Authors: Carolyn Thornton
He stepped into the living room, where she watched him
selecting two crystal goblets from the étagère, bringing them to the
refrigerator, where he filled each with a white Rhine wine.
"Thank you," Lacey said, accepting the glass from him and
tasting it. "Delicious."
"I thought you'd like it."
Lacey watched him puttering with the pots on the stove,
stirring one concoction, adding water to another. "You must have just
washed your glasses," she said, watching the light sparkle through the
wine, "because you knew I was coming." She seldom used her fine crystal
and had to rinse each glass out when she pulled it out of the cabinet.
"My housekeeper washes them once a week."
"All of them?" Lacey asked, thinking that was quite a
chore.
Rafe turned his back to her and started seasoning the
meat. "Uhm-hm. I have a list of directives she has to follow and a
schedule of how often everything has to be done. One of the questions I
asked when I was hiring my housekeeper was whether I could walk in on
any day and take a glass off the shelf. I expect them all to be clean
whenever I'm ready to use them."
"Wow," Lacey said, sipping some wine. Maybe she should
hire a housekeeper.
"Some of them admitted to me they just weren't sure they
could handle it."
"What else does she have to do?"
"Wash the windows and wipe down the walls every month. She
doesn't have to cook meals, but a lot of times I'll come home and she's
left me a casserole. She does a lot of extra things for me."
"How old is she?" Lacey asked, picturing an
orthopedic-shoe-wearing grandmother who hadn't heard that the help
didn't do windows and walls these days.
"Twenty-eight," he answered.
Lacey coughed on her wine. No wonder she did extra things
for Rafe. Jealousy pricked at her again, but she calmed herself with
the thought that he was, after all, cooking the steaks for her.
"What else does she do?" Lacey asked, sarcasm coloring her
voice ever so slightly.
"The usual. Laundry, vacuuming, rearranging the kitchen
cabinets, bathrooms."
And a lot of extras
, Lacey added to
herself.
Ceilings, attics, beds
. Lacey finished
the wine in her glass and held it out to Rafe for a refill.
"And she's here for Angela when she returns from school
until I come home."
So the housekeeper was in the prime spot for the mothering
role as well, Lacey thought. That would be a hard slot to replace. "Why
did you hire her?" Lacey asked.
Rafe shoved the rack with the steaks into the oven and
wiped his hands on a dish towel. "I guess it was her enthusiasm. She
seemed to want the job more than the others I interviewed, and also
seemed capable of handling this household."
Naturally, Lacey thought. What woman wouldn't be
enthusiastic around a powerhouse like Rafe Chancellor? Lacey picked up
her wineglass. It was too late now to apply for housekeeper; she'd just
have to settle for the latest position that had just opened
up—lover.
"What are you grinning at?" he asked, leaning over the
table and kissing her.
"You," she whispered. "Would you like a massage?"
"Love one," he answered.
"Before, after or instead of dinner?"
He laughed. "Later will be fine. Come into the living
room. Everything's under control here." He picked up her glass to carry
it for her and took her hand to help her up.
Music played softly on the stereo. Lacey sat in his
papasan chair so that he could sit next to her. She put her arms around
him and snuggled up to his shoulder, forgetting the housekeeper,
forgetting the sparkling TV-commercial-clean glasses, ignoring the
scrubbed white walls. "Tell me about your day," she said, and let him
talk for the next fifteen minutes.
Lacey's stomach was grumbling and she thought something
was burning. But Rafe was talking about a hotel and his marketing plans
to draw vacationers during the stark winter months. "Rafe," she
interrupted, remembering what he had told her the other night. "Don't
tell me how -you built the watch. Just give me the time and check
what's burning."
"Nothing's burning," he called from the kitchen two
minutes later. "It's just well done. Are you ready to eat?"
"I thought you'd never ask. Let me help."
"No," he said, coming back into the living room to take
her wineglass and carry it to the dining-room table, where he had two
place settings laid out with linen place mats, napkins and crystal
glasses.
"Your housekeeper must cost you a fortune," Lacey said,
sitting in the fan-backed peacock chair he held for her. "She sets a
beautiful table." Lacey looked across at the opposite end, where Rafe
would be sitting, and noticed the candles between them.
"She didn't do this. I just told her I was having a guest
for dinner and to be sure the house was clean. I know which forks go
where."
Lacey sank into her chair, watching him through the
dining-room door as he brought her plate to her.
She took a bite of the steak Rafe had put in front of her.
"You're a good cook."
"Thank you, ma'am," he answered, and smiled.
"I'll have to cook for you one night," Lacey said, taking
a sip from her crystal water glass and thinking Rafe even had better
tableware than she did.
"Do you cook?"
"Oh, sure, but it's been a while. It's not much fun eating
by yourself, is it?" How long had it been? She paused to think. A few
months? A year? Who was the last man she had liked enough to invite
into her home for dinner? "You might have to give me time to practice.
I have a habit of trying out brand-new things on people for the first
time, and they generally don't come out recipe-book-perfect."
"I don't mind," he answered. "But you also don't have to
cook for me. I like doing it every once in a while. Especially when I
have company like you to cook for."
Lacey blushed. This man just couldn't be real. "Do you
have any faults?" she asked.
Rafe laughed. "Sure."
"Like what?"
"You'll have to find that out for yourself. There are
different faults for different people."
"You're no help," she muttered, tasting the wild rice.
"One thing I'm not is a fool," he said, grinning. "I'm not
going to scare you away before you've had a chance to see my good
points and see if they outweigh the bad."
She picked up her knife and fork and cut up her meat. She
wasn't going to start digging for negative qualities, but it'd be nice
to find one, just one, to make her feel more adequate. She smiled
across the candlelit table at him. "You really are a terrific cook."
"Terrific company deserves it."
Later, Rafe cleared the table, not allowing Lacey to get
up to help him. Afterward she forcibly carried the last of her dishes
into the kitchen to help him clean up, and watched after he planted her
on one corner of the kitchen counter while he rinsed the plates, packed
the dishwasher and scrubbed the pans. He even knew how to wash dishes
better than she did, and wouldn't let her help.
While that was a bit intimidating, she had to admit she
liked the pampering. How long did this last? Just until the honeymoon
was over?
Rafe tossed down the scrub brush and set the last pot to
drain in the rack. Then he picked up the dishcloth and wiped down the
stove and counter-tops. If he came packaged in different sizes and
models and was labeled "Perfect Male", someone would make a fortune.
Maybe she should even take lessons from him in the housekeeping
department, but right now she had other things on her mind.
He tossed the dishcloth into the sink and wiped his hands
dry on the towel. "Can I get you anything?" he asked, opening the
cabinet to mix a drink for himself.
Lacey grinned across the room at him. "How about you?"
Lacey fell into an easy pattern with Rafe over the next
few weeks. Most evenings she would drive out to his house after work,
where he would have dinner waiting for her. Occasionally he invited
friends over and introduced her to his circle of acquaintances. A
couple of times he took her out to dinner and dancing with long strolls
on the surf-tossed beach in the early-morning hours. Lacey counted the
hours spent apart from Rafe.
Nights were spent in his arms, watching patterns' develop
in the half-light filtering through his bedroom windows, knowing that
when Angela came home to live with him again at the end of summer, all
of this concentrated time together would end. She'd have to go back to
sleeping in her bed alone again.
The longer Lacey spent with Rafe, the
more perfect he seemed to her. As different as they were, she found a
lot of things they shared in common. They stocked the same brands of
groceries on their shelves (this she discovered when they took their
checkbooks and shopping carts into the supermarket one afternoon
together to save time before a party they were going to attend later
that evening); they both worked in an organized fashion in their
business and at home. The only difference was Rafe had a housekeeper
and Lacey was on her own; Rafe liked all the finer things in life, from
crystal stemware to custom-made boots, which fit well with Lacey's
style.
Before she knew him even a week, Lacey loved him. She
purred with contentment every time she was near him, and he seemed to
play up to her attention. Lacey knew from the little he had told her
that he still felt some hurt from the way his wife had left him, but
she didn't ask about it. When the time was right, she decided, he would
tell her what he wanted her to know. But that pain of rejection was
keeping a tight rein on Rafe's emotions. Lacey felt his affectionate
concern and caring whenever she was in his company, but she never heard
the words of loving she wanted desperately for him to say.
Sometimes it was right on the tip of her tongue to tell
him how much she loved him. She would bite her cheek at those times and
refrain; it might frighten him away to hear the words, she thought,
because then he would take that as a commitment —as if she
could consider anything less after having given herself totally to him.
But the words might make him think she was trying to trap him the way
his ex-wife had trapped him into marriage.
Besides, she didn't want to influence Rafe's decisions
about her. She wanted him to be committed to her, but by his choice, in
his own time. Commitment meant more that way, when it was given instead
of forced. She could wait, she told herself. When the time was right,
she could let him know how much she loved him and wanted to be joined
with him forever.
Early one June morning, Lacey stewed in her office. She
had just talked to the housekeeper, trying to catch Rafe at home before
he flew off to a business meeting in New York. Rafe had already driven
out of the driveway, she told Lacey. Lacey strummed her fingers against
the desk and looked at the clock. Rafe was cutting his time awfully
close to catch his plane, and the housekeeper was arriving awfully
early. And blast it all, Lacey thought, breaking a pencil in two,
nobody had a right to sound as cheerful as that woman did this early in
the morning!
"What's eating you?" Jane asked, walking into Lacey's
designing room and hearing another pencil snap.
"Who? What?" Lacey quipped, glancing around and accepting
the cup of steaming coffee Jane handed her.
"What's your problem that's going to make us bankrupt due
to a lack of a pencil supply?" Jane questioned, glancing at the
collection of midget-sized writing sticks.
"Just nervous, I guess," Lacey answered.
"What about?"
Lacey turned around and glared at Jane. "What else?"
"Rafe Chancellor."
"And his housekeeper. Or maybe I should say his
keeper-keeper. Honestly, there's nothing that woman doesn't do for him."
Jane raised an eyebrow at that.
"There's nothing I wouldn't put past her," Lacey
complained. "I mean, I know I spend my nights in his bed, a lot of
times just sleeping with him. Do you know how nice that is?"
Jane smiled.
"A man can only stand so much of a good thing, but how do
I know what he's doing with her when I'm busy here during the day?"
"Is he that kind of a man?"
Lacey shrugged. "How do I know? He never tells me what
he's thinking or feeling. I think we have something terrific
developing, and I think he cares about me as much as I do him. He isn't
the type to look at other women. But I sure as anything know they're
looking at him. He's charismatic. And it doesn't help to know he has
this young woman who's washing out his socks every day."
Jane settled into the rocking chair Lacey had placed neat
the window and rocked back and forth without answering for a while.
"What kind of a woman is she?" Jane asked.
"Little Miss Perfect," Lacey answered, and another pencil
snapped.
"What does she look like?" Jane asked, sipping her coffee.
"Probably like a centerfold," Lacey grumbled. "Rafe only
picks the best in everything he chooses."
"At least that says something about you."
"Thanks," Lacey said, sweeping the broken pencils into
the wastebasket. "But I'm not so sure I rate next to Miss Chinese
Laundry, Mom-and-apple-pie, and Marilyn Monroe rolled into one."
"What's she like?"
"She has the sweetest little voice you ever heard on the
phone," Lacey drawled, "and prepares the best beef
tournedos
you ever tasted."
The rocking chair creaked back and forth. "Do I take that
to mean you've never actually met the woman?" Jane asked.
"No," Lacey said, turning in her chair to look at Jane.
"She always manages to dust the contents of Rafe's closets, wash and
iron his bath towels, and leave a casserole fit for the Queen of
England and five guests and leave before I get there, even when I've
arrived early, just purposely to get a glimpse of her. Amazing woman."