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He stroked Becky’s dark head and wanted to ask, “Why not?” But he held back the question. It was none of his business. And he doubted she would tell him anyway.
He inquired with ironic good humor, “I take it you’re going to be interviewing nannies for my daughter.”
“If that’s all right with you, yes. I would like to do that.”
“If that’s all right with me? Ms. Miller, you sound downright agreeable.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts, Mr. Stockwell.”
“Ms. Miller, I intend to do just that.”
Chapter Three
It was a little after seven that evening and Hannah was just putting the last of her clothes into the maple bureau of the nanny’s room when the tap came on the door to the hall.
“It’s open,” she called.
A slim, dark-haired woman poked her head in. “Hi. I’m Kate. Cord’s little sister—and Becky’s aunt.” Kate Stockwell smiled. She had a great smile. It lit up her fine-boned face. “You’re Hannah, right?”
Hannah nodded. “Come on in.”
“I’m not interrupting?”
“Nope. I just finished unpacking.” Hannah turned to the bed, on which her ancient hard-sided suitcase lay open. With both hands, she levered it closed and pressed the latches. Then she grabbed the handle, lugged it to the floor and dragged it into the closet.
When she turned back to the room, Cord’s sister was standing near the bed. She was dressed for evening, her dark hair swept up, a little chain of diamonds dangling from each ear. Her dress was a simple cobalt-blue cocktail-length silk sheath that had probably cost a fortune at Neiman-Marcus. The dress brought out the blue of her eyes—eyes that watched Hannah with undisguised curiosity.
“Cord told me this afternoon that you’d be moving in for a while. You’re not what I expected.” Smoothing her dress beneath her, Kate Stockwell sat on the edge of the bed. “Then again, I’m not sure exactly what I expected.”
Hannah frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, I have to confess, Cord has mentioned you once or twice in the past several days. I mean, that you’re Becky’s caseworker with Child Protective Services. And that you’re, um…”
Hannah did understand then. She laughed. “You are being so tactful. I think what you mean is that your brother didn’t have too many nice things to say about me.”
Kate’s gaze slid away. “Well…”
Hannah said with cautious honesty, “Your brother and I don’t always agree, I’m afraid. He’s a very determined man.”
Kate met Hannah’s eyes again. “And you’re pretty determined yourself, right?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Kate was grinning now. “But you know, even if you two have had some disagreements, he seems pleased with the idea of your taking care of Becky.”
“It’s only for a few days—until I find the right nanny.”
“Yes. I know. That’s what Cord said.”
Hannah still hovered by the closet door, feeling unsure. Her instincts told her that with this woman she could skip right on into “girlfriend” mode—but then that seemed inappropriate. She would no doubt be wiser to respect the usual professional boundaries between herself and a relative of one of her charges.
Kate looked confused. “What did I do?”
Hannah hesitated, still unsure how best to proceed.
And Kate caught on. “I get it. You don’t know how to treat me—and I’ll bet my brother’s been giving you his Lord of the Manor routine. He does that. You’ll get used to it. Underneath, he’s a sweetheart, I swear to you. And the rest of us do our level best to act like normal human beings.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Well, I suppose I should clarify that. Most of the rest of us act like normal human beings.”
Hannah wondered which Stockwell didn’t fall in the “normal human being” category.
Kate didn’t enlighten her. She sighed. “I’m rambling. But my point is, I meant it when I asked you to call me Kate.”
Hannah looked into those blue eyes—so much like Becky’s eyes, really—and decided to go ahead and follow her instincts. “All right. Kate, then.” She left off hovering by the closet door to take the hand Cord’s sister offered.
“And I don’t have to call you Ms. Miller, do I?”
“Please. Just Hannah is great. You came to see Becky, I’ll bet.”
Kate nodded. “I can’t believe it. Cord has a daughter. And I’m an aunt—but maybe she’s sleeping. If she is, just tell me the best time and I’ll come back.”
“I put her down about an hour ago. We could go check on her—and just sneak back out if she’s asleep. What do you say?”
Kate stood. “I’d love it.”
Hannah led the way through the door that joined the nanny’s room to the play area of the nursery—and the darkened baby’s bedroom beyond that.
Becky was asleep, lying on her back, her black lashes like tiny perfect fans against her plump cheeks. The two women stood over the crib. Hannah stared down at Becky, smiling like a fool, just grateful to be allowed to care for her for the brief few days to come. She heard a small sound from Kate—a sigh, she thought.
But when she glanced over at the other woman, what she saw made her want to cry out in sympathy. Such sadness. Such…despair, the eyes far away and lost, the soft mouth bleak and twisted.
Hannah couldn’t stop herself. She reached out, touched Kate’s slender arm. Kate shivered.
Hannah wanted to offer comfort—and to her, the greatest comfort in the world was cradling Becky against her heart. “Here. Hold her…” Hannah formed the words without giving them sound, already reaching for the sleeping child.
Kate caught her arm, mouthed, “Next time.”
Hannah froze, mimed, “Are you sure?”
And Kate nodded, her delicate chin set. She gestured toward the door to the playroom, signaling that she was ready to go.
What else could Hannah do? She followed Kate out.
Back in the nanny’s room, Kate said that she had to be on her way. “I’ll be back, tomorrow, though, and see if I can catch that little darling awake.” Her voice sounded brittle now, and way too bright.
“Tomorrow,” Hannah promised, “we’ll just wake her up if she’s sleeping.”
“Oh, no. She needs her sleep—and I’m sure you enjoy the break whenever she gives it to you. Tell you what, next time I’ll buzz you first.”
“Buzz me?”
Kate pointed at the phone on the nightstand. Hannah had been purposely avoiding confronting the thing, though the housekeeper, Mrs. Hightower, had briefly described its operation when she had ushered Hannah into the room an hour before. The darn thing looked as complicated as a switchboard.
“We all have our own private lines,” Kate explained.
“It’s a big house and we can’t go running from one end of it to the other every time we need to ask each other some simple little question. Cord is line two—that one buzzes both in his office downstairs and in his private rooms. I’m line four. And the new nursery is…” She craned toward the phone. “Ah. Cord’s had it all set up. Thirteen.”
Hannah pulled a face. “My lucky number.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“In the few days I’ll be here? I doubt it.”
“The outside lines are on the right. Just punch one of them if you want to make a regular call.”
“Will do.”
“I really have to go.” A wry smile twisted Kate’s mouth. “I’m due at one of those endless charity dinners. It is for a good cause, though. Raising money for learning-impaired children.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“It’s a deal.”
After Kate left, Hannah wondered about the bleakness in her eyes when she’d looked down at Becky dreaming in her crib. And beyond that, Cord’s sister had gone and turned down the chance to hold the baby. Hannah couldn’t understand how anyone could pass up an opportunity to have Becky in her arms.
Kate Stockwell had a secret or two, Hannah was certain of it. And as a woman with a few sad secrets of her own, Hannah sympathized. In a sense, she did understand. In her heart. Where it counted.
Heck. Hannah liked Cord Stockwell’s sister. And that was a pleasant surprise, given that Becky’s supposed father was such a difficult man to get along with.
Cord ate his dinner alone in the sunroom. Kate had gone to some charity thing. Rafe, a Deputy U.S. Marshall, was on duty, transporting a federal prisoner to Washington, D.C. And their older brother, Jack—well, who knew where Jack might be? Like Cord, Rafe and Kate, Jack had his own rooms at Stockwell Mansion. But he rarely stayed in them. Jack lived all over the world, wherever new governments or old regimes were willing to pay for his highly skilled and lethal services.
After dinner, Cord went to his office in the West Wing. He’d only meant to wrap up a few things. But as usual, there was just too damn much that couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
He worked into the evening. He had a number of contracts to review, correspondence to go over and a stack of business proposals that needed a decision from him yesterday.
The Stockwell empire had really begun with the oil boom of the thirties. Until then, Stockwells had been cattlemen, and not especially successful ones. It had been the land itself that had made them multimillionaires—or the black gold beneath the land, anyway.
For decades, the name Stockwell and the word “oil” had been almost synonymous. Stockwells drilled in and profited from oil fields from the Lone Star State to the Middle East.
When times got rough, they proceeded with care. And during the boom years, they took chances. And they prospered.
In the eighties, when real estate became king again, Caine had seen the trend and jumped on it. And in the nineties, once Cord had graduated from UT and started working alongside his father, he had pushed even harder to diversify.
Now, when people heard the words, Stockwell International, they still thought “oil.” But those in the know realized that the company had its fingers in a huge number of profit-making pies. Over the past few years, as he’d assumed more and more control, Cord had continued to channel investment capital wherever he saw potential. He backed shopping malls and high-tech companies just getting their start. And the projects in which he invested Stockwell capital almost always paid off and paid off well.
At a little after ten, Cord scrawled his name on the last in the stack of correspondence his secretary had prepared for him. Then he tossed the pen aside and ran his hand down his face. It was getting late. Time to call it a night.
Just then the phone on his desk rang—his private outside line. The caller ID window showed him a number he recognized. He hesitated before answering, thinking that he wanted to get back to his rooms, to check on his daughter—and on Ms. Miller, who by then should have been all settled in the nanny’s room off the nursery.
The line buzzed again. He went ahead and picked up.
“This is Cord.”
“As if I didn’t know.” The voice was soft. Extremely feminine. And thick with innuendo.
“Hello, Jerralyn.” Cord leaned back in his chair.
Jerralyn Coulter was a Texas aristocrat—if there actually was such a thing. One of her great-great-great-great-grandfathers had perished at the Alamo. And her great-great-great-grandfather had been a true cattle baron. Cord and Jerralyn had been an item in the gossip columns for several weeks now. They’d hooked up at a political fund-raiser, a thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner where they’d been seated across from each other. It had started with smoldering looks and teasing banter. He’d driven her home. And spent the night in her bed.
Jerralyn was twenty-six, an extremely beautiful and sophisticated woman. Not to mention energetic. With a very naughty mind.
“Are you working late again?” she asked.
“Guilty.”
“You work too hard.”
“I like to work.”
“You need to play—and I could be there in twenty minutes—with a bottle of Dom Pérignon in my hand and nothing on under my sables.”
He laughed at that. “How can you wear sable? I thought you told me you were an animal rights activist.”
“I was speaking figuratively.”
“About the rights of animals?”
“No, about the sables.”
“You are tempting,” he said, still thinking of Becky, of the irritating Ms. Miller, of the way she hadn’t seemed irritating at all, sitting in the white wicker rocker, her brown hair falling soft and thick along her cheek.
“And you are preoccupied.” Jerralyn pretended to pout. “I could be hurt.”
Cord blinked, rubbed his eyes. “Don’t be. Later in the week?”
“Oh, all right. But at least turn the light off now and get out of that office. Workaholics are not sexy.”
He promised her again that he was through for the night, and then said goodbye.
Emma Hightower, who had been the head housekeeper at Stockwell Mansion for well over a decade now, appeared in the doorway as Cord was turning off the lights. As always, she looked serious and sincere in her concern for his comfort. “Just making my last rounds. Is there anything else I can get for you tonight, Mr. Stockwell?”
“No, thank you, Emma. I’m fine. Did Ms. Miller get moved in all right?”
“Yes. She’s all settled.”
“You saw that she was fed?”
“I had dinner sent up to her room at seven-thirty, which seemed a good time for her, tonight anyway. By then, I assumed, she would have had sufficient opportunity to unpack her belongings. Consuela picked up the tray an hour later.”
“And did Ms. Miller eat her vegetables?” he teased, hoping, as he’d hoped for years and years, to catch a hint of a grin on Emma’s long, serious face.
