“My what?”
“She also said you can give the jewelry to her in person and suggested dinner at her favorite restaurant in the New Year. I’ve put it in your calendar.”
Piers groaned. “Fine, I’ll tell her to her face.”
“Good. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’ll be on my way.”
She was in an all-fired hurry to leave, wasn’t she? He’d told her she was welcome to stay for his annual holiday house party, but Faye had looked at him as if she’d rather gargle with shards of glass.
“No, nothing else. Take care on the road. The forecasted storm looks as if it’s blowing in early. It’s pretty gnarly out there. Will you be okay to drive?”
“Of course,” she said with an air of supreme confidence.
Beneath it, though, he got the impression that her attitude was one of bravado rather than self-assurance. He’d gotten to understand Faye’s little nuances pretty well in the time she’d worked for him. He wondered if she knew she had those little “tells.”
Faye continued, “The rental company assured me I have snow tires on the car and that it will handle the weather. They even supplied me with chains for the tires, which I fitted this morning.”
“You know how to fit chains?” he asked and then mentally rolled his eyes. Of course she knew how to fit chains. She pretty much could do everything, couldn’t she?
“You don’t need to worry about me.”
While she didn’t ever seem to think anyone should worry about her, Piers was pretty certain he was the only person looking out for her. She had nobody else. Her background check had revealed her to be an orphan from the age of fifteen. Not even any extended family hidden in the nooks and crannies of the world.
What would it be like to be so completely alone? he wondered. Even though his twin brother had died suddenly last January, both his parents were still living and he had aunts and uncles and cousins too numerous to count—even if they weren’t the kinds of people he wanted to necessarily be around. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be so completely on your own.
She reached for her coat and Piers moved behind her to help her shrug it on, then Faye bent to lift her overnight case at the same time he did.
“I’ll take it,” she said firmly. “No point in you having to go back out in the cold.”
Her words made sense but grated on his sense of chivalry. In his world, no woman should ever have to lift a finger let alone her own case. But then again, Faye wasn’t of his world, was she? And she went to great pains to remind him of that. “Thanks for stepping into the breach and doing the house for me,” he said as they hesitated by the door.
Faye gave one last look at the fully decorated great hall—her eyes lingered on the stockings for Piers’s expected guests pinned over the fireplace, at the tree glittering with softly glowing lights and spun-glass ornaments—and actually shuddered.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said with obvious relief.
It was patently clear she couldn’t wait to get out of there.
“Thanks, Faye. I do appreciate it.”
“You’d better,” she warned direly. “I’ve directed the payroll office to give me a large bonus for this one.”
“Double it, you’re worth it,” he countered with another one of his grins that usually turned women to putty in his hands no matter their age—women except for his PA, that was.
“Thank you,” Faye said tightly as she zipped up the front of her coat and pulled up her hood.
He watched as she lifted her overnight case and hoisted the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder.
Piers held the door open for her. “Take care on the driveway and watch out for the drop-off on the side. I know the surface has been graded recently but you can’t be too careful in this weather.”
“Trust me, careful is my middle name.”
“Why is that, Faye?”
She pretended she didn’t hear the question the same way he’d noticed she ignored all his questions that veered into personal territory.
“Enjoy yourself, see you next year,” she said and headed for the main stairs.
Piers watched her trudge down the stairs and across the driveway toward the garage, and closed the front door against the bitter-cold air that swirled around him. He turned and faced the interior of the house. Soon it would be filled with people—friends he’d invited for the holidays. But right now, with Faye gone, the place felt echoingly empty.
* * *
The wind had picked up outside in the past couple of hours and Faye bent over a little as she made her way toward the converted stables where she’d parked her rental SUV. Piers hadn’t seen fit to garage the Range Rover she’d had waiting for him at the airport, she noted with a frown, but had left the vehicle at the bottom of the stairs to the front door. Serve him right if he has to dig it out come morning, she thought.
It would especially serve him right for delivering that blasted megawatt smile in her direction not once but twice in a short space of time. She knew he used it like the weapon it truly was. No, it didn’t make her heart sing and, no, it didn’t do strange things to her downstairs, either. But it could, if she let it.
Faye blinked firmly, as if to rid herself of the mental image of him standing there looking far more tempting than any man should in such a truly awful sweater—good grief, was one sleeve really longer than the other?
Well, none of that mattered now. She was on her way to the airport and then to normality. A flurry of snow whipped against her, sticking wetly to any exposed patches of skin. Had she mentioned how much she hated snow? Faye gritted her teeth and pressed the remote in her pocket that opened the garage door. She scurried into the building that, despite being renovated into a six-stall garage, was still redolent with the lingering scents of hay and horses and a time when things around here were vastly different.
Across the garage she thought she saw a movement and stared into the dark recesses of the far bay before dismissing the notion as a figment of her imagination. Faye opened the trunk of the SUV and hefted her overnight bag into the voluminous space. A bit of a sad analogy for her life when she thought about it—a small, compact, cram-filled object inside an echoing, empty void. But she didn’t think about it. Well, hardly ever. Except at this time of year. Which was exactly why she hated it so much. No matter where she turned she couldn’t escape the pain she kept so conscientiously at bay the rest of the year.
An odd sound from inside the SUV made her stop in her tracks. The hair on the back of her neck prickled and Faye looked around carefully. She could see nothing out of order. No mass murderers loitering in the shadows. No extraterrestrial creatures poised to hunt her down and rip her spine out. Nothing. Correction, nothing but the sudden howl of a massive squall of wind and snow. She really needed to get going before the weather got too rough for her to reach the airport and the subsequent sanity her flight home promised.
Stepping around the SUV to the driver’s door, Faye realized something was perched on her seat. Strange. She didn’t remember leaving anything there when she’d pulled in two days ago, nor had she noticed anything amiss this morning when she’d come out to fit the chains on the tires in readiness to leave. Was this Piers’s idea of a joke? His joy in the festive season saw him insist every year on giving her a gift, which every year she refused to open.
She moved a little closer and realized there were, in fact, two objects. One on her passenger seat, which looked like a large tote of some kind, the other