Expecting.... Carol Grace

main house.”

      Mallory could have said no then. She could have gone to her car and instead of unloading it she could have driven back to town. And then what? She’d declined to teach summer session, preferring to do research. Hoping to publish her results and get her appointment changed from assistant professor to associate. She’d given up her apartment. Didn’t have much money. And then there was the real reason she’d come up here. The reason she’d decided to get married. The one she hadn’t mentioned and wouldn’t, not until she had to.

      By mid-afternoon she’d stashed all her gear in a suite that was larger than her whole apartment in town. Her clothes were divided between a pine chest and a spacious walk-in closet, her computer and her boxes of journals on the oak desk. Her telescope and tripod stood in the corner of the sitting room formerly occupied by Diane, her predecessor. She’d met Juana, a maid, George, a handyman and Tex the cook, in his restaurant-size kitchen.

      “You like barbecued beef?” Tex had asked giving his spicy sauce a stir.

      “Love it,” she’d told him, as her stomach churned. She used to love it, but recently the only thing she could get down was saltine crackers.

      “Miss Diane said my sauce was the best she’d ever eaten. You a friend of hers?”

      “No, no, I didn’t know her.”

      “Fine woman. Hard worker. Can’t believe she’d run off like that. Shocked us all. Now Joe, nothin’ he could do would shock us.”

      Mallory gulped. She wondered when the talk would die down, if ever. Would she always be only a poor replacement for Diane? Always? There was no always. Not for her. She’d be lucky if she lasted the summer, considering the personality of her boss. A summer should give her time to figure out what to do next. Depending on what shape her research was in, and of course what shape she was in. In the mean time she had Diane’s job while Diane had her man.

      “Dinner’s at seven,” Tex said. “Hope you’re not on a diet like Diane was.”

      So Diane was fat. Or was she thin? Whatever she was, she had something Joe wanted and Mallory didn’t. Strange how fast she had accepted the fact. Much faster than she’d accepted her sister’s taking her boyfriend away. As if she’d had a choice either time. Funny how the shock was wearing off already. And how fast Joe’s classic cowboy face was fading from her memory.

      She had not seen any more of her boss, not since he’d told her what the obscenely large salary was, shaken her hand and pointed to a large, richly appointed room he called “the office” in one wing of the sprawling house.

      “That’s where we meet every morning. In the meantime...”

      Just as she was about to tell him she couldn’t do anything in the meantime except collapse and that she was having second thoughts about being anybody’s housekeeper and especially his, someone yelled to him from outside the house that the vet had arrived, and he disappeared. She staggered to her room and lay on the bed, wondering how she’d ever sleep a wink in the same bed as the woman who’d taken Joe away from her and spoiled her plans.

      Yet she did sleep, until dinner. Another weird thing, along with her heightened sensory awareness was her need for an afternoon nap. Of course, staying up late tracking the cosmos could do that to a person. But it never had done that to her before. She felt better after she’d had a shower and changed into khaki pants and a soft cotton shirt.

      The pungent smell of Tex’s barbecue wafted through the covered walkway that led to the large, cheerful dining room. When she opened the door, the dozen or more people at the table stopped talking. Heads swerved in her direction. A hush fell over the room. Everyone was staring at her, everyone but her boss. He was busy piling potato salad on his plate. He already knew what she looked like, both conscious and unconscious.

      A tall, tanned older man with a sweeping mustache stood and doffed his hat. “I know you must be, but you can’t be our new housekeeper.”

      “Why can’t I be?” she asked, sitting in the only vacant chair, next to the dashing older man.

      “Much too young and much too pretty. Thought you’d learned your lesson, Zach.”

      Zach looked up briefly, just long enough to meet her gaze. If she expected warmth and support, she didn’t get it. There was only a brief flicker of recognition, as if he’d almost forgotten he’d even hired her.

      “This is our new housekeeper,” he said briskly. “Mallory, meet the staff.” He proceeded to go around the table, introducing his vet, his mechanic, the buyer, his business manager and so forth until the names and faces all blurred together. Except for Perry, the man who thought she was too young and pretty to be a housekeeper.

      “Tell me,” Perry said slanting his head in her direction. “What’s a nice girl like you doing on a ranch like this?”

      “Just what Mr. Calhoun said,” she replied, taking a small piece of barbecued brisket from a platter served by a young woman in blue jeans and a braid over one shoulder. “I’m the new housekeeper.” Maybe if she said it often enough she’d start to believe it. I’m the new housekeeper, I’m the new housekeeper, I am the new—

      “And what do you think of Mr. Calhoun?” Perry asked over the din of renewed conversation and the clatter of silverware.

      “He’s...very decisive,” she said with a brief glance toward the end of the table. “Seems to know what he wants.”

      “That he does,” Perry agreed, shaking hot pepper onto his baked potato. “But what he wants is not always what he needs.”

      “I see,” she said. But she didn’t see at all. Anyone as rich and successful as Zach Calhoun could surely get anything he wanted or needed. Case in point. He needed a housekeeper, so he’d gotten her, using his forceful personality and an outlandish salary. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been the next hapless female who’d happened to pull up in his driveway for whatever reason. To marry his foreman or deliver a truckload of gravel. It didn’t seem to matter. He was just looking for a warm body.

      “I guess you heard what happened to your predecessor?” he asked.

      “Do you mean...”

      “I mean she ran off with our foreman, and no one even knew they were involved. Talk about the odd couple. It’s the biggest scandal to happen around here in a long time. No one understands why they left, why they had to run off. Why didn’t she just move in with him and stay here and keep her job?”

      “I don’t know,” Mallory said. But she did know. It was because Mallory was coming to marry Joe. And he didn’t want to marry her. Not at all. He didn’t want to marry her so much that he took the housekeeper and left a good steady job just to avoid her. And that hurt.

      “They’ll never find anyone like Zach to work for,” he observed, filling her water glass for her. “He’s tough but he’s fair. By the way,” he said bending his head so close his mustache tickled her ear. “Has anyone been given Joe’s cabin, do you know? Maybe you could put me on top of the list. Perry’s the name. Perry.”

      “I’ll remember,” she said, leaning forward to avoid his hand on the back of her chair. Was it the housekeeper’s job to assign housing? To fend off lecherous old wranglers?

      “You’re not worried about filling Diane’s rather large shoes, are you?”

      Large shoes. Was that just a saying or did Diane really have big feet? “Well, yes,” she said, “now that you mention it, I am worried. I hear she was quite good at...what she did.”

      “Good? She was the best. You had much experience?”

      She took a sip from her water glass. “Yes and no,” she hedged.

      He smiled as if he saw right through her. As if he knew she’d been hired off the street, or off the floor as it were.

      “Yes, our boss appears to have everything,” Perry said,