"Yes, ma'am."
"Now I know I'm sick." Cheered, Kate plucked up the envelope. "Imagine Margo sending me a bunch of flowers." But when she tore out the card, her jaw dropped.
"Not from Margo, I take it." With the privilege of time and affection, Ann slipped the card out of Kate's fingers and read, " 'Relax, Byron.' Well, well, well."
"It's nothing to 'well' about. He's just feeling sorry for me."
"Two dozen yellow roses are something aside from sympathy, girl. That's moving toward romance."
"Hardly."
"Seduction, anyway."
Kate remembered the wild embrace in his kitchen. Hot, intense, rudely interrupted. "Maybe. Sort of. If I was the seducing type."
"We all are. Thank you, Jenny. I'll take it from here."
Ann took the vase from the maid and went into the bathroom to fill it. She wasn't surprised, and not just a little pleased, to see Kate sniffing thoughtfully at one of the blooms when she came back.
"Drink your tea now while I arrange these. It's a relaxing thing, arranging flowers."
She took a pair of scissors from the old kneehole desk, spread the tissue that had covered the flowers on the dresser, and got to work. "Something you take your time about, enjoy. Plunking them by the handful into a handy vase doesn't bring any joy."
Kate dragged her thoughts away from detailing a list of Byron De Witt's qualities. Confident, kind, interfering, sexy, meddlesome. Sexy. "It gets the job done."
"If that's all you're after. In my opinion, Miss Kate, you've always been in a hurry to get the job done, whatever it may be. You've
forgotten the pleasure of doing. Rushing through something to get to the next something might be productive, but it's not fun."
"I have fun," Kate muttered.
"Do you now? From what I've seen, you've even turned your weekly treasure hunts into a scheduled chore. Let me ask you this. If you were, by some wild chance in your quest for efficiency, to stumble over Seraphina's dowry, what would you do with it?"
"Do with it?"
"That's what I asked. Would you take the riches and sail around the world, lie on some lazy beach, buy a fancy car? Or would you invest it in mutual funds and tax-free bonds?"
"Properly invested, money makes money."
Ann slipped a stem gently into the vase. "And for what? So it can pile up neatly in some vault? Is that the only means to the end, or end to the means? Not that you haven't done a tidy job with helping me build up a fine nest egg, darling, but you've got to have dreams. And sometimes they have to be beyond your immediate reach."
"I have plans."
"I didn't say plans. I said dreams." Wasn't it odd, Ann mused. Her own daughter had always dreamed too much. Miss Laura had dreamed simple dreams that had broken her heart. And little Miss Kate had never let herself dream enough. "What are you waiting for, darling? To be as old as me before you indulge yourself, enjoy yourself?"
"You're not old, Annie," Kate said softly. "You'll never be old."
"Tell that to the lines that crop up on my face daily." But she smiled as she turned. "What are you waiting for, Katie?"
"I don't know. Exactly." Her gaze shifted to the crystal vase behind Ann, filled to bursting with yellow flowers that glowed like sunlight. She could, if she bothered to, count on one hand the number of times a man had sent her roses. "I haven't really thought about it."
"Then it's time you did. Top of the list is what makes Kate happy. You're good at list making, God knows," she said briskly, then went to the closet for the robe Kate always left in her room at Templeton House. "Now you can sit out on the terrace in the sun for a while. You sit there and do nothing but dream for a bit."
Chapter Nine
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A week of pampering was excellent medicine. For Kate it was also nearly an overdose. Yet anytime she made noises about going home and getting back to work, everyone within earshot ganged up on her.