It was cool inside the classic Western house, thanks to the thick adobe walls covered with native American weavings. Huge brown leather chairs flanked a massive stone fireplace, the kind you see in ski lodges. Mallory could imagine curling up in one of those chairs with a good book. Or a good man. Which brought her to the reason she was there. It was time to forget the furnishings and ask—
“Now,” he said, waving her to a straight-backed chair next to an end table while he leaned against the wall and observed her with his penetrating blue eyes. “We don’t have much time, but I need to get a little more information about you.”
She bit her lip. She’d heard he was brutally frank. That he didn’t mince words. “I’m not sure...I don’t know what you already know,” she stammered. Not everything. Please don’t let him know everything. Not yet. Not today.
“I know you’ve had some experience. You’ve done it before, but on a smaller scale.”
“That’s not true,” she said hotly, getting to her feet. “I’ve never...this is the first time I’ve ever—”
He raised his hands to stop her from continuing. “Never mind. At this point it doesn’t matter. I’m desperate. You’re hired.”
“What? Wait a minute. This is a mistake. I’m not here about a job. I’m here to see your foreman, Joe Carter. He and I...we’re...”
He gave her a cynical smile laced with pity and cut her off. “Sorry, lady, you’re a day late. The son-of-a-gun left yesterday. Ran off with the best housekeeper I’ve ever had, that’s why...”
Mallory stared at him. He was still talking, at least his mouth was still moving, but the words were a jumble of sounds. “No notice...irresponsible...unexpected,” she heard him say. The blood drained from her head, and the room spun around, as the herbal tea she’d swallowed for breakfast came up and threatened to choke her. Her legs refused to support her any longer, her knees buckled, and the varnished wide-planked floor rose to meet her with a resounding thud. And everything went black.
Zach moved fast, but not fast enough to catch her before she fell. Instead he had to scrape her up off the floor, sweep her into his arms and lay her out on the cool leather couch. He clamped his lips together to keep from blurting out a string of expletives and sat next to her, vigorously rubbing her wrists.
“Wake up,” he ordered. “Come on, sweetheart, tell me you’re okay. Say you’ve been sent by the agency to take Diane’s place.”
Her face was cold and still as a statue. A lump was forming on her head. Cattle he could handle. Sick, well, nervous, skittish, he knew what to do with them. They rarely fainted. And never cried. Women on the other hand were a mystery to him. He’d had little experience dealing with them. His mother had left him to be raised by his uncle. His wife had lasted about six months before she took off. Since then he’d avoided getting involved with the fairer sex.
But his woman problems weren’t over yet. Yesterday his superefficient housekeeper ran off with his foreman, and today a strange woman passed out in his living room. One minute she was standing there, glowing with apparent good health, her long smooth legs in khaki shorts and her white camp shirt buttoned snugly over lush full breasts. If he hadn’t noticed these details then, he couldn’t have missed them in his brief walk to the couch with her body pressed intimately against his, causing an unmistakable reaction on his part. Now she was out cold. Legs and all. And his body was still throbbing. That was the price of being celibate too long. Damn, damn, damn.
Just when he was about to hire her. Hell, he would have hired Lizzie Borden the ax murderess at this point, he was so desperate. Alarmed at her lack of response, he bent over and put his ear against her left breast to listen to her heart.
What if she never came to? If she went into a coma here on his couch? Thank God her heart was still beating. Just a little too fast. But then so was his. Too fast for comfort. He was about to raise his head from where it was pillowed on her breast, he really was, but before he did she sat up abruptly, as if she’d had electric shock treatment. He got to his feet. Calmly. Deliberately.
“What were you doing?” she asked, her eyes wide and alarmed.
He looked down at her with a frown creasing his forehead. “Checking to see if you were still alive,” he said brusquely. “You may not remember but you passed out on my floor here. I was concerned about you. Afraid I might have to call an ambulance. Thought you might have some problem...”
“I have a problem all right,” she said, her shoulders suddenly sagging under the weight of some invisible burden. “Did you really say Joe had gone somewhere with someone?”
“You got it. He’s gone somewhere with someone who was my housekeeper. Who kept order around this place in a hundred different ways. Calmly, efficiently. Did you or did you not come here today to take Diane’s place?”
“I didn’t. I came to meet Joe. I’ve got everything I own in my car out there. I thought...”
“Yes?” he said impatiently, noting the color had come back to tinge the woman’s cheeks with scarlet. “Spit it out.”
“I...I don’t know where to start,” she said, moving to the edge of the couch and swinging those long lovely legs to the floor.
“Okay,” he said crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ll start it for you. You were involved with Joe. Stop me if I have it wrong, but I’d say you met him in town, at the Old Town Tavern, listening to one of the R&B bands that rolls through. And he swept you off your feet.”
The look on her face told him he’d got it exactly right. It didn’t surprise him. What surprised him was that she’d gotten all the way up here. Joe’s usual MO was to have a hot and heavy affair with some babe he met in town then break it off just as fast as he’d started it. “Always leave them wanting more,” he’d once told Zach with a wicked gleam in his eye one early morning when he’d run into him on his way back to his cabin.
Zach had to hand it to the guy, he never missed a day’s work. No matter what he’d been doing the night before. So what happened here? What made Joe take off with Diane, seemingly a sane, sensible, incredibly efficient woman of ordinary looks, leaving this extremely attractive woman high and dry on his couch?
Zach studied the woman before him before continuing. “He told you he loved you. He told you you were beautiful, special... What else?” he prompted.
“He told me he was going to marry me,” Mallory said softly. The look on Zachary Calhoun’s rugged face told her he thought she was a fool. Not just a fool, a naive fool. He had no idea just how naïve. And how clueless she was about men. No idea how many years she’d spent with her nose in a book, in classrooms and in libraries. Pursuing knowledge while other girls pursued boys.
He had no idea that a good-looking cowboy with a few sweet words could sweep her off her feet in one night. Make love to her and make her believe he’d marry her. Or maybe he did know. There was something all-seeing in those shrewd blue eyes of Zach’s. Something that made her tear her gaze away before he saw the insecurities locked deep inside her.
She couldn’t let anyone see the fear that she’d never be desired, never be sought after or fought over the way her sister, Mimi, was. Flirtatious Mimi, the pretty one, who had boys fighting over her from day one and who was now happily married to Mallory’s one and only boyfriend. Once he’d seen Mimi that was it, he was gone. It was a long time ago, but still the memory lingered, the old feelings...
Zach stared at her with disbelief. This woman was even more gullible than he thought. He figured she could be as young as twenty with that innocent, classic face and deepset brown eyes, but with those bones she’d look just as pure and pretty at forty. Not that he was looking at her bones. It was the subtle curves he couldn’t take his eyes off.
“Well, don’t take it personally,” he said making an unaccustomed effort to be kind. “If it’s any