Private Property (Rochester Trilogy 1)

“Mrs. Fairfax!”

She turns and grabs the plastic handles with her bare hands. Boiling water sloshes over her skin. She screeches, and I run over to her, guiding her hands beneath a stream of cold water from the tap. “It’s too much,” she mutters to herself. “I can’t do it. I should quit.”

“Shhh,” I say, making soothing sounds. Maybe it would help me to have Zoey’s dinner party become a disaster, but it wouldn’t help Paige if we lost our cook. The only things I know how to make are Pop-Tarts and boxed mac and cheese. “I’ll help you. I can’t cook, but I can cut things up and follow directions. I’m yours to order around.”

She looks suspicious.

“Seriously.” I wave in the direction of the vegetables, where a pile of zucchini rests. “Are these next? Do you want them sliced or cubed or what?”

“Fine,” she says with a reluctant sigh. “And thank you, I suppose.”

She shows me how she wants them chopped, and I get to work. As she moves things onto the stove and into the oven, the kitchen begins to look more orderly. When she doesn’t have something for me to prepare, I wipe down the counters and keep things clean.

“This smells amazing,” I say, using pot holders to take something out of the oven. I don’t even know what it is, but it makes my stomach grumble.

“Don’t know why these rich folks need so much food.”

I offer a companionable shrug. “I wouldn’t know.”

She gives me a dark, knowing look. “Maybe if you become Mrs. Rochester, you’ll find out.”

My cheeks burn. Does she know what Beau and I have done together? She must be guessing. She wasn’t in that hallway with us at night. She wasn’t in his office when I went down on him. Except she looks at me like she does know. Maybe I’m see-through. I’m giving it away. “That’s never going to happen. I’m not stupid.”

Well, perhaps I was stupid for a while. I didn’t think he’d marry me. I just didn’t think about anything at all. I let myself feel things without thinking about the consequences.

And now there’s Zoey in the house. She’s the consequence.

“Never gonna happen,” she agrees. “Not for that other one, either. The pretty one.”

“Zoey,” I say, my voice grim.

“That’s her. Zoey. He’s not going to marry her either.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s a bad man. And bad men are better off alone.”

Despite the fact that I’ve been frustrated at him, outrage rises. “He’s not a bad man. And no one deserves to be alone.”

“He’s got lots of money,” she says, her voice contemplative. “Plenty of women who’d marry him just for that, but they’d live to regret it, they would.”

“We shouldn’t talk about our boss that way,” I say, my voice stiff.

Her smile turns sly. “That what you call him? Your boss?”

“I’m only Paige’s nanny. That’s all.” Liar, whispers a voice in my head. You want to be more.

“I see the way you look at him,” she says, heaving a large platter into the oven. “And more importantly, I see the way he looks at you.”

“How does he look at me?”

“Like he’s going to eat you up. Eat the meat off your bones and spit the rest of you out.”

“That’s a terrible analogy. I’m not fish.”

She shrugs. “It’s your own life you’re risking.”

“My life?” Does she mean I’m going to ruin it by falling for some guy who’s inappropriate for me? Or does she mean actual risk, which is how it sounded? “I think you’re exaggerating.”

“You heard about what happened to that other Mrs. Rochester, didn’t you?”

“She died in a boating accident.”

“Some that says that. Others that say she was murdered. Her husband, you know. Beau’s brother. They were always fools, both of them. Violent. Mean.”

I shiver in the warm kitchen. “The newspaper said it was an accident.”

She keeps going as if I never spoke. “And some says her spirit never really left. Her ghost roams the cliffs looking for Beau to save her from her husband.”

Unease clenches my stomach. “That’s not real.”

Cool brown eyes meet mine over a steaming pot. “I wouldn’t go into the attic again, Ms. Mendoza. You go looking for ghosts, you just might find them.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jane Mendoza

I’m not sure I’ve ever really attended anything called a dinner party. My father went to work and came home. On a good night we’d watch a baking show together. There wasn’t a large group of family and friends, which is why I went into the state’s custody when he had a heart attack.

My foster homes could barely put food on the table, much less invite people over.

Apparently a dinner party involves a lot more than good food. A party rental company arrives in the afternoon, dropping off fine china, wineglasses, cutlery, a table runner, and iridescent sashes to go across the wooden dining room chairs.