GINA WILKINS – Secretly Yours (страница 2)

Since Annie had experience with Martha’s relentless prying, having fielded quite a few personal questions of her own, she didn’t blame the guy. But it did seem strange to her that a young man, not even thirty yet, would isolate himself from everyone this way.

Reaching his front door, she looked for a doorbell, but didn’t see one. Her hand was actually shaking when she lifted it to knock. She sighed in exasperation. What was wrong with her today? Why did she have this weird feeling that her life was going to change when she knocked on this door? She had made a lot of changes during the past couple of months. How hard could it be to add a new name to her growing client list—even if she had been warned that this client was different?

Gathering her courage, and castigating herself for her cowardice, she knocked. She was being ridiculous to let her imagination run away with her this way. Whatever Trent McBride’s problems, this was hardly a scene from Beauty and the Beast. For one thing, she didn’t consider herself any great beauty. And Trent might be wounded, but he certainly wasn’t a beast.

She knew his family, and they were all nice, normal people. How different could he be?

She knocked again, thinking perhaps he hadn’t heard her first timid effort. After another moment, the door opened.

A man she assumed to be Trent McBride stood in the shadows inside the darkened house, so that she couldn’t quite make out his features. She could see that he was tall—around six feet—and thin, perhaps a bit too thin. Blond, she decided, catching a glimmer of gold in the shadows. “Mr. McBride?”

“You’re the housekeeper?” His voice was deep, and slightly rough.

Though it still felt strange to hear herself identified that way, Annie answered simply, “Yes. I’m Annie Stewart.”

After another pause, he stepped out of the doorway. “Come in.”

When she instinctively hesitated, he reached out to snap on the overhead light. The cavelike room was instantly transformed into a more welcoming environment. The few pieces of furniture were very nice, she noted as she walked slowly inside, but the room had a spartan air to it. Even motel rooms had more personality.

Having procrastinated as long as she could, she turned to face Trent. She thought she had prepared herself for anything—scars, disfigurement, whatever evidence a plane crash might have left. She certainly hadn’t expected to be facing sheer masculine perfection.

Thick golden hair framed a face that Annie suspected had received more than its fair share of feminine attention. No wonder so many local women had been anxious to visit him after his accident. Behind the lenses of a pair of gold-tone metal glasses, his eyes were very blue. If he ever smiled—which she saw no evidence of at that moment—she imagined that his angled cheeks would crease appealingly. Whatever damage his accident had caused—and Martha Godwin had led her to believe it was extensive—it certainly hadn’t been done to his face.

If they had been playing a scene from Beauty and the Beast, she thought wryly, she suspected she knew who would be cast as the beauty—and it wasn’t her.

“You’re younger than I expected,” he said, studying her with an intensity that unnerved her.

You’re prettier than I expected, she would have liked to respond, but that sort of flipness didn’t fit her new position. “Is that a problem?” she asked instead.

He shrugged. “My mother said you need some repairs done.”

“Yes. My great-uncle’s house was in worse shape than I thought when I first moved in, and I’m afraid I can’t afford a lot of improvements just yet. She suggested that you could take care of some of the most pressing problems while I work for you, and I told her it seemed a fair trade, if you’re agreeable.”

She couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t look overly enthused by the arrangement, but he nodded. “I’ll head over to your place now. Anything you want done there first?”

“I’d really appreciate it if you could fix the front step,” she answered tentatively. “I’ve almost tripped a couple of times because it’s loose. I tried to stabilize it, but I’m afraid I’m not very good with that sort of thing.”

Another nod. “Do whatever you want around here—dust, vacuum, fluff—but don’t rearrange the furniture. I like everything where it is.”

She almost imitated him and nodded. Resisting, she said instead, “Of course. Any other instructions?”

“No.” He turned and moved toward the door, apparently intending to leave without another word.

She felt as though she should say something. “Mr. McBride?”

He glanced over his shoulder, looking impatient. “What?”

“If you need to go inside my house, there’s a key hidden beneath the big rock beside the front step.”

She certainly wasn’t surprised that his only response was a nod.

“Definitely an odd man,” she murmured when the front door had closed behind him. By the time she went out to her car to collect her cleaning supplies, both he and the old truck that had been parked outside when she’d arrived were gone. Carrying her things into his house, she found herself comparing him to the other McBrides she had met.

The McBride Law Firm had been one of her first clients, one she’d found only days after she’d arrived in town. Trent’s brother, Trevor, the man who’d hired her after a brief interview, was polished, charming, personable. Their father, Caleb, the senior partner of the firm, was the personification of a soft-spoken, good-humored Southern lawyer. It was through that custodial job that Annie had met Trent’s mother, Bobbie, who was talkative, well-intentioned and seemed to have an almost compulsive need to take care of everyone around her.

From her first impression, it was hard to believe Trent was related to any of the McBrides.

Not that she really cared whether he was unfriendly or even downright surly, she assured herself. Her only interest in Trent was that he had agreed—whether willingly or not—to do some much-needed repairs on her house in exchange for her cleaning his. A fair trade of services, no personal relationship implied. Which was exactly the way she wanted it to remain. Annie had no interest in forming a personal relationship with anyone in Honoria, Georgia, for now. After her recent debacle of an engagement, she certainly wasn’t interested in getting involved with another man for a while—especially one as difficult as Trent McBride seemed to be.

Even if he was gorgeous.

She pulled a spray bottle of kitchen cleaner out of her supplies and started to work on Trent McBride’s already-neat kitchen. No one would ever claim that Annie Stewart didn’t fully earn her pay.

THOUGH HE HADN’T SEEN it in years, the old Stewart place was in even worse shape than Trent had remembered. Even the lot had gotten smaller as the surrounding woods had been allowed to encroach on what had once been a decent-size yard. It wasn’t a bad house—good, solid structure overall—but it had been allowed to deteriorate before old Stewart had died, and had been vacant for almost a year since. The place needed a lot more than he could do in a month, he decided, pushing his glasses up on his nose, but he could at least make it reasonably safe for its present occupant.

Okay, maybe he had been a little bored lately—though he wouldn’t have admitted it to his mother for any reason.

Remembering what Annie had said about the front step, he set his toolbox beside it. He noted immediately that the step was not only broken, it was actually dangerous. It was a wonder Annie hadn’t fallen, landing on the oversize rocks that had been used to outline the unplanted flower beds on either side of the front door. He frowned as he recalled her saying that she’d almost tripped several times. She was very lucky she hadn’t.

Pulling out a hammer, a handful of nails and a level, he found himself thinking about Annie Stewart. She hadn’t been at all what he’d expected. For some reason, he thought she’d be older—much older. But she’d looked even younger than his own twenty-six years—and was so small and delicate he could hardly imagine her tackling heavy cleaning every day.

He supposed she could be considered pretty—if he had a taste for a heart-shaped face dominated by big, long-lashed brown eyes. Or a tip-tilted nose and a full, soft mouth bracketed by shallow dimples. Add to those attributes her glossy, shoulder-length, chestnut-brown hair and a petite, but definitely feminine figure, and most men would probably start fantasizing about getting to know her better. Trent, on the other hand, had taken one look at her and made a silent vow to keep his distance.

If there was one thing he didn’t need in his life now, it was a sweet young thing who seemed to be in even worse shape than he was, judging from what his mother had told him. Annie apparently had no family, no friends in town yet and obviously no money if she was forced to live in this dump. He, on the other hand, had more family than he knew what to do with, old friends who were determined to stay involved in his life even though he had tried his best to push them away, and a nagging uncertainty about his future that seemed to have no workable solution.