Once in a Lifetime (2 page)

She held her breath while she waited for his reaction. Tara reached up for his hand, anxious, as usual, to get her way. “Come on,” she said, and he turned and let the child lead him down the stairs to the kitchen, where he stopped.

“Where’s the food, Henry?”

“We’re eating in the breakfast room tonight, Tel. New house rules.”

He walked to the breakfast room, still holding Tara’s hand, stared at the table and spun around. “What the… What’s all this for? You’re having a party? Before I get all the way in the
house, I see the place looks and smells like a woman’s boudoir. Now…”

She lifted her chin. “I’m sorry. Should I have set the table in the dining room? That seemed so formal.”

“What’s wrong with the kitchen?”

“It’s the
kitchen
. Besides, that table has only three chairs. Why do you have dining and breakfast rooms, if you don’t use them?”

Tara tugged at his hand. “Can we sit down?”

“Yeah.”

“What about Henry?” Alexis asked him. “Doesn’t he eat?”

“Ask him.” He let his impatience show and picked up a slice of jalapeño corn bread.

“We have to say grace,” Tara said and bowed her head.

To her amazement, Telford bowed his head and waited. Realizing that he wouldn’t say it, she did, but she knew Tara would be disappointed.

“I don’t like the pepper, Mummy.”

“Then eat the potato and the pork chop, and remember, you do not complain at the table.”

“Sorry, Mummy.”

Telford looked at her, and she wasn’t sure whether the fire in his eyes bespoke annoyance of or delight in her presence, though she suspected it was not the latter.

“You’ve been here, let’s see, half a day, and in that short time, you’ve managed to get dust flying all through the house, change my furniture around as well as my eating habits, and you’ve got the foyer looking like a girl’s dormitory. Ms. Stevenson, this is the home of three adult men and one grizzly cuss. We don’t need this.”

She leaned back, squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “‘Wanted: a woman of taste, intelligence and refinement as homemaker for three brothers.’ That’s what your ad said, and I was expecting a man who could appreciate that in a woman.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t ask you to come here and change my life.”

“Not to worry,” she said in as casual a tone as she could manage, though she couldn’t get her heart to settle down or her nerves to reassemble themselves. “You’ll be pleased, and it’s only for two years.”

He looked toward the ceiling in an air of resignation. “Two years. We’ll talk after we finish supper.”

She’d thought they were talking about it right then. “Whatever you say, sir.” She emphasized the “sir.”

“Call me Telford, and no nicknames please. Henry calls me Tel, but that’s because he can’t remember that I’m no longer six years old. I don’t accept that from anybody else. What do you want me to call you?”

“Alexis is fine.”

“And you can call me Tara.”

She watched Telford carefully to judge his reaction to her daughter. He smiled at the child—composed and at ease in her new environment with the strange man—and her heart raced a little faster. He may be annoyed, but he wouldn’t take it out on her child.

“How old are you, Tara?”

“I’m four, but I’ll be five this year. Mummy says I change ages every year, but only one time a year. Isn’t that right, Mummy?”

She nodded. If Telford and his brothers accepted them, Tara would thrive in the environment. She reached for some lemonade, but Telford took the pitcher from her and refilled her glass.

“This is a lot more than I thought I was getting, Alexis. With a child this age among us, Drake, Russ and I…well, we’ll have to learn a new way of living. Henry will, too.”

“I…I’m sorry, but I’ve burned all my bridges.”

He focused his gaze on her, and she could hardly withstand the intensity of it. There was no telling what those hazel-brown eyes were saying. “Then…all of us will have to give a little.”

Five minutes later, Drake Harrington breezed into the room.
“Man, what the hell’s going on here? Henry told me… Whoa!” He walked over to Alexis. “Things have definitely brightened up around here. First, I see flowers, and now I’m looking at a beauty who puts flowers to shame. I’m Drake, the handsome brother.” He shook her hand.

A smile swept across her face. She liked his sense of humor and answered in kind. “So far, that would describe the two I’ve met. Does the other one live up to this standard?”

Drake’s wide grin gave her a sense of well-being. “You mean old sourpuss? If Russ thought he was handsome, he’d do something to change that.”

“Tut-tut,” she said, barely able to contain a giggle. “You should show more respect for your older brother. Have you met my daughter?”

Drake’s eyes widened. “Your… Well, who are you?” he asked Tara. He hadn’t seen her, partly because he hadn’t expected to find her sitting there and partly because he’d glued his gaze on Alexis.

“Mr. Telford already asked me that.” She pushed her glass to Telford. “I drank my milk. Can I please have some lemonade?”

Telford looked at Alexis. “What do I do here? I don’t know what’s good for children.”

Drake glanced at her and, when she nodded, walked around the table, took the glass and half filled it with lemonade. “Now who’s your friend?”

With her face wreathed in smiles, she said, “Mr. Telford, ’cause I saw him first.”

“Whew,” Drake said, hunkered beside Tara’s chair. “How do you like that?” He got up. “Looks like this one’s yours, brother. I’d better eat before Henry gets antsy and doesn’t leave anything for me.”

Alexis noticed that Telford looked from her to Drake as if he expected something to happen. Then it dawned on her that he thought she’d fall for Drake, who obviously had a way with people and was probably famed as a ladies’ man. She looked at Telford steadily and with as much dispassion as
possible, hoping to convince him without speaking about it that, although she liked Drake at once, she was not and never would be attracted to him. By the time they finished the meal, Tara was leaning against Drake’s thigh and talking to him nonstop.

If only Telford will accept us. I can’t stay, contract or not, if he’s not happy having Tara here.

“After you get Tara to bed, we’ll talk,” Telford told Alexis after sipping the last of his coffee.

Drake winked at her. “I’m going for a ride. See you later.”

The two men stared as Tara ran to Henry. “Thank you for my supper, Mr. Henry,” she said, smiling up at him. “Mummy said you’re a nice cook.”

The man had the grace to show embarrassment, and to Alexis’s mind that was a good thing. He liked her daughter.

“You just tell old Henry what you like. I’ll fix it.”

“I like black-cherry ice cream,” she told him, smiled and clasped her hands in front of her.

“First thing you know, I won’t recognize the place,” Telford said before heading upstairs.

For the nth time, she read
Puss ’n Boots,
and for as many times, Tara applauded constantly. When at last Tara was asleep, Alexis walked down the stairs and into the family room or den, where Telford waited for her.

Telford stood beside the gray-stone fireplace with a snifter of cognac in his right hand. How was he going to turn his life around to fit what he considered an appropriate environment for a little girl? No woman had lived among those four men since his mother died fifteen years earlier. Flowers, open windows in the spring and the breeze wafting through, a properly set dining table and a beautiful woman at its head. It reminded him of his mother, whom he had loved and, on many occasions, hadn’t loved at all. He downed the Hennessy VSOP cognac and walked to the window that overlooked the garden, where he saw Drake dismount his horse and tether him.

“I wanted to be here when you started chewing out Alexis for bringing Tara,” Drake said as he entered the den. “And don’t say you hadn’t planned to do it. I have a feeling she’s just what we need.”

“Who? Alexis or a four-year-old?”

Drake pulled off his riding boots, kicked them under a chair and poured himself a snifter of cognac. “Both of ’em.”

“Sure. Alexis Stevenson and ten more would suit you perfectly, but don’t make a move on her. She’s the housekeeper.”

Drake crossed his unshod right foot over his knee, and a grin burst out on his face. “Wake up, man, I saw what was going on.”

Telford stuffed his hands into his trousers pockets and kicked at the brass andiron that graced the fireplace. “What do you mean by that?”

“Figure it out. Suffice it to say, she’s not one bit interested in me, nor I in her.”

“Glad to hear it. When you start after something you go like a bat out of hell.”

Drake grinned. “By the time you know I’m going after it, I’ve done some thinking about it and made up my mind. Ready to move. And when I take off, I make time.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. Say what you please, though, she can’t stay.”

His gaze caught Drake’s foot swinging at a slow, even rhythm. “She stays, Telford, because you know you aren’t going to ask her to leave. If you do, I’ll oppose you.”

Telford expelled a long breath. “Yeah, but she can’t make the rules in this house.”

“Let’s wait and see. I wouldn’t mind having a little order around here.”

“I suppose you’re planning to walk around fully clothed, remember to close the bathroom when you’re taking a shower and watch your mouth when you talk. Et cetera, et cetera.”

“Oh, hell. Yeah, I guess I’ll have to.”

“I was wondering where you were,” Alexis sang as she glided into the room.

The simplest dress a woman could put on, and she looked like a goddess, soft, feminine and…and…for Pete’s sake, what was he thinking? She refused the cognac he offered.

“Wine at dinner and a glass of champagne, occasionally, are my limit. You wanted to talk with me, Telford?”

Champagne, eh? “Yeah. Look,” he began, rubbing the back of his neck, “have a seat. This is no place for a small child.”

She sat forward, alert and anxious, and he had the feeling she’d spring out of the chair in a second. “Are you saying you want me to leave?”

Hearing her voice shake brought out his protective streak, and try as he would, he couldn’t forget that by her own account, she was vulnerable. “Can you imagine what it’s like for three men and a male cook living in a house this size together? On summer weekends, we hardly ever put on clothes, and I don’t ever remember wearing bathing trunks in that pool out back.”

Alexis stood. “Maybe you should have advertised for a homemaker with greatly impaired vision. You’ll have to be just as circumspect around me as around Tara.”

The howls of laughter from Drake accentuated Telford’s embarrassment. He hadn’t thought of that. He folded his arms against his chest, leaned against the wall and asked her, “Will I have to refrain from saying damn?”

“Yes, you will.” He realized he’d raised her temperature level when she walked to within a foot of where he stood. “And there are a few other things we have to straighten out. My contract says two years, and I intend to stay for at least that long. If you’re three blood brothers, you’re a family. Families eat their meals together, so you shouldn’t straggle in whenever it suits you. Say dinner’s at seven, all of you sit down to the table at seven. Or six, or whatever time you decide.”

“Anything else?” Telford asked her, and Drake eyed them the way a sleuth watches a suspected criminal.

“No hats on in the house or at the table, no boots beneath
chairs and no swearing. I don’t want my daughter conditioned to accept such behavior from men.”

She had hutzpah, all right, he had to hand it to her.

“Of course not,” he said, sarcasm lacing his words. “She might one day go to college and live in a coed dormitory, and she’d be prepared for just what she found there—a bunch of naked men in the showers. Alexis, I would treat Tara with no less respect than I would my own daughter.”

Drake got up, took off the Stetson he wore when riding, pulled his boots from beneath the chair and winked at Alexis. “You won’t get any flack from me; unlike Robinson Crusoe over there, who enjoys his own company—” he pointed to Telford “—I love women. The more around me, the merrier. And Tara can stay here as long as she likes. She’s just what this tomb needs.” He left them and walked up the stairs, whistling “Knock About Sweetheart” as he went.

“Oh, yes,” Alexis said. “I forgot to add that you shouldn’t raise your voices in disagreement or anger.”

His glare had to suffice, since he couldn’t grab her and shake her till…till she was soft and…and warm and perfumed with the tantalizing odor of woman, till she… He brought himself up short and regrouped. “Alexis, don’t push me too far. Don’t ever do that. Never. You got that?”

She didn’t give quarter, and in spite of his annoyance, he admired her. “I know this all sounds like a bad pill you have to swallow, and I’m sorry, but I figured you’d want us to settle everything now, and it’s best to get these things straight in advance.”

He’d had enough. “Do you think you’ve happened upon a houseful of barbaric, uncivilized men? If so, you’d better make a run for it.”

She appeared thoughtful. “Barbaric? Uncivilized? Hmmm. I’m not sure I’d go quite that far. A little rough around the edges, maybe.”

His glare broadened to a thunderous glower. “You trying to test my restraint?”

She lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Wouldn’t think
of it. Anybody can see you’re a paragon of willpower and self-control. Cool. Real laid-back.”

“All right, all right. You and I both know what’s going on here. If these verbal whacks are helping to relieve your frustration, by all means don’t spare me.”

Apparently less assured now, she avoided looking him in the eye for the first time. “You’re assuming a lot, Mr. Harrington.”

“Don’t fool yourself.” He poured half a glass of club soda, dropped two cubes of ice in it, offered the glass to her and, when she declined, sipped it slowly. “Let’s get back to business. I was not expecting you to come with a child. You told me you were divorced, and I got the impression you were much older.”