Plain Jayne (9 page)

If I had to guess—and I’m not very good at
these things—I’d say the Victorian-style home is five times bigger than the
house where I lived with my parents and two sisters. Some of its more
impressive exterior features are its huge bay and dormer windows, the giant
wraparound porch, and the ocean-view gazebo large enough to fit a dance floor
and a five-piece band. And that’s only what I can see as I peer at the property
from the car window.

“Oh my effing gosh,” I whisper reverently.

The driver clears his throat, which I take to
be my not-so-subtle cue to stop gawking and get my butt out of the car. I open
my door and step onto the driveway, which I now see is made of sand and
seashells, not gravel.

The driver, who I’m beginning to think is
mute, also gets out, but instead of merely standing there, staring, he goes to
the trunk and retrieves my two puny suitcases. I shoulder my laptop bag—I’d
never entrust it to someone else or stow it in the trunk and risk being
separated from it in an accident—and follow Silent Tom up the shiny porch steps
that are painted the same grayish blue as the sky before a storm.

I’m armed with a key and the alarm code, but
apparently so is Tom, because he doesn’t wait for me to unlock the house. He
sets my luggage down, opens the door, and expertly disarms the alarm. When he
starts up the stairs with my suitcases, I say, “Oh! Don’t bother with that.
I’ll, uh… take them up myself when I figure out which room is the guest room.”

Speaking for the first time, he answers in a
heavy Boston accent, “Miss, I was given specific instructions regarding your
room,” before continuing up the seemingly-endless flights of white wooden
stairs.

I hurry to catch up to him, feeling guilty
that he’s carrying my stuff. I wouldn’t necessarily call him “old,” but he’s
older than I am by a couple of decades, at least. Plus, the guy’s a driver for
a black car service; he’s not a butler. This whole thing is making me feel
uncomfortably bourgeois.

Again, we resort to silence. The only sound is
the clomping of Tom’s polished shoes and the slapping of my flip-flops on the
immaculate stairs. At the top of the second flight, he looks wearily at me when
I mutter, “I would have been content to stay in the basement,” so I quickly
amend, “But this is nice. I bet there are some great views up here.”

He doesn’t confirm or contradict my
speculation. Instead, he leads me down a hallway carpeted in a pattern designed
to make it look like the rug’s been here for years, when it’s obvious by its
lack of wear that it’s brand new. The wide hallway is paneled in more white
wood—this time narrow beadboard wainscoting—and the top half of the walls features
a pearly gray paint, reminiscent of the inside of a clamshell. Very beachy in a
masculine, non-pastel way.

Tight-Lipped Tom seems to know his way quite
well around the place. I stiffen when he pushes open a large set of
double-doors at the end of the hall and leads me into a bright, airy,
enormous
bedroom with a huge bed (and some other furniture… but the
bed
is
definitely the centerpiece). Wide, dark wooden floor planks stretch from wall
to wall, uninterrupted save for a ten by ten square of exquisite Oriental rug
anchored by the
bed
, which looks like the softest, coolest, snuggliest…
instrument of sex… I’ve ever seen.

Before I can check my brain, it delivers a
picture of Lucas lying naked in the center of it.

I blush and quickly look away from it, as if
by doing so I can also avert my gaze from my own thoughts. “Uh… Tom?”

He turns from where he’s stowing my two suitcases
next to a gleaming dresser. “Yes?”

I pin my eyes to a spot in the middle of the
cheery pale yellow wall nearest me. “Yeah. Umm… Here’s the thing. Tom.”

When I’m too embarrassed to go on, he prods,
“Yeesss?”

Gosh, he’s going to make me spell it out.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” I repeat, before rushing on, “I don’t think it’s
appropriate for me to stay in the master bedroom. Maybe one of the other sixteen
bedrooms will be better.”

“There are only five other bedrooms,” he
flatly informs me and then tacks on, “Miss.”

I sigh. “My point is… there are a
lot
of
bedrooms.”

“It’s a big house, yes.”

Is this guy for real? And what does he know
about it, anyway? I’m about to ask him how he knows Lucas when he says, “This
isn’t
his
room, if that’s what you’re worried about. His is next door.” He
gestures in that direction with his eyes. “And this is the room he wants you to
have while you’re his guest.”

I can’t fathom why it would matter to Lucas
which room I sleep in. I also can’t figure out why it makes me feel tingly that
he thought about it. To cover my increased discomposure, I cross to one of the
huge windows and look at the backyard that slopes down to a private beach. “Oh.
Well, okay. As long as I’m not imposing…”

“You’re not. Now, if that’s all, then I’ll be
going. Paulette will be arriving later today. She’s the housekeeper, and she
can help you with anything you need.”

My heart lifts at the idea that I won’t be
rattling around this huge house alone, but it sinks at the prospect of being put
in charge of a staff member. I’m such an outsider in this world. There’s no way
I can pull off bossing someone around like the mistress of the castle. But Tom
is hardly the one I need to talk to about this. I’ll give Lucas a call and tell
him I don’t need a housekeeper while I’m staying in his house. It’s a little
over-the-top, considering I’ll probably dirty one towel, one plate, and one
glass a day. I’m sure I can clean up after myself.

I wave goodbye to Tom, listen as he trots down
the stairs and through the front door, and turn toward that incredible bed
again. I have to know what it feels like.

I slink toward it like a cat sneaking up on a
mouse. When I’m standing close enough that the fronts of my thighs press
against its high mattress, I reach out my hands and smooth my palms across the
surface of the cool, soft comforter.

“Oh, my,” I say on an exhale.

Moving aside several pillows, I pull back one
corner of the bedspread and slide my hand against the sheets. I’ve never felt
anything like them. They look like cotton, but they’re almost as soft as silk
or satin. Hesitantly at first and then more confidently as I remember no one’s
here to see me, I lower my face to the bed and bury my nose in the linens. They
smell like… money. Okay, not the real thing, but… if wealth has a scent, it’s
this. It’s a strange amalgamation of the perfume counter at a department store,
a bank lobby, leather, citrus, and sea spray.

Suddenly, as quickly as if I’ve been goosed, I
straighten and spin in a circle, my hands covering my mouth and nose.

“Oh, my gosh,” I muffle into my hands. “What.
The. Figgity?!” I wonder giddily at the entire situation. A house like this one
never figured into even my wildest, most-optimistic bestselling-author dreams.

I can’t wait to spend some time here,
not
writing.
I can’t wait to have Gus here for the weekend. I can’t wait to have my morning
coffee in the gazebo and swim in the infinity pool and walk in the surf. I
can’t wait to sleep in
that
bed.

Writer’s block is the best thing that’s ever
happened to me.

*****

“What is Tom?”

“You mean,
who
is he?”

Impatient to have answered the question that’s
been preventing me from relaxing and enjoying myself at this remarkable house,
I tap my foot and fiddle with my hair as I interrogate Lucas via cell phone.
“Yes. What or who is he to you? Is he your favorite chauffeur at the car service?
Your valet? Your hit man?” I’m only half-joking about that last one. I’ve come
up with crazier scenarios while I replay my interactions with the driver.

Lucas laughs. “Uh… no. But it’s good to see
your imagination is waking up. Tom’s my driver.”

“
Your
driver? As in, he drives you
everywhere?” I know I sound stupid, but the question makes sense to me.

I simply sound stupid to Lucas, apparently. He
answers as if he’s speaking to a cross-eyed dog, “Yes. That’s typically what a
driver does.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m starting to think that maybe I don’t, actually.”

Irritated at my inability to express myself
clearly, I say, “I mean, is he on your personal payroll, listed as your
chauffeur? I mean, are you the type of person with the means to employ a
staff?
”

“Jayne.”

“Yes?”

“I’m busy. Did you call me about something to
do with our business together, or have you suddenly decided your true calling
is as an auditor for the IRS?”

I realize with embarrassment how nosy and
pushy I’m being. “I’m sorry,” I mumble. Then in my defense, I explain, “But he
didn’t make it clear to me what his
role
was in your life or how he knew
you. I thought he was a random driver with the car service, but then he was
unlocking the door and punching in the alarm code and leading me through the
house like he knows the place, and then when he showed me to my room—which is
awesome, by the way—”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“He knew it wasn’t your bedroom—”

“Is that something you were worried about?”

“Sort of. But before I could ask him, ‘Hey,
how do you know all this stuff?’ he was telling me about some lady named Paulette—”

“She’s my housekeeper, yes.”

“—which, by the way, I don’t need a
housekeeper. That’s just too weird.”

“I don’t want you to think about anything but
relaxing and writing, when the inspiration strikes, which it will,” he insists.
“Now, I can email you my family tree later, if you want to know how I’m related
to all the other Edwardses in the world, and I can have Sally send you a full
list of all the people on my payroll—”

“You
do
have a payroll, then?”

“—but I really have to go now. I’m late for a
meeting with Arthur Thornfield, who—incidentally—lists me on
his
payroll.”

I feel embarrassed and awkward again. “Oh.
Yeah. Okay. Well, I’ll… go swimming or something, then.”

I can tell he’s smiling, and I can even
picture what that looks like when he says, “You do that. Goodbye now.”

“Bye.”

It’s not until after I hang up and have been
standing in the middle of the gleaming white and stainless steel kitchen for a
while, staring off into space, that I realize we just had our first
conversation that didn’t include an argument.

Chapter Eight

As promised, Mrs. Paulette McGovern arrives
later, in time to serve me a light dinner by the pool. I didn't realize she had
arrived, and if she hadn’t been carrying a tray of food, I may have been
alarmed at the sudden appearance of a stranger when I opened my eyes during my
impromptu duet with Chris Martin. Instead, I’m merely mortified.

I sit up on my lounger and pop the earbuds
from my ears, letting them drop into my lap.

She pretends nothing strange has happened. “Hello
there, I’m Paulette. Thought you might be peckish,” she says in a delightful
English accent.

Taking my cues from her, glad to ignore my
embarrassing behavior, I manage to recover with, “Oh, yeah. Thanks.”

As she sets the tray of food on the
wrought-iron table under the umbrella, I cringe at my ignorant surprise at her attire.
She’s wearing a linen button-up shirt and a pair of culottes, which are classy
and very comfortable-looking, but not what I expected Lucas’s maid to be
wearing. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I had pictured her more like one
of the chamber maids in the BBC period dramas I seem to be addicted to. I feel
like an idiot that I thought she’d be decked out in a black dress with a white
apron and a silly little cap, like one of the girls in
Upstairs Downstairs
.
I’m such a rube!

While I’m beating myself up, she says, “Luke tells
me you’re quite the writer.”

“Quite bad?”

She laughs as if I’m joking, and I don’t want
to make her uncomfortable, so again, I go along with her. Or maybe she’s
laughing because Lucas
did
say I was quite bad, but she’s being generous
and putting a positive spin on it. While I wrap my towel around myself, I study
her through my peripheral vision, but I can’t glean anything from her
expression. She doesn’t have a secret smile on her face that would indicate
she’s double-speaking. She’s not rolling her eyes or doing anything else
overtly disparaging. Her expression is blankly innocent as she positions the
dishes, cutlery, glass, and pitcher of lemonade.

When I get closer to the table, my stomach growls
at the sight of BLT Paninis cut into neat triangles, a dainty pot of baked
beans, and a generous square of strawberry cheesecake waiting for me. I stop
next to the table and gaze down, delighted at the quintessentially-summer meal,
one that I didn’t have to make for myself.

“Oh, blimey! I didn’t even think to ask if
you’re a vegetarian or have any allergies or special dietary needs,” Paulette
frets. “Luke didn’t mention any, but that doesn’t mean anything, now, does it?”