Enticed (6 page)

He didn’t exactly ask a question, but I answered it anyway. “Yes.”

“That is Elise,” he said. “Everything has to look right. No hair out of place and no knock-off designer clothes or accessories. She works hard to maintain her reputation as one of the Beverly Hills elite. Jonathan is just one more accessory, something to wear on her arm so people won’t think poorly of her. If she loved him, truly loved him, she wouldn’t have left him to shack up with some beach-dwelling gigolo.”

So it was true.
Still… it was absolutely none of my business (and certainly not in my job description) to shield them from one another. “I don’t know her, and I really don’t know you. But I do know it’s tearing Jonathan up to be in the middle of all this. I’ll do what I can to help,” I promised. “But I refuse to be a pawn used between you and your ex-wife. Please don’t put me in that position again.”

“Noted,” he clipped. “Goodnight, Miss Dennehy.”
I could tell by his tone that the boundaries had been fully reestablished.

“Goodnight, Mr. Fullerton,” I said. I hung up the phone and back to my book. I reread the same page five times before I finally gave up, turned out the light and tried to sleep.

Jonathan was an endless ball of energy as we shopped at the local market for dinner. “What’s next on the list?” he asked.

“Lemme see,” I said as I perused the shopping list. “We have the ground meat and the rice. We just need the green beans and garlic.”

“I got it!” he exclaimed as he rushed off toward the produce section. I followed with a smile. As he put handfuls of fresh green beans into a bag, I stopped to look at the bright yellow bananas. “How do you feel about banana pudding?” I asked as I picked up a bunch of perfectly ripe fruit.

“Don’t know,” he said as he brought the bag of green beans to our cart. “I’ve never had it.”

I gasped in mock shock. “Well, we have to fix that, pronto. Add to the list,” I said as I handed him the pad and a pen. “Bananas. Pudding mix. Vanilla wafers. And whip
ping cream.”

He nodded as he complied. I grabbed a beautiful spring bouquet of
pink Gerbera daisies along with pink and red roses. We finished our shopping and Harrison drove us back to the house by four o’clock in the afternoon.

By six, when
Drew was due to arrive, Jonathan put the finishing touches on the meal while I arranged the bouquet in a beautiful crystal vase on the large mahogany table in the formal dining room. Jonathan brought the salad to the table. He looked so cute in Cleo’s apron I had to smile. “It looks amazing,” I praised. “I guess I better run up to my room and dress for the occasion.”

He glanced over my jeans and sleeveless cotton top. “You look fine to me,” he said.

I grinned as I mussed his hair. “I look like the help.”

“You are the help,” he retorted with a teasing smirk.

“Don’t rub it in,” I said as I knelt down to eye level. “And, as a matter of fact, I’m not officially hired yet. So I should probably go change into something more professional to impress you dad and seal the deal.”

Something foreboding crossed over Jonathan’s face. “Don’t try too hard to impress him,” he warned softly. “It never works out. For anyone.”

He turned and headed back into the kitchen, leaving me speechless from his remark.

What a sad little boy
, I thought again as I ascended the grand staircase. He had the whole world at his tiny fingertips and yet he still ached with an unfulfilled yearning. It just proved, once again, money could not fill the void of love and emotional security.

The self-described
prison in which he lived was just a helluva lot nicer than the modest dwellings in which most of us lived.

Twenty minutes later I descended the stairs in a pale green flared skirt and a white cotton blouse. I pulled my hair back into a professional bun and kept any makeup I might have worn to a bare minimum. The fact I wore any at all was newsworthy enough. If Nancy would have seen me she might have likely had a stroke. But I could hardly show up to dinner with one of the most important and powerful men in the county looking like a
country bumpkin from some dusty farm in West Texas, which is precisely what I was. So I dusted my cheeks with foundation to minimize my freckles, and decided to lighten my eyes with mascara and a light dusting of gold shimmery powder. With a smack of lipstick I was good to go. I slipped into my sandals and entered the dining room two minutes before Drew did.

If I thought I was fully prepared to meet
Drew Fullerton face to face, I was sorely mistaken. The minute his six-foot-two frame entered the magnificent dining room, he sucked the air right out of the joint with an aura so powerful I immediately felt a part of me wilt in response. I had never had this kind of reaction to anyone before, but he was, without question, the most powerful and influential, and famous, person I had ever met in person. His suit was an expensive Italian cut in navy blue. The powder blue shirt underneath brought out the unbelievable light within his piercing blue eyes, which were enhanced by the silky darkness of his ebony hair. His build was athletic, with slightly broad shoulders that tapered to a trim waist and powerful hips and legs. I would guess one could bounce a quarter right off of any part of his toned body.

It made me feel frumpy by comparison
, which was unusual.

Though I had never really been one of those girls to obsess about my appearance, especially in recent years, I felt underdressed and unr
emarkable as his eyes slid ever so coolly across my attire. From the glasses I wore to the clothes I had purchased at a discount department store, I felt every inch the homely schoolmarm. Worse, his eyes gave nothing away, whether or not he was pleased or displeased by what he saw. He just took it all in emotionlessly, like a computer assessing a line of binary code.

“Dad!” Jonathan exclaimed as he burst through the double doors from the kitchen. He flung himself across the room right into his father’s embrace, which cracked right through his father’s icy veneer.

“Hey, sport,” he said with a lopsided smile that very nearly mirrored his brother’s.

Jonathan dragged him by the hand. “I want you to meet Rachel,” he said as he pulled his father to where I stood.

I think I might have actually shrunk a bit once Drew loomed above me. I could smell the woodsy essence of his cologne fill my nostrils as he finally stood close enough to touch. I cleared my throat and extended my hand. “Mr. Fullerton,” I said, much stiffer than I had wanted to. “It’s so nice to finally meet you face to face.”

He smiled, but there was something hard in his eyes as he stared down at me. He took my hand in his in a firm handshake. “Likewise, Miss Dennehy,” he said.

“We made you dinner!” Jonathan announced happily as he gestured to the full table.

Drew
was puzzled as he glanced between the table and his son. “You prepared dinner?”

Jonathan nodded. “It’s Rachel’s recipe. We went shopping and everything. It was so cool!”

That icy gaze slid back to me, locking me in its grip as if he were a snake about to ingest a hapless little field mouse. “Is that so?”

Before I could defend or justify my methods, Jonathan pulled
Drew to the seat at the head of the table. Cleo entered, holding a bottle of aged wine in her hand.

“Welcome home, Master Fullerton,” she greeted warmly. “Did you have a good flight?”

“Uneventful,” he replied as he sat in the chair and pulled the delicate lace napkin into his lap. No further words were spoken between them as she poured him a glass of blood red wine. He nodded to dismiss her, and she disappeared as unobtrusively as she had arrived. He turned back to Jonathan. “So what are we having?”

Jonathan grinned big as he lifted the silver dome from the serving tray. “Porcupine meatballs,” he said happily as he spooned two savory meatballs onto
Drew’s plate. I could see Drew’s jaw clench that his progeny was performing such a menial task.

His eyes met mine. “Porcupine? Is this a Texas delicacy?” he asked, his tone laced with a hint of condescension.

“Dad!” Jonathan laughed. “It’s ground beef and rice, not a real porcupine.”

“I couldn’t be sure,”
Drew murmured as he glanced down at the plate his son filled with salad and garlic sautéed green beans. “It appears so many things have changed in my absence.”

“I take full responsibility for that, Mr. Fullerton,” I said. “I thought it would be a nice gesture for you to have a home-cooked meal upon your return, especially given that you’ve been gone several days.” I met his gaze directly, proving to him that I could match every veiled insult.

Jonathan’s eyes darted to mine. I could tell that he sensed the uneasiness at the table, and I knew that he was concerned that his father would send me back to Texas over the slightest infraction. “It was my idea, Dad,” he said, throwing himself on the virtual grenade in the room. “Please don’t be mad.”

Drew
masked any annoyance as he turned to his son. “I’m not angry, Jonathan. Just surprised. I had no idea that you liked to cook.”

“Me either,” he said with an impish grin. “Rachel taught me how.
She says it’s like knowing a magic trick. Right, Rachel?” he asked with a hopeful smile.

I nodded. “Guilty as charged.”

Drew once again offered his son a supportive smile. “Then I can’t wait to taste your magical meal, especially since the first trick was turning beef into a porcupine,” he said, before spearing a meatball with his fork. I could tell that this wasn’t the type of cuisine he was used to eating, but for his son he made the effort.

In that moment, it was the only thing warming me to my prospective employer.

“Delicious,” he praised. Whether or not he was sincere, I couldn’t be sure. But Jonathan beamed under his father’s approval, which somehow cracked my heart even more. “So what else did you learn while I was gone?”

“I went to the grocery store,” he said. “Rachel gave me a budget and I had to make it all fit.”

I could tell this was not good news to the elder Fullerton. “I see. Anything else?”

Jonathan thought about it a moment. “I got a new book from the library. I’m going to do a book report on it.”

That seemed to appease Drew. “Which book is that?” he wanted to know. “A classic, I hope,” he said as he turned to me.

“Nope. J
ust brain candy,” I said without a hint of shame.

“It’s called
Comic Squad
,” Jonathan supplied. “It’s about these geeks who accidentally set a comic book villain free in their town. They have to use their ingenuity to capture him,” using the big word he had learned over the weekend to impress his father.

“I see,”
Drew repeated again. “How else did you spend your time, Jonathan?”

“We went for a walk in the neighborhood,” he answered dutifully. “Other than that, we watched TV, stayed by the pool and talked.”

Drew leveled his cold blue eyes on my face. “I trust you’re enjoying your spring break in California, then.”

My chin tipped defiantly. I knew that was a slam that I hadn’t done more to teach Jonathan the curriculum he had provided for me. No doubt he wondered if I was
like the other teachers who had come before me, who got one good look at the house and the man who owned it and aimed for something a lot more profitable than a simple teaching position. I could hear Jonathan’s voice whisper in my ear, “
He thinks fat people are lazy
.”

Worse, Alex’s voice was even louder. “
Single billionaire, big, empty Beverly Hills mansion and a lonely kid who desperately needs a mom. Easy pickings for a smart gold-digger
.”

As
Drew’s hard eyes glittered at me, I could only guess what he was thinking. Clearly this was another test I hadn’t been aware I was taking, and it was evident I hadn’t passed. “It’s been lovely,” I murmured sweetly. If he expected me to get defensive and demean myself in front of his son, he was in for a long wait. I didn’t do humiliation, either as a teacher or a human. When we talked, and I knew we would, it would be privately.

T
hat opportunity presented itself the second Drew told Jonathan that there was a package on his bed, straight from Japan. Jonathan hopped up and darted for the door, but then turned back to me as if he had forgotten something.

And of course, he had.

“May I be excused?” he asked.

I gave him a slight nod of the head and he was gone in a flash.

We didn’t have much time before he would return, so Drew didn’t mince words. “I think you misunderstood exactly what kind of educator I was seeking for my son. He is going to be a titan in business, following four generations of Fullertons before him. He needs to be prepared. You’ll forgive me if I don’t think measuring ingredients and shopping at the market qualify as the higher education for which I’m paying very good money.”

I placed the fork on the plate, my appetite totally obliterated
under his heavy disdain. “You wanted me to teach your son, and I have done that. More importantly, I’ve reached him. He knows he can trust me, especially after I shielded him from that family debacle yesterday. This morning I gave Jonathan four different tests. In math, he was tested on fractions and word problems. The skills he learned with a quick trip to the store helped him score in the 99
th
percentile testing at near seventh-grade levels. He earned similar marks on his science paper, where he was tested on how certain elements react to each other, something he learned hands-on with a simple cooking lesson. For his history essay, he researched and wrote a thousand-word document on the Greystone Mansion and Park where we walked and explored which – if I’m not mistaken – qualifies under your physical fitness requirement as well. Finally I tested him on the book he’s been reading for pleasure, with a questionnaire that helped him think critically about the material he was reading simply for the joy of it, giving him several key vocabulary words to note as he read along. Though it isn’t a classic, it is a book that has been in my own curriculum for years, and I’m confident at least one student who reads it will go on and get an Ivy League education.”

His jaw clenched as he realized what I had done. I had taken Jonathan from a stale, unchallenging classroom environment with endless tests and bookwork,
all of which had been crippling his curious and playful nature. By putting him in an entirely foreign setting, he learned how to do the things Drew wanted him to do, right down to the budgeting skills at the market, but in new ways that would naturally keep him more engaged than the boring ol’ status quo. And Jonathan had never even realized what I had done until I had quizzed him on it that very morning.