Her Man Friday (16 page)

In light of his unmistakable antagonism, she inhaled a deep breath, threw back her shoulders, and smoothed a hand quickly down the front of her beige knit dress. The loose-fitting, nondescript, long-sleeved sheath wasn't, perhaps, the most efficient armor in the world. With a man like Schuyler Kimball, she probably would have fought the battle more effectively if she had donned a hula skirt and halter top. But Caroline had learned long ago that if she wanted others to see past the outer shell that had always betrayed her, then she would have to learn to disguise it as best she could.

Evidently, she thought, as Mr. Kimball flicked a hasty—and indifferent—glance in her direction before turning away, she had succeeded well in that this morning, at least. As always, though, the victory felt hollow at best.

"Mrs. Beckwith, isn't it?" he asked as he approached her, focused not on her, but on the rows of books he slowly passed.

"No," she replied easily, unwilling to lose her composure in light of his games. A man like him, she supposed, would always want to have the upper hand. Nowhere was it written, however, that she had to let him have it. "It's Mrs. Beecham."

He kept coming until a scant foot of space separated them. But instead of halting to face her, he seemed to become preoccupied by something else and moved to her left, covering the half dozen feet between him and a wall completely obscured by books. He scanned the titles idly for a moment, until locating whatever had caught his interest. Withdrawing the volume, he opened it to the table of contents, then leaned one shoulder insouciantly against the shelf from which he had pulled the book and began to read.

She waited in silence while he finished his stalling tactic, suddenly none too eager to get on with the reason for her visit. Frankly, she found him far more interesting to watch than she did to talk to. She wondered if he ever stopped thinking, or planning, or scheming. For long moments, neither of them spoke, and Caroline congratulated herself for her patience. Then, as absently as he had taken an interest in the book, he lost it again, closing the volume and reshelving it with much care.

But still he maintained his indifferent posture. With one shoulder pressed to the shelf, he stuffed his hands nonchalantly into his trouser pockets and met her gaze with a look that was, at best, incredibly bored. "And, I'm sorry… what is your position again?" he asked. "I've forgotten what it is you said you do."

She smiled dryly. "The hell you have."

A flicker of something—surprise?—lit his eyes for a moment, then dimmed again. "A teacher, or something, right?"

Caroline took a few steps toward him, thinking it might be best if she could at least appear to be on the offensive here. "I'm the headmistress of Chloe's school, the Van Meter Academy. Where," she added, biting back the sarcasm that spurred her, "your young
ward
is currently enrolled in the program for extremely gifted children, studying literature, music, art, science, and philosophy. Or at least she would be, if she made it to class more than a handful of times a week and completed the required assignments."

Mr. Kimball nodded slowly, seemingly lost in thought. "That's right," he murmured, his voice as soft and smooth as velvet. He met her gaze levelly again, mischief sparking his eyes this time when he did. "How could I forget? That's one of my favorite words in the English language, after all."

She eyed him with confusion. "What word?"

He smiled the way he had smiled at his…
playmate
—she hesitated to use the word, though she wasn't sure why, seeing as how that was essentially what his dinner companion of the week before had been. "
Headmistress
," he said, enunciating the word with much relish. "I love that word. It just seems to encompass so many wonderful things, doesn't it?"

Instead of rising to the bait, Caroline ignored the remark. There was no reason for her to resort to adolescent comments. Especially since Mr. Kimball seemed more than capable of providing enough for both of them.

"Your ward, Mr. Kimball," she said, moving a few more slow steps forward, until she, too, could lean a careless shoulder against the bookcase, albeit a shelf lower than where he'd settled his own, "is an extremely gifted young woman. I don't know if you honestly realize just how gifted."

His lips flattened into a line of clear disapproval where the change of subject was concerned. "My ward, Mrs. Beecham, is a troubled kid whose mother should have done better by her," he replied.

"Maybe it's her father who should have done better by her," Caroline returned without hesitation. "It takes two to generate a life, after all. Why do people have so much trouble remembering that? Why is it always the mother who fails a child, and not the father, hmmm?"

But Mr. Kimball didn't rise to her bait, either. He simply stated blandly, "Chloe is doing just fine, in my opinion, all things considered. Yes, she can be difficult at times, but she's by no means any worse than a number of children her age. I don't see where you need to trouble yourself with her welfare. Will that be everything? Lily can show you out."

Caroline inhaled a deep breath, releasing it slowly as she tried to keep a lid on her anger and decide how to proceed. Finally, ignoring his invitation for her to beat it, she said, "I have been working with gifted children for nearly twelve years, Mr. Kimball, ever since earning my master's degree in child development. But I've never met a child like Chloe. Ever."

"Yes, well, you wouldn't be alone in that regard," he interjected dryly. "She's certainly one of a kind."

Caroline ignored that comment, too. "There are a lot of gifted children in the world," she continued, striving to keep her voice even, hesitant to succumb to the passion she felt for her subject matter. Something told her that Schuyler Kimball would react to passion—any passion—in a way she wasn't prepared to deal with right now. "Musically gifted children," she went on, "linguistically gifted children, intellectually gifted children, emotionally gifted children, kinetically gifted children. But I've never met a child who combined so many gifts in one single package. Chloe is gifted in virtually every way imaginable. She could do or be anything she wants. Anything. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

For a long moment, the billionaire didn't respond. He only stared at Caroline as if giving great weight to some very important matter. In many ways, he seemed not to see her at all, so absorbed was he in whatever had claimed his attention. His entire being seemed to hum with the process of dissemination, as if he were some sophisticated bit of machinery filing and sorting what she had just told him, drawing conclusions no mortal human would ever be able to fathom.

Although she didn't alter her seemingly careless pose any more than he did, ultimately, Caroline had to look away. She suddenly wished she had kept her glasses on instead of leaving them in the car, even though they were only necessary for close-up work like reading and driving. At this point, she thought, any barrier, anything that might give the impression of distance between them, would be welcome. Such intensity on Mr. Kimball's part, such focus, such utter fixation… It made her nervous. It made her anxious. It made her…

God help her, it made her
hot
.

She had been totally unprepared for Schuyler Kimball a week ago, and she was no more ready for him now. And it wasn't just because of the simple matter that he was an extremely handsome, rawly sexy, man. Certainly she'd met plenty of handsome, sexy men in her time, and had been married to one for nearly ten years… before losing him.

But Mr. Kimball's appearance went beyond dark good looks. There was something compelling about him. Something commanding. Something charismatic. It was something she'd never encountered in another human being before. He was the kind of man who could tell a person to do something outrageous, something ridiculous, something dangerous… and that person would do it without a thought for the repercussions of the action.

He was the kind of man who, if he had a mind to, could honestly
own
another person, heart and mind, body and soul. Maybe that was why Miss Rigby had granted Caroline an audience with him of only twenty minutes. Because to spend any longer than that in the man's presence was to risk losing oneself forever.

He shifted his position slightly then, and she brought her head back up to glance at him. But only long enough to note that he had removed one hand from his pocket and was absently rubbing his open palm over his roughly shadowed jaw. There was something strangely intimate about the gesture, though, and she forced her gaze away again, focusing on the flame-colored trees that dotted the vast landscape outside the big Palladian window behind him.

"Look," he said softly, a bit wearily, "I'll grant you that Chloe is brighter than the average child, but—"

"Her IQ is off the charts, Mr. Kimball," Caroline interrupted him. "Higher, I'll wager, than even yours."

He thrust his chin up defensively at that, and Caroline realized with no small degree of surprise that she'd just inflicted the first blow of battle. So Schuyler Kimball's own armor wasn't quite as impenetrable as he let on. The recognition that he wasn't, in fact, omnipotent, as everyone seemed to think he was, offered her some small measure of reassurance.

"She's nothing at all like the average child," Caroline continued, taking advantage of his silence. "In fact, Chloe's nothing like anyone. If you could put Einstein, Mozart, and Da Vinci in one person, Mr. Kimball, you would end up with Chloe Sandusky. It's that simple. And believe me, she's smart enough to know it. Can you imagine what that must be like? To be fourteen years old—
fourteen years old
—and to be as brilliant as she is, and to look the way she looks, and to have no idea—
no idea
—where you fit into the scheme of things?"

Mr. Kimball's chest expanded with the silent and lengthy breath he inhaled. His eyes grew turbulent, his mouth hard when he replied, "Yes, Mrs. Beecham. Believe it or not, I can, to some extent, imagine what that must be like."

She shook her head. "No, I don't think you can." She held up a hand when he opened his mouth to object. "I'm familiar with what kind of man you are," she told him. "Everyone is. A brilliant, analytical mind, a child misunderstood and all that. But that's the point—you're a man. Even when you were a boy, your potential was still seen as a man's potential."

"When I was a boy, Mrs. Beecham," he interrupted her, "no one saw any potential in me at all."

He didn't even try to disguise the bitterness in his voice, and for the first time, Caroline realized that perhaps he and Chloe had something more in common than she'd initially surmised. Still, she thought, Chloe was at a far greater risk than Mr. Kimball ever had been. There was no question about that.

"Chloe obviously isn't male," she continued, dropping her voice to a quieter, gentler pitch. "Nor is she even an unattractive female," she added with a soft, sad chuckle, "which is what most people expect to find when a female person is vastly intelligent.

"Chloe matured early in as many ways as there were," Caroline went on intently. "She should have started receiving the proper attention the moment she was born to prepare her for what lay ahead. And once she entered puberty, she should have had a strong female role model to guide her through the hazardous waters. Yet prior to coming here, the only influence she ever had in her life was her mother, who, I don't think I need to remind you, made her living as a stripper."

"An exotic dancer," the billionaire corrected her halfheartedly.

Caroline surrendered to a little sound of derision. "Chloe doesn't talk a lot about what her life was like then, but her mother, quite frankly, didn't seem to give a damn about her."

"Yes, well, she's not living with her mother anymore, is she?" Mr. Kimball pointed out.

"No, that's true," Caroline agreed. "Now she's moved into a big, beautiful estate, and her guardian is a hugely successful, very wealthy, very prominent businessman. Who," she added pointedly, "doesn't seem to give a damn about her."

His eyes turned absolutely stormy at that, and for a moment, Caroline honestly feared he would lunge at her, in much the same way that she had gone after him at dinner that night a week ago. Quickly, she steeled herself for the press of roughly one hundred and seventy-five pounds and nearly six feet of solid flesh. And, oddly, for just the briefest of moments, she almost found herself looking forward to it.

But Schuyler Kimball evidently had better control over his own emotions and reactions than she did her own, because, although a muscle twitched once in his jaw, he didn't move an inch.

"I don't have to give a damn about her," he said coolly. "I have people to do that for me, and they get paid a pretty penny for it."

Caroline was so taken aback by his response that she had no idea what to say. She'd never met anyone who could be so heartless, who could be so clearly proud of his inhumanity. As rigid and distant as Mr. Kimball had come across, she hadn't expected him to be like this when grilled about his feelings for his… ward. Startled by the discovery that he was, in fact, a cold-hearted son of a bitch, the only thing she could manage by way of a reply was, "You bastard. You cold, selfish, stupid bastard. You have no idea what you've just thrown away."

Immediately, she regretted the words. Although the accusation was perfectly understandable coming from a woman who was concerned about the welfare of a child, it was anything but appropriate coming from the headmistress—or, rather, the director, she decided to call herself now—of the exclusive and conservative Van Meter Academy.

That wasn't the main reason why she regretted the statement, however. The main reason she regretted it was because, the split second after she uttered it, that lunge she had been expecting earlier on Mr. Kimball's part did in fact materialize.

Before she even realized what had happened, he had her pinned against the bookcase behind her, his entire body pressed into hers, his face a scant inch from her own. One of his forearms was braced against a fat leather volume beside her face, his hand fisted tight just above her head, while his other hand gripped fiercely the shelf at her shoulder level. When she tipped her head back to look at his face—frankly amazed by her ability to do so—she saw that a single lock of jet-black hair had fallen over his forehead, giving him the look of a very dangerous man.