The Housekeeper's Daughter. Christine Flynn

the first to leave the next morning. He’d said his goodbyes at the party that lasted long past when he’d turned in at midnight, and slipped out at the crack of dawn while there was no danger of running into anyone who might delay his escape.

      Mornings were usually his favorite time of day. He especially liked it when the sun was just coming up and the whole day stretched untouched before him. It was a time of possibilities, a clean slate, another beginning. This morning, though, as he tossed his black leather suit bag into the back seat of his black Mercedes, climbed behind the wheel and headed down the long drive to where the automatic gate swung wide to let him back into the real world, it wasn’t beginnings he was thinking about.

      It was change.

      Apparently he didn’t adapt to it very well.

      Addie’s dad had once told him that how a man dealt with change was often the truest test of his character. Until yesterday Gabe had figured he dealt fine with it. At least he did when he instigated it himself. With something beyond his control, it was clear he’d pretty much flunked the test.

      He couldn’t believe he’d kissed her like that.

      He couldn’t believe how she’d responded to him, either. He’d tasted surrender in her, astonishingly immediate, and a hint of passion held ruthlessly in check. The surrender had nearly made him groan with need. The thought of removing the reins from that bridled passion had made for a decidedly restless night’s sleep.

      His hands tightened on the wheel.

      Addie had never been so completely on his mind as she had in the past thirty hours. And never had she been on his mind the way she had last night. More often than not when he thought of her, it would be to remember her view on some issue he needed to address—and her fervor or sympathy when she expressed it. As restrained as she seemed when others were around, he usually had no problem getting her to tell him exactly how she felt. All he had to do was ask her what she thought her father would think, and she would be the voice of reason.

      During his last campaign, when his advisors had wanted to cancel appearances because he was so far ahead in the polls, she had made him see that by not staying out there and encountering more of his constituents, he would miss the opportunity to meet voters who might have needs he didn’t yet know about. And his purpose as a senator, after all, was to serve.

      When he’d been going nuts with the thought of having to move his office because a youth center had gone into the building behind him and the noise through the walls was deafening, she suggested he donate soundproofing and double-pane windows.

      He’d saved a fortune in time by not having to move. He’d also earned the undying gratitude of the youth facility’s director over the unexpected savings on the center’s fuel bills.

      She knew her mind, knew what she felt was right, wrong or of no consequence.

      For everyone but herself, anyway. He didn’t know why she did it, but she tended to downplay her own talents and abilities. It was as if she didn’t even realize she had them. The only dream he’d ever known her to cling to was college. And there, he had the feeling she was doing that as much for the memory of her father as she was herself. Tom had wanted it for her. Therefore, she would see that it was done.

      As for anything else she might have wanted, she seemed to settle for whatever appeared the most reasonable, or caused the least disruption for everyone else. Sometimes he thought the trait quite generous. Mostly it annoyed him that she shortchanged herself so much.

      Not that he had any business being annoyed, he reminded himself. She’d apparently had dreams he’d known nothing about and was well on her way to fulfilling them.

      He just hoped she wasn’t shortchanging herself there, too.

      Not liking the thought that she might well be, he turned on the radio, tuned to the morning news.

      The thought of her no longer being around when he went home bothered him more than he would have thought possible.

      The thought of how she’d felt in his arms bothered him even more.

      He turned the radio up, telling himself to let it go. That bit of spontaneous combustion meant nothing. She had her life. He had his. And his did not allow for a relationship with his family’s engaged groundskeeper.

      He needed to find some way, though, to make sure she knew he really did want only what would make her happy.

      Addie felt good. Great, actually, as she hung her serviceable brown canvas jacket on a peg inside the back door of her little house and toed off her muddy rubber boots. The gladiola corms she planted every spring had to be dug up again every fall so they wouldn’t freeze over winter. She now had all eight hundred and six of them spread out on screens and would tuck them away in peat moss as soon as they were dry. She’d also separated and replanted the crowded lily of the valley crowns along the far perimeter of the property.

      It had been a week since the wedding, but she was working as hard as ever.

      Being her mother’s daughter, she checked those tasks off the long list she’d left on the maple kitchen table and headed for the narrow white refrigerator by the stove.

      The cottage consisted of only four rooms—a little L of a kitchen that occupied the back part of the cozy living area with its stone fireplace and slip-covered furniture, two tiny bedrooms and an even tinier bath. Her mom had never been much for color. What wasn’t serviceable beige or brown was either pale mauve, pale rose or paler pink. Addie preferred brighter colors herself, though the only place she indulged that uncharacteristic bit of boldness was in her own room. There she’d hung yellow curtains on her window, pictures of sunflowers and lavender fields on her walls and covered her bed in bright Bristol blue.

      She’d had plans to build a canopy over her bed, too. But there’d never been time.

      The thought reminded her of her list—and that she needed to ask her assistants, Miguel and Jackson, if they could spare an additional day a week for her next month. The two part-time gardeners worked for other families, too, and their time would be at a premium, but she would need their help with the heavier pruning.

      Although she could handle the hedges herself and had no problem keeping the bridle paths cleared and all the potted plants and borders free of anything dead or dying, an old oak by the stables needed a large limb removed before the coming winter’s ice cracked it off for her. The red maples that formed a canopy on a section of the lake path needed to be pruned back, and with the autumn leaves starting to fall, there was no way she could keep the lawns cleared alone.

      Her empty stomach took precedence over the list at the moment, however. Unfortunately, the fridge was nearly empty. Her mom usually ate at the main house with Olivia, and Addie rarely bothered to cook for herself. She didn’t mind eating alone, but she couldn’t see much point in messing up the kitchen for one person when the local grocery store stocked perfectly edible entrees in its freezer section.

      The cottage freezer bore two Lean Cuisine dinners. Selecting one, reminding herself as she did that she needed to add shopping to her list, she popped it into the microwave, grabbed a handful of Oreo cookies for an appetizer and debated whether to take a shower before she ate or wait until after. Scott had a game tonight. There wouldn’t be time to meet him before it started, but they would go for coffee afterward. Decaf for her, espresso for him. She had no idea how he managed to sleep with all that caffeine in his system, but he wasn’t the only person she knew who seemed unaffected by what would have had her clinging to the ceiling all night. Gabe drank coffee as if it were water, too.

      The thought caught her unscrewing a cookie.

      Screwing it back, she set it beside the others on the counter. She had to stop thinking about him. There hadn’t been a day go by in the week since the wedding that she hadn’t found him creeping into her thoughts. She had thought of him often before. Frequently, in fact. But never the way she’d been thinking of him lately.