Meet Me in Paris

He accepted it without question, and offered, almost irrelevantly, “My wife used to diet all the time.” That was when she noticed the simple, ridged gold band on his wedding finger. He was married? Someone put up with him 24/7? She hadn’t heard anything about that in all the breathless conversations about him and his indisputable gorgeousness back at the office. She was sure her colleagues would have noticed a ring. Maybe she was just odd woman out. Or hard of hearing.

He cajoled. “Come on, you’ve got to be hungry. It’s way past lunchtime.”

Food. Food! She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

Patiently, he explained, “Hey, I’m starving, but my mother didn’t raise me to eat in front of a lady, if she isn’t having anything. So please, it’s almost two o’ clock, and I haven’t had breakfast. Pick something, or I’ll do it for you.”

All she could do was sit in dumb incredulity.

He took that as a cue to proceed, and summoned the redhead again. “We’ll both be having the mutton.”

She spent the rest of the meal struggling with the disorienting sensation that she was having lunch with Trey Hammond’s good twin, or at least the pod person that had replaced him somewhere between the steps of Farrar-Chase and the front door of the Blarney Stone. Her lunch companion was urbane, almost friendly, making small talk about the travel business and asking her opinion about a deal he was exploring. She answered where applicable, hearing her own voice as though it were coming from underwater, but couldn’t scrape up the gumption to initiate a train of conversation herself. The food was delicious, a comforting place to hide. She drew the line at his offer of desert, so they sipped Irish coffee to round off the meal.

He steered the conversation around to her personal life with the suddenness of a rally driver at the Paris-Brest-Paris. “Are you from around here?”

“Where?” she asked stupidly, irrationally looking about the room.

He laughed. The sound was foreign to her ears. “I wasn’t enquiring as to whether you were born under the salad bar. I meant, are you originally from Santa Amata?”

“No, not exactly. I’ve only been here for a couple years or so. I’m originally from Gary.”

“Indiana?”

“Yeah.” She paused to allow him to insert the obligatory Michael Jackson reference, but was disappointed.

“And what brought you out east?”

What, indeed. Getting into too many details about her past would have meant digging up the flat-footed, ugly duckling self she’d tried to escape, and Kendra was never keen on that. She was deliberately vague. “I guess I needed a fresh start.” And she’d made one, a good one, until she’d gone and messed it up.

“So you went to college, stayed in Indiana for a few years, then moved here. And you worked with Shel ever since?”

“Yes. He hired me because of my travel-and-tourism and hospitality courses. This was my first real full-time job. Not much tourism in Gary. I felt like I found my niche here.”

“Wet behind the ears, huh?” The irony couldn’t possibly be lost on him, but he chose not to rub it in. Instead, he finished his coffee and set the spoon in the saucer, next to the cup. He folded his hands on the table, and tilted his head to one side, examining her contemplatively. Calculatingly. Slowly.

Lord, she wondered, what next?

Finally he spoke. “Did you mean what you said?”

“What part?”

“The part about working your fingers to the bone to pay me back.”

“I did. I’m going to pay you back, no matter how long it takes. I don’t know how I’ll get a job in the travel business, considering how small the community is. They must all be talking about me. And it’s not like….” She looked at him, then glanced away. “It’s not like I’m leaving Wanderlust with a glowing recommendation.” In spite of the grimness of the situation, she laughed ruefully. “So I guess I need a whole new career.”

“People have short memories. It’ll blow over faster than you think.”

Easy for him to say. “It might, or it might not. But I will pay you back. I promise.”

Tired from the events of the day, he took a deep breath, as if he were drawing on inner courage to say what he had to say next. “You could pay it off in kind.”

“ What? ” For a second, she wondered if she could get away with throwing her glass in his face. He’d been forbearing so far about siccing the police on her. Would such a gesture of feminine outrage end with her in the slammer?

The shock on her face brought a short, amused laugh to his lips. “Don’t jump to conclusions. That wasn’t what I meant, but I’m flattered you think I’m capable of such a sophomoric idea. I was more in the market for a housekeeper.”

A housekeeper? “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve been living out of a hotel for the past few months, and I’ve only just settled on a house. I’ve had my stuff delivered but it’s still all in boxes, and the place’s gonna need a little elbow grease….”

“You want me to unpack your stuff and clean your house?”

“Pretty much. It’d go a whole lot faster if two people tackle the job.”

“Two people? What about your wife? Isn’t she helping?”

“My wife is dead.” Briefly, the chill in his eyes was back, but it was gone so fast, she could have imagined it.

Oops . I’ll have a side of fries with that mouthful of my own foot, please. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

She contemplated his incredible offer. Was he tripping, or was she? On what planet could such a proposition possibly make sense?

He leaned forward, looking at her levelly, challenging. “Too demeaning for you? Afraid to get scuff marks on your Manolos?”

He couldn’t resist that, could he? “You leave my wardrobe out of this.”

He lifted his shoulders. “I was just thinking we could help each other out. You need money, and I need help. I certainly don’t condone what you did, but I’m in need. I’d pay eighteen dollars an hour, that’s above standard rates around here, I’m told. You could get half in cash, and the other half I put toward your debt to me.” He added, “When you get another job, you can feel free to take it up. Then we can make alternative arrangements for repayment. That is, if you really are serious about paying me back.”

She lobbed his challenge right back into his court. “Aren’t you afraid I’d swipe your spare change off your nightstand?”

“I doubt even you would stoop that low.”

Even her? Oh, he was a bastard. But she couldn’t see any other way out of her predicament, and he knew it. He knew it so well, he wasn’t even making any further case for himself. He just sat there, quiet, allowing her to wrestle with her own misgivings and come to the realization that he had her over a barrel.

Times might be tough, but she still had her dignity. She’d show him. She wasn’t afraid of a little work, and she certainly wasn’t as self-absorbed and high-maintenance as he thought she was. Plus, who knew how long it would take her to find another job. So, he wanted to make her pay for her sins in sweat? Bring it on.

“When do I start?”

He pulled out a thin, stylish pen from his breast pocket, scribbled an address and number on a paper napkin, and pushed it to her. “We’ll start on Saturday. I’ll be home all day, so I can show you around. Eight o’ clock. Don’t be late.”

As if.

Chapter 4

Atonement

I f Kendra was going to change her mind, she had a day in which to do it. Truth be told, she came pretty close. Half a dozen times she made it to the phone. Half a dozen times she reminded herself that, if this was a battle of wills, Trey Hammond wasn’t going to win. If it was a test of her character, he wasn’t going to find her wanting.

She was so determined not to be late on Saturday, she slept with one eye on the alarm clock, checking it periodically to reassure herself it was set for the right time. She was up with the chickens. She showered and dressed in sturdy jeans and a plain, long-sleeved, brushed-cotton shirt, throwing on a pair of rugged boots to show Hammond she meant business. She bolstered herself with a bagel and some cranberry juice and marched out of the house well on schedule.

The crumpled napkin bearing Trey’s address was a wadded ball in the front pocket of her jeans, but she’d read and reread it so many times she knew it by heart. His new house was in Augustine, a nice professional area favored by many of the black, Hispanic and Asian businesspeople in Santa Amata.

By bus, it was a convoluted trip. The ones that did the city circuit didn’t cross Falcon River. She had to go all the way down to the main bus station and change there, and even so, it was still a twelve-minute walk from the nearest bus stop. She stepped up her pace a little. It wouldn’t do to lose her time advantage as she was closing in on the finish line. Would he be beastly enough to dock her wages?

Wages. Of all the harebrained schemes. Here she was, a young, bright professional, about to ransom her soul back for the queenly sum of eighteen bucks an hour. She checked her watch. Four minutes to eight. She resisted the urge to run. The man wasn’t going to get her goat.

There was a storybook quality to his street. It was nicely laid out, with orderly rows of pastel-colored houses and duplexes. Yards were separated by neat hedges and filled with tree houses and kennels. Some of the swings and slides were occupied, even at this early hour. Children laughed and screamed, chasing excited dogs and each other. Then she was standing in front of Hammond’s house, double-checking the number on her beat-up paper napkin, although she knew she had the right place.

Surprise left her rooted to the sidewalk. This was the house he’d bought? A mild breeze could have knocked her over. She’d have bet good money Hammond would have chosen an environment as cold and stark as he was. She was expecting chrome, white paint trimmed with gray or black, and a precision-cut lawn. Instead, she got a new millennium version of Norman Rockwell. The air was filled with a hint of fresh paint. The two-story house was a blushing ivory, with doors, windows and gables trimmed in a pale, milky squash. The slanted shingle roof was a deep avocado, and the window panes stained in gemstone colors. Spring was springing up all over. In contrast to the other yards in the street, the grass was a knee-high tangle dotted with stray daisies. A seesaw and jungle gym stood in the far corner, all lonely.

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers and copper-crested whatchama-callems flitted deliriously around, feasting on bugs—and on bananas that somebody had stuck on the branches of the fruit trees that were just pushing out new blossoms. Hammond, a nature lover? Nawww.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move in one of the curtainless ground-floor windows. Remembering her purpose for being here, she stopped gawking at the lawn and straightened her shoulders.

The front door swung open. “You going to stand there all morning, or are you coming in?”

Deciding the question didn’t warrant a response, she opened the waist-high wooden gate that led up the flagstone path and met him on his doorstep. “Good morning,” she said as amiably as possible. “Lovely day. How you doing?” Let’s see him try to grouch his way out of that one.

“Morning,” he answered, pleasant as pie. “And I’m fine and dandy, thank you.” He was actually smiling, and glory be, his face didn’t crack. “What about you?”

“Oh, I’m…” It was about then she noticed he had on the best damn fitting jeans outside the pages of a magazine, and a stark white, sleeveless undershirt that he’d probably just pulled from the package. She could still see the creases in it. His feet were bare. What a difference clothes made in a man! What had happened to the young Turk with his custom suit, striding around the office as if all of Wall Street depended on his performance? The man who stood before her was relaxed and comfortable in his glowing skin. His skin, while she was on the subject, made her think of hot toast done just right, dripping with melted butter and deep, rich honey. Oh. Food.

His lean, fit body spoke not of hours of pumping iron but of good health, natural grace and the kind of structure that only came from good genes. The dark brown hair that sprinkled his chest and peeked out from his armpits as he held the door open was slightly curlier than the crisp, well-tended mass upon his head. Kendra, Kendra, stop staring. Even though he was as dressed down as she, she felt almost grubby by comparison. She patted down the front of her shirt in a nervous gesture she hoped he didn’t spot. Fat chance. Those gray eyes didn’t miss a thing. “You look ready to get your hands dirty.”

“I am.”

“Good. Had trouble finding the place?” He almost gave her the impression he was interested in the answer.

She shook her head. “No, but it was a pretty long ride.”

He checked the time. “Still, you hit eight on the nose. What’d you do, sit up all night in a chair fully dressed, just to be sure you’d be on time?”

“Of course not,” she replied with a huge helping of scorn. Not exactly. She stepped in so he could close the door.

He slipped into tour guide mode. “The house is about fifteen years old, but in good repair. I’ve had some work done, but more to suit my taste and my needs than to fix any problems.” He led her into the living room, gesturing as he went. There were traces of workmen’s mess, bits of wood and rubble in the corners—and guess who was going to have to clean it. “I’ve knocked out a wall here to make things more airy, see?” There was a hint of pride in his voice, a homeowner’s excitement at the freshness and promise around him.

She didn’t begrudge him his satisfaction. He’d made this castle his own, and was proud of it. “I see. It’s very nice.”

“My den’s back there.” He pointed. “Bedrooms are upstairs, one master, one guest, and one’s for a…” He trailed off, and then started over. “One’s a child’s bedroom. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with that one yet.”

“I saw a seesaw and some other kid’s stuff in the backyard. I guess a kid used to live here, huh?”

“I guess.”

She should have known better, by the look on his face and his noncommittal answer, but before she could stop it, she was cheerily saying, “It’d be a lovely house for children. Lots of space, places to play. Did you ever want children?”

He looked as though she’d whacked him in the gut with a four iron. He took an age to answer, and when he did, his eyes were steady on her face, as if he was afraid to blink. “My wife and I never had the chance.”

Oh God. The late wife. She hastened to apologize for her clumsiness. “Oh, I’m so…”

He shook his head, and the uncomfortable moment was past. “Forget it.” He started moving again. Motion. Good. He continued with his tour, as though she’d created no ripples on the surface of his pond. “Kitchen, of course.” He gestured through the open back door. “There’s a deck out there. The wood needs stripping, but I’ll have to get to that later, when the interior’s in order.” He laughed lightly. “If I ever make any friends here in Santa Amata, maybe I’ll hold a barbecue. I’ve been here only a few weeks and it’s been all work.”

Kendra peeped out politely, but her mind was still on her faux pas. “It’s…lovely.”

His spiel returned to the kitchen. “They delivered the appliances yesterday, but the gas isn’t hooked up yet. We’ll be ordering take-out for lunch. Gas people are supposed to swing by this afternoon, so maybe soon you can taste my hand, as my grandma used to say. Fridge works, though.” He opened it, partly to demonstrate, partly to offer her something. “Had breakfast?”

Last thing she needed right now was to see food. Being on the brink of a self-imposed sentence of community service was nerve wracking enough. “I’m okay.”

“Doesn’t exactly answer the question, but all right. How ’bout some juice?”

“Thank you.”

He reached into a cardboard box, rummaged through packing peanuts and retrieved a glass, which he washed and filled with pink grapefruit juice. “Ice maker needs about twenty-four hours to kick in,” he apologized, “but the juice is sorta cold.”

She sipped it. “It’s fine.” They were standing next to the marble-topped island in the kitchen, with him a little closer than she would have liked, given that she’d suddenly discovered that he had quite a body on him, and that as much as she didn’t cotton to him, her body wasn’t immune to the ripples she could see as he folded his arms across his chest. He looked at her, assessing, until she couldn’t stand it anymore. “What?”

“I half wondered if you were going to show.”

Smart aleck. “I said I would, and I’m here.” She couldn’t resist adding, “Just because I’ve got sticky fingers doesn’t mean that my word isn’t my bond.”

He nodded to indicate that her barb had landed well, but didn’t volley back.

She tried not to sound too disgruntled when she added, “You have to admit you have me over a barrel, Mr. Hammond. I don’t have many options open to me right now.”

“Trey.”

She frowned, puzzled, so he clarified. “Call me Trey. Please.”

In a bug’s eye. “At the office we called you Mr. Hammond.”

“We’re not at the office. In my home people call me Trey.”

She wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so she said, “Okay,” but she wasn’t going to call him a damn thing, if she could get away with it.

“Can I call you Kendra?”

“You’ve called me worse.”

He stepped maybe two inches closer, but two inches was enough for her to catch the slightest whiff of his scent. Sawdust and aftershave. And something else, something manly and warm, but she had to be imagining that. “If we’re going to work together, can we at least make peace?”

The swirly patterns the grapefruit pulp made on the sides of her glass suddenly held her attention to such an extent that she was unable to meet his gaze. Peace. He didn’t know what he was asking. He’d questioned her morals and mocked her values. He’d thrown her out in front of people who’d once respected her. He’d reduced her from a woman in a prestigious position to a scullery maid. Now he wanted peace.

He was waiting for an answer, but not in silence. “I’m not the enemy, Kendra. We’re just two people helping each other.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. “I don’t…”

“Try, at least,” his voice was low, encouraging.

She caved in like a house of straw. “Okay.” The concession took less effort than she’d expected.

“Okay.” His smile lit up his eyes. He held out his hand.

She took it, idly noticing how, although she didn’t have the most delicate hands in the world, his was still capable of engulfing it. She noticed, too, that his skin was as warm as his voice. This was probably the first time she’d touched him, and, considering what that brief contact was doing to her, she was going to do her darnedest to make sure it didn’t become a habit. She pulled her hand away and rubbed it surreptitiously on her jeans. “We should get started.” It was hard to get the suggestion past the little frog in her throat.

He conceded without any argument, easing the glass from her fingers and putting it next to the sink. “We’ll start with my den.” She followed close behind, and came to stand near a pile of cardboard boxes in a corner. He was a careful mover. On the sides of each box he’d clearly written the word “Den” with a fat, black marker. She didn’t need much of an imagination to visualize other piles of boxes elsewhere labeled “kitchen, bathroom, bedroom.” Just one more way in which this man kept his world under strict control. Just one more way in which they were different.

“I thought we’d fix this one up first,” he was telling her, “because I like to have a nice quiet place to work in at night.”

Odd reason, Kendra thought. When you live alone, isn’t the whole house a nice quiet place? Setting up a den in order to have a “quiet place to work” was like building an igloo on a tundra just to have a place to cool down. He was oblivious to the irony. She didn’t draw his attention to it.

“Back in a sec.” He disappeared, then returned with an armload of cleaning supplies—buckets, mops, brooms, cleaning fluids of all kinds—and set them down. She reached for a broom, but he beat her to it, and began to tackle the rubble left behind by the painters and repairmen. He caught her look of surprise. “Did you think I was planning on sitting back with a bourbon and watching you work?”

That was exactly what she was thinking, but she’d rather drink cleaning fluid than admit it. “No, not exactly,” she fluffed.

He stopped sweeping long enough to tell her, “I’m not a slave driver, Kendra. I expect you to put in a fair day’s work, and I’ll do the same.”

“I guess that’s reasonable.” Her surprise was being replaced by admiration for his decent gesture, but she wasn’t about to let him see that, either. “I’ll go fill this bucket, so when you’re done sweeping I can mop up.”

“Attagirl.”

By the time she was back, he’d produced a small CD player and was loading it with albums. “Music to work by. Hope you aren’t one of those modern girls who won’t listen to anything that’s not on the charts this very second, ’cause I’m old-school.” He certainly was. The player began belting out vintage funk, loudly and with great enthusiasm. James Brown. The Average White Band. Rick James. Chaka Khan. And he was right—it was music to work by. Before long, she forgot why she was here and focused on what needed to be done. She forgot that he was, if not the enemy, at least only a guarded ally. Together they found their rhythm.

When the floors were clean, the rug rolled down and the desk in place, they started to unpack his books. The walls of the den were lined on three sides with built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelving. When she first noticed them, she’d thought they were a little excessive; but now that his collection was being revealed, crate by crate and box by box, she was half-worried there wouldn’t be enough room.

She took her time unpacking, reading the covers curiously, trying to gauge the nature of this surprisingly complex man. He was sentimental: he’d kept books from his boyhood, reading primers and adventure stories. Hardy Boys and Treasure Island . He was an escapist. There were science fiction, murder mysteries and legal dramas—John Grisham, Peter Benchley, Stephen King and Walter Mosley. Even more surprising, he had a collection of books on maritime nonfiction. Wars, war machines, boats and planes. These made her brows shoot up.

He caught her look and shrugged. “We’ve all got our vices.”

Amen to that, she thought. At least his weren’t fattening. As she helped him mount a framed MBA from Howard next to a twenty-year-old certificate of excellence in piano, Kendra had the odd sense that the wall of cold air she knew him to be was condensing and warming up into a human being. It was as if he was a huge puzzle that needed solving, and the items in all these boxes were the pieces.

She opened a box of knickknacks and photos. The one on top was fairly faded. It showed a tall, well built, sandy-haired, golden man with slate-colored eyes. He was standing behind a small boy on a bright red bike, his hands steadying the handlebars. Kendra recognized the frown of concentration on the boy’s pointed face. She held the photo up. “You and your dad?”

He knew which photo she was referring to without having to look up. “Yeah. I was five. It was my first bike. I got it for my birthday. Well, Christmas and my birthday, I guess. They’re both on the same day.”

“You’re a Christmas baby?”

“Unfortunately. You know we get about forty percent fewer presents over the course of a lifetime than regular folk?”

She made a rueful face. “Sorry to hear that.”

He gave an exaggerated shrug. “You get used to it.”

She looked down at the photo again. “Your dad’s white?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly, but he could pass, if he’d had a mind to. If my mother had a mind to let him.”