Love By Proxy

“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.”

“You’re safe,” she told him, turning toward her old Ford. “I don’t like older men.”

“Forty is not old,” he said shortly.

“At twenty-eight, it is old,” she returned, facing him squarely. “I want somebody to play with.”

He started laughing, and only then did she realize how he’d interpreted what she said. Her face flamed.

“Baseball!” she burst out. “Tennis and swimming and jogging, not…not…that!”

He laughed harder. She didn’t say another word. She crawled into her car and managed with the greatest of difficulty to get it turned around and headed out of the yard. He was still standing there laughing when she drove away.

Four

Amelia showed up for work the next morning at eight-thirty sharp, wearing a sedate gray ensemble that made her pale blue eyes look slate-gray to match it. The skirt and knit blouse were worn with a trendy little short-sleeved cotton jacket, and she put her hair in a neat bun. She wasn’t giving Wentworth Carson any cause for complaint with the way she dressed.

When she pulled up in front of the house, a short, elderly yardman motioned her to move the car down to the garage. She cranked the engine again, with difficulty. The old yellow Ford had a habit of refusing to turn on again after the engine got hot. It was one of those ghostly problems that several mechanics hadn’t been able to solve, so she lived with it. But today it did crank, eventually, and she pulled it with a clank and a clatter down to the elegant, spacious garage where Wentworth’s Rolls and a Mercedes were parked.

It made her feel odd, parking between two such luxurious vehicles, and she was half afraid that she might accidentally scratch one of them. But it was obvious that Wentworth didn’t want her pitiful old wreck parked in front of his house. And that irritated her no end. Snob, she thought angrily.

She’d worked herself into a fever of resentment by the time she got to the front door. Well, he needn’t think she was going to skulk up the back stairs like a servant. She was as good as he was, any day!

The maid opened the door for her with a smile. “Come in, please. Mrs. Carson is still asleep, but Mr. Worth said you’re to have breakfast with him in the dining room. Follow me, please.”

Breakfast with Worth, she thought, how lucky could a working girl get?

He was sitting at the head of the table with a cup of coffee and a pile of toast at his elbow. He glanced up when she came into the room, his eyes dark and steady and expressionless.

“What a treat,” he taunted. “Breakfast with the terror of the Egyptian tombs.”

“I am not a mummy,” she countered. “And I don’t want breakfast.”

“Yes, it’s patently obvious that you rarely eat,” he commented, glancing at her. “But if you work here, you’ll need to. You see,” he added, leaning back with a disgustingly confident smile on his tanned face, “my grandmother and I have an arrangement about you.”

This sounded unpleasant. She sat down gingerly and eyed him suspiciously. “You have?”