At Your Command Page 2

  She had heard his voice before. All day, whispering in her ear, the hint of an accent—French, she realized—at odds with the crisper tones underneath. American, but not local.

  Great-Aunt Zannah had lived in Paris.

  No. Impossible.

  “Madame, you must accept the inheritance.” His calm voice broke slightly, showing a hint of near desperation, as though he expected the world to end if she refused.

  “Don’t call me that. My name is Susannah.” It was a delaying action, and she knew it. Why was she arguing with this man? Good-looking, with a voice that was just sexy enough to make her toes curl, saying he was here to do whatever it took to make her happy. Your command, had been his actual words. Whatever she asked for…

  “You show up here, break into my house and offer to cook me dinner…” It was insane. Worse, it was absurd. And yet, it happened. This was either the most elaborate practical joke she had ever seen, or—

  Or it was real.

  “Madame.” He sounded slightly offended. “I did not break in. You signed for me.”

  The package. The delivery guy. Genies came parcel post? And who said he was allowed to have a sense of humor? Because that was definitely the hint of a smile on his lips, and his eyes had a crinkle of laughter in them, quickly.

  “Just…sit down.” She couldn’t think with him looming over her like that.

  He looked around her condo, noting the limited options—the love seat she was on, the hassock that served as a coffee table, the overstuffed chair opposite her, and chose the chair. She didn’t often have people over: most of her socializing revolved around the office, or going out. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had someone actually in her apartment, other than her cleaning lady or the complex’s plumber-on-hire.

  He finally sat in the chair, moving with a sort of formal grace that made her think of a cat deigning to join the conversation. Despite herself, despite wanting only to get him out of her house, Susannah was intrigued. Never mind the voice and the looks, she was usually pretty good at reading people, and what she got off this…person was not servile obedience, but a coiled energy just waiting to be directed. The thought of him being anyone’s personal servant was beyond her comprehension.

  “Your grandmother would disagree…” Was that, this, what her grandmother and great-aunt had fallen out over? Had her grandmother known? Had she known that her granddaughter, named for the sister she never spoke of, never spoke to, would eventually become heir to this? Surely, if she had known, she would have warned Susannah. Prepared her, somehow. Or changed her name.

  He sat there, his face the kind of expressionless that usually meant a lot was going on under the surface, like a jaded poker player, and Susannah felt a shiver that was equal amounts of fear and anticipation. Whatever was going on whatever this was all really about, she wasn’t about to back down.

  Anthony. He said that his name was Anthony.

  She looked to make sure that Max was still with her, protecting her. The idiot dog was now staring at the stranger with a sort of anticipation he usually only gave the box of doggie treats. Susannah thought she should be offended, but somehow the sight made her relax instead. Max was overprotective to, well, the max. If he didn’t see this guy as a threat, then neither would she.

  But what was he, then?

  “Let me get this straight.” She leaned back into the love seat, forcing her own body language to project a relaxed, in-control vibe she wasn’t even close to feeling. If she started questioning her sanity then the hysterics would begin and she’d be down the rabbit hole forever. Better to treat it as a work problem; start with the known information and break it down. “You’re the genie of the brooch?”

  He gave a slight nod, as though her words made perfect sense. It was a hell of a lot to take in. Easier to think he was some kind of well-meaning crazy who had fixated on her and some sort of elaborate fantasy. If so, she’d play along until she could trip him up, get him to admit the truth.

  “And you’ve served how many women in my family?”

  “You would be the third, ma…” He stopped himself, clearly remembering her irritation with the title, but unable to use her given name.

  Three…he looked like he was thirty, tops. Even if her great-aunt had picked him up as some kind of gigolo…

  Her patience and credulity was deeply strained, Max’s acceptance or not, and there was no way she could step back and look at this like some kind of logic problem. “Well, I won’t have it. It’s…insane. This entire thing is insane. I’m probably hallucinating all this, anyway.” Maybe the rabbit hole would be preferable.

  Annoyance snapped in those fine eyes of his, as though she’d just told him he’d screwed up something he knew he’d done perfectly. “This is no hallucination. It is my responsibility to ensure that all of your needs are taken care of.”

  Susannah was about to respond when something about the way he said the words filtered through her brain.

  “My needs.”

  “Yes.” He looked at her directly, the way Max might, with an utter trust and willingness to obey. “My existence is dedicated to ensuring your happiness.”

  Oh. Susannah’s breath caught in her throat, and her pulse sped up, even as her brain utterly rejected what those words implied. A series of visuals flashed through her brain, mainly having to do with what he looked like under that tailored, if old-fashioned, suit, and what his skin tasted like, before she got her libido under control. God, what was wrong with her? Was he spraying something in the air, maybe, that was calming Max and making her utterly incapable of thinking?

  Suddenly he had gone from harmless lunatic, to a very real problem. “I don’t…need help with my happiness. I don’t want help with anything. You can…go away.”

  That poker face broke and he looked impatient, but never lowered his gaze. “I cannot.”

  “What?”

  “The terms of my obligation, my duty, are clear. You possess the brooch. Therefore, I must serve you.”

  “Or?”

  There was that hint of desperation again. “Or I cease to exist.” He swallowed, hard. “I have…no desire to cease. You must claim your inheritance, confirm ownership.”

  “If I don’t? What if I…give the brooch to someone else?” Susannah shuddered, something within her protesting the idea even as she spoke it. She wasn’t sure if it was the thought of giving someone else—even a…a genie…away like an object, or something deeper, some family-bred possessiveness, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t just box up the brooch and give it—and him—to someone else. Nor could she call the cops. Something inside her revolted at the thought of handing him over to likely unsympathetic authorities.

  Did she believe him? Susannah wasn’t sure, but real or not, he clearly believed the fairy tale he was spinning, and that made her…responsible for him, somehow.

  “I never thought I’d sympathize with Major Nelson,” she muttered, thinking of how annoyed she used to get watching I Dream of Jeannie on DVD with Grandma, and was startled when that comment broke through his serious mien, a glimmer of a smile appearing in his eyes. Apparently, he got cultural references, at least the older ones.

  “Your great-aunt found me useful to have around,” he said, his broad shoulders relaxing slightly. “Try to think of me as a family inheritance, not a curse.”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  A darkness passed over his eyes, then was gone. “I have two choices,” he said. “I choose to serve.” And with that, Susannah had to be satisfied, because he refused to say more.

  Apparently, there were limits to how much she could command him. Obscurely, that made Susannah feel better, even as she wondered what other skills he might be able to provide

  If she wasn’t going to call the cops or flee the house screaming—and apparently she wasn’t—then the first order of business, according to Anthony, was to feed her. Susannah’s stomach rumbled, not allowing her to disagree. It was something of a relief, after hearing his talk of genies and spell-cast brooches, to see that he couldn’t whip up a gourmet dinner out of thin air, with a wave of his hand, but instead went into her kitchen and started poking around the contents of her pantry and fridge. Although she was doubtful that she had fresh linguine in the fridge, much less a defrosted chicken….

  At that moment, Max made his needs clear and she—thankful of the excuse—snapped on his leash and fled the house.

  Walking down the street, letting Max sniff at his usual trees and planters, she considered not going back to the town house, of going to the police, or calling Rose and asking her for crash space.

  “Do you believe in genies, Max? Do you believe in magic?”

  Susannah had been raised in a fairly religious house. She knew that the things her grandmother called miracles, some people said were impossible, or fables or lies. She hadn’t been there to see them, so she didn’t know. But she had seen this, seen a man appear in front of her, through a locked door.

  “He could have been hiding…but why? He knows too much to be a random crazy. So either it’s all true—insane—or maybe it isn’t true, and he really is a crazy…except the box did come from the lawyer’s office, and they had checked out, so…what purpose would anyone have to scam me?”

  The more she tried to make herself believe that Anthony was a lunatic or a con man, the more flaws appeared in her logic. How would he know about the brooch, about her great-aunt…and what reason could he have for playing it out? She had no money to embezzle, nothing to steal.

  That left the thought that it was, insane as it sounded, real.

  She had a genie in her house, cooking her dinner.

  “Grandma knew about all this,” she said to Max. “She must have known, and didn’t warn me, didn’
t tell me not to accept gifts, or…anything.”

  Max, busy peeing, had no response.

  When she came back into the town house, the table was set with her good dishes, a small vase with a sprig of wild roses plucked from the bushes outside her kitchen window—something she had often thought to do for herself but somehow never found time—and the meal was delicious. Anthony refused her invitation to dine with her as though she’d somehow offended him, so she didn’t push it.

  “How long did you…were you with my great-aunt?” she asked him.

  “Since your great-grandmother died,” he responded, coming out of the kitchen to answer her. “Then I was with Susannah until the day she died.” He looked—not sad, exactly, but like a professional mourner.

  “Do you miss her?”

  Anthony’s dark blue eyes looked somewhere Susannah couldn’t see. “I served her for many years. She was…not an easy woman to make happy.”

  As answers went, it wasn’t, but the tone of his voice said far more than he allowed his words to. Unlike her grandmother, Anthony hadn’t had the option of walking away.

  After the meal, he refused her offer of help and shooed her away. Susannah, full and feeling oddly comforted and guilty all at once, booted her laptop and downloaded the files she still had to go through before the morning meeting, but her thoughts kept wandering.

  A good-looking man was doing the dishes. A good-looking man who could cook, was in the kitchen doing the dishes.

  A good-looking man who cooked and cleaned and claimed he was a genie.

  If she wished him back into the brooch, would he go?

  Susannah reached up and discovered that the brooch was pinned to her blouse again. She didn’t remember replacing it.

  Her thoughts might be disordered, but the sounds in the kitchen were soothing, as was the fact that Max was snoozing at her feet, and Susannah fell asleep the way she often did, on the love seat, the laptop still open beside her.

  Unlike the previous night, a sense of unease and wrongness chased her in dreams, like she had left a window unlocked, or her keys in the car, even though she knew she’d done neither.

  “I double-checked,” her dream voice protested. “I always do. I’m very careful!”

  She woke up sweaty, and panting from the effort of waking herself up before dream-disaster struck. A check over the side of the bed revealed Max asleep on the rug by her bed, not yet whining for his morning walk. The clock by her bed told her it was 5:57—three minutes before her alarm would go off.

  The events of the night before slowly came back to her. She had fallen asleep on the love seat, yet woken in her own bed, dressed in her favorite cotton sweats and oversized T-shirt. The thought that Anthony had somehow gotten her undressed, into her pj’s, and into bed without her waking should have disturbed the hell out of her. Susannah knew this. But as she stretched, feeling how—despite the dream—her spine was relaxed, her shoulders not aching, she somehow couldn’t bring herself to mind.

  “Susannah?”

  She rolled over onto her side and blinked at the doorway. Anthony stood there, still in the suit pants and white shirt of last night, but minus the jacket. His sleeves were rolled slightly, and his hair was mussed, as though he’d just finished washing his face. Did genies have to wash their faces? Where had he spent the night?

  The questions came and fled, and all she could manage was a sleepy “mmm?”

  “Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes. I’ve prepared your shower, and wanted to know if you would prefer the blue suit or the pinstripe one for today.”

  Her sense of well-being fled, flooded by a greater sense of outrage. Somehow, being put to bed seemed less intrusive than the idea of his choosing what she would wear.

  “I can choose my own damn clothing,” she said, rolling out of bed and almost stepping on Max. “Seriously, do you have any sense of personal boundaries whatsoever?”

  Anthony blinked at her, taken aback as she marched up to him, and the corner of his lip twitched, as though he were repressing a smile. Once again she was struck by the fact that, although he was only a few inches taller than her own five-nine, he seemed neither disturbed nor annoyed by that fact, but met her gaze straight-on.

  “I am here to serve you,” he said, vaguely mollifying without being apologetic. “It appeared that you had not had time to do laundry recently, so I…”

  Before he finished speaking she had spun around and flung open her closet door. As she’d half expected, the usual chaos had been replaced by neatly hung—and ironed—blouses and skirts, organized not only by style but color.

  If he’d slept, it hadn’t been for long. And he’d been in and out of her bedroom, without waking her, without Max raising a fuss….

  “You’d damn well better not have folded my underwear,” she warned without turning around.

  Silence.

  She turned then, and noted that there was a hint of color just above his cheekbones. He was…embarrassed? If so, he did not show it beyond that, merely replied, with a starched dignity, “There was not enough material to allow folding, Madame.”

  It was her turn to flush, then. “That’s it. That is…enough. I…”

  She spluttered to a halt, and he smoothly took back control of the situation. “You need to eat your breakfast and take your shower, otherwise you will be late.” His words were so calm, his voice neither mocking nor reprimanding, that Susannah felt her ire slip away, even as Max looked from one of them to the other, clearly not understanding why she was yelling.

  Apparently, she really had inherited a domestic genie, and she had no say in the matter.

  Annoyed or not, the smells coming from the kitchen were incredible. Susannah gave in, and it wasn’t until she was halfway to work that she realized she had not only put on the dark blue suit Anthony had suggested, but that the brooch was pinned to her lapel. People were going to think that she was going to an interview, if she showed up dressed like this. She should take the jacket off, leave it in the car. But what about the brooch, then?

  Her hand left the steering wheel to touch it, and a soft murmuring voice again whispered something inaudible in her ear, making heat rise up along her spine almost immediately. There was just something about the tone, or the intimacy, or…something that made her dangerously distracted and she dropped her hand back to the steering wheel, vowing that when she got to the office she would take the brooch off.

  Except, she didn’t. And throughout the day her hand kept lifting to the pin, as though reassuring herself that it was still there, and each time there was that same hum of voice in her ear. Having someone talking low and sweet in your ear, even if they weren’t talking to you, was incredibly…seductive. The fact that the voice belonged to a good-looking man—genie—oh, hell, he looked and talked and, yeah, smelled like a man, who had pledged to serve her, all that just ratcheted up the charge. Only the fact that he was, in effect, cursed to make that pledge kept her from enjoying it.

  He thought he belonged to her. She couldn’t lose track of that. He wasn’t some lovely gift that had fallen into her lap: he was a person—all right, a genie-person, but a person, and genies didn’t come automatically with lamps or brooches, they were put there, right?

  Had he been a terrible person once? A thief, a con artist, a killer? That thought put cold water on her libido, even as her mind protested that Anthony could do no such thing.

  Anyone could do anything, and smile charmingly while they did it.

  And yet, she did not take the brooch off.

  By midafternoon, if she focused intently, she could make out the words in that soft rumble. He was talking to Max, something about polishing the silver.

  Susannah shook her head: the only silver she had was a box shoved in the far corner of her credenza, which she hadn’t used in almost two years. She had absolutely no doubt that by the time she got home, each piece would sparkle, and they would be used to set the table, rather than the everyday, dishwasher-safe pieces she had been using.

  “Damn it, Grandma,” she muttered, annoyed with the old woman all over again. “You couldn’t have warned me? Told me what the hell I was supposed to do?”

  The old woman had raised her after her parents died. You’d think somewhere along the line, something about this might have come up in conversation? “Oh, by the way, we have a genie bound to our family. Don’t worry about it, you’ll understand some day.”