The Millionaire Makeover

Chapter 7 part two

Four courses took way too long to eat, even when one of them was only a delicate green salad. The way Kate kept creeping in and out to serve the courses and remove the empty dishes didn't help. She would mouth out things like " cracked pepper." every now and again, exaggeratedly signaling that she didn't want to be a nuisance, in a way that was far more intrusive than actual speech.

"I hate when she does this," Trey muttered.

"Does...?"

"creeps. Mouths things. She only does it when she thinks I'm dating. When it's business, she bustles in and out, quite cheerful and normal."

"Well then, you're right. She definitely shouldn't creep. Because this isn't a date." Amelia certainly hadn't dressed for one. About the only thing she could claim for the outfit, after this afternoon's dusty t-shirt and jeans, was that the pastel skirt and top were  pressed and clean.

Trey hadn't been out in the garden long enough to get d irty, but he'd changed out of that incongruous business shirt and into a cotton sweater that hugged his strong frame too well. Amelia remembered how his arms had looked when he'd rolled up the shirtsleeves, the tanned muscles working easily and the contrast of skin and fabric reflecting the contrasts she'd begun to discover in the mana himself.

So forbidding, sometimes, and.. and.. bad tempered, really, like a brooding lord in a dark and crumbling English castle. Yet at other times so down to earth and funny. Cynical yet enthusiastic. Impossibly wealthy yet happy to be hands on. None of it fit. All of it stirred something new and dangerous inside her.

She wanted to know him better, but where could that possibly lead?

"Kate, stop!" Trey ordered out loud.

The Irishwoman turned in the doorway, balaning her piled tray. "What is it now, then, Mr Radford?"

"Come and meet Amelia properly. You're making her nervous."

So Amelia met Kate and learned in the space of three bewildering, and strongly irish accented, minutes that she'd come to the U.S as a widow on vacation at the age of forty six when her only son turned twenty four and got married. She'd had a whirlwind romance with a Las Vegas croupier, "who didn't look nearly as good in the daylight, I'm tellin' you darlin'!"

Not suprisingly, the marriage hadn't lasted. "My divorce party was brilliant!" But Kate had stayed and worked in the kitchen of a huge Las Vegas hotel for seven years before retiring to the quieter life of being Trey's kitchen queen and housekeeper here at Santa Brigida. She had green eyes with sooty lashes, fair Irish skin, wrinkles that told you she smiled a  lot and hair whose vibrant burgundy red was unashamedly not natural.

Trey managed to communicate to Amelia that Kate terrorized him in myriad ways, and that if she had any sense, she'd be terrorized too. Amelia decided inwardly that she didn't have any sense, because she already liked Kate, a lot.

After the potted biography, Kate stopped creeping, but then the meal crept instead. They had to wait at the table for the lemon souffles, and there just wasn't enough for them to say by this point in the evening.

Amelia was tired after rising early to make her flight, and there was a limit to how much even she could talk about old wells and dead cacti. The more she'd tried to be interesting, the more her wits deserted her. It was a familiar pattern, and she could tell Trey was bored.

"I'm sorry. You're bored," he said, just as she hid a yawn behind her hand. "And tired. This is a date meal she's given us, too. I don't normally get four courses, with a gap between each one."

"Two would have been plenty," Amelia agreed, privately deciding to take the offer of a tray in her room whenever she could.

"Would you like dessert and a pot of hot tea on a tray in your room?"