Through The Leaded Glass (36 page)

As follow-up to reports A1-A4 concerning
Charges, Alexander Traverse and Kate Lawton Traverse, I have the
following updates:

1. While this Guardian does not condone
illegal activities, special dispensation was granted upon
submission of my report ATKLT10704931240654314634.A1 so that the
Traverse family could obtain the necessary documentation for Alex
and William to live in this digital age. In this, regard, Calista’s
necklace was a boon for the family.

2. Alex continues both his stay-at-home dad
duties and position as an EMT with the local ambulance crew, but is
considering entering medical school in the fall with an eye toward
pediatrics.

3. William and Emma have grown into healthy,
happy, well adjusted children and are eagerly looking forward to
the arrival of their new sister on the third of next
month.

4. The Traverse family continues to purchase
annual passes to the Renaissance Faire. William has quite the
English accent when in character and it is no surprise that
faire-goers think Alex is one of the actors. Kate continues to
leave messages and supplies for Alicia beneath the blue banner in
the jousting arena.

Sometimes she even gets a reply.

Respectfully submitted,

Jonathan Griff,
Guardian-in-training

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the folks at the Pennsylvania
Renfaire for such a great time every weekend we go! And, too, for
allowing me to take liberties with their schedule, the layout of
the fairgrounds, and the descriptions of the shops. Of course, if
I’m taking liberty with time, why not location?

Many heartfelt thanks to Jill Lynn Anderson,
Sia McKye, and Kat Sheridan for the beta reads. And to Beth Hill
for her on-point edits. You ladies rock!

And thank YOU for reading
Through The
Leaded Glass
. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please help
other readers find this book by writing a review, or sign up for my
newsletter list by contacting me at
[email protected]
,
so you can find out about the next book as soon as it’s
available.

Turn the page for a sneak peek
at
Beauty and The Best
, now available.

Jolie Gardener’s new boss, reclusive widowed
artist Todd Best, who hasn’t produced anything since the death of
his wife two years ago, is a pretty interesting guy. He:

a) shows up buck naked on her first day on the
job,

b) asks her to pose for him - in the
nude!

and

c) discovers she’s an aspiring romance novelist
who finds the tragedy of his lost love inspiring, thereby throwing
her out of his house, his life...and his heart.

What’s a girl to do?

Fall in love, of course!

Once upon a time…

a long time ago,

there lived a beast of a man,

locked within a castle

with no one to love him.

This is not his story.

This
is the story of another
man,

locked within himself,

and the Beauty

who sets him free.

Chapter One

There’s a naked man in my
kitchen.

The thought registered just as the terse, “Who
the hell are you?” had Jolie Gardener spinning around faster than a
figure skater on speed.

He
had the nerve to ask this? He of the
broad shoulders, six-pack abs, and other, nice, um,
parts...

Really
. A naked man. In her
kitchen.

Well,
technically
, she was in a naked
man’s kitchen. Even more technically, she was in a naked Todd
Best’s kitchen—and there wasn’t one hint of self-consciousness or
embarrassment on his part.

Of course with that body, there shouldn’t be.
The guy
should
flaunt his nudity for the world to see.
Which, at present, consisted of one single, solitary person: Jolie
Gardener, aspiring writer and personal chef
extraordinaire.

“
Well?” His hands slammed to his
hips.

“
You’re naked,” she squeaked,
which, really, was the only way to state that kind of
obvious.

“
I’m what?” Mr. Six-Pack Abs
glanced down.

Jolie tried not to—so unsuccessfully it was
pitiful.

“
Shit,” he muttered. “I am. I, uh,
fell asleep last night…”

As butter sizzled in the new super-slick
omelet pan on the top-of-the-line range, Jolie’s gaze alternated
between some rock-hard abs and a scruffy eight a.m. shadow while
her fingers danced along the speckled granite countertop in search
of a napkin, placemat, oven mitt… something.

Mercifully, they scooped up a thick dishtowel
that, in her world, would constitute a very plush, very luxurious
hand towel from The Ritz or The Four Seasons, but which, here,
apparently, was used to soak up water from designer flatware. She
dangled it in the direction of Mr.
Au Naturel
.
“Here.”

He placed an empty bottle of Jim Beam on the
island countertop with a
clink
, then took the towel with a
grunt. “So, who are you, what are you doing in my kitchen, and
would you mind turning around?”

She turned. “I’m the new girl the agency sent
over.”

“
Hell. There better be some aspirin
left,” he muttered beside her, his bare (of course) feet making no
sound on the limestone floor.

She peeked over at him.

His eyebrow soared skyward.

Right
.

She turned back to the sizzling butter. Which
had started to burn. Sigh.

He rummaged around in one of the drawers as
she carried the pan to the sink. Trying to impress the new boss on
her first day with his favorite omelet ranchero and she burned the
butter. Not good, but then, it wasn’t exactly her fault because
nowhere in those papers she’d signed with her employment agency,
Domestic Gods & Goddesses, was mention made of an optional
dress code. And she didn’t care how much they were paying her,
nudity did tend to throw one off. As for the
alcohol-before-breakfast debacle, she wasn’t even going to address
that. His rudeness said it all.

And here,
she’d
been worried about
making a good impression on
him
.

A click of plastic bottle cap followed by a
shake of the bottle, the fridge opening, a gulp, then Naked Guy
sighing punctuated the silence before she turned on the faucet. She
cleaned out the pan, all the while the Naughty Girl side of her
brain screaming, “Turn around!” with the other, Jolie side, going,
“You
want
to keep this job?”

Self-preservation being the backbone of her
existence since being dumped into the foster care system, she
decided to listen to the Jolie side—no matter how much groaning
Naughty Girl did.

Naughty Girl, however, couldn’t resist a peek,
and was rewarded with a swish of his longish golden hair, a flex of
his well-defined arm, and an accompanying sizzle to her own nerve
endings.

So not good. Jolie had known he was a hunk
before she accepted this position. Had had quite the crush on him,
too. How could she not? The guy had been plastered all over every
magazine in the country for years, most especially here in his
hometown.

Todd Best.
The
Best, as the media had
dubbed him. And rightfully so. The man’s landscape paintings were
hanging in every high-end hotel, public library, and courtroom in
the country. Even the White House, for Pete’s sake. Not that she
had an eye for art, but when a painting looked like the scene down
the road and made her think she was standing there, feeling the
leaves rustling by, smelling the fresh cut grass, hearing the birds
singing in the trees and the ducks quacking on the pond, the whole
set-up, that, to her, was talent.

And, of course, there’d been his fairytale
marriage. But then, sadly, his wife had died suddenly and he’d
moved out of their home, turned the reins of his company over to
his brother, and put down his paint brushes.

Yes, Jolie had known
exactly
who she’d
be working for. That’d been half the incentive.

“
So, new girl, do you have a name?
And what are you doing here today?”

Since he was talking, she assumed it was safe
to turn around.

The old adage about making an “ASS out of U
and ME” proved true.

Although he was the one with the A-S-S. And
what a nice one it was. As was the muscled shoulder leaning against
the stainless steel of the microwave above the stove, and the
ninety-degree jut of his jaw line, the sculpted cheekbones, a
perfectly proportioned brow, the fall of hair over his
forehead…

She tore her gaze away from the visual
smorgasbord and, traitors that they were, her eyes headed
south.

Thank goodness he had the dish towel spread
across his nether regions like a loincloth. But a hot guy in a
loincloth was just as distracting as a naked hot guy. And she’d
seen him in both. Or not in both. Whatever.

She ordered her eyes back on the pan. “Um yes,
I do have a name, and as to what I’m doing here, I think that’s
obvious—burning the butter for your morning omelet.” She raised the
pan to illustrate and managed a quick push with her hip to get him
to back away from the stove so she could start cooking again,
praying all the while she wasn’t hitting something
vital.

Luckily, the guy had quick reflexes—or a good
hunch—’cause he stepped out of the way before her hip came anywhere
close to anything important, saving them the extreme embarrassment
of
that
.

“
How’d you get in?” Mr.
Clothing-Optional asked.

Okay, what was the protocol here? How long did
one actually have to converse with a buck-naked human being before
someone said something about it? Or did a strategically placed
dishtowel negate all observances of nudity?

“
Look, um,
Mister
.” What did
one call their bare boss? Todd? Sir?
Big guy
? “How ‘bout you
go freshen up a bit and I’ll make breakfast. We can have our chat
when we’re both, um, well, prepared for the day. ‘Kay?”

“
Fine. I’ll get dressed. Then we’ll
talk.”

“
You do that.”

As he sauntered—okay, maybe that was her
overactive imagination, because could one
really
saunter
with a Jim Beam-sized hangover?—from the fourteen-foot-ceiling
kitchen with its state-of-the-art appliances that looked as if
they’d come out of their packing boxes yesterday, so stainless
steel shiny she could have used them as a mirror to fix her
lipstick—if she’d worn lipstick—and she inhaled enough oxygen to
jump-start primordial ooze.

Which posed a whole new set of problems for
this job. How was she supposed to focus if she kept getting
sidetracked by the physical?

But she would.

She could.

Heck, if she could outwit social workers and
manage to keep her teenaged self out of the gutter, not to mention,
actually
make
something of her life, she could certainly
keep her own libido in check.

She had to. Her job, her livelihood, and all
her dreams depended on it.

***

Each step up the goddamned grandiose stairway
reverberated through Todd’s skull, setting his teeth on edge and
his stomach roiling. Why the hell hadn’t the builder put carpet on
these stairs?

Todd grabbed his head with one hand, keeping
the other one hovering above his groin with the damned kitchen
towel. It’d be funny if it weren’t so ungodly pitiful.

He, a grown man, hiding his modesty behind a
piece of eight-by-twelve cotton because he didn’t have enough sense
to pass out in his own bed.