No Less Than a Lifetime Read online

  Faith told herself she was happy. She could get on with her new life at last.

  But then Price spoke. “You’re a widow, it says here.” He held up Justine’s application.

  “Yes. My husband was a fire fighter. He died five years ago. On the job.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Justine looked down at her lap, then up with a sad smile.

  Price said, “You have a child, I see.”

  Justine nodded. “Yes. His name’s Eli. He’s six.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “With me.”

  “You would expect him to live here, then? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.” Justine smiled her serene smile. “I would. He’s a very well-behaved child. And he’s in school for several hours of the day now. I don’t see him as a problem. Mrs. Curry, my last employer, was actually quite fond of him. But if you don’t want to deal with him, please don’t worry. I’ll keep him out of your way, I promise you.”

  “I see,” Price said flatly.

  Faith’s spirits sank. It had been going so well. But she knew Price. She could read his closed look as if he’d spoken aloud.

  Price was going to veto Justine. Because of the child. He couldn’t bear having a child around, to remind him of all that he’d once had and lost.

  The interview ended soon after that. Faith saw Justine out, explaining that they’d be in touch through the agency within twenty-four hours.

  The Montgomerys were already going at it when she returned to the morning room.

  Ariel let out a big puff of air, which blew the hair away from her eyes. “If we have to lose Faith, then Justine is the one.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  “Yes. I liked her,” said Regis.

  “No children,” said Price.

  Faith stopped in the arch to the kitchen. Ariel looked up and saw her. “Faith. Tell him. Justine is just what we need around here—I mean, if we can’t have you, of course.”

  “Yes,” urged Regis. “Help us. If you really are determined to leave us, make sure our pigheaded son chooses the right person to take your place.”

  Though Faith had been avoiding eye contact with Price all through the interviews, she made herself look at him now. He met her gaze. The force of his stare was like something reaching out and touching her.

  Goose bumps rose on her skin, and her heart kicked against her breastbone. It was worse than it had ever been, this pull she felt toward him. Yesterday, in the library, she’d thought she’d imagined this—that the force of her longing had doubled somehow. But now, here, today, it was the same as it bad been then. As if the energy of desire had multiplied on itself. Now, it was so powerful, she feared she was becoming a little deluded.

  Because it had started to seem as if his yearning matched hers…

  She had to leave here, that was all. As soon as possible. Or she feared that she wouldn’t get out with her poor heart intact.

  Price’s gaze flickered down. Faith could have sworn he cast a quick glance at her breasts. She was wearing a longsleeved white blouse and a buttoned vest over that. Surely he couldn’t see anything beneath both the shirt and the vest. He couldn’t detect that her nipples were hard—achy against the cups of her bra. There was simply no way he could see that.

  She longed to look down, just to check. But, somehow, she stopped herself.

  “Faith, don’t just stand there,” Ariel pleaded. “Tell him. Justine is the one.”

  “Yes, tell him,” said Regis.

  Sir Winston cawed and cackled.

  Faith and Price went on staring at each other. Price was smiling now. It wasn’t a very nice smile. “Well, Faith. Come on. Tell me. I’m listening.”

  Faith felt caught in the middle. She thought the world of Regis and Ariel. But they rarely managed to hold their own in the face of their older son’s steely will. They almost always counted on Faith to come to their rescue at moments like this. She wished they’d tackle the job themselves this time. Perhaps even do the forbidden and bring up Danny. Confront Price with how unhealthy it was for him to turn away from all children just because he’d lost his own.

  But they would never do that. They’d seen Price’s suffering after his son died. Nobody could bear to remind him of that.

  So they waited for Faith to take charge.

  From someplace deep inside, Faith found her own calm, reasonable voice. “Your parents are right. Hire her. She’ll do very well here. She’s the perfect housekeeper for Montgomery House—and the Montgomerys.”

  “Yes,” said Regis.

  “Exactly,” added Ariel.

  Sir Winston, for once, kept his peace.

  Price looked from his mother to his father—and finally back at Faith. His mean smile had faded. Suddenly he looked tired. And not quite so determined to have his way.

  Faith could hardly believe the evidence of her own eyes. Price Montgomery was weakening.

  She added another argument to the list. “And at this point, you’re about out of alternatives.”

  “She’s right,” said Ariel.

  “There really is no other choice,” Regis intoned.

  Price was looking off toward a Boston fern near Sir Winston’s cage. His mouth was a grim line. “She’d have to keep the child out of my way.”

  Ariel and Regis exchanged gleeful glances. They couldn’t believe it, either. But it was happening. Price was actually going to allow a woman with a child to live in his house.

  Ariel piped up eagerly. “I’ll tell Justine how you feel. She seems a very capable woman. And she’s already said she can keep the boy from bothering you.”

  Price rose to his feet. “Fine. Do it, then. Let’s get her ready to take over. Then Faith can get out of here.”

  His words were like a slap in the face. All at once it was achingly clear why he had decided to let them hire Justine.

  He was fed up and furious. With Faith. She’d caused too much upheaval. He’d finally reached the point where he wanted her out of his house—and his life.

  Price moved then, toward the exit through the kitchen. Faith was still standing there, so he had to go by her to get out. He brushed past without so much as a sideways glance.

  Faith stared straight ahead as he left, despising herself for the foolish tears that pushed at the back of her throat. He was behaving like a jerk about this, and she should be angry at him. The last thing she should want to do was cry.

  “Faith,” Ariel said.

  Faith swallowed down the tears. “Um?”

  “Don’t take it so hard,” Ariel advised gently. “My older son is a good man, but he’s also a bit of a despot. He hates being outvoted, because secretly he thinks all decisions should be his alone. Give him time. He’ll get over the bad attitude. Just wait and see.”

  But as the days passed and Justine slowly began assuming the duties that had once been Faith’s, Price didn’t get over his bad attitude at all.

  He hardly spoke to Faith. If she entered the morning room when he was there, he’d get up and leave. If she passed him in the foyer or on the stairs, he’d nod curtly and move on.

  Faith told herself it was for the best. The day of her departure was fast approaching. As long as Price treated her coldly, there was no chance under heaven that she’d slip up and reveal what was in her heart. She’d leave with her pride intact, if nothing else.

  Justine caught on quickly to her new job. Faith kept a system of file cards for all the routine cleaning and maintenance tasks of the big house. Justine had to assign the jobs to the maids when they came up on the cards and understand enough about how to do the work that she could supervise effectively. And, of course, she had to plan menus with Balthazar. And arrange the flowers and run the errands. And cater to each slightest whim of every Montgomery.

  Justine’s son, Eli, turned out to be a little charmer. A very nice boy, as his mother had promised he would be, he had Justine’s pale hair and soft hazel eyes. Ariel and Regis fell in lo
ve with him on sight; he had the run of their suite from the first day he moved in.

  And either someone had warned the boy to avoid Price, or he did it naturally. It seemed to Faith that whenever Price appeared, Eli, who always seemed to be underfoot the rest of the time, was nowhere to be found.

  All told, Faith thought, the transition seemed to be going smoothly. Yes, she spent a few sleepless nights longing for what would never be. But that was nothing new to her. And since Price continued to treat her so coldly, it became easier and easier to tell herself that she wasn’t going to miss him at all when she left. She thought she was handling things surprisingly well.

  Price, on the other hand, was living in hell.

  It seemed to him that wanting Faith was like a fresh, deep wound. He’d been cut. And cut bad. And every time he saw her—setting a vase of long-stemmed roses on the piano, or opening the curtains in the front parlor—he wanted to scream out his agony. He wanted to grab her. To caress her. To taste those lips that he didn’t even dare to look at, for fear he’d go over the line.

  He hardly slept at all. He lay in his big bed at night, wondering how he was going to get through the last few days. Until she was gone. Until he could enter a room in his own house again without fearing—and praying—that she’d be there.

  He didn’t want to want her. He didn’t want to let any woman become too important to him.

  And yet, as the day she would leave his house forever approached, Price began to realize that he couldn’t just allow her to go this way—with so much cold distance between them. He couldn’t let her walk out of his life without another word, when she’d meant so much to him.

  And she had meant a lot. Maybe he hadn’t let himself really consider how much until now, when he was losing her.

  More and more, as her departure approached, the sleepless nights became a time when he recalled the past.

  Like that first day he’d noticed her, a waif with a long brown braid down her back, trying to reset the ormolu clock that crouched on the Eastlake mantel in the front parlor.

  She’d turned, her eyes wide, when she heard him cough behind her.

  “That thing’s never on time,” he told her.

  She thought for a moment. “Maybe it should be taken apart and cleaned.”

  “Why don’t you take care of it?”

  “All right. I will.”

  Faith had only been a part-time maid, like Mary, at first. But then another in the endless chain of housekeepers had quit, and they hadn’t known what to do. They’d never known what to do, actually. And they’d always hired someone new, who left soon after she started.

  Faith had asked for an interview with him and Marisa, his wife. They’d talked in the library. And Faith had said she’d like to be their housekeeper.

  Marisa had been all for it. “Let her try it,” she’d said, after Faith left them alone. “I’ve watched her. She’s bright and conscientious. And somehow, she’s both quiet and fun, too. She’s exactly what we need to run things around here.” Marisa, like Ariel, was an artist. She’d had no interest at all in taking care of a house.

  Price had agreed to try Faith out. And slowly, over that first year, she’d taken his chaotic household, where nothing ever went right, and made it into a place of comfort, warmth and beauty.

  And she’d been incredible when Danny died. The rest of them had been immobilized by grief, but Faith had done what had to be done. She’d seen to all the arrangements, though Price knew damn well that she’d loved Danny too, and must have grieved, also.

  And there was more. The hardest part to admit.

  His own worst hours.

  His marriage to Marisa, which he’d once thought would last a lifetime, hadn’t survived the awful loss of their only child.

  After Danny died, Marisa had turned away from him— and into the arms of a series of other men. Price had tried his damnedest to care that his wife was sleeping around. But it hadn’t mattered to him, not really; nothing had. They’d had some ugly battles; there had been a lot of shouting and slamming of doors. But on his part, at least, those fights had been all noise and bluster. He’d raged at Marisa—but it had been a counterfeit rage. Inside, he’d been numb. His heart was in the grave with his son.

  At last, Marisa had left. She’d filed for divorce. That had reached him, when she filed on him. He’d understood then that he’d lost it all.

  More than once, in those two years between Danny’s death and the final disintegration of his marriage, Faith had found Price passed out drunk at his desk in the library. She would put her cool hand on his brow and help him to bed.

  One time, when he felt her soft hand on him, the awful, ugly tears had come, welling up from that deep, dark hole that losing Danny—and Marisa—had left in him.

  “Oh, Price. Oh, I know,” she had whispered. He’d clutched at her, laid his head against her belly. And she’d wrapped her arms around him, just stood there, holding him so tight and yet so gently as the sobs tore out his insides.

  And then, when he had no tears left, she’d patiently helped him to stand. She’d anchored his arm around her slender shoulders. They’d started for the back stairs.

  He didn’t really remember the grim trip to his room. But she must have dragged him up the stairs somehow, because the next morning he woke in his own bed, his head pounding as if all of hell’s demons were loose in there.

  That had been rock bottom. Five years ago. And after that, he’d slowly pulled it together again. He’d stopped drinking himself into oblivion every night. He’d gotten on with his life.

  Over time, he supposed, he had even started to tell himself that none of those nights when Faith put him to bed had actually occurred.

  But now, with her leaving, he had to face the truth about how it had been. And Danny’s death and the loss of Marisa weren’t all of it. There was all she’d done for Parker, as well.

  At first, when Parker took over the room upstairs, Faith had been the only person he would even speak to. He’d locked himself in at all times, and he’d open the door only if Faith knocked and gently called to him.

  The truth was, Faith was one of the best things that had ever happened to the Montgomerys. And they were losing big, now that she was moving on.

  After a week of treating Faith as if she didn’t exist, Price finally admitted to himself how cruelly he was behaving. More than once, he’d snubbed Faith outright.

  It had been for a good cause, of course. If he pretended she wasn’t in the room, he was less likely to grab her and try to make love with her.

  But now he could see that he’d been wrong to behave so coldly. And grossly ungrateful. He had to do something to make it all up to her.

  The next day he drove across the Golden Gate to San Francisco. He visited a jeweler he knew and he purchased a delicate gold watch with good-quality diamonds encircling the face.

  Back at home, he called a certain restaurant he liked, one with fabulous bay and city views, since it occupied the top floor of a five-star hotel. He made reservations for that Saturday night. The maître d’ knew him, so he was able to get just the table he wanted, a secluded one that overlooked the bay. Next, he wrote out a big check: a severance bonus.

  As soon as he tore the check from his checkbook, he realized he felt better. He’d take Faith to the restaurant and present her with the watch and the check. Then he’d tell her that he hoped she’d accept those small tokens as proof of his gratitude for all the years she’d given to him and his family. He’d wish her the best and thank her from the bottom of his heart.

  And then, knowing that he’d done right by her and that she was going where she wanted to be, he’d be able to put her out of his mind.

  Second thoughts assailed him at that point. What if she was so angry at him for the way he’d treated her recently that she wouldn’t have dinner with him? Well, he’d grovel a little. He deserved to grovel. He had been cruel.

  And what if she said she’d go to dinner with him, and then h
e couldn’t keep his hands off of her? He’d stayed away from her for good reason, after all.

  But surely he could get through one evening in her company without forcing himself on her. He was a man, after all, not some wild animal.

  Price rang for the housekeeper.

  A few minutes later, Justine walked in. “What can I do for you, Mr. Montgomery?”

  He stared at her for a moment, caught completely off guard. He was going to have to get used to this. When he rang for the housekeeper, Faith would no longer come.

  He coughed. “Actually, I wanted to talk to Faith.”

  “Shall I tell her to come here to the library?”

  “Uh, yes. That would be fine. Thank you, Justine.”

  With a polite little nod, Justine went out. After what seemed like forever—but was in fact five minutes and fiftyfour seconds—there was a discreet tap on the inner door, which opened onto the central hall.

  Price picked up a pen and began drawing scowling faces on the yellow legal pad he always kept at his elbow. “Come in, Faith.”

  Her heart racing and her palms moist, Faith pushed open the door and stepped over the threshold into Price’s sanctuary.

  He looked up—and smiled.

  Faith was barely over her shock at such a blatant display of congeniality when he said, in a perfectly friendly voice, “Close the door, why don’t you?” He gestured toward the chair she always seemed to end up in lately, whenever she entered this room. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Though comfortable was the last thing she was capable of being right then, she did scoot across the room and plunk herself into the chair.

  He’d been writing something on a yellow legal pad. Now he set his pen aside. “Well. How is Justine working out?” He was still smiling.

  She wondered what he could be up to now. “Just fine.”

  He nodded and made a serious face, as if she’d said something of great depth and import. “Good. Very good.” He rested his elbows on the arms of his big chair and templed his fingers. “So. You’re getting all ready to leave us, I suppose.”