Jacob's Proposal

Jacob waited. And he saw, again, Claire’s smile. It was crooked, disturbing the symmetry of that perfect face and making her seem more human. Dangerously so. And he remembered the thought that had hit him the second he saw her, before he recognized her—before, even, the impact of her beauty had time to register.

Mine.

On her fifth morning at the West mansion, Claire awoke with her pulse throbbing between her legs and dreams sleeting off her, brightly colored images slipping away with each sleepy blink of her eyes.

Erotic images. Though she couldn’t remember the content of the dream, she knew it had been highly erotic. And she knew who had starred in it. Good grief. She stared up at the ceiling, throbbing and restless. Is this what men have to put up with every morning?

More to the point, was this what she would have to put up with every morning she stayed in this house?

Her real problem wasn’t her boss. Jacob had behaved himself. Oh, she’d caught him watching her sometimes. And sometimes, his pale eyes went from ice to white-hot for a second, before he realized he’d been spotted and promptly slammed the shutters closed again. But he never said or did anything objectionable. Aside from the occasional display of a sneaky sense of humor that a less observant woman might have missed altogether, Jacob had been a model of businesslike behavior—demanding, yes, but respectful. Distant, for the most part. Though he had begun to seem cautiously friendly the past couple of days…

She was vastly relieved that he’d picked up on her hands-off signals. And vastly aggravated, because relief wasn’t all she felt.

It was her own unruly imagination she had to watch out for. No surprise there, she thought, and grimaced. At least, it shouldn’t be. Hadn’t she always been the cause of her troubles? Her impulses, her lack of judgment, had snarled up more than just her own life.

Well, she wasn’t going to give in to any impulses with Jacob West. She was doing her damnedest not to have any impulses, but she couldn’t control her sneaky, hormone-prompted unconscious when she was asleep. Claire sighed and squinted at the clock. Time to get up. At least today was Friday. She could pick up Sheba this evening.

Claire was looking forward to having her cat with her again. She hummed as she popped under the shower—leaving the water cooler than usual, to discourage those wayward hormones and flush out the lingering traces of her dream.

Right now, her cat was at home with her cousin Danny, who was house-sitting. Sheba was a cat with attitude. She also possessed a worse set of impulses than Claire owned. The two traits had resulted in a serious disagreement with a neighbor’s German shepherd the day before Claire started working for Jacob, followed by a quick trip to the vet. The vet had stitched up Sheba and kept her a few days, but she was doing fine now.

Clean, dry, with her hair and makeup done, Claire stood in front of her open closet door and tried to find something to wear. It shouldn’t have been difficult. She liked clothes, and she’d brought a fair portion of her closet with her. But for some reason nothing looked right this morning.

Finally she settled on loosely shaped black slacks in a heavy silk that felt like pure sin against her skin, pairing them with a short yellow jacket. She slipped tiny gold hoops through her ears and glanced at the clock. She didn’t want to be late for her date this morning. With Ada.

She smiled. Ada was quite a character. So was Cosmo, though of a different stripe. Even the maid who came three days a week to help keep this huge old house clean was out of the ordinary. Maude was a grandmother with enough college credits for two degrees, and no intention of getting a “real” job. She just wanted enough money to keep taking courses in whatever interested her.

They said you could tell a lot about people by the company they kept. Claire wasn’t sure what Jacob’s odd household said about him, but it sure didn’t fit with his Iceman image.

Normally the inmates of the big old house fended for themselves at breakfast and on weekends, but during the week everyone gathered in the big kitchen for lunch and dinner. Often Jacob was there, sometimes not, depending on whether he was in town and remembered to stop working. Last night Ada had honored Claire with an invitation for breakfast. Blueberry pancakes. Claire’s stomach rumbled, but she paused on her way out, glancing at the door that joined her office to Jacob’s.

It was closed, of course. Every day when she shut off her computer she shut that door. And every morning when she opened it he was already in his office, already working. Sometimes she wondered if he slept there.

Acting on impulse, she snuck the door open and peeked inside. His office was dark, unoccupied. Of course it was. Jacob had a perfectly good bed in his bedroom on the second floor. Ada had pointed out his room when she gave Claire a tour of the house. Right now he was probably asleep in that king-size bed, stretched out beneath the silky black-and-brown comforter… Don’t go there, she ordered herself, and inched the door closed once more.

She was reaching for the other door—the one to the hall—when her phone rang.

Dang it. Well, the pancakes could wait one minute, but no more. She picked up the receiver. “This is Claire.”

“And this is your hardworking house-sitter with a good news, bad news report,” her cousin’s voice said cheerfully.

“Danny! I didn’t expect to hear from you this early.” She resigned herself to being a few minutes late. “Sheba’s okay, isn’t she?”

“Oh, she’s fine. She got her medicine last night just like the vet ordered. And don’t worry about me—the bleeding stopped eventually. You are coming to get that hell-spawned beast tonight, aren’t you?”

She chuckled. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Not as much as I am,” he said fervently.

“You’re earning stars in your crown, as Mom used to tell us. I take it that was the good news. What’s busted? Did the disposal spit up again?”

Danny paused. “A disposal, I could fix. This is a little more complicated. When I opened the door this morning to bring in the paper, there was something else on the stoop. A rose.”

Claire’s pulse began pounding in her ears. “Red,” she said, her voice flat. “It was red, wasn’t it, Danny?’

“I’m afraid so.”

A single rose. Bloodred, the petals barely unfurled. She could see it so clearly. Red for passion, Ken used to tell her. Only one rose, always just the one. Because they were meant to be one. Claire’s fingers tightened on the receiver. “You didn’t see him?”

“I wish I had. If I’d caught him—”

“Dammit, Danny, do not do anything macho and stupid!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll let your cop buddy know if the son of a bitch comes sneaking around. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to catch him at it, just so we could prove he’s violating parole.”

The police wouldn’t consider a rose evidence of anything. She bit her lip and changed the subject, trying to push the fear down, where it wouldn’t show. To either of them. “Are you going to be home tonight, when I come get Sheba?”

“I’ve got a meeting at seven, but I’ll be here after that. No more wild Friday nights for me,” he said wryly.

His words warmed her. Danny just might make it work this time. She wasn’t fooling herself. He had a lot of hard work ahead, and he might fail and fall many times. But this time he was attending AA meetings because he wanted to, not because he needed to please or fool someone else. Like her. Or a judge.

“How about you?” he asked. “Going to have a wild time tonight with your new boss, maybe?”

“Hardly.”

“You do have that haughty, duchess tone down pat. How long has it been since you went out on a real date, Claire?”

“Come on, you know I don’t have the time or energy for much of a social life. I’m trying to get my consulting business off the ground.”

“Your career’s an excuse. No, listen to me for a minute. You enjoy the money game, and you’re good at it. But at heart, you aren’t an ambitious person. You just like playing the game.”

“Jut playing the game won’t pay the bills,” she said dryly. “And that, I do take seriously.”

“You’re hiding, Claire. Just look at your clothes.”

She bristled. If there was one thing she knew, it was how to dress. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”

“Those power suits of yours are just as much camouflage as the bag lady clothes you wore for a while.”

“I realize you don’t get the whole dress-for-success concept, but take my word for it. I need to look professional. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people do judge us on how we look.”

His voice was sad. “I understand why you think that. But—oh, hell, Claire. Sometimes I miss you. The person you used to be, the cousin who laughed all the time and did crazy stuff just for the hell of it. The one who didn’t plan her life on a blasted spreadsheet.”

Silence fell, trapping too much of the past between them. “That person made too many mistakes,” she said at last. Danny ought to know that. One of her impulses was partly responsible for the hell he’d been living in the past few years.

“Maybe, but she was human. I’m learning a whole lot about being human and making mistakes these days. Claire…I’m glad you got out of this house, where Ken Lawrence can’t find you. Just don’t keep running away from him in other ways, too.”

“Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”