“A thousand?”
“Ha. Ha. Ha,” she said with great sarcasm.
“What then? What do you want most in the world?”
“The finest education the world has to offer for my son.”
“Cambridge,” he said automatically.
“Anywhere, just so it’s the best.”
“You want me to give your son four years at Cambridge University for one week’s cooking? You’re talking thousands.”
“Not four years. Freshman to PhD.”
At that Frank laughed. “You, lady, are crazy,” he said, turning away from her.
She stopped walking and turned to look at his back. “I saw wild strawberries up here. I make French crepes so light you can read through them. And I brought fresh cream to be whipped and drenched in strawberries, then rolled in a crepe. I make a rabbit stew that takes all day long to cook. It’s flavored with wild sage. I saw some ducks on a pond near here, and you would not believe what I can do with a duck and tea leaves.”
Frank had stopped walking.
“But then you’re not interested, are you, Mr. Billionaire? I bet you could toast hundred-dollar bills on a stick over the fire and they would no doubt taste yummy.”
He turned back to her. “Potatoes?”
“Tiny ones buried under the fire coals all day so they’re soft and mushy, then drizzled with butter and parsley.”
He took a step toward her. When he spoke, his voice was low. “I saw bags of flour.”
“I make biscuits flavored with honey for breakfast and bread touched with dill for dinner.”
He took another step toward her. “PhD?”
“Yes,” she said firmly, thinking of Eli in that venerable school and how much he’d love it. “PhD.”
“All right,” he said, as though it were the most difficult thing he’d ever agreed to.
“I want it in writing.”
“Yes, of course. Now, shall we return to the cabin?”
“Certainly.” With her head held high, she started to walk past him, but he pulled aside a curtain of bushes. “Might I suggest that this way would be quicker?”
Once again, not a hundred yards away, was the cabin.
As she walked past him, her nose in the air, he said, “Thank heaven your cooking is better than your sense of direction.”
“Thank heaven you have money enough to buy what you want.”
She didn’t see the way he frowned as she continued walking. If the truth were told, Frank Taggert wasn’t used to being around women who didn’t fawn over him. Between his good looks and his money, he found he was quite irresistible to women.
But then he usually didn’t have anything to do with women like this one. Most of the women he escorted were the long-legged, perfect sort, the kind who wanted sparkling baubles and nothing else from him. He’d found that if he grew bored with one of them, if he gave her enough jewelry, she soon dried her tears.
But this one had had a chance at a great deal of money and she’d asked for something for someone other than herself.
As he watched her walk back to the cabin, he wondered about her husband. What was he like to allow his wife to go alone into the mountains to take care of another man?
Once he was inside the cabin, he sat down hungrily at the table and waited while she served the meal she’d cooked. She made herself a plate and took it into the living area, put it on the heavy pine coffee table, sat on the floor, and began to eat as she watched the fire.
Annoyed, and with great difficulty because he was one-handed, he picked up his plate and flatware and moved it to the coffee table. He’d no more than sat down when she lifted her plate and took it to the table.
“Why did you do that?” he asked, greatly annoyed.
“The hired help doesn’t eat with Mr. Billionaire.”
“Would you stop calling me that? My name is Frank.”
“I know that, Mr. Taggert. But what is my name?”
For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. But then, considering the circumstances under which she’d told him her name, his lack of memory was understandable. “I don’t remember,” he said.
“Mrs. Stowe,” she answered, “and I was hired as your nurse.”
She was behind him, seated at the dining table, and when he twisted around, causing pain to shoot through his shoulder, he saw that she had placed herself with her back to him. Frowning in annoyance, he moved to the table across from her.
“Would you mind telling me who hired you?” he asked. The chicken was indeed delicious, and he thought a week away from canned food was going to be worth sending some kid to school—well, almost, anyway. Maybe he could write off the expense as charity. This could be advantageous tax-wise if he—
“Your brother.”
Frank nearly choked. “My brother hired you? Which one?”
She still refused to look at him, but he could see her shoulders stiffen. They weren’t fashionably square shoulders, but rather round and soft.
“It seems to me, Mr. Taggert,” she said, “that a rather unpleasant joke has been played on you. I would hate to think that you had more than one brother who would have such animosity toward you as to instigate such a joke.”
Frank well knew that each of his brothers would delight in playing any possible trick on him, but he didn’t tell her that.
After her remark about his brothers he didn’t speak again but tried to give his attention to the food. She wasn’t going to put his French chef out of business, but there was a comforting, homey flavor to the food, and the portions were man-sized. In his house in Denver, his apartment in New York, and his flat in London, each of his chefs served calorie-controlled meals to ensure Frank’s trim physique.
She finished eating, then silently cleared her place and his, while Frank, feeling deliciously full, moved to the couch and watched the fire. He’d never been a man who smoked, but when she served him a tiny cup of excellent coffee, he almost wished he had a cigar. “And a plump woman to share my bed,” as his father used to say.
Relaxed, drowsy, he watched the woman as she moved about the room, straightening things. But then she stood on a chair and drove a nail into the ceiling beam that ran between the two beds. “What are you doing?”
“Making separate rooms,” she answered. “Or as close as I can come to it.”
“I assure you, Mrs. Stowe, that that is not necessary. I have no intention of imposing myself on you.”
“You’ve made yourself clear as to your thoughts of my . . . of my feminine appeal, shall we say?” She drove another nail, then tied a heavy cotton rope from one nail to another.
Aghast, Frank watched her drape spare blankets over the rope, effectively creating a solid boundary between the two beds. He stood up. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me. You see, Mr. Billionaire, I don’t like you. I don’t like you at all, and I’m not sure anyone else in the world does either. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a bath.”
Minutes later, Miranda stepped into a tub of water so hot it made her toes hurt, but she needed the warmth, needed the heat to thaw her heart. Being near Frank Taggert was like standing near an iceberg. She wondered if he had ever had any human warmth in him, whether he’d ever loved anyone. She’d like to think he was like one of her romantic heroes: wounded by some callous woman, and now his cold exterior protected a soft, loving heart.
She almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of the idea. All evening he’d been watching her speculatively; she could feel his eyes even through her back. He seemed to be trying to decide where she belonged in the world. Rather like an accountant would try to figure out where an expense should be placed.
“At least Leslie had passion,” she whispered, lying back in the tub. “He lied with passion, committed adultery with
passion, made money with passion.” But when she looked into this Frank Taggert’s eyes, she saw nothing. He would never lie to a woman about where he’d spent the night because he’d never care whether or not she was hurt by his infidelity.
All in all, she thought it was better not to think about Mr. Billionaire. With longing, she wondered what Eli and Chelsea were doing tonight. Would Eli eat properly if she wasn’t there? Would he ever turn off his computer and go to bed if she didn’t make him? Would he get seasick? Would—?
She had to stop thinking about her son or she’d cry from missing him. It suddenly dawned on her that whoever had played a joke on Frank Taggert had inadvertently also played one on her. Obviously, someone thought that sending a plain, ordinary woman such as she was to spend a week with a handsome, sophisticated, rich man like Mr. Taggert was the most hilarious of jokes.
Getting out of the tub, she dried off, then opened her night case to get her flannel gown and old bathrobe. At the sight of the garments inside, she felt a momentary panic. These were not her clothes. When she saw the Dior label on the beautiful pink nightgown, she almost swooned. Pulling it out, she saw that it was a peignoir set, made of the finest Egyptian cotton, the bodice covered with tiny pink silk roses. The matching robe was diaphanous and nearly transparent. It didn’t take a brain like Eli’s to see that this was not something a woman who was merely a housekeeper would wear.
Wrapping a towel about herself to cover the beautiful gown and robe, she rushed out of the room, past the bed on which Frank Taggert sat, scurried behind the blanket partition, and began to rummage in her not-yet-unpacked suitcase for her own clothes.
“Is there a problem?” he asked from behind his side of the blanket.
“No, of course not. What could be the problem?” She went through her bags frantically, but nothing was familiar. If a 1930s-era movie star were going to spend a week in the Rockies, these were the clothes she would have worn. But Miranda had never worn clothes made of silk or linen, or a wool so soft you could use it as a powder puff.
She knew herself to normally be a soft-tempered person. After all, she’d had to put up with Leslie’s shenanigans for years. But this was too much!
Throwing aside the blanket room divider, three cashmere sweaters in her hand, she pushed them toward Frank Taggert. “I want to know exactly what is going on. Why am I here? Whose clothes are these?”
Sitting on the side of the bed, Frank was trying to unlace his boots with one hand. “Tell me, Mrs. Stowe, are you married?”
“Divorced.”
“Yes, I think I am beginning to understand. I come from a large family that is constantly reproducing itself. I believe they have decided I should do the same.”
“You—?” In shock, Miranda sat down on the edge of her bed. “They have . . . You mean, they want us to . . .”
“Yes. At least that’s my guess.”
“Your . . . guess?” She swallowed. “My guess is that your family sent me here because the idea of a woman like me with a man like you is a great joke.”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. While she’d been speaking, he’d continued to work at untying his bootlaces. So far he’d not managed to even loosen the knot.
Not even thinking about what she was doing and certainly not what she was wearing, Miranda knelt before him and untied his laces, then pulled off his boots. “I don’t mean to pry,” she said as she removed his socks. Then, just as she did for Eli and used to do for Leslie, she gave each foot a quick massage. “But why would they choose someone like me? With your looks and money, you could have anyone.”
“My family would like you. You look like a poster illustration for fertility.”
She had her hands on his shirt collar as she began to unbutton it. “A what?”
“A symbol of fertility. A paean to motherhood. I’m willing to bet that this son of yours is your whole life.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” she asked defensively.
“Nothing whatever if that’s what you choose to do.”
She was helping him out of his shirt. “What better life is there for a woman than to dedicate herself to her children?”
“You have more than one child?”
“No,” she said sadly, then saw that his eyes seemed to say: I knew it. “So your brother sent me up here in the hope that I would . . . would what, Mr. Taggert?”
“From the look of your gown, I’d say Mike did this, since his wife, Samantha, is the personification of a romantic heroine.”
“A romantic heroine?”
“Yes. All she wants out of life is to take care of Mike and their ever-growing brood of children.”
“You have not been reading what I have. Today, the heroines of romance novels want a career and control of their own lives and—”
“A husband and babies.”
“Perhaps. Stand up,” she ordered and began unfastening his trousers. She’d undressed many patients, and she was doing so now without thinking too much about the action.
“How many heroes have you read about who said, ‘I want to go to bed with you, but I don’t want to get married and I never want children’?” he asked.
“I guess normality is a requirement in a hero.”
“And to not want marriage and children is abnormal?”
She smiled coldly at him. “I’ve never met anyone like you, but I assume you are not married, never want to be, never will be, and will have no children. But then, if you did, you would only visit them by court order.”
She had him stripped to his undershorts and T-shirt and he was certainly in fine physical form, but she felt no more for him than she would have for a statue.
“What makes you think I have no wife? I could have married many times.” He sounded more curious than anything else.
“I’m sure you could have, but the only way a woman would marry you is for your money.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Maybe it was rotten of Miranda, but she felt a little thrill at having upset his calm. “You are not what a woman dreams of.”
“And what does a woman dream of, Mrs. Stowe?”
The thought of that relaxed Miranda as she pulled back the blankets on his bed. “She dreams of a man who is all hers, a man whose whole world revolves around their family. He might go out and solve world problems and be seen by everyone as magnificently strong, but when he’s at home, he puts his head on her lap and tells her he couldn’t have accomplished anything without her. And, most important, she knows he’s telling the truth. He needs her.”
“I see. A man who appears to be strong but is actually weak.”
She sighed. “You don’t see at all. Tell me, do you analyze everything? Take everything apart? Do you put it all into an account book?” She gave him a hard look. “What are you making your billions for?”
As she held back the covers, he stepped into bed. “I have many nieces and nephews, and I can assure you that my will is in order. If I should die tomorrow—”
“If you should die tomorrow, who will miss you?” she asked. “I mean, miss you?”
Suddenly she was very tired. Turning away from him, she pushed the blanket partition aside and went to her own bed. She had never felt so lonely in her life. Perhaps it was Eli’s going away to college, or maybe it was this man’s talk of her looking as though she should have many children. When Eli left home, she would be alone, and she didn’t think some man was going to come riding up to her front door on a black stallion and—
She didn’t think anymore but fell asleep.
When Frank heard the soft sounds of her sleeping, he got out of bed and went to the fire. Without seeming to think about what she was doing, she’d banked the fire before they went to bed.
In fact, Mrs. Stowe seemed to have done every good thing without conscious thought. It seemed to be natural to her. Whe
n he’d first entered the cabin, for a moment it was as though he’d been transported back to his childhood. The delicious smell of food, bits of clothing draped on the furniture, wildflowers in a vase, had brought it all back to him. He’d almost expected his many brothers and sisters to come running to him. And then his mother would call to him to please help her with . . . anything and everything.
His mother, overburdened with so many children and wanting to show that she could do everything herself, often said Frank was her “rock.” He was her helpmate, a child who never complained, never threw tantrums, who always shared. His father said Frank had been “born old.”
What none of them realized was how much Frank hid inside himself. He’d had to develop great inner strength to keep quiet and repress urges to run away and hide. Sometimes he wanted to scream, “I don’t want to take care of three toddlers. I want to be all by myself and read a book or look at the stars.” Gradually, being alone, being quiet, and having no little kids around him had become the ultimate goal of his life.
Frank threw a couple more logs on the fire, then sat down on the couch. He had achieved his goal so well that . . . Well, he’d almost become a joke to his family. His childhood had been inundated with sticky siblings leaping on him, trying to stick wet crackers in his ears. By the time he was twelve he could change a diaper with one hand while feeding strained carrots to another child.
But his adulthood was the opposite. Over the years his siblings had married and begun producing children of their own, and Frank had nearly run from them. He’d found that he had a talent for making money—and his ability to hide his true feelings had helped greatly. He had used what he earned to give himself an extremely orderly life. Peace. Calm. Quiet. It had all been such a glorious relief to him.
Until Eli, he thought. It was as though meeting the boy had unlocked something inside Frank. Eli wasn’t like Frank’s gregarious, laughing, rambunctious family. Eli was like Frank. They understood each other, thought alike, wanted the same things in life.
Frank found himself telling the boy things he’d never shared with anyone else. And Frank had begun to change. When he’d been shown his latest niece, her dad had laughed and said, “I know you’re not interested, so you don’t have to hold her.”