by Rose Amberly
“It’s very hot,” he said, concerned. She saw his face through her lashes; his devastatingly handsome face was full of concern.
Except… the light was too strong. Nothing like that grey afternoon in April.
“I shouldn’t sleep too long in the sun, if I were you,” he told her. “Let me help you up before you get a heat stroke.” He stretched his hand down to her.
Her eyes flew open, and she sat up like she’d been drenched with a bucketful of ice. She looked at his hand and looked up into his face. He was smiling, slightly amused.
She shook her head to wake up properly from her dream, but when she opened her eyes, he was still standing above her, one hand hooking a linen jacket over his shoulder. His body—Oh dear God, his body. Lean and tall, his chest stretching a white T-shirt which did nothing to hide his pecs. His figure tapered to narrow hips and long legs in faded jeans.
He hunkered down to look at her. “Are you all right?” He took her hand in his.
She must have sun stroke. This couldn’t be happening. Wake up!
But no matter how many times she blinked, the vision didn’t change and her feverish fingers were still in his cool hand. Slowly she allowed him to pull her up.
“You must be Millie, my father’s assistant. I’m George Du Montfort.”
Oh, him.
She did her best to hide her surprise as the world settled the right way up and reality came into proper focus.
She’d been told about George, the son that Mr Du Montfort liked to call “that interfering, controlling, selfish son of mine.”
“I’ve heard so much about you,” he said conversationally.
“Yes, me too, I mean. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
He laughed, throwing his handsome dark head back. “Yes, I bet you’ve had quite an earful from my father.”
He was so disarming that she stood like a fool, grinning at him. Pull yourself together, Millie! This man is your employer.
She tried to hide her nerves by brushing the grass from the back of her trousers. What had they told him about her? Then another thought hit her. Did he recognize her? He hadn’t said anything, and she hoped she looked nothing like the shaking mess who had shouted at him in the street.
“Did they send you to find me?” she finally said, looking at her watch.
“Don’t worry. I haven’t come to catch you skiving on the job.”
It didn’t help that she as having trouble telling reality from her dream. His eyes, silver-flecked grey under black lashes, settled on her face for a moment. No, please don’t remember me.
Then he shook his head and smiled. “Actually, I haven’t been to the house yet. I always like to walk up here first.”
He shaded his eyes with long fingers as his gaze travelled over the island exactly as she had done earlier, his face curiously soft, transformed by an emotion she couldn’t guess.
Finally. he turned his attention back to her. “Shall we walk down?”
Again, he held his hand out to her, but she was determined not to touch him. Something about his presence was very intense, and she felt out of her depth. Ignoring the offered hand, she jumped down quickly on another smaller rock, nearly lost her footing and lurched forward.
She would have fallen flat on her face over the rocks and gravel had it not been for his quick reflexes. He stepped forward neatly and caught her. His hands held her waist and lifted her off like she weighed nothing.
So close to her dream of a moment ago, yet it was completely different. She placed her hands on his shoulders to steady herself; he was far more solid than the dream man, and warm under her hands. There was a faint hint of stubble on his jawline.
He lowered her slowly. Her chest brushed his, which pulled her blouse up, slightly exposing her stomach. Suddenly there was nothing between his fingers and her skin, and his hands circling her waist tightened for a second. She had the strangest urge to slide her hands behind his neck and touch his hair.
He brought her down until her feet were on the grass but didn’t let go, and they stood in an impromptu embrace for a moment longer while he made sure she was steady on her feet. Then he stepped back.
The entire thing couldn’t have been longer than three seconds. A lifetime in which she lived in a different world.
It ended too quickly. When he let go of her, she felt cold and abandoned.
George watched Millie step past him and start walking downhill without waiting for him.
She looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place her.
No sooner had she walked ten yards downhill than she stopped and doubled back up towards him.
“What’s it called?” she said climbing to the rock from which he had just lifted her—and saved her neck!
She looked out over the east shore.
“That cove at the end of the island with the jetty and the cottage, can you see?” she asked.
George looked where she was pointing, although he already knew exactly where she meant. What he didn’t know, yet, was how much he was prepared to tell her.
“Blue Sage Bay,” he answered finally, opting for the minimum.
But Millie nodded as if he’d confirmed something she already suspected. She climbed down, smiling to herself.
“Does this answer your question?” he asked, intrigued.
“Yes, it answers this question, but it raises fifteen others,” she said without looking at his face, then continued down the path.
EIGHT
A week later. La Canette, 10am
George moved the stack of files to the out tray and turned to look at the next bundle. Most of the morning had been wasted on this, and there were still several more bundles. Part of him wanted to dump the lot. Better yet, drop them in his father’s lap.
He lifted a couple of pages and read through them. The village school were behind on their rent. George frowned at the papers; how was the school expected to make money and teach for free? Two officials, Morris and Sweeny, were getting ready to take the school head to court. Morris and Sweeny were heartless bastards and if they got their way, the School would be forced to charge fees.
George reached for his pen and crossed out the debt, Then he added a three-year rent freeze to give them a chance to get back on their feet. What the school needed was an experienced fundraiser. He picked up his phone and fired off a message to one of his interns at the London office to do the necessary research.
Time for a breather? He leaned back in his chair and for good measure put his foot on the edge of the desk and pushed, sending his chair rolling halfway across the room. It stopped level with the French doors, which were open to let in the morning breeze.
George watched the tails of the weeping willow sway slightly. Millie was sitting with his father in the white rose garden.
Strange.
The white rose garden was a secluded little spot almost hidden from the house except for this corner window.
Why would Millie take his father there? They had the run of the grounds surrounding the house where, surely, the perfect lawns and smooth paths were easier on a wheelchair.
On impulse, George grabbed some of the files and walked out of the French doors across the grass towards them.
His father was in a sunny spot with a small cashmere blanket over his legs. Millie, looking summery in a yellow floral skirt, sat on a low stone wall next to him. As she crossed smooth legs, bare to the knee, George’s mood darkened.
Her head was bent over a book on her lap; her hair fell in a smooth curtain, screening her face. As she read, she kept tucking her hair behind her ear, but as soon as she took her hand away, it came loose again.
Something about the movement, about her head bent down over a book, a ghost of a memory, but he couldn’t quite catch it. Where had he seen her before? His father could not be trusted around women, and wo
men could not be trusted around his father.
Millie’s voice, even measured and mellifluous, reached him as he came closer.
“Think how it wakes the seeds
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?”
And his father, who hadn’t a romantic bone in his body, was listening avidly.
George’s lips thinned. “What on earth are you reading to my father?”
Millie looked up, startled. Or was it guilt? As if surprised doing something secretive. He supposed he was glaring, but she was acting nervous.
“Um-wiffen—rowen, I mean, sorry, I mean it’s Wilfred Owen, erm, the collected works,” she answered.
George turned to his father. “Since when do you like poetry?”
“War poetry,” his father corrected.
“All right. Since when do you like war poetry?”
“Wilfred Owen fought in France on the same front as my grandfather and his brothers. Your great-grandfather was killed in the trenches, or does family history mean nothing to you?”
George decided not to take the bait; instead he sat down on a stone bench opposite. The ground between them was paved with irregular flat stones. Thin grass and a scattering of tiny flowers grew between the stones like discarded confetti.
He looked at Millie. “I’m surprised to see you here. Isn’t it difficult to wheel my father on the crazy paving?”
Before Millie could answer, however, his father said, “Have you met my lovely new assistant?”
“Forgive me, I should have said good morning.”
Millie looked up briefly. “Hello, again.” Then she turned to his father. “Yes, we met yesterday.”
For some reason, she seemed uncomfortable, as if lying. George’s reputation as a shrewd lawyer came, in part, from his ability to sense when people were hiding information. He watched her as she tried to look busy with inserting a bookmark between the pages and closing the book.
His father was in a mischievous mood. “Isn’t she a far cry from the limp rag you hired for me three months ago?” He looked at her. “Don’t blush, girl, it’s the truth. When you first turned up here, O Lordy, you were as plain as the back of a kitchen cupboard.”
Millie stood up and pretended to collect books and brush the back of her skirt.
“Father, can we talk about business?” George placed his files on the bench beside him.
Millie looked grateful for the rescue. “I’ll just run inside and check if everything is ready.”
George’s eyes followed her as she set off towards the house. Her yellow skirt swayed and danced around her knees as she hurried across the wide lawn.
Back of a kitchen cupboard? He shook his head. Millie wasn’t model thin but rather what he thought of as gracefully curvy. He wasn’t pleased. The agency had assured him she was badly dressed, overweight, and unattractive.
“I know what you’re thinking, my boy.”
I seriously doubt it. George tore his eyes away from her.
“It was an evil joke hiring someone who looked like she did, but I have the last laugh, haven’t I?” His father was smug. “You see, I’ve transformed her.”
And I plan to get to the bottom of this. George kept his thoughts to himself and opened the first lever-arch file. “This is all tenant accounts, conveyancing and overdue repairs.”
His father made a careless sweeping gesture with the back of his hand. “We have an agent to deal with all that.”
“Yes, Lockley has done his best and completed everything up to the point where your signature was needed.”
A moment passed in silence.
George hated to state the obvious, but his father remained deliberately obtuse. “And that’s where the process has ground to a halt.”
He waited for his father to respond, but the old man merely looked back at him as if it had nothing to do with him.
“Father, you need to sign these.”
“You have a power of attorney; you can sign for me.”
“These are your affairs; you are the seigneur. I can’t run the island whe—”
Fast as a bullet, his father interrupted. “I cannot run the island. I am a frail old man, remember? That’s what you said in your long submission to the court when you tied up my estates and entailed everything in trust to stop me doing what I liked with my own money.” He paused for a long moment, but as soon as George opened his mouth to speak, his father continued. “Since you have taken charge of my house and the employment of my staff, you can jolly well take charge of the rest of my affairs.”
George counted to ten, took a deep breath, and willed himself not to react to the emotional blackmail.
Stick to business. He counted to ten again. “You cannot hold up urgent work for want of a simple signature. I have a job that takes up all my time in London. I can’t keep flitting back and forth every few months. It isn’t fair on the people here.”
“Indeed not. You must move here and take up the work you were born to do. I am retired. I want to hand over the seigneurship to you.”
They glared at each other, grey eyes to icy blue, both equally determined. He and his father understood each other perfectly. He knew what the old man was about to say.
“It’s your responsibility and your privilege to govern La Canette just as your family have done before you. You have played at being a corporate man in the city long enough. Time you grew up.”
“Father, we have been through this many times before. If you want to hand over the seigneurship, by all means, find a man you like and hand it on to him. I am not taking it.”
“You don’t know what you want, George.”
“Because I don’t want to play Lord of the Manor in some outmoded relic of Elizabethan England?”
His father threw his head back and laughed. “Then you should have let me remarry and produce another heir, shouldn’t you?”
A sequence of unsuitable Barbie dolls and fortune hunters flashed across George’s mind before he dismissed the image. Return to business. Don’t let him distract you. George picked up the files and placed them on his lap.
“It’s comical. You must see that you’ve scored an ‘own goal’ my boy.” His father tried to distract him again. “I’m glad you are still my only heir.”
“About the accounts here—”
“Even if you are a selfish son of a bitch, you’re still my—”
The stack of papers fell from George’s lap to the ground as he rose to his feet. The words died on his father’s lips as he looked back at George.
“Never, ever, for the rest of your days,” George said through clenched jaws, “not even as a joke, never speak of my mother this way.” He turned and marched across the lawn, leaving his father alone with files and papers scattered on the stones and grass around him.
* * *
Millie walked back towards the white rose garden with Liam, the physiotherapist. The garden was round a bend, screened from the house by the weeping willow trees behind the lily pool. She couldn’t see, but she hoped the business talk was over.
Just then, George walked towards her as if he were ready to commit murder.
Blimey, he can’t know how frightening he looks. I feel sorry for his office staff if they ever make a mistake.
As he came close to her, he eyed the rolled-up yoga mats under her arm as if they were smuggled explosives.
She found herself explaining before realizing he hadn’t asked. “They are for your father. It’s time for his Pilates.” She indicated Liam, who had his arms full of air cushions and exercise equipment.
“My fath
er?” George stopped. “Pilates? Since when?”
Liam must have also felt the disapproval coming off George in waves. “For about a month now, twice a week,” he said. “The other days we just do general exercises to loosen his limbs.”
George looked at both of them silently.
Millie gave the rolled-up mats to Liam. “You’d better get on. I’ll see you after.”
She remained standing in front of George, enduring his eyes on her. Whatever happened to the nice laughing man from the hilltop yesterday afternoon?
Finally as if coming to a decision, he asked her, “I’d like to talk to you about my father’s care. Are you free tomorrow evening?”
“What time? I usually help out with Mr Du Montfort’s dinner—”
“The staff can handle it.”
She swallowed. “Actually, I think it’s better if I am there. Just to make sure all goes well.” He could glare all he liked, but he wasn’t going to frighten her into changing her work routine.
George observed her for a moment. “All right. After my father has finished dinner. I’ll meet you at Brasserie Pascale at nine.” He looked at the line of the trees. “It’ll be dark. I’ll ask Evans to bring you.” He turned to go, then turned back. “You know Evans, don’t you?”
“Yes, the horse—er—yes, I know him.”
“Good.” And he was gone.
Millie realized she’d been holding her breath and blew it out. I can’t believe I was dreaming about kissing him. She turned to go back to the house and find Mrs B.
* * *
Kitchen
“No, he’s nothing like his dad,” Nurse Ann said. She was sorting different pills into a seven-day medication organizer.
Joanie looked up from her magazine. “He is drop-dead gorgeous,” she said, pushing her dark, curly hair into an untidy twist which she pinned with a pencil. “He has a sexy laugh and the most beautiful eyes I ever seen on a man. His father, boeph!” Joanie’s characteristic French exclamation when she wanted to show contempt beyond words. English weather was Boeph! American cuisine was Boeph, boeph!
