Male Order Bride (19 page)

"She sounds like a robot," Jane commented.

Lacey took a swallow of coffee and set her cup down on her
drawing board. "It would suit me just fine if Rafe kept her under the
kitchen sink and out of my love life. I don't do well with competition."

Jane laughed. "You thrive on competition and you know it.
Just look at the Jumper Line you came up with and the April Showers
coats you designed. If that didn't come out of a spirit of competition,
I don't know what did."

"That's different. That's business. This is something real
with Rafe. I don't want to start playing guessing games and jealousy
games with him. But damn it all, I wish he'd tell me what he thinks. He
can be the strong silent type in everything else, but where I'm
concerned, I want words. Words like 'My housekeeper makes a terrific
chicken
tetrazzini
, but I could live on a diet of
Lacey,' or, 'My housekeeper has a knack for lighting a charcoal fire
with one match, but you are the pilot light in my heart.'"

Jane started laughing and Lacey turned and grinned.

"Is that asking too much?" Lacey yelled.

Jane set her coffee cup on the floor to prevent the
contents from spilling. "It doesn't seem like it, but he may be a man
who has trouble putting things into words. It doesn't make him any less
of a person, just different in his methods of communication."

"Fine, if he'll just give me a phrase book of translations
to help me cope with his messages in sign language." Lacey signed. "And
the thing is, there's no one I can talk to about him."

"What do you mean by that?" Jane asked. "Aren't you
telling me about him now?"

"That's not what I mean," Lacey answered. "There's no one
who knows Rafe well that I can go to for an interpretation of his
feelings. As little as he has said to me about his feelings for me, I
know he's opened up to me more than he has to probably anybody he knows
here in town. Which is a good sign, I suppose, now that I come to think
of it."

Jane nodded. "I don't think you have much to worry about.
Look at how thoughtful he's been in wanting to see you so often. He
introduces you to his friends. He wouldn't be doing that if he didn't
intend to keep you in his world. And he talks about you to his friends.
Didn't you tell me how some of his friends were already picking out
your wedding date just because Rafe's never been so gung-ho about any
woman the whole time he's been living here?"

Lacey nodded in agreement.

"Silence creates suspicion," Jane said, picking up her
coffee cup again and sipping from it. "I think you should pay a little
visit to the housekeeper and check her out firsthand, especially since
Rafe's out of town. The best way to deal with a problem is to confront
it head-on."

"I can just see us getting into a bake-off competition,"
Lacey mumbled. "She'd win. But if we had a dress-designing competition,
I'd come out ahead."

"Right," Jane agreed, cheering Lacey on.

"But what good is a dress going to do Rafe?" Lacey asked.
"I still haven't figured out one good reason why he needs me."

"Probably the same reason you need him," Jane commented.
"Because neither one of you needs anybody."

Lacey gave what Jane had to say a lot of thought, as long
as it took her to drive from the boutique out to Rafe's house. As long
as she knew the housekeeper was around this morning, she might as well
get this initial meeting over with to decide what sorts of tactics she
should take against this competition. With Rafe out of town, Lacey
would have enough time to implement whatever change of plans was needed
before he returned, whether that involved changing the color of her
hair or whipping up a fully edible gingerbread house for two. Whatever
the housekeeper's appeal, Lacey decided, she would top it.

Suddenly she realized she hadn't taken time to figure out
what the purpose of her visit was going to be to camouflage her spy
mission. Lacey's irritation increased as she pulled into Rafe's long
driveway and noticed the unfamiliar car parked behind his 1933 Chevy.
A hulking lineback figure was waxing the fenders of Rafe's antique car.

"Great," Lacey muttered to herself as she pulled up behind
a dusty blue Beetle missing the rear bumper. "Her boyfriend is here
too. I wonder how he feels about his girl working for a man like Rafe
Chancellor? We probably have a lot in common to talk about."

The barefoot lineback with the short-cropped hair stopped
polishing the car at the sound of Lacey's arrival and stepped around
the hood of the VW to see who was in Rafe's driveway.

Lacey plastered a smile on her face and opened her car
door.

The lineback returned her smile and stepped over to
Lacey's car, holding out a hand. "I bet you're Lacey Adams," Lacey was
greeted, her hand being pumped in the introduction. "Lieutenant Colonel
Rafe told me you had a car like that. I'm his housekeeper."

Lacey's smile quivered. Well, maybe, she thought, taking a
closer look at the lineback. If she stretched her imagination, she
would be able to see the girl behind the loose-fitting sweatshirt and
baggy jeans. Even the hair threw her off, but the voice was definitely
the one she had heard over the phone. "I'm really glad to meet you,"
Lacey said, pumping her hand back. "Rafe talks so highly of you and all
you do for him. I have to tell you I'm envious."
But not in
the same way I was on the drive over here
, she added to
herself. What a relief to know she wasn't going to have to learn how to
plow fields and bale hay just to keep up.

"What brought you out here?" the girl asked, tucking her
rag in her hip pocket.

"Oh… I… Uh." They both knew Rafe was
out of town. "I'm missing a sketchbook and thought I might have left it
here. Did you run across one about this big?" Lacey gestured with her
hands. "No? Well, I must have overlooked it somewhere at home."

"Can I fix you something cool to drink while you're here?
Lieutenant Colonel Rafe says you like freshly brewed tea."

"Does he talk about me much?" Lacey asked, glowing from
this report, anxious to hear more.

"All the time."

"Oh. Well. Gee. I'd like something to drink, thanks."

"How about some cassis tea?"

"What?"

"It's nothin' more than blackberry, but the box says
'cassis,'" she answered. "It's not as good as sassafras, but it'll do
to cool you down on a hot day like today."

It figured, Lacey thought, watching her wipe off her
perspiring forehead with the back of her hand. She wouldn't have
ordinary tea bags like everybody else. She'd have something exotic like
cassis. "Sounds great."

"Let me just shove the thirty-three back into the garage.
Lieutenant Colonel Rafe doesn't like it left out where the hot sun can
bake the color out of the paint."

"Shove it back?" Lacey's mouth dropped open.

"It won't take a minute," she assured Lacey.

"But why not just get in it and drive it back?"

"Lieutenant Colonel Rafe doesn't let just anybody drive
it."

"Oh," Lacey answered, and watched while she pushed the car
back into place.

Lacey spent more than an hour listening to the housekeeper
describe Rafe's likes and dislikes from a maintenance, cleanup,
housekeeping-cooking point of view. It never hurt to have that kind of
arsenal of information, even if Lacey wasn't sure she'd ever know what
to do with it.

"Now what's your problem?" Jane asked Lacey two days
later. Lacey was sitting at her drawing desk with a collection of
wadded paper lined up in perfect order across the top.

"Oh, nothing," Lacey answered, continuing to stare out of
the window and barely acknowledging Jane's entrance into the attic room.

"It must be something or you wouldn't be so full of
nervous energy and not doing anything about it." Jane walked over to
the desk and uncrumpled one of the papers, turning it over back and
front. "There's nothing on this," she said, and looked over at Lacey,
waving her hand in front of her face to attract her attention. "I
thought you were having trouble with a design."

Lacey shook her head. "I don't feel like designing
anything today."

"I see," Jane said, and perched in the window so that even
if Lacey wasn't going to look at her she couldn't avoid seeing her. "I
bet this has some connection with Rafe Chancellor. What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

Jane let that pass, and took her time before she tried to
make her own deductions about the situation. "It can't be the
housekeeper. You already told me she'd never make first grade as Miss
America. You can't still be worried about that."

"I'm not," Lacey answered, and met Jane's eyes directly.
"It's nothing."

"Lacey…"

"He's been gone now for three days," Lacey said, "and I
have heard nothing from him."

"Now we're getting somewhere," Jane said, smiling. "It's
only three days."

"It feels like three months," Lacey said, and crumpled
another sheet of paper, adding it to the pile on her desktop. "I can
see why he didn't call the first night. He was probably tired from the
trip and he'd seen me just a few hours earlier. Fine. The second day,
maybe he didn't call because he got really busy with his first day's
business and thought it would be too late when he got back to his room
to call me. Last night I figured he'd call for certain. I mean, it's
been three days. I'm hungry just for the sound of his voice. Isn't he
supposed to be feeling these things too?"

Jane smiled and crossed her arms, ready to give her
advice. "I'm sure men feel these things too. But they handle them
differently than women do."

"Like ignoring them."

"Where is he?"

"At the Plaza in New York."

Jane frowned. "If you know where he is and how to get in
touch with him, why don't you call him?"

"Because I want him to call me," Lacey said, squashing the
line of crumpled paper together into one giant wad. "I want to know
that he's missing me the way I'm missing him, even if he is busy. Can
anyone be too busy to miss another person?"

"I know," Jane sympathized.

"Besides," Lacey said, tossing the wadded paper into the
wastebasket, "I don't want to bother him if he's busy. I want him to
know I don't have to call him up every two seconds just to get a high
from the sound of his voice. I want him to know I can stand on my own
two feet without him. I was doing it before I met him and I'll still be
doing it twenty years from now, with or without him. And I don't want
him to know I'm missing him as badly as I'm missing him if he's not
missing me that much too."

Jane laughed. "You sound like a true independent woman."

"I am!" Lacey returned, poking her chin out at Jane. "It's
just that where Rafe's concerned I feel like a soft-shelled crab. All
you have to do is poke me and I'll wiggle away and hide under a rock
someplace until he can come rescue me again."

"Why do you need reassurance about that man?" Jane asked,
leaning back so that her shoulders rested against the closed panes of
the window.

"Because he never tells me anything. He's the strong,
stone-mountain-silent type. Very hush-hush about his feelings and
emotions. He should be in the Pentagon instead of New York."

Jane shook her head and smiled at Lacey. "Look at
everybody around you, will you, and quit whimpering? The man obviously
adores your company. Every time he's in town he wants you around him.
How many other men have you known who keep you guessing week after week
about when they're just going to call you up for the next date?"

"I know," Lacey whined, "but—"

"And from what you've told me," Jane continued, not giving
Lacey a chance to speak, "he's open enough with you to show his
affection toward you, touching you as he crosses a room, surprising you
with kisses, introducing you to his friends and letting them know how
proud he is to have you with him."

"I know, but—"

"And how many men have any of us ever met who like to cook
for the women they're dating? And don't mind taking them out to dinner
even after a hard day at the office? And don't ask the women to pick up
their socks after them?"

"How much did he pay you to say all of this to me?" Lacey
joked.

Jane ignored her attempt at humor and continued. "And how
many men do you know who are capable of accepting you as you are? Who
don't let your business threaten them? Who actually encourage you in
what you do? Frankly, until you met this Rafe Chancellor," Jane
confided, "I didn't think there was anyone who could match you. Not a
man, anyway. But this guy has definite possibilities."

"I know," Lacey said, feeling twice as despondent now
because Jane was absolutely correct in everything she had said about
Rafe. "But I just wish he'd tell me he loves me."

"He may never tell you that," Jane answered. "Not in
words, if he's as strong and closemouthed as you say he is. Are you
going to let mere words stand between you and what you want?"

"I know, but—"

"Hasn't all that he's already done with you and for you
spoken for itself?"

Lacey nodded. "You're right. But when you don't hear
anything, you start imagining the worst —other women, boredom
with you, other women, second thoughts about you, and other women."

Jane shook her head. "Not a man like Rafe, from what
you've told me. He is so much like you, just interested in a one-on-one
relationship. Why invest a lot of useless energy in other relationships
when you can have everything you want wrapped into one person?"

"Are you sure he isn't paying you for this speech?"

Jane laughed. "Think about it."

"I will. And you're absolutely right."

Jane was silent for a while. "Have you ever thought," she
said eventually, "that maybe he doesn't tell you he loves you every
five minutes because he's afraid of being rejected again, the same way
he was when his wife left him?"