Christmas in the City - Jill Barnett Page 0,72

door, stood across the street and acting like he was talking to a man at the local newsstand down the street. Her fit of anger grew hotter the closer she was to home. Who did he think he was, this Edward Lowell, Man of Year, that's who, harasser of innocent females. She marched up the stairs to her door, then about kicked herself for leading him to her home, until she reminded herself he had followed her from Brooklyn.

She closed the door none too lightly, removed her gloves with jerky movements, hung up her jacket, jabbed the hatpin into the hat's crown before she tossed it on a bench and stormed across the room, sitting down at her desk.

Mr. Edward Lowell, Lowell & Green

Dear Mr. Lowell:

I am contacting you about

She wadded up the paper and tossed it in the trash bin, took out another sheet, addressed it and started again:

Dear Mr. Lowell:

You are violating my person.

"No," she said aloud and wadded it up, too. Then she started again....

Dear Mr. Lowell, Man of the Year, Harasser of Women, All Around Degenerate, Arrogant Fool, Trespasser of Privacy, Handsome Devil, Kisser of Woman...

One more for the bin. She sagged back against the chair back. This wasn't working. She crossed to the window and looked outside. She didn't see him. So she looked out the narrow bedroom window and didn't see him. Down the back steps to a water barrel, where she hitched up her skirt and stood on the barrel so she could see over the fence and down the street.

He was out of sight or gone. Back inside, she glanced at the mantel clock, showing it was not yet 4 o'clock.

Okay, Mister Lowell, Mister -Can-Do-Anything.

No, she would not write to the man, she thought as she shrugged back into her jacket and pulled on her gloves. She would confront him face to face. Then she reached for the brass doorknob but stopped. She turned on her heel, opened a metal box and pulled out a hammer, dropping it into her bag.

There! She was confronting him face to face, but just in case, she had a good solid hammer.

Chapter 7

The store delivered the tea table to his office by mistake. Ed returned from an afternoon meeting at the city planning office to find that his efficient secretary had unpacked the boxes and set up the tea service in a corner of his office, then promptly left for the day.

He wasn't surprised since he'd brought Penny in to work with him twice this past week. There was a stack of brightly dust-jacketed picture books on the same bookshelf that held his architectural manuals, schematics, and business books, and Ed knew a cloth bag filled with building blocks sat stored in the long drawer next to his blueprint tubes and rolled up floorplans.

The table, chairs, and china would go to the house tomorrow. He dropped his hat and coat on a chair and walked over to look at it. Finely gilt-edged, the china set was decorated in a familiar pattern of red roses with small blue flowers painted on the rim of the tea cups and the saucers. The teapot had a large rose on one side and blue flower on the other and the same decorative gold edgework. Made of dark mahogany, the tea table and chairs were identical to one in the formal room at the house, the same wood finish and delicate turned legs.

He wondered then how much it had cost him, since he hadn't asked. It looked sturdy, so he pulled out a chair and sat on it, his knees well above the tea table and his big feet straddling the delicately curved table legs. He picked up a teacup, held it to the light- Clearly fine English bone china, he thought and turned it over to see a small Minton a print mark with a crown.

It must have cost him pocketful.

"Hallo!"

Ed froze there.

"Mr. Lowell?" Miss Idalie Everdeane, chin high, shoulders back, handbag clutched in her gloved hands held primly in front of her, and a determined look on her face, marched through the open door of his office and immediately turned her blue eyed gaze on him, sitting at a child's tea table holding up one tiny teacup in his big clumsy hand.

She looked to be fighting back a smile. "I see I'm interrupting your tea...or is it playtime?"

He leaned slightly back in the chair, pulled back his legs and straightened them out, crossing them at the ankles, then toasted