Читать книгу Corner-Office Courtship - Victoria Pade - Страница 8

“I brought lunch.”

“I’m so glad! I’m starving,” Nati told her friend when Holly arrived at the shop around noon on Saturday. “Did you get your errands done?”

“Every one—thanks to you being here to share shop duties now. How was the morning?”

“You made a couple of nice sales. I’ve only had a few looky-loos, nobody bought anything.”

“But now you’ll have the money from doing the Camden wall—you were smart not to turn that down.”

Nati shrugged, unable to decide whether working for Cade Camden was good or bad. Certainly the money was good. The fact that she was working for a Camden—whom she’d actually had dreams about all night long in which one or more of them was hot and bothered and not entirely clothed—didn’t seem like such a good thing.

“What’s for lunch?” she asked, changing the subject.

“My throw-everything-in salad with the homemade dressing you like.”

“Yum. Thanks for this—I was running late this morning and didn’t have time to fix lunch. I was going to skip it,” Nati said.

“Another sleepless night because of The Camden?” Holly guessed.

Holly was a childhood friend who was more like a sister to Nati. They’d always told each other everything, so Holly knew that Nati was suffering doubts about having anything to do with a Camden. Holly also knew that Nati had been up half the night after her Thursday meeting with him. But last night? Holly didn’t know about last night yet.

“I had trouble falling asleep again and then when I did the dreams I had were… Wow!” she confessed to her friend.

Holly laughed. “Cade Camden is the stuff ‘wow’ dreams are made of,” she concurred.

Holly had come in just as Cade had left on Thursday so she’d seen him.

“Have you decided yet if you’re going to tell your grandfather you’re working for a Camden?” Holly asked as they ate. Nati’s friend had gone to her side of the door that connected their shops.

“No, I still don’t know if I should tell him or not,” Nati said.

“He gets home tonight?”

Nati’s grandfather, Jonah Morrison, was on a brief vacation in Las Vegas with some of his lodge buddies.

“Late tonight. I have until tomorrow to think about it, I guess,” Nati answered.

“I think you should tell him. I know you—you’ll be sorry if you don’t. You’ll hate lying—even by omission—and you’ll worry that he might find out. And I don’t think he’ll care, anyway. What went on was a lifetime ago, and your grandfather will be glad you have the work. He’ll say good for you for taking some of the Camdens’ money.”

Holly had grown up across the street from the Morrisons, so she knew Nati’s grandfather well.

“Yeah, I could see him saying that,” Nati agreed.

“Because he’s the sweetest guy in the world. He’d give you the shirt off his back. He’s so tenderhearted that he tears up at the sight of puppies and kittens, and he’ll just be happy that you have money coming in no matter who it’s from.”

“Right—it was more like my great-grandparents to rant and rave about the Camdens, not my grandfather.”

“Although he might feel guilty because you need the work—” Holly cut herself off. “No, forget that. It’ll be fine. You need the money, and your grandfather won’t care who you’re working for. Just do the job, take the check, then wash your hands of the Camdens.”

“Yeah,” Nati agreed, unsure if she was doing the right thing.

Or if washing Cade Camden out of her thoughts when this was all over with would be as easy as Holly made it sound.

“It’s just me…”

Nati heard Cade’s voice coming from the entrance as he let himself in. It sent a tiny tingle up her spine.

It was after five o’clock on Saturday and she’d been expecting that he might show up any time. And maybe hoping—just a little—that he would. She couldn’t help it.

She was cleaning up the remnants of the mess made from tearing off wallpaper, cleaning the wall and then priming it, when Cade came into the dining room.

Apparently working on Saturday didn’t require him to dress up because he was wearing a pale yellow sport shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. A pair of jeans that he wore to perfection slung slightly low on his hips. Nati’s jaw dropped for a split second before she forced her eyes up to his face, which looked remarkably sexy with a five-o’clock shadow.

“Hi,” she said, her voice catching in her throat.

“Hi. I’m so glad you’re still here.”

She didn’t know why he should be glad but his words gave her a wave of satisfaction anyway.

“Five minutes later and I wouldn’t have been,” she informed him as she stuffed the last sheet of wallpaper into the trash bag she’d brought with her. “The contract is there on the dining room table,” she added with a nod in that direction. “I was just going to leave it for you.”

“Any chance you could stick around for a while? I can sign the contract and then there’s another job I’m hoping you might take. If you don’t have to be anywhere in a hurry maybe we could talk about it….”

“No, I don’t have to be anywhere—in a hurry or otherwise,” she said, realizing only after the fact that it made her sound like a dud.

But what difference did it make if he knew her social life was nearly nonexistent? In fact, it was better that he think she was a dud, she told herself. Maybe it would act to deter any interest in her.

As she pulled the drawstring closed on the trash bag, she said, “I’ll take this to my car and give you a minute to read the contract, then come back.”

“Okay,” Cade said with more enthusiasm than seemed warranted.

Outside the sun had gone down and taken the warm autumn temperature with it, so after putting the trash bag into her trunk Nati opened her car door to retrieve the overblouse she’d brought with her.

Slipping it on, she tried not to think about the fact that while she’d worn a perfectly work-appropriate beige crewneck T-shirt and jeans, the overblouse took the outfit beyond work clothes and made it a tad dressier. It was fine-gauge wool in deep cocoa brown, with long sleeves and an asymmetrical front opening that fastened at her hip with one large button.

Yes, it added another layer and a bit more warmth, but just a bit. Its primary purpose was to spruce her up a little. Which was what had been in the back of her mind when she’d brought it with her.

And when she took a brush from her glove compartment, ran it through her hair, and then applied some lip gloss, it was hard to deny her intentions—she wanted to look her best now that Cade Camden was home.

But only because she wanted to be presentable when dealing with a client…

She called herself a liar and went back inside.

She hoped Cade wouldn’t notice that she’d done anything. But he glanced at her the minute she rejoined him in the dining room, giving her a quick once-over.

He seemed to approve, though, because the faintest of appreciative smiles brushed across his lips before he handed her the signed contract.

“That was quick,” she said with raised eyebrows. “You didn’t have any questions or problems with it?”

“Nope, looks just right to me,” he said, almost as if he was commenting more on her appearance than on the contract.

Then he switched his attention to the wall she’d spent the afternoon working on.

“This is already an improvement,” he observed.

“It’s only primed but just losing that gaudy wallpaper was a big step.”

“Did you have any problems with it?”

“Only in a few spots. Nothing big. And I got everything off without doing any damage, so I think we’re good to go from here.”

“I told my grandmother about what you did with the frame on that mirror I saw in your shop and it reminded her that she has her grandmother’s hope chest.”

“That would be your great-great-grandmother’s hope chest. How old is that?”

“GiGi—that’s what we call my grandma—is seventy-five. If we stick with round numbers, let’s say GiGi’s mother would have been twenty years older than her, add another twenty years to get GiGi’s grandmother’s age, so the hope chest has to be…” He laughed. “Really old.”

Nati laughed, too, at his failure to come up with a precise number.

“I’d never seen it before,” he went on, “but GiGi made me root around in the attic until I found it this morning. It’s kind of like a wooden steamer trunk. The overall finish has survived pretty well, but the design painted on the front, around the latch, and on the very top has faded nearly into oblivion. GiGi wanted me to ask you if you could redo it the way you redid the mirror frame.”

“I’d have to check it out to know.”

“It’s a leafy vine motif with some hearts and flowers—”

“That’s the kind of thing I do. But I can’t say if the original design is restorable until I see it.”

“There are some spots that are gone altogether,” he warned. “Especially around the latch—”

“Sure, where hands brushed against it over and over again. But if there’s enough of the pattern left in other places I can usually figure out what’s missing and fill it in.”

“You just have to see it first to know,” he repeated. “What about now? If you don’t have anywhere to be, we could go over there and take a look…”

“Oh. Now? To your grandmother’s house?”

“It doesn’t have to be now. We can set it up for later. I just thought that since we’re both free, and you’re already on this side of town, and GiGi’s place is just over on Gaylord—”

Saturday night and he was as free as she was? He didn’t have a party or an event or a date with some drop-dead-gorgeous socialite? That was hard to believe.

“Sure, I can do that,” she answered after a pause.

“We can take my car or you can follow me over and go home from there—your choice,” he offered.

The thought of riding in a car with him seemed a little awkward and at the same time too appealing, so she said, “I’ll just follow you in my car.”

“Okay. Then if you’re all finished here, why don’t we go? We might be just in time for you to meet GiGi before she leaves for her dinner plans.”

GiGi. Every time he said it there was affection in his tone. Georgianna Milner Camden. Nati’s grandfather’s old love.

Nati’s curiosity suddenly ran high.

“Okay,” she agreed, worrying all over again that this whole thing might smack of disloyalty in some way. But she couldn’t stop herself now.

Cade ushered her out the front door and back to her car. It was parked beside his in the driveway.

“Just follow me,” he suggested.

“Okay,” Nati agreed, hoping her old clunker could keep up with his sleek black sports car.

As they drove the short distance, Nati saw him repeatedly glance into his rearview mirror to make sure she was there. But he drove conservatively enough for her not to have any problem following him.

After a few minutes, Cade turned onto a driveway that ran through the gap in a ruddy redbrick wall bordering an enormous estate.

She followed him up the stone-paved drive and around the fountain that formed the centerpiece of the front grounds. They came to a stop near a five-car garage. It was attached to an expansive house that would have made her former in-laws drool with envy because it dwarfed theirs.

The Tudor mansion curved out from the garage in a two-story semicircle of brick, stucco, wood trim and arched windows. The classically steep roof was dotted with dormers, two sculpted brick chimneys and gables under which thick green ivy grew.

Nati was embarrassed by the sound her car made when she turned off the engine but she pretended not to be when she got out.

“This is beautiful,” she said with unveiled awe as Cade led the way up the three steps onto the wide curved landing that stretched out from the house’s entrance.

Cade didn’t knock on the huge single door with its stained and leaded glass in the upper half. He merely opened it, held it and motioned for Nati to go in ahead of him.

She did, stepping as gingerly as if she were walking on eggshells, into an enormous foyer with a vaulted ceiling and a crystal chandelier centered over a round entry table large enough for a family of six to eat around had it been a dining table.

Cade followed her in, closed the door and shouted, “GiGi? Are you still here?”

“In the den,” a voice from somewhere farther into the house shouted back.

Having been married to the heir to an airline fortune, Nati had had the occasion to see some pretty impressive places. But nothing had compared to what she saw as she followed Cade to the left of the foyer, through double doors and into an oak-paneled den where two women were standing at a curio, one of them dusting antique watches, and then handing them to the other woman who carefully placed them on display.

Nati judged the woman replenishing the display to be about sixty years old—too young to be Cade’s grandmother. She was short, plump, with rosy round cheeks. She was dressed casually in knit slacks and a sweatshirt, her ash-blond hair cut close to her head all over in a low-maintenance cap style.

The other woman was older—more the age of Nati’s seventy-five-year-old grandfather and more likely to be the matriarch of the Camden clan. Like the sweat-shirted woman, she was also not much more than five feet tall and had a somewhat fluffy figure that said she enjoyed her food and robust good health, too. She was the more attractive of the two women, with a lined face that still bore the signs of glowing beauty. Her hair was salt-and-pepper colored, and she wore it short and curly. And despite the fact that she was dressed in a stylish black evening suit with a lacy white blouse and several strands of pearls, she was doing the dusting.