Simon shrugged. “Why not?” he replied.
“High praise, indeed,” she quipped dryly. “Don’t worry, the only recommendation I’m interested in has to do with decorating.” She had no intention of doing anything else, ever. “I’ve been in the decorating business for a number of years and I’ve ridden out a lot of highs and lows. This dip in the economy is all part of that.”
Although she had to admit it would be nice to get back to the point where she was juggling assignments, looking for a way to squeeze yet another one in, rather than waiting for the phone to ring so that she had something to do. Until this assignment—if indeed it actually was one—had come along, she’d quietly begun paying Nathan out of her personal account because the business account was close to flatlining.
“And speaking of references,” she threw in, switching gears back to his initial comment, “my references are available for viewing anytime you’d like to look them over.” She had a website, plus an actual physical file where she kept her letters of reference, all of which were glowing.
But Simon waved away her offer, uninterested. “No need,” he told her.
She looked at him in surprise. He struck her as a belt-and-suspenders kind of man, taking precautions, making sure everything was on the up-and-up—and then devising a backup plan just in case. Did this mean he’d changed his mind about hiring her for the job?
“You don’t want to see my references?” she asked, wondering why he’d suddenly switched courses. Had she said something to offend him?
“Recommendations from people I don’t know don’t impress me,” he told her. “An enthusiastic one from someone I know or have dealt with—like Ms. Sommers—does. She seemed to be very high on your ability to, in her words, turn a ‘sow’s ear into a silk purse.'”
Since Maizie was her aunt, the endorsement could be misconstrued as nepotism. But while Maizie would never bad-mouth anyone, she would never praise anyone if she felt their work was lacking in any way. She was far too honest to lie.
“Nothing quite that drastic,” Kennon assured him. “But I have been able to turn some pretty awful rooms into lovely extensions of the client’s home, bringing up the total value of the house.” Warming to her subject, she rose from the table, ready to make a quick run to her vehicle. “I’ve got an album of my work in the car that I can show you.”
His words stopped her in her tracks.
Wiping his mouth, Simon retired his fork. “You can save yourself the trouble, Miss Cassidy. I don’t have time to handle the job myself and I certainly don’t have time to conduct any more lengthy interviews.”
Any more? Kennon bit her tongue to keep from echoing the last part of his statement incredulously. Did this qualify as a lengthy interview in his mind? On what planet? He hadn’t asked her for any kind of information, any backup statements, nothing. This didn’t qualify as an interview. It didn’t even make the grade for a run-of-the-mill conversation.
Don’t antagonize the gift horse, Kennon, she cautioned herself.
Putting on her brightest smile, she asked, “So then I’m hired?”
Simon raised his deep blue eyes to hers, silently asking what part of his statement she didn’t understand. Of course she was hired—unless she had a comprehension problem.
“That’s what I just said.”
Not really. Her smile never shifted.
The man needed to work on his communication skills. She wondered if he was just as obscure and distant with his patients when he spoke to them. Heart patients, she would think, would want to have their hands held, would want to be comforted and put at their ease. They would want to know that their surgeon cared. There was absolutely nothing about this exceedingly handsome, exceedingly sexy, reserved man that came close to even hinting that he cared about the people he operated on. Was it a protective device? A mechanism he employed so that he couldn’t get close to anyone, just in case they didn’t make it?
Focus on what’s important. You’ve got bills to pay, Kennon. “Thank you,” she told him. “I can start tomorrow. Tonight if you like.”
He shook his head. Her eagerness made him feel tired. It was almost as if her energy was growing only because it was sapping his.
“What I’d like,” he informed her, “is to go to my study and get back to the paper I was working on yesterday. The paper with the quickly approaching deadline.”
She backed away quickly. It did no good to get a client stirred up about anything except color schemes. “Of course. So when can I speak with you?” she asked so she could plan accordingly.
“You just did,” he pointed out, rising from the table. “This was very good,” he told her, as if he was measuring out each word carefully, taking them out of some invisible bank account and leaving a deficit in their wake.
Kennon watched him leave the room, heading for the stairs. She did her best not to let her frustration show in her face. No matter what he thought, she was really going to need to speak to him about the house. Decorating was a matter of personal taste—in this case, his. She wasn’t about to impose her own aesthetics on him. Aside from perhaps a fondness for blue, she had a feeling that their individual preferences would most likely clash fiercely.
“He doesn’t mean anything by it, Miss. He’s just hurting.”
Edna’s voice floated in from the living room, cutting into her thoughts. Giving the girls a quick, fleeting smile, Kennon cocked her head and looked around the side into the living room.
Edna was sitting up on the sofa, propped up exactly where she and the girls had left her. The plate Kennon had brought out to her earlier lay on top of the black-lacquered folding TV tray, which she’d brought with her expressly for Edna’s usage until the nanny was literally back on her feet.
After first encouraging the girls to have another serving, she left them to finish their dinner and crossed over to the living room and Edna.
“I understand,” Kennon said, lowering her voice so that it wouldn’t carry. “But I need to know what Dr. Sheffield wants me to do with the house besides just ‘fill’ it.”
The girls had heard her anyway. “I’ve got pictures,” Meghan volunteered happily.
Kennon’s attention instantly shifted. Something was far better than nothing. “You mean pictures of your old house?”
Ignoring her older sister’s pointed scowl, Meghan nodded. “Daddy said to pack away our pictures, but I wanted them with me so I could look at them. Mama gave me the album. I didn’t want to throw it away or lose it,” she explained.
Gutsy little thing, Kennon thought with admiration. Simon Sheffield seemed as if he was capable of casting a large shadow over his children. Secretly defying the man took courage.
“Daddy didn’t want you to throw it away, stupid,” Madelyn chided. “He just wanted to put everything we wanted to keep into that big storage place.” Seeing that her sister still didn’t grasp the concept of what she was saying, Madelyn explained what storage was. “It’s a big room for all our stuff, but it’s not in the house.”
Meghan didn’t look as if she believed what she was being told. “Then where is it?”
“Someplace else,” Madelyn told her, this time letting her shortened fuse show.
Pictures would definitely help, Kennon thought. But she wasn’t sure just how much they’d help until she had a basic question answered. Did the surgeon want to get away from everything that reminded him of the life he’d lost, or would he want to recapture that feeling? Or would it