Change of Heart by Jude DEVERAUX

Author:Jude DEVERAUX [DEVERAUX, Jude]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

212 JUDE DEVERAUX

“Why did you do that?” he asked, greatly annoyed.

“The hired help doesn’t eat with Mr. Billionaire.”

“Would you stop calling me that? My name is Frank.”

“I know that, Mr. Taggert. And what is my name?”

For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. He knew she’d told him, but, considering the circumstances under which she’d told him, it was understandable that he didn’t remember. “I do not remember,” he said.

“Mrs. Stowe,” she answered, “and I was hired as your nurse.”

She was behind him, seated at the dining table, and when he twisted around, causing pain to shoot through his shoulder, he saw that she had placed herself with her back to him. Frowning in annoyance, he again moved his place setting so he could face the back of her.

“Would you mind telling me who hired you?” he asked. The chicken was indeed delicious, and he thought a week away from canned food was going to be worth sending some kid to school—well, almost, anyway. Maybe he could write off the expense as charity. This could be advantageous taxwise if he—

“Your brother.”

Frank nearly choked. “My brother hired you? Which one?”

She still refused to look at him, but he could see her shoulders stiffen. They weren’t fashionably square shoulders, but rather round and soft.

“It seems to me, Mr. Taggert,” she said, “that a rather unpleasant joke has been played on you. I would hate to think that you had more than one brother who

CHANGE OF HEART 213

would have such animosity toward you as to perpetuate such a joke.”

Frank well knew that each of his brothers would delight in playing any possible trick on him, but he didn’t tell her that.

After her remark about his brothers he didn’t speak again but tried to give his attention to the food. She wasn’t going to put his French chef out of business, but there was a comforting, homey flavor to the food, and the proportions were man-sized. In his house in Denver, his apartment in New York, and his flat in London, each of his chefs served calorie-controlled meals to ensure Frank’s trim physique.

She finished eating, then silently cleared her place, then his, while Frank, feeling deliciously full of food, leaned back against the coffee table and watched the fire. He’d never been a man who smoked, but when she served him a tiny cup of excellent coffee, he almost wished he had a cigar. “And a plump woman to share my bed,” as his father used to say.

Relaxed, drowsy, he watched the woman as she moved about the room, straightening things, and then—

“What are you doing?” he demanded as she drove a nail into the wall between the two beds.

“Making separate rooms,” she answered. “Or as close as I can come to it.”

“I assure you, Mrs. Stowe, that that is not necessary. I have no intention of imposing myself on you.”

“You have made yourself clear as to your thoughts of my … of my feminine appeal, shall we say?” She drove another nail, then tied a heavy cotton rope from one nail to another.

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