Christine Flynn - Falling for the Heiress

Seeing the maid Tess had dismissed reminded him that, for all practical purposes, he was her only employee. That alone warned him that challenges on this particular job wouldn’t be in short supply.

His client’s unanticipated decision to attempt self-sufficiency was no longer on his mind when he returned to the house a half an hour later. Now that he had a general idea of the property’s layout, he remained totally preoccupied with his visual inspection of the back of the house as he approached it. The bad news was the number of balconies and French doors overlooking the admittedly beautiful grounds. Every one was a potential photography or entry point. The good news was that anyone trying to get up or down from them would probably break a body part if they fell.

He walked in the back entrance, catching the screen door before it banged shut so he wouldn’t make noise if the boy was still asleep. Even before he’d cleared the utility room, with its walls of cabinets, he could see Tess at the island in the big kitchen.

She’d raided the cook’s stash of cookbooks from the open bookcase in the hallway. The sizable collection sat in stacks on either side of where she leaned with her forearms on the white tile studying one of them.

She looked up when he stopped in the doorway. The overhead lights caught shades of pale gold in the depths of the hair clasped at her nape. Pushing back the strands that had escaped in the breeze at the airport, she straightened.

It was then he noticed that she’d kicked off her heels. Bright coral toenails peeked from beneath the hem of her slim white slacks. The gold chains she’d worn sat in a gleaming pool near a stack of three blue pottery plates topped by silverware wrapped in cloth napkins.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Seems to be. Ed said there are no alarms on the perimeter of the property because of the wildlife, but the intrusion alarm for the main house and the garage goes off in his quarters and at the security company. He thinks it can take anywhere from two to ten minutes for the Camelot police to get here, depending on where their patrol cars are.”

“Did he say something to make you think we’d need the police?”

“If you mean has he seen paparazzi hanging around, no. Everything’s been quiet here this summer.”

Her slender shoulders lowered with the breath she quietly exhaled.

“Mind if I look around inside now?”

Knowing the layout of the interior was essential to his work. He especially wanted to know the location of doors or any other possible points of access or egress. He wasn’t aware of any threats against any of the Kendricks, and according to Bennington’s files there had been no incidents involving kidnapping for ransom, revenge or recognition for someone seeking their fifteen minutes of fame. But as with others with wealth, high-profile or celebrity status, kidnapping was always a possibility. The children were especially vulnerable.

“I need to know where you and your boy will be sleeping, too,” he told her, watching the toes of one foot disappear into a three-inch-high pump.

She slipped on the other, reaching back to tug the back strap over her heel as her glance darted toward the back hallway.

“Do you mind if we wait a while? I need to stay here until Mikey wakes up. He won’t remember this house and he’ll be scared if I’m not here.” Her concern shifted uncertainly to the cookbook. “I need to figure out how to get this going, too. He’s going to be hungry.”

Parker had been gone half an hour. “You haven’t found a recipe?”

“I’ve found several. They just all seem…complicated.”

One of the cookbooks she’d selected bore the title The Chef’s’ Book of Sauces, from Artichoke to Zabaglione. Another, Creative Italian Cuisine. The Art of Pasta sat atop Mastering Mediterranean Cooking.

What she needed was Cooking 101.

He nodded to the book open in front of her. “May I see that?”

She handed it to him. The page she’d been so diligently studying held a recipe for Bolognese sauce and the marinara she’d been looking for.

He indicated the latter. “What’s wrong with this one?”

Her expression mirrored his. “I’m not exactly sure how to ‘sauté’ or ‘reduce.’”

He hadn’t really noticed the faint shadows beneath her eyes before now or how tired she looked beneath her faintly frustrated smile. But then, he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge much of anything about her that didn’t directly affect the reason he was there. He considered himself a fair man, though, and to be fair, he had to admit that she didn’t seem much like the woman he’d expected. She was young, to be certain, and there was no mistaking that she knew privilege. Yet she hadn’t once acted spoiled, selfish, difficult or demanding. A little needy maybe, though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was about her that made him think so. But so far she didn’t appear to be anything like the diva the press had portrayed.

With hints of her fatigue staring him in the face, impressed by how intent she seemed to disregard it, he felt his priorities take a subtle shift. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning in the country she’d just left. The woman was probably dead on her feet.

Telling himself he was only taking pity on the boy, he ignored his earlier insistence that he wouldn’t be her cook and handed her back the book.

“They aren’t that complicated,” he told her, slipping off his tie. “But you shouldn’t practice on an unsuspecting child. I’ll make it.”

Tess blinked in disbelief. “I can’t ask you do that.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“What I mean is that you don’t have to do it. I can manage this.”

His response was the challenging arch of one dark eyebrow as he shrugged off his jacket.

“Well, I can if you’ll tell me how,” she qualified.

“It’ll be faster to just do it myself.” The jacket was dropped over the back of a chair at the staff’s table. “The pot by the stove will work for the pasta,” he said, rolling up the sleeves of his starched white shirt. “But I’ll need a small one for the sauce. Mind if I look in the pantry?” he asked, already heading for it. “All I need is garlic, olive oil, salt and basil. Fresh is best if there’s any growing outside, but dried will do.”

Tess opened her mouth, closed it again. She didn’t know if her bodyguard wanted to speed up the dinner project so she could show him around as soon as Mikey woke up or if he thought her incapable of the task herself. The latter thought stung, especially since she already had the feeling he thought of her as either naive, young, helpless or some unflattering combination of all three. But whatever his rationale, she couldn’t allow him or anyone else to defeat her purpose.

The man was accustomed to taking charge. He’d already found the olive oil and had removed a bottle of something green and flaky from a shelf when she stepped into the pantry herself.

She’d been around big men before. A couple of her grandmother’s sentries had been built like tanks, and her own brothers were over six feet. But Parker’s body seemed to dwarf hers, and she wasn’t a short woman by any means. Barefoot, she stood an easy five foot seven inches. In heels, five ten. Even at that, she barely reached his broad shoulders.

Terribly conscious of the scents of clean soap and warm male, she took the ingredients from him.

“You don’t need to do this,” she repeated more firmly. “But I would appreciate it if you would tell me how.”

She stood too close to look up without bending back her neck. Ahead, all she could see was the solid expanse of his chest. A woman would feel very safe held there.

The unexpected thought brought a flush of heat, caused her to turn away. “Please.”