Love By Proxy. Diana Palmer

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      Four

      Amelia showed up for work the next morning at eight-thirty sharp, wearing a sedate gray ensemble that made her pale blue eyes look slate-gray to match it. The skirt and knit blouse were worn with a trendy little short-sleeved cotton jacket, and she put her hair in a neat bun. She wasn’t giving Wentworth Carson any cause for complaint with the way she dressed.

      When she pulled up in front of the house, a short, elderly yardman motioned her to move the car down to the garage. She cranked the engine again, with difficulty. The old yellow Ford had a habit of refusing to turn on again after the engine got hot. It was one of those ghostly problems that several mechanics hadn’t been able to solve, so she lived with it. But today it did crank, eventually, and she pulled it with a clank and a clatter down to the elegant, spacious garage where Wentworth’s Rolls and a Mercedes were parked.

      It made her feel odd, parking between two such luxurious vehicles, and she was half afraid that she might accidentally scratch one of them. But it was obvious that Wentworth didn’t want her pitiful old wreck parked in front of his house. And that irritated her no end. Snob, she thought angrily.

      She’d worked herself into a fever of resentment by the time she got to the front door. Well, he needn’t think she was going to skulk up the back stairs like a servant. She was as good as he was, any day!

      The maid opened the door for her with a smile. “Come in, please. Mrs. Carson is still asleep, but Mr. Worth said you’re to have breakfast with him in the dining room. Follow me, please.”

      Breakfast with Worth, she thought, how lucky could a working girl get?

      He was sitting at the head of the table with a cup of coffee and a pile of toast at his elbow. He glanced up when she came into the room, his eyes dark and steady and expressionless.

      “What a treat,” he taunted. “Breakfast with the terror of the Egyptian tombs.”

      “I am not a mummy,” she countered. “And I don’t want breakfast.”

      “Yes, it’s patently obvious that you rarely eat,” he commented, glancing at her. “But if you work here, you’ll need to. You see,” he added, leaning back with a disgustingly confident smile on his tanned face, “my grandmother and I have an arrangement about you.”

      This sounded unpleasant. She sat down gingerly and eyed him suspiciously. “You have?”

      “Yes. I don’t have a private secretary. And since you’ll be here all day, every day—” he made it sound like a waking curse “—and since grandmother will need you for only a few hours a day, we’ve decided to share you.”

      Her skin chilled. “I don’t want to be shared.”

      “But then, it isn’t your choice,” he reminded her. “You can always go home and marry Henry,” he suggested mildly.

      She shuddered delicately. “Even working for you wouldn’t be that bad.”

      “Should I be flattered?” he murmured dryly. He lifted his head, craggy features relaxing a little as he studied her face. “It must take layers of makeup,” he said absently.

      He surprised her. “What?” she stammered.

      “Your complexion,” he explained. “It’s much too perfect to be natural.”

      “I use soap,” she said curtly. “Nothing else, not even powder. I don’t like artificial things.”

      “Neither do I,” he returned. His tanned fingers toyed with a spoon in his coffee. He was wearing a blue jacket with a white shirt and a speckled tie, and he looked every inch a business magnate. But the muscles under that jacket were formidable, and they rippled with every movement he made. His hair seemed even darker under the light, neat and clean, and there was a faint darkness where he shaved, as if he needed to shave often. His mouth fascinated her. She kept remembering how it felt on hers, how expert it had been. He was the kind of man who could have had any woman he wanted, and she was secretly glad that her powers of resistance weren’t going to be tested by him. She would have been defenseless in any kind of confrontation, and she wouldn’t have the sophistication to hold him. He could have broken her heart, and she was delighted that he wasn’t going to try.

      “She’s very fragile,” she ventured as she poured coffee from the carafe into a delicate china cup and added cream.

      “What?”

      “Your grandmother,” she returned. “How did she break her hip?”

      “Trying to learn how to break dance.”

      Amelia had just taken a mouthful of coffee and almost strangled on it. She gaped at him.

      “That’s right,” he said calmly. He sipped his own coffee. “She had videotapes of the steps, and she was trying to do a spin. She was too close to the fireplace. She went down on the stone hearth.”

      “But she’s seventy-five!” she exclaimed.

      “She likes hard rock,” he continued. “She enjoys very racy movies, she flirts outrageously with men, she can outdrink me when she likes and you’ll get an education in the art of self-expression if you’re ever in the vicinity when she loses her temper.”

      She was only just getting her breath back. “An exceptional lady,” she said.

      “Quite. But she has an unusually soft heart, and I don’t want her hurt,” he added, with a level, hard gaze. “I don’t know you. But I will. And if I find out anything that doesn’t jibe with what information you’ve given me, I will toss you out on your ear.”

      She met his hard gaze levelly, eyebrows raised. “Well, I did get a parking ticket once,” she confessed.

      “Funny СКАЧАТЬ