Her Man Friday (6 page)

Lily sighed. "I'll see what I can
do
about increasing your salary. And your bonus, as well," she added when she saw the other woman open her mouth to remind her.

"I'll give him one week to… you know… see to my needs," the nanny stated quite forcefully. Then she stared down at her half-filled suitcase with what was obviously
much
regret. "I need a drink," she muttered. And before Lily had a chance to object—happy hour didn't begin until six o'clock, after all—the other woman had left the room.

Oh, well, she tried to console herself. At least she had managed to keep Mrs. Puddleduck from joining the ranks of Chloe Sandusky's former nannies—a place in dire need of a twelve-step recovery program if ever there was one. She only prayed that she would be able to talk Schuyler into opening his tight fist long enough to eke out a few more dollars per week for the woman.

"What was that all about?"

Lily started at the question. Until Mr. Freiberger had uttered it, she had forgotten he was there. Well, almost forgotten, anyway. There was that small matter of his forearms having totally consumed her thoughts. She turned to look at him, only to find him standing with his weight rested on one foot, his hands hooked loosely on his hips, his intense scrutiny warming parts of her body that really had no business warming in polite company. Oh, and she also noticed that his forearms were still way too sexy.

"That," she said, "was just the latest in a series of troubling developments here at Ashling."

"I see," he said. "And who exactly is Chloe? Other than a juvenile delinquent, I mean?"

Lily supposed that if he were going to be working at Ashling for any length of time, he was going to have to be made aware of Chloe's existence sooner or later. Doubtless, there was some kind of OSHA regulation about such a thing.

She opened her mouth to explain, but the words didn't quite make it out because she was too busy studying the changes in Mr. Freiberger. With his dweeby jacket gone and his ugly necktie all askew like that, he looked quite fetching. His hair was rumpled in a way that was almost sexy, as if some woman had been clutching great handfuls of it in her fingers while he buried his head between her—

Goodness
, but that was an uncharacteristically lascivious thought she was having. Lily's eyes widened in shock as the graphic image materialized in her brain, but no amount of coaxing would roust it. She shook her head once to clear it, but unfortunately, the image of Mr. Freiberger, um, doing that… to her… came bouncing right back to the forefront of her brain again. She swallowed with some difficulty and made a mental note to have a date with someone. Anyone. Soon.

"Chloe is Mr. Kimball's ward," she said, telling herself she must have imagined the huskiness her voice seemed to have suddenly adopted.

"His ward?" Mr. Freiberger echoed doubtfully.

But Lily wasn't going to offer up specifics of the arrangement to a total stranger, so she only reiterated, "Yes, his ward."

"What? You mean like Batman and Robin?"

She narrowed her eyes at him in confusion. "Batman and Robin?"

He nodded. "Yeah, you know. Like Bruce Wayne's young ward, Dick Grayson?"

Lily shook her head. "No. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Kimball and Chloe have never donned Spandex and fled from a secret underground entrance to Ashling in a re-engineered Pontiac to rid Gotham City of its unsavory elements."

Leonard Freiberger offered her a look that was less than tolerant. But he said nothing.

"Actually," she told him, spurred by his silence, "the situation is more like
Jane Eyre
."

"Come again?"

"You know," Lily went on, "the part about Mr. Rochester's ward being the offspring of a French opera girl? Only with Chloe, her mother wasn't a French opera girl. She was a, uh, a cabaret dancer. But she was originally from Versailles, Indiana, for what it's worth."

Mr. Freiberger's eyebrows shot up at that. "You mean she was a stripper?"

Lily suddenly wondered if she was due for a manicure, and dropped her gaze to the backs of her hands. "Yes, I believe that is, in fact, what they're called in this country."

"So Chloe is Mr. Kimball's illegitimate daughter by a stripper from Indiana?"

Lily continued to study her left cuticles. "Well, I never said
that
."

"You didn't have to."

"I didn't?"

"It was that
Jane Eyre
reference that did it. Just because I'm a bookkeeper, Miss Rigby, doesn't mean I haven't read books."

She glanced up at that, only to find that Mr. Freiberger was glaring at her. "I didn't mean to imply that—"

"Chloe's secret is safe with me," he interrupted her. "If that's what you were worried about. The last thing a fourteen-year-old girl needs is to have talk like that circulating about her."

Actually, talk like that was the least of Chloe's worries, Lily thought. But there was no reason to tell Mr. Freiberger about all that. "Thank you for your discretion," she said instead.

"How long has she been living here?"

Lily couldn't imagine why he would be interested in such a thing, but she told him, "About a year and a half now."

He nodded slowly, and she got the feeling it was because he was thinking hard about something. And although she was reluctant to interrupt him, it suddenly occurred to her that the two of them were alone in Mrs. Puddleduck's room, and his forearms really were quite, quite sexy, and she hadn't had a date in quite, quite some time, so it would probably be better for them to retreat to their previous positions pronto, mainly because Schuyler's office and the kitchen were in two separate wings of the house, and at the moment, Lily felt an intense need to be far, far away from Mr. Freiberger and his forearms.

So she said, "Would you like to come to the kitchen for a cup of tea?"

Thankfully—at least, she
tried
to convince herself that she was thankful of the fact—Mr. Freiberger declined her invitation. "Thank you, Miss Rigby, but I really should go back to my work. I was right in the middle of something very interesting when I heard Mrs. Puddleduck scream."

Lily nodded. "Some other time then."

He dipped his head forward a bit in acknowledgment. "I think I'd like that."

A whiff of formaldehyde reminded her that there was one last matter to which she needed to attend. After glancing briefly over her shoulder, she said, "I'll, uh, I'll have Mr. Tooley, the groundskeeper, see to the, uh, the spleen. Perhaps he could put it in the compost bin. I'll need to order a new mattress, as well." Until then, she thought, the nanny could claim one of the guest rooms.

"Disposing of the evidence?" Mr. Freiberger asked. The look on his face suggested that he was only half-joking.

Lily expelled a restless breath. "Look, I won't lie to you. Chloe is more than a handful. But deep down, she is a good kid. She's just had some rough breaks, you know?"

"What kind of rough breaks?"

Unwilling to divulge the particulars of Chloe's young life to a man she'd just met—after all, even juvenile delinquents were entitled to some privacy—Lily only said, "Let's just say she has a lot of issues to work out, shall we? Despite what Mrs. Puddleduck said, Chloe's not dangerous."

If nothing else, Lily was certain about that. Even after a life fraught with insecurity, instability, and perhaps even subtle abuse, Chloe Sandusky was, in essence, a good kid. She was just crying out for attention, and, as a gifted child—as an
extremely
gifted child, Lily amended—she was simply much more effective than other kids at going about such a thing.

"I'll hold you to that," Mr. Freiberger said.

Oh, goody, Lily thought. And then maybe he'd hold her to himself.

She bit back a sigh at the thought and extended her arm toward the door, indicating he should precede her. But he only smiled and mimicked her gesture, suggesting that she should go first instead. So Lily strode forward with the bookkeeper right behind her. And, with no small effort, she somehow managed to keep from following him when they parted ways at the foot of the stairs. Instead, with a brief nod to his forearms—uh, to him—she returned to her cold tea, and warm thoughts, in the kitchen alone.

At the foot of the stairs, Leo kept his gaze trained on Lily Rigby until she was completely out of sight. Not so much because he didn't trust her, but because she had a way of walking that a man simply could not ignore. Yeah, a walk that could start fights and stop traffic, no doubt about it. And he just didn't see any reason to deny himself the simple pleasure of watching her.

In that snug skirt and those smoky stockings, she was, in a word,
very hot
. Okay, so that was two words. One word just wasn't enough for a woman like that. A woman who, one minute, was throwing looks his way that would outgun a flame-thrower, then the next minute was unflinchingly inspecting a pig's spleen, then the next minute was coming to the defense of a young girl who obviously had some serious problems.
Issues
, Lily Rigby had called them.
Felonies
was probably more like it.

And then another thought struck him when he recalled Miss Rigby's revelation that Kimball's young ward had been at Ashling for about a year and a half. That meant the industrious Chloe had come to live here right around the beginning of last fiscal year. And if Miss Rigby was to be believed—something on which Leo's mental jury was still definitely
out—
then the troubled Chloe was also a gifted child.

Well, my, my, my, he pondered as he forced his feet to move in the direction of Schuyler Kimball's office. Presuming that the girl's gifts weren't homicidal in nature, or spawned by a chemical imbalance in the brain, then Kimball's ward might warrant a bit of investigation herself. Just what were they teaching kids in computer science class these days anyway? Seeing as how he hadn't uncovered much of anything else so far today, maybe he'd just try a new tack and see where it led him.

Leo made his way quickly back to Kimball's office—well, as quickly as he could, considering the fact that Kimball's house was roughly the size of Rhode Island—and rifled through his briefcase until he located his telephone directory. Then, snatching up the phone, he dialed his good buddy Eddie Dolan, a man who was connected in ways that no one operating within the parameters of the American justice system ought to ponder. Eddie Dolan, who could find out anything about anybody… for a pretty hefty fee.

Good thing Eddie owed Leo a big favor. Normally, he'd never be able to afford the price Eddie's superiors charged, which generally consisted of five figures. Or a selected body part. Depending on one's relationship with the guy and his… employers. Not to mention the size of one's debt.

The phone rang a good half dozen times before being picked up at the other end, and then a few more moments passed before a gravely voice muttered in greeting, "Whattaya want?"

"Whoa, Eddie, have you been reading Martha Stewart books again?" Leo asked. "Your telephone etiquette has come a long, long way."

There was another moment of silence in which Leo envisioned Eddie squinting bleartly at the phone as he tried to figure out just where the hell he'd woken up anyway. People who did their business during the hours when most people—people who
weren't
involved in questionable lifestyles—were sleeping, tended to be pretty sleepy and incoherent at… Leo glanced down at his watch. Oh, say, three o'clock in the afternoon.