“I’m calm,” Leigh said.
Brenna’s doubtful gaze shifted to Leigh’s hands on the table. They were clasped together and clenched so tightly that the tops of her fingers were white. Leigh hastily unclasped them. Brenna continued, “I sent Joe O’Hara to the pharmacy to pick up the prescription.”
It took Leigh a moment to realize that Joe O’Hara was her new chauffeur-bodyguard. Not only had she forgotten his name in the chaos of the last few days, she’d forgotten that Matt and Meredith Farrell had insisted on loaning O’Hara to her before they left on their world cruise. He was staying at their New York apartment, but he was supposed to drive Leigh about in the Farrell limousine and protect her from further approaches by her stalker.
“I may as well warn you,” Brenna added with a sigh, “he’s a little upset that we didn’t ask him to drive the Blazer for us yesterday.”
Leigh lifted her hands in helpless admission of the embarrassing truth. “That would have been a good idea. I just—forgot he existed.”
“If you ask me,” Hilda angrily announced, “that man doesn’t know his place! He’s supposed to drive you when you want him to, not when he decides he should.” She banged a pot to emphasize her opinion. “He’s just a chauffeur.”
Leigh forced herself to focus on the matter at hand before it resulted in more disharmony in her already disharmonious life. “I understand what you’re saying, Hilda, but he’s not used to being ‘just a chauffeur.’ He’s worked for the Farrells for years, and they think of him as a very loyal member of their family. They told him to look after me while they were gone, and he’s probably going to take that very seriously, particularly right now when—when things are so mixed up.” She was about to say more when the service door into the kitchen from the elevator foyer was flung open, and she half rose in her chair, stifling a cry of nervous shock.
“Sorry, I guess I shoulda knocked,” Joe O’Hara said, striding into the kitchen wearing a heavy black overcoat with the collar turned up over his ears.
A thick-shouldered, heavyset man about five feet ten inches tall, he had the lumbering gait of a grizzly bear and an almost-ugly face that looked as if it had taken serious poundings in either the boxing ring or street brawls. His appearance didn’t daunt Hilda, however. She glared at him over her shoulder and snapped, “Don’t you come into my kitchen without wiping your feet!”
A flash of surprised annoyance made the chauffeur look almost threatening as he glared first at the irate woman across the room and then at his shiny shoes. Dismissing the entire matter with a shrug, he hung his overcoat in the closet and approached the kitchen table carrying a little white bag from the local pharmacy in his meaty fist. “Mrs. Manning,” he said, his gravelly voice tinged with calm resolution. “I realize you don’t know me, and you probably don’t want a stranger underfoot at a time like this, but your husband and Matt Farrell both told me to look after you and make sure you stay safe.”
Leigh had to tip her head all the way back in order to see him, and since that made her neck hurt, she motioned him to sit next to Brenna. “When you walked in just now, you startled me. It’s not that I don’t want you here,” she finished.
“No need to apologize,” he told her, settling his broad frame onto a chair that looked a little too small for him. “But I have to tell you that if you’d let me drive you into the mountains Sunday, instead of driving there yourself, you might not be sitting here grittin’ your teeth so no one will notice how bad you hurt.”
“Thank you for making my effort unnecessary,” Leigh replied, not at all certain whether she liked him or not.
Her reprimand sailed over the chauffeur’s head. “Yesterday, you shoulda called me and let me do the driving. You two women got no business driving around the mountains in the snow by yourselves. You coulda got stuck!”
“Well, we obviously didn’t,” Brenna pointed out.
“Yeah, lucky for you. But if you had, what would you have done, hiked off for help while Mrs. Manning huddled alone in the car, hurt and sick and trying to stay warm after it ran out of gas?”
“They would have managed just fine,” Hilda informed him sharply as she stirred the contents of the pot on the stove.
Leigh observed the uneasy, heated exchange taking place between her three employees as if from a great distance, her entire being focused on the telephone and the clock on the opposite wall. When Logan’s private line suddenly lit up and began to ring, she shoved Brenna back in her chair and bolted for the phone, her injuries forgotten. “Hello,” she burst out breathlessly.
The male voice on the other end was deep and unfamiliar. “Mrs. Manning?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“Michael Valente.”
Leigh slumped against the wall, unable to hide her disappointment. “Yes, Mr. Valente?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you. From the sound of your voice, I assume you haven’t had any word yet about Logan?”
“No. Nothing.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. He hesitated a moment and then said, “I know this isn’t good timing, but Logan has some documents I need. He had them with him at your home when he called me from there Saturday afternoon. I’m only a few blocks away. Would it be at all possible for me to stop by and get them?”
“I have no idea where they are,” Leigh said, disliking the idea of anyone going through Logan’s things when he wasn’t there.
“They are the plans and a prospectus from another project of mine that Logan borrowed.”
The documents were his property, not Logan’s. He was making that courteously but abundantly clear. Leigh swallowed her resentment and disappointment that the call wasn’t from or about Logan. “I see. Then come over and get them.”
“Thank you very much. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Leigh forced herself away from the supporting wall, hung up the phone, and looked around at the occupants of the kitchen. A few moments ago, they had merely been employees who seemed to be bickering over nothing, but as she looked at the three tense faces etched with raw anxiety, sympathy, and concern for her, her heart melted. They truly cared; they wanted to help in whatever way they could. She had a thousand acquaintances, but she knew she couldn’t count on their discretion or their silence. She knew from experience that Hilda and Brenna were completely trustworthy, and she had a feeling that Joe O’Hara probably was, too. Right now, those three people were her closest friends and allies, her family.
She gave them a wan smile, but disappointment over the phone call she’d answered made her face even paler, and Brenna noticed it. She opened the bag from the pharmacy, removed the prescription bottle, and held it toward Leigh. “Leigh, Dr. Winters was insistent that you take these.”
Leigh gently but firmly pushed the bottle away. “I don’t like drugs that affect my mind. I don’t need them. Later, if I feel that I do, I’ll take them. I promise.”
Satisfied that the pill issue seemed to be resolved, O’Hara tackled the issue that was foremost on his own mind. “If you’ve got a spare room I could use, I think it would be a good idea if I stayed here until things settle down.”
Leigh’s apartment had sixteen rooms, including two small suites that were intended to be used as “servants’ quarters,” one of which Hilda occupied. The other was vacant, but Leigh felt a sudden, almost superstitious need to keep everything exactly as it had been before Logan disappeared. So long as everything stayed the same, his absence was only temporary, but making a change—that might encourage or imply permanence. “That’s very nice of you, but I’m not alone. Hilda stays here.”
His reply made Hilda whirl around and glower. “I’m real sure Hilda could beat up an omelet or wallop the dust right out of a rug,” he mocked, “but until your husband comes back, I really think you need a man around here to deal with people problems. The lobby’s crawling with reporters, you got fans lined up out on the sidewalk, and you got a stalker who knows your husband is out of the way now. There’s no telling
when somebody’s gonna pay off your doorman or find some other way to sneak up here, but sooner or later, it’s gonna happen.” Sensing that Leigh was wavering, he quickly played his trump card. “I’m sure your husband would expect me to stay here and look after his womenfolk,” he stated emphatically, and to Leigh’s shock, he cast a benevolent look around the room that encompassed indignant, self-sufficient Hilda and displeased, independent Brenna in the category of “womenfolk” O’Hara felt obliged to protect.
Somewhere in her frantic mind, Leigh noted that O’Hara had a small, startling knack for diplomacy and wily persuasion, because he’d scored his win as soon as he deftly turned his wishes into Logan’s wishes. “You’re probably right, Mr. O’Hara. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome. And please call me Joe,” he reminded her. “That’s what Meredith—I mean, Mrs. Farrell—calls me.”
Leigh nodded as she shifted her attention to Hilda, who was placing two bowls on the place mat in front of her. “What is this?” Leigh asked, staring at a bowl containing a thick white substance that looked like gritty paste. Beside it was a smaller bowl of nasty-looking brown lumps that made Leigh’s stomach churn.