Wincing a little, Luis levered himself to his feet before joining her and, for some reason, he became aware of the lamplight making intriguing shadows on her rather square face. He noticed the way her breasts moved as she fidgeted with the cards. And he wondered what she’d say if she knew that he’d been sitting here wondering what she would look like naked. He pulled out a chair and sat down, wondering how long this madness was going to continue, and his mouth hardened. Because he had never slept with anyone on his payroll—and he didn’t intend to start, not with Carly.
He held out his hand for the pack.
‘So what are we going to play?’ she questioned.
It was unfortunate that her innocent question only fuelled his frustration, and suddenly all he could think about was the brush of her skin against his as he took the cards from her and he wanted more of it. He wanted to play a game which had nothing to do with hearts or clubs or diamonds. He wanted to play a very grown-up game which involved baring those intriguing curves and feasting his mouth and his hands on them, until he had sated his inconvenient hunger.
He shook his head, trying to clear the powerful images from his mind. ‘Do you want to try learning poker?’ he asked.
‘Is it easy?’
‘Not really.’
‘In that case, I’d love to.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
He shuffled the cards and dealt them and watched her brow pleating in concentration as he explained the rules to her. To his surprise he didn’t have to repeat them and she seemed to grasp the concept of the game with remarkable speed.
He had expected—what? That he’d beat her without trying and soon become bored with effortless victory as had happened so often in the past? He was midway through the second game when he realised she was good. Actually, she was very good. And he was having to keep all his wits about him to compete against a mind which was more agile than he’d given her credit for.
She was bright, he thought in confusion. She was very bright.
‘Are you sure you haven’t played this before?’ he questioned suspiciously.
‘If I’d played before, then why would I have allowed you to explain all the rules to me?’
‘Gamesmanship?’
‘That’s a very cynical viewpoint, Luis,’ she said as she studied the fanned-out cards in her hand.
‘Maybe life has made me cynical.’
She looked up and extended her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. ‘Oh, poor diddums!’
It wasn’t an expression he knew but the meaning was clear and Luis found himself laughing in response. But that confused him even more, because women didn’t usually amuse him, unless it was with the light, teasing comments they sometimes made when they were removing their clothes. Women had their place, but humour rarely featured in it. And suddenly he found himself intrigued by this badly dressed woman with her surprisingly street-sharp grasp of the complex card game. ‘You do realise,’ he said slowly, ‘that I know practically nothing about you.’
She looked up and the light from the lamp shone directly into her face, turning her eyes the colour of clear, bright honey. And Luis suddenly found himself thinking: They are beautiful eyes.
‘Why should you?’ she questioned. ‘It isn’t relevant to my work. You don’t need to know anything about me.’
‘A woman who deflects questions about herself?’ he drawled. ‘Can this really be happening, or am I dreaming?’
‘That’s an outrageous generalisation to make about women.’
‘And one which happens to be true. Generalisations usually are.’ He leaned back against the chair and narrowed his eyes. ‘So how long have you worked for me now? It must be a year?’
‘It’s two and a half, actually.’
‘That long?’
‘Time flies when you’re having fun,’ she said.
He heard the flippant note in her voice as he continued to study her. ‘Being a housekeeper is an unusual job for a woman your age, isn’t it?’ he observed slowly.
‘I suppose so.’ She shrugged. ‘But it’s a good job if you don’t have any qualifications. Or if you need somewhere to live,’ she added, almost as an afterthought.
He put his cards face down on the table. ‘You don’t have any qualifications? That surprises me. You are clearly bright enough—judging by the way you’ve just picked up a relatively complicated card game.’
Carly didn’t answer straight away and not just because his words sounded so patronising. She didn’t want to tell him about her hopes and dreams—she didn’t want to expose herself in any way to him because she sensed a certain danger in doing that. If it had been any other time, she might have distracted herself with a task which needed doing and hoped he’d forget about it. But it wasn’t any other time—it was now—and she was out of her usual comfort zone. She couldn’t pretend that she needed to go and see to something in the kitchen because she suspected he would overrule her. Luis wanted to talk and Luis was paying her wages. And what Luis wanted, he generally got.
‘I’ve been trying to make up for lost time,’ she said. ‘Which is why I did those evening classes. And why I’ve taken a couple of the science exams I really ought to have taken at school.’
‘You’ve been studying science?’
She heard the surprise in his voice. ‘Yes. What’s the matter with that? Some people do actually like those subjects.’
‘But they’re not usually women.’
‘Again, another outrageous generalisation.’ She shook her head in mock despair. ‘That’s the second sexist thing you’ve said within the space of two minutes, Luis.’
‘How can it be sexist if it’s true? Look at the stats if you don’t believe me. Men dominate the field of science. And maths,’ he added.
‘Which might have a lot more to do with teaching methods and expectations than because they have scientifically superior brains.’
His eyes glittered. ‘I think we’ll have to differ on that.’
Carly could feel herself getting hot as he ran a speculative gaze over her and once again she was aware of that whispering feeling of danger. ‘As you wish,’ she said, wanting to change the subject and talk about something else, but it seemed he was having none of it.
‘Which science were you good at?’ he persisted.
‘All of them. Biology and chemistry. Maths, too. I loved them all.’
‘So why—?’
‘Did I flunk my exams?’ She abandoned all pretence of playing the game and put her own cards down on the table. She didn’t want to answer this, but she knew Luis well enough to recognise that he wouldn’t let up. And pain grew less over time, didn’t it? As the years went by you could talk about things which had happened and make them sound almost conversational. ‘Because my father was...well, he was very ill when I was younger and as a consequence I missed out on quite a bit of school work.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and Carly almost wished he hadn’t because it was harder to keep things in perspective when his voice had softened like that.
‘Oh, these things happen,’ she said.
‘What exactly happened?’ he probed, his dark eyes narrowed. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Carly? People have sick parents but still manage to pass exams.’
His persistence was as difficult to ignore as it was surprising, since he wasn’t known for taking an interest in the personal life of his staff. And suddenly Carly found herself telling him. It was, she realised, a long time since she’d told anyone because people didn’t want to hear hard-luck stories, did they? It was the modern trend to portray your life as if it were just one long, happy party; to act as if you were having fun all the time.
‘It was one of those long-term chronic things,’ she said, her voice growing quieter. ‘He couldn’t get out of the house much, so I used to come home from school, and sit and tell him about my day. Sometimes I’d read to him—he liked that. Then by the time I’d cooked supper and the nurse had come in t
o put him to bed, I’d be too tired to do my homework. Or maybe I was just too lazy,’ she added, her attempt to lighten the mood failing spectacularly, for not a flicker of a smile had touched his suddenly sombre face.
‘And did he recover?’
His voice was still doing that dangerous thing. That soft thing which was making her feel things she had no right to feel—certainly not about him. It was making her feel vulnerable, and she’d spent a lifetime trying not to feel like that. Carly pressed her lips together. She never cried about it these days, but the mind could still play funny tricks on you, couldn’t it? Sometimes an innocent question could make your eyes well up without warning and she didn’t want that happening now. Not in front of her boss. She shook her head. ‘No. I’m afraid he didn’t. He died when I was nineteen.’
His ebony gaze seemed to pierce right through her skin.
‘And what about your mother?’ he questioned. ‘Wasn’t she around to help?’
This bit was more difficult. It was hard to convey what had happened without making Mum sound like some kind of wicked witch, which she wasn’t—she was just someone who could occasionally be a bit misguided.
‘She wasn’t very...good with illness. Some people aren’t,’ said Carly, injecting that breezy note into her voice which she’d mastered so well. The one which implied that she totally supported her mother’s decision to live out her own failed dreams through her beautiful, younger daughter. She remembered the way her mum used to talk about Bella making it big through modelling, but saying that you needed to pump money in to get money out. And that had been what had driven her. What had made her bleed their dwindling bank account dry—a big gamble which had ultimately failed. And even if it had succeeded—so what? As if material success could ever cancel out all the sadness which had been playing out at home. ‘My mother was busy helping my sister launch her career. She’s a model,’ she added.
‘Oh?’ Luis’s eyebrows rose. ‘That’s a term which usually covers a multitude of sins. Would I have heard of her?’
‘You might have done,’ said Carly. ‘Though maybe not yet. She does lots of catalogue work. And last year she was hired for the opening of a new shopping complex in Dubai.’
‘I see.’
Carly heard the trace of sarcasm in his voice and she bristled. Because that was the thing about families, wasn’t it? You could criticise your own until the cows came home, but woe betide anyone else who attempted to do the same.
‘She’s doing a lot of swimwear shoots at the moment and lingerie modelling. She’s very beautiful.’
‘Is she?’
Carly could hear the doubt in his voice and all her own insecurities came rushing in to swamp her, like dark strands of seaweed pulling her down into the water so that she couldn’t breathe. Did he think that someone like her was incapable of having a beautiful sister, with hair like white gold and naturally plump lips, which made you think she’d had Botox? A sister whose ankles and wrists were so delicate that sometimes you worried that they might snap, like spun sugar. Because Bella was all those things—and more.
And didn’t she have to believe that her sister would one day achieve the success which she and her mother had yearned for? Otherwise it would make all those years of sacrifice and heartbreak count for nothing. It would make the memory of her father’s reedy voice as he’d called in vain for his wife all the harder to bear. It would make the debts and the loss of their house seem a complete waste. And it would stop Carly from shrugging and accepting fate the way she’d learned to. Because the last thing she wanted was to feel bitter, when she remembered screwing up her application form for medical school into a tight little ball and hurling it onto the fire.
‘Yes,’ she said fiercely. ‘She’s the most exquisite woman you could ever wish to meet.’
For a moment, Luis didn’t say anything. He thought her mother sounded shallow and uncaring, but he wasn’t particularly shocked by that. She was a woman, wasn’t she? And he had yet to meet a single one who could be trusted.
But it must have been hard on Miss Mouse. Even if she was trying to make it sound as if she was okay with it, he could see her struggling to contain her emotions. And for once he felt a certain empathy with her, even though dealing with a woman’s emotions was something he tended to steer clear of. Because this was different. This wasn’t someone who was breaking her heart just because she’d put on a couple of kilos, or because a man refused to buy her a diamond ring.
Instead, he saw a bright girl who was good at science, who had flunked her exams because she’d been busy caring for her father. But he wondered who had been looking out for her.
He remembered flitting in and out of consciousness after his recent operation, wondering who had been stroking his brow during the surreal night which had followed. The woman with the soft voice which had washed over him like a cool balm. Next day he’d asked the nurse if he had been hallucinating and she’d told him it had been the girl with the ponytail, in the old raincoat. He remembered frowning and wondering who she was talking about. A kind girl, the nurse had added, and that was when he’d realised that she’d meant Carly.
She had visited him a few times after that and in a strange way he had found himself looking forward to her visits—mainly because she always seemed able to plump up the pillows and make him feel even more comfortable than the nurses. She’d sat beside him rather primly and had suggested he breathe deeply and move his ankles around. Actually, in a quiet way she had been a bit of a tyrant, but he seemed to have responded well to her general bossiness. And then one day she’d just stopped coming, and that had been that.
He picked up his coffee and sipped it. Despite her occasional bursts of fierceness, her company had been surprisingly tolerable since they’d been alone in the house, even if she did insist on scurrying away to her room at every available opportunity. Even if she seemed to play down every womanly trait she possessed...
At least tonight she wasn’t wearing that ugly uniform she always insisted on, though she had chosen a cotton shirt in yet another forgettable shade of beige. It was not a colour palette he would have ever chosen for her. With those eyes the colour of iced tea he might have dressed her in flame—or maybe scarlet. He gave the glimmer of a smile. Even if she was the antithesis of a scarlet woman.
His gaze flickered to her hands. Working hands, with short, unpainted nails which matched her scrubbed face and no-nonsense hairstyle. Briefly, he wondered why she was content to sublimate her femininity like this. Was it because she had stood for too long in the shadow of her beautiful sister? Or just that caring for her father during her formative years had blotted out her more frivolous side?
He thought that her childhood sounded pretty grim. Or maybe it was that all families were essentially dysfunctional. The wounds they inflicted never really healed, did they? He thought of his own family as the rain began to batter against the window again.
‘This weather is crazy,’ he said, his voice growing hard with frustration.
‘Of course it is. We’re in England.’
‘But we don’t have to be.’ He put his cup down with a rattle and stared at her. ‘Do you have a passport?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Good.’ He picked up his cards again. ‘Then make sure you’re ready to leave first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘Leave?’ Carly blinked. ‘Leave for where?’
‘St Jean Cap Ferrat. I have a house there.’
‘You mean...’ She looked at him in confusion. ‘Cap Ferrat in the south of France?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is there any other?’
‘But why do you want to go there, and why so suddenly?’
‘Because I’m bored,’ he said silkily.
Carly looked at him uneasily. She’d heard enough stories about his Mediterranean villa to know what it was like. It was where the beautiful people hung out. Where someone like her would never fit in. ‘I...I think I’d prefer to stay here, if that’s okay with you.�
�
‘But it is not okay with me,’ he returned, his voice edged with a steely arrogance which cut through her like a blade. ‘You are being paid an enormous amount of money to make my life easier, Carly, which means doing as I wish. And number one on my wish list is to get out of this damned rain and feel a little warmth on my skin again. So why don’t you wipe that dazed look off your face and start packing?’
CHAPTER FOUR
HATEFUL, ARROGANT MAN.
Even the beauty of her surroundings couldn’t blot out Carly’s indignation at the way Luis had spoken to her just before they’d left England.
You are being paid an enormous amount of money.
Yes, she knew that.
To make my life easier.
She knew that, too. So did that give him the right to treat her like a portable piece of property who could just be shifted around when it suited him? Her mouth tightened. But what Luis wanted, Luis got, didn’t he? And if the South American billionaire decided to uproot to his villa in the south of France because he was bored and wanted to feel the heat of the sun on his body, then that was exactly what would happen.
But Carly forced herself to stay positive as she packed her suitcase, concentrating instead on the massive bonus he was paying her. It made her dream of getting to med school one step closer. It was so close now that she could almost taste it. All she had to do was tolerate the arrogant Argentinian playboy for a little while longer and then she would be free.
They had spent a surreal morning getting here, boarding a private jet, which had flown them from London to Nice, where they’d been spotted by a lone paparazzi who apparently spent his days waiting for famous passengers to arrive on the incoming flights. Carly watched as he leapt in front of them, shooting off a role of film as Luis walked through the airport terminal.
He wasn’t striding at his usual powerful pace, but his walking stick didn’t seem to deter the attentions of a group of women who converged on him, looking like beautiful clones with their sun-kissed hair and frayed denim shorts. Instantly, they began to thrust pieces of paper in front of his face.
The Housekeeper's Awakening Page 5
