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“No, one more thing,” Dean said, finishing up his hot dog. “I want that storytelling to stop.”
Susan flushed. She had thought that might be coming. They had had this conversation before. She gulped, hating to have done something contrary.
“I’m sorry. It’s just the kids were acting up tonight, didn’t want to go to bed,” she rationalized. “And they seem to like the story so much.”
“I don’t want their heads filled with fantasy,” Dean said, his voice suddenly icily determined. Susan shivered under the personal power this man had—if he treated his business adversaries this way then he certainly deserved his reputation for always getting his way—without ever having to raise his voice.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Radcliffe.”
“They need to face reality. Not be distracted by fiction,” he added. “Besides, the Eastman Bear Company is ripe for my purchase precisely because of the muddled thinking promoted by such dreaming.”
“But the children like it—hearing stories about the bears.”
“I would suggest you reading to them about history or science or animals,” he replied curtly in a way that left no doubt this was no mere suggestion, it was an order.
Susan bit back a retort.
He was so close, so close to connecting to these children, Susan thought. But then he couldn’t do it. He wanted to love them, did love them, but couldn’t get close enough to them to see that they were wonderful children and having a few moments of whimsy at the end of the day wouldn’t turn them into wimps or daydreamers. He was so close to being a real father to them, but he couldn’t do it. She knew the death of his wife had hurt him greatly. She wondered what kind of man he had been before the tragedy.
Because she loved him, she could forgive him the kind of man he was now.
And wish that someday he would change.
She stood up.
“It won’t happen again,” she said.
“Good. Oh, Susan, I nearly forgot,” he said, pulling a velvet box from under a pile of papers. “Your birthday.”
She approached the desk, swallowing back a sadness mingled with anticipation. She wished she hadn’t wanted his present, wished she didn’t care. She only knew she did. She approached the desk and he smiled—the same charming smile that had gotten him everything in life.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he answered and turned his attention to some paperwork in front of him. “And happy birthday. By the way, what’s that perfume you’re wearing? It’s very beautiful.”
He asked the question as if he were asking what time the trains ran, but still he asked it. Her breath caught. She looked into his emerald eyes as he waited for her answer. And for a moment, a scant moment, her heart soared as she knew he had noticed her, really noticed her.
She felt a rising heat in her body, confusing as it was enticing.
How could he do it? With just a look, just a word he could make her quiver.
She was nuts—he didn’t give her a thought other than in her capacity as nanny.
And yet he had just noticed her, had noticed her scent.
He noticed her as a woman.
Her heart soared and then fell flat with a thaddump! as her body heat made her scent blossom and even she could recognize its source.
“Cake,” she said blandly. “I smell like cake.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_236fb145-0764-50af-8ff8-38d61a91949e)
“That was real close,” Chelsea said in a small voice.
“Real close,” Henry blubbered.
“Just pay attention to the story,” Susan urged. “Then you won’t notice the thunder. Now where was I? Oh, yes, the Continental Congress appointed five men to write a letter to the King explaining why the colonies should not be taxed under the Parliamentary—”
“Can you tell us about Eastman Bears again?” Chelsea asked.
“Sorry, honey, it’s not…not a good idea,” Susan said, thinking of their father’s new restrictions on what they should read. “Besides, I told you the whole story.”
“No, you didn’t,” Henry pointed out.
“Bears,” Baby Edward begged. He didn’t like the blue book about the American Revolution. Not even the pictures of Benjamin Franklin, the Liberty Bell or the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
The nightstand lamp flickered on and off. Susan glanced only briefly at the window, determined to not let the children see that she was worried. The wind was fast and furious—the massive Radcliffe oaks creaked and groaned as their branches were yanked back and forth. Hail and rain slapped against the windowpanes and the sky was a sickly yellow and black. No wonder they called this part of northern Illinois “Tornado Alley.”
“I wish Daddy was home,” Henry said dismally.
“Me, too,” said Chelsea.
“Me, thweeeeh,” Baby Edward added.
Clap!
Chelsea and Henry leapt into Susan’s arms at the crack of blazing light and thunder. Susan hugged all three children and watched the lamp flutter and die, plunging the bedroom into darkness.
The book on the American Revolution slid from her lap to the floor.
“I want my daddy!” Chelsea cried in great, convulsive gulps. “I’m scared!”
Baby Edward howled.
“All right, all right,” Susan soothed. “Now let’s try to be a little braver.”
“I can’t,” Chelsea exclaimed.
“I can’t, either,” Henry said.
Susan looked around the room, blinking to adjust to the darkness. Familiar furniture seemed like ominous prowling monsters and the curtains looked like unearthly ghosts.
And the candles were safely tucked in the dining room hutch, waiting for dinner parties that hadn’t been given since the mistress of the house had died.
She disengaged herself from the children enough to shove her hand into Chelsea’s toy box. Rooting around, she pulled out the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle flashlight. She flicked it on, shooting out a small but comforting speck of light.
“Calm down, all three of you. The Bear family survived a storm much worse than this without a single tear.”
Henry was the first to catch on. He gulped down his sobs and wiped his runny nose with his sleeve.
“They did? Not a single tear?”
“It was a much bigger storm than this one,” Susan said, guilty that she was going against her employer’s wishes but certain he would understand. Just this once.
She hustled them back into the safe bed, opening her arms wide enough to encompass them all. Even Henry, who sometimes considered himself too old for her embraces.
She started another tale, a story she made up as she went along, cuing her words to the reactions of her charges. She had described the storm, the bears, their bravery and was winding things up, when they heard the first anguished yelps.
“It’s Wiley!” Henry shrieked.
“Oh, no!” Susan cried.
The children leapt from the bed to the window, Susan behind them. Illuminated by the lightning, the pitiful, wet, sobbing Wiley stood in the court-yard—pulling at the chain that tied him to the steel shed out in back of the Radcliffe oak trees.
“The landscape service must have forgotten to let him loose after they mowed the lawn,” Susan said.
“Bring him back in!” Chelsea demanded.
“Yeah, get him!” Henry begged.
Susan stared in horror at the poor dog and then at her charges. If she did nothing, Wiley’s pain and terror would be unbearable—for all of them.
But if she went downstairs and left the three children on their own…
“I’ll go down there, but you have to stand right here,” she said. “And don’t move. And take care of Baby Edward. Chelsea, you’re in charge.”
She left them the flashlight and some comforting kisses. In the hall, she felt her way, hand over hand, along the walls of the night-shrouded house. Down the steps, through the cavernous pitch-black dining room. At last she reached the kitchen. She flung open the back door, then fell back as the wind slammed it right back against her. She landed hard.
She scrambled up, grabbed the door handle and shoved with all her might. A sudden vacuum created by the unruly wind sucked the door outward, and she lurched onto the back porch. Downed branches and ripped leaves, slathered to the porch with rain, made it slippery going.
Out past the courtyard, Wiley moaned for her, his eyes pleading for relief.
Woman and dog jumped as the sky cracked in two with a bang and a burst of light.
That was close, Susan thought. Must have hit right near the orchard behind the formal Radcliffe gardens. Swallowing the tight lump of fear, she charged down the steps and across the courtyard.
She looked back once through the sheets of rain to see three ghostly faces pressed against the window of the second-floor back bedroom. Then she reached for Wiley and he lapped her hand as she fumbled with the chain at his neck.
“It’s all right, Wiley, you’re safe now,” Susan comforted. She found the grip, and released him. He raced for the back door, slipping once but recovering as if the very hounds of hell were chasing him.
Susan felt a gentle tap on her shoulder and, still holding the metal chain, she turned around. She looked down at the bracelet Dean Radcliffe had given her—its little charms twinkling in the eerie storm light. She hadn’t wanted to wear it, hadn’t wanted to admit it meant something to her to receive a gift from him. But she wore it now—always, long after they grew up, the children would be in her memories. She hoped she would get over Dean.
A quivering light burst from the shed and slithered up the chain to the twinkling bracelet. She felt fire squeezing her wrists. And then came the roar of thunder, close against her ear.
“Daddy, you gotta come home.” Henry gulped, then choked on a sob. “Daddy, it’s just like the night Mommy…”
Dean Radcliffe picked up the receiver on the speaker phone and with a single silencing glance at the executives around the conference table, leaned back in his chair.
“What’s just like—” He hesitated and took a deep breath. “What’s just like that night?”
“The lightning!” Henry cried.
Dean glanced out his sixty-fourth-floor office window to the black sky. Clouds hung low, so low it seemed he could grab their swollen mounds. There was a crack of lightning in the distance.
It all came back to him—even now the memory was as sickening as it had been two years ago.
Nicole’s body, her car at the bottom of the ravine where the Radcliffe property line met the street, the car radio still playing the heavy-metal music she loved so much, her blond hair thrown forward across her still, frozen face.
“Henry, get Susan on the phone,” he ordered his son, more curtly perhaps as he struggled to squelch his own emotions.
“That’s the problem,” Henry said. “Susan’s outside.”
Unbidden, the scent of sugar and vanilla came to him. He batted it away with a surge of anger. She was clearly negligent, leaving the frightened children to fend for themselves. He’d have to talk to her.
“What’s she doing outside?”
He stood up, his tall frame making the office look as if it had been furnished with treasures from a dollhouse. He raked a callused hand through his hair. Savvy executives knew he was fighting off a headache—they had seen that gesture many times during tense negotiations. And nothing in recent years had been more tension filled than the attempted purchase of the Eastman Bear Company.
Indistinct sobs crackled from the speaker phone.
“Henry!” Dean yelled.
Someone else came on the line.
“Daddy, it’s Chelsea. Please come home.”
“If Susan’s outside, get me…” He thought for a minute, and then remembered the terrible truth. There wasn’t a housekeeper who would stay in the isolated and gloomy Radcliffe house. There wasn’t a maid who had lasted longer than a day. And he had fired the groundskeeper two days after Nicole’s death; as he remembered that man, his jaws clenched in suppressed rage.
The problem was there was no one to care for his children except Susan.
Dependable, responsible, nearly invisible Susan.
If she wasn’t there…
“There’s no one here, Daddy,” Chelsea said quietly. “Susan went outside to save Wiley.”
Dean scribbled a note to Mrs. Whitherspoon and passed it across the table to her. “Call 911, send them to the house,” it said.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded.
“No,” Chelsea said in a very small voice.
“Are Henry and Edward all right?”
“Yes, but we’re very scared.”
Dean took a deep breath, and his emerald eyes skittered across the conference room at the two dozen executives who had been working through profit-loss statements, annual reports, spreadsheets and payroll estimations for the purchase of the Eastman Bear Company.
