Once in a Lifetime

“Sure. Alexis Stevenson and ten more would suit you perfectly, but don’t make a move on her. She’s the housekeeper.”

Drake crossed his unshod right foot over his knee, and a grin burst out on his face. “Wake up, man, I saw what was going on.”

Telford stuffed his hands into his trousers pockets and kicked at the brass andiron that graced the fireplace. “What do you mean by that?”

“Figure it out. Suffice it to say, she’s not one bit interested in me, nor I in her.”

“Glad to hear it. When you start after something you go like a bat out of hell.”

Drake grinned. “By the time you know I’m going after it, I’ve done some thinking about it and made up my mind. Ready to move. And when I take off, I make time.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. Say what you please, though, she can’t stay.”

His gaze caught Drake’s foot swinging at a slow, even rhythm. “She stays, Telford, because you know you aren’t going to ask her to leave. If you do, I’ll oppose you.”

Telford expelled a long breath. “Yeah, but she can’t make the rules in this house.”

“Let’s wait and see. I wouldn’t mind having a little order around here.”

“I suppose you’re planning to walk around fully clothed, remember to close the bathroom when you’re taking a shower and watch your mouth when you talk. Et cetera, et cetera.”

“Oh, hell. Yeah, I guess I’ll have to.”

“I was wondering where you were,” Alexis sang as she glided into the room.

The simplest dress a woman could put on, and she looked like a goddess, soft, feminine and…and…for Pete’s sake, what was he thinking? She refused the cognac he offered.

“Wine at dinner and a glass of champagne, occasionally, are my limit. You wanted to talk with me, Telford?”

Champagne, eh? “Yeah. Look,” he began, rubbing the back of his neck, “have a seat. This is no place for a small child.”

She sat forward, alert and anxious, and he had the feeling she’d spring out of the chair in a second. “Are you saying you want me to leave?”

Hearing her voice shake brought out his protective streak, and try as he would, he couldn’t forget that by her own account, she was vulnerable. “Can you imagine what it’s like for three men and a male cook living in a house this size together? On summer weekends, we hardly ever put on clothes, and I don’t ever remember wearing bathing trunks in that pool out back.”

Alexis stood. “Maybe you should have advertised for a homemaker with greatly impaired vision. You’ll have to be just as circumspect around me as around Tara.”

The howls of laughter from Drake accentuated Telford’s embarrassment. He hadn’t thought of that. He folded his arms against his chest, leaned against the wall and asked her, “Will I have to refrain from saying damn?”

“Yes, you will.” He realized he’d raised her temperature level when she walked to within a foot of where he stood. “And there are a few other things we have to straighten out. My contract says two years, and I intend to stay for at least that long. If you’re three blood brothers, you’re a family. Families eat their meals together, so you shouldn’t straggle in whenever it suits you. Say dinner’s at seven, all of you sit down to the table at seven. Or six, or whatever time you decide.”

“Anything else?” Telford asked her, and Drake eyed them the way a sleuth watches a suspected criminal.

“No hats on in the house or at the table, no boots beneath chairs and no swearing. I don’t want my daughter conditioned to accept such behavior from men.”

She had hutzpah, all right, he had to hand it to her.

“Of course not,” he said, sarcasm lacing his words. “She might one day go to college and live in a coed dormitory, and she’d be prepared for just what she found there—a bunch of naked men in the showers. Alexis, I would treat Tara with no less respect than I would my own daughter.”

Drake got up, took off the Stetson he wore when riding, pulled his boots from beneath the chair and winked at Alexis. “You won’t get any flack from me; unlike Robinson Crusoe over there, who enjoys his own company—” he pointed to Telford “—I love women. The more around me, the merrier. And Tara can stay here as long as she likes. She’s just what this tomb needs.” He left them and walked up the stairs, whistling “Knock About Sweetheart” as he went.

“Oh, yes,” Alexis said. “I forgot to add that you shouldn’t raise your voices in disagreement or anger.”

His glare had to suffice, since he couldn’t grab her and shake her till…till she was soft and…and warm and perfumed with the tantalizing odor of woman, till she… He brought himself up short and regrouped. “Alexis, don’t push me too far. Don’t ever do that. Never. You got that?”

She didn’t give quarter, and in spite of his annoyance, he admired her. “I know this all sounds like a bad pill you have to swallow, and I’m sorry, but I figured you’d want us to settle everything now, and it’s best to get these things straight in advance.”

He’d had enough. “Do you think you’ve happened upon a houseful of barbaric, uncivilized men? If so, you’d better make a run for it.”

She appeared thoughtful. “Barbaric? Uncivilized? Hmmm. I’m not sure I’d go quite that far. A little rough around the edges, maybe.”

His glare broadened to a thunderous glower. “You trying to test my restraint?”

She lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Wouldn’t think of it. Anybody can see you’re a paragon of willpower and self-control. Cool. Real laid-back.”

“All right, all right. You and I both know what’s going on here. If these verbal whacks are helping to relieve your frustration, by all means don’t spare me.”

Apparently less assured now, she avoided looking him in the eye for the first time. “You’re assuming a lot, Mr. Harrington.”

“Don’t fool yourself.” He poured half a glass of club soda, dropped two cubes of ice in it, offered the glass to her and, when she declined, sipped it slowly. “Let’s get back to business. I was not expecting you to come with a child. You told me you were divorced, and I got the impression you were much older.”

“If you’d asked my age, I would have told you. You didn’t.”

“I know, I know. But I always heard that women don’t like to tell their age.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you there.” Suddenly her demeanor seemed to change. Lord forbid she should try some feminine tactics on him. He wasn’t holding still for that.

But she fooled him. “Telford, let’s see this from my point of view. I sublet my house, packed some necessities, stored the remainder of my belongings, got in my car and changed my life by coming here. Where do I go if I leave here, and what will I do with Tara while I find another job and a place to stay? That’s my dilemma, but if you don’t want my child here, I don’t want to stay, and I won’t.”

“I’m not asking you to leave. What do you think I am, an ogre of some kind?”

“She’s obedient, and she’s smart. You’ll see.”

And she was a beautiful, loving child who would soon have him and every other man around rolling over whenever she snapped her fingers. He looked at the hopeful expression in Alexis’s soft brown eyes. Hopeful, but not pleading. What had he thought he’d gain by giving her the third degree? Except perhaps to establish some vital distance between them. They’d hooked the minute they looked at each other on those stairs. She could deny it if she wanted to, but he’d felt it to the marrow of his bones, and he’d bet anything, even his varsity ring, that it was the same for her.

The present arrangement wouldn’t work; he didn’t want Tara running around in the corridors near their bedrooms. “Tomorrow, I’d like you to move over to that guest room off the garden. It’s private and safe, and it’s much more spacious. No one can scale that wall without spending a few weeks in a hospital. Furthermore, Tara will be less likely to grow up too fast. Henry will show you to that room.”

“Thanks. When you have time, please tell me how you like things done.”

He looked at her to see if she might be pulling his leg, and realized that she was serious. In spite of himself, he laughed aloud. “Why would I bother to do that? You’ll do what you like. Sleep well.”

For some reason, he didn’t want to see her walk out of the door, so he went over to the window and busied himself closing first the blinds and then the draperies. He heard her say good-night, but he pushed from his mind the soft caress that was her voice.

He went back to the bar, poured himself another glass of club soda and sipped it, mostly to have something to do. When he’d looked up those stairs and seen her looking down at him, he thought a barrel of bricks had fallen on his head. And as she glided toward him, her motion slow and fluid as if something other than her feet propelled her, a sweet, terrible hunger that he hadn’t experienced in his thirty-six years began to churn in him. She stopped just in time, bringing him to his senses seconds before he would have reached out for her.

He brushed his fingers over his curly hair, exasperated at the thought of having that woman in his home for the next two years. He’d had enough of women, beautiful and otherwise. First his unfaithful mother, and then… He pushed the thought from his mind.

“Well, does she stay?”