The Housekeeper's Daughter Read Free

that first awful storm of grief had passed.
    She ate the delicious meal without tasting it. Every time her eyes met Drake’s over Teddy’s blond curls, a shiver rushed through her. His gaze boded no good for her.
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    Drake stood at the window of his dark room and stared at the windows across the central courtyard patio. Maya’s room. He knew it well. Once it had been his.
    A flurry of emotion ran through him. Need. Anger. Despair. Loneliness. Name it and he’d felt it during the past eight months, even during hot nights in the humid jungles of Central America when he should have been concentrating on the business at hand.
    His mission: rescue an American diplomat kidnapped by drug dealers and held in a mountain stronghold. He’d nearly lost two good men on that trek, but in the end, the mission had been a success.
    A new scar from a bullet wound suddenly throbbed in the fleshy tissue of his hip. He’d been lucky. The bullet had missed his pelvic bone by half an inch. With a shattered hip, he wouldn’t have made it out.
    He laughed silently, sardonically. Yeah, he led a charmed life. There was just one problem at present. Maya.
    Past emotions hadn’t held a candle to the ones he’d felt upon seeing her on a runaway horse. Fear had clawed its way to his throat and stayed there until she was safe and secure in his arms.
    Safe?
    From her condition, she obviously hadn’t been very safe in his arms eight months ago.
    The irony of the note he’d left on the table beside her bed struck him. He’d told her his job was too dangerous, his life too busy, to include a wife.
    Right. What about including a child? He shook his head, unable to answer that question just yet.
    Staring at the window across the way, he set his jaw and headed out. It was time they had a serious talk. He entered the long hall running along the other wing of the house and rapped on the door.
    Every nerve in Maya’s body jumped when the knock sounded. “No rest for the weary,” she muttered, a gallows attempt at humor that did nothing to lift her spirits.
    She’d supervised the boys’ studies, then read to them after their baths. Their mother demanded they be in bed and the lights out at nine. Maya was careful to comply. To fail was an invitation to wrath from Ms. Meredith.
    Upon returning to her room, Maya had half expected Drake to be there, waiting for her. Finally, after almost an hour of fruitless study, she’d closed her textbook and prepared for bed. She should have known better. Coltons were a stubborn, unpredictable lot, and Drake was no exception.
    She would live through this, she told her flaggingspirits. She’d lived through his leaving and finding that awful note, then realizing she was pregnant and telling her parents. What more could life throw at her?
    Warily, she approached the door after tightening the belt to her robe. She opened it and peeked out.
    â€œI want to talk to you,” Drake announced in a low tone.
    She considered locking the door. He probably knew how to unlock it without a key. The room had once been his before he struck out on his own.
    Last summer, lying in bed with her, he’d told her of his childhood escapades, of sneaking in past curfew, of the hiding his father had once given him that had caused his mother to cry, making him feel so bad, he’d stopped skipping school and started studying. Now he slept in a room across the patio in the other wing of the house, a guest in his former home.
    Surprised by an unexpected rush of sympathy, she moved back. He entered and closed the door.
    His eyes, dark in the soft lamplight, as unyielding as a granite cliff, roamed over her. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.
    The question annoyed her. “Yes.” Her answer seemed to stir his temper.
    He scowled. “Only a fool would be out on a horse in your condition.”
    â€œThe doctor said I could continue all my normal