Her Man Friday (35 page)

"Schuyler," she said, her soft voice tinted with more than a little surprise. "I mean… Mr. Kimball. What are you doing here?"

"Don't 'Mr. Kimball' me, you uncooperative wench," he said as he pushed through the door without awaiting an invitation. Had he waited for that, after all, he never would have made it inside. He halted just inside the door and turned toward her. "Call me Schuyler, like you did last night," he added. Then, impulsively, he dipped his head to hers and brushed a brief, chaste kiss on her cheek.

Immediately, she lifted a hand to touch her fingertips to the spot he had kissed, and her cheeks grew pink with the stain of a blush.

"Wh-why did you do that?" she asked as she closed the door slowly, reluctantly, behind him. "Why are you here?"

He shrugged. "Because I like you. Dammit. Where shall I put these?" He held up the roses—all four dozen of them—for her inspection.

She laughed a little anxiously. "I have no idea. I don't have anything big enough to hold all those." But she extended a hand gingerly toward the flowers, fingering one of the delicate red blooms as if it were spun glass. "I can't believe you did this. I can't believe you're here."

Yes, well, that made two of them.

She chuckled a little anxiously again before adding, "And you're dressed in… Why are you wearing a tuxedo?"

That, he thought, was a very good question. He only wished he had a good answer to go with. "Because I'm trying to impress you," he said. "There. I've admitted it. Dammit."

She laughed again, and he decided that he liked the sound very much. Hearing Caroline's laughter once or twice a day, he thought further, would go a long way toward making life tolerable.

"I'm… I'm at a loss," she confessed. "I… I don't know what to say."

Schuyler sighed. "Well, not to put words into your mouth, but how about something like, "Thank you, Schuyler. Won't you stay for dinner?"

She smiled again. "Thank you, Schuyler. Won't you stay for dinner?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

He extended the roses again, and, almost helplessly, she took them from him. She lifted the massive bouquet to her nose and inhaled their sweet fragrance, closing her eyes as she held the breath inside her. Something tightened inside him at seeing her enjoyment of such a simple act, and he marveled again that she had knocked him so thoroughly off-center. Funny, her coming out of nowhere like that, just when he least expected.

"I'm serious," she said as she cradled the bouquet in her arm as one might hold a sleeping infant. "I don't think I have anything large enough to hold these. I'll have to check. Come in, please," she added belatedly, gesturing over her shoulder. "But I don't want to hear a word about the clutter. You did show up out of nowhere, without warning, after all."

Yes, well, that made two of them, didn't it? Schuyler thought. It was only fair.

The clutter, he found, was actually quite nice. All the color that was absent from Caroline's office at school was present here in her home. One entire wall was covered with books, many of them novels, he noted. Another wall was virtually floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the back of a building beyond. The window seats sported dozens of multi-colored pillows and throws and… stuff, and there was a cat sleeping on each of the three, none of whom seemed at all interested in Schuyler's presence.

Which was fine with him, because he would just as soon pretend they didn't exist, either.

The sofa and chairs were an eclectic mix of style and color, each hosting more pillows, more throws, more… stuff. But thankfully, no more cats. On the walls were framed posters advertising a mix of genres on exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The place was small, but cozy, the kind of apartment that invited Bohemian guests and arty conversation.

His gaze trailed after Caroline, who lifted the roses to her face again as she strode toward what he assumed must be the kitchen, skimming the soft blossoms against her cheek as she went. Schuyler could scarcely reconcile this woman with the one he'd gone to see at the Van Meter Academy the evening before. Certainly their conversation afterward had offered each of them an insight into the other that neither had had before, but this…

When Caroline was safely ensconced on her own turf, in her own domain, in her own home, she was obviously a different woman than the one she unleashed on the world. Because surely it couldn't have been anything he'd said the night before that made her so accessible now.

Could it?

A resounding clatter of metal striking metal snapped his attention around, and he realized she had disappeared from his view. So, rounding the counter that separated the kitchen area from the living area, he saw her stooped down, struggling to extract something from one of her lower cabinets. She squatted in front of the open door with both of her stocking feet planted firmly on the linoleum, her arms looking as if they were about to be consumed by whatever lived inside the cupboard. She rugged once, twice, three times, then lost her footing and fell onto her fanny. Schuyler smiled at the picture she made, so clearly unbothered at having someone view her in such a position.

She pushed herself back to a squatting position, dusting her hands on the part of her shirt that covered her bottom. "I think I have a big roaster," she said as she completed the action.

Schuyler refrained from commenting on that. Oh, no he didn't—he couldn't. "I don't think it's inordinately large," he assured her, tilting his head to one side to get a better view of her posterior.

But she seemed not to get the joke. She just nodded and said, "Yes, it is—it's
huge
. I think it would be perfect."

"I think it's already perfect," he told her.

But again, she didn't notice that they were discussing two entirely different things. Instead, she reached into the cabinet again and jerked hard, yanking a big, metal… thing… out of its jaws. Unfortunately, to win the war of the roaster, she had to concede the battle of the posture, and once again, fell backward onto her… roaster. And as she threw her head back without concern and blew an unruly curl off her forehead, Schuyler couldn't help but chuckle.

"Here," he said, moving forward, extending his hand. "Let me help you."

Without hesitation, she reached up and tucked her hand into his, letting him pull her up to a standing position. She tried to set the roaster on the counter as she stood, but he had tugged a bit too hard—though he really, honestly, truly hadn't meant to—and even when Caroline was standing, she just kept moving forward, until she had careened against him, coining to rest with her torso nuzzled against his.

Immediately, the big metal roaster fell to the floor with an almost deafening clatter. But all Schuyler heard was the sound of bells, rattling an alarm at the back of his brain.

As always, he ignored that alarm, and dipped his head to Caroline's to kiss her.

He had never realized what softness tasted like, what gentleness smelled like, what tenderness sounded like. Not until Caroline Beecham melted into him, curving her palms over his shoulders, curling her arms around his neck, threading her fingers through his hair. When she did, Schuyler intensified the kiss, cupping a hand under her chin and over her jaw, to tilt her head to the side and hold it in place while he plundered her mouth at will.

She sighed, a soft murmur of surrender, and he nearly lost himself completely to the sound. Without warning, he was overcome by a need to completely possess her, as if in doing so, he might transfer some of her warmth, her happiness, her ability to care, into himself. So what else could he do but end the kiss as quickly as he had started it, and take a step away?

"Well, that was certainly…" He took a deep breath and released it slowly. "Life altering."

Caroline blinked her eyes quickly, as if she were a mechanical doll, and wondered what on earth had happened to make the Earth tilt on its axis the way it clearly had. Then her gaze focused again, taking in the sight of Schuyler Kimball in a tuxedo, and she was surprised the Earth hadn't gone spinning completely out of its orbit and crashing into the sun. Because what else could explain the explosion of heat that rocked her as a result of one kiss?

She swallowed hard and had no idea what to say. "Ah… you like tomato soup?" she asked, uttering the first thought to brave entry into her brain.

"Tomato soup?" he asked. But he seemed to be not at all affected by what had just transpired between the two of them. "Well, I like the kind they serve at The Chart House. It's got leeks in it, and this funny little green herb that looks like fur. Do you make yours that way?"

She shook her head. "No, I open a can. I was about to have that and a grilled cheese sandwich for supper. How will that be?"

He kissed his fingertips before spreading them wide. "
Vive les tomates et la frontage
."

She smiled. "Nothin' like home cookin'."

"Yes, that's what I meant," he said.

She still couldn't believe he was standing here in her apartment looking so… so… Wow. By the time their evening had concluded last night, she'd changed her mind significantly about Schuyler Kimball. But that didn't mean she felt as if she were up to the task of taking him on. Not even on her own turf this way. Nevertheless, he was here now, and she told herself she might as well make the best of it. Of him. Of herself.

Last night, she had realized that the man he presented to the rest of the world, the one he had been on the other occasions when she'd met him, wasn't the real Schuyler Kimball at all. On the outside, he was a wealthy, sophisticated, vaguely eccentric billionaire who cared about little other than his own satisfaction. Outwardly, he didn't seem as if he had a care, a heart, a soul.

But deep,
deep
inside, he did indeed have a heart. And a soul. And a care. He was simply too frightened to acknowledge any of them.

In many ways, he was like Chloe. In fact, he was like a lot of the children who came to Van Meter. None of them understood the source or comprehended the nature of the gift they'd been given. None of them could figure out the whys or whats or wheres or hows of it. And few of them knew quite what to do with the gift they had so arbitrarily received. That was part of the program at Van Meter, to teach the children how to handle and nurture and grow their gifts. And how to stay human in a world that tried to exploit them, a world that was becoming less human with every passing year.

Schuyler had never had the opportunity to learn how to do those things. No one had ever taken the time to teach him. And something inside Caroline responded to that lost quality about him. Certainly he was no child. And certainly she was drawn to him in a way that went far beyond her role as an educator. But she could no more resist trying to reach inside him to teach him about himself than she could resist performing the same gesture for one of her students.

And last night, at some point in the evening, as they'd shared a small table in the corner of a deli, bathed in the flickering red and green light of the neon Killian's sign, she'd made him laugh, a genuine, heartfelt laugh, and had broken through the first layer.

But there hadn't been time for more. By then, it was after midnight, and Caroline had needed to get home. So Schuyler had instructed his driver to drop her back at the school to retrieve her car, and then the two men had followed her home to make sure she arrived safely. Schuyler had walked her to her front door, even though she'd assured him such chivalry was unnecessary.

Chivalry, he'd assured her right back, had had nothing to do with it. Then they'd stood there awkwardly for some moments without speaking. And then he'd lifted a hand to a strand of her hair that had come loose from its knot, had wound it lightly around his finger, and had told her, very, very softly, goodnight.

He hadn't looked back as he'd made his way down the hallway to the stairs, and she had been certain she had seen the last of him. Even though she'd wanted with all her heart to spend a few more minutes with him—just long enough to see if she could notch another chink or two in his facade—she had thought for sure he wouldn't allow it.

But now here he was, of his own free will, and there was no way she would let him off that easily again.

"Had I known you were coming," she said, trying to pick up the thread of their conversation, "I would have been better prepared." She had thought she was talking about dinner, but somehow, the words came out suggesting something else entirely.

He seemed to understand that fully, because his gaze never strayed from her face as he responded, "Yes, well, that makes two of us."

She bent to pick up the roaster from the floor and settled it once again on the counter. Although it was black and unremarkable, it was all she had that would hold such an enormous bouquet. She could trim the stems and treat the roaster like a massive rose bowl, and when she was finished, it would make for a lovely centerpiece. She hoped. She withdrew a pair of shears from one drawer and began to snip the stems, one by one, nearly overcome by the sweet aroma of the blossoms, nearly overcome by the man who had brought them.

And she wished she knew what to say.

"They really are quite lovely," she began.

"Yes, they are," he concurred.

"And I appreciate your bringing them," she added lamely. "No one has brought me flowers for a long time."

"Haven't they?"

She shook her head and focused on the task she was performing, because she was much too frightened to meet his gaze. "No."

"Has there been no one since your husband?"

Her fingers faltered in their task, and she nearly snipped off her fingertip. "Ah, no," she said, still trying not to look at him. "No, there hasn't been. There was no one before him, either," she added quickly. For some reason, she needed for Schuyler to know that. She didn't know why it should make such a difference—or even if it
would
make a difference where he was concerned—but it was important that he understand how seriously she took something like physical intimacy.

But all he offered in response was, "I see."