Prologue
Twenty-Five Years Ago
“What a shame,” said Virginia Porter, director of the Barrie Home for Children, looking at the little girls who had lost their parents in a car crash just one week ago. The little angels were sleeping now, but they had spent more restless hours awake and crying than Virginia could count. She’d walked the floors with them every night. If any of her hair had remained brunette at the beginning of the week, it was all gray now. “So young to be all alone in the world. It’s a terrible, terrible shame.”
The air conditioner kicked on, sending, as if on cue, a cold breeze into the room.
“Do you think we’ll be able to keep them together?” Sister Gladys asked, kneading her hands in front of her. “I can’t bear the idea of separating them.”
Virginia sighed. “Of course we’ll continue to try and find some next of kin, but it’s not looking hopeful at this point. We’ll have to start thinking about placement.” She frowned, already worried about how little control she might have over the matter. Like Sister Gladys, Virginia wanted to keep the girls together, but it would be hard to refuse a good home to one if the parents wanted just one child. At least the girls were young enough, at thirteen or fourteen months, that they probably wouldn’t remember any of this later. “We’ll do the very best that we can.”
“They’ll need each other, Miss Porter,” Sister Gladys insisted. If possible, she was even more tender-hearted than Virginia. “They’ve lost their parents so horribly, so suddenly. Surely we can make sure they keep each other. Please.”
The little redheaded girl, Rose, stirred in her sleep and Virginia bent down and stroked her hair to soothe her back to sleep. If she woke up, she’d cry…They could already tell that Rose was the most sensitive one of the three.
“We’ll try.” Virginia said softly, smoothing the child’s copper curls as she spoke. “I promise you, we’ll try.”
Chapter One
“Warren Harker, age, forty-one, height six feet two, hair, black, eyes, blue, educated at Stanford, but got his master’s from Harvard Business School.”
Rose Tilden listened incredulously as her boss, Marta Serragno, of Serragno Catering, listed the attributes of the man who had hired them to cater his party tonight.
“Has worked in real estate development and construction since 1988, established Harker Companies in 1992. Likes his meat rare, his business cold and his women hot. Bank portfolio, four hundred and twenty-seven million, give or take a million.” Marta licked her lips. “And soon he’s going to be mine.” She turned her dark eyes on Rose. “You can count on it.”
“You sound pretty sure of yourself,” Rose commented.
“Do you doubt me?”
Frequently, Rose thought. But there was no point in arguing with Marta. It wouldn’t end until she felt she’d won. Might as well give in to her early on. “Never.”
“Wise girl.” Marta tapped her index finger against her temple. “That’s the right answer.”
“Although, if you ask me…” Rose went on. Sometimes she was unable to stop herself from giving her opinion. Her sister, Lily, said it was her red hair that made her fiery that way. “We could do with a little less real estate development and a little more fixing up of what already exists.”
Marta gave her a chilly look. “I do hope you don’t plan on saying that to Harker.”
“Not unless he asks.” She’d never been shy about giving her opinion. Lily also kept telling her she needed to learn to zip it, because that red headed fire was going to get her into trouble, but every time she tried, she failed.
This was particularly bad in her line of work, since she was supposed to be nice and accommodating with the client and their guests, even in the face of sexual advances (which happened a lot) or complaints that were clearly concocted with the aim of getting free service (which happened even more frequently). Rose was amazed how often the richer clients tried to get something for free. Three years into the business, Rose had learned several strange truths, and one was that the wealthier the clients, the cheaper they tended to be.
And the cheaper they were, the meaner they tended to be.
Rose had trouble with that, but Marta was just fine with it. The richer the better, she didn’t care.
“Frankly, my dear,” she said to Rose, “you’re not going to have any sort of conversation with our client, so the idea of him asking your opinion on inner city refurbishment is out of the question.”
Rose gave a short nod. Marta was really such a jerk. If she weren’t so ridiculous, Rose might occasionally feel offended by her slings and arrows.
“Now,” Marta went on. “Did you make that artichoke salad everyone likes so much?”
“Eight pounds of it.” Rose pointed to the large bowl she’d been working on for the past hour. She knew why Marta wanted the lemon artichoke salad. It was one of Rose’s specialties. As a matter of fact, it was one of the dishes that tended to…well, people thought it had some sort of aphrodisiacal properties.
Clearly, Marta was looking for magic.
“You did it…” Marta gave a small, tight smile. “The usual way, right?”
Rose held a smile back. Marta was so transparent. “I always do it the same way,” she assured her.
“Excellent.” Marta turned her attention back to the gorgeous man in the parlor of the large hotel suite. “I’ll definitely be having a bowl of that tonight. Even though I hate artichokes.”
Rose stopped working and looked at her boss. “Marta, if you hate artichokes, don’t eat it.”
“If anything they say about that dish is true, I’m going to eat it.”
“Not everything they say is true.”
“Honey, if I eat it, the stories had better be true,” Marta said, in a voice that could have been jesting or bitterly serious.