Diana Palmer - Love By Proxy

“Thank goodness, I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy being murdered. Do you drink tea, my dear?”

“Grandmother, I’m sure Miss Glenn has packing to do,” the big man said, as if the prospect of having her out of the city delighted him.

Amelia glared at him. “I like tea.”

“Then do come and have a cup with me,” the old woman said. “I’m Jeanette Carson. Worth is my grandson.”

“How lovely for you,” Amelia said. She gave Worth a glance and followed the little old lady into the elegance of rosewood and silk furniture and immaculate white carpeting. “My name is Amelia Glenn.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you, my dear. I adore white, as you see. Impractical, but so lovely,” Jeanette Carson said. She eased down on the sofa in front of a long, polished coffee table, and rang a bell. A young woman in uniform appeared and was told to bring tea.

“That was Carolyn,” Jeanette said. “Worth hasn’t run her off yet, but I do believe he’s giving it his best. He prefers to have me surrounded with men here. He’s sure I can get around women, but he believes that men can handle me. Ha!” She laughed. Her wrinkled face drew up indignantly. She sighed. “Anyway, he never brings young ladies home these days. I was simply shocked when he mentioned you. I didn’t know about you, you see.”

“Oh, Worth and I are great friends,” she said, smiling poisonously at the big man who joined them. “Aren’t we?”

He stared at her. “You and I, friends? God forbid!”

“Don’t you worry, we will be. You’ll get used to me, you lucky man,” she added with a cold smile.

“You brought your troubles on yourself, Miss Glenn,” he said. He sat down, hitching up his pants. “You should take some spelling courses.”

She glared at him. “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have gone to the restaurant in the first place.”

“You started it,” he reminded her. He leaned back in his chair and smiled at her challengingly.

“I do seem to have missed something,” Jeanette broke in, glancing from one to the other.

“Lucky you.” Amelia smiled.

“Miss Glenn was arrested in the early hours for—” he paused for effect “—flashing, wasn’t it?”

She glared at him. “I was arrested for wearing a belly dancing costume under a trench coat,” she told the elderly woman, “at Wentworth’s instructions.”

Jeanette gasped as she stared at her grandson. “You sent this young woman to an elegant French restaurant in a belly dancing costume?”

His dark eyes narrowed at Amelia. “She came waltzing into my office wearing it, sang me a birthday song and kissed me.”

Jeanette leaned forward. “Don’t be ridiculous, Worth, it isn’t your birthday.”

“I know that!” he burst out. “It was a practical joke one of my employees played on me. Almost,” he added darkly, “an ex-employee.”

“Now, now, Wentworth, you wouldn’t really fire him?” Amelia taunted.

“Worth,” he said irritably. “No one calls me Wentworth.”

“I can think up some better names,” Amelia said sweetly. “Perhaps you’d like to hear them, at length, some other time?”

“That isn’t likely,” he said firmly. “You’ll be out of town.”

“Out of town?” Jeanette frowned. “Why?”

“She lost her job,” Wentworth Carson said.

“Then, dear, you must give her another one,” Jeanette said. “It’s the least you can do, since it’s your fault she lost it.”

“It is not my fault,” he said. “And I don’t have a job to give her,” he added smugly, “there are no vacancies.”

“In that case, she can work for me,” Jeanette said haughtily. “I need a social secretary. Someone to fetch and carry and help me get around town. God knows, you’re never here in the daytime.”

Worth sat up straight, as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing. “Social secretary?”

“Yes,” Jeanette said. She gave him a dogged glare, and the resemblance between the two of them was so noticeable that Amelia almost smiled.

He glared at Amelia.

“I didn’t come here looking for a job,” she said in all honesty to Jeanette. “I only came to kill your grandson.”

“Too messy on white carpet,” Jeanette said, shrugging it off and smiling as Carolyn brought in the big silver tea service. “Work for me instead. You can even live in, if you like.”

“Hell, no,” Worth said quietly.

“Wentworth!” Jeanette chided.

He got up and walked out of the room, muttering things under his breath as he slammed the door behind him.

“Now that he’s out of the way, let’s talk business,” Jeanette said, smiling at her guest. “I’m seventy-five, I have a temper as bad as my grandson’s, I’m overbearing and pushy and I never ask when I can demand.” She sat back, tea in hand. “I’m recovering from a broken hip and it’s hard for me to get around. Worth practically keeps me in chains. And I want to break out. You can help me.”

“You don’t know me,” Amelia began.

Jeanette stared at her. “In my day,” she said, “I was one of the best investigative reporters in Chicago. I am a dandy judge of character even to this day. I may not know you now, but I will. And so far, you pass with flying colors. Now,” she said. She named a figure twice what Callahan had paid Amelia. “Does that suit you? And would you like to live in?”

“I would, if only to spite your grandson, but I signed a one-year lease where I am, and I like my landlords very much,” she confessed. “Besides,” she added, “I like my privacy. There simply isn’t any when you live with other people.”

“How old are you, dear?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Parents?”

“Both living. They have a print shop back home in Georgia.”

Jeanette stared into her tea. “And is there a man in your life?”

She sighed. “Not unless you count Henry. He runs the paper back home and would marry me on a sunny day if it weren’t too inconvenient and didn’t happen on press day.”

Jeanette laughed softly. “We’re going to get along very well. Yes, we are.”

Amelia thought so, too. But when she came out two hours later, Wentworth Carson was waiting outside in the yard, hands in pockets and glaring holes in her.

“What a snit we’re in,” Amelia chided. “Talk about bad-tempered people…”

“It is not my fault you lost your job,” he told her bluntly. “And I like my life as it is. I want no part of you here. Tell my grandmother you won’t take the job.”

“I like your grandmother,” she said curtly. “She’s just like my mother, crusty and unflappable and impossible to fool. I’ll take care of her.”

He stared harder. “In return for what?” he asked, narrowed eyes telling her everything he wasn’t saying.

“How often is she taken advantage of?” she asked instead.

“Her heart is as big as the world,” he said. “She likes strays.”

“I am not a stray. I have owners.”

“Go home.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d have to marry Henry!” she burst out. “If he’d still have me after he saw a copy of this morning’s paper. My reputation will be in shreds.”

“Why not marry Henry?” He frowned.

“Because the most exciting thing he ever said to me was, ‘Amy, your nose has a crook in it.’”

His eyebrows lifted. “Not a passionate man.”

“No.”

His dark eyes roamed over her neat suit. “Are you a passionate woman?”

“That’s something you’ll never need to know. I am going to work for your grandmother, not get involved with you,” she told him firmly.

One corner of his disciplined mouth turned up. “She likes you. She’ll spend her days throwing you at my head and her nights finding more ways to get us married.”