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“By buying sheets…?”
“Exactly. Anyway, these ones—” she indicated the sheets on the half-made bed behind her “—are mine and because I had to go fetch them, I’m running late.”
“For?”
“Work. Clients. Appointments.” With quick hands she resumed her bed making. “Julia also shopped for groceries. I’m sure you’ll find there’s enough to get by on. I took the liberty of having your phone connected, and the power, of course.”
Quade folded his arms and watched her tuck the plain white sheets into ruthless hospital corners. “Leave it,” he said, feeling unaccountably irritated by her seamless switch to business mode.
She straightened. “Are you sure?”
“You think I can’t make my own bed?”
Unexpectedly her mouth curved into a grin. “Well, yes, actually. I’ve never met a man yet who could make a bed worth sleeping in.”
Her wry amusement lasted as long as it took their gazes to meet and hold, as long as it took for images of rustling sheets and naked skin and hot elevated breathing to singe the air between them.
“I—” She looked away, off toward the wide bay window and the wild gardens beyond, then drew a breath that hitched in the middle. “I have to go. I’m running so late.”
She started to turn, on the verge of fleeing, Quade thought. With a hand on her shoulder, he stopped her and felt her still. He picked up her discarded phone and pressed it into her hand.
Slowly, finger by finger, he wrapped her hand around the instrument. No rings, he noted, with a disturbing jab of satisfaction, just neatly filed nails, unpolished, businesslike. But he felt them tremble, and she retrieved her hand quick smart and took a small step backward. A reluctant step, he knew. Chantal Goodwin didn’t like stepping back from anything.
“One thing before you go.” He waited for her to turn, to meet his gaze. “You’ve done a first-rate job here considering you’re not a professional housemaid.”
An almost-smile touched her lips. “Thank you…I think.”
“So, what’s in it for you?”
“Like I told you, it was convenient for me to help out, living so near.”
“And this—” he waved his hand expansively to indicate the whole buffed and sparkling house “—has to be worth a whole truckload of brownie points.”
One dark brow arched expressively. “You think?”
“Yeah, I think.”
“Then I’d best go see what I can negotiate.”
This time he let her go although he stood unmoving, listening to the sharp click-clack of her sensible heels all the way down the long hallway, around his dumped luggage, and out the front door. Not fleeing, but hurrying off to work, to collect those brownie points.
To further her career. He should have figured that one out without any clues.
Funny how he hadn’t recognized her, although in fairness to himself, she hadn’t merely changed, she had metamorphosed. Even funnier was the way he’d responded. Hell, he’d been practically flirting with her, circling and sniffing the air. And it wasn’t even spring yet.
Scowling darkly, he put it down to sleep deprivation and the complex mix of emotions associated with his homecoming. Combine that with the unexpectedness of finding her in his bedroom, leaning over his bed, and no wonder he’d forgotten himself for a minute or ten.
The next time they met he’d be better prepared.
Chantal didn’t slow down until a passing highway patrol officer flashed his headlights in warning, but even after she eased her pressure on the accelerator her heart and blood and mind kept racing—not because of her near brush with a speeding fine, but because of her brush with Cameron Quade.
With time weren’t teenage crushes supposed to fade? In this case, obviously not. Right now she felt as warm and flustered as when she’d first met the object of her teenage infatuation. He had fascinated her for years before that, what with all the retold stories—from her parents via Godfrey and Gillian—of his glorious achievements at the posh boarding school he’d been sent to after his mother died, then at law school, and finally his appointment to a top international law firm.
He’d done everything she aspired to, and everything her parents expected of her. Oh, yes, she’d heard a lot about Cameron Quade even before she met him, and she’d worshiped from afar. Up close he was worth all of the worshiping. Her skin grew even warmer remembering the moment when she’d turned and found him in that doorway. The perfect bone structure, the strongly chiseled mouth, the brooding green eyes and thickly tousled hair.
So long and lean and hard. So unknowingly sexy, so irresistibly male. So exactly how a man should look.
Chantal tugged at the neckline of her sweater and blew out a long breath as she recalled the way he’d looked right back at her. Like she was there in his bedroom for another purpose entirely. What was that all about?
Back in the Barker Cowan days he’d never looked at her with anything but annoyance or dismissal or—on one painfully embarrassing occasion that even now caused her to wince—with blood-freezing disdain.
And didn’t he have a fiancеe back in Dallas or Denver or wherever he’d been living the past six years? Kristin, if memory served her correctly. He’d brought her home for his father’s funeral and she’d looked exactly like the kind of woman Cameron Quade would choose as a mate. Tall, stunning, self-assured—the direct antithesis of untall, unstunning, self-dubious Chantal.
She must have misinterpreted that look. Perhaps he’d been even more exhausted than he looked. After all, he hadn’t even recognized her. As for Chantal herself…well, her wits had been completely blown away by his sudden appearance. Not to mention what he’d overheard.
Good grief, Julia, you might as well have left a box of condoms on the pillow while you were at it!
Had she laughed it off or explained that she usually didn’t go around tossing phones at walls? Oh, no. She’d just stood there staring at him like some tongue-tied teenager…some lopsided tongue-tied teenager.
In her mind’s eye she saw one low-heeled black court shoe spiral through the air in stark slow-motion replay. She groaned out loud.
Way to make an impression, Ms. Calm Efficient Lawyer!
Especially when making an impression was the whole point of the exercise. Godfrey had asked her to help him out, to check that the cleaners did their job and maybe stock the fridge, but she’d wanted Merindee prepared within an inch of perfection.
To impress the boss’s nephew, to impress her boss.
She’d intended to be finished and long gone before said nephew arrived, but then she hadn’t counted on the whole bed and sheets debacle…for which Julia had to wear some culpability, she decided, frowning darkly at her cell phone. She punched Last Number Redial and waited nine rings—she counted them—for her sister to pick up.
“Hello?” Julia sounded breathless.
“Were you outside? You better not have run—”
“Relax, sis. You know I’m beyond running anywhere.”
In the background Chantal heard a deeper voice, followed by a muffled shush. Her frown deepened. “Shouldn’t Zane be at work?”
“Oh, he has been.” Julia sounded suspiciously smug. “We’re working on our honeymoon plans.”
Chantal rolled her eyes. “Good grief. You’re six months pregnant. Shouldn’t you be working on your nursery?”
Julia laughed, as she did so often these days. “It’s been finished for weeks. Where are you, by the way?”
“On my way to work.” In fact, she was just passing the Welcome sign at the eastern edge of the Cliffton city limits. “And, thanks to you, I’m running way late.”
“Thanks to me?”
“You didn’t hear the message I left earlier?”
“Sorry, we’ve been busy.” Julia laughed huskily then added in cavalier fashion, “Well, whatever the prob, I’m sure you’ll deal with it.”
“The prob is those black sheets you bought.”
“Oh, no, they’re midnight-blue. They look black but in the light they have this deep blue shimmer. Very classy but sexy, too, don’t you think?”
Chantal didn’t think about sexy sheets, at least not consciously. Before Zane Julia hadn’t, either, and Chantal was still adjusting to this new mouthy version of her formerly meek and mild sister.
“Now, about tonight…” Julia shifted to a more businesslike tone. “Would you be able to collect the party platters seeing as you’re in Cliffton?”
“Well, actually, about tonight—”
“Uh-uh, no way! You are my only sister and half of my bridesmaids and you will be at my shower.”
“I was only going to say I may be running a little late.”
“Oh. Then I’ll have Tina bring the supplies. But don’t be too late and don’t forget it’s costume.”
How could she forget? The other bridesmaid, Zane’s sister Kree, had taken complete control of the wedding shower arrangements because, in her words, Chantal’s party skills needed serious surgery. A matter of opinion, Chantal sniffed. Some people preferred her quietly elegant dinner parties.
“You won’t forget?” her sister prompted.
“No,” Chantal said on a heavy sigh. “But I liked this relationship much better when I was bossing you around.”
Julia laughed again then asked, her voice laced with suspicion, “What are you coming as?”
“A lawyer.”
Julia groaned and Chantal smiled. “Before I go I should thank you.”
“For?”
“Doing that shopping job for me. Sheets aside, you were a big help.”
“Don’t thank me, just give the man my business card.” Chantal closed her eyes for a second and wondered if she could put the card under Quade’s door. Or in his mailbox. “Oh, and you might toss in a personal recommendation. If this Cameron Quade saw your garden, he’d know I do good work.”
“Look, sis, he may not want to do anything with the old place. He might not be staying.”
“You didn’t ask Godfrey?”
“I asked but I don’t think he knows any more than I do about his nephew’s plans.”
“Easily fixed. What’s the man’s E.T.A.?”
Chantal shifted uneasily in her seat. For some inexplicable reason she didn’t want to share news of the Cameron Quade encounter with her sister, at least not until she’d come to grips with it herself. “Today some time.”
“So, when you pop over to welcome him to the neighborhood, you ask how long he’s staying.”
Chantal’s response fell halfway between a snort and a laugh. When you pop over. Huh!
“What? I thought asking questions was what you lawyers did for a living.”
“You watch too much television,” Chantal replied dryly. Far more of her time was spent on reading and researching and documentation than in courtrooms. She cast a quick glance at the box of files on her passenger seat and felt her heart quicken. Some day soon she hoped that would change, and that the brownie points she’d earned this week would speed the process along.
“So, you’ll see him over the weekend?” Julia persisted.
“You don’t think this garden design thing could wait, say, until after your wedding?”
“No way! I need something to do other than worry about what we’ll do if it rains.”
“You did have to choose a garden wedding,” Chantal pointed out.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I chose a garden wedding and I chose to wait until spring so my guests would have something to look at other than bare-limbed trees.”
“Like your belly?” Chantal teased, and was rewarded with her sister’s laughter. Better.
They said their see you tonights and disconnected as Chantal braked at the first of three traffic lights in Cliffton’s main street. The way her day was going, she’d likely catch every red. Her CD player flipped to the next disc and she remembered the one she’d left in Quade’s house. Wonderful. As if she needed another reason to call on her new neighbor…
When you pop over, you ask.
If only Julia knew the half of it!
This morning she hadn’t asked any of the questions that needed asking, and she wasn’t talking about Julia’s garden design aspirations. She was talking questions that had been gnawing away in her mind like a demented woodworm ever since she first heard of Quade’s imminent return.
Questions such as, What’s a hotshot corporate attorney like you doing back in the Australian bush?
And, Has Godfrey asked you to join his firm?
Questions whose answers might impact on her own career aspirations. Straightening her shoulders, she reminded herself that she was no longer a gauche teenager with no people skills. She was a mature twenty-five-year-old professional who had worked hard on her inadequacies, on overcoming her fear of not measuring up, at focusing on what she was good at, namely, her job.
As such, there was only one option.
Tomorrow she would pop over to Merindee and ask her questions.
Two
Two minutes later Chantal swung into the car park behind Mitchell Ainsfield Butt’s offices and—thank you, God—found a vacant spot. Maybe her day was about to get better, although she wasn’t betting any real money on it.
Juggling keys and phone in one hand, she jammed her briefcase under the other arm and balanced the box of files on one hip. With the other she nudged her car door shut—one of the few instances when a sturdy pair of hips proved an asset, she noted as she crab-walked her load between the closely parked cars.
The back door to the office block swung open just as she reached the stoop. And yes, her luck did seem to have changed for the better. The man holding the door for her, the man taking the box and briefcase and carrying them into her office was Godfrey Butt himself.
“Quite a load,” he said, sliding it all onto her desk.
“The Warner files. Since I spoke with Emily I’ve been doing some further research—”
“Good, good.”
Chantal bristled at the interruption, but didn’t have a chance to object before he continued.
