Kate Hewitt - Mills & Boon Christmas Set

He folded his arms over his chest, uninviting.

She ignored that. “Canned food is very high in sodium,” she told him. “At your age, you have to watch things like that.”

“My age?” he sputtered.

And then she laughed. It was a tinkling sound, as refreshing as a brook finding its way over pebbles.

“Do you have any fresh food?”

“Not really. There might be a few things in the freezer.”

“That’s not fresh. What do you eat?”

He thought of the stacks of microwavable meals in the freezer. “Whatever I feel like,” he said grouchily.

“Never mind, I’ll make a grocery list. How do you get the perishables here? In this heat? I guess ice cream is out of the question.”

“I take the boat and a cooler,” he said. “Anslow is quicker by water.”

“You take a boat for groceries?”

“In the summer, yes.”

“That’s very romantic.”

And then she blushed. And well she should. You did not discuss romance with your employer!

“If you make a list, I’ll do a run tomorrow.” That hardly sounded like a reprimand for discussing romance with him! It sounded like a concession to her feminine presence in his house!

“Oh, good,” she said. “I’ll be happy to prepare some meals if I have the right ingredients.”

There was that whole meal thing again. A strong man would have just said no, that it was not part of her job, and that he was more than capable of looking after himself. But Jefferson had that typical man’s weakness for food.

“What kind of meals?” he heard himself ask. He tried to think of the last time he’d had a truly decent meal. It was definitely when he’d been away on business, a great restaurant in Portland, if he recalled.

Home cooked had not been part of his vocabulary for over a decade, not since his grandmother had died. How she had loved to cook, old-fashioned meals of turkey or roast beef, mashed potatoes and rich gravy. The meal was always followed with in-season fruit pie—rhubarb, apple, cherry. When he had first moved in with his grandparents, his grandma had still made her own ice cream.

Hailey had been as busy with her career as he himself was. She liked what she called “nouveau cuisine,” which she did not cook herself. She had made horrified faces at the feasts he fondly remembered his grandmother providing.

“It is not healthy to eat like that,” she had told him.

And yet he could never remember feeling healthier than when his stomach was full of his grandmother’s good food.

Jefferson remembered, suddenly and sharply, he and Hailey arguing about this very kitchen.

“Double ovens?” he’d said, when they met the kitchen designer. “We’ll never use those.”

“The caterers will appreciate it when we entertain.”

Why had he argued with her about it? Why had he argued with her about anything? As they had built the house, it had seemed as if the arguments had become unending.

If a man only knew how short time could be, and how unexpectedly everything could change... Jefferson felt the sharpness of regret nip at his heels. Somehow, it felt as if Brook, nosing through his fridge, was the reason for this regret. He usually was able to bury himself in work. It prevented being bothered by pesky emotions and, worse, by guilt.

Brook closed the fridge door and opened the freezer side of the huge French-door-styled appliance. She stood with her hands on her hips for a moment, staring at the neatly stacked boxes of single-serving freezer foods.

“I’ll make that list,” she said, obviously dismissing everything in the freezer as inedible.

“You do that,” he said.

Apparently, she meant to make a list right now, while the lack was fresh in her mind. She found a piece of paper on the counter, and a pen. Her brow furrowed with concentration, and as she wrote, she muttered out loud.

“Chicken. Chocolate chips. Flour. Sugar...”

Chocolate chips. And flour. And sugar. Was she going to make cookies? Jefferson felt some despicable weakness inside himself at the very thought of a homemade cookie.

She had obviously been distracted from her request to see the house. “I’m expecting a call in a few minutes, so if you’ll excuse me,” he said.

Jefferson eased himself out of the room. His mouth had begun watering at the mention of chicken. Again, his thoughts went to his grandmother and platters of golden fried chicken in the middle of the old plank table.

It was a weakness, but he had no power to fight it. Besides, so what? She was signing on as his housekeeper, if she wanted to cook a few things, why shouldn’t he be the beneficiary? He’d be signing the paychecks, after all. There were no worries that she would be as good a cook as his grandmother had been. No one was that good a cook.

CHAPTER FIVE

AS SHE WATCHED him go, Angie realized that, in her eagerness not to annoy her new employer with anything that could even remotely be construed as chattiness, she had not asked him his name. Now he was in full retreat and she didn’t know where his cleaning supplies were kept or where he would like her to stay.

Instead, she watched mutely as he stalked away, down a wide hallway, turned and disappeared from view. A moment later she had heard the slamming of a door.

Considering how unfriendly he was, Angie contemplated what she was feeling. She felt as if she understood his unfriendliness. Her new employer was a man who had lost everything.

For the first time in a long time—far too long, in fact—Angie was aware that it was not all about her. She had seen in his face that he would not brook any sympathy from her, and though her first impulse had been to offer some, she had listened to her instincts. There were other ways to let him know she had heard him and seen him. There were other ways to offer comfort. After the public humiliation of her broken engagement, she personally knew how hollow words could feel.

Her boss had become an orphan when he was six, and now he was a widower. She remembered the shattered-glass look in his eyes when he had revealed that about himself, and his quick rejection of what he had perceived as sympathy even though she had not said a word.

He didn’t want sympathy, and she did not blame him. He wanted to be left alone, and she did not blame him for that, either.

But he had let her into his house, and that was a gift to her. She would give him a gift, too. She vowed she would be the best housekeeper the world had ever seen. She vowed for the next two weeks, she would make her employer’s life a little bit easier in any way that she could.

Angie contemplated the feeling in her. It was nice that it was not terror. What was it?

She felt safe.

Maybe his unfriendliness even made her feel safer. Look where seemingly friendly male interest had landed her last time, after all!

But no matter the reasons, for the first time since she had bolted after finding that stuffed panda on her bed, she felt something in her relax. Really, the tension had been increasing for months, as it became more and more apparent Winston’s interest in her was not healthy.

Now, it was as if she had exhaled, after a long, long period of holding her breath. Looking around the neglected house, it felt extraordinary to have a purpose beyond her own survival.

With that exhale came a sensation of pure exhaustion, and she let her eyes wander longingly to the hammock that she could see through the kitchen window. But falling asleep would be no way to make a good first impression or forward her goal of making her boss’s life a little better!

She made herself focus on the task at hand. From the stack of leaning mail that had taken over the beautiful harvest-style kitchen table, she presumed his name was Jefferson Stone and that he was a business consultant who owned a company called Stone Systems Analysis. She made a mental note to sort the mail for him. Some was obviously junk, but some of those envelopes just as obviously contained checks and business correspondence.