Her Man Friday (18 page)

Especially Schuyler. Honestly. He was thirty-five years old and, for all intents and purposes, headed up a multi-billion-dollar empire. One would think it would be all right to leave such a man alone for one morning. But
noooo
…

Lily had wandered off for less than fifteen minutes, and look what had happened. He'd gone after a perfectly nice woman who deserved to be heard and heeded where the care of one Chloe Sandusky was concerned. Lily made a mental note to call Mrs. Beecham herself and arrange for a meeting with her at the school later this week. How could she expect Schuyler to look after the girl when he wouldn't even look after himself? As always, the responsibility would fall upon Lily.

Her thoughts spurred her dark mood, dogging her as she covered the distance of the house, reinforcing her conviction that she needed to get away for a while. But it was only when she closed her bedroom door behind herself that she finally, finally realized what had actually put her in such a foul mood today. It wasn't her concern for Schuyler. Nor was it her concern for Chloe or Caroline Beecham. It wasn't even because of the unsteadiness of her own feelings this morning. No, what had her feeling off-kilter and irritable this beautiful autumn day was really quite obvious.

She missed Leonard Freiberger.

It was Saturday, so he wasn't working, and Lily, quite simply, missed him. She missed greeting him as she had every morning for more than a week now, and chatting with him as she accompanied him to Schuyler's office. She missed the borderline lascivious looks she caught him throwing her way on those few occasions when they met during the day, and she missed the innuendo in their conversations when they broke for tea and coffee every afternoon. She even missed being suspicious of his motives and wondering what he was up to, even though she had double-checked to make sure he was indeed here at the behest of the Kimball Technologies board of directors. She just plain missed his presence at the estate.

And now it appeared that he wouldn't be coming back. Yesterday he had informed her that, having found nothing in Schuyler's files here, he would be taking his search for the income tax problem elsewhere. Then he had gathered up his pert little files, had rubber-banded his cute little computer disks, had adjusted his darling little glasses, and smoothed out his adorable little ugly tweed suit. And with a quick goodbye and an awkward handshake—
handshake
, Lily recalled with much disappointment now, thinking that a man who had starred front and center in her sexual fantasies for a week should be good for at least one heart-stopping grope—he'd left Ashling to return to work in Philadelphia.

And Lily had been feeling oddly dejected ever since, as if she'd been dumped by a lover.

It made no sense, her reaction. In spite of their daily chats, she didn't really know the man all that well, after all. Yet as she changed out of her suit and into her off-duty uniform of well-worn jeans and thick, oversized, berry-colored sweater and hiking boots, she couldn't quite stop her thoughts from lingering on the man. And then, suddenly, somehow—she really, truly, honestly didn't mean to—she found herself going to her closet and pulling out the Philadelphia telephone directory, and flipping through the white pages until she located
F
.

Or, more specifically, until she located
Fr. Fr… e
. Let's see now…
Frederick, Freed, Freeman, Frehse, Freibaum
… Ah ha.
Freiberger
, there it was. All three of them.

Lily frowned. But no Leonard Freiberger. Not even an L. Freiberger. Well, that didn't help at all, did it?

She slammed the phone book shut and replaced it in the closet. It would figure that he would have an unlisted number. He had, after all, fairly exuded the warning,
No Trespassing
. And
Keep off the Grass
. And
Access Denied
. That sort of thing.

And then she was overcome once again by the feeling that Mr. Freiberger had been trying to hide something during his brief sojourn at Ashling.

What? She couldn't imagine. But her instincts had cautioned her to beware.

Before leaving, she quickly checked her e-mail on the state-of-the-art laptop that perched on her writing desk, to make sure there was nothing pressing that needed her attention. Not that she'd expected anything, seeing as how it was Saturday and Schuyler was home, but there was always a chance for the odd development that might require her input. Satisfied, however, that there was nothing she needed to attend to for the rest of the day, Lily donned a knit cap the same color as her heavy sweater, grabbed her backpack and a new romance novel she'd been looking forward to reading, and headed down to the kitchen to pack herself a lunch to take with her. Might as well make a day of it, she thought.

Today was hers, she told herself further, as she reached for the keys to what she'd always considered, not the SUV—the sport utility vehicle—but the SAV—the suburban assault vehicle. Jingling the keys merrily in her hand, she headed toward the four-car garage behind Ashling. She wasn't going to worry about anything today, she promised herself. Not Schuyler. Not Mrs. Beecham. Not Chloe. She wasn't even going to worry about Lily.

And she certainly wouldn't worry about Mr. Leonard Freiberger and what he had been up to during his time at Ashling. Not for all the money in the world.

Funny how life worked out sometimes, Leo thought as he lay beneath a big pile of large, sweaty men. He had just been thinking about Lily Rigby—not so surprising, really, seeing as how he'd been thinking about little else lately—when, lo and behold, a woman should appear who looked exactly like her.

Well, not
exactly
like her, he amended as he grunted and tried to push himself up on his elbows, only to be thwarted by the most massive of the large, sweaty men. With a muffled
oof
, he fell back to the ground, tasting dirt, and eyed the woman again. No, this woman wasn't wearing a no-nonsense business suit and striding purposefully through a huge estate as if she were the queen of all she surveyed, the way he'd come to think about Lily Rigby. Instead, this woman was clad in faded jeans and a sweater made of some soft, fuzzy… stuff… and she was lying on her stomach in the grass with her legs bent backward and upward. She was reading a book—and was really, really involved in it, too, if the look on her face was any indication—beneath a tree not fifty feet away from where Leo had just been soundly sacked in his role as weekend quarterback.

Call him crazy, but there was just something incredibly sexy about a woman wearing big ol' hiking boots. Maybe it was because hiking boots were traditionally something he'd always viewed as utterly masculine, and seeing them on a woman who was anything
but
masculine just made her seem that much more feminine. Then again, he thought further, Lily Rigby could be wearing waders and have a duck sitting on her head, and Leo would still think she was sexy as hell. Especially if that was
all
she was wearing. Hmmm…

With one final shove, he pushed upward, freeing himself from the last of the large, sweaty men. "Get
offa
me," he grumbled to his buddy Nelson as the two men struggled to stand. He arced his gaze around at the five other men who met weekly for a game of football in Fairmont Park. "
Jeez
, you idiots, I thought this was just supposed to be a friendly game. College rules, not prison rules."

"Sorry," Nelson said without an ounce of apology. As always, however, anything the man said came out sounding like a death sentence.

Nelson stood eye to eye with Leo, but outweighed him by a good thirty pounds. With his dark skin and shaved head, and eyes as black as thunder, he was a menacing-looking sonofabitch. He'd been drafted to the Eagles once upon a time, but an injury had forced him into extremely early retirement. Which was just as well, because he was doubtless making a lot more now as a stockbroker than he would have made playing second-string ball.

He cracked each one of his knuckles in turn—slowly—and smiled evilly. "Felt like we were losing you there, man. Needed to bring you back around. You been awfully…
distracted
lately."

Well, no shit, Leo thought. A woman like Lily Rigby living in your brain and taunting your libido night and day sorta left a man preoccupied. But he didn't offer any explanation. Instead, he turned to gaze at the source of that preoccupation, became even more preoccupied than usual, and smiled with
much
preoccupation.

Yep, that was definitely Lily Rigby. She was definitely wearing some incredibly sexy denim and sweater stuff—not to mention those haunting hiking boots—and she was definitely so wrapped up in her book that she wasn't paying any attention at all to her surroundings. He could sit there all day watching her, he thought, and she'd never even know it. But hey, where was the fun in that?

He glanced down at his Georgetown sweatshirt and jeans and noted they were only a little bit muddy and grass-stained. Likewise, he was only marginally fragrant from his athletic endeavors of the last hour. So he bent to retrieve the driving cap he'd been wearing to ward off the day's chill and settled it on his head backward, where it had been before Nelson had tried to turn him into a bag of mulch. Damn. If only he'd had the foresight to wear his glasses instead of his contacts, he might just be able to pass himself off as lame Leonard Freiberger.

"I need a pair of glasses," he said, so focused was he on that one thought.

"What for?" Nelson asked.

Only then did Leo realize he'd spoken aloud. He didn't want to have to explain his reasons to a bunch of guys who would hound him relentlessly about his double life and his attraction to the delectable Miss Rigby. Nor could he offer an honest explanation anyway, even if he wanted to, seeing as how he had taken a blood oath for the sake of Kimball's board of directors.

So all he said was, "Long story. It's not that big a deal."

"Here," Mike, one of the other men, piped up. He pulled off his own tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles and held them out toward Leo. "Take mine. They're not real. They're mood glasses."

Leo scowled at his friend. "Oh, God. Not you, too." But he reached for the glasses anyway. "What is it with this stuff?" he asked as he donned them. "I can't believe anybody who doesn't have to wear these things would actually choose to wear them."

All the men gaped at him. "Chicks dig 'em," they said as one.

Leo rolled his eyes. "Just pretend you don't know me, okay?"

Nelson chuckled. "Like we don't do that all the time."

Leo emitted a rude sound of disgust in response, and turned his back on the men. When they realized he was approaching Miss Rigby, however—hey, they were smart guys; they recognized a man in heat when they saw one—they all began to laugh themselves silly and offer him, oh… etiquette instruction… that was dubious at best.

Suddenly, he felt as if he were back in sixth grade, and all the boys in school knew about his crush on Marianne Gianelli, and how he was leaving the football field to go over to where the girls were playing Josie and the Pussycats, just so he might get a whiff of her Love's Baby Soft cologne.

It was humiliating, he thought, that a thirty-eight-year-old man could be reduced to hormone-driven prepubescence by the simple sight of a woman in hiking boots. Man. He was a disgrace to his gender. Even if they were really sexy hiking boots.

As he drew nearer to Lily Rigby, however, his humiliation vanished, because there was something about the look on her face as she rapidly, rabidly, turned the page of her book and continued to read. Seeing that expression made him feel much better about the potential for what might lay ahead.

In the time it took her to finally notice him, he had dropped down onto the grass beside her, had leaned on one elbow and stretched his legs out before him, feigning an idleness he was nowhere close to feeling. And even after she did look up, it still took a moment for her eyes to focus, a moment he used to drink in the sight of her.

If she'd put on makeup that morning, it had long ago vanished. And somehow, the absence of cosmetic enhancement only made her that much more attractive. Her eyes were clearer somehow, her mouth more luscious. The cool wind had stained her cheeks and the tip of her nose pink, giving her the appearance of an innocence he suspected wasn't quite an illusion. For all her businesslike efficiency, there was still something very human and approachable about Lily Rigby. And even though he couldn't quite define what that something was, Leo decided that he liked it. In fact, he liked it a lot.

Her hair was tucked up under a knit cap, save the long bangs brushing her forehead, bangs that she'd always combed to the side before. The fringe of black only added to the suggestion of youthful innocence about her, and for the first time, he wondered if she was younger than he had originally guessed. Thanks to her air of command at Ashling, he had assumed that she was in her early thirties. Now, however, he wondered if she had yet to even see thirty at all.

He told himself to say hello, but as he opened his mouth to do so, she seemed to suddenly recognize her surroundings. Her eyes widened in surprise when she realized who he was, and she hastily sat up, shoving her book behind her back. It was, to say the least, an incriminating gesture. He could only imagine what she didn't want to get caught reading. Probably some gruesome true crime thing about relentless slaughter, he guessed. That was about the only thing he could think of that would be unlike her.

"Mr. Freiberger," she said. But there was little welcome in her voice when she said it. "Where did you come from?"

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, to where his friends were still gathered. There was no sense denying he knew them, seeing as how they were all pointing at him and doubled over with laughter. He didn't
even
want to think about what kind of speculating they were doing back there. "I'm here chaperoning a bunch of slackers who wanted to play football today," he said. "How about you? What brings you into the big city?"