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Blue took in the mature trees and overgrown yard, the barn, fields, and pastures. She couldn’t imagine a more unlikely spot for a big-city celebrity like Dean. She watched him head toward the barn with the easy, loping grace of a man at home in his body, and then she returned her attention to the house.
She wished she could have come here under different circumstances so she could enjoy this place, but the farm’s isolation made her situation more difficult. Maybe she could get hired by one of the crews working on the house. Or she’d find something in the nearby town, although it was barely a dot on the map. Still, she only needed a few hundred dollars. Once she had that, she’d set out for Nashville, rent a cheap room, print up new flyers, and start all over again. The trick was getting Dean to let her stay here rent free while she put her life back together.
She had no illusions about why he’d brought her to the farm. By not tearing off her clothes for him that first night, she’d turned herself into a challenge—a challenge he’d forget about the instant one of the local southern beauties caught his eye. That meant she’d needed to find another way to make herself useful to him.
Just then, the front door opened and one of the most amazing creatures Blue had ever seen stepped out. Amazon tall and slender, she had a bold, square face and long, uneven blades of poker-straight, streaky blond hair. Blue remembered photos she’d seen of the great fashion models of the past, women of the sixties and seventies like Verushka, Jean Shrimpton, and Fleur Savagar. This woman had that same presence. Smoky blue eyes peered out from a dramatic square-jawed face, almost masculine in its strength. As the woman reached the front step, Blue saw a faint set of lines bracketing that wide, sensuous mouth and realized she wasn’t as young as she’d first thought, maybe in her early forties.
Narrow jeans perched on bladed hip bones. The strategically placed rips at the thighs and knees hadn’t been put there by wear, but by a designer’s calculated eye. Metallic threads edged the suede shoulder straps of her crocheted, cantaloupe-colored camisole. Copper leather blossoms bloomed on the toes of her slides. Her look was both boho funky and chic. Was she a model? An actress? Probably one of Dean’s girlfriends. With such dramatic beauty, a few years’ age difference hardly signified. Although Blue didn’t care about fashion, she was suddenly conscious of her own shapeless jeans, baggy T-shirt, and unkempt hair, which drastically needed a decent cut.
The woman took in the Vanquish, and her wide, crimson-slashed mouth curved in a smile. “Lost?”
Blue bought a little time. “Well…I know where I am geographically, but, frankly, my life’s kind of a mess right now.”
The woman laughed, a low, husky sound. There was something familiar about her. “I know all about that.” She came down the steps, and Blue’s sense of familiarity grew. “I’m Susan O’Hara.”
This sexy, exotic creature was Dean’s mysterious housekeeper? No way. “I’m Blue.”
“Damn. I hope it’s temporary.”
Right then, Blue knew. Holy shit. That square jaw, those blue-gray eyes, that quick brain…Holy, holy shit.
“Blue Bailey,” she managed. “It was a…uh…bad day in Angola.”
The woman regarded her with interest.
Blue made a vague, meaningless gesture with her hand. “Plus South Africa.”
Boot heels struck the gravel.
As the woman turned, the fading light picked out long strands of blond and fawn in her hair. Her red lips parted, and the delicate fans of strain at the corners of her eyes constricted. The boot heels came to an abrupt stop, and Dean stood silhouetted against the barn, his legs braced, arms tensed at his side. The woman might have been his sister. But she wasn’t. Not his girlfriend, either. The woman with the stricken ocean blue eyes was the mother he’d dismissed so brusquely just that morning when Blue had asked about his family.
He stopped for only a moment, and then his boots ate up the ground. Ignoring the brick path with its uneven edges like broken teeth, he stalked across the overgrown lawn. “Mrs. Fucking O’Hara.”
Blue flinched. She couldn’t imagine blasting her mother with the f-word, no matter how angry she got. But then, her mother was impervious to verbal attacks.
This woman wasn’t. The bangles slipped on her wrist and a trio of delicate silver rings caught the light as she touched her throat. Long seconds ticked by. She turned away and went inside without a word.
The dazzling charm Dean employed so skillfully was gone. He looked stony and remote. She understood his need to withdraw, but now wasn’t the time for it. “If I were a lesbian,” she said to break the tension, “I would totally go for her.”
The shuttered look vanished and outrage took its place. “Thanks for nothing.”
“I’m just being honest. And I thought my mother drew a lot of attention.”
“How do you know she’s my mother? Did she tell you?”
“No, but the resemblance is hard to miss, although she must have been twelve when she had you.”
“A skin-deep resemblance, that’s for damn sure.” He mounted the steps and headed for the front door.
“Dean…”
But he was already gone.
Blue didn’t share her mother’s intolerance for violence—witness her recent contretemps with Monty—but the idea of that exotic creature with the wounded eyes being
its victim bothered her, and she followed him into the house.
Evidence of the renovation was everywhere. A staircase with an unfinished banister rose on the right, along with a wide, plastic-draped opening that must lead to the house’s primary living area. On her left, beyond a pair of sawhorses, lay the dining room. The smell of fresh paint and new wood permeated everything, but Dean was too intent on finding his mother to check out the changes.
