It’s late and you’re home early. We didn’t expect you till next week.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, glancing at his watch. Ten o’clock wasn’t late by New York standards. Unclenching his hands, he twitched a shoulder in irritation. Why should he apologize for coming home at any time he chose?
Spring continued to stare at him, eyes wide, then she abruptly caught her breath as though breaking a spell.
“Chad.” Her color spread into her hairline. “Of course. I should’ve known. I’m so sorry. I’m the one to apologize, and I do so humbly. You obviously didn’t remember about me being here. I’m Spring Barbour.”
She thrust her hand forward in a rather formal offer to shake hands. He took it slowly, enveloping her slender fingers and palm in his for a required moment. He felt the delicate bones beneath, and slid a thumb across warm skin.
“I don’t recall being told of your presence at all,” he murmured.
“Oh, really?” she said with a slight frown in Honor Suzanne’s direction. “Sorry. I suppose that information must have been lost along the way? But you don’t look like those snapshots Honor has of you, do you? Not much, anyway. My goodness, they must’ve been taken ages ago. Otherwise, I would’ve recognized you right off. You should have something professionally done, really.”
She dropped his hand, leaving his palm with a sense of loss. “But it doesn’t matter now…” She trailed off.
Good. She’d hushed. He’d begun to think she never breathed. Yet her voice was soft, with a gentle accent.
He glanced at his sister, wondering about her choice in friends. At twenty years her senior, he didn’t know much about teenagers, and supposed he’d have to study a bit to get up to speed.
Spring moved to turn off the CD player, her midnight blue skirts, made of some floaty material, dancing around her ankles. Raveling threads tickled her toes. He noticed for the first time that the hem wasn’t stitched. He’d already noted she had only one sleeve in the top, the neckline slanting to reveal a graceful white throat. Her dark hair fell like feathers against her bare shoulders.
“That’s a long ride in from the airport, isn’t it?” she picked up again as she turned back. “What time did you land?”
“Couple of hours ago,” he muttered, wondering who and what she was. He still wanted to know where Mrs. Hinkle had gone, thinking the woman had better have a doggone excellent excuse for allowing this young person to move into his apartment.
Where was the girl sleeping? He’d had to give up his den to accommodate the housekeeper. Another body in his apartment would put a big crunch in his life, on his space. And privacy. He had enough adjustments to face as it was.
“I’ll just bet you’re hungry,” Spring continued. “Did you have anything? No? Honor, did you finish that English paper?”
“Uh-huh. Eight pages,” Honor said, looking pleased. “It’s much better now, since you showed me where I missed my theme. Bound to pull an A.”
“Good. Then you can start the tea kettle while I change. I’ll only be a minute. Chad, why don’t you go on into the kitchen with Honor, and I’ll be there in a minute to find something for you to eat.”
“You will?” Why should she? He could take care of himself. And he wasn’t a guest!
And where was that blasted housekeeper?
But his words only trailed her, as Spring disappeared down the hall. He turned to his sister. “Where’s Mrs. Hinkle?”
“Um, Chad…” Honor laid a hand on his arm, anxiously coaxing him past the dining room alcove and into the kitchen. “Mrs. Hinkle isn’t here.”
“I can see that.” The dining alcove was a mess. The table was covered with some of the same dark cloth Spring wore, and a sewing machine sat at the end. Scraps and loose threads lay on the floor. He yanked his gaze back to his sister’s face. “Where is she?”
“I fired her.”
“Excuse me?” He halted in the middle of the small kitchen, realizing that something had changed there, but unable to give it the attention it deserved in the face of Honor Suzanne’s news. “You can’t be serious.”
“Well, I am. I did. I hired Spring, instead.”
“You what?” He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. No one in their right mind would allow a fourteen-year-old to hire or fire an employee. What had the employment agency said? Who had she talked with?
“I hired Spring…”
“How could you? What about the employment agency?”
“They didn’t have much to say about it after the letter I wrote. I didn’t like Mrs. Hinkle.”
“Now wait a minute. You wrote a letter to the agency? Why, what was the need?”
“I told you, I didn’t like Mrs. Hinkle.”
“You said nothing before I left about not liking Mrs. Hinkle. Why didn’t you inform me? Talk to me? And merely not liking her isn’t enough reason to take such drastic action.”
“I tried to talk to you once, but…” Honor turned away to fill an enameled tea kettle he’d never seen with bottled water, before setting it on a burner. “Well, you were so busy, and, anyway, I didn’t know about Mrs. Hinkle until after you left.”
The mild statement, carrying a good degree of guilt, hit him straight between the eyes. He hadn’t heard Honor because he’d been too busy to listen to her teenage twaddle.
He hid his sense of frustration, and mentally chided himself. He might not have been eager to take Honor Suzanne into his life, but he’d had no other choice when she’d become so depressed after their father died, only two years after Honor’s mother had passed away. Now he was all she had, her only living relative.
He ran a hand against his jaw and turned away to shed his jacket. True, he’d been too involved in getting his last-minute arrangements in place for an extended absence to interview many candidates. It all had happened at once; Honor coming to live with him as he was preparing for a working trip through several European countries.
“Tell me why you didn’t like Mrs. Hinkle,” he said, pulling out one of two kitchen chairs at the tiny table meant for one. “She came well recommended by the agency. Couldn’t you have lived with your dislike until I got home?”
“No, I couldn’t. She was impossible. And I don’t know why they recommended her,” she muttered. “She steals.”
“Steals?” He frowned, silently questioning how such a woman could have gotten past the agency screening. “Are you sure? Could you have misinterpreted something you saw?”
“No, I didn’t, Chad.”
She thrust out her small chin, reminding him of her mother, Sandra. He hadn’t liked Sandra.
“I saw her going through your desk,” Honor insisted.
“I left my desk double-locked.” Uneasiness began to set in. He didn’t keep a lot of important papers in his home office unless he was working there, but he still didn’t like the idea of anything being disturbed. He did keep a list of his private bank numbers and associated interactions in a notebook in the bottom drawer, but it would have to be an experienced thief to take advantage of the coded knowledge.
He’d check his desk contents before going to bed, but said now, “Well, there isn’t anything of movable cash value in there, anyway. And I left the household funds in a special account. Mrs. Hinkle only had to charge anything else you needed.”
“Well, she pried the desk open,” Honor insisted. She reached for a pig-faced cookie jar, half-filled, which he’d never seen. “In fact, you can see scratches on the brass key holes, if you look closely.”