The Ring on Her Finger (5 page)

Then again, he goaded himself, wasn’t torturing himself for the rest of his life the whole point?

“Max,” Rosemary said, thankfully scattering his thoughts. She must have thought he hadn’t heard her introduction because she repeated it again. “This is Lucy French. She’s filling in for Mrs. Lindstrom while she’s up in Columbus. Say hello.”

“Hello,” he replied dutifully.

“Hi,” Lucy French with the luscious, potentially naked, sweaty, gams replied. Then, strangely, she added, “You’re, um, you’re not German, are you?”

“Not last time I checked, no.”

“Ah.”

“Is that a problem?”

She shook her head quickly. Nervously, he couldn’t help thinking. But what would she have to be nervous about? “No. It’s not a problem.”

“Because if it is, I could probably scare up someone of Teutonic origin from my family tree. We Hogans are pretty much mongrels from way back.”

Her beautiful blue eyes widened in surprise—or maybe nervousness, he couldn’t help thinking again. “Mongrels?” she asked. “You mean like...Genghis Khan?”

Hoo-kay, Max thought, so maybe she wasn’t nervous so much as she was, ah...not bright.

She must have realized she’d misspoken—probably by the way both he and Rosemary were looking at her—because she hastily tried to recover herself. “Or do I mean Kahlil Gibran? Or Chiang Kai-shek? Or Omar Khayyam?” She smiled anxiously. “I, um, I always get all those guys mixed up,” she finished lamely. “All those Ks and everything. It’s not exactly the most commonly used letter of the alphabet, is it?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, obviously distressed by her rambling, then tittered apprehensively. Which meant maybe she wouldn’t be such a temptation after all, even if she did have great gams and a pretty face. Tittering had always bugged the hell out of Max.

“Didn’t you say you were working on your master’s degree in literature?” Rosemary asked her. “One would think that Omar Khayyam and Kahlil Gibran wouldn’t be so very confusing to you.”

“Well, um, they’re not exactly John Donne, are they?” Lucy pointed out.

“No, I suppose not,” Rosemary agreed. Still, she eyed Lucy warily.

All right, so maybe she wasn’t in the running for lifetime Mensa membership, Max thought. Hey, who was? Except for lifetime Mensa members, he meant. “I think it’s Genghis Khan you’re looking for,” he said as diplomatically as he could. “Though he was actually a Mon
gol
, not a mon
grel
. Anyway, the Hogans are more like a pack of wild dogs than they are poets or warriors.”

Lucy bit her lip nervously, and Max’s entire body surged in response. It made him wonder what it would feel like to have her nibbling his mouth. Or other parts of him. And that was when he realized even tittering wasn’t going to put him off this time.

Dammit.

He sighed heavily, resigned to his fate, then jackknifed into a sitting position, hooking his arms loosely over his bent knees. “Nice to meet you, Ms. French,” he said in an effort to be polite, extending his right hand.

“Likewise, I’m sure,” she replied, taking his hand gingerly in her own.

Funny, but in spite of the heated looks she’d been throwing his way, she didn’t sound any happier about meeting him than he was about meeting her. Which was actually good, since it would make things a lot easier. If she really was as reluctant to be around him as he was to be around her—whatever her reasons might be—then maybe he would survive her stay.

Nevertheless, as irrational as it was when he was trying so hard to escape his old life, it kind of galled him that Lucy wasn’t eager to make his acquaintance. He wasn’t used to women not wanting to meet him. Even after five years of self-inflicted exile and better—i.e., boring—living, he still halfway expected women to drape themselves over him and shove their tongues down his throat before even offering their names. He still halfway expected women he’d never met to knock on his door in the middle of the night wearing nothing beneath their coats. He still halfway expected to find panties with phone numbers inked inside them dangling from the side view mirror of the Formula One Ferrari he didn’t even drive anymore.

Certainly he expected that a housekeeper might find him attractive enough to at least smile at him. But Lucy French wouldn’t even do that. And it bothered Max—a lot—that he wanted her to.

She gave his hand a quick shake, then withdrew to nervously twine the fingers of both hands in front of her. Helplessly, Max followed the movement of those hands, then was struck by what he saw on the left one. On the ring finger of the left one, to be more specific. It appeared to be an engagement ring. A really big, really ugly engagement ring.

So. Ms. Lucy French was intended for another man. Another man with exceedingly bad taste, judging by his choice in jewelry, but another man nonetheless. No wonder she didn’t want to be attracted to Max. But at least now there was no chance she’d offer him any encouragement to get all naked and sweaty with her. ’Cause one thing he already knew for certain, even after having known her a few minutes—he needed no encouragement there.

“So,” he began again, nudging his thoughts away from Lucy French’s bad-taste fiancé, “you’re filling in for Mrs. Lindstrom for... How long did you say?”

“Through the end of the year,” she told him.

Four months, Max calculated. Four months of being reminded of what he couldn’t—wouldn’t—have. Four months of sleeping right across the hall from her. Four months of lying in bed at night, wondering what she looked like naked and sweaty and—

Dammit.

—and knowing she belonged to another man. Knowing he couldn’t have her, even if she didn’t belong to another man. He might as well just go throw himself off the Sherman Minton Bridge into the Ohio River right now, and save himself the trouble of a slow and painful death. Because there was no way he was going to survive four months of Luscious Lucy—engaged Luscious Lucy—right there under his nose, not to mention his other body parts.

Man, he was a goner for sure.

An hour after meeting Max Hogan, mongrel—and non-German, way non-wizened car guy—Lucy sat in the window seat of her temporary living room, gazing out her temporary window at her temporary surroundings. And listening to the steady clank-clank-clanking of her temporary neighbor in the driveway below. She wondered how long she was going to have to put up with it. Not the clank-clank-clanking so much as the presence of Max Hogan, car guy. Never in her life had she been more fiercely, more immediately attracted to a man.

Recalling their initial encounter, she winced inwardly. Again. Had she really said she got all those K guys mixed up? Even she knew the differences there. Sort of. Kahlil and Omar had poetry in common, and Genghis and Chiang were historical figures, right? There was no way they were going to buy her supposed 3.5 GPA in literature. Maybe she really should go back to college.

Or maybe she should just go period.

How had she let Phoebe talk her into this? They were both nuts for thinking she could pull it off. But if she left the Cove estate, where could she go? She was completely unfamiliar with almost every place that wasn’t Newport. Surely she wouldn’t be here long enough to get into any more trouble. Surely it would only take a few days for Phoebe to figure out what was going on with Archie and straighten things out with the authorities. Surely they’d discover they made a terrible mistake thinking she was involved with anyone’s murder, then Phoebe would call and tell her it was all right for her to come home.

Surely.

Lucy could keep a low profile for a few days. Good heavens, considering the size of the house where she’d be working, she’d probably go weeks without meeting another human being. Then again, she’d have to return to her apartment at the end of her workday. Her apartment right across the hall from Max Hogan, mongrel—i.e., Max Hogan, wild dog.

And why did that analogy seem so appropriate? He’d been perfectly polite to her. Well, except for those rabid looks he’d given her that had made her feel all naked and sweaty for some reason. But those hadn’t lasted long. Only until she brought up Khan, Kahlil, Khayyam, and Kai-Shek. He must think she was a complete idiot. And here she’d been, thinking since her arrival that she might be able to start anew at the Cove estate. Yeah, right. There were some things a person couldn’t escape. Not when they were an intrinsic part of that person’s character.

Oh, why did she care what Max thought of her? Not only was she misrepresenting herself, she’d only be here for a short time. It was pointless to think anything might happen with him. Anything more than a major physical lust, anyway.

Which was another thing. Where had that physical lust come from? Just because the guy was unbelievably good-looking in a sullen, steamy kind of way. A dangerous, rabid, overwhelmingly hot, erotic, naked, sweaty... Um, where was she? Oh, yes. Just because he was unbelievably good-looking didn’t mean she had to go all gooey inside whenever she looked at him. Even if the passage of an hour had done nothing to change that.

An hour, she repeated to herself, frantic. Oh, no. Rosemary had told her to come back up to the big house in an hour, because Mrs. Cove would be home by then and could go over Lucy’s duties. She glanced down at her watch and realized she had two minutes to cover the roughly two hundred miles between the carriage house and the big house if she was going to arrive on time.

She hurried down the stairs on the side of the carriage house, but when she rounded the corner and saw Max standing beside the roadster wiping his greasy hands on a rag, she stopped. She couldn’t help herself. He just had a presence—or something—about him that made it impossible for her not to notice him. Be distracted by him. Respond to him. Succumb to him.

What was it she had just been planning to do...?

He glanced up as she skidded to a halt, his smoky eyes raking over her from head to toe and back again. “Well, hello, Ms. French,” he said in that whiskey-rough voice that could make even a simple greeting sound like a seduction attempt.

A successful seduction attempt, too, since with four little words and one steamy look, he made her want to devour him in one big bite. “Hi. I… Um… I have to go up to the big house to see Mrs. Cove.”

Max continued to wipe his hands on the greasy rag, his expression bland, but his eyes alive with something sharp and watchful that Lucy figured she’d be better off ignoring.

Yeah, right.

“She just got back,” he said. “I’ll walk up with you. Lunchtime,” he added by way of an explanation. “I’m really hungry.”

Oh, and why did that remark sound just so suggestive? Was it because he had intended for it to sound that way, or because she had wanted it to sound that way? And really, which would be more troubling?

She nodded in response to his suggestion, not because she thought it was wise, but because she found it impossible to say no to him.

Not a good sign.

He fell into step beside her as she strode past him, much too close for comfort. But then, he would be too close for comfort as long as he was in her zip code. Area code. The Western Hemisphere. Whatever.

She wished he would at least button up his shirt, because the gentle breeze kept blowing it open, displaying every solid inch of his torso. She swallowed against the dryness that overtook her mouth—funny how her mouth went dry when other parts of her were getting so, ah...not dry—and forced her eyes ahead. Not that she had any idea where they were going, because only then did she realize that it wasn’t Max who was following her, but she who was following Max. And the route he had chosen wasn’t the same one Rosemary had taken earlier. This one was a narrow dirt path overgrown by lush foliage, shaded from the sun and out of view of both the carriage house and the Cove mansion. Maybe this was a shortcut. Or maybe Max was leading her into a secluded area so he could ravish her.

Well, a girl could dream, couldn’t she?

“So,” Lucy began, hoping to end the awkward silence. Because, gee, awkward conversation was so much more preferable. “How long have you worked for the Coves?”

“Five years,” he said. But he offered nothing further.

“So,” Lucy tried again, “are you from around here originally?”

“No.” And nothing more to enlighten her.

“So,” she tried once more, “where are you from originally?”

“Here and there,” he said.

“Have you always worked around cars?”

“Pretty much.”

“And what exactly is it you do for the Coves?”

“I take care of all of Justin’s cars.”

“All of them?” she echoed. “How many does he have?”

“This month?”

Lucy’s eyebrows shot up at that. “I guess.”

“Fourteen.”

“Oh.” She hoped she didn’t sound as flabbergasted as she felt.

“Of course, some of them are parked at his other residences.”

Although it was common enough in Lucy’s Newport social circle to find people with more than one home, they usually didn’t talk about their additional living space in plurals. “Other residences?” she asked, deliberately emphasizing the tense.

“Yeah. In New York, Colorado, London, and Aruba.”

“Um, wow?” she replied, not sure what else to say.

“He has other people to work on the cars at those homes, though.”

“Naturally. I guess.”

Holy moly, Lucy thought. Who needed fourteen cars? Or five residences? Especially when one’s primary residence had already set one back seven figures. Then again, if one could afford all those things, why not have them, right? Then again—again—if one could afford fourteen cars and five residences, then one could probably afford to feed a small, sovereign nation, and that might be just a tad more worthy a cause than all that conspicuous consumption. But then, that was Lucy. Always playing devil’s advocate. It was a quirk.

She shook off the observations and turned her attention back to Max. “So,” she continued, “what does working on Mr. Cove’s cars here involve?”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop in a way that she supposed was meant to be casual, but which was actually kind of sexy. “Maintenance mostly,” he told her. “But also keeping up with the paperwork on the vehicles and their registration and insurance and everything. Washing them. Driving them occasionally to make sure they’re running well. Making sure they’re ready for Justin or Mrs. Cove when they need them. Occasionally I act as their driver when they go out to some formal function.”