The Maid and the Millionaire Read online

  MYRNA MACKENZIE

  The Maid and the Millionaire

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  To my mother, Virginia Mackey,

  who introduced me to the joy of reading.

  Thanks, Mom. You’re a great role model!

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  COMING NEXT MONTH

  CHAPTER ONE

  ANNA NOWELL stared at the telephone receiver she had just hung up. “Okay, don’t panic,” she told herself. “This is just a little bump in the road. Nothing to worry about.”

  But even as she whispered the words, she knew there was everything to worry about.

  For two years she had been house-sitting Morning View Manor, the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, mansion belonging to Donovan Barrett, Anna’s wealthy employer and absentee owner. In all that time, Mr. Barrett had never once stepped foot on this beautiful lakefront property. With the exception of the gardeners who showed up to take care of the manicured grounds, Anna had lived here alone, playing at being lady of the manor.

  Now Donovan Barrett was coming here. What was that going to mean for her?

  A lump formed in Anna’s throat. She knew what it meant. It meant that a house sitter was no longer necessary. She was going to lose her job.

  She ran one hand over the rich golden oak of a nearby table and stroked the lush dusky-blue upholstery of a chair. Her days of pretending that she belonged here, that she had been born to privilege, were over, but not being able to pretend that this fantasy house was hers was the least of her worries.

  All the time she had worked here, she had lived rent free and had been able to save a significant portion of her income. This job had paid better than most positions that were open to a woman without a university degree. Working here had not only allowed her to live a fantasy, but it had put her closer to being able to afford her dream of adopting a child.

  Closer, but not close enough. She had saved some money but she could still not support another person for any significant length of time, not in the way she wanted to. And she would not bring an innocent baby into the poverty she had grown up with, the kind that had driven her father to abandon his family and had led to a painful and lonely existence for Anna. She would never subject a child to that kind of life. Not ever.

  Her throat ached at the thought that she might have to postpone something she had wanted for so long, a child she could lavish with the kind of love she had never known. But truth was truth and she had grown used to meeting it head-on when she had to.

  Anna swallowed. “Face it. Things have changed.”

  The woman on the phone had been Donovan Barrett’s Chicago assistant. Tomorrow morning Mr. Barrett would move from his home base to his Lake Geneva estate.

  It was less than a two-hour drive by car and yet that distance would be life-changing in so many ways.

  Anna took a deep breath. She had been hired to do a job and she had done it. Donovan Barrett had needed a house sitter and now he wouldn’t. It wasn’t the man’s fault that she wished he was staying in Chicago. Now she had to get the house ready for his arrival. She wasn’t jobless yet.

  “And I’m not beaten yet, either,” she said, though her fear was still there. She knew little of Donovan Barrett other than what his assistant had reluctantly told her and what the area gossips had read on the Internet and shared. Born to wealth, he had been a renowned physician until the tragic accidental death of his young son. Dr. Barrett had given up his practice and become a recluse. In the eighteen months since his son’s death, Donovan Barrett had become difficult. He disliked closeness; he disliked people. He craved darkness and quiet.

  Anna loved light even though her upbringing had been filled with darkness. She loved conversation and music and company, perhaps because she’d had little of that in her life growing up.

  She sounded like just the kind of person Mr. Barrett disliked, but…

  “He’ll need at least a skeleton crew,” she told herself. “A cook?”

  If she’d been in the mood to laugh, she would have laughed until tears rolled. She was a terrible cook.

  “Okay, a maid, then.” A house with ten bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a kitchen the size of a small city needed lots of cleaning.

  Could she realize her dreams on a maid’s pay?

  Anna frowned. None of this worrying was getting her anywhere. The truth was that much of the house had been closed off for two years and now it had to be opened up, gotten ready. In less than twenty-four hours. If everything wasn’t perfect, if the house didn’t glow, if it didn’t meet the exacting specifications that a man like Donovan Barrett was undoubtedly used to, she would appear incompetent. All hope of securing another position here would be gone. She would be jobless, homeless. She would have to dip into her savings until she found another place to work, and her hopes of becoming a mother…

  Anna closed her eyes. She resisted the urge to smooth her palm over the empty place on her abdomen where other women could carry children and she took a deep, energizing breath. Self-pity wasn’t allowed. It was pointless.

  “Get a grip,” she told herself, standing taller. “Get to work.”

  Maybe if she did a good job of preparing the house for its owner, she and Donovan Barrett might come to terms.

  “Miracles can happen,” she whispered as she set off to clean what needed cleaning, to take the dust covers off the furnishings in the rooms she had not spent much time in and to do her best to impress the man who held her fate and the fate of her unknown child in his hands.

  She had to try to win the man’s favor, and from what his assistant had implied, he wasn’t a man particularly interested in doling out favors.

  Donovan Barrett was on his way to a destiny he wasn’t interested in. But he had his reasons for being in Lake Geneva, and it was here he intended to stay.

  For now.

  Having only visited once, he barely remembered the picturesque resort town set midway between the metropolitan areas of Chicago and Milwaukee. He did know that the lake was a summer retreat for many wealthy Chicago families and had been ever since the Civil War. His ex-wife, Cecily, was the one who had chosen the house. In retrospect, he supposed she’d wanted to get him away from his practice long enough for him to pay attention to his family, but it hadn’t worked. He’d shown up once, to sign the closing papers, and had gone straight back to his patients. He’d never returned.

  Driving past the shops now, he passed a long, low Frank Lloyd Wright-style building, the library, overlooking a grassy park, a beach and the east end of Geneva Lake. In the bay were small boats, sailboats with rainbow-colored sails, and a cruise ship with a paddlewheel and an open second deck filled with passengers. For a moment Donovan imagined how much Ben would have loved riding on the historic-looking vessel.

  If only he’d brought his son here once. Just once. Ben had only been four years old when he died.

  Donovan gripped the steering wheel and drove on toward Morning View Manor, cursing himself for all the ways he had failed his child, including not being able to save his life despite the fact that Donovan was a doctor. Rage rushed through him, and he remembered why he ha
d come here.

  Not to forget.

  “That’s never going to happen,” he promised himself as he drove down the snaking road that led to his estate.

  He would never forget Ben, but he couldn’t be the man he’d been anymore. At least at Morning View he could leave his old life behind. He had to. He’d spent the first twelve months after Ben’s death in a fog, but these past six months, well-meaning friends and colleagues had started to urge him to move on. Gently, at first, then more urgently. They didn’t understand why he wasn’t going back to his career as a successful physician or why he had to get away from a world that was a constant reminder of all he had lost.

  He didn’t want to hurt or disappoint those people anymore but he couldn’t do what they wanted him to do.

  Donovan fought the dark tide of anger that threatened to overtake him. There was no going back to his practice and there never would be. There wasn’t going to be a slow slide past the pain back to meaningful relationships. His neglect had been the cause of his son’s death, on more than one level. He had to live with that, but he’d do it on his own terms. He would give himself no opportunities to fail anyone else. Here, where people came to escape the reality of their worlds for brief weekends, where no one knew him, he would immerse himself in mindless diversions. He could disconnect without the sad, expectant looks from old friends.

  “Here, I can pretend I never heard the words ‘Hippocratic oath,’ and no one will care.” A grim glimmer of satisfaction greeted the thought, but Donovan had barely uttered the words when the house, a wide white building with a wall of arched windows and a fountain courtyard, came into view. Twin towers framed the house. There were five chimneys. Ten bedrooms, if he recalled the description. If he had brought Cecily and Ben here, she might have been happy. They might have stayed married. Ben wouldn’t have been crossing that street at the same moment the car had gone hurtling down it.

  Hot, dark agony threatened to overcome Donovan. He pulled up in front of the house with a squeal of tires and shoved his way out of the car.

  Keep moving. Don’t think. It was a mantra that had gotten him through many days. He angled toward the house, dug out his key and inserted it into the lock. Pulling back the wide double doors, he strode through the entrance, nearly colliding with a woman who was halfway up an old wooden ladder. An exceptionally tall ladder.

  The ladder shook. Instinctively Donovan reached out. The woman swayed on her precarious perch, twisting so that her weight stopped the ominous tipping. His hand came down on the wooden frame two rungs beneath her feet.

  “What in hell are you doing?” he bellowed.

  He looked up into startled wide gray eyes.

  “Oh, darn, I’ve made you angry. I didn’t mean to start this way. There was just—the light needed changing.” She held out the bulb. Her face was pale, and Donovan realized that he must be glowering. He recalled the explosive tone of his voice, made far worse by the disturbing thoughts he had been running from when he had opened the door.

  As if he hadn’t hurt enough people.

  He took a step back. “I’m not angry,” he said, beating back as much emotion as he could muster. He had gotten good at this skill lately. It had been necessary when friends arrived, but it was a skill he had hoped to abandon here at Morning View. He supposed he should have expected to run into someone here. He’d given his accountant free rein to make sure the place didn’t fall into disrepair. He just hadn’t remembered to ask the man who was working or what to expect.

  It was too late to ask questions now. She was coming down the ladder. He watched as her denim-clad legs slid past him, the curve of her rear, the slope of her back. She stopped her descent when she was at eye level with him, and a brave smile lit her face. “You are angry,” she said simply. “And why not? No doubt you weren’t expecting to find someone right inside the doorway. Yet, here I am.”

  Yes, here she was. Donovan studied her. Her face was slightly round, slightly plump. Her hair was an unremarkable shade of brown and curved slightly, brushing her cheeks before ending just beneath her chin. She was, he supposed, a decidedly ordinary looking woman. Except for those gray eyes that seemed to stare a bit too intently, see a bit too much.

  A sliver of awareness of himself as a man ran through Donovan. Inappropriate, he thought. Meaningless. It had simply been a long time since he’d looked directly into the eyes of a woman. His reaction wasn’t her fault. None of his problems were her fault.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his voice more gentle this time.

  Her smile grew, showing even teeth and the faint trace of a dimple in her right cheek. She pushed out one hand, the warmth of her body brushing his arm where it still rested on the frame of the ladder.

  “Anna Nowell, your house sitter,” she said.

  He raised one brow. “I have a house sitter?”

  A delicious and far from ordinary laugh slipped between her lips. “Didn’t you know?”

  “’Fraid not. This house and I don’t have a history. My accountant handles the bills, and I let him.”

  “But you’ll be living here now. You’ll make a history. You’ll need to hire more people in addition to me.”

  “In addition to you?” He raised a brow. She had said she was the house sitter, but now that he was here, he wouldn’t need a sitter.

  A faint hint of rose suffused her cheeks. “And in addition to Clyde,” she added. She had a nice, low voice.

  “Clyde?”

  “Your gardener.”

  He gave a curt nod. “Any others I should know about?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. But you’ll need a cook, probably a maid and a housekeeper at least.”

  More people. He wanted to be alone. In his penthouse in the city, he had gotten by with a cleaning service.

  “I’d like to make do with a skeleton staff. I’m not used to having a lot of people around,” he said.

  Something flickered in her eyes. He wasn’t sure what it was, but her smile faded and she looked suddenly vulnerable. Slowly she descended the last few steps of the ladder, placed the used lightbulb on one rung and looked up at him.

  “I know everyone around here. I’ll help you find what you need.”

  Somehow Donovan stopped himself from groaning. He didn’t want to need anyone or anything.

  “I’m sure my decision to come here caught you off guard,” he said, suddenly realizing that must be true and that a job house-sitting must not pay particularly well. She probably needed the money. “I’ll give you two weeks to find a new position and I’ll provide a generous severance package.”

  Her look was so crestfallen he felt as if he’d hit her. Donovan looked to the side, but he refused to back down. The thought of he and this woman interacting on a day-to-day basis was…

  “Impossible,” he whispered.

  “I beg your pardon?” Her voice was strained.

  “Leave the ladder,” he said. “I’ll take care of it. And in the remaining time you’re here, do not go climbing on it again. I don’t want your neck broken.”

  I just want you gone. But he kept those words to himself as he strode past her and into the bowels of his house.

  CHAPTER TWO

  TWO weeks. She only had two weeks to make herself indispensable to a man who just wanted to be left alone.

  “So I’ll become the invisible superwoman,” she whispered as she laced her shoes, snatched up a clipboard and headed for the main part of the house.

  For two years she had taken care of Morning View and done odd jobs on the side, but during all that time she had been the only inhabitant. Caring for this house, big as it was, hadn’t been an involved process. Her needs were simple.

  But Donovan Barrett was practically royalty, or at least as close to royalty as she was ever going to get. He was used to better, and she intended to give him the best.

  For starters, he would need breakfast. Not exactly the job of either a house sitter, a caretaker, or a housekeeper, but for now there wa
s no cook. While she wasn’t handy with a stove, she could at least manage the basics.

  She rushed down the stairs as quietly as she could just in case he was still sleeping, then picked up her pace when she heard movement, sliding into the kitchen and opening a cabinet.

  For half a second, she thought about the fact that she and Donovan Barrett had slept in the same house last night. Different wings, but still more or less alone. A vision of that dark hair against a pillow hit her.

  She slipped and clanged the pan in her hand against the stove.

  “Stop it,” she told herself. The man was miles above her in social class, wealth, education…everything, and anyway, she didn’t get involved with men. She’d been foolish enough to trust her heart to at least three men, including her father. And all of them had failed her, hurt her, shredded her ego and danced on the pieces. How much more foolish to start daydreaming about someone so obviously not meant for her as her boss?

  “Just make the coffee, toast and eggs, Nowell,” she told herself. “Pour the orange juice.” She did.

  Minutes later she slid the omelet onto a Tiffany dinner plate, loaded the food upon a tray, and went in search of Donovan.

  He was in the sunroom, staring out the window at the lake and the long green lawn sloping down to the water.

  Anna cleared her throat.

  When he turned, she tried not to notice how handsome he was. His black hair had a streak of white. His brown eyes held a touch of pain.

  Stupid, she thought. Don’t notice. Concentrate on staying. Adopting means jumping through hoops and having enough money. That’s all that can matter. Don’t try to analyze Donovan Barrett. Just get him to hire you.

  “Breakfast,” she said, setting the tray down on a small table flanked by white rattan chairs.

  He raised one aristocratic brow. “I thought you were the house sitter, not the cook.”

  “House sitting involved cooking. For myself at least.”