Falling for the Heiress
She had the distinct impression that he was mentally shaking his head at her. At that moment, she really didn’t care. She would not have considered an ex-Marine who looked capable of bench-pressing her mom’s Mercedes to know his way around the kitchen. Since he did, she intended to take full advantage of his knowledge.
She also wanted to know how he’d acquired it.
“Where did you learn how to cook?”
“From my mom.”
“Is she a chef?”
“She’s first violin with the Philadelphia Symphony. You need to put a few tablespoons of olive oil in this,” he said, clearly changing the subject as he set a pot on the eight-burner stove in the middle of the island. “If we were doing this right, you’d put the garlic in next, then open the tomatoes and add them. Since we’re not, just add the tomatoes to the oil.”
“How much?”
“The whole can.”
“Oil, I mean.”
“A few tablespoons,” he repeated. “It’s a matter of taste. A little more or less won’t hurt.”
“Give me exact.”
With a pen poised above a notepad, she looked much as he imagined a young student might waiting for a teacher to proceed. Yet it wasn’t her expectation that struck him as he found measuring spoons for her and she dutifully wrote out his instructions before adding the ingredients precisely as he instructed. It was how young she looked each time she glanced up to make sure she’d done the step correctly or to ask what came next, how very innocent and how incredibly, unbelievably tempting.
The texture of her skin all but invited a man’s touch. Her lush lips fairly begged to be kissed. And a man would have to be dead not to notice the appealing concern in her lovely dark eyes when an uncertain, “Mommy?” had her abandoning everything to turn to the hallway.
“I’m right here,” she called. “Will that be all right?” she asked with a quick glance back at the pot.
He’d no sooner told her he would watch it than she headed for the sleepy-looking child who’d wandered toward the sound of her voice.
She scooped him up and turned, smiling, with him in her arms.
Parker had known beautiful women. They’d been arm candy for rich clients or the men’s daughters, wives or mistresses. He’d guarded female rock stars and models and on occasion found himself in the unenviable position of having to decline advances he wouldn’t have minded pursuing, on a purely recreational basis, had company policy not frowned on fraternization.
But recalling company policy wasn’t necessary as he deliberately dismissed the sharp physical pull he felt toward Tess. It wasn’t even necessary to remind himself that she was Cord Kendrick’s little sister and that the only reason he’d recommended Parker was because he knew he could trust him.
Shifting his attention to the boy as she set him down and took his hand, all Parker had to do was remind himself that she had robbed the child of a relationship with his natural father.
That alone was enough to dampen the heat.
The little boy with the button nose and big brown eyes stared at him uneasily. A tuft of his cornsilk hair stuck up in back.
His mom smoothed it down.
Snagging his slacks above his knees, Parker crouched down to bring himself more or less to the child’s level.
“Great shirt,” he said, smiling at the logo above the tiny pocket. “Do you play soccer?”
Smashed against his mom’s leg, Mikey nodded. “I have a ball.”
“You do?”
Fine blond hair brushed his eyebrows as he gave a vigorous nod.
“You’ll have to show it to me sometime.”
Without moving from where his arm wrapped his mom’s leg, he tipped back his head and looked up at her. “Do I have my soccer ball?”
“It’s not unpacked yet.”
“Can I show it to him when it is?”
“If Mr. Parker wants to see it.”
Parker gave the boy a wink.
Mikey grinned.
Planting his hands on his knees, Parker rose to tower over them both.
“That can simmer for a while,” he said, nodding toward her creation. With the little boy looking a little less wary of him, Parker pulled his professionalism back into place. “Where do you plan to eat?”
“It’s so nice outside, I thought we’d eat out there. Unless you’d prefer the dining room,” she offered, much as she might to a guest.
He was not a guest. He was her employee. “I’ll eat at the staff table.” Distance seemed prudent. So did boundaries. “Why don’t you show me around the house now?”
The unexpected ease Tess had started to feel with him vanished like smoke in a stiff wind. She had just been quite pointedly reminded that there were certain distances to maintain. Certain protocols to follow. She had thought they would eat together simply because it was only the three of them and it hadn’t seemed right that he should eat alone. Especially since he’d shown her how to prepare the meal.
The reserve he had just pulled into place brought a tug of embarrassment. The way his manner changed so quickly almost made it seem as if he thought she’d been coming on to him. She wasn’t sure she’d know how to come on to a guy even if she wanted to. Despite what Brad had told the world about her supposed inability to settle for one man, she was nowhere near as experienced as he’d portrayed her to be. Certainly not as experienced as the press had assumed in its relentless attempt to discover her nonexistent lovers.
It hadn’t helped that one enterprising reporter claimed to have unearthed two of them, then gone on to explain that they had refused to go public out of respect for how special the relationships had been. It had been the sort of tabloid treachery that couldn’t be refuted without adding fuel to the fire but fed the gossip and scandal just the same.
Hating where her thoughts had gone, she straightened her shoulders, smiled politely and took her son by the hand. Reenergized, Mikey could inadvertently do serious damage to her mother’s Mings. The large, ornate vases flanking the foyer staircases had survived for over four hundred years. Not only her mother but museum directors and antique dealers all over the country would weep to discover that in his first couple of hours in the house a three-year-old whirlwind had caused a crack or a chip, much less destroyed one.
She really needed her own place.
Doing her best imitation of her sister’s cool poise, she moved through the swinging door leading to the family dining room. Mikey trotted along beside her, looking around to check out the man following them. She felt like a tour guide as she called off the names of the still and silent rooms they entered and left. The music salon, the living room that was seldom lived in at all and used mostly for entertaining, the library, her father’s study, her mother’s office. The sunroom. The atrium. The family room. The game room. And that was before Parker helped her carry up the luggage he’d brought in along with the bags Eddy had left beside them and they went through the two wings of bedroom suites upstairs
Parker said little as he lifted back drapes, checked out windows and doors and looked up at the ceiling in search of heaven only knew what. She had no idea how his mind worked. She knew only that it was with some relief that he disappeared to retrieve his own luggage from the SUV while she and Mikey dined on the first meal she’d ever made.
The fact that it was good—very good—filled her with a definite sort of relief.
At least her son wouldn’t starve.
She would have thanked Parker for that. She didn’t see him, though, until after she had dumped their dishes in the sink, too tired to tackle them that night, and he knocked on her bedroom door.
Chapter Three
Tess was now officially exhausted. She’d lost nearly an entire night’s sleep to stress before she’d left Luzandria and she hadn’t slept on the plane at all. Having crossed multiple time zones, she wasn’t even sure how many hours she’d gone without rest. It didn’t matter. She was just hoping that Mikey’s hour-long nap before dinner wouldn’t keep him up past a bedtime story when her search for his pajamas was interrupted by three short raps on the door.
Leaving her son and the open suitcases on the daybed in her sitting room, she hurried past the king bed that had replaced her old twin, tossed a throw pillow from the floor onto the piles of powder-blue and cream pillows already covering it and pulled open the door.
Parker filled her doorway. Even with his white shirt open at the collar and his sleeves rolled to just below his elbows, he looked much as he had when she’d seen him a while ago. Just as staid. Just as professional.
He held something small and black out to her.
“Use this if you need me at night. Just flip back this guard, punch this key and I’ll be here.”
She took what looked like a small pager.
“The doors are all locked and the alarm set. I’ll be in my room,” he continued, glancing to where Mikey peeked around the corner. A smile tugged at the sensual line of his mouth as he winked at her son. That smile and the ease in it was gone by the time he looked back to her. “I think that’s everything,” he concluded, “so I’ll say good night.”
Her hand shot out as he started to turn. “Wait,” she said, pulling back before she could overstep the employee-employer line and grab his muscular forearm. “Thank you for helping me tonight. With dinner,” she murmured, because she didn’t want him to think she hadn’t appreciated what he’d done. He hadn’t had to offer the assist.
Though his smile had died, she offered a weary one of her own. “And thanks for this.” She held up the device that would keep her linked to him while she slept. Peace of mind in the palm of her hand. “Rest well.”
For a moment he simply looked at her. Then, incredibly, she saw his facade crack. That fissure was pathetically slight. Yet, as his glance slowly skimmed her tired features, it was enough to allow a bit of warmth back into the cool blue of his eyes. “You rest well, too,” he said, sounding as if he knew how badly she needed sleep. With a nod he added, “See you in the morning,” and left her staring at his back.
The burgundy carpet with its Persian runner absorbed the sound of his footfall as he walked down the hall, past her brothers’ and sister’s old rooms, and headed down the curving stairs. Moments later the crystal chandelier lighting the foyer, the stairway and the first few yards of the long, wide hall went out.
Across from her, the buttery glow from the brass lamp on the credenza provided the hall’s only light. From below came the muffled sound of footsteps on marble and the click of the butler’s door as it closed.
Tess didn’t move. She just stood there, clutching what he’d given her and listening to the silence.
The enormous house suddenly felt as empty and lifeless as Tut’s tomb. Yet it wasn’t just the house that felt that way. Something about glimpsing a bit of warmth from a man who was a virtual stranger had somehow magnified what she’d felt for a long time now. Empty. Drained. And more lost than she would ever have thought possible.
She pulled a deep breath, pushed back her hair and turned to the room and the little boy now helping her by unpacking his suitcase himself.
She was just tired, she told herself, setting the pager on her nightstand before picking up the T-shirts that had fallen to the carpet. That was the only possible explanation for why she’d felt abandoned all over again when Parker had turned his back on her. He was her bodyguard. His job was to keep her from being harassed. It made no difference that he disturbed her in ways she couldn’t explain. It didn’t even matter that she’d sensed the disapproval he was so careful to mask. All that mattered was that with him around she felt…safe.
Mikey had no problem falling asleep. He awoke, however, at four o’clock the next morning. Since Tess was awake by then, too, she had him crawl into bed with her, where they cuddled and read their respective books until he complained of being hungry. By then it was five-fifteen and light outside, so she dressed herself, dressed him, and they both headed through the quiet house to the kitchen where she poured him a bowl of granola and a glass of milk and tried to figure out the coffeemaker.
At the palace, she could have rung for coffee and had it brought to her room or been served a cup from a silver pot on a terrace. Under normal circumstances at her parents’ home, in another hour or so she would have found a carafe of it on the sideboard in the family breakfast room. When she’d been married, the live-in help had made it or she’d gotten it from the Starbucks on the first floor of the building she’d lived in.
Never again would she take her morning coffee for granted.
Since staring at the machine with its levers and buttons provided few clues to its use, she searched the drawers in the hope of finding some sort of manual.
That exercise proved just as futile.
She knew she needed water and coffee, so she filled the glass carafe, found a bag of beans in the refrigerator and decided that she’d have to wait until Parker woke and ask him how to get the thing to work. In the meantime, with Mikey occupied on the kitchen floor with his robot that transformed into a tank, she would use the kitchen computer to check out the local real-estate market.
By six-thirty she’d found three houses she wanted Parker to call about, but even if he’d been up, it was too early for him to make an appointment with the Realtor.
By six thirty-five she’d entered the back hall to listen for some sign of life from the room he was using.
Mikey scrambled past her on his hands and knees, making motor noises as he pushed his tank. Turning around a few feet past Parker’s closed door, he stood up.
“What are you doing?” he wanted to know.
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Listening to see if Mr. Parker is up yet.”
“Why?”
“Because I need his help with something.”
“Why?
“Because I can’t do it myself.”
At three, he had no trouble comprehending that rationale. “I’ll look,” he announced and reached for the door.
Tess’s eyes widened, but she’d barely opened her mouth to tell him that checking wasn’t necessary before he’d pulled down on the handle and pushed the door open.
Parker wasn’t there.
She dropped to her knees in front of her too-helpful little boy. “Honey, we don’t do that.” Relief at not having found her bodyguard in bed collided with puzzlement over where he might be. She knew she hadn’t heard him leave. She’d been listening for him. “This is Mr. Parker’s private space. We don’t open closed doors. Okay?”
“Then how do we get back in our bedroom?”
“That door is all right. We don’t open doors to other people’s rooms. Not without permission.” Rising, she took his hand. “Let’s see if we can find him.”
If there was anything she knew about the guards she’d encountered, body or otherwise, it was that they were incredibly fit. They didn’t get or stay that way without work. Considering the amount of muscle Parker needed to keep in condition, she figured he might be in one of three places: out jogging or running, in the pool doing laps or in the workout room her mom had had equipped for her dad and his trainer after his doctor told him to get more exercise or deal with rehab after he had a heart attack.
If Parker was running, she’d just have to wait until he returned. If he was swimming or working out, he could tell her how to make the coffee machine work and they could each get on with their morning.
He wasn’t in the pool.
He was, however, in the mirrored exercise room off the sauna—wearing nothing but baggy athletic shorts and running shoes.
The counterpart to the pager he’d given her lay on the floor by the machine he was using. She noticed it only because it wasn’t far from his feet, which was where her glance landed after moving the entire length of his hard, honed body.
The sculpted muscles of his shoulders and back gleamed with sweat as he slowly lowered the incredible amount of weight he’d loaded onto the machine.
With Mikey heading for a big blue exercise ball on a yoga mat, she watched Parker rise from the black bench seat. Concern slashed his features as he reached for the blue hand towel on the arm of the machine and wiped it over his face.
“Is there a problem?”
She was staring. She knew that as she ventured into the mirror-lined room that reflected him from every angle. Yet she couldn’t seem to help it. She’d seen statues of magnificently sculpted warriors and gods in Rome and Florence. Perfect male bodies immortalized in marble and bronze. She just wasn’t accustomed to such a blatantly masculine male in the flesh. At least not a nearly naked one.
From six feet away, she jerked her attention from his powerful thighs to his beautifully carved stomach and chest. Feeling strangely warm when she met his eyes, she swallowed and gave a small shake of her head.
“Just a minor one,” she began, hugely relieved that she sounded quite normal. “I’m not sure how to use the coffeemaker. We’ve been up for a couple of hours and I could really use some caffeine.”
“Jet lag?”
“Major,” she murmured, remembering the elusive bit of warmth he’d allowed when they’d said good night. Or maybe what she’d glimpsed had been sympathy. “When you’re finished, will you show me how to make the coffee?” she asked, torn between wishing she could again see whatever it had been and knowing she’d only feel worse when that warmth was gone. “Or just tell me now and you can get back to what you’re doing. That way it’ll be ready for you, too, when you’re finished. If you drink it,” she hurried on. “Maybe you don’t put things like caffeine into your body. You obviously take good…care of it.”
Seconds ago, her glance had moved from his stomach to his pecs. It now faltered and hit the floor.
“I don’t abuse it,” he allowed, a little surprised by how flustered she suddenly seemed. “But I do allow certain indulgences.”
She cleared her throat. “Like coffee.”
“Among other things.”
He couldn’t remember ever having seen a woman blush. But there was no mistaking the pink beneath the peach blusher on her cheeks. That provocative bit of innocence didn’t fit at all with her sophistication. Or her reputation. It seemed to him that a woman who claimed she could never be happy with just one man would be accustomed to variety at most or, at least, the sight of a bare chest.
He wasn’t an immodest man. Or a particularly modest one, for that matter. But he was now conscious himself of his state of undress. Especially with her looking every inch the lady of the manor in a cocoa-colored sleeveless turtleneck, matching capri pants and touches of gold on her ears, neck and low-riding chain belt. There was a certain decorum to maintain between them. There were boundaries. Less than twelve hours ago he’d made a point of drawing them himself.
Sweat trickled down his chest. Taking an absent swipe at it, he was about to tell her he’d be upstairs in a few minutes when he tossed the rectangle of terry cloth over the machine. It promptly slid to the floor.
Swearing to himself, he bent to snatch it up. So did she. Her fingers had barely skimmed the terry cloth when his shoulder hit hers, she flew back and his hands shot out to catch her.
With his fingers curled around her bare upper arms, he jerked her upright.
He’d hauled her to within inches of his chest when he thought he heard her breath hitch. He knew for certain that his own stalled somewhere behind his breastbone. The breath he’d drawn had brought her scent, that combination of innocence and seduction that moved from his lungs to his blood at the speed of light, taunting nerves every centimeter of the way.
Beneath his palms, her skin felt like velvet. Her slender muscles were as taut as bowstrings. But it was the confusion he sensed in her when his glance moved from the temptation of her lush mouth and his eyes met hers that told him she wasn’t immune to him, either.
That was dangerous knowledge to possess.
No longer fearing she’d wind up on her appealing little backside, he reminded himself of all the reasons he needed to keep his thoughts off her body and his hands to himself and slowly released his grip.
The pink blushing her cheeks seemed even deeper as she crossed her arms and stepped back.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m… Yes, of course,” she assured him. “I’m…fine.”
Seeing how her hands covered where his had been, his brow pinched. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. No,” Tess insisted, suddenly conscious of what had his attention.
Apparently aware that she was holding in his heat, she dropped her hands and picked up what neither of them had managed to get. As if utterly determined to appear composed, she rose with the rectangle of blue terry cloth. “You dropped this.”
Impressed by her aplomb but not at all fooled by it, he lifted the towel from her hand and hung it around his neck. She’d already put another arm’s length between them.
“Give me twenty minutes and we’ll deal with the coffee.” The job, he reminded himself. Just focus on the job. “What’s the agenda today? You said you want to look at houses. Do you prefer me in a suit or more casual?”
“Casual. Thank you,” she murmured, then turned to collect her son from where the boy had draped his little body over the ball and coaxed him out the door.
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