What a Woman Wants (A Manley Maids Novel) (3 page)

Sean set the vacuum down and headed to the curio cabinet. With the way he reacted to her, he’d better find out what those stipulations were and soon. Failure was not an option. This property was going to make his name in the resort industry and validate everything he’d been working for. He was banking on it, to the tune of millions of dollars in revenue.

His Heritage Corporation bought historic buildings, most in disrepair, and brought them back to their former standard and beauty as bed & breakfasts. So far, it’d been a win-win situation. Localities loved saving their old buildings, and he loved the bottom line.

But his dream had always been to be bigger. He wanted luxury resorts. He wanted to be
the
destination in this part of the state, with an eye toward growing into other areas. To be as successful in his career as his siblings were in theirs.

The Martinson property was his chance to start expanding the company. The next tier of his dream. And as long as there was a chance to make it happen, he wasn’t about to call it quits.

So when Merriweather had thrown the wrench in, jeopardizing his name, his bank account, and his brothers’ money, his back was to the wall. He
had
to buy this place at the below-market-value price she’d promised or he’d lose everything. He really didn’t need her change of heart or his sense of misplaced lust screwing this up.

Screwing
was a bad word choice.

Sean replaced the porcelain statues in the glass-fronted case, careful not to ding them against each other. There were some prize pieces here. What in God’s name had possessed the woman to leave this place to a granddaughter she’d never acknowledged? According to the detective, Mrs. Martinson hadn’t sent even a birthday card to her only living descendant. No contact even when her son, Olivia’s father, had died. Talk about cold. He hadn’t had a doubt that his plan would pan out as she’d promised.

Yet there was obviously no figuring what was in someone’s mind at the end of her life. And the old woman was thorough, dammit. His lawyer had tried to find some way to break the bequest, but no dice. It was airtight. Olivia Bombshell Carolla held all the cards.

The poker reference was ironically appropriate.

He’d thought Mac’s win was a homerun when he’d seen the Martinson name on her client list. He’d jumped at it; if Lady Luck had given him the means to secure the place for himself, he wasn’t one to question her.

Until now.

Because with millions at stake, a babe for a boss, and just under three weeks to kick her out of her home, instead of being lord of the manor, he was the freaking
maid
.

W
INDING
through the indoor maze of corridors that made up the second floor, Livvy paused to glance out one of the arched windows. Yep, the outdoor maze was still there. She’d gotten lost in the hedgerow monstrosity during that one visit all those years ago. The thing still creeped her out, just like the rest of this place. She couldn’t believe she was descended from these people. If not for Mom’s fling with the local rich boy on summer break, she wouldn’t be.

That maze had to go. Along with the free-range peacocks. Peacocks were notoriously nasty and she did have her babies to consider.

But Pool Boy? She’d keep him around awhile. There was definitely something to be said for eye candy.

She placed her bag and Orwell’s cage in the first room she found after climbing the curved staircase, the Blue Room, or some other bland misnomer, she was sure. Pale-blue-to-the-point-of-being-white curtains against cream walls, cranberry carpet and gilded French provincial furniture so ornate it was a testament to Pool Boy’s cleaning expertise that dust bunnies hadn’t set up colonies in the curlicues.

She removed the cover from the cage, bracing herself for the parrot’s rendition of “
Just a Gigolo
,” his favorite wake-up song. She gave him some water and herself a quick once-over in the Roman bath of a bathroom to remove travel
ick
from her face, buttoned her blouse, then headed out to take a look at The Inheritance.

At the top of the stairs, she took one step down and stopped. She looked at the banister, glanced around, and smiled. No one would know and, for all intents and purposes, this
was
her house, right?

Right.

In the dimming rays of daylight streaming into the foyer through a massive oval window, Livvy hiked her skirt between her thighs and slung one leg over the banister. She unbuttoned her blouse so she could get a good grip on the banister, looked behind her, then shoved off.

The rush tickled her tummy like her hair did her cheeks as she sailed down backwards. She’d wanted to do this every day of the ten she’d stayed here during that long-ago visit, but with a butler whose face could’ve outwrinkled a raisin and a housekeeper whose disposition made a lemon seem sweet, there’d been only one opportunity. And Dragonlady had caught her.

Livvy reached the bottom without incident, banister surfing being one good skill she’d learned in boarding school.
Dragonlady
. Funny, she’d forgotten that nickname for the woman.

At the bottom, she landed on one foot and started to swing the other over the banister, but her skirt tangled in her combat boot. She grabbed hold of the closest spindle, twisting it as she tried to prevent herself from falling, while simultaneously attempting to unlatch the fabric from the rivet before one or both ripped.

Apparently her banister surfing skills were a bit rusty. Thankfully, though, no one was around to witness them.

The door to the
whatever
room opened and out stepped Um Sean.

Figured.

“You didn’t really slide down, did you?” His laughter did not detract from his hot-guy saunter across the marble floor.

“Sure I did. What kind of kid wouldn’t want to do that? I finally got the chance.”

He bent down to unhook the hem of her skirt while she did a mad scramble to make sure all pertinent parts were covered.

Sapphire eyes met hers through the spindles, his glance resting briefly on the turned one. “What
would
Grandmama say?” He stood up with a
tsk-tsk
and set the baluster to rights.

“Well, what
Grandmama
doesn’t know won’t hurt her, now will it?” Shrugging, Livvy yanked the strap of her camisole back into place and crossed the edges of her blouse over her stomach.

“So, Um Sean.” She tried a dignified march down the last step to the black-veined white marble floor, wishing she was wearing something more glamorous than combat boots. “What exactly are your duties around here? Have you been running this place for Merriweather for long?”

Sean slid his hands into the side pockets of the cotton work pants. “Long? No. Running the place, well, that’d depend on your definition of running it.” He swept his hand toward the far corridor. “You want something to eat? I was just going to get lunch.”

“Works for me. Lead on, MacDuff.” She swept out her hand for him to precede her.

“Princess, it’s Irish, not Scots.”

Black-haired, blue-eyed, sexy, skin-shivering Irish.

They passed an old suit of armor her grandmother’s former housekeeper, Mrs. Tidwell, had told her was haunted. Someone had probably rigged the thing to move its arm with fishing line or something to scare the old sourpuss. Livvy remembered being terrified of the housekeeper as a child. Merriweather certainly had had a lot of old cronies around her back then. Old cronies and no children.

That one visit had been enough. Funny that she was now the sole beneficiary. She hadn’t expected it, though she’d be the first to admit Merriweather owed it to her.

Oh, sure, the self-appointed matriarch had picked up the boarding school bills, but Livvy wasn’t talking about what, to her grandmother, had been a mere pittance. No, the woman owed her for Mom’s untimely, sauce-induced demise, brought on by the free time the kiss-off money had afforded her after Merriweather’s attorneys had swooped in to take custody of Livvy.

Livvy shoved that nightmare back into the farthest closet of her mind. The worst part had been that she’d known what was going on—even at the tender age of five when they’d packed her off. If only Merriweather had given her a semblance of love. Hell, pity would’ve been something, but the silent indifference had gnawed at her all those years. Why wasn’t she good enough to be called a Martinson? What sin had she committed? Why take the anger at her parents out on her, an innocent victim from all parties involved?

There’d been no answers, and after a while Livvy had stopped asking the questions. Stopped writing letters. Stopped hoping to belong. Instead, she’d found the determination in her soul to make a different life for herself. And once all the
I
s were dotted and
T
s crossed, she’d have the money to invest in proper facilities and equipment to make her organic bakery products and to give herself the life she’d always wanted, Martinsons be damned.

The archway into the banquet hall, aka the dining room, took longer to traverse than the entire farmhouse where she lived.

“Memories?” A deep voice behind her yanked her from her thoughts.

The toe of one of her boots caught the heel of the other.
Memories
. “I guess you could call them that.”

The arched door leading to the kitchen was ajar.
Tsk-tsk
, indeed. Jeeves/Rupert had never allowed the door to be unlatched. Why, the kitchen was where
the help
did all the nasty work. He’d always made sure to secure that door whenever she’d skipped in for a treat.

Or maybe he’d been under orders to keep her contained. Who knew, but with the family’s wish to keep the heir’s
little
indiscretion
from becoming tabloid fodder, it certainly was feasible.

Livvy pushed the door open the rest of the way.

Oh, hell.
The kitchen had been updated.

She stepped onto the polished oak floor that was a couple hundred years old and covered now by what must be a dozen coats of polyurethane. Wax didn’t give off that shine. Wax also wouldn’t protect the floor from the thousands of pounds of stainless steel appliances now ringing the walls. Sub-Zero, Wolf, Bosch, Viking . . . The high-end products gleamed at her. Granite countertops, speckled black, with double ogee edges. A baking-level prep counter with a wagon wheel of copper pots hanging overhead. Mini fridges and ice maker. Sinks of all sizes, and two six-burner commercial-grade ranges.

The original room-sized fireplace still graced the back wall, and through the window on the back door she saw the herb garden was still thriving.

With all this new equipment and the best of the old kitchen, she could have the perfect place to make her breads and pies. It’d be heavenly to have this much workspace, and with the herb garden so well established, she’d have her own organically grown ingredients to be able to—

Livvy stopped mid-stride. She had to halt this train of thought before it left the station. The only thing she’d
be able to
do was sell the place. Period. She didn’t need a
thing
from her grandmother and the family that had all but disowned her the moment she’d been conceived, except the money the sale of their pride and joy would bring.

S
EAN
tried not to bump into her when she stopped, but his momentum carried him forward. He caught her as she stumbled. “Olivia? What’s wrong?”

Not a damn thing,
his hormones answered. She smelled of lavender soap and apples and something way too feminine for his state of mind.

“Huh?” She swung around to look at him, a wine-colored curl catching on the tip of her nose, and Sean found himself drawn to her eyes.

Confused, vulnerable, a little lost . . . Then there was a sexy quirk to a kissable mouth that was entirely too close for his comfort—

Back away from the enemy, Manley.

His brain was on board with that, but the rest of him was staging a mutiny. Back away? Right.

“Sean?” Her voice was soft as she licked her lips, her slim hand gripping his arm.

If his name were whispered like that in the middle of the night, he’d have no defense.

“Did you want something?” She peered up into his eyes.

Oh, he wanted all right.

“Uh, lunch. You want lunch?” Damn these flimsy pants—his body’s reaction wasn’t easy to hide. Mac really needed to change the uniform. Jeans would be better.

Or that suit of armor.

He headed to the counter, hoping the granite would cool him down. But then he looked back at her, her hair fanning out as she spun around to follow him, her curls tumbling over one shoulder to drape across the prominent curve of her breast, and Sean found himself battling the granite for the title of Hardest Thing In The Kitchen.

He strode to the Sub-Zero fridge, turned his back to Olivia, and hoped an arctic blast would take care of the problem—but,
of course,
the problem
followed him over.

“Is food shopping on your list of duties?” She peered around him.

The half-empty jar of ketchup, two eggs, and a hot dog mocked him. “I was planning to get to it,” he spat out. “No one sent a list of your likes and dislikes, Olivia, so I figured I’d wait for you to get here. I think there are a few frozen dinners in the freezer.”

“The name’s Livvy. Unless you want to go back to being Pool Boy.”
Livvy
opened the upright freezer beside the fridge. “A chicken pot pie?” She picked up the package. Perfectly arched eyebrows headed skyward as she looked at him. “This is what you’re subsisting on? Forty grams of fat, sodium tripolyphosphate, monosodium glutamate, liquid and partially hydrogenated soybean oil, mono and diglycerides, sodium benzoate . . . Do you want me to continue reading about the clogging of your arteries?”

“What are you, some kind of a health nut?”

“I find that term extremely offensive, you know.” She crossed her arms, making her curves all the more prominent. “Just because I’ve decided not to fill my body full of chemicals doesn’t mean I’m nuts. People who eat additives, preservatives, and whatever other poisons big-time corporations put into their food”—she punctuated the last word with air quotes—“are the crazy ones.”

“So what do you eat? Lettuce and tofu?”

“No. I eat normally. And so do my customers. All natural products with no hormones, no preservatives, no pesticides, just food as nature intended. Organic.”

Customers. Ah, yes. Princess Olivia Bombshell Carolla—
Livvy
—was a wannabe farmer. Sean had had a good laugh over that. A co-op living, organic baker-slash-farmer had inherited the Martinson fortune; a fortune made of and invested in any number of companies that’d have her running for the hills when she read their portfolio.

He pulled a carton off the shelf. “You’re welcome to the eggs.”

“Styrofoam? Why not just toss mercury into the ground while you’re at it?” She spun around, giving him a quick glimpse of sexy leg beneath the skirt. “Do you have any idea—oh! They’re here!”

Sean shook his head at the change of subject. It was like trying to follow a hummingbird as it darted from flower to flower. “Who’s here?”

“My babies!” She skipped over to the back door, flinging it open with no thought to the chink the brass handle would put in the countertop behind it.

Sean never moved so fast in his life. Mrs. Martinson had spent a small fortune—no, make that a
large
fortune—updating this kitchen. It was one room he wasn’t going to have to touch when he took over. As long as he could keep Livvy from destroying it until he got her out of here.

But . . .
babies
? She had
kids
?

Sean shook his head. That detective had a lot to answer for. Nowhere had the guy made mention of children. Christ. How the hell was he supposed to throw a woman with kids out of their ancestral home?