“Yes. My son’s name is Sam Solomon.” The beeping finished and Gayle swiped her card to pay. “Do you remember him?”
“Kinda.”
“I was wondering if I could talk to you when you get off work,” Gayle said while Christy finished the transaction.
“That won’t be until midnight.” Christy handed Gayle the charge slip to sign.
“That’s okay,” Gayle said while she scribbled her name. “Would you mind giving me a call then?”
Christy frowned. “What is this about?”
“My son needs a nanny.” The woman looked up, and Christy thought her eyes had grown sad. “For his little girl.” She fumbled in her slim shoulder bag.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not looking for another nanny job.” As much as Christy loved kids, being a nanny hadn’t been as undemanding as she’d imagined. Originally, she had wanted to free up her mind and her time to concentrate on her songwriting, but she’d ended up funneling all of her creativity into her little charges. For her, this mindless Wal-Mart job was a better fit.
“My granddaughter is special,” the woman said as she withdrew a card from her purse. “Sam will pay you very well.”
To Christy’s astonishment, the woman snapped the business card onto the counter along with the signed charge slip. Christy separated the receipts, then picked up the card, examining it. It had unusual angular lettering slashed across thick gray paper.
The center read:
Solomon Architectural Masterpieces
Samuel Solomon, AIA, Restoration Architect
“I’m staying at my son’s house,” Gayle Solomon explained. “Call the number in the right-hand corner. It forwards automatically.”
The customer in line behind Mrs. Solomon shoved her goods toward the register with an impatient scowl. Christy smiled apologetically at the woman, remembering that the little child with her needed to go to the rest room. She started scanning the stuff as fast as she could.
“Okay,” she said as she worked, “I’ll call you.” Mrs. Solomon picked up her plastic bag, bulging with kids’ stuff, and they smiled at each other one last time.
Later Christy slipped the card into the pocket of her blue Wal-Mart vest. Life was so weird, she thought. Who would ever imagine that she’d be standing here, minding her own business, scanning stuff at Wal-Mart, and suddenly Sam Solomon’s mother would appear and say “Call me.”
Sam Solomon, the blond Adonis that Christy had fantasized about all through high school. Christy hadn’t thought about him in a long time. Well, at least she’d tried not to think about him. Christy had heard, somewhere, that Sam had gotten some sorority girl pregnant and they ended up married. End of fantasy.
But Sam Solomon remained stubbornly imbedded in Christy’s heart, in her dreams. And if she was honest, she’d have to admit that over the years he had become the haunting benchmark for all other men. And now she was going to work for him?
CHAPTER THREE
CHRISTY SURVEYED THE STARK interior of Sam Solomon’s home with a mixture of dread and awe. She was actually going to be Sam Solomon’s nanny, in Sam Solomon’s house.
She wasn’t exactly sure how that had happened, except that Mrs. Solomon—Gayle, the woman kept insisting—had been very persuasive. She had shown Christy pictures of Sam’s beautiful daughter, and Christy had recognized Sam in the child’s wide blue eyes. And then when the grandmother had told Christy about the child’s disabilities, about the fact that this darling child’s mother was gravely ill, Christy’s heart had melted.
So, here she was.
The outside of the arts-and-craft-style house in this historic Tulsa neighborhood had actually looked inviting. But the inside…
Mrs. Solomon had gone upstairs to get the child, Meggie, and so Christy took a moment to explore the surroundings before they got down to business.
Her mama always said you could tell if a person was happy or not by looking at their home. And from the looks of this place, Sam Solomon was not a happy man. His home looked as cold as the lobby of a bank.
The more she looked, the more she wondered if she’d made a huge mistake. What kind of man lived in such a home? Uptight? Austere? Controlling? Cold?
So much black. So much black that even the banks of bare mullioned windows failed to brighten the place. Even the floor where she stood was painted black. Everything seemed dark, shiny…slick. The man actually had an entire wall of his foyer covered in smoky mirrors.
But Christy was adaptable, she had proved that. Flexible. Creative. Sunny and positive under any circumstances. The fact that her new charge had been brain-damaged at birth did not deter Christy in the least. But this house…that was another story.
A little girl was living here? Already Christy was formulating plans to get the child out of this place as much as possible.
She peeked around the corner into the living room. It was spacious, airy. Really high ceilings. At least the walls in here were painted off-white. But still, starkness prevailed. Black marble fireplace. Black leather couch. A big old painting with slashes of hot red, yellow and lavender in birdlike shapes. As her eyes traveled over it, she realized the thing spoke to her on some level. She supposed she could live peaceably with the painting, at least. She really liked art.
Oh.
Oh, my.
In an alcove of windows draped in gray velvet gleamed the most gorgeous black-lacquer grand piano Christy had ever seen.
She went to the keyboard as if drawn forth in a Sleeping Beauty-like trance.
She slid onto the bench and plucked a few keys with her delicate fingers. The notes resonated, perfectly tuned, like sounds from heaven. Magnificent! This piano would surely be her salvation in this bleak house. Impulsively, she drifted into a few bars from Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat major. Then she cut loose, momentarily filling the barren room with trilling sounds of magical notes.
“Hello,” a man’s voice called above the music.
She swiveled her head with her fingertips guiltily poised on the keys. “Hi,” she said, a little breathless. He’d startled her.
“You must be Christy Lane,” he said as she straightened and stood. “Mother said that you play.”
Christy examined the man—a tall, blond man with Nordic good looks—leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed over his chest. He wore tasseled loafers and a smooth black mock turtleneck tucked into sharply creased chinos. Were it not for his wild mane of caramel-and-cream hair, his appearance would be as stark and forbidding as his house.
“Or did I see that on your résumé?” He slipped on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and perused the piece of paper in his hand.
He was still in great shape, but it was a surprise to see Sam the Athlete in reading glasses. She supposed since he was an architect he spent a lot of time at the computer.
“I love music,” she said. “This is a wonderful piano. Do you play?”
“No. I got a good deal on it and thought it looked great in the alcove.”
“I hope it’s okay that I tried it out.” She trailed her fingers over the keyboard. She felt a little self-conscious about playing Sam Solomon’s piano before she’d even been introduced to him. But his mother had said he was out of town, up at some place called Moonlight Grove. She thought about explaining herself. But the explanation would be long and complicated. She certainly couldn’t tell her new employer how she had chosen to subsist in a series of undemanding