Now Jade was floored. Melanie... Sexy? The idea was preposterous. And yet...
Jade looked at the housekeeper, really looked at her, mentally stripping away that shapeless black dress, trying to see the real woman behind the sexless façde. Her slender shoulders were broad, her breasts full, her waist and hips trim. And when she bent down over the dishwasher, her buttocks showed shapely and firm through the black gabardine. Her knees—what Jade could see of them—were very nice indeed. As were her ankles. Those ghastly thick beige stockings distracted from, but not entirely hid, the slender coltish lines of the legs inside them.
Jade tried to imagine what Melanie would look like in a slinky black dress, scarlet gloss on that sultry mouth of hers and sexy earrings swinging around that long white neck she had. Everyone’s eyes round Belleview would fall right out of their sockets, her father included. He wouldn’t recognise his prim and proper housekeeper.
A sudden memory stabbed at Jade’s heart before the corner of her mouth lifted in a cynical smirk. It was just as well, perhaps, that Melanie was as she was, considering what had happened between the last housekeeper and the master of Belleview. Catching her father with that woman in his arms had come as a dreadful shock to Jade. Her god of a father, high on his pedestal—or was it podium?—always preaching about character and control and moral standards. Her father, having an affair with his housekeeper while his manic depressive wife was safely installed in a sanatorium somewhere.
He’d tried to explain everything away, saying he hadn’t actually slept with the woman, saying he’d kissed her in a moment of weakness. Jade had not accused. She’d simply stood there, not listening, refusing to understand, unable to forgive, regardless of the circumstances. She couldn’t abide parents who had the policy of ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say.’
She’d been just twenty at the time. Her father had dismissed the unfortunate woman—another injustice, she believed—and hired Melanie. But Jade had never looked at her father in the same way again. Neither had she taken a blind bit of notice of anything he tried to tell her. She went her own way, did her own thing. She had her own code of right and wrong, and had never hurt anyone as she was sure he had. He, and Nathan. They were the hurters, the despoilers.
Jade frowned as her mind shifted uncomfortably to her mother.
No, she decided abruptly. I will not make excuses. For either of them. For any of them!
An alien tap-tapping sound click-clacked somewhere in the house. Not recognising it, Jade swivelled on the kitchen stool she was perched up on, only to see her father making his way across the family-room, a walking cane in his right hand.
Their eyes met simultaneously through the open doorway, Jade’s widening as Byron’s narrowed. He looked hopping mad.
‘You didn’t give me a chance to tell you,’ Melanie said quietly from the other side of the breakfast bar. ‘Your father came home from the hospital yesterday.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU’VE changed your mind, it seems, about darkening this doorstep again,’ Byron barked at his daughter.
‘And hi to you, Pops,’ Jade said with a flipness she fell into when at her most stressed. What on earth was her father doing home from hospital? A fortnight ago they’d said his leg wasn’t mending properly and he’d be stuck in there for another month at least. She should have known he’d prove them wrong. ‘You thinking of auditioning for the part of Long John Silver?’ she quipped airily, waving at the walking cane.
Byron hobbled into the kitchen, still scowling at his daughter. ‘One day you’ll use that sassy mouth of yours on the wrong person. I hope I’m around to see it. Melanie, I’m expecting a visitor shortly. A Mr Armstrong. Show him into my study when he arrives, will you? And we’ll be wanting coffee. Or tea, if he prefers. Ask him.’
‘Certainly, Bryon. Will this Mr Armstrong be staying to dinner?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll have to let you know.’
‘And who is Mr Armstrong?’ Jade asked, the name not at all familiar.
Byron’s hard blue eyes swung back to his daughter. ‘No one you know.’ He looked her up and down, his upper lip curling with disgust at her appearance. ‘Good God, girl, don’t you ever wear a bra?’ And, spinning round on his good leg, he limped off.
She pulled a face at his disappearing back. She did wear a bra...once every hundred years or so.
Admittedly, the ribbed pink vest-top she was wearing moulded her well-rounded breasts like a second skin, her nipples outlined and emphasised. But she hadn’t brought any clothes with her and all that was in her wardrobe were things she hadn’t worn for years, most of which were a little tight on her. She’d gone through a semi-anorexic stage back in her teens, till the loss of half her boobs had brought her up with a jolt. Horrified, she’d quickly eaten up till she was back to her shapely self, substituting the dieting with aerobics and weight-training. Her figure had steadily gone from gaunt to good to great. She was quite proud of it and had no intention of hiding her hard-earned shape under dowdy matronly clothes. Lord, she was only twenty-two, not fifty-two!
Sliding from the kitchen stool, however, reminded her that the jeans she had on were close to obscene, they were so tight. Maybe she should hunt out something of Auntie Ava’s to put on. The old dear was always buying things in sales that were several sizes too small.
Jade was on the way through the family-room, heading in the direction of the front hall when the doorbell rang. ‘I’ll get it, Melanie,’ she shouted back over her shoulder. ‘It’s sure to be the mysterious Mr Armstrong.’
‘Find out if he’s staying to dinner, will you, Jade?’ Melanie called back. ‘And if he wants tea or coffee.’
‘Will do.’
She was whistling when she opened the door, her whistle changing to a low wolf-whistle as she took in the man standing there. God, but he was gorgeous! Tall, without being too tall, black curly hair, olive skin, lean saturnine features and piercing black eyes. His thick dark eyelashes were curly too, the bottom ones resting on high cheekbones that looked as if they’d been carved in stone.
He looked as if he’d been carved in stone, so still was he. And so totally unaffected by her none too subtle whistle.
Jade thought she detected the slightest flicker of something when his hard gaze raked over her eyecatching form. But if he was in any way impressed by what he saw he certainly didn’t show it. Instead, there was a fractional lifting of his already sardonically arched eyebrows before he spoke in a voice reminiscent of Melanie’s for its lack of emotion.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said coolly. ‘Mr Whitmore is expecting me. Kyle Armstrong.’
I wonder if there’s a Mrs Armstrong, was Jade’s first thought, not at all put out by the man’s apparent indifference to her charms. Nothing like a good challenge. It would make for a pleasant change. But she never tampered with married men. That was one of the lines she drew.
Pity other people didn’t, she thought bitterly.
Her attention returned to the man before her. He wasn’t wearing a wedding-ring but he was too good-looking not to be married. Taking a wild stab at his age, she came up with somewhere between twenty-eight and thirty-two. She was always hopeless at ages. She’d thought Roberto around thirty and he’d been closer to forty!
‘Good afternoon, Mr Armstrong,’ she greeted, holding out her hand and flashing him one of her most winning smiles. Her dentist had every reason to be proud of the perfectly even white teeth she displayed. ‘Yes, my father mentioned he was expecting you. Do come in. I’ll take you to him.’
Her smile turned slightly smug at