Change of Heart p.5 Read online

  “A thousand?”

  “Ha. Ha. Ha,” she said with great sarcasm.

  “What then? What do you want most in the world?”

  “The finest education the world has to offer for my son.”

  “Cambridge,” he said automatically.

  “Anywhere, just so it’s the best.”

  “You want me to give your son four years at Cambridge University for one week’s cooking? You’re talking thousands.”

  “Not four years. Freshman to PhD.”

  At that Frank laughed. “You, lady, are crazy,” he said, turning away from her.

  She stopped walking and turned to look at his back. “I saw wild strawberries up here. I make French crepes so light you can read through them. And I brought fresh cream to be whipped and drenched in strawberries, then rolled in a crepe. I make a rabbit stew that takes all day long to cook. It’s flavored with wild sage. I saw some ducks on a pond near here, and you would not believe what I can do with a duck and tea leaves.”

  Frank had stopped walking.

  “But then you’re not interested, are you, Mr. Billionaire? I bet you could toast hundred-dollar bills on a stick over the fire and they would no doubt taste yummy.”

  He turned back to her. “Potatoes?”

  “Tiny ones buried under the fire coals all day so they’re soft and mushy, then drizzled with butter and parsley.”

  He took a step toward her. When he spoke, his voice was low. “I saw bags of flour.”

  “I make biscuits flavored with honey for breakfast and bread touched with dill for dinner.”

  He took another step toward her. “PhD?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly, thinking of Eli in that venerable school and how much he’d love it. “PhD.”

  “All right,” he said, as though it were the most difficult thing he’d ever agreed to.

  “I want it in writing.”

  “Yes, of course. Now, shall we return to the cabin?”

  “Certainly.” With her head held high, she started to walk past him, but he pulled aside a curtain of bushes. “Might I suggest that this way would be quicker?”

  Once again, not a hundred yards away, was the cabin.

  As she walked past him, her nose in the air, he said, “Thank heaven your cooking is better than your sense of direction.”

  “Thank heaven you have money enough to buy what you want.”

  She didn’t see the way he frowned as she continued walking. If the truth were told, Frank Taggert wasn’t used to being around women who didn’t fawn over him. Between his good looks and his money, he found he was quite irresistible to women.

  But then he usually didn’t have anything to do with women like this one. Most of the women he escorted were the long-legged, perfect sort, the kind who wanted sparkling baubles and nothing else from him. He’d found that if he grew bored with one of them, if he gave her enough jewelry, she soon dried her tears.

  But this one had had a chance at a great deal of money and she’d asked for something for someone other than herself.

  As he watched her walk back to the cabin, he wondered about her husband. What was he like to allow his wife to go alone into the mountains to take care of another man?

  Once he was inside the cabin, he sat down hungrily at the table and waited while she served the meal she’d cooked. She made herself a plate and took it into the living area, put it on the heavy pine coffee table, sat on the floor, and began to eat as she watched the fire.

  Annoyed, and with great difficulty because he was one-handed, he picked up his plate and flatware and moved it to the coffee table. He’d no more than sat down when she lifted her plate and took it to the table.

  “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. But what is my name?”

  For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. But then, considering the circumstances under which she’d told him her name, his lack of memory was understandable. “I don’t 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 moved to the table across from 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 tax-wise 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 would have such animosity toward you as to instigate 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 portions 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 and his, while Frank, feeling deliciously full, moved to the couch 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. But then she stood on a chair and drove a nail into the ceiling beam that ran between the two beds. “What are you doing?”

  “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’ve 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.

  Aghast, Frank watched her drape spare blankets over the rope, effectively creating a solid boundary between the two beds. He stood up. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me. You see, Mr. Billionaire, I don’t like you. I don’t like you at all, and I’m not sure anyone else in the world does either. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a bath.”

  Minutes later, Miranda stepped into a tub of water so hot it made her toes hurt, but she needed the warmth, needed the heat to thaw her heart. Being near Frank Taggert was like standing near an iceberg. She wondered if he had ever had any human warmth in him, whether he’d ever loved anyone. She’d like to think he was like one of her romantic heroes: wounded by some callous woman, and now his cold exterior protected a soft, loving heart.

  She almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of the idea. All evening he’d been watching her speculatively; she could feel his eyes even through her back. He seemed to be trying to decide where she belonged in the world. Rather like an accountant would try to figure out where an expense should be placed.

  “At least Leslie had passion,” she whispered, lying back in the tub. “He lied with passion, committed adultery with