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The Bewildered Wife
Vivian Leiber
THE BRIDE HAS AMNESIA!THE BRIDE HAS AMNESIA!The woman Dean Radcliffe had hired to care for his motherless children believed she was his wife! Having lost her memory, shy Susan Graves had been transformed into an exciting, passionate woman–who wanted him to claim his husbandly rights! Had Susan been harboring a secret crush on her brooding boss all this time? And why had he never noticed how utterly captivating she was?Dean had no choice but to go along with the charade until Susan recovered her wits. But how long could he pretend to be her husband without wanting to make her his own–for real?
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u77b61640-0dcd-5793-b947-be742defffd0)
Excerpt (#uf45bb962-fe86-5a6c-b900-b16c3cb6a003)
Dear Reader (#u74b2635c-c206-5c85-972c-0685014b12ee)
Title Page (#u4a8d5819-c8a2-5cc6-8864-5e8535ada76f)
Dedication (#ubbfb724b-b8ef-588a-824a-93b73dd0bb1d)
About the Author (#u0a64ae5d-2068-581f-aca3-4578f6dd3673)
Chapter One (#uc078bcbc-b7d0-5707-9bba-793c0a3b834f)
Chapter Two (#u7ab50cd7-bac3-52c6-aa00-733131d8ffa3)
Chapter Three (#ufdccfba7-d79f-51f0-9345-713817eeaf83)
Chapter Four (#ua73afb62-5bc7-53fd-ac81-0efeaa21537c)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Why do you have this silly idea I’m a nanny?”
Susan asked dismally.
“It’s not silly,” Dean said at last. “I’m being perfectly rational.”
“You’re always very rational. But, in this case, you’re also being silly.”
“But I’m not! Susan, think carefully. Do you remember being my wife? Do you remember anything at all?”
“I don’t remember much of anything because my head feels pretty muddled,” she said defiantly. “But the doctor said that’s perfectly understandable. It will all come back.”
“Susan, what do you remember about our marriage, about us?”
“I remember a lot, a lot that a nanny wouldn’t remember. Intimate things. Bedroom things. You and me things. Not just nanny things. You take me upstairs to that bedroom and I’ll prove to you once and for all that I’m your wife. I’ll prove to you that I remember the most important things about being your wife…”
Dear Reader (#ulink_90b187f8-808c-5aa1-b76a-cb63869624f1),
This July, Silhouette Romance cordially invites you to a month of marriage stories, based upon your favorite themes. There’s no need to RSVP; just pick up a book, start reading…and be swept away by romance.
The month kicks off with our Fabulous Fathers title, And Baby Makes Six, by talented author Pamela Dalton. Two single parents marry for convenience’ sake, only to be surprised to learn they’re expecting a baby of their own!
In Natalie Patrick’s Three Kids and a Cowboy, a woman agrees to stay married to her husband just until he adopts three adorable orphans, but soon finds herself longing to make the arrangement permanent. And the romance continues when a beautiful wedding consultant asks her sexy neighbor to pose as her fiancé in Just Say I Do by RITA Award-winning author Lauryn Chandler.
The reasons for weddings keep coming, with a warmly humorous story of amnesia in Vivian Leiber’s The Bewildered Wife; a new take on the runaway bride theme in Have Honeymoon, Need Husband by Robin Wells; and a green card wedding from debut author Elizabeth Harbison in A Groom for Maggie.
Here’s to your reading enjoyment!
Melissa Senate
Senior Editor
Silhouette Romance
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
The Bewildered Wife
Vivian Leiber
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my husband, who taught me that lightning really
does strike twice.
VIVIAN LEIBER’s
writing talent runs in the family. Her great-grandmother wrote a popular collection of Civil War-era poetry, her grandfather Fritz was an award-winning science-fiction writer and her father still writes science fiction and fantasy today. Vivian hopes that her two sons follow the family tradition, but so far the five-year-old’s ambition is to be a construction worker and own a toy store, while her other boy wants to be a truck driver.
Chapter One (#ulink_40bde697-17fa-5cab-872a-a27ee8cbbc1e)
“Susan, make a wish,” Chelsea begged.
Susan looked around the dining room table. Chelsea, Henry and Baby Edward’s faces were lit by excitement and by the twelve candles on a chocolate cake—Chelsea had run out of both candles and patience long before she could spear the cake with all twenty-seven.
“Come on, make a wish,” Henry demanded. He was dressed in Batman pajama bottoms, but had decided to wrap the matching top around his head like a turban. A tube that had been used to mail architectural drawings to his father was shoved into his waistband—ready to draw, to strike, at the first sign of trouble.
Susan took a deep breath.
I wish…I wish all this were mine, she thought.
And then immediately chastised herself.
It wasn’t hers, could never be hers, and it was very selfish to want it.
But it wasn’t the Radcliffe mansion, the fortyacre grounds, the luxury cars or the Radcliffe collection of late-nineteenth-century American painters she longed for. She didn’t pine for the jewels locked away in a safe behind a panel in the upstairs library. She wouldn’t even want the heavy Queen Anne furniture, the soft Aubusson rugs or the ornate silver flatware that lay dusty and tarnished in the beveled-glass cabinets of the butler’s pantry.
No, she wasn’t wishing for any of the expensive and elegant things that made the Radcliffe family one of the wealthiest in the country.
It was other things she wished for, intangible things that couldn’t be measured by an accountant or valued on a bank statement
Things that she hesitated to name, even in silence, even before her birthday cake, which glittered more brightly than gold on the dining room table.
It was out of the question that her wishes would be granted, presumptuous even to blow out the candles with these thoughts on her mind.
Out of reach for a nanny who was paid well above minimum wage but still not enough to afford even a single fork on the table before her. Out of reach for a woman who, at twenty-seven, had no husband or child or even a home to call her own.
Still, Susan took a deep breath.
There was nothing wrong with a wish, right?
She wished to call her own the three little faces glowing with pride—pride at a cake they had frosted themselves, although Susan had been the one to make the iced flowers.
To claim Chelsea, at seven, already starting to take over some of Susan’s sewing work on designing clothes for her multitude of Barbie dolls.
And Henry, at six already a gentleman. Or a knight. Or a superhero. Or just a boy with a cowlick that couldn’t be tamed and hands that looked dirty bare seconds after a scrubbing.
And, of course, Baby Edward, who was two and a half and not really a baby anymore. But Henry and Chelsea kept raising the age limit on the word baby, like a reverse limbo bar. He’d be Baby Edward when he was fifteen.
Baby Edward stared at the cake and Susan knew exactly what he’d wish for.
Toys.
She reached out to touch his soft cheek and her attention was caught by the wedding band on her left hand. All that she had left of her own family, it looked like—but wasn’t—a symbol of marital status. Instead, it was a reminder of her mother, left to her when she was just a child.
The ring brought to her mind the final, most secret, most selfish, most impossible wish that skittered across her mind as a wild mosaic of images: a vision of white, of tulle, of roses and real wedding rings, and passionate kisses on a bed covered with silk. It was what her parents had had, and their parents before them. It was what Susan wanted for herself.
She shook her head at her own silliness in wishing for…him. Wishing for him to hers.
And so, Susan having grown up to be realistic, maybe even a little too pragmatic, decided to wish only this: that this private moment at one end of the Radcliffe dining room table would last just a little longer.
“What are you going to wish for?” Chelsea asked.
“She won’t get it if she tells,” Henry said knowingly.
“Toys?” Baby Edward asked.
Susan smiled and kissed him on his forehead, inhaling his sweet baby smell. She touched the macaroni necklace that she wore—Chelsea’s present. Henry and Baby Edward had drawn pictures that she had already folded carefully into her wallet for safekeeping.
Stretching out her moment…
“I won’t tell you what I wish for,” Susan said. “But, Baby Edward, you’ll always have toys.”
She took a deep breath, holding it long enough for the kids to take theirs. And then she blew. And they blew. Very hard, but still the candles fluttered as delicately as the wings of doves.
The dining room was thrown into complete black for a brief moment until Henry switched on the chandelier to its blazing glory.
It was amazing how quickly you forgot that the dining room was the size of a basketball court, Susan thought as she looked around the Louis-the-Fifteenth-inspired room.
“You’ll get your wish!” Chelsea exclaimed, clapping her hands. “You got all the candles. You’ll definitely get your wish.”
“I already have,” Susan replied.
Baby Edward reached out to steal a taste of icing, but Susan firmly pushed his hand away.
“Now how about we let Baby Edward have the piece with the red icing flower?” she asked.
She had placed the three flowers on the cake with extreme care, knowing that the pieces must be cut with precision. Baby Edward liked red things—fire trucks, valentines and red icing flowers. Chelsea liked yellow—the sun, lemonade and the yellow flowers. And Henry liked purple, the color of royalty, and Susan carefully cut the cake so each child got their favorite colored flower.
The cake had turned out pretty good on such short notice. Their father, Dean Radcliffe, had said only this morning he was coming home for the small family party to celebrate Susan’s birthday.
Chelsea had invited him as the children sat planning Susan’s party at the breakfast table.
“I’ll be here with a cake and a special present for the birthday girl,” he had promised.
“In time for dinner?” Henry had challenged.
Susan had felt a red, hot blush sweep over her, but luckily Dean Radcliffe didn’t choose this moment to actually notice her.
He merely smiled at Henry.
“In time for dinner,” he repeated.
Susan had made hot dogs and chips—but had put a steak in the refrigerator to thaw in case he did live up to his promise. She also made him a baked potato and salad, fixed a martini extradry, and got out the Harry Connick, Jr. CDs he liked. For an hour, Connick’s soft and sultry jazz and the smell of home cooking had filled the house.
Then, around six, she had admitted to herself that he might, just might, not come home early. If she were truly honest with herself, she would know it was a billion to one shot that he would even remember his nanny’s birthday.
Much less return from work with the promised cake, present, and on time.
She had started baking the cake while the children ate their dinner—feeding them their hot dogs was a hard concession to reality. But she knew she felt the disappointment in his not coming more acutely than the children. They scarcely missed the successive nights he didn’t come home until they were already in bed.
Dean Radcliffe shouldn’t be expected to come home early for his nanny’s birthday. Susan sat back in her chair and shook her head at her own naive and heartfelt anticipation.
She had even worn her best blouse to top her usual sturdy jeans. She had hand-washed the blouse and mended the wrist where the seam was frayed. She had sewn the blouse years earlier from a piece of fine gold brocade she had found on sale at a junk store. She had thought at the time the color would set off her pale blond hair nicely.
But now Susan didn’t think even a gold blouse could make her hair look all that good. It was damp with sweat from the oven’s heat, held back by a scrunchie and dotted with icing. Even the prized blouse had some speckles of purple, yellow and red food dye.
She didn’t feel like eating. Pushing her plate away, she took a couple of dog biscuits from her jeans pocket.
“I didn’t forget you, Wiley,” she said, holding them out to the eighty-pound German shepherd, who had awakened at the telltale sound of Susan rubbing those treats together.
The children savored their cake for several minutes—Baby Edward eating only the icing and Chelsea making a hash of the fluffy insides—and then Henry asked the question he asked every night
“Are you going to tell the story of the Eastman bears?”
“Only if Chelsea gets her pj’s on and all of you brush your teeth.”
Instant and complete obedience.
In ten minutes, Henry found his favorite pillow and spread out across the bottom of his elder sister’s bed. Chelsea, in her Barbie doll nightgown, pulled the covers up to her neck. Susan sat at the head of the bed, Baby Edward on her lap. Lit by the golden hall light, the bedroom seemed a gateway into a wonderful paradise.
A paradise littered with discarded towels, children’s clothes, toys and well-worn shoes.
A paradise guarded by Wiley.
A paradise ruled by bears.
Several times, Susan looked up to see the children’s collection of Eastman teddy bears aligned on the dresser top. And she continued the tale she had told the night before, which was really just a continuation of the story of the night before that.
In fact, the story she had created about the Eastman bears extended as far back as any of the Radcliffe children could remember—though, in fact, Susan had only started working for the family the year before. A year after their mother’s death.
Baby Edward’s head drooped to Susan’s shoulder. Henry squirmed, rolled around and finally found the perfect position. Chelsea closed her eyes.
I wish this were mine, Susan thought, letting herself be selfish for just one final second. And then she realized that she had already gotten her wish. They were here.
Maybe Dean Radcliffe wasn’t with them, but her crush on him was so excruciating that he’d just make her nervous.
No, in a life already beat down with reality’s harshness, Susan had a way of seeing the perfection in her day.
“And then Sister Bear walked all the way to the magic castle,” she continued, finding her place in the story.
Dean Radcliffe tossed his keys on the hallway console and leafed through the pile of envelopes. Junk mail, requests for money, invitations to flashy charitable events Nicole would have loved. Why couldn’t people just send money to help out their favorite charity—instead of requiring a black-tie event in return?
He pushed the mail to one side and walked through the darkened living room, carrying a cake box and a dozen roses.
Nicole was still in this house, though she had been dead for almost two years. He wondered if her death was what fueled his insatiable desire for work—never wanting to face the moment in the day when there as nothing left…but to come home. He raked his fingers through his blue-black hair and strode through the marbled hallway.
He paused as he reached the dining room. The crystal chandelier cast a faint golden glow on the remnants of a party—paper plates, noisemakers, half-eaten pieces of cake.
He shuddered.
Late again.
He really hadn’t wanted to be.
Susan seemed like a nice nanny—in fact, she was the only person who would stay.
So he should make an effort.
Had wanted to make an effort.
Had made an effort.
He had spent a good two or three minutes with his secretary, Mrs. Witherspoon, telling her he wanted a cake, a dozen roses and a present from the jewelers. And Mrs. Witherspoon, who had worked for him since he graduated college and had worked for his father before him since the Jurassic Age, had taken care of everything with her usual pursed-mouthed efficiency.
He put the cake box down at the head of the table and pulled the small blue velvet jewelry box from the inside pocket of his charcoal gray suit jacket. He opened the box and studied the simple, silverlinked bracelet with three charms—two were silhouettes with Henry and Edward engraved in bold, block letters and one silhouette had pigtails and was engraved with Chelsea’s name.
Simple. Nice. Festive.
But nothing a young woman could get the wrong idea about. A decidedly perfect nanny gift. Mrs. Witherspoon had done an excellent job.
Too bad he had missed the little party, but surely Susan couldn’t expect that he would leave the strategic planning meeting for the Eastman Toy Company takeover just for her birthday!
No woman could expect that of him, especially not a sensible nanny like Susan.
Chapter Two (#ulink_89e49114-e243-5797-98fb-a33745c77aa1)
“And then Brother Bear came up with a great idea,” Susan said. “He thought if they took a kitchen towel and made it into a sail, they could get across the big sherbet lake…”
“Daddy’s home,” Henry whispered.
“Daddy’s home?” Chelsea hissed.
“Daddy?” Baby Edward asked groggily, opening one eye and then closing it. He snuggled farther into Susan’s warm, soft bosom.
Wiley looked up from his sleep, arching one eyebrow in an imitation of alertness.
Dean Radcliffe climbed up the last landing up to the children’s wing and appeared at the doorway, a tall shadow backlit by the hall light.
“Oh, Daddy,” Henry said, poised between happiness and uncertainty about his father’s mood.
“You missed Susan’s birthday,” Chelsea said accusingly.
“Now, Chelsea,” Susan warned.
As Dean stood in the doorway, all Susan’s sensible thoughts about him being out of reach flew out the window.
She loved him—and could kick herself for loving him.
And he, she reminded herself sternly, barely noticed her. His mind, as always, was on his work.
His only concession to the lateness of the hour was that his burgundy silk tie was pulled a bare inch away from the white Oxford shirt collar. His suit was severely, but most expensively, cut. His eyelids were sooty but, though he had left the house at six that morning, his emerald eyes were as piercing and quick as if he had just awakened.
He raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture that Susan recognized as meaning his head ached.
It should—his days were long, his work was grueling and he came home every day to children who reminded him of the wife he lost. With their blond hair, their freckles, their blue eyes so much like the wife who had died so tragically, so prematurely.
Susan was sure he must have loved his wife very much and mourned her deeply.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Radcliffe,” Susan said, easing off of Chelsea’s bed while managing to hold Baby Edward in a comfortable sleeping position. “Children, give your father a kiss good-night. Then to bed. Henry, pick up your pillow—”
“No, it’s all right. I’m interrupting,” Dean said, raising his hand. “But I do want to talk to you in the study when you’ve put the children to bed.”
Chelsea and Henry fell back onto the comforter in a mixture of relief and disappointment.
“Goody gum drops, we get to finish the story,” Henry said.
“Daddy, I really do want to give you a goodnight kiss,” Chelsea said.
But Dean Radcliffe was already halfway down the hall to his study, followed by the ponderously slow but very loyal Wiley.
Ten minutes later, she went downstairs to the study with a tray piled high with two hot dogs, chips and the salad she had made earlier in the evening.
The steak was burnt beyond recognition and the baked potato shriveled like a piece of wadded-up paper. The martini pitcher was already washed, dried and put away in the bar armoire. Besides, she didn’t want to remind him of the promise he had made—and broken.
“Susan, please sit down,” Dean said as she came into the room. He looked at her with the wary but gracious expectancy he no doubt gave to all business associates, secretaries and clerks. “How kind of you to bring me dinner. I could have made something for myself.”
“Actually, I just made a little more of what I made the kids,” Susan said, conceding nothing about her hopes and dreams and efforts. She put the tray down on the only corner of the desk not covered with papers, and sat on the edge of one of the leather wing chairs opposite him. “You didn’t eat yet?”
“No, I guess I didn’t,” he said. “I was too busy working out the details on the Eastman Toy deal. There’s a lot of money riding on it.”
He reached for a hot dog.
“How is it you always guess correctly the nights I don’t have a business dinner and the ones when I’m able to come home in time for dinner?”
“Just intuition, I guess,” she said. She didn’t add that appearing at nine o’clock was hardly coming home in time for dinner.
She slipped Wiley a dog biscuit from her jeans pocket.
“I’m sorry about your birthday,” he said stiffly, clearly not very practiced in apologies.
“It’s all right,” Susan said, shrugging.
“I wanted to talk to you about the children,” Dean continued, showing his relief that she was understanding, that she knew her place in the household. “Tell me about how they’re doing.”
Susan swallowed the dryness in her mouth. She wondered if she was turning red—she did that when she was nervous. It was always this way with him, being around him. He made her excited and anxious and delighted all at the same time.
It was a crush. Just a stupid crush.
A crush she had rationalized and dissected and fought against so long and finally surrendered to so that it was now just a part of her personality, like her soft spot for children, weakness for chocolate and love of Audrey Hepburn movies.
Having a crush meant that whenever he was near, she noticed everything about him. Whether he was tired, whether he was sad. If he needed a haircut, if he was happy about some business deal.
She even noticed that he didn’t notice her.
So she could have her dry mouth, could shake with the jitters, could feel her excitement, her face could have a bright crimson blush—and she never had to worry that he would embarrass her by even suspecting that he was the object of her adoration.
All he wanted was an update on the kids. All she wanted was the chance to be near him.
“Baby Edward pointed to the picture of a brachiosaurus in a book this morning and he could sort of say the name of it,” she reported. “And Chelsea won the second-grade calla tournament today. She’s very proud of her—”
“What’s calla?”
“It’s a board game. Uses numbers and counting. The second graders have been playing it.”
“Strategy?”
“Yes, it uses strategy. Sort of like checkers.”
“Good. Chelsea’s got a good head for scoping out the competition.”
Actually, Susan just thought Chelsea was a bright, sweet little girl who had played a lot of calla games with her friends.
“Henry’s teacher told me when I picked him up that he’s doing much better with sounding out blends. And he got invited to Michael’s house for a play date this afternoon.”
“Excellent. He must begin making those vital connections.”
“You mean friendships?”
“Yes, of course, friendships.”
As Susan continued the update of domestic events, she was amazed again at how, even as busy, as distant as he was, Dean Radcliffe knew every detail of his children’s life. He puzzled over Henry’s phonics problems, asked about whether Chelsea’s best friend, Martina, had recovered from chicken pox and reminded Susan that all three were due for their six-month dental visit.
On the other hand, maybe he was the kind of businessman who remembered the birthdays of his clients’ secretaries and sent gifts to trusted employees at Christmas.
He certainly was that way with the children.
“Susan, I’ll have my secretary get Edward a T-shirt with a brachiosaurus,” Dean said. “Sort of a congratulations-on-learning-your-dinosaurs gift.”
Susan nodded, although she didn’t like it when Dean counted on Mrs. Witherspoon to pick up things for the children. Maybe Dean should consider telling Baby Edward himself that he was proud—but it wasn’t her place to make suggestions.
“Will that be all?” she asked.
“No, one more thing,” Dean said, finishing up his hot dog. “I want that storytelling to stop.”
Susan flushed. She had thought that might be coming. They had had this conversation before. She gulped, hating to have done something contrary.
“I’m sorry. It’s just the kids were acting up tonight, didn’t want to go to bed,” she rationalized. “And they seem to like the story so much.”
“I don’t want their heads filled with fantasy,” Dean said, his voice suddenly icily determined. Susan shivered under the personal power this man had—if he treated his business adversaries this way then he certainly deserved his reputation for always getting his way—without ever having to raise his voice.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Radcliffe.”
“They need to face reality. Not be distracted by fiction,” he added. “Besides, the Eastman Bear Company is ripe for my purchase precisely because of the muddled thinking promoted by such dreaming.”
“But the children like it—hearing stories about the bears.”
“I would suggest you reading to them about history or science or animals,” he replied curtly in a way that left no doubt this was no mere suggestion, it was an order.
Susan bit back a retort.
He was so close, so close to connecting to these children, Susan thought. But then he couldn’t do it. He wanted to love them, did love them, but couldn’t get close enough to them to see that they were wonderful children and having a few moments of whimsy at the end of the day wouldn’t turn them into wimps or daydreamers. He was so close to being a real father to them, but he couldn’t do it. She knew the death of his wife had hurt him greatly. She wondered what kind of man he had been before the tragedy.
Because she loved him, she could forgive him the kind of man he was now.
And wish that someday he would change.
She stood up.
“It won’t happen again,” she said.
“Good. Oh, Susan, I nearly forgot,” he said, pulling a velvet box from under a pile of papers. “Your birthday.”
She approached the desk, swallowing back a sadness mingled with anticipation. She wished she hadn’t wanted his present, wished she didn’t care. She only knew she did. She approached the desk and he smiled—the same charming smile that had gotten him everything in life.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he answered and turned his attention to some paperwork in front of him. “And happy birthday. By the way, what’s that perfume you’re wearing? It’s very beautiful.”
He asked the question as if he were asking what time the trains ran, but still he asked it. Her breath caught. She looked into his emerald eyes as he waited for her answer. And for a moment, a scant moment, her heart soared as she knew he had noticed her, really noticed her.
She felt a rising heat in her body, confusing as it was enticing.
How could he do it? With just a look, just a word he could make her quiver.
She was nuts—he didn’t give her a thought other than in her capacity as nanny.
And yet he had just noticed her, had noticed her scent.
He noticed her as a woman.
Her heart soared and then fell flat with a thaddump! as her body heat made her scent blossom and even she could recognize its source.
“Cake,” she said blandly. “I smell like cake.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_236fb145-0764-50af-8ff8-38d61a91949e)
“That was real close,” Chelsea said in a small voice.
“Real close,” Henry blubbered.
“Just pay attention to the story,” Susan urged. “Then you won’t notice the thunder. Now where was I? Oh, yes, the Continental Congress appointed five men to write a letter to the King explaining why the colonies should not be taxed under the Parliamentary—”
“Can you tell us about Eastman Bears again?” Chelsea asked.
“Sorry, honey, it’s not…not a good idea,” Susan said, thinking of their father’s new restrictions on what they should read. “Besides, I told you the whole story.”
“No, you didn’t,” Henry pointed out.
“Bears,” Baby Edward begged. He didn’t like the blue book about the American Revolution. Not even the pictures of Benjamin Franklin, the Liberty Bell or the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
The nightstand lamp flickered on and off. Susan glanced only briefly at the window, determined to not let the children see that she was worried. The wind was fast and furious—the massive Radcliffe oaks creaked and groaned as their branches were yanked back and forth. Hail and rain slapped against the windowpanes and the sky was a sickly yellow and black. No wonder they called this part of northern Illinois “Tornado Alley.”
“I wish Daddy was home,” Henry said dismally.
“Me, too,” said Chelsea.
“Me, thweeeeh,” Baby Edward added.
Clap!
Chelsea and Henry leapt into Susan’s arms at the crack of blazing light and thunder. Susan hugged all three children and watched the lamp flutter and die, plunging the bedroom into darkness.
The book on the American Revolution slid from her lap to the floor.
“I want my daddy!” Chelsea cried in great, convulsive gulps. “I’m scared!”
Baby Edward howled.
“All right, all right,” Susan soothed. “Now let’s try to be a little braver.”
“I can’t,” Chelsea exclaimed.
“I can’t, either,” Henry said.
Susan looked around the room, blinking to adjust to the darkness. Familiar furniture seemed like ominous prowling monsters and the curtains looked like unearthly ghosts.
And the candles were safely tucked in the dining room hutch, waiting for dinner parties that hadn’t been given since the mistress of the house had died.
She disengaged herself from the children enough to shove her hand into Chelsea’s toy box. Rooting around, she pulled out the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle flashlight. She flicked it on, shooting out a small but comforting speck of light.
“Calm down, all three of you. The Bear family survived a storm much worse than this without a single tear.”
Henry was the first to catch on. He gulped down his sobs and wiped his runny nose with his sleeve.
“They did? Not a single tear?”
“It was a much bigger storm than this one,” Susan said, guilty that she was going against her employer’s wishes but certain he would understand. Just this once.
She hustled them back into the safe bed, opening her arms wide enough to encompass them all. Even Henry, who sometimes considered himself too old for her embraces.
She started another tale, a story she made up as she went along, cuing her words to the reactions of her charges. She had described the storm, the bears, their bravery and was winding things up, when they heard the first anguished yelps.
“It’s Wiley!” Henry shrieked.
“Oh, no!” Susan cried.
The children leapt from the bed to the window, Susan behind them. Illuminated by the lightning, the pitiful, wet, sobbing Wiley stood in the court-yard—pulling at the chain that tied him to the steel shed out in back of the Radcliffe oak trees.
“The landscape service must have forgotten to let him loose after they mowed the lawn,” Susan said.
“Bring him back in!” Chelsea demanded.
“Yeah, get him!” Henry begged.
Susan stared in horror at the poor dog and then at her charges. If she did nothing, Wiley’s pain and terror would be unbearable—for all of them.
But if she went downstairs and left the three children on their own…
“I’ll go down there, but you have to stand right here,” she said. “And don’t move. And take care of Baby Edward. Chelsea, you’re in charge.”
She left them the flashlight and some comforting kisses. In the hall, she felt her way, hand over hand, along the walls of the night-shrouded house. Down the steps, through the cavernous pitch-black dining room. At last she reached the kitchen. She flung open the back door, then fell back as the wind slammed it right back against her. She landed hard.
She scrambled up, grabbed the door handle and shoved with all her might. A sudden vacuum created by the unruly wind sucked the door outward, and she lurched onto the back porch. Downed branches and ripped leaves, slathered to the porch with rain, made it slippery going.
Out past the courtyard, Wiley moaned for her, his eyes pleading for relief.
Woman and dog jumped as the sky cracked in two with a bang and a burst of light.
That was close, Susan thought. Must have hit right near the orchard behind the formal Radcliffe gardens. Swallowing the tight lump of fear, she charged down the steps and across the courtyard.
She looked back once through the sheets of rain to see three ghostly faces pressed against the window of the second-floor back bedroom. Then she reached for Wiley and he lapped her hand as she fumbled with the chain at his neck.
“It’s all right, Wiley, you’re safe now,” Susan comforted. She found the grip, and released him. He raced for the back door, slipping once but recovering as if the very hounds of hell were chasing him.
Susan felt a gentle tap on her shoulder and, still holding the metal chain, she turned around. She looked down at the bracelet Dean Radcliffe had given her—its little charms twinkling in the eerie storm light. She hadn’t wanted to wear it, hadn’t wanted to admit it meant something to her to receive a gift from him. But she wore it now—always, long after they grew up, the children would be in her memories. She hoped she would get over Dean.
A quivering light burst from the shed and slithered up the chain to the twinkling bracelet. She felt fire squeezing her wrists. And then came the roar of thunder, close against her ear.
“Daddy, you gotta come home.” Henry gulped, then choked on a sob. “Daddy, it’s just like the night Mommy…”
Dean Radcliffe picked up the receiver on the speaker phone and with a single silencing glance at the executives around the conference table, leaned back in his chair.
“What’s just like—” He hesitated and took a deep breath. “What’s just like that night?”
“The lightning!” Henry cried.
Dean glanced out his sixty-fourth-floor office window to the black sky. Clouds hung low, so low it seemed he could grab their swollen mounds. There was a crack of lightning in the distance.
It all came back to him—even now the memory was as sickening as it had been two years ago.
Nicole’s body, her car at the bottom of the ravine where the Radcliffe property line met the street, the car radio still playing the heavy-metal music she loved so much, her blond hair thrown forward across her still, frozen face.
“Henry, get Susan on the phone,” he ordered his son, more curtly perhaps as he struggled to squelch his own emotions.
“That’s the problem,” Henry said. “Susan’s outside.”
Unbidden, the scent of sugar and vanilla came to him. He batted it away with a surge of anger. She was clearly negligent, leaving the frightened children to fend for themselves. He’d have to talk to her.
“What’s she doing outside?”
He stood up, his tall frame making the office look as if it had been furnished with treasures from a dollhouse. He raked a callused hand through his hair. Savvy executives knew he was fighting off a headache—they had seen that gesture many times during tense negotiations. And nothing in recent years had been more tension filled than the attempted purchase of the Eastman Bear Company.
Indistinct sobs crackled from the speaker phone.
“Henry!” Dean yelled.
Someone else came on the line.
“Daddy, it’s Chelsea. Please come home.”
“If Susan’s outside, get me…” He thought for a minute, and then remembered the terrible truth. There wasn’t a housekeeper who would stay in the isolated and gloomy Radcliffe house. There wasn’t a maid who had lasted longer than a day. And he had fired the groundskeeper two days after Nicole’s death; as he remembered that man, his jaws clenched in suppressed rage.
The problem was there was no one to care for his children except Susan.
Dependable, responsible, nearly invisible Susan.
If she wasn’t there…
“There’s no one here, Daddy,” Chelsea said quietly. “Susan went outside to save Wiley.”
Dean scribbled a note to Mrs. Whitherspoon and passed it across the table to her. “Call 911, send them to the house,” it said.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded.
“No,” Chelsea said in a very small voice.
“Are Henry and Edward all right?”
“Yes, but we’re very scared.”
Dean took a deep breath, and his emerald eyes skittered across the conference room at the two dozen executives who had been working through profit-loss statements, annual reports, spreadsheets and payroll estimations for the purchase of the Eastman Bear Company.
“Daddy, it’s just like Mommy,” Chelsea said.
He closed his eyes, wishing very much that she wouldn’t say that. He had worked so hard to get on with his life.
“You’re just saying that because it’s a storm, just like on…that night.”
“No, Daddy,” Chelsea said. “I’m saying that because…because she’s dead.”
Dean dropped the phone and leapt across the table, making the receptionist’s desk in the lobby in four seconds.
“Fire department will be out there in ten minutes,” Mrs. Witherspoon cried out to his shadow.
“Not soon enough,” he muttered.
He punched the elevator button with his fist, then decided to take the stairs. He hit the parking lot in less than a minute, leapt into his midnight-colored Porsche and skidded out onto the street.
Chelsea was so right, he thought, as he sped down the rain-soaked streets of Chicago. It was just like that long-ago night of violent tempers and recriminations. He remembered driving home, angered at…Well, those memories were too painful to go over.
He reached the house before the fire trucks—although, to their credit, he could hear the sirens from a distance.
He screeched to a halt at the point where the circular drive met the front colonnade. His three children cowered just inside the door.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, taking the steps three at a time and yanking open the beveled glass door.
“We’re all right.” Chelsea gulped. “It’s…it’s Susan.”
Though he wanted to pick up a howling Edward, to smooth Henry’s trembling lip, to brush away Chelsea’s tears, he knew he’d better go first to the body of his children’s nanny.
Besides, for the past two years, he had found himself totally unable to handle any of his children’s emotions.
“Now this, now this,” he muttered as he swept through the entrance hall, the living room, the library and out onto the breakfast room porch. Rain lashed against the French doors, and gurgling waters from overflowing gutters swept through the cobblestone courtyard.
He opened the back door and then he saw her. The inert body. Susan? He tried to remember any detail of the woman who had cared for his children for the past year.
But to him, she was the only nanny who had lasted, and there had been fourteen others who had left before her—some lasting no more than a day. He was hard on people, he knew that, and regret welled up in him as he realized that if he were only easier to work for, he might have had a full-time housekeeper, or maid—someone else besides the woman who came twice-a-week—to bring the dog in.
He took the steps two at a time and crouched down at her rain-soaked body.
He opened the palm of her hand, and nearly broke down in uncharacteristic tears as he saw she still held the metal clasp of Wiley’s chain.
He looked heavenward, wondering at a world in which there could be such random and senseless horror.
She had given her life for his children’s dog.
He rolled her over carefully, put his hand underneath her head and pulled her up into his arms.
Gently, so very gently. She deserved the deepest respect in death even if she had never, to his knowledge, had much respect accorded to her in life.
Hadn’t the agency said something about her not having had much of a family?
Well, maybe that’s the only thing that would make a nanny willing to put up with him.
He looked at the closed eyes, the pale skin with drops of rain like dewdrops on rose petals. He touched the budlike lips. He stroked away the wet, thick tendrils of golden hair. He knew it wasn’t right, but his eyes drifted to the swell of her breasts revealed by the rain-drenched T-shirt. She had been beautiful, in her own fresh and innocent kind of way.
He had never noticed. Never noticed at all.
He thought of the life that had been taken away from her, of all the opportunities that a sweet, gentle girl like her had lost. The future—the possibility of finding someone, of having children, of having a life.
All for Wiley, a twelve-year-old German shepherd.
All because of his own stupidity and hard-heartedness—there should have been someone else here to worry about the dog, someone else to help out around the house.
Hadn’t she just had a birthday? He searched his memory and realized that he hadn’t even been able to offer her a day off. Hadn’t even managed to get home in time for a shared dinner. Had delegated the purchase of her birthday present to Mrs. Witherspoon. He noticed the twinkling of the three-charm bracelet.
He shook his head sadly.
And then, suddenly, her darkly lashed eyes fluttered open. She looked up at him, smiled at first tentatively and then joyously. Those amber eyes he had never noticed before now seemed to him to be the most beautiful jewels he had ever seen.
Simply because she was alive.
She squeezed her arms around his neck and his first thought was that he would never, ever embarrass her by reminding her that she had acted most unnannylike by hugging him.
It was a shock—to both of them—and perfectly forgivable, Dean reminded himself.
Many people acted foolishly in the face of death.
“Darling,” she said. “Darling, I’m so glad you’re home.”
And she put her mouth on him and kissed him, really kissed him, while hail the size of Ping-Pong balls pelted the yard and the fire truck came to a screeching halt at the front steps of the Radcliffe mansion.
Chapter Four (#ulink_2e3b6d38-9f0c-5874-80bb-1b61aab64efe)
Three hours later, after a conference call made from the hospital lobby to reschedule the day’s meeting with the owner of Eastman Toys, Dean Radcliffe swept up the hospital staircase with an oversize bouquet of dazzlingly white and pink tea roses that had been dropped off by Mrs. Witherspoon.
He stopped at the fourth-floor’s nurses’ station.
“Susan…uh,” he said, snapping the fingers of his free hand as he struggled to remember the last name of his nanny. “Susan. She was brought in this evening. The emergency room nurse said she’d been transferred up here from the emergency room. It was a lightning accident. She was struck by lightning. Susan…uh…Susan…uh…”
Susan something or other.
He couldn’t remember her last name.
Had he ever known what it was?
When he had called the office, Mrs. Witherspoon hadn’t even known. And Mrs. Witherspoon knew everything, with the cool, unruffled efficiency of a computer.
He had told Mrs. Witherspoon to find someone, anyone from the agency who could take over this crisis. He ordered her to make arrangements to pay for Susan’s hospitalization and recovery. And a generous severance pay to help her if she didn’t want to return to work.
He hoped she’d want to come back.
The alternative would be a disaster because the agency had warned him many times that it was difficult to find anyone who would work for him at the Radcliffe Estate.
He shoved down the sensation that had haunted him for the past hours, a memory he had dodged by concentrating on the changing profit-loss ratios of Eastman Bears and stock option prices.
Still, the memory nagged at him.
She had kissed him.
She had grabbed him by the collar and kissed him in a way that was most un-Susan-like.
In a way that made him think of stars and fire-crackers and roller-coaster rides and trips to the beach. In a way that lingered on his lips like a caress, even now he could remember the feel. And when he had been most thoroughly kissed by her, she had pulled away and looked up at him with frank sensuality and the breezy confidence of a woman his equal. Straight into his eyes without a whisper of the deference he had unconsciously come to expect from the women in his life.
Not like the Susan he knew at all!
As the paramedics poured out onto the courtyard, he had picked her up, shielding her face with his jacket—but it hadn’t been the rain he had feared, it was the notion of strangers seeing her so…so naked and open and womanly and sensual.
When she was brought back to her right senses, she would be appalled.
She had obviously been very traumatized. Would never remember it and be very embarrassed if she were told about it.
Which he didn’t intend on doing.
He found himself staring into the eyes of the fourth-floor station nurse. And remembering Susan’s beautiful amber eyes, eyes that he had never before noticed.
“Susan,” he repeated more slowly, wondering if the feel of her name on his lips would ever be the same. The name didn’t sound quite so efficient and no-nonsense. The name Susan conjured up images of such intensity that he closed his eyes and counted to ten in an effort to get a grip on himself.
“Your wife, Mr. Radcliffe?” the nurse, a big blonde with a horsey jaw, supplied. “She’s resting comfortably. In room 403. Here, there’s some paperwork in her file. You’re supposed to sign two releases for the Cat scan we performed and…”
Dean opened his eyes to an inch-thick sheaf of forms the nurse had flapped down on the counter.
“No, no, no,” he said, the roses trembling in his arms. “She’s not my wife.”
“Not your wife?” the nurse questioned, frowning.
“Not my wife,” Dean confirmed, again reviewing his nanny’s very odd behavior. She had called him darling. She had kissed him. He touched his lips, where he thought he might still feel her kiss.
She must have been in some sort of shock.
Poor, poor Susan.
Now he was the one having problems.
An older man in a white jacket approached the nurses’ station. He leaned close to Dean.
“But, Mr. Radcliffe, your wife is in room 403. Recovering nicely,” he said. “The Cat scan indicated some problem areas, but considering the shock she took, we’re all quite amazed that she’s doing as well as she is.”
“She’s my children’s nanny,” Dean said brusquely, determinedly putting the memory of her kiss aside. “My wife…my wife…my wife is—was actually was a woman named Nicole and she’s…”
“Relax. You look entirely too agitated,” the man soothed. “Please, let me introduce myself. I’m Dr. Sugar. Sam Sugar. I treated your wife this evening in the ER. When she came in, her blood pressure was 80 over 40 and her heartbeat was erratic but essentially strong and we started with a potassium drip—”
“The woman who was brought in this evening is not my wife,” Dean interrupted.
“But it says right here that she’s your wife,” the nurse said, holding up the chart.
Her square-jawed stare made clear that as far as she was concerned, that ended the matter. Hospital forms were never wrong.
“She’s not my wife. Maybe there’s been some confusion,” Dean said. “She’s actually my children’s nanny. If she told you she’s my wife she’s very much mistaken.”
“Admitting on the first floor says she’s your wife,” the nurse insisted.
“Maybe it’s Braxton-Myers shock,” Dr. Sugar mused.
“What’s that?”
“Disturbance on the left lower ventricle of the brain,” Dr. Sugar explained. “People who have been struck by lightning often have very strange neurological responses.”
“Lightning made her think she’s my wife?”
“Most Braxton-Myers experiences are short-term,” Dr. Sugar reassured.
“How short-term?”
Dr. Sugar shrugged.
“Hours, days, weeks, sometimes a few months.”
“You don’t know when she’s going to stop thinking she’s my wife?”
“She’s very beautiful.” Dr. Sugar shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to a man.”
“I’ve never noticed whether any employee is beautiful or not,” Dean said coldly. “Least of all, the woman I hire to provide child care.”
But he had noticed—if only this evening. In the rain, her hair slicked back with rain, her face flushed like a tea rose and her eyes a clear, brilliant golden shade.
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