Believe in Me: A Rosewood Novel (15 page)

And though the room had a lived-in feel to it, the Radcliffes were obviously taking pains to care for the antique furniture. Every piece gleamed softly, polished and dust-free. The pieces in the second parlor must require special care; they’d been covered with sheets for extra protection.

He crossed the center of the room, admiring the carved capitals of the columns. A low whistle of appreciation escaped him when he saw the grand piano tucked into the corner of the second parlor. He had a sudden vision of women in white and men in cutaways, cognac snifters in hand, as
the notes of the piano floated through, as clear as the crystal teardrops of the chandeliers. Okay, this place was really something, but it was time to cut out the ghostly fantasies, he told himself.

The muffled giggle behind him had the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up.

He spun around and saw no one—no Jordan, vastly entertained by his architect’s awestruck expression for what to her was simply her family home. So who the hell had made the noise?

The laughter came again, this time followed by an equally loud “Shhhh!” and his eyes zeroed in on the sheet-draped furniture.

They were in there. The kids. Damn. He’d have preferred a few moldy ghosts.

He really didn’t do kids. Perhaps if he was quiet they’d leave him alone.

No such luck. The sheet twitched like a live thing. Three little faces appeared in the vee where two sheets, draped over the backs of chairs, met.

They were staring at him. Six round eyes unblinking. The two older ones had on jodhpurs, long-sleeved polo shirts, and socks. The littlest one, about two feet tall, wore elastic-waisted blue jeans and a pink shirt.

“Uh, hi.”

“Who are you?” The largest one, a girl, asked.

“I’m Owen.”

There was a silence as they digested that piece of information.

One of them was a boy, with hair Jordan’s deep russet color. His eyes, however, were a greenish brown. Across his nose and cheeks there was a liberal smattering of freckles, which Owen knew many would find the height of adorableness. But he was too preoccupied by the weird, bright orange smear across the kid’s face to feel any softening of the heart.
It looked like the boy had been drawing on his face with a marker. Then he opened his mouth and Owen saw the stuff crusted on his teeth.

“Are you here to weed?” the boy demanded.

Did he look like a gardener? “No.”

“That’s my sister’s book.” His stubby index finger pointed accusingly. “Are you going to weed to us?”

“Oh, right,
read
, not weed—no,” he said hastily. “I’m not here to read. I came to see Jord—uh, your mom.”

“Are you a friend of Mommy’s?”

He hesitated. That was a tough one. How to answer? “I guess so.”

“Do you want to sit in our tent?”

He didn’t know which was more unnerving, the questions the boy kept firing at him or the steady blue stare of the other two kids.

“I think I’m too big.” There was no way he was getting in there with them.

With no warning, the littlest one started to lurch toward him. This set off the others: they advanced in single file behind her. As they neared, he took a step backward and bumped into the piano bench with his calf.

“You know, I wonder where your mom is. Maybe you guys should go find her—
ooof
!” The littlest one, moving in that downright frightening half-walk, half-lurch, had collided into his legs with surprising force.

Dropping the book and flashlight onto the piano bench, he reached down to steady her—Christ, the last thing he wanted was for the kid to get hurt and start to cry—and that seemed to be some kind of signal for her to climb into his arms. Agile as a blond-haired monkey, she hung about his neck and somehow he just knew she wasn’t going to release him without a hell of a good reason.

Then she started talking, a rush of gibberish of which he couldn’t understand a syllable. Whatever it was she was
saying, though, she seemed really happy about it, pumping her legs up and down against his gut in ecstatic punctuation.

“Can either of you translate? Does she need to go to the bathroom?”

The question prompted peals of laughter from the little boy, while his older sister continued to stare at him with her deep blue eyes. Meanwhile the babbling and leg-pumping continued unabated. He was getting seriously worried; he’d already gotten drenched with iced tea today. No way was he going to tolerate leaking tots. “Really,” he said with a touch of desperation. “What is she saying?”

“Olivia’s telling you that she’s going riding with her aunt Jade after Kate and Max have their lessons.”

Damn, but he was happy to see Jordan. The arrival of her mother had the blond monkey scrambling out of his arms with a finally intelligible cry of, “Mommy!”

Her other two children switched their focus, as well.

“Those are really pretty flowers, Mommy,” said the older girl—Kate, that was her name.

Jordan put down the flowers, which she’d arranged in a large blue and white Chinese vase. “Yes, they are. Mr. Gage gave them to me.”

“Is that Mr. Gage?” The boy pointed to him.

“No pointing, Max. And yes, that’s Mr. Gage. Now—”

“Owen,” he interjected. “You can call me Owen.” Being addressed as “Mr. Gage” by someone less than three feet tall made him feel about ninety years old.

Jordan paused fractionally, the only sign that she’d heard him. “You guys better run to the bathroom before Aunt Jade gets home or you’ll be late for your lesson.”

“Is Owen going to watch us wide?” piped up the boy again, and while Owen was remembering to translate “wide” into “ride,” the tot began babbling wildly again.

Even the older girl, the quiet, watchful one, spoke up. “I’m going to be trotting on the rail all by myself today.”

“And that’s a huge accomplishment, sweetie, but I’m not sure Mr. Gage—Owen,” she corrected at his pointed cough, “will be able to stay long enough to watch.”

So she wanted him gone already, and his five minutes’ exposure had definitely exceeded his tolerance limit to kids. But her answer had the perverse effect of making him actually consider sticking around.

“I’d be delighted to watch you—” He was going to say her name but damned if he hadn’t forgotten it. Jordan didn’t look any too pleased by the news, but the little girl gave him a shy smile. At least he could win over some females.

“You’d best get ready then, Kate. Max, your face needs a good wash. No way will Aunt Jade let you ride looking like that. And please take Olivia with you so she can clean her hands.”

Olivia, however, didn’t seem inclined to follow the program. Wrapping her arms about Jordan’s legs, she buried her face against her knees and began stomping her feet with surprising force.

Certain she was going to blow, he tensed. Maybe he
should
get out of here. Toddler tantrums were definitely outside his comfort zone. Taking a cautious step sideways, he caught the flash of what looked like a smile on Jordan’s face. But then she was bending over and scooping up her child and planting a quick kiss just beneath her ear. Setting her back down on the ground, she dropped to one knee. “Go on, Olivia, so you’ll be all ready for Aunt Jade. If you’re a very good girl, she might let you help groom Doc.”

The kid blurted out a long response. Owen felt as if he were watching a foreign movie with no subtitles, straining to catch an intelligible word.

But Jordan merely nodded and said, “Yes, I’m sure he’d love to meet Cookie Monster someday.”

“Come on, ’Livia.” The older girl walked up and took one of the toddler’s hands.

“Yeah, come on, Wiv,” Max said, grabbing hold of the other.

Orderly as soldiers, the three of them marched from the room.

He looked at Jordan with renewed admiration. She obviously had untold gifts, able to interpret sounds that had, at best, only a tenuous connection to language, able to quell impending riots with a simple kiss. Although now that he thought about it, he wasn’t so astonished by the latter. He was beginning to suspect that he might do a hell of a lot for one of her kisses.

The million-dollar question was, what exactly would it take for him to convince Jordan to kiss him back?

He realized how novel the question was, one that he’d never had to ask. The women he dated all knew the rules of the game and were expert players. He liked that, looked for it in a woman, so why was he even entertaining these thoughts about the highly inappropriate Jordan?

The problem was that he’d been working too hard lately. His fixation was his body’s way of telling him that he needed to get back to Alexandria this weekend.

He would ring Fiona Rorty, a lawyer he’d been dating for the past couple of months, and invite her out to dinner. Bright, sexy, and more committed to making partner in her corporate law firm than ensnaring him as a partner, Fiona was just to his taste. A night with her would be the perfect antidote to Jordan. Back to normal, he’d be able to look at Jordan without wanting to grab her and drag her like some caveman into her kids’ tent.

She was standing by the table where she’d placed the vase of flowers, adjusting the arrangement. She lingered at the task, fiddling with the stems, adjusting the arrangement, and then stepping back to study the effect.

“That was extremely impressive, the way you talked the little one down.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Pretty routine stuff, actually. I’m sure if you cast your memory back you’ll remember your mom doing much the same.”

His mother? Not likely. She had things to do: articles to write, important people to meet, parties to attend. In all probability the nannies his parents hired had possessed those skills. Honestly, though, he couldn’t remember ever even contemplating a temper tantrum. His parents would have made sure to spoon-feed him instructions about the proper protocol for a career diplomat’s offspring with his baby cereal. “I was an only child. My mother’s job description didn’t call for the same level of involvement or finesse.”

“An only child?” She turned to face him. For a moment she was silent, as if pondering that fact, though why that would be an important piece of information was beyond him. “I’ve always thought being an only child was kind of sad.”

He shrugged. “It might have had its drawbacks but it had advantages, too.”

She looked unconvinced. “I know my childhood would have been a lot harder without my sisters. Even now, I don’t know what I would do without them.” A door slammed and she checked her watch. “Speaking of which—”

“Hey, everybody, I’ve been released from the salt mines,” a voice rang out. “Jordan?”

“In here,” she called out before explaining, “It’s my youngest sister, Jade, back from school.”

Ah, yes, this was the one Nonie wanted locked up in a juvenile detention center.

The younger sister strode into the room with the snap and crackle of a fast-approaching storm. It wasn’t due, however, to her I-don’t-give-a-crap deep pink hair color, shocking though it was. It was the raw sexuality she exuded that made one think of a night filled with lightning strikes. A sexuality made all the more potent for her obliviousness.

No wonder Nonie despised the teen. The older woman would give her eyeteeth to possess a tenth of the kid’s high-octane sex appeal.

Owen thanked his lucky star that he wasn’t the type of guy who lusted after jailbait, like Nabokov’s character Humbert Humbert. He had definite age requirements for his bed partners. They needed to be old enough to have actually seen an LP record and have voted in at least two presidential elections. He liked women, not girls.

Besides, Nonie was right: Jade Radcliffe definitely looked like trouble—that is, for the guy who fell for her. He had no doubt she was the sort who would put a man through the wringer.

None of this meant that Owen was blind or that he couldn’t appreciate the sensuality of Jade’s lithe figure or the intensity of her jewel-like gaze as it swept over him with open curiosity even as she began speaking to Jordan.

“So are Thing One, Two, and Three ready to go? The clock’s ticking.” She tapped a huge, ugly watch strapped to her delicate wrist.

“I sent them off to the bathroom to wash up after their snack. They just need to put on their boots and they’ll be ready to go. And I talked to Olivia. She’s very sorry about taking your keys. I don’t think she’ll be playing with them again.”

“She better realize this is strike two. One more time and I’m going to have to get seriously tough with her.”

Owen wondered exactly what getting tough with a chubby-cheeked linguistically challenged tot entailed.

“Wow, those are really nice flowers you picked up. Are we planning a party, or did Margot score a mega contract?”

“No party plans, no new contract,” Jordan replied. “Owen brought these. Jade, this is Owen Gage. Owen, this is my sister Jade.”

“Hi there, Owen Gage,” she said, friendly enough as they shook hands. But then her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Whoa, wait a minute. Aren’t you the architect who stole the decorating job Jordan wanted with Witch Harrison? That’s, like, so lame.”

It was a toss up as to who was more embarrassed by the question, Jordan or him. “Nonie was already my client—” he began as Jordan simultaneously answered, “Jade, I told you it’s not that big a deal.”

She shot them both down with a derisive snort. “What total BS. Mrs. Harrison should have given you the job, Jordan. He must know it, too,” and she gave a toss of her magenta head in his direction. “Or he wouldn’t have brought you half a freakin’ garden.”

“I bought her the flowers because—”

Once more Jordan’s answer edged him out. She was obviously accustomed to the teen’s rapid-fire delivery. “He only brought me the flowers because I flung my iced tea in his face and called him a jer—” she stopped, the word hanging unfinished in the air, a bright flush stealing over her face, clearly appalled at her admission.

Not so her sister. “You called him a jerk? Good one, sis,” she said approvingly. “That was really ballsy of you. But FYI, guys don’t give you flowers after you dump a drink on them. It’s far more likely he gave you the flowers because he’s suffering from a major guilt trip. Or else it’s because he likes you. So which is it, dude?” she asked, pinning him with her green gaze.