At that Cole put his hands on the desk and leaned across it toward her, his face close to hers. "Mrs. de Longe, or whatever your name is, and I seriously doubt the 'Mrs.,' there is no honor in that contract. The way I see it, you aren't the person I hired, so I don't have to give you one red cent."
For a full moment Kathryn's mind went blank. No job, no money. How were she and Jeremy supposed to survive?
"Now, Mrs. Whatever-your-name-is, I would like for you to leave my office and you can tell whoever's paying you that I wasn't as easily duped as you planned. Although I must say I do like the bait they used," he added with a leering look up and down her tightly corseted body.
"Mr. Jordan," she said, and her voice was hardly above a whisper. "I must have this job. My son and I have invested everything we have in this, and there are... other considerations."
"Such as?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.
"I can't say what they are but--"
She broke off because he began moving the papers on his desk and in the process her letters and the contract fell to the floor. Hurriedly, she bent to pick them up, retrieved her leather portfolio, and began to put the papers inside. Her hands were trembling so much she could hardly tie the string.
"Do you need a cook?" she whispered.
"What?" he snapped.
Drawing herself upright, she swallowed something that could only be her pride. She had dealt with enough people in her life to tell by this man's tone as well as his words that he was not, under any circumstances, going to reconsider his stance. Maybe later she could get him to reconsider, but now she didn't so much as have money for a meal.
"Do you need a cook?" she asked louder, then had to stand there and bear the way he looked at her, as though he were trying to figure her out.
After a while a slow smile crept onto his lips, lips that earlier in the day she had enjoyed kissing. "No," he said softly, "I don't need a cook, and I don't need a wife. My son doesn't need a mother, he needs a teacher. And although I do appreciate all the trouble you have gone to to get close to me, I can assure you that the girls in town supply me with all the 'wifely' affection that I can handle." Again he looked her up and down, but this time with lowered eyelids that let her know what was in his mind. "There are other men in town, Miss, ah, Mrs. de Longe. You really don't have to set your cap for the richest man."
Maybe it was the word richest that finally broke through to Kathryn, or maybe it was just the whole rotten day in which she had been repeatedly accused of being a prostitute, and had seen her son nearly murdered in the filthy streets while a bunch of dirty ruffians watched. Or maybe it was kissing a man who turned out to be such a pig as this one. Whatever it was, Kathrytfs temper broke.
With measured steps, she walked toward the desk, then put her fists on it and leaned toward him. He was sitting, so she was the one looking down at him.
"Let me make myself clear, Mr. Jordan. I have no, let me repeat that, no desire to marry you or any other man. I came here because I signed a contract for a job. You hear me? A job! And I want nothing else from you. Right now I don't even want that because I have never met a more vain, egomaniacal man than you in my life--and that includes the aristocracy of Ireland. I have no idea how the photographs were exchanged, but I can assure that I did not switch them. I represented myself honestly and with integrity, and that is how I expect to be treated in return. Now, I demand that you honor your contract with me!" Never in her life had Kathryn demanded anything, except sometimes that Jeremy not do something dangerous, but this man seemed to elicit emotions and responses from her that she'd never felt before.
"Demand, do you?" the man said with a one-sided smile, then slowly he stood up, pulling himself to his full height of well over six feet. "Well, Mrs. de Long, I demand that you get out of my house and never step foot into it again. Now which of us is more likely to have our demands obeyed?"
Standing there, Kathryn looked across the desk into eyes that had turned as cold as sapphires, and she knew she had lost. There was nothing she could do or say that was going to make this man give her the job that was hers by right, the job that she and her son so desperately needed.
Trying to retain her pride, she stiffened her back and walked toward the door. If she allowed herself to think for even a second about what this man was condemning her to, she'd collapse.
Once she was outside the odious man's office, she took Jeremy's hand in hers and led him out of the house. Jeremy knew his mother well enough not to ask questions about what had gone on; besides, their voices had been loud enough for him to hear most of it. Kathryn half pulled him down the dirt road, past the stone wall that separated the two very different parts of town from each other, and into the muddy streets of Legend proper. For all that Jeremy was only nine, he had seen a very ugly side of life, and he knew what jobs were open to women in a place like Legend.
"I can work," he said softly. "I'm strong and I can get a job. There are mines here and I--"
Abruptly, Kathryn halted in the middle of the street and stared at her son. "Going to work in a mine at nine years old?" she said, horror in her voice. "Is that what kind of mother you think I am?" For a moment forgetting his age, she said, "I'll make a living on my back before I--" She broke off as she stared at something above Jeremy's head.
"Mother?" he said, then turned and looked at the sign that was behind him. "Prettiest girls in the West," the sign read. "Highest prices for the best."
"Mother!" Jeremy said in fear, then grabbed her arm when she took a step forward. "I'll work. I'll--:"