“How was that?” he asked lightly as if he didn’t want to grab his best friend by his lapels and shake the answer out of him.
“Like you couldn’t wait for the rest of us to get the hell out of your house so you could be alone with her.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Linc made a scoffing sound to throw Knox off but saw that his friend wasn’t to be deterred. “Claire works for me. That’s all there is to it.”
“And if she didn’t?”
“She’s still hung up on her dead husband.”
“Are you so sure about that?”
“Yeah.” Linc doubted his drawl gave anything away. “Why would you think otherwise?”
“Because there’s the way she gobbles you up with her eyes.”
Although Linc’s heart stopped at Knox’s observation, he’d spent enough time in the public eye to keep his expression under control.
“She doesn’t.” Linc frowned. Did she? The thought appealed to him. “You’re making stuff up to mess with me.”
“Only partially. I wanted to see your reaction.”
“And?”
“You might not be sleeping with Claire, but you want to.”
“And what’s so wrong with that? She’s beautiful, sweet, and we get along great.” Wait...where was he going with this? Linc was supposed to be coming up with reasons why he didn’t want to sleep with Claire.
“She’s also your housekeeper,” Knox pointed out unnecessarily.
“Men have been known to fall for their secretaries and nannies. Why not a housekeeper?”
Knox’s eyebrows shot up. “Fall for?”
“Figure of speech,” Linc said with a careless shrug. “Sounds better than ‘sleep with.’” He rubbed his face. “Damn. I’m back in Charleston only a few weeks and my Southern manners kick in.”
Knox laughed the way Linc had hoped he would, and for a few minutes, they smoked in companionable silence. It couldn’t last. Linc could feel his friend’s curiosity pressing on him even as he kept his gaze fixed on the tranquil turquoise pool glowing softly a few feet away.
“Why did you really break up with London?” Knox asked.
“I’ve already told you. Because I wasn’t in love with her. And I don’t really think she was in love with me.”
“What makes you think that?”
Linc shrugged. “She liked the idea of what I represented, an old Charleston family. Ever since her family moved here, they’ve been trying to crack the ‘inner circles’ of Charleston society. London wanted to be a debutante and that was never going to happen. But if she married me and we had a daughter, she could live vicariously through her.”
“You’re not interested in all that stuff.”
“I don’t really care one way or the other.”
“Are you sure about all this? She’s been seen out with Harrison Crosby and he’s the furthest thing from old Charleston as you can get.”
“Trust me. London was obsessed with the whole society thing. So much so that every woman who attended tonight’s dinner party has pulled me aside at some point since my engagement ended and given me an earful about my ex-fiancée.”
Knox chuckled. “I’m surprised they waited that long.”
“What do you mean?”
“A year ago, Augusta and Ruby approached Austin, Roy and me. They wanted us to warn you that London was too focused on your social position. I think they spent quite a bit of time chatting with your mother about it as well.”
It wasn’t a stretch to imagine how some of those conversations must’ve gone. Bettina often entertained his friends and saw nothing wrong with cultivating relationships with women she perceived as being more suitable for Linc to marry.
“Did London know that so many of my friends were rallying against her?”
“How could she not?”
That explained a lot of things. As his relationship with London had deepened toward marriage, she’d made it so that he spent less and less time with his old circle of friends. How ironic that the very people she wanted to associate with had shut her out and she’d responded by cutting them off from Linc. It had become a vicious cycle.
“I guess it’s better for all of us that we’re no longer getting married,” Linc said.
“It’s certainly better for your housekeeper.”
Linc frowned at his friend. “Leave it alone.”
“So you’re not going after her?”
“No.” He stared at the pool. “Maybe if things were different...”
If Claire wasn’t still in love with her dead husband.
“You mean if she didn’t work for you?” Knox asked.
“Yeah.”
“You could always fire her.”
Linc gave his friend a rueful grin. “I actually thought about it a couple days ago. But that would probably just make her hate me.”
“What if she quit?”
“Why would she do that? She has a swell setup here, and I’m a great boss.”
Knox finished off his scotch. “Ever think that Claire might be interested in turning in her French maid costume for a set of chef whites?”
Linc hadn’t considered this. In fact, although he’d hired her more for her cooking skills than her cleaning abilities, there hadn’t been much opportunity for him to utilize the former in the past year.
“She’s happy right where she is.”
“Maybe. But Austin was right when he pointed out that her culinary talent is wasted on just you.”
“So I’ll entertain more.”
“Didn’t you say she’s catering your mother’s party in a couple weeks?”
“Yeah. What of it?”
“Augusta cornered Claire just before we left and asked if she could do the food for the function she’s coordinating next month for that free medical clinic her cousin volunteers at.”
“Did she agree?” It hadn’t occurred to Linc that Claire might be interested in picking up some extra work here and there.
“She said she’d think about it and give her a call.”
Linc didn’t consider himself selfish, but the thought of sharing Claire irritated him.
“Have you considered that you’re doing her a disservice by having her as your housekeeper?”
“I guess I haven’t.”
Until now, he hadn’t given it much thought. She seemed happy enough keeping his forty-five-hundred-square-feet home neat and clean. Often she pointed out that his long periods of absence during the spring and summer months enabled her to devote time and attention to her daughter. But now that Honey was getting older, wouldn’t she be going off to preschool? Maybe with more free
