Under his roof and his protection. He supposed if you were looking for a place to hide, the Stone House fit the bill quite nicely, as long as the things you were hiding from were outside of yourself.

Jefferson wondered if his new housekeeper would feel quite so eager to seek shelter here if she knew how colossally he had failed the one other woman, his wife, who had expected protection from him.

Meals. He hadn’t really even considered a housekeeper providing meals. His search for a housekeeper had been motivated strictly by getting the house ready for the magazine photo shoot. He considered telling her meals would not be part of their agreement but found himself oddly reluctant to do so. He had not had a home-cooked meal in longer than he could remember, and his mouth was watering. His weakness annoyed him.

“Look,” he told Brook sternly. “Against my better judgment, I’m giving you a chance, but be warned, if you chatter, you’re out of here.”

She looked as if she might say something. But then she pursed her lips, brought her fingers up, locked and put the imaginary key in her pocket. But before he could even be properly relieved, she reached into that imaginary pocket, took out the key and unlocked her lips.

“Maybe just before we begin our vow of silence, I should get you to show me around and you can tell me what you’d like to see prioritized. I’ll make a list of what each room needs.”

It was a reasonable request, and he knew he could not really refuse it.

“Let’s begin here,” she coaxed, when he was silent.

“This room is the great room,” he said. “I noticed the windows are rain spotted.”

“The windows would be a priority,” she agreed. “But I should probably leave them until right before the photo shoot so they just sparkle that day, right?”

“Right,” he said, though of course he had not thought of that.

“Dusting.” She looked up at the high vault of the ceiling. “You have a ladder somewhere? I see cobwebs up there.”

He frowned up at where she was looking. He did not like spiders. Before he answered, she went and slapped the couch, and a cloud of dust flew up from it. “Vacuuming. If the weather stays nice, I might even put the furniture outside for a bit to air it out.”

He couldn’t really imagine she was going to get all that furniture outside by herself. The sectional was huge. And apparently she was going to need a ladder. Actually, he was not going to let her up on a ladder, so there was no point in finding one. He needed to make it clear he was not going to be roped into interaction with her. He was going to protest, but then she went on.

“It smells faintly stale in here. I think a good airing of the furniture will change that.”

It smelled stale in his house?

“For the photo shoot,” she said, a little pensively, “it might be nice to make it look lived in. You don’t use this room much, do you?”

“Not really.” She was proving to be uncomfortably astute.

“What would you think if we set it up a bit?”

We?

“We could just add a bit of color. Maybe a bright throw over the couch, a few glossy magazines on display, a vase of flowers.”

“Don’t you think the photographer will do that?”

“Well, if he doesn’t think to bring a vase of flowers with him, you’d be out of luck, since the nearest vase of fresh flowers would be quite a distance away. I could make the throw. I’ll snoop around and see what you have.”

He must have looked unconvinced because she rushed on, “You’d be surprised what you can make things out of. And I’m pretty handy with a needle and thread. I made this blouse.”

That made him stare at the blouse for an uncomfortable second.

Thankfully, she had moved on. “It’s just that this room—the house—is so beautiful, but it doesn’t look very homey. It would make me happy to help it look its very best.”

He stared at her. She already appeared much happier than she had when she first arrived, that little furrow of worry easing on her brow.

“I’ll leave it up to you to spruce it up however you see fit. If you need to buy a few things, let me know,” he said, and was annoyed that he felt he was giving in to her in some subtle but irreversible way. “Stay out of my office. And my bedroom.”

The fact that he did not want her in his bedroom, that most intimate of spaces, alerted him to the fact she—this little mite of a woman in her homemade blouse with her wayward curls—was threatening him in some way that he had not allowed himself to be threatened in, in a very long time. If ever.

“But surely they’ll want to photograph those rooms, too?”

“I’m quite capable of getting two rooms ready.” His tone was curt and did not invite any more discussion, but he was aware that she had to bite her lip to keep herself from discussing it.