tilted backward, his hands locked behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. She couldn’t help noticing that he still hadn’t buttoned his shirt.
Her line of thought shook her. She stomped on the mental brakes. For a long time she’d managed to bottle up that part of her, and this wasn’t the time to uncork it. There was too much at stake.
“Pull up a chair, Avery, and let’s have a chat.” Logan sighed wearily and closed his eyes. Avery took a chair opposite him. “It seems easier to go along with the program than fight my father,” he said, “so I guess you stay.” He dropped his hands from behind his head, settled the chair in an upright position and met her gaze across the table. “Let’s start off on the right foot and get something straight between us. I can’t abide mothering.
“Dad tells me you can handle a computer. That’s great, ’cause I’m terrible at it.” He rubbed his face and tried to concentrate. “He says you can keep books, do invoices, pay bills and generally make everything in the office run smoothly, so I can work. As for the cooking and housekeeping—” he shrugged “—I have a woman who comes in two days a week to clean. Sometimes she’ll cook a ham or a roast for me. But mostly I’ve been fixing my own meals when I can, or eating in town. So if you’ll just handle my meals, I think that’ll do. We’ll see how it works as we go along.”
“What about your father and Jessie?”
Logan frowned. “What do you—?” Then he realized what she meant and grinned. “They don’t live here, thank God. Jess stays on her father’s ranch with her brother. As for Dad, he divides his time between his house in town and the farm.”
She didn’t intend to involve herself in any personal conversations, and figured that keeping their association on a business footing was best. She needed to be efficient. Most of all she had to make herself irreplaceable. “That all sounds fine to me. You look exhausted, though. Have you eaten?” She pushed her chair back.
“You’re mothering me.”
“No, I work for you, Mr. Monahan. You just told me part of my job is to cook your meals. You also said your morning was long and hard. Mine was, too. It’s almost lunchtime and I’m hungry. I just assumed...” She let the unfinished statement dangle between them, and waited.
Avery was too logical for his sluggish brain to come up with a fitting retort. “I thought we’d agreed—none of this mister business. Just Logan.” He managed a strained smile. “A sandwich and a Coke will be fine, thank you. After that I’m going to rest for a couple of hours, so you might as well finish settling in.”
It didn’t take long to find everything she needed. His cleaning woman had baked a ham, and Avery quickly had his sandwich on the table. He was almost finished when she sat down. He didn’t try to hide the fact that he was watching her. It made her nervous, but she’d learned the hard way to hide her feelings.
“How old are you?” Logan asked, genuinely puzzled. She handled herself like a mature woman.
“Twenty-eight,” she said, then dabbed at the corner of her mouth and took a sip of her own Coke. “Is my age a problem?”
“None I can think of just now.” There was something that still didn’t seem right, but Logan gave up. He didn’t feel like playing games with her. He folded his napkin and rose from the table. “Your first official duty is to answer the phone and take messages.”
As HE CLIMBED the stairs to his bedroom, Logan wondered where he’d gotten the notion that she was playing games. Was that what she was about? He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was more to Avery Jensen than she allowed him or the world to see. He’d have to give it some thought when he wasn’t one of the walking dead.
By the time he reached the landing, he felt like a man twice his age. As he passed one of the closed bedroom doors, he paused and stepped back. He put his hand on the cut-crystal doorknob and noticed how cold it felt. A familiar sense of foreboding settled between his shoulder blades. As much as he wanted to walk away, he couldn’t. He twisted the knob and opened the door.
He couldn’t force himself to take that step over the threshold, though, so he simply stood there. His son’s room was as silent as a tomb. It was also empty. Every piece of furniture, all the toys and posters had been taken away, but Jamie’s presence hadn’t been erased. Even the faint musty smell hadn’t obliterated that special child scent that was Jamie’s own.
For a moment Logan thought the pain in his chest would destroy him. He wished it would, and thus end the dreams and the awful longing. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he could still feel small arms wrapped tightly around his neck and hear the bubbly giggling in his ear. At last he pulled the door shut and continued down the hall, his heart filled with tears he could no longer shed.
AVERY LISTENED to the muffled footsteps overhead, the opening and shutting of doors, the rush of water in the old pipes, and knew he was taking a shower. Folding her arms on the table, she lowered her head and breathed deeply. More than anything she longed to relax, let go and cry from sheer relief. She’d done it. Her life was about to begin anew. This time, she vowed, she wasn’t going to screw up.
With that thought firmly in mind, she got to her feet. First she cleaned the kitchen and then studied the contents of the refrigerator, freezer and pantry so she could plan dinner. Then she decided to acquaint herself with the first floor of the house.
It didn’t take more than a few rooms to see that someone had expensive taste and a flare for decorating. There were antiques mixed with chintz, lace and leather. Still lifes and nineteenth-century portraits were artfully mixed with Oriental paintings, and all were cunningly arranged with a few fine pieces of Western art. Eclectic taste, to be sure and it worked, but Avery’s first thought was that the display was the work of someone who liked change but was loath to let go of the past.
Avery was very observant, and she realized there was something out of place here, too. Expensive area rugs covered the beautiful hardwood floors, and she noticed impressions in the nap of the wool where furniture once had stood. The room was obviously missing some major pieces.
Wandering back toward the rear of the house, across the hall from the kitchen, she found the office. It was full of the usual things—file cabinets, a computer, printer, a phone and fax machine. The desk appeared to be an antique. An effort had been made to bring some sort of order to the desktop—it had a clean, white pad of paper, an in-and-out tray and a brass pencil-and-pen holder. It was obvious this room was Logan’s territory and he’d furnished it. Here and there were items that showed a feminine influence—a cut-crystal vase full of dried flowers, a delicate china dish of potpourri.
But like the rest of the house, something was lacking here, too. As Avery was about to leave the room, she spotted boxes stacked haphazardly in a corner. A couple of them were open, and she saw the edges of picture frames. Her boss was either moving in or moving out. Puzzles—the house seemed full of them.
When the telephone rang, Avery flinched, still startled by the almost forgotten sound. She hesitated, then picked up the receiver, a little unsure how to answer. “Monahan’s,” she said, and recognized the surprise in the long silence that followed.
“Who is this?” a male voice demanded rudely.
“Avery Jensen. Mr. Monahan’s unavailable at the moment—may I take a message?” There was another lengthy pause. As she waited, she frantically searched the stacked papers on the desk for something to write with, found a stubby pencil, then tore off a scrap of paper from the unblemished notepad. “Hello?”
“Yeah, this is Tanner. Tell Logan Molly’s gone down on me again and if he doesn’t get here quick, I’m going to have to put her out of her misery.”
The phone clicked in her ear so abruptly she wondered if she’d just received an obscene telephone call. With the blank bit of paper in one hand and the pencil in the other, she walked to the bottom of the staircase and called Logan’s name. The second floor seemed to be his