Читать книгу Falling for the Heiress - Christine Flynn, Christine Flynn, Mary J. Forbes - Страница 8

Tess Kendrick balanced her three-year-old son on her hip and descended the steps from her grandmother’s private jet. A hot summer breeze whipped the whine of aircraft engines around her, causing little Mikey to bury his head against her shoulder at the noise.

At the base of the stairs, a member of her grandmother’s elite security service gave her a deferential nod while a uniformed steward quickly moved her luggage from the cargo bay to the trunk of a waiting black Lincoln SUV.

It had been over a year since the bottom had fallen from her world, a year since the scandal of her divorce had forced her into exile. Granted, that exile had been in a royal palace on the Mediterranean and her maternal grandmother, the queen of the tiny jewel-like kingdom of Luzandria, had been most gracious offering Tess and Mikey accommodation, but Tess couldn’t continue to live in those gilded confines.

Isolation, homesickness and a desperate need to get on with her life had finally brought her back to Camelot, Virginia. The family estate outside the picturesque little town was where she had been born and raised. It was where her parents still lived, for part of the year, anyway. But most important of all, it was home.

“Do you require help with the child, ma’am?”

“Thank you, but I have him.” She hoisted the towheaded boy clinging to her neck a little higher, adjusted the oversize bag hanging over her other shoulder. A massive case of nerves remained hidden by her soft smile. “And thank you for the escort. You’ve all been most kind.”

The solemn soldier with the heavy French accent dipped his head in a deferential bow. “It was our pleasure to be of service, madam.” He motioned her ahead of him. “I will see you to the car.”

He hadn’t smiled back. It was almost as if it were against the rules, the code or whatever it was the men trained to serve Her Majesty followed. Even as a child on summer visits to her grandmother with her siblings, it had seemed to Tess that smiles were allowed only by personnel in closest service to the royal family and their guests. Even then, any expression of friendliness had seemed subdued.

As much as she loved her grandmother, the formality of the palace was one of the reasons she’d become so restless to return. Though her basic nature yearned for less structure, she’d learned to live with propriety. Her energetic and endlessly curious little boy didn’t need to suffer such constraints, though. His enthusiasm had been suppressed enough before they’d more or less been forced to leave the country. His father—her now ex-husband—had not only preferred that the child not be heard, most of the time he hadn’t wanted him in his sight.

She hugged her precious son more tightly, her narrow heels clicking on the tarmac as she moved quickly toward the waiting vehicle. Her prince had turned into a frog, her charmed life into a nightmare and her personal reputation had been totally destroyed in the process, but there wasn’t a thing she could do to change that harrowing bit of history. She could only remind herself of the phoenix that rose from the ashes and hope that her singed wings would be strong enough to lift her back up. All she wanted was to forget the past few years, to buy a house and to go back to work on her project for the Kendrick Foundation.

If she’d had any idea how to restore her reputation, that would have been on her to-do list, too, but she couldn’t figure out how to counter all the lies told about her without causing greater problems. The best she could do on that score was hope that people would remember her as they had known her, not as her ex and her silence had portrayed her to be, and that time would have healed the worst of the damage.

Certain time would never heal some wounds, she picked up her pace.

What people didn’t know was that her marriage to Bradley Michael Ashworth III had disintegrated within the first year and that the fairy-tale life she’d appeared to be living had been a sham. Because she’d been raised to never say anything to anyone that might get passed on and wind up in print, she hadn’t confided the difficulties in her marriage to any of her friends. Even her family didn’t know how abusive the relationship had been. They knew only that Brad had promised a protracted and embarrassingly public divorce if she didn’t take full blame for the demise of their marriage.

The divorce had been humiliatingly public anyway. But her family had no idea that had she not complied with Brad’s wishes, he would have gone to the press with photographs he’d taken of her father with another woman. He’d even shown her some of the photos that would have sent the media into a frenzy scavenging for more dirt and completely broken her mother’s heart.

The breeze loosened strands of her hair from the clip at her nape and blew them across her face. Smiling at her son as he pushed them back for her, she tried not to think of her father and reminded herself that the business with Brad was behind her. He now managed his family’s property investments in Florida, so the chances of running into him were as remote as a sudden snowstorm in the Sahara. Same for most of the country-club set, which included his parents and other former friends. Most everyone she knew vacationed during the summer, so avoiding them shouldn’t be a problem. Avoiding the public, however, was another matter entirely.

The steward from the plane hurried past, pushing Mikey’s backpack and a half dozen suitcases on a rolling cart. As her escort joined him to load her luggage into the back of the SUV, her attention shifted to the six-feet three-inches of brawn and testosterone opening the back passenger door. Broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, he wore his dark suit and tie with an air of quiet power and watchful authority. Behind his dark sunglasses, she knew he was looking for potential trouble, which meant he was looking everywhere but at her.

He was her bodyguard from Bennington’s, the exclusive security service her family had used for years. The female she’d requested—the former Secret Service agent who’d shadowed her through college—was on an assignment for the next two weeks. The no-nonsense mountain of muscle with the shaved head and the shoulders of a linebacker had been recommended by her brother, Cord.

She had never met Jeffrey Parker, but she recognized him from the photograph that had been e-mailed to her so she’d know he was indeed the man she’d hired and not an imposter bent on grabbing headlines or a slice of her family’s fortune by holding her and her son for ransom. When she’d first seen his unsmiling image, he’d struck her as surprisingly handsome—in a formidably male, serious and decidedly ex-military sort of way. Now, other than to think him even more imposing than she’d anticipated, she was simply grateful for his presence. She and her siblings had been followed by paparazzi off and on all their lives. But she’d never been hounded as mercilessly by them as she had before she’d left last year. In that time, she had learned to truly appreciate a good bodyguard’s ability to evade and avoid.

Cord had assured her that the man he’d referred to as “Bull” was the best.

He moved behind her as she reached the car, blocking her from view as she slid inside and lowered Mikey into the child seat he’d had installed. It seemed he’d no sooner closed her door behind her than he opened the door opposite and reached in to assist with her son.

His big frame filled the space as she reached to secure Mikey’s shoulder straps. Her bodyguard had aimed for the same strap, too. With her hand suddenly trapped beneath his, her glance shot up.

His dark sunglasses had been pushed back so he could see inside the vehicle. The information sheet she’d been sent on him had indicated that his eyes were blue. There had been nothing in that dry recitation of facts, however, to describe the depth of that startling, clear color or to prepare her for their unnerving intensity as they easily held her own.

“We can do this,” she assured him.

“I’ll do it, ma’am.”

“Really, we’re fine….”

“We’re not going anywhere until I know myself that the child is secured. You said you wanted your arrival to be as unobtrusive as possible. The sooner you let me do my job, the quicker I can get you out of here.”

He hadn’t moved his hand. Since it appeared he had no intention of moving at all, at least not until she did, she slipped her fingers from beneath his and edged herself back.

She hadn’t been able to go anywhere before she’d left without a camera following her. That was why she had specifically requested that he make her arrival as efficient and discreet as possible. That he was only doing what she’d asked of him, however, did nothing to explain the wholly unexpected and unfamiliar jolt of heat she’d felt at the contact of his very capable-looking hands.

More than willing to blame that disconcerting reaction on her already jumpy nerves, she watched him smile at her wide-eyed son.

“How does that feel, buddy?” he asked. “Too tight?”

Eyeing him cautiously, Mikey shook his head.

The man looked capable of snapping body parts, but his smile just then seemed incredibly kind. The unexpected expression did interesting things to the aristocratic lines of his face, made them more arresting, more compelling. Though his hair was shaved so close it was impossible to tell its color, the heavy slashes of his eyebrows were dark, his lashes sooty and thick. The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled, taking the coolness from that intense blue and allowing her son to see something that somehow invited a hesitant smile back.

Mikey rarely warmed to strangers. Especially large strangers like the guards around the palace who had ignored him, anyway.

Clips clicked into place. A quick check of the restraints’ fit against Mikey’s shoulders and the man’s smile vanished. Within seconds, he’d backed out the door, shoved in the suitcases that wouldn’t fit in back and closed the door with a thud.

Getting her out of public view and her son secured clearly had been his first priority. Only after he’d settled his big frame behind the wheel did he bother with the preliminaries.

He glanced into the rearview mirror. “I’m Jeff Parker, Miss Kendrick. But ‘Parker’ works just fine. My instructions say you want to go directly to your family’s estate. Is that still your plan?”

Pure professionalism had replaced the unexpected bit of warmth she’d seen when he’d smiled at her son. Thinking that her brother was right, that the man could, indeed, appear pretty intimidating, she offered a determined smile of her own. “Do you know how to get there?”

Assuring her that he did, Parker turned his attention to the runway attendant waving them toward the gate. He not only had directions to the estate just outside the little town of Camelot, he had pulled as much information as he could find about Theresa Amelia Kendrick, once Theresa Amelia Kendrick Ashworth, off the Internet and from Bennington’s files. He always made it a point to know who he was protecting. Just as he made it a point to research his surroundings.

His client’s landing at the small regional airport near Camelot had caused none of the hassles that would have been created landing at Richmond International thirty miles away. Without masses of people watching runways from panoramic terminal windows, the arrival of a private jet went virtually unnoticed. Private jets and small craft were all that ever landed there. The royal-blue crest of Luzandria plastered on the jet’s tail didn’t do much for anonymity, however. Nearly everyone in America knew Luzandria was the country Katherine Kendrick would have someday ruled had she not given up her crown to marry then-Senator William Kendrick years ago. But the plane wouldn’t be there long enough to attract much attention. It was already being refueled and readied for its turnaround back to Europe.

The member of the security team who’d handed over the Kendrick woman to him had told him that the jet flew with two full crews. That meant no layover was required for the inbound pilot and copilot to rest. The plane would be gone before anyone who noticed it could do much more than speculate about which member of the Kendrick family had arrived or departed. As quickly as the transfer from plane to SUV had been made, Parker felt certain his client’s identity remained secure.

With his initial objective accomplished, he left the small airport by a back access road and glanced into the rearview mirror.

Tess Kendrick was stroking her son’s pale hair, murmuring something to him that had the child giving her a tired nod.

She was taller than he’d thought she’d be. Thinner, too, in a willowy, waiflike sort of way, and even more striking than she’d appeared in photographs. Mostly she looked more delicate to him than he had expected. More…fragile, somehow. But he knew looks could be deceiving, especially among the rich and pampered. And pampered she clearly was. With shades of gold and platinum woven through her sable hair, her French manicure and the white, undoubtedly designer pantsuit that seemed totally impractical for a transatlantic flight with a small child, she practically screamed high-maintenance. And quiet sensuality.

She’d secured her shimmering hair back from the classic lines of her face, exposing the delicate lobes of her ears, the long line of her neck. The low cut of her jacket ended at the buttons between her breasts. An arrow of bare skin adorned with varying lengths of gold chains beckoned between the lapels. The longest of those shiny strands rested against a hint of cleavage.

Ignoring the tightening sensation low in his groin, he jerked his glance back to the road. He would admit that she was incredibly easy on the eyes, and the heat he’d felt at the contact of her impossibly soft skin when he’d found her hand beneath his had definitely caught him off guard, but he dismissed his body’s primitive response as nothing more than a normal red-blooded male’s reaction to a beautiful woman. A spoiled, childish woman ten years younger than his own hardened thirty-six years, he reminded himself.

Other than for her physical appeal, he wasn’t impressed with his new client at all.

From what he’d heard, her bewildered husband had been as shocked as the rest of the world when she’d suddenly asked him for a divorce, taken his son and left the country. Bradley-Something-Ashworth-the-Whatever apparently hadn’t had a clue there’d been any sort of problem. Even her friends—women she’d known since before college—had indicated nothing more substantive than that she hadn’t seemed as happy as she once had. For her part, Tess had publicly refused to say why she’d wanted out. The press had found no clues in the couples’ no-fault divorce petition, either. She’d left all the explanations up to her ex.

In his review of old news videos a few days ago, Parker had watched her yacht-club-type husband reluctantly confess to a barrage of reporters outside a courthouse that she had finally told him marriage bored her and that she didn’t think she could ever be happy with just one man.

A guy had to feel for any man who’d married a woman like that.

Parker had a healthy respect for the state of matrimony—for everyone but himself. He was wedded to his work, and what he did for a living wasn’t a job for a married man. Especially a married man with kids. It was his unfaltering belief that kids deserved to have their dad around, and he never knew where he’d find himself next. But the woman now resting her hand on her son’s knee while she gazed out the tinted window beside her had made a promise when she’d married. A promise she’d broken because she’d been bored, he reminded himself with a mental shake of his head. Taking a guy’s son and leaving him to deal with the public humiliation of her decision on his own was pretty low in his book, too.

The GPS on the dashboard gave a low ding, pulling his attention to the navigation system directing him to a turn up ahead. It wasn’t his job to like her, he reminded himself. His job until the bodyguard she’d requested became available was to act as her driver and to protect her and her son from any of the public or paparazzi who might attempt to encroach upon her privacy. In his spare time, he would stay in touch by computer and cell phone with the tactical team he’d been promoted to oversee.

With everything else he had to do, he wouldn’t have taken this additional assignment at all had her brother, Cord, not had her ask for him. He liked Cord, though. The man was a good client. He’d been his bodyguard on a few decidedly wild gambling jaunts to Las Vegas and Monte Carlo and one memorable trip to Cannes. He’d gotten to know the internationally infamous playboy over hands of poker in various hotel suites when Cord hadn’t felt like hitting the clubs or playing high-stakes games with the other whales. He had even once provided protection for his ladylike sister, Ashley, and for Madison, the woman Cord had just married.

Having watched out for the other women in his client’s life and being nothing if not loyal to those loyal to him, he would have felt a certain obligation to protect the man’s kid sister even if his boss hadn’t pretty much insisted that he take the assignment. The Kendricks were some of the firm’s oldest and best customers. Since declining wouldn’t have been the politically correct thing to do, that left him to do his regular job and keep up with the logistics for security surrounding an upcoming judicial conference in his downtime.

The drive from the little airport took less than ten minutes. Miles of open fields planted with peanuts and corn led to land that had been left forested to seclude the mansions and more modest residences of the local gentry. Like many of those homes, the Kendrick estate wasn’t visible at all from the two-lane country road. A double iron gate suspended between stone pillars blocked the driveway itself.

Parker pulled to a stop beside the pillar concealing the entry keypad.

Tess leaned forward. “Twenty-four, sixteen, fifty-seven.”

Aware of her settling back to cross her long legs, he punched in the security code, waited for the gates to swing open and pulled onto the long drive. The late-afternoon sun slanted through the trees lining the way, their leaves joined at the tops like the arches of a cathedral. With his window still down, he felt the change in the air, the coolness of the shadows, heard the distant whinny of a horse. The manse itself, all three gabled and mullioned stories of it, came into view as the road curved to the left.

The trees opened to a sweep of manicured lawns, a bubbling fountain in front of a wide portico and a view of enough windows to keep a Manhattan window-washer busy for the rest of his life.

A man didn’t do what Parker did for a living without being exposed to a certain amount of extravagance. He’d protected clientele on yachts, in the world’s finest hotels, on estates that rambled on forever. What impressed him about them all was the amount of staff it took, invisible for the most part, to keep the places running.

He fully expected to see staff now as he pulled beneath the portico, climbed from the driver’s seat and opened the back door for his passengers.

The mansion’s massive double doors stayed closed as he leaned forward to take the now-sleeping child from the woman who’d already unfastened and lifted him from the child seat.

“I’ll carry him and his backpack,” she said, “if you’ll get the rest of the luggage. Here’s my key.” With the boy’s head resting on her shoulder, she dangled a small gem-encrusted key ring toward him. “It’s the silver one.”

Thinking it odd that she didn’t expect a butler or maid to unlock the door for her, he ignored her intention to slide out on her own and cupped her elbow as she rose. The slenderness of supple muscle beneath white silk barely registered before she thanked him, headed for the back of the vehicle and stood there waiting for him to lift the tailgate.

Her little boy hadn’t moved. The child lay limply against her, drooling on the shoulder of her jacket. Fine blond lashes formed crescents against his pink cheeks.

Struck by how oblivious she was to the drool and still expecting someone to show up and help, he handed her a bright blue Harry Potter backpack and started hauling out enough designer luggage to stock a small boutique. Not quite sure how to tell her that playing butler wasn’t part of the service, he grabbed four of the suitcases—one under each arm and one in each hand—and followed her up the rounded and sweeping stairs to the massive double doors.

Using the key she’d given him, he opened one door, picked up the luggage again and followed her inside.

“Just leave the bags here in the foyer,” she said, “and come with me, please.”

Her voice was hushed in deference to the sleeping child. She clearly didn’t want to disturb him. Or wait for Parker’s response. The tap of her heels echoed on white marble as she crossed the edge of the malachite-and-onyx sunburst tiled into the floor and passed the circular table in the middle of it holding an empty urn.

In the dim light, his glance left her back to skim the curved arms of double staircases, the crystal chandelier centered two stories above the table and the various and vast rooms visible through the open doorways.

Dustcovers concealed much of the furniture. Lamps were dark. The drapes were all closed. Yet what he noticed most was the heavy stillness that indicated an empty house.

With the sudden and unwelcome feeling that this particular assignment might not be as straightforward as he’d thought, he followed her toward a narrow butler’s door camouflaged by the paneling beneath one staircase and into a long equally dim hall.

They were clearly in the servants’ wing. The white hallway and the utilitarian rooms off it had an infinitely more practical feel to them than the areas furnished with the velvet side chairs he’d noticed in the formal dining room or the ornate bombé chest in the foyer.

After passing two rooms with twin beds, she opened one that held a neatly made double bed and a dresser at one end and a desk and small seating area at the other. Lowering her son to the mauve tweed sofa, she pulled a brightly knit afghan off its back and settled it over him. Her motions seemed almost unconscious as she pulled off his shoes, tucked the afghan over his feet when he stirred, then gently touched his head as if to reassure him before slipping back into the hall.

Considering how totally unmaternal Parker would have expected her to be, her easy affection for her son surprised him. Or maybe, he thought, it was protectiveness he sensed in her. Whatever it was, he found himself far more interested in why her smile seemed so uneasy when she moved past him and into the huge—and deserted—kitchen.

He was wondering where the devil everyone was when she flipped on the overhead lights and illuminated a room filled with what looked like miles of counters and glass-fronted white birch cabinetry. Stacks of dishes gleamed through the glass panes. Copper pots glinted from the rack high above a white-tiled center island the size of a boardroom conference table.

“You can stay in the room where I put Mikey. It belongs to the head housekeeper,” she said, her expression polite, her voice still low. “Rose is with my parents in the Hamptons for the summer. The rest of the staff is on vacation, too. Except for the stable master and his wife. They live above the stables. And the groundskeeper is in the cottage near the lake. Rose’s room has its own bath, and you’re welcome to use the pool and the exercise room downstairs if you’d like.”

Tess watched a frown pinch the dark slashes of Parker’s eyebrows as he glanced from her to the office alcove and the window above a table in the far corner where the staff took their meals. The man was difficult to read, a trait his profession seemed to demand, but he appeared far more interested in what surrounded him than in his personal accommodations.

In the space of seconds, it seemed to Tess that her paid protector had absorbed who was on the property, managed to take in the details of his immediate surroundings and just as thoroughly searched her. He’d no sooner noted the utility room leading to the back door than his scrutiny moved from the top of her head to the toes of her pumps. She could swear he’d missed nothing in between.

Had it not been for her brother’s recommendation, she would have felt far more uncomfortable than she already did at that unapologetic appraisal. Those arresting features gave away nothing of his impressions.

Feeling totally disadvantaged, nerves ruined the cultured poise she constantly strove to achieve. That poise seemed to come as naturally as breathing to her mom and her older sister, but neither of them had been cursed with the inner energy she constantly battled to tame. Even fighting fatigue from a week’s worth of sleepless nights stressing over her trip home, it was either pace or fidget. Since pacing seemed more dignified, she turned away to do just that. All that mute and massive muscle unnerved her, too.

“I assume you’ve done your homework,” she began, hating the position she was in, knowing no other way to address it. “So I imagine you’re aware of what was being said about me before I left.”

She turned back, met his too-blue eyes. He stood ramrod-straight in the arch of the hallway, one hand clasping the opposite wrist. “The majority of it,” he conceded.

Not caring to imagine what he thought of all that dirt, she tipped her chin, only to immediately check the motion. She couldn’t allow herself to get defensive with him. She needed him on her side. More important than that, she desperately needed an ally.

It seemed a true indication of how much she’d lost that she’d had to hire one.

At the dispiriting thought, she resumed her pacing. “You’ve worked for my brother,” she reminded him, arms crossed as she made her way up one side of the island, “so you know that people distort things to serve their own purpose. And you know that the press has a definite tendency to exaggerate.” Among other transgressions, real and imagined, her brother had been sued for support for a child that wasn’t his and blamed for a nightclub brawl that started after he’d left. If she remembered correctly, Parker had been with him that particular night. “I hope you’ve kept that in mind with anything you’ve heard or read about me.

“I also hope my brother is right about you,” she continued before he could ask why she hadn’t defended herself if what he’d heard wasn’t true. “Cord said I could trust you. I don’t know anyone outside my family that I can trust anymore,” she stressed softly, “so I had to rely on his judgment. That’s why I asked for you. That and a comment he made about you being up for just about anything.”

She turned again to face the man filling the space with his powerful presence, saw the faint lift of one dark eyebrow.

“I didn’t want to indicate my plans over the phone or the Internet, but aside from you being my driver and keeping me clear of paparazzi, there are some other things I need you to do for me. I hope you won’t mind.”

Parker had spent years learning to anticipate people and situations. Little caught him unprepared. Since he inevitably prepared for the worst, even less surprised him. He had not, however, expected the open candor of the woman giving him a cautious, almost hopeful smile or the isolation he sensed about her as she stood waiting for him to confirm or deny what her brother had claimed. He recognized that sense of separation, that sense of no longer being a part of the whole, only because in the past year he’d felt it so much himself.

Dismissing that unwanted thought, not appreciating the reminder, he studied her even more closely.

“You can believe your brother. You and your plans are secure with me.” He was nothing if not honorable. “But he may have misled you on just what I’d be willing to do.” He rarely objected to having a good time, situation permitting. He had the feeling Cord’s little sister wasn’t looking for a good poker game, though, or an escort to the local clubs. He hadn’t read a single report about her doing the party circuit or getting wild and crazy in some trendy hot spot. “I play by the book, Miss Kendrick. I might bend rules, but I won’t break the law.”

Her lovely eyes widened. “I’d never ask you to do that. What I want is perfectly legal.”

“Then what is it exactly that you want me to do?”

“Just set up some appointments.” She replied quickly, as if she wanted her request to sound as if it were nothing of any import at all. “And run errands. And maybe watch Mikey for me. But only for a few minutes at a time,” she hurried to explain, “and only if absolutely necessary.”

Parker stifled a mental groan. He was a bodyguard. Not a personal slave. He most definitely was not a babysitter.

“Due respect, Miss Kendrick, but my duties are laid out in your family’s contract with Bennington’s. I’ll provide surveillance, protection and evacuation if the latter is necessary. But if you need a personal assistant, you’ll have to hire one. Same goes for a nanny.”

His glance shot over the hair she’d smoothed back into place, over her perfectly made-up face, down the buttoned silk jacket that allowed that tantalizing glimpse of soft-looking skin between her breasts.

He would be willing to bet his tickets to the next New England Patriots game that Tess Kendrick was accustomed to getting everything she wanted. And to getting rid of whatever she did not, he reminded himself, thinking of how she’d shed a husband. If she was even half as spoiled as he’d read, he figured he was about to face major attitude.

Yet, rather than offense, all he saw enter her expression was something that looked almost like an apology.

“That’s my problem,” she murmured, pacing again. “Even if I knew who to hire…who I could trust,” she emphasized, “I don’t want more people around. The fewer people who know I’m here, the less the chance of the press finding out that I’m back. It’s taken forever for all talk and speculation to die down, and if they find out I’m here, it’ll just start up again.”

Something pleading crossed the delicate lines of her face. “All I’m asking is for help buying a house. I need you to make appointments under another name,” she explained, because her own would be too easily recognized, “then maybe act as if you’re the one buying when we look at the properties. When I find something that will work for Mikey and me, I’ll turn it over to our lawyers and they can take it from there. And a car,” she said, faint lines of concentration forming in her brow as she checked off items on her mental list. “I need to buy a car, too. I lost mine in the divorce.”

She’d lost everything, actually, except for some personal items, her clothes and Mikey’s things, most of which were stored in her parents’ attic. She didn’t mention that, though. Partly because she desperately wanted to forget the past few years. Mostly because the big man silently considering her wouldn’t be interested in her need to rebuild a life for herself and her son. Or in how ill-equipped she felt to be doing it on her own.

“What about your brothers?”

“Gabe doesn’t have any spare time. Buying a car is the kind of thing he’d staff out anyway.”

Her oldest brother was governor of the state. Yet, more than the demands of the job on his time kept her from seeking his help. He and his press people hadn’t been too happy with her for what the publicity surrounding her divorce had done to his family-values platform. Under the circumstances, asking a favor of him would take more nerve than she wanted to spare right now.

She could only conquer one mountain of ashes at a time.

“Cord knows real estate. And he’s into cars. What about him?”

“He and his wife are in the Florida Keys. Sailing,” she added, to prove just how inaccessible he was for the tasks. “I’d ask Ashley to help me look for a house, but she lives an hour away and is really busy with her kids. The two of us together would attract too much attention anyway.”

Two Kendrick sisters together truly would be like waving a red flag at the press. Even if that hadn’t been the case, Tess wanted to avoid Ashley right now. Long before her ex-husband had started pointing out how miserably Tess had failed to live up to her older sister’s accomplishments, Tess had been aware of how Ashley had always done everything so well, so flawlessly. At least it had seemed so to the little sister who’d followed in her footsteps.

Because of Tess’s place in the hierarchy as the baby of the family, she’d had none of the first-son or-daughter pressure to perform thrust upon her. For as far back as she could remember, everyone had insisted on watching out for her, doing for her, and nothing had been expected of her other than to maintain the integrity of the family name.

Image and integrity were paramount to their parents. The actions of one Kendrick inevitably affected them all. Having a brother who’d possessed an unfortunate tendency to draw embarrassing headlines had proved that often enough.

She hated that the one big choice she’d made on her own had turned out to be an error in judgment that had not only screwed up her own life but done an even more spectacular job than her once-prodigal brother of tainting the family’s good name.

“What I want won’t take long,” she promised, trying desperately to push past feelings of failure and helplessness. “I need to be in my new home before my parents return.” They would arrive right after Labor Day. That gave her roughly six weeks.

Skepticism slashed his broad brow.

“Do you know how long it can take to buy and move into a house?”

“Actually, no,” she admitted. She hadn’t a clue. She’d never had to deal with that particular detail before. “But I can’t let it take long. It will be too uncomfortable living here with Mom and Dad.” Her voice dropped. “Especially with my father. If I have to, I’ll rent or lease something until I find what I want. I’d rather not move Mikey around that much, but I’ll do it if I have to.”

Thoughts of her father put a new face on her pacing. She wasn’t ready to be around William Kendrick yet. She hadn’t dealt well at all with the pictures Brad had shown her.

She didn’t know which had the firmer hold—the disappointment she felt in her dad or her anger over his betrayal of her mom. Both were there, demanding to be dealt with. She just didn’t know how. With no one to confide in, all she could do was jam down the emotions the same way she had the anxiety of everything else she’d had to cope with and force that energy into moving past her…past.

Parker remained discouragingly silent.

“I’ll pay you whatever you ask.”

It wasn’t what she’d requested of him that kept Parker quiet. It was the tension in her body as she spoke and the faint anxiety running just beneath the surface of her practiced composure. Knowing how upset the senior Kendrick had been over Cord’s indiscretions on occasion, he didn’t doubt for a moment that the famously powerful head of the Kendricks’ massive corporate and philanthropic holdings had been less than pleased with the unflattering publicity his daughter had brought. Yet, when she’d mentioned her father, he’d seen more than the embarrassment or discomfort he would have expected. He’d seen hurt.

He didn’t want the bit of empathy that hit him just then. It was simply there as he pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks, buying himself time as he considered what she wanted. He knew what it was to have lost the approval of a parent. Since he’d left the Marines five years ago, his own father had barely spoken to him. But then, his father was a three-star general and the military was, always had been and always would be his life. The only time the man had ever had time for him was when Parker had been in the military himself.

Frowning at the thought, he dismissed the old resentment that came with the memory as irrelevant. He didn’t appreciate her reminding him of it. He didn’t appreciate the way she’d distracted him either. It wasn’t like him to get sidetracked. Yet, in less than a minute, the woman who’d gone still waiting for him to respond had reminded him of the isolation he’d felt since he’d lost his sister and the father neither one of them had ever really had.

He’d just reminded himself that neither had a thing to do with the requests she’d just made when the pounding of footsteps on the veranda outside had him jerking toward the back door an instant before it flew open.