As You Wish (22 page)

“I did.” Patricia thought Mrs. Dudley might have thrown the arrangements out. Right now, she couldn’t even remember what they were. Probably roses. “I’ve only been back to work since Tuesday, and I’ve had a lot of catching up to do.”

“So how many spies do you have in the hospital?” Rita asked, balancing her iced-tea glass between her hands.

“Spies?” David turned to focus on her. His face shuttered.

“You said someone called you. Ipso facto, you have someone or several someones spying on her in the hospital. What are you trying to do, catch her having a torrid affair with Bruce?”

“Rita!” Both Patricia and Bruce objected at the same time.

“I didn’t say I would have a problem with it. He is hot.” Rita grinned, but the set of her features said she would kill both of them.

David couldn’t see that, though. “Bruce isn’t Patricia’s type,” he informed Rita.

“Why? Because you are?”

“I think I am.” David reached over and appropriated Patricia’s hand. “We share a similar background, interests, and ambition.”

“Really? You want to be a doctor when you grow up too?”

David’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re not—”

“White?”

Patricia would have gasped if she’d been able to breathe. Through the grip of his fingers, she could tell David was inches from losing his temper.

“I think the word you’re looking for is Spic,” Rita continued. “Damn Krauts. World War Two has been over for decades, and they still think they rule the world. Little tip, your side lost.” She ignored Patricia’s blonde hair and Bruce’s European features.

“I’ll have you know, I meant no such thing. I am not a racist,” David said. His tone implied Rita was. Patricia reflected that with Ryan it would have been a growl threatening enough to make even Rita pause, but with David it sounded more like a whine that would goad her on. “I only meant that Patricia and I come from a very similar place in society.”

“Oh dear, then I shall have to break out my Sunday best for afternoon tea.”

“Rita, please,” Patricia murmured. “This helps nothing.”

“What is your problem? That time of the month?” David snapped, drowning out Patricia’s voice.

Bruce tensed as if he might be called on to grab Rita and haul her off David, which he might after such a clumsy dig.

“No,” Rita said. “It’s that you’re a jackass.”

David clenched his fists on the table. “How dare you?”

“Speak to my betters like that? I wouldn’t, but you’re not one of my betters. You don’t even rate as an equal.”

Patricia wondered if she heard the hush in the cafeteria or if it was psychological. It felt like everyone should be watching. It also felt like the kind of story that would turn into a bad joke. A doctor and a lawyer get into a fight in the hospital cafeteria. Her stomach churned. “Please, you two. Calm down,” she said, trying to get some volume in her voice. “You are both part of my life, and I would like you to be friends.”

“Part of your life?” Rita objected. “You aren’t really thinking about marrying this clown, are you?”

“It’s—” Patricia bit the inside of her lip and glanced at David. Triumph lit David’s eyes. She didn’t have to look at Rita to know the depth of her horror. For Ryan, she imagined a couple of expressions. Miserable and uncaring competed evenly. Why would he care about who she married if he didn’t care about her? Of course, it had to be great fun to be screwing the lady of the manor. He might be disappointed by the end of that. And David did need her, even if it was just for her name. “It’s still a distinct possibility.”

“A distinct possibility?” David repeated aghast. “You realize half the city thinks we’re already engaged.”

“Only the half I haven’t gotten to. I’ve been working very hard to stop those vicious rumors, you know,” Rita said. “I’m considering a full-page ad in the newspaper.”

Patricia put up her hand before Rita said anything else. “It is still my decision, and I haven’t committed yet.”

“You’d have to be committed to marry him. I’ll order the psych evaluation personally,” Rita grumbled.

A phone rang. All four of them reached for their cells.

“It’s me.” Patricia opened her phone and pressed the receive button. “Hello?”

“Hello, Miss Patricia, am I disturbing you?”

Patricia felt a comforting and disconcerting flush of heat at Ryan’s voice. “No, Ryan, I was just having some lunch.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you Miss Beatrice was coming to town for the ball.”

“Great Aunt Beatrice?” Patricia bit her cheek again. With her great aunt in the house, all her activities with Ryan would end. It was too cold now to meet in the garden or the potting shed, and she didn’t know if he would want her in his house.

“She called while we were sick, and I forgot to tell you.”

“That’s all right. When is she coming?”

“I picked her up at the airport this morning. Mrs. Dudley prepared her room while I went after her. I’m sorry, Miss Patricia. I just now got away to call you.”

“She’s there now?”

“Yes, Miss Patricia.”

“Ryan, you don’t have to call me that.” Three pairs of eyes watched her across the table. It wasn’t much better than the eyes of the entire cafeteria watching David and Rita fight.

“Miss Patricia?” He chuckled, and the sound trilled down her spine. “Miss Beatrice is very old-fashioned and very blunt. If I call you by your given name, she’ll want to know if we’re sleeping together.”

Patricia swallowed, her mind conjuring a memory. The worst part was, Aunt Beatrice would say just that, and if she said it in front of Patricia, she would know the truth by the color of her niece’s face.

“I thought I should get into practice.”

“Good idea,” Patricia said. “Is she alone in the house now?”

“She said she would be fine, and she gets around very well.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t worry, Princess. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“I thought it was Miss Patricia now,” she asked, keeping her gaze on her lap. She was already going to have to do some explaining later.

“It is. Miss Patricia.” He said it with the same sarcastic intonation.

Patricia licked her lips. She needed to get out of this conversation before something slipped. She already felt dampness between her legs, and Aunt Beatrice would be in the house for weeks. “All right, if you can keep an eye on her. I’ll try to come home early.”

“I’ve been elected to cook for the duration of her stay, so I may be inside the house when you get home.”

“Do you need me to bring anything home so you can make dinner?”

“No, Miss Patricia. Mrs. Dudley’s nephew helped plan some menus for you, and he’s getting the groceries—he just came through the gates.”

Between Mrs. Dudley, Mrs. Dudley’s nephew, Ryan, and the social secretary she needed to hire to handle the nonprofit crowd, Patricia was developing a staff. “Good. I’ll see you tonight when I get home. Good-bye, Ryan.”

“Good-bye, Miss Patricia.”

Patricia closed her phone and tried to empty her mind of the memory of the touch of his hands and the smell of his skin before looking up. “It seems even my great aunt in Boca Raton heard about the masquerade ball, and she’s come to town for the event.”

“And your guard dog forgot to tell you,” David sniped.

“Gardener,” Rita corrected.

“Caretaker,” Patricia corrected again.

“Oh, that’s right. He was taking very good care of you while you were sick.” Rita grinned.

David folded his hands on the table. “I really didn’t approve of that, Patricia. I don’t think you should have had that strange man in your house while you were incapacitated. He could have stolen something.”

Patricia opened her mouth to announce that Ryan had been too sick to steal anything, but Bruce saved her from that gaffe.

“And you were running over to take care of her?” Bruce asked before Rita could start on him again. Bruce didn’t understand germaphobes anyway.

David turned on this new adversary. “I’ll have you know, I was very busy.”

“But not so busy that you couldn’t come charging to the hospital as soon as you heard Patricia was back,” Rita pointed out. She turned to Bruce. “He must be more afraid of Ryan than he is of a big bad staph infection.”

David lifted his hands off the table and put them in his lap before he spoke again. “I just don’t think that man is entirely kosher. I think you should get rid of him, Patricia. Fire him.”

“Ryan is nonnegotiable, David,” Patricia said. Rita sat back in her chair. Hopefully, Patricia would be able to slip out before Rita cornered her for the explanation she would want. “You do not make decisions about who does and who does not work for the estate.”

“He has to be some kind of criminal, the way he acts.”

“There was a complete background check done on him by the estate lawyers. He has been an exemplary employee for seven years, and you will make no moves to have him dismissed.” Her spine stiffened. She was headed for what Rita called the full regal treatment, but David had deserved this for a long time. How dare he dig into her personal life?

“He’s hiding something,” David insisted.

“He’s not the only one, is he, David?” Bruce asked.

David glared at Bruce. His neck turned bright red. He opened his mouth to fire something back but closed it again. “Fine. I’m leaving. Patricia, may I stop by tonight and visit you and your Great Aunt Beatrice?”

“Not tonight. She might be tired from the trip. How about tomorrow? I’m off, and I can spend the day with her.”

David stood and leaned over to kiss Patricia’s cheek. “I’ll call you, sweetheart.” He swept away from the table without another word for Rita or Bruce.

“Jesus, Trish, you can’t still be thinking about marrying that rat, can you?” Rita hissed as David walked out the cafeteria doors.

“Rita, he is right about one thing. There are certain expectations for me, and one of them happens to be that I will marry well.”

“Marry well, not marry a weasel. Besides, it’s not the seventeenth century anymore.” She turned to Bruce. “And you. What do you know that he’s trying to hide?”

Bruce coughed. “I just took a lucky guess. I knew a guy who was in the same fraternity with him in college, who told me he was sleeping with everything that would let him then. I just took a gamble that things hadn’t changed.” Bruce coughed again. “I’ll do some more digging if you want.”

“Aren’t you just the best boy in the world?” Rita gave him a loud, smacking kiss on the cheek.

Bruce stood up and grabbed his tray. “I have to go.”

Rita seized his arm. “Tonight?”

He smiled at her before walking away.

Rita stared until he left the room. Patricia prepared herself to be grilled about her conversation with Ryan, but when Rita turned around, she had an almost stunned expression of happiness on her face. “Isn’t he just the cutest thing in the world? Do you think he’d totally shit his pants if I asked him to marry me?”

* * * *

Patricia parked in the garage much later than expected, hoping someone had saved her some dinner. She had had only one appointment that afternoon, but as she was leaving, an emergency had stopped her.

“Aunt Beatrice?” she called when she walked in the front door.

Ryan met her in the foyer. “She’s in the library, looking at the calendar. Several ladies called about coming by. I think we’re hosting a tea on Sunday, and David is coming to dinner tomorrow night.” He took her coat. “I have some dinner for you. Do you want me to warm it up and bring it to the library?”

Patricia rubbed her neck. “Thank you, Ryan. I didn’t realize you would be such a good butler.”

He bowed. “Thank you, ma’am.” When he straightened again, he had a mischievous smile playing on his lips, and he took a step closer.

Patricia’s heart pounded with his nearness. The deep masculine scent of him filled her with longing. She’d been bothered all day by the idea that he might be sleeping with other women. Now she couldn’t remember why that was a problem. As long as he deigned to give her some of his attention, who cared where else it went? “Ryan,” she moaned.

“Yes, Princess?” He leaned closer, looming over her. He backed her up against the door without touching her, standing so close she could feel his body heat.

“Would you… I—” She couldn’t breathe. Her skin tingled in anticipation of his touch. His lips hovered inches above hers. She flattened her hands on the wood behind her, closing her eyes in surrender.

The sharp ring of a bell cut between them.

“Miss Beatrice is calling,” Ryan murmured. His eyes were glazed. He blinked and stepped back. “I’ll bring your dinner to the library.”

Patricia wanted to slither down the door into a puddle. Never had she allowed her body to rule her this way. She worked through colds and sore muscles. Kept alert when all she wanted was sleep. Remained calm and gracious when others were seething with fury or lust or hysteria. At one point, she’d even become convinced she was emotionally flawed. That she wasn’t so much in control of her emotions, but that she didn’t have them the way other people did.

Ryan cut through that. One look from him and twenty-eight years of bottled emotions boiled over. And it felt really good.

Patricia straightened and smoothed her skirt. She hurried to change into jeans and a sweater, arriving in the library at the same time as Ryan, who was carrying her dinner on a silver tray.

Aunt Beatrice peered up with a twinkle in her eye. She was tan and wrinkled, looking both older and healthier than God. “Patricia, dearest, you’ve made me so happy. I feared when I had that ballroom closed after your parents died, it would never be opened again. I feel like a little girl again.” She held out her hand, and despite her ninety-seven years, it didn’t tremble at all. “I remember when Mama and Papa held my debutante ball like it was yesterday. Your grandfather was so jealous because he wasn’t allowed to stay up late.” She giggled. “He sat at the top of the stairs watching everyone come and go until his nanny made him go to bed.”

Patricia sat down in the chair Ryan set for her at the side of the desk. “What are you doing there?” she asked. Dinner was pasta primavera, and it looked like he had made hers fresh.