Change of Heart (6 page)

She had to stop thinking about her son or she’d cry from missing him. It suddenly dawned on her that whoever had played a joke on Frank Taggert had inadvertently also played one on her. Obviously, someone thought that sending a plain, ordinary woman such as she was to spend a week with a handsome, sophisticated, rich man like Mr. Taggert was the most hilarious of jokes.

Getting out of the tub, she dried off, then opened her night case to get her flannel gown and old bathrobe. At the sight of the garments inside, she felt a momentary panic. These were not her clothes. When she saw the Dior label on the beautiful pink nightgown, she almost swooned. Pulling it out, she saw that it was a peignoir set, made of the finest Egyptian cotton, the bodice covered with tiny pink silk roses. The matching robe was diaphanous and nearly transparent. It didn’t take a brain like Eli’s to see that this was not something a woman who was merely a housekeeper would wear.

Wrapping a towel about herself to cover the beautiful gown and robe, she rushed out of the room, past the bed on which Frank Taggert sat, scurried behind the blanket partition, and began to rummage in her not-yet-unpacked suitcase for her own clothes.

“Is there a problem?” he asked from behind his side of the blanket.

“No, of course not. What could be the problem?” She went through her bags frantically, but nothing was familiar. If a 1930s-era movie star were going to spend a week in the Rockies, these were the clothes she would have worn. But Miranda had never worn clothes made of silk or linen, or a wool so soft you could use it as a powder puff.

She knew herself to normally be a soft-tempered person. After all, she’d had to put up with Leslie’s shenanigans for years. But this was too much!

Throwing aside the blanket room divider, three cashmere sweaters in her hand, she pushed them toward Frank Taggert. “I want to know exactly what is going on. Why am I here? Whose clothes are these?”

Sitting on the side of the bed, Frank was trying to unlace his boots with one hand. “Tell me, Mrs. Stowe, are you married?”

“Divorced.”

“Yes, I think I am beginning to understand. I come from a large family that is constantly reproducing itself. I believe they have decided I should do the same.”

“You—?” In shock, Miranda sat down on the edge of her bed. “They have . . . You mean, they want us to . . .”

“Yes. At least that’s my guess.”

“Your . . . guess?” She swallowed. “My guess is that your family sent me here because the idea of a woman like me with a man like you is a great joke.”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. While she’d been speaking, he’d continued to work at untying his bootlaces. So far he’d not managed to even loosen the knot.

Not even thinking about what she was doing and certainly not what she was wearing, Miranda knelt before him and untied his laces, then pulled off his boots. “I don’t mean to pry,” she said as she removed his socks. Then, just as she did for Eli and used to do for Leslie, she gave each foot a quick massage. “But why would they choose someone like
me
? With your looks and money, you could have anyone.”

“My family would like you. You look like a poster illustration for fertility.”

She had her hands on his shirt collar as she began to unbutton it. “A what?”

“A symbol of fertility. A paean to motherhood. I’m willing to bet that this son of yours is your whole life.”

“Is there something wrong with that?” she asked defensively.

“Nothing whatever if that’s what you choose to do.”

She was helping him out of his shirt. “What better life is there for a woman than to dedicate herself to her children?”

“You have more than one child?”

“No,” she said sadly, then saw that his eyes seemed to say:
I knew it.
“So your brother sent me up here in the hope that I would . . . would what, Mr. Taggert?”

“From the look of your gown, I’d say Mike did this, since his wife, Samantha, is the personification of a romantic heroine.”

“A romantic heroine?”

“Yes. All she wants out of life is to take care of Mike and their ever-growing brood of children.”

“
You
have not been reading what I have. Today, the heroines of romance novels want a career and control of their own lives and—”

“A husband and babies.”

“Perhaps. Stand up,” she ordered and began unfastening his trousers. She’d undressed many patients, and she was doing so now without thinking too much about the action.

“How many heroes have you read about who said, ‘I want to go to bed with you, but I don’t want to get married and I never want children’?” he asked.

“I guess normality
is
a requirement in a hero.”

“And to not want marriage and children is abnormal?”

She smiled coldly at him. “I’ve never met anyone like you, but I assume you are not married, never want to be, never will be, and will have no children. But then, if you did, you would only visit them by court order.”

She had him stripped to his undershorts and T-shirt and he was certainly in fine physical form, but she felt no more for him than she would have for a statue.

“What makes you think I have no wife? I could have married many times.” He sounded more curious than anything else.

“I’m sure you could have, but the only way a woman would marry you is for your money.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Maybe it was rotten of Miranda, but she felt a little thrill at having upset his calm. “You are
not
what a woman dreams of.”

“And what does a woman dream of, Mrs. Stowe?”

The thought of that relaxed Miranda as she pulled back the blankets on his bed. “She dreams of a man who is all hers, a man whose whole world revolves around their family. He might go out and solve world problems and be seen by everyone as magnificently strong, but when he’s at home, he puts his head on her lap and tells her he couldn’t have accomplished anything without her. And, most important, she knows he’s telling the truth. He
needs
her.”

“I see. A man who appears to be strong but is actually weak.”

She sighed. “You don’t see at all. Tell me, do you analyze everything? Take everything apart? Do you put it all into an account book?” She gave him a hard look. “What are you making your billions
for
?”

As she held back the covers, he stepped into bed. “I have many nieces and nephews, and I can assure you that my will is in order. If I should die tomorrow—”

“If you should die tomorrow, who will miss you?” she asked. “I mean, miss
you
?”

Suddenly she was very tired. Turning away from him, she pushed the blanket partition aside and went to her own bed. She had never felt so lonely in her life. Perhaps it was Eli’s going away to college, or maybe it was this man’s talk of her looking as though she should have many children. When Eli left home, she would be alone, and she didn’t think some man was going to come riding up to her front door on a black stallion and—

She didn’t think anymore but fell asleep.

When Frank heard the soft sounds of her sleeping, he got out of bed and went to the fire. Without seeming to think about what she was doing, she’d banked the fire before they went to bed.

In fact, Mrs. Stowe seemed to have done every good thing without conscious thought. It seemed to be natural to her. When he’d first entered the cabin, for a moment it was as though he’d been transported back to his childhood. The delicious smell of food, bits of clothing draped on the furniture, wildflowers in a vase, had brought it all back to him. He’d almost expected his many brothers and sisters to come running to him. And then his mother would call to him to please help her with . . . anything and everything.

His mother, overburdened with so many children and wanting to show that she could do everything herself, often said Frank was her “rock.” He was her helpmate, a child who never complained, never threw tantrums, who always shared. His father said Frank had been “born old.”

What none of them realized was how much Frank hid inside himself. He’d had to develop great inner strength to keep quiet and repress urges to run away and hide. Sometimes he wanted to scream, “I don’t
want
to take care of three toddlers. I
want
to be all by myself and read a book or look at the stars.” Gradually, being alone, being quiet, and having no little kids around him had become the ultimate goal of his life.

Frank threw a couple more logs on the fire, then sat down on the couch. He had achieved his goal so well that . . . Well, he’d almost become a joke to his family. His childhood had been inundated with sticky siblings leaping on him, trying to stick wet crackers in his ears. By the time he was twelve he could change a diaper with one hand while feeding strained carrots to another child.

But his adulthood was the opposite. Over the years his siblings had married and begun producing children of their own, and Frank had nearly run from them. He’d found that he had a talent for making money—and his ability to hide his true feelings had helped greatly. He had used what he earned to give himself an extremely orderly life. Peace. Calm. Quiet. It had all been such a glorious relief to him.

Until Eli, he thought. It was as though meeting the boy had unlocked something inside Frank. Eli wasn’t like Frank’s gregarious, laughing, rambunctious family. Eli was like Frank. They understood each other, thought alike, wanted the same things in life.

Frank found himself telling the boy things he’d never shared with anyone else. And Frank had begun to change. When he’d been shown his latest niece, her dad had laughed and said, “I know you’re not interested, so you don’t have to hold her.”

But to Frank’s surprise, he
had
wanted to hold the baby. The feeling had so shocked him that he’d left his brother’s house right away.

As he drove home, he wondered if Eli was the cause of these new feelings or if it was the other way around. Had Frank begun to change so that he noticed a kid skulking around his office?

Frank glanced over at Miranda, lying on the bed. He was ashamed of himself for what he’d assumed about her. His family had often said that his incessant business dealings had made him lose touch with the real world. While it was true that his life consisted of doing his best to win deals, he did have a social life. In fact, right now he had a girlfriend, Gwyn. They went to one charity gala after another. He owned an entire wardrobe of tuxedos, all of which got frequent wear.

It was his sister-in-law Samantha who’d said, “But that’s not real. Seeing each other at your best has nothing to do with actual life. You need to love a person at three a.m. when the baby has spit up on you and you haven’t had any sleep and you’re angry and crying and he puts his arms around you and says, ‘Go to bed. I’ll do this.’ Charity balls are the dessert, not the meal.”

At the time, Frank had dismissed what she’d said, but since he’d met Eli two years ago, he’d thought about it. A few months ago he’d been up all night working on a contract with some Russian businessmen. There’d been vodka and a lot of cigarettes. He was to meet Gwyn later that day so he’d planned to take a nap and clean up, but he didn’t. Instead, when she arrived at his apartment, he’d been unshaven, sweaty, and stinking.

She had graciously and charmingly told him she’d return when he was presentable.

Frank got up to use the poker to move the logs around. This woman, this Mrs. Stowe, wouldn’t do that. She would probably have straightened up the apartment while Frank took a shower. Or maybe he would have rubbed his whiskers on her neck, made her laugh, and they would have taken a shower together.

He liked that idea. In fact, he liked everything about her. He had treated her abominably. Horribly. But she’d returned his actions with kindness. Well, maybe she’d been a bit sassy in calling him Mr. Billionaire—the memory made him smile—but she’d fed him, undressed him, taken care of him.

When he’d told Gwyn that he’d broken his arm, she’d said, “Oh dear, how awful for you. You’ll miss the museum gala. But I’ll send you photos so you won’t feel left out.” Photos were Gwyn’s idea of kindness.

What would Miranda have done in that situation? Made chicken soup?

One of the reasons Frank was so very successful was because he could make decisions quickly. In seconds, he could see down the road to where his decision would lead him, then say yes or no.

As he looked at Miranda’s sleeping form, he could see where a liaison, a merger so to speak, with her would lead. There was a possible end to the deep loneliness of his life. Perhaps with someone like Miranda in his life he could at last give up hiding what was inside him.

He’d been angry at the thought of his siblings playing a joke on him, but maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d realized what Frank needed and had helped him find her.

But, he thought, how to present what he had in mind to her? Should he lie and say he’d fallen in love with her? She wouldn’t believe that. Tell her he was overcome with lust? She’d go running out the door again. Perhaps he should suggest dating? What a waste of time! He’d made up his mind so why dally?