Her Man Friday Read Free Page B

baggy tweed jacket and trousers, even the rumpled white oxford shirt and outdated tie, did nothing to hide the solid body lurking somewhere beneath.
    Goodness. Mr. Freiberger was built like a Mack truck. And he probably topped six-feet, though it was hard to say for sure, considering that nasty slouch of his. But even with his bad posture, he towered over Lily. Then again, she stood a mere five-foot-four in her stockinged feet—on a good day—and never wore heels any higher than one inch with her work clothes.
    She stepped aside to allow the man entry, wondering again why the board of directors of Kimball Technologies wanted him to go over Schuyler's home files. Something about a problem with last year's tax return, Mr. Freiberger had explained, but honestly. She wished they would have given her more notice for an audit that sounded in no way urgent.
    "Come in, Mr. Freiberger," she told the bookkeeper, sweeping a hand toward the expansive marble foyer. "I apologize for my hesitation. My mind is elsewhere. Mr. Kimball is out of town this week, so I have my hands full keeping things running on my own."
    Not that she didn't run things all by herself when Schuyler was there, too, she added to herself with not a little pique. Ten years had passed since she'd earned her first degree in business and Schuyler had suggested launching Kimball Technologies, but he had always been far too focused on the design work for the company to ever worry about anything else. Like so many other things, the day-to-day tasks here at Ashling invariably fell to Lily, regardless of where Schuyler was.
    The bookkeeper nodded his thanks as he gripped his leather satchel more firmly. Then he strode forward, pausing just inside the door. When he passed her, Lily noted that he smelled… very nice. Not perfumey, but… clean. Earthy. Masculine. Somehow the scent was both wildly inappropriate and strangely suitable for him.
    "Thank you, Miss Rigby," he said. His voice, like the rest of him, was a combination of opposites, the gentility edged with a roughness she couldn't mistake. "I'll do my best to stay out of your way this week," he added. "I'll be quiet as a mouse. You won't even know I'm here."
    That was something Lily sincerely doubted. Already she was far too curious about Mr. Freiberger. In spite of his clothes, he looked like the kind of man she might meet in a South Philly bar, at the end of the work day and the peak of hockey season, downing beer and screaming on the Flyers to the Stanley Cup. Yet he dressed and spoke and carried himself as if he were an unassuming and inconspicuous… well, dweeb.
    "Um, that's okay, Mr. Freiberger," she said. "It's pretty quiet around here when Mr. Kimball's not in residence. And we tend to fall into a fairly casual routine, even when he's home. I assure you, you won't be in the way at all."
    She closed the door behind him, but not before a breath of autumn scurried inside. The mid-October wind was cool and crisp, already hinting at the winter to come, redolent of apples and drying leaves. The expansive maples and oaks that surrounded Schuyler's estate were ablaze with orange and red and gold, their leaves scattered about the grass like fallen handkerchiefs. Mr. Tooley, the groundskeeper, could scarcely keep up, even with the help of two college boys he had at his disposal. Then again, the house they cared for wasn't exactly your run-of-the-mill estate.
    Ashling, the thirty-four-room, twenty-nine-thousand-square-foot Georgian manor that was Schuyler Kimball's primary residence, rested on forty-five acres of prime real estate in rural Bucks County. With its rose-colored brick and lead/copper roof, with its twelve fireplaces and nine bedrooms, with its gymnasium and movie theater, and with its majestic marble gallery that linked the house's two wings, Lily knew Ashling surpassed even Schuyler's expectations for living quarters. The name he had bestowed upon his home was a phonic representation of
Aisling
, an Irish