have missed them in his brief walk to the couch with her body pressed intimately against his, causing an unmistakable reaction on his part. Now she was out cold. Legs and all. And his body was still throbbing. That was the price of being celibate too long. Damn, damn, damn.

Just when he was about to hire her. Hell, he would have hired Lizzie Borden the ax murderess at this point, he was so desperate. Alarmed at her lack of response, he bent over and put his ear against her left breast to listen to her heart.

What if she never came to? If she went into a coma here on his couch? Thank God her heart was still beating. Just a little too fast. But then so was his. Too fast for comfort. He was about to raise his head from where it was pillowed on her breast, he really was, but before he did she sat up abruptly, as if she’d had electric shock treatment. He got to his feet. Calmly. Deliberately.

“What were you doing?” she asked, her eyes wide and alarmed.

He looked down at her with a frown creasing his forehead. “Checking to see if you were still alive,” he said brusquely. “You may not remember but you passed out on my floor here. I was concerned about you. Afraid I might have to call an ambulance. Thought you might have some problem...”

“I have a problem all right,” she said, her shoulders suddenly sagging under the weight of some invisible burden. “Did you really say Joe had gone somewhere with someone?”

“You got it. He’s gone somewhere with someone who was my housekeeper. Who kept order around this place in a hundred different ways. Calmly, efficiently. Did you or did you not come here today to take Diane’s place?”

“I didn’t. I came to meet Joe. I’ve got everything I own in my car out there. I thought...”

“Yes?” he said impatiently, noting the color had come back to tinge the woman’s cheeks with scarlet. “Spit it out.”

“I...I don’t know where to start,” she said, moving to the edge of the couch and swinging those long lovely legs to the floor.

“Okay,” he said crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ll start it for you. You were involved with Joe. Stop me if I have it wrong, but I’d say you met him in town, at the Old Town Tavern, listening to one of the R&B bands that rolls through. And he swept you off your feet.”

The look on her face told him he’d got it exactly right. It didn’t surprise him. What surprised him was that she’d gotten all the way up here. Joe’s usual MO was to have a hot and heavy affair with some babe he met in town then break it off just as fast as he’d started it. “Always leave them wanting more,” he’d once told Zach with a wicked gleam in his eye one early morning when he’d run into him on his way back to his cabin.

Zach had to hand it to the guy, he never missed a day’s work. No matter what he’d been doing the night before. So what happened here? What made Joe take off with Diane, seemingly a sane, sensible, incredibly efficient woman of ordinary looks, leaving this extremely attractive woman high and dry on his couch?

Zach studied the woman before him before continuing. “He told you he loved you. He told you you were beautiful, special... What else?” he prompted.

“He told me he was going to marry me,” Mallory said softly. The look on Zachary Calhoun’s rugged face told her he thought she was a fool. Not just a fool, a naive fool. He had no idea just how naïve. And how clueless she was about men. No idea how many years she’d spent with her nose in a book, in classrooms and in libraries. Pursuing knowledge while other girls pursued boys.

He had no idea that a good-looking cowboy with a few sweet words could sweep her off her feet in one night. Make love to her and make her believe he’d marry her. Or maybe he did know. There was something all-seeing in those shrewd blue eyes of Zach’s. Something that made her tear her gaze away before he saw the insecurities locked deep inside her.

She couldn’t let anyone see the fear that she’d never be desired, never be sought after or fought over the way her sister, Mimi, was. Flirtatious Mimi, the pretty one, who had boys fighting over her from day one and who was now happily married to Mallory’s one and only boyfriend. Once he’d seen Mimi that was it, he was gone. It was a long time ago, but still the memory lingered, the old feelings...

Zach stared at her with disbelief. This woman was even more gullible than he thought. He figured she could be as young as twenty with that innocent, classic face and deepset brown eyes, but with those bones she’d look just as pure and pretty at forty. Not that he was looking at her bones. It was the subtle curves he couldn’t take his eyes off.

“Well, don’t take it personally,” he said making an unaccustomed effort to be kind. “If it’s any consolation, the guy isn’t the marrying type.”

Mallory looked at him, her eyes suddenly glazed with unshed tears. His words hadn’t helped. She was not consoled.

“You’re young. You’ll find somebody else,” he said heartily. Why on earth would he care if she got married or not? He didn’t know her. She would leave in a few minutes and he’d never see her again. Still, he had this irrational urge to try to make her feel better. It must have been those eyes, those sad, dark eyes that threatened to spill over.

“I’m not young,” she said. “I’m twenty-eight.” She squared her shoulders and blinked back her tears. “I can’t believe he didn’t even... Maybe he left a note for me.”

“Maybe he did,” Zach said, tearing his eyes from her soft brown gaze, ignoring the plaintive note in her voice. Anyone dumb enough to fall for Joe didn’t deserve pity. They needed professional help. He glanced out the window to see if any of his stray heifers had shown up. No. Today just wasn’t his day. It wasn’t as disastrous as yesterday; today it was just plain terrible.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. “But if you feel like it, you could walk down to his place and have a look around.”

She stood up quickly, then rocked back on her heels.

He grabbed her by the elbow, forcibly steadying her with his hand. “I’ll walk with you,” he said. “All I need is for you to get lost between here and there, to pass out again and not be found for days, which would cause me even more headaches than I have already.” He was sick of Joe’s profligate ways, sick of dealing with an ineffective employment agency, of losing employees and replacing them with others.

“I’m sorry,” she said trying to pull her arm free from his grasp, but he was not about to let her go. He was afraid she’d faint again. She was, too. Though she’d never fainted before in her life, lately she was doing all kinds of things she’d never done before. Drinking too much. Flirting with a stranger, the first randy cowboy to cross her path. Then going to bed with him. And next quitting her job, making wedding plans and changing her life. It all started on her birthday when her colleagues at the university had taken her out to the tavern to celebrate. That’s when she’d met Joe. It was a brief fling. Her first. And her last.

“Not as sorry as I am,” he muttered as they walked down the path together. When they reached the cabin, Zach threw the door open and held it while she looked around.

“Nice place,” he commented. “No wonder everyone on the ranch is bugging me about it. Before the sheets are cold they all want to move in. Diane had some system for deciding who had first claim, but I’ll be damned if I know what it was.”

Mallory wasn’t listening to him. She wandered from the small cozy living room with a potbellied woodstove and a braid rug to the kitchen with rustic tiles and a view of the surrounding hills. Then to the wood-paneled bedroom with a king-size bed, the striped sheets left in a tangle. This was the cabin she’d been going to live in. The bed she’d been going to sleep in. With him. Her face flamed. From shame. From humiliation. Before she left the room she took a deep breath and held her head high. She would not let that man with the all-knowing look in his cool blue eyes and the foul temper see her weak side again. Or try to make her feel better with empty words and clichés.

When she returned to the living room he was holding a white envelope in his hand. “You were right,” he admitted. “He left you a note. That is, if you’re Mallory Phillips.”

She snatched it out of his hand and read it standing up. Joe said he was sorry, but marriage, even to someone as wonderful as her, was not in the cards for him now or ever. He wished her good luck in her career. Her heart plummeted. He was talking about the career she’d just put on hold to join him here, to marry him and have a—

“Good news? Bad news?” Zach asked with a curious look in his eyes.

She stared at the letter for a long moment, while the tears welled up and threatened to spill down her cheeks. She would not cry in front of Zachary Calhoun. She could feel his eyes on her, watching, waiting, expecting the worst from her. Well this time he wasn’t going to get it. When she looked up she’d arranged her mouth into a stiff smile and held her tears firmly in check.

“Neither,” she said briskly, tucking the letter in her breast pocket. “Just an explanation.” She brushed past him on her way out the door, aware of his rock-hard chest muscles, of his washboard-flat stomach and the earthy scent of leather and tobacco.

Her hands trembled. Heat shimmied up her spine. It had nothing to do with Zach and his blatant masculinity. It had everything to do with her and her heightened awareness of all things sensual—sights and sounds and tastes and smells and feelings, too. Like the way his head had felt pressed against her breast. Hormones, that’s all it was. Hormonal overload.

Out in the sunshine she took a deep breath. “I’m fine now,” she assured him when he joined her. “I won’t trouble you anymore.” She turned and started up the path.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home,” she said, forgetting she had no home to go to.

“Where’s that? I thought you had everything you own in your car.”

She sighed. “I do.”

“Ever been a housekeeper?”

“No.”

“Ever wanted to be?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What are you?”

“I’m an astronomer.”

He dropped his hands from her shoulders. He raised his eyebrows, radiating skepticism from every pore. Either he didn’t believe her or she’d surprised him. She guessed he was a man who wasn’t that easily surprised. But she’d done it. That gave her some satisfaction on a day that hadn’t offered much else.

“You think you know a lot about women, don’t you?” she asked.

He shook his head. His eyes shuttered. “I don’t know anything about them.” Then abruptly he changed the subject. “Were you going to watch the stars from up here?” he asked.

“The nebulae. That’s my field. I thought it would be a good place with the altitude, and no ambient light or pollutants in the air to interfere.” She glanced with longing at the green hills that undulated to the horizon and drew in a breath of pure, clean air.

“What do you think now?” he asked, absently chewing on a piece of grass.

“It would have been a good place,” she admitted.

“Got your own telescope?”

“A hundred-pound reflector telescope. With a tripod. It’s small but has good light-gathering power for its size.”

“Then stay here. Be my housekeeper during the day and watch your damned nebulae at night. Which is what you should have been doing instead of fooling around with my foreman.”

Her face flamed. The man just didn’t know when to quit. “I wouldn’t be your housekeeper if you paid me.”

“But I will pay you. More than you make as an astronomer. Enough to buy yourself a really big telescope.”

She felt herself waver. Picturing a new telescope, one that could peer all the way to intergalactic nebulae. How hard could it be to keep somebody’s house anyway? “What does it entail?” she asked. “Making beds, cooking meals?”

He shook his head. “This is a big ranch. We have a cook, and we have maids. That cabin you saw was one of many. The housekeeper knows who lives where, which ones need repairs, she orders supplies, does the household budget, and God knows what else. I’m gone a fair amount so I need someone to keep everything in order inside the house. That’s what Diane did. She was remarkable.”

He knew she was vacillating. He pressed on. “No physical work, all administrative. If you can keep track of a few million stars, you can handle a few dozen employees, their housing, their meals, the main house, some entertaining and a thousand acres of ranchland, can’t you?”

“A thousand?”

“Forget the thousand acres. Forget the ranchland. The foreman handles that. Or at least my new one will. I’ll have someone unload your car. Your suite is in the main house.”

Mallory could have said no then. She could have gone to her car and instead of unloading it she could have driven back to town. And then what? She’d declined to teach summer session, preferring to do research. Hoping to publish her results and get her appointment changed from assistant professor to associate. She’d given up her apartment. Didn’t have much money. And then there was the real reason she’d come up here. The reason she’d decided to get married. The one she hadn’t mentioned and wouldn’t, not until she had to.

By mid-afternoon she’d stashed all her gear in a suite that was larger than her whole apartment in town. Her clothes were divided between a pine chest and a spacious walk-in closet, her computer and her boxes of journals on the oak desk. Her telescope and tripod stood in the corner of the sitting room formerly occupied by Diane, her predecessor. She’d met Juana, a maid, George, a handyman and Tex the cook, in his restaurant-size kitchen.

“You like barbecued beef?” Tex had asked giving his spicy sauce a stir.

“Love it,” she’d told him, as her stomach churned. She used to love it, but recently the only thing she could get down was saltine crackers.

“Miss Diane said my sauce was the best she’d ever eaten. You a friend of hers?”

“No, no, I didn’t know her.”

“Fine woman. Hard worker. Can’t believe she’d run off like that. Shocked us all. Now Joe, nothin’ he could do would shock us.”

Mallory gulped. She wondered when the talk would die down, if ever. Would she always be only a poor replacement for Diane? Always? There was no always. Not for her. She’d be lucky if she lasted the summer, considering the personality of her boss. A summer should give her time to figure out what to do next. Depending on what shape her research was in, and of course what shape she was in. In the mean time she had Diane’s job while Diane had her man.

“Dinner’s at seven,” Tex said. “Hope you’re not on a diet like Diane was.”

So Diane was fat. Or was she thin? Whatever she was, she had something Joe wanted and Mallory didn’t. Strange how fast she had accepted the fact. Much faster than she’d accepted her sister’s taking her boyfriend away. As if she’d had a choice either time. Funny how the shock was wearing off already. And how fast Joe’s classic cowboy face was fading from her memory.

She had not seen any more of her boss, not since he’d told her what the obscenely large salary was, shaken her hand and pointed to a large, richly appointed room he called “the office” in one wing of the sprawling house.

“That’s where we meet every morning. In the meantime...”

Just as she was about to tell him she couldn’t do anything in the meantime except collapse and that she was having second thoughts about being anybody’s housekeeper and especially his, someone yelled to him from outside the house that the vet had arrived, and he disappeared. She staggered to her room and lay on the bed, wondering how she’d ever sleep a wink in the same bed as the woman who’d taken Joe away from her and spoiled her plans.

Yet she did sleep, until dinner. Another weird thing, along with her heightened sensory awareness was her need for an afternoon nap. Of course, staying up late tracking the cosmos could do that to a person. But it never had done that to her before. She felt better after she’d had a shower and changed into khaki pants and a soft cotton shirt.

The pungent smell of Tex’s barbecue wafted through the covered walkway that led to the large, cheerful dining room. When she opened the door, the dozen or more people at the table stopped talking. Heads swerved in her direction. A hush fell over the room. Everyone was staring at her, everyone but her boss. He was busy piling potato salad on his plate. He already knew what she looked like, both conscious and unconscious.

A tall, tanned older man with a sweeping mustache stood and doffed his hat. “I know you must be, but you can’t be our new housekeeper.”

“Why can’t I be?” she asked, sitting in the only vacant chair, next to the dashing older man.

“Much too young and much too pretty. Thought you’d learned your lesson, Zach.”

Zach looked up briefly, just long enough to meet her gaze. If she expected warmth and support, she didn’t get it. There was only a brief flicker of recognition, as if he’d almost forgotten he’d even hired her.

“This is our new housekeeper,” he said briskly. “Mallory, meet the staff.” He proceeded to go around the table, introducing his vet, his mechanic, the buyer, his business manager and so forth until the names and faces all blurred together. Except for Perry, the man who thought she was too young and pretty to be a housekeeper.

“Tell me,” Perry said slanting his head in her direction. “What’s a nice girl like you doing on a ranch like this?”

“Just what Mr. Calhoun said,” she replied, taking a small piece of barbecued brisket from a platter served by a young woman in blue jeans and a braid over one shoulder. “I’m the new housekeeper.” Maybe if she said it often enough she’d start to believe it. I’m the new housekeeper, I’m the new housekeeper, I am the new—

“And what do you think of Mr. Calhoun?” Perry asked over the din of renewed conversation and the clatter of silverware.

“He’s...very decisive,” she said with a brief glance toward the end of the table. “Seems to know what he wants.”

“That he does,” Perry agreed, shaking hot pepper onto his baked potato. “But what he wants is not always what he needs.”

“I see,” she said. But she didn’t see at all. Anyone as rich and successful as Zach Calhoun could surely get anything he wanted or needed. Case in point. He needed a housekeeper, so he’d gotten her, using his forceful personality and an outlandish salary. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been the next hapless female who’d happened to pull up in his driveway for whatever reason. To marry his foreman or deliver a truckload of gravel. It didn’t seem to matter. He was just looking for a warm body.

“I guess you heard what happened to your predecessor?” he asked.

“Do you mean...”

“I mean she ran off with our foreman, and no one even knew they were involved. Talk about the odd couple. It’s the biggest scandal to happen around here in a long time. No one understands why they left, why they had to run off. Why didn’t she just move in with him and stay here and keep her job?”

“I don’t know,” Mallory said. But she did know. It was because Mallory was coming to marry Joe. And he didn’t want to marry her. Not at all. He didn’t want to marry her so much that he took the housekeeper and left a good steady job just to avoid her. And that hurt.

“They’ll never find anyone like Zach to work for,” he observed, filling her water glass for her. “He’s tough but he’s fair. By the way,” he said bending his head so close his mustache tickled her ear. “Has anyone been given Joe’s cabin, do you know? Maybe you could put me on top of the list. Perry’s the name. Perry.”

“I’ll remember,” she said, leaning forward to avoid his hand on the back of her chair. Was it the housekeeper’s job to assign housing? To fend off lecherous old wranglers?

“You’re not worried about filling Diane’s rather large shoes, are you?”

Large shoes. Was that just a saying or did Diane really have big feet? “Well, yes,” she said, “now that you mention it, I am worried. I hear she was quite good at...what she did.”