“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Derek reached up to the back of his neck, massaging the tense muscles that refused to relax. Maybe this wasn’t the best time for this discussion; he’d only just arrived and hadn’t yet done a proper reconnaissance.
He opted for courtesy. “How long have you lived here?”
She narrowed her eyes with notable skepticism. “More than two years now. I came as your uncle’s housekeeper—and his friend—and stayed after he…” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes darkened with what Derek assumed was remembered pain.
“Died.” He supplied the word with a trace of impatience. It may have been a heartless reaction, but it shouldn’t have been necessary. Richard’s death wasn’t recent. And his housekeeper still grieved?
And what about his housekeeper? Derek couldn’t ignore his doubts. Why would a beautiful young woman confine herself to keeping house at a remote ranch, and for a man old enough to be her father?
Unless…she had no family or friends to whom she could turn. Or none who would claim her. He blinked, startled by the innuendo. Unless she defined friend differently than he did.
“Did you know Richard before that?”
She smiled thinly, as though she recognized his suspicions. “Yes. I knew him for more than ten years.”
She didn’t give much ground, he noted. “I hope you understand that I’ll have many questions about the ranch, and my uncle. We weren’t close, and I find myself at a sudden loss here.”
“Richard was a wonderful man.” She shot him a spirited glare. Intrigued, he looked closer. “He was a good friend, especially when—others needed him most.”
“If you say so.”
She drew in a sharp breath and stepped back, away from him. Her eyes flared with fiery green sparks, an eloquent conviction that she’d hidden until now. She blinked slowly and then expression and fire disappeared as she fixed her gaze beyond his shoulder.
“I think it’s time I showed you the house.”
Guardedly he studied the woman who stood before him, uncompromising and proud. She wasn’t nearly as detached as she wanted him to believe. She cared, and passionately, about certain things, certain people. And Richard seemed to be one of them.
Had she been his mistress?
Chapter Two
Amber arched across the mattress, stretching to tuck in the sheet. After three days of making Derek’s bed, she concluded the man was a persistently restless sleeper.
His sleeping habits are none of your business. Her cheeks flushed with a dull heat that seemed to haunt her whenever she was in his bedroom. Proving your worth as his housekeeper is the only thing that should concern you at the moment.
Surely he would retain a good worker.
The subject hadn’t come up yet, but she didn’t delude herself. It was only a matter of time.
And then?
Amber ran her hand across the sheet, smoothing out the smallest wrinkle. She continued to hope that she could convince him to keep her on as his housekeeper, but he’d given her little encouragement thus far. Any plans he had for the ranch he was keeping strictly to himself. He had, however, begun to ask questions. Questions about ranch operations, about Richard, about everyone and everything. Questions she’d done her best to avoid.
Tell him too much, too soon, and you won’t need to worry about keeping this job. She’d seen the expressions on other people’s faces when they realized who she was, and she knew exactly what she could expect from Derek once he satisfied his curiosity. When he discovered the truth—or what so many people thought they knew and were so very eager to tell—she would have one chance to convince him to let her stay.
She didn’t doubt what form of persuasion would be expected of her.
An odd sensation, like that of being watched, crawled up her spine, and she shivered. She meant to ignore it, but it persisted until finally she glanced up. Derek stood in the doorway.
“Oh!” She reared back and lost her balance, tumbling awkwardly onto the half-made bed. Cheeks flaming, she scrambled to her feet and gaped at him. He looked back with impressive detachment.
“I’m going into Twigg today. Do you need anything?”
“You startled me!” she snapped. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, and she was beginning to feel a little…hunted.
“Sorry,” he said instantly, but he didn’t look the least bit apologetic. Instead he looked bold, untamed and roguish, leaning against the door frame with lazy grace, his arms crossed over his chest as though he had nothing better to do. He wore dark trousers and a blue cotton shirt that turned his eyes to a dazzling shade of blue.
“I was making up your bed.”
He raked her with a sizzling gaze that trapped her words and made them suddenly conspicuous, as if he’d seen her clean unmentionables hanging on the clothesline.
Making up your bed? Dear Lord, what did she think she was doing, talking to this man in his bedroom, next to his unmade bed? Hadn’t she learned how very easily—willfully—a man could misunderstand a woman’s intentions? Certainly, if anything could be misinterpreted, it would be a woman floundering wildly on a man’s mattress.
Derek remained still, however, simply watching her. He seemed bigger and taller, his shoulders broad, and a harnessed power filled the room. Amber’s cheeks remained flushed, and she clenched her fingers into tight fists. Her breath came out as a sketchy wheeze.
“Making the bed,” he murmured softly, breaking the silence. He shook his head and dropped his arms to his sides. “I almost remember when things like that mattered.”
Standing across the bed from him, looking into his fallen-angel features and barren eyes, she felt his proximity as keenly as if he touched her. The possibility seemed imminently dangerous.
“I beg your pardon?” She stepped back, some ancient feminine instinct insisting she put more space between them. “Don’t you want me to do such chores?”
He shrugged and straightened, his movements a study in carelessness. “Go ahead. I don’t care. When you’ve spent as many nights as I have under the stars with just a blanket, any bed at all seems like a luxury.”
Amber swallowed. Was he referring to his trip here? Traveling from South Carolina to Texas on horseback would be a long, arduous journey in these days of reconstruction. Vaguely, she recalled the trip she and her father had made from St. Louis, twelve years ago now. She had been eight years old, and life then had seemed more like high adventure than grueling travel.
Or could Derek mean something else? Something like the war? A deep coldness settled heavily in her chest. To Amber’s way of thinking, most able-bodied men in Texas—in all the South—had blindly enlisted to fight for the Confederate cause. They’d rushed off to fight the damn Yankees, intending to teach those sorry boys in blue a lesson they’d never forget, and be home in a month.
Four years later they’d all been dead or whipped, she thought severely, and they’d left the South in a mess from which it would likely not recover in her lifetime. They had paid dearly for their foolish Rebel bravado and forced a heavy price from their mothers and sisters and wives and sweethearts. A price no one ever seemed to consider.
Surely Derek had played his own part in the debacle. She didn’t know a man who, at least in some small way, hadn’t. And yet how could she blame him, any more than a thousand other men?
“Well, around here I do things like make up the beds,” she announced briskly. “Just as I clean and do laundry. And you don’t have to eat your meals in the bunkhouse. I cooked