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Homely as a board fence.
Seizing a pair of black socks, he sat down on the bed to pull them on. Her tweed suit, too large and in a depressing shade of mud-brown, had a boxy jacket and a loose-cut long skirt; her shirt was man-tailored, no-nonsense white cotton, buttoned high to her throat, and she was wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Her shoes were clunky brown lace-ups.
It was a mystery to him why a woman like her—a young woman, with a very sexy voice—would choose to make the worst of herself. Those awful glasses. That suit. She must have searched high and low to find something so ill-fitting. So hideous.
Even her lipstick was an unflattering shade of pale pink.
He dragged a comb through his hair. While her hair wasn’t a bad color, sort of a reddish-brown, how could a man appreciate it when it was skewered to her scalp? Her ankles weren’t bad, though.
He’d noticed every detail, he thought wryly. But hadn’t he been hoping, subconsciously, that the rest of her would interest him as much as her voice? That she might relieve the tedium of three days stuck in a place he didn’t want to be?
Not a hope.
Luke pulled on a pair of shoes, ran downstairs, then followed his nose to the kitchen. “Coffee,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
Kelsey blinked. “You’d better taste it first.”
“I don’t need to. Name the date.”
She said, with complete truth, “Marriage isn’t on my list, Mr. Griffin.”
“List? Ah, of course. Organize Your Home—you’d have to be a maker of lists. Are they arranged alphabetically?” He poured himself a mug of coffee, added a liberal dollop of cream and raised it to his lips. “You can file this under H for heaven.”
“I’d file you under C for charm,” she said, more tartly than she’d intended.
“Why do I think that’s not a compliment?”
“Because it isn’t. Charm’s not to be trusted.” She poured her own coffee. “I’ve opened a couple of the boxes. What exactly are you hoping to find?”
Taking his time, Luke looked her up and down, from the sagging hem of her skirt to the pencil stuck in her hair. “B for business…I get the message.”
“At two hundred and fifty dollars an hour, that might be advisable.”
“Your tongue doesn’t match your outfit,” he said. “You’re clearly intelligent—so why do you dress like that?”
She flushed, and for the first time he noticed the delicate rise of her cheekbones under the thick rims of her glasses. She said tightly, “The way I dress is nothing to do with you.”
“I don’t require all the women in my life to be beautiful, or even pretty,” he said thoughtfully. “But I do require character—the confidence, the flair to dress like a beautiful woman.”
“All the women?” Kelsey repeated ironically. “I’m sure they mob you.”
“Money’s a powerful aphrodisiac.”
“Money is why I’m here,” she said crisply. “Would you please tell me what we’re looking for in all those boxes?”
Luke wished he knew the answer to that question. It was a very obvious question, and one he should have anticipated. He took another big gulp of coffee, feeling it course down his throat. “My mother was Sylvia Griffin’s daughter,” he said curtly. “We’re looking for anything at all relating to Rosemary Griffin. You’re to put any papers bearing her name aside without reading them.”
Kelsey’s flush deepened. “There’s no need to be insulting.”
“I’m just stating the parameters of the job.”
She should quit. Right now. But for six thousand dollars, surely she could swallow an insult or two? “Very well,” she said, with rather overdone politeness. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get started.”
As Luke watched her march out of the kitchen, he couldn’t even tell if her hips were swinging under that extraordinarily unsexy skirt. Her ankles, however, were indeed very shapely.
With an impatient sigh he drained his mug, then refilled it. He should have thought this whole venture through. By calling Kelsey in to help, he’d invited a virtual stranger to look for papers relating to his mother. How was she going to earmark them without at least partially reading them?
He was known worldwide for his strong sense of privacy; it drove the media crazy. Yet he’d just directed a lippy woman to go through files whose contents could be highly personal.
Well done, Luke. Grimacing, he poured cream in his coffee and left the kitchen. Kelsey was already set up on a table by the window, the first box open, papers neatly piled on the table. Luke brought another table in from the parlor, and followed suit. For the space of three hours, they worked in silence.
Kelsey was the first to stop. She stood up, stretching the tension from her neck. Tension which had more to do with sitting ten feet from Luke Griffin all morning than her futile search. His focus had been formidable, his face grim, nothing in his demeanor encouraging conversation.
“I haven’t found anything,” she said. “What about you?”
“Inventories of furniture, stock certificates and a grocery list.”
She looked over at the pile of boxes. “It’s a huge job.”
Luke wasn’t enjoying searching through the details of Sylvia Griffin’s life. Standing up, he said brusquely, “I’ll double your pay.”
Kelsey’s chin jerked up. “You will not.”
“When I make an offer like that, most people say Thank you very much, Mr. Griffin.”
“I’m not most people.”
“I’ll damn well pay you what I want.”
“Fine. I’ll donate the excess to a home for stray dogs. Or to a fund for elderly women who live alone and whose grandsons don’t even bother to visit them.”
He stepped closer, noticing with part of his brain how she stood her ground, even though panic was flaring in her eyes. “Until I got the message in Hong Kong three days ago that she’d died, I didn’t even know I had a grandmother,” he said, clipping off every word. “So don’t lay guilt trips on me, Kelsey North—I won’t wear ’em.”
“You didn’t know?” she repeated stupidly.
“Right.”
For reasons she couldn’t have articulated, Kelsey believed him instantly. “So that’s why you never visited her…and you got the message too late to attend her funeral.”
“On the day she was buried I was in the wilds of Cambodia.”
“Why didn’t your mother tell you about her?”
He winced; unerringly, Kelsey had asked the question that had been tormenting him for the last few days. He said evasively, “I can only assume my mother left this house before I was born. Don’t tell me gossip hasn’t been rampant in the village since Sylvia died—I’m sure you can fill in the details.”
Kelsey said quietly, “All I’ve ever heard is that your mother left home when she was seventeen.”
“Was she pregnant?” he flashed, the words out before he could censor them.
“People speculated that she was. But it was only speculation.”
“Let’s break for lunch,” he grated. “Be back here in an hour.”
His eyes were ice-blue, his mouth a tight line. Kelsey didn’t dare ask if his mother was still alive; he looked like he’d take her head off if she as much as opened her mouth. She brushed past him, her brain whirling. Earlier, she’d cast him as the villain, but she’d been wrong. He’d been totally ignorant of his grandmother’s existence.
Wouldn’t Alice at the post office love to hear that juicy little morsel?
Too bad. She wasn’t going to hear it from Kelsey.
Tomorrow she’d bring sandwiches, Kelsey decided, and work through lunch. And tonight she’d take a couple of boxes home with her and go through them there. The sooner this job was done the better. Luke Griffin didn’t just spell H for handsome or S for sex. He spelled D for danger.
CHAPTER TWO
THE FOLLOWING DAY, as dusk fell, Luke and Kelsey carried a couple of boxes out to her car. Luke drew a deep breath of the chill, damp air. January at its worst, he thought, crunching through a patch of unmelted snow, catching a glimpse of a pale moon through wind-torn clouds. Carefully balancing the box on the rear bumper, he opened the trunk, waited for Kelsey to dump her box in, then added his own. He slammed the trunk shut and opened her car door.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly, and climbed in.
As she banged snow from her shoes, her skirt inadvertently rode up her legs. Admirable legs, he thought with sudden sharp interest, watching as she hastily hitched the thick tweed back in place. Her wrist, under the cuff of her jacket, was slender, the skin smooth. And it wasn’t the first time he’d seen a flush mount her cheekbones, which were also admirable.
He toyed with the very strong temptation to yank the glasses off her nose. Keeping his hands firmly at his sides, he said, “See you tomorrow.”
She mumbled something under her breath, thrust the key in the lock, clashed the gears and drove away. It was time he headed back to the city if he was having sexual fantasies about the frumpy Ms North, Luke thought caustically
Maybe he should ship the boxes to his penthouse and go through them at his leisure. If he was in Manhattan he could be having dinner at Cisco’s, with someone like Clarisse or Lindsay.
Neither of them had a temper. Unlike Kelsey. No, Clarisse and Lindsay wouldn’t risk ruffling his billion-dollar feathers.
He walked slowly up the front steps. A headache was banding his forehead. So far, Kelsey had found Rosemary Griffin’s birth certificate, and he’d found the bill from the exclusive clinic where his mother had been born. And that was it.
He’d learned one other thing. Kelsey might top America’s Worst-Dressed List, but she sure knew how to work. Thorough, uncomplaining and dedicated: if he’d been writing a reference for her, he’d have used all three words.
He could have added unforthcoming. The only fact he knew about her was that she’d lived all her life in Hadley. He’d found that out by asking.
He himself was in no mood for idle conversation. Why, then, did it irritate the hell out of him that she’d discouraged anything resembling personal chitchat?
Luke walked slowly up the front steps and forced himself to go through one more box. The wind was moaning in the gutters and rattling a loose shingle; suddenly he couldn’t stand being alone for one more minute in his grandmother’s house, a house as withholding of its secrets as its dead owner.
He ran upstairs, changed into a clean sweater and jeans, and picked up his car keys.
THREE-QUARTERS OF an hour later, Luke got out of his car, carrying a thick brown paper bag. Kelsey’s little house was set in a grove of old lilac bushes and tall yews; lights blazed in nearly every room. He climbed her front steps and rang the bell.
Janis Joplin was emoting at the top of her lungs. Luke rang the bell again, then turned the handle and found the door unlocked. The song came to an end as he pushed on the door and walked in. The hinges squealed like an animal in pain.
A woman came running down the stairs. When she saw him, she stopped dead on the fourth step down. Her hair was a tumbled mass of chestnut curls, framing eyes of a rich, velvety brown. She was slender-waisted, slim-hipped, with legs that seemed to go on forever.
Her low-necked orange shirt clung to her breasts; her jeans were skintight. Her toenails, he noticed blankly, were painted purple.
Her mouth…He gaped at it. Her lips, too, were orange, a glossy lipstick smoothed over their soft, voluptuous curves.
Lust coursed through his veins. He said awkwardly, “Oh…I was looking for Kelsey North. But I must have got the wrong address. Sorry to have bothered you…”
“Very funny,” the woman said, in a husky contralto voice.
“Kelsey?”
“Who did you think it was?”
“I—er, you’ve changed your clothes,” he said. With a distant part of his brain he wondered what had happened to the Luke Griffin who’d dated famous beauties from Manhattan to Milan, and who was unfailingly suave.
Descending the last of the stairs and putting her hands on her hips, she said coldly, “I don’t want any more boxes, and if you’ve lost your way I can direct you wherever you want to go.”
She smelled delicious. The other Kelsey, the brown tweed Kelsey, smelled of worthy soap. Swallowing hard, Luke said, “Have you eaten dinner?”
“No. I’ve been going through the boxes I brought home.”
“Good.” He indicated the bag in his hands. “I brought it with me. From the bistro ten miles down the road.” The bistro on the rich side of the peninsula, he thought, the same side as Griffin’s Keep. Hadley, seven miles away, might as well be on another planet.
“You brought dinner with you? To eat here?”
“Yes.” He gave her a winning smile. “I couldn’t stand one more evening alone in that house.”
Kelsey said carefully, “Am I missing something? I may only be from Hadley, but I thought it was customary to ask a woman if she wanted to have dinner with you.”
“If I’d phoned, would you have said yes?”
“No, of course I wouldn’t.”
Why of course? “I don’t like rejection,” Luke said, and smiled again. “So I just arrived.”
“I bet you haven’t been rejected in years.”
With an edge that surprised him, he replied, “Not since I earned my first million.”
“Poor little rich guy.”
“That’s me. What were you going to have for supper?”
“Scrambled eggs.”
“I can offer borscht, capons stuffed with wild rice, and blackberry mousse. Along with a reasonable Merlot.”
Her mouth was watering. For the food, she thought hastily. Not for the man who was leaning so casually on her newel post, his dark blue sweater deepening the blue of his eyes. Eyes that were laughing at her, full of the charm she’d professed to despise.
Much too easily for her peace of mind, Kelsey capitulated. “I can’t very well tell you to come in, because you already did. The dining room’s through there. I’ll get a couple of placemats from the kitchen.”
He walked down the narrow hall into a small room containing a scarred oak table, four chairs and an old-fashioned sideboard; beyond it was a living room in a barely controlled state of chaos. Cardboard packing boxes, piles of books, clothing and sportsgear… Men’s clothes, he thought. Hockey and soccer gear. What was going on?
Looked like she’d just booted her husband out, and his stuff was following him out the door at the first opportunity.
