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“He gave me a full orientation. What time you get up in the mornings, what you like for breakfast—”
“Did he know you were a woman?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “I think he probably noticed.”
He grimaced. Dumb question, Jonesy. You’re usually a little smoother with the ladies. “I just thought it was strange Rodgers would agree to hire a woman as his replacement.”
“I told him I could type.”
Griffin hoped she’d get the tea ready in a hurry. Maybe it would clear his head. “Why would Rodgers care whether or not you can type?”
Turning, she planted her fists where her waist used to be. “He made it very clear he was not only your butler but also your personal secretary, screening phone calls, keeping your appointment schedule, that sort of thing. I assured him I was quite capable of handling secretarial chores of that very minor sort.”
Choking, Griffin began to cough again. As a part of his job, Rodgers made sure Griffin wasn’t interrupted when he was entertaining a lady, keeping phone calls and unexpected guests at bay, particularly when they were other women.
“Oh, my sakes, that cold of yours is just awful. I think I’d better whip up some chicken soup. You know, there’s nothing better—”
“No,” he croaked.
“Really, Mr. Jones, I think—”
“Sit down!” he bellowed.
She crumpled into the nearest chair at the oak breakfast table, her eyes as wide as flying saucers.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
She nodded vigorously, like one of those dolls you see in the back window of souped-up cars.
“I’m just going to explain to you why this isn’t going to work, you being my butler and all. It’s not personal, you understand. It’s that you’re a woman.” And pregnant.
Trying to gather himself, Griffin shoved his hands in his pants pockets. His jacket sleeves bunched up and he decided to get rid of the coat, shrugging it off. He took a deep breath. “Miss Santana, there are various occasions when I have young ladies visiting me. Attractive young ladies. Ladies with whom I sometimes have an intimate relationship.”
A rosy glow crept up her slender neck and stained her dramatically sculpted cheeks. “I’m not one to judge other people’s actions, Mr. Jones.”
“Yes, well—” he cleared his throat “—these young ladies, if and when they do visit, might not take kindly to me having a lovely young woman like yourself in my, er, employ.” Particularly a sexy, pregnant woman, he suspected. And he most assuredly didn’t like the idea. He didn’t want to be responsible. What if she fell...or went into early labor? A thousand things could go wrong.
“I wouldn’t think of interfering in your personal life, Mr. Jones. They’d never even see me, if that’s what you wanted. I’d be still as a mouse.” The color on her cheeks went from rose to scarlet, and she raised her chin to a stubborn angle. “Besides, you can’t discriminate against me because I’m a woman. The government doesn’t allow that anymore. A woman has certain recourses now.”
He frowned. He’d had a long day, the competition was gaining the upper hand, and now he had some pregnant woman issuing a veiled threat that she would sue. He didn’t like that one damn bit!
“Furthermore, if you’re considering discriminating because I happen to be pregnant, you should know forty-two out of the fifty states have laws that prevent discrimination solely for that reason. California is included in that list.”
It took him a moment to realize the shrill whistle in his head was the kettle boiling. Scowling, he gestured for her to get the tea.
She hopped up out of her chair like she’d been goosed. At the counter, she fussed with a teapot and bags of herbal tea while Griffin considered his options. Physically throwing Loretta Santana out of the house wasn’t one of them, though he might wish it were. But he just couldn’t do that to a pregnant woman—or any other woman, for that matter.
Damn, why had Rodgers’s aging mother decided to take a turn for the worse now? She’d been teetering on the edge of whatever for as long as Griffin could remember.
The only reason Griffin had a butler at all was because Rodgers had been with Griffin’s father since forever. When his dad died a couple of years ago, Griffin inherited the butler along with a multimillion-dollar company. Bequests like that weren’t something a man could turn down.
Loretta slid a cup and saucer onto the table near him. To his amazement it smelled pretty good—a combination of a pine forest and the scent of roses in spring. He sat down and took a sip. He didn’t think it would kill him, and maybe it might do something about the raspy throat that had been niggling at him all day.
“So tell me why you want to be my butler.”
She eased back into the chair opposite him. In a world of waifs, she’d be a winner. Fragile. Vulnerable. Yet something about the way she held her head suggested a stubborn streak a man would be wise not to challenge.
“It was the only job the agency would send me out on.” Her slender shoulders lifted in a shrug.
“Butlers are hard to find nowadays. The pay’s not especially good, you know. And I really needed the job so I could get medical coverage for myself and Isabelia’s baby.”
His gaze slid toward her midsection, now hidden by the edge of the table. “You’re having somebody else’s kid?”
“My aunt tried for years to get pregnant. When she turned forty, she got desperate. They decided to try a surrogate, and I volunteered.”
Ah, Isabella and Wayne. The herbal tea was definitely clearing his muddled brain. “You didn’t, ah, get that way—” he eyed her hidden belly again “—in the usual way?”
“Oh, my, no. That’s an awful thing to even think about Uncle Wayne.”
“There wasn’t anyone else who could do the job? I mean, as a surrogate.”
“My other aunts are mostly too old, and my cousins already have children, and their husbands weren’t keen on the idea. Besides, most of them didn’t have really easy pregnancies.”
He clenched a little. Maybe difficult pregnancies ran in her family—high-risk pregnancies. “Couldn’t Wayne hire somebody? It couldn’t cost much more than—”
“We’re family, Mr. Jones. When family’s involved, you do what needs to be done.”
“I wouldn’t give my uncle the time of day, much less get pregnant for him,” Griffin grumbled. Besides, Uncle Matt was the competition, the head of the electronic outlet stores that were giving his company fits.
A lyrical giggle erupted from Loretta. “I don’t think your uncle is likely to ask you to get pregnant.”
“Probably not,” he agreed, smiling wryly. He also couldn’t imagine his aunt, who looked as dry as a mesquite bush, asking him to impregnate her. He shuddered at the thought. “So why do you need medical insurance? I’d think your aunt and uncle would pay your expenses.”
“They died in a car accident.”
“I’m sorry. But didn’t they leave you something—”
“They weren’t rich, Mr. Jones. Not like you. And they never even thought about a will, I’m sure. Even if they had, there wasn’t enough left after the double funeral for my medical bills...or the baby’s.”
God, how he hated sob stories, particularly when they sounded legitimate. “Haven’t you been seeing a doctor?”
“Oh, sure. They prepaid my prenatal care, and the doctor’s been really good about not charging me for anything extra. But the delivery’s a whole different ball game, plus the hospital and pediatric care. So I’m going to need medical insurance.” Her eyes started to sparkle again, like diamonds in a pool of hot chocolate.
“Even if I let you work for me until you qualify—and I’m not saying I will,” he hastily added when he saw hope spring into her eyes, “wouldn’t the insurance company say you’ve got a pre-existing condition? They won’t cover—”
“It works a little differently with temp agencies. If I last long enough, I’m covered since the day I started work for them. It’s a carrot they hold out to keep employees around longer.”
“You’ve worked for these people before, then?”
Nodding, she sipped her tea. “Lots of times. I work when I’m not going to college.”
“College?”
She lifted her chin again at that determined angle. At some point the dark hair she’d pulled back into a bun had come loose, and feathery strands kissed the slender column of her neck. “I’m going to be the first person in my whole family who’s ever graduated from a university. I’ve completed 136 units at Cal State L.A.”
“That’s a lot of units.” More than Griffin had, and he had a degree.
“I would have graduated already but I keep changing my major. And they keep changing the requirements.”
“That can set you back, all right.”
“So I’ve still got a year or so to go. And now with the baby—” she shrugged “—it may take me a little longer.”
Maybe she should have thought about that before she agreed to have some other woman’s baby. Gritfin didn’t want anything to do with Loretta and her sob story. He certainly didn’t want her as his butler. But he couldn’t exactly throw her out on her ear in the middle of the night.
“Look, Miss Santana—”
“You can call me Loretta, if you like. They said in my accelerated butler’s class that was okay, if my employer found it easier.”
“Yeah, well...” Damn, he really hated firing people even when they were incompetent. So far, at least, Loretta hadn’t done anything wrong. “The truth is, I don’t actually need a butler.”
“Of course you do. Rodgers assured me—in confidence, you understand—that there are days when you wouldn’t be able to manage without him. You’re not terribly well organized, I gather.”
Griffin scowled. “Rodgers said that?”
“Oh, yes. But you mustn’t worry that I’ll let you down. I’m the most organized person I know.” She appeared quite confident.
He wasn’t convinced. “I still don’t think—”
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it.” Loretta hopped up, bumping the table in the process with her oversize belly and tipping over her cup of tea. “Oh, dear, I’ll wipe that up in a minute. You leave it for me.”
“Why don’t I answer the door while you take care of—”
“No, no. Answering the door is my job. They taught me just what to do.”
Taught her to answer a door? If that’s what she learned in the accelerated class, Griffin could barely imagine what a slow course might include.
He heard the door open and Loretta greet his visitor.
“I’m truly sorry you didn’t call first, miss,” Loretta said. “Mr. Jones has a dreadful cold, and I don’t think it would be wise for him to have guests this evening.”
A feminine voice he couldn’t quite make out responded.
“Now, wait a minute,” he muttered, heading for the front of the house. His cold, such as it was, wasn’t that bad.
“I’m sure you understand Mr. Jones is only thinking of your well-being. He wouldn’t want to expose you to a virus that might take weeks for your immune system to throw off.”
Griffin spotted a willowy redhead at the door, a soap opera starlet who was making a big splash on the social scene. He’d been trying for weeks to date her.
“Aileen, hi, there. It’s good to see you. Come on in.” He tried to ease Loretta aside. She didn’t budge from her post at the door.
Aileen eyed him with regal disdain before sending Loretta a cutting look intended to cause a mere mortal to bleed profusely. “I don’t recall ever getting such an interesting brush-off before, Griffin.”
“No, you don’t understand. She’s my butler.”
“Really? How terribly convenient for you.” Turning, she floated back down the steps, gracefully exiting the scene.
Griffin swore under his breath and followed her to her flashy Porsche. He tried to talk to Aileen, to make her understand, but the best he got was “By all means, call me when your butler returns from England. If he ever does.”
The car roared off down the driveway, rattling across the planks of the twenty-foot-long bridge over the creek at the bottom of the hill.
Griffin fumed and marched back up the steps.
He glared at Loretta. “Do you know what you just did? I’ve been trying to date that woman for weeks.”
“Well, you certainly wouldn’t want to make a bad impression on her, then, by giving her your cold. That’d be terrible. She’d be overwhelmed by all those nasty little oxidants, her yin and yang would have a terrible battle, and then where would you be?”
He didn’t have a good answer for that as she breezily went back to the kitchen to clean up the spilled tea and make him some chicken soup.
Having Loretta Santana as his butler was definitely going to be hard on his love life.
Damn, he’d vowed years ago—at his mother’s funeral—that he’d never put a woman at risk by getting her pregnant. Irrational as it might seem to someone else, that’s how he felt. And he’d been especially careful. He’d always played the field, with women who understood marriage and having kids weren’t in the cards if they hung around with him.
Now, to his dismay, he had a pregnant woman on his hands. He didn’t want to be responsible. But he damn well didn’t know how to get rid of her.
Chapter Two
Griffin stretched and untangled himself from the bed sheets. To his surprise he felt a helluva lot better than he had last night. His sore throat was gone, his head clear. Amazing what a good night’s sleep could do for a man. Not for a minute did he attribute his miraculous cure to the herbal tea or chicken soup he’d consumed.
He frowned, recalling the scene at the front door last night and his new butler’s offhanded dismissal of Aileen Roquette. If it hadn’t been for Loretta Santana he might not have awakened alone in his bed this morning.
Rolling to his feet, he strolled to the window. The southern California sun cast early-morning shadows through the oaks and pines that surrounded his property, tinting summer-dried grass to a golden brown. Though less than an hour from downtown L.A., Topanga Canyon had a rural flavor. Along the winding canyon road, houses varied from modest homes to opulent residences sporting ten thousand square feet of living space. His was on the high end of the scale.
Finger combing his sleep-mussed hair, he scanned the redwood decking that circled three-quarters of the house and cantilevered out over the canyon. In a column of cool winter sunlight, Loretta sat crosslegged gazing toward the distant hillside.
Griffin’s lips twitched with the threat of a smile. In this light she looked like a cross between a delicate, dark-haired wood nymph and a chubby Buddha. Grimly he remembered he had to find some way to send her back to wherever she had come from.
He grabbed a pair of walking shorts from the closet, tugged them on and strolled outside. The mild air brushed against his bare legs and chest, promising a day that would grow much warmer, even though the calendar read early December.
Leaning back against the deck railing, he crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you meditate every morning?”
Slowly she opened her eyes and a little smile played around her lips. Kissable lips, he thought, momentarily caught off guard by her serene expression.
“I learned to meditate while I was working as a temp for the Transcendental Psychic Society. The technique’s really helpful to keep your free radicals from escaping.” She frowned and shrugged. “Or maybe they’re supposed to escape. I forget which. But meditation is really good for you.”
He had the distinct impression Loretta spoke an entirely different language than he did. “Is the society where you learned about ions and oxidants?”
