Once in a Lifetime

Tara moved closer to Alexis. “My name’s Tara. What’s yours?”

Henry stared at the little girl and shook his head. “M’ name’s Henry, like I said. I don’t know if this is gonna work, ma’am. Nobody told me nothing ’bout no little girls. Where’s your stuff? Might as well get you settled in.”

Nothing about his behavior eased her anxiety about Tara; indeed, he behaved as if she needn’t hope for understanding. “How about giving me a tour of the house, Henry?” she called after him, hiding her concern.

“Soon as I put together something for you to eat. Course, if you don’t like what I fix, feel free.”

Henry gave them a lunch of hamburgers and French fries with ginger ale for Alexis and milk for Tara, enough to feed two more people and causing her to think the Harrington men were big meat eaters. Tara walked over to Henry, tapped him on the thigh and thanked him for her lunch. He looked down at her as though making up his mind whether he’d allow himself to be captivated, but Tara smiled and took the matter out of his hands.

Henry wiped his hands on his oversize, blue-denim apron and started out of the kitchen. “Come on,” he threw over his shoulder. “This’ll take a while. Ain’t much changed here since the old man passed, and that was well-nigh twenty years ago.”

Alexis glanced around the kitchen, enormous with Chinese-blue brick walls and kitchen cabinets, and a chrome sink, stove, dishwasher, grill and refrigerator. A round table with three curved-back Moroccan chairs rested in a white nook as if forgotten.

Hmmm. How odd, she thought as she walked with Henry through the dim living and dining rooms, rooms that obviously once boasted the elegance of their day. At the end of the hour-long tour, she’d decided that Telford Harrington lived much to himself. His bedroom contained a huge sleigh-style bed with a bedspread to match the tan-colored drapery, a beige-and-brown Tabriz carpet, mahogany desk, oversize brown leather chair and chest of drawers. What appeared to be a violin or a viola rested in a corner. A large black-and-white drawing hung over his bed. Nothing cheerful there. And nothing to calm her fears that he might send her packing, as would have been the case if his room were bright and cheerful.

Three other bedrooms, two of which belonged to Telford’s brothers, met the criteria for a master bedroom with anterooms and private baths. Henry had placed her things in a different end of the second floor.

“You might want to ask Mr. Tel if you and your little girl can stay back on the other side in the room on the end by the garden. It’s got an anteroom with a nice bay window, and your little girl could have that by herself. Course, I ain’t saying he’s gonna like none of this, but that’s twix you and him.”

She wished Henry would stop his frequent references to Telford Harrington’s certain displeasure about her child. But she said nothing to that effect, only thanked him. She put Tara to bed for a nap, and walked around the gardens to get her bearings. She loved natural settings—gardens, forests, the ocean, places where a person could feel free. On an impulse, she cut a large bouquet of pink peonies and purple irises, put them in a water-filled vase and placed them on the marble-top walnut table in the foyer. Observing the elegance that the flowers added to the area, she moved the gilt-edged mirror from its dark corner in the hallway, found a hook and hung it above the flowers.

“Now that’s really an improvement,” she said to herself.

“The men won’t like you making changes, ma’am,” Henry said, coming up behind her. “They like things the way they is.”

“I can imagine. What are you planning for supper?” They wanted a homemaker, and she intended to turn that mausoleum into a home.

“Whatever I find in there.” He pointed to the pantry. “Some chops, baked potatoes and beans, apple pie…something like that. They ain’t hard to feed.”

“I’ll do the marketing from now on, Henry. We’ll sit together, plan the menus and make out the grocery lists. Okay?”

“Don’t matter none to me. Mr. Tel said I’d take care of the upstairs and the kitchen, and you see to the downstairs. Twice a week, Bennie comes in and does the heavy cleaning.”

Just as he’d written into her contract. “Thanks, I’m sure we’ll get on well.”

She opened the windows downstairs, let the breeze flow through and immediately felt better about her new job. She found table linens, place settings and flatware and set the table in the breakfast room. Then she cut more flowers and put them on the table along with long tapered candles that she discovered in the linen closet.

Henry stood in the doorway scratching his head and shaking it. “Like I said, I don’t know if this is gonna work. The men eat in the kitchen, and I ain’t seen none of this—” he waved a hand around the breakfast room “—since Miss Etta passed. Course, like I said, that’s twix you and Mr. Tel.”

“How long have you worked here, Henry?”

“’Bout thirty years, since the boys were little. Why?”

She raised an eyebrow. “And you call Telford Harrington Mr. Tel?”

“Humph. I call him anything I want to. I figured that’s what you’d call him.”

She liked Henry, but she didn’t think he’d appreciate her telling him that. “What time do we eat dinner?”

“You mean supper? Whenever they gets here…sometime ’round six or seven.”

She’d have to work on that. Around five, she bathed Tara and dressed her in a yellow pique dress, braided her hair and secured the ends with matching yellow bows. Then she showered, put on a floor-length yellow T-shirt that flattered her svelte and curvaceous five-foot-seven-inch frame, secured her permed hair in a French knot and waited for the verdict. Hers and his. Thinking of what she had to lose, tremors raced through her, and she groped her way to a chair. With three hundred and eighty dollars to her name, Telford Harrington would have to see reason or she’d have a problem.

She’d hung up most of their clothing when she heard the doorbell ring but, thinking that anyone who lived there would use a key, she didn’t move from the closet. She couldn’t. The colors of her clothing danced in a mirage before her eyes, and her feet would not budge.

Tara. She had to find Tara. If she’d gotten into something… She looked around for the child, didn’t see her and walked quickly toward the stairs in time to hear a deep male voice—one she wouldn’t likely forget—explain, “Well, hello to you, too, and who are you?”

“My name is Tara. What’s yours? Do you live here?”

“I certainly do.”

“What’s your name?”

Alexis raced down the stairs and stopped, for he had looked up in her direction, and from that distance, his masculine persona, strong and heady, jumped out to her. Lassoed her and claimed her. She shook her body the way one rids clothes of wrinkles and got a grip on herself. “My name’s Telford,” she heard him say to Tara, though he’d locked his gaze on Alexis. “I’ll be right back.”

He stopped before reaching her and stared into her eyes. She tried to look away, but couldn’t. He seemed to pull her to him the way a magnet captures steel, and she realized that she was closing the distance between them. Her whole body slammed on alert, tingling with a strange new vibrancy, with life, and a blaze leaped into his eyes. The expression burning in them nearly unglued her. She felt him then; oh, how she felt him! He rimmed his top lip with the tip of his tongue, bringing her back to herself and to a halt two steps above him. If she trusted her judgment right then, she’d swear that he shuddered as though tension seeped out of him.

“I’m Telford Harrington, and something tells me you’re Alexis Stevenson.” That didn’t sound as if he was happy about it, either.

She took the hand he extended and shimmered with awareness from her scalp to the soles of her feet. He jerked his hand away from hers as if she’d scalded him. What a mess! Maybe she’d better leave right that minute and take her chances somewhere else.

“Yes,” she said, as though leaving hadn’t occurred to her. “I’m glad to meet you.”

He remained there, a breath away, eye to eye with her though she stood two steps above him. “You didn’t tell me you had a child. If you had, I’m not so sure I’d have hired you.”

“You didn’t ask me, nor did you mention it, so I figured you didn’t think it relevant.”

“If you had three kids, would you still think that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what I’d think if I had three. I’m just thankful that I only have to support this one.” She said that pointedly to ring his bell of compassion, if he had any.

He looked down suddenly, and she saw Tara pulling at his pants leg. “Mr. Telfry, Mr. Henry said supper is ready, and I’m hungry.”

“Mr. Telford, honey,” Alexis corrected.

She held her breath while she waited for his reaction. Tara reached up for his hand, anxious, as usual, to get her way. “Come on,” she said, and he turned and let the child lead him down the stairs to the kitchen, where he stopped.

“Where’s the food, Henry?”

“We’re eating in the breakfast room tonight, Tel. New house rules.”

He walked to the breakfast room, still holding Tara’s hand, stared at the table and spun around. “What the… What’s all this for? You’re having a party? Before I get all the way in the house, I see the place looks and smells like a woman’s boudoir. Now…”

She lifted her chin. “I’m sorry. Should I have set the table in the dining room? That seemed so formal.”

“What’s wrong with the kitchen?”

“It’s the kitchen. Besides, that table has only three chairs. Why do you have dining and breakfast rooms, if you don’t use them?”