City Cinderella

by Catherine George

  ‘To your regained health,’ she countered, and drank in turn. ‘Do sit down.’ She curled up in the smaller chair and Lucas settled himself in the larger one, taking such open pleasure in looking at her that she felt her cheeks grow hot.

  ‘You look very appealing tonight.’

  She stared at him in surprise. Her clothes were old and her face was as bare as her feet. The only thing she had going for her was newly washed hair. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I obviously disturbed your work. Is it going well?’

  ‘Surprisingly enough, yes.’

  ‘Why surprising?’

  ‘I’ve had a lot of distraction lately.’

  ‘To put it mildly. Which brings me to one of the reasons for seeing you.’ He gave her a straight black look. ‘Emily, I know my choice of phrase was tactless in reference to our mutual problem, but I meant the worst for you, not for me.’

  Emily sipped some of her wine, eyeing him over the rim of her glass. ‘Very true. I’d be the one left holding the baby.’

  His face darkened. ‘As I told you, I won’t shirk my responsibilities.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Nice?’ He gritted his teeth, then leaned forward, his face urgent. ‘If you’ll only come to my place when I’m not there, how will you let me know?’

  ‘I’ll leave a note on the kitchen jotter.’

  He scowled. ‘Damnation, Emily, we’re not talking groceries here!’

  Her chin lifted. ‘True. But it’s not something I care to discuss over the phone, either.’

  Lucas drained his glass. ‘You’re very calm about this.’

  Then she was a fantastic actress. ‘Not really.’

  He got up to put the glass on the table and looked round at the room. ‘If you are pregnant you can’t stay here,’ he said flatly.

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Imagine lugging a baby-buggy up those stairs.’

  Lucas winced. ‘You’ll need somewhere else to live.’

  Emily got up. ‘I’ll meet that particular problem—if there is one—when I come to it.’

  He looked down at her in silence for a moment. ‘I’m going back to work next Monday.’

  ‘Are you fit enough for that?’

  ‘I will be.’

  ‘Then I’ll come round to clean that morning, as usual.’

  Silence fell between them, and at last Lucas put on his jacket and took an envelope from the pocket. ‘You should have reminded me,’ he said huskily.

  Emily flushed as she took a cheque from the envelope, her eyes wide when she saw the extravagant amount. Her head flew up. ‘What’s this for, Lucas? Personal services?’

  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ he said angrily. ‘If you count it by the hour, as we’ve always done, you’ll find it comes out about right. I meant it as a token of appreciation for all you did for me, not an insult.’

  Emily badly wanted to tear up the cheque and throw the pieces in his face. Instead she gave it back without drama, her hand steady instead of shaking with fury. ‘Make a new cheque out, please. Just give me the usual amount I get every Friday. Or I don’t work for you any more.’

  Lucas glared at her, a pulse throbbing at the corner of his mouth as he took the cheque, screwed it into a ball, and hurled it into her wastebasket. In angry silence he took his cheque-book out, scrawled his signature and the amount she stipulated, then handed it to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said politely.

  ‘Are you like this with everyone?’ he demanded. ‘Or only with me?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘In some ways you’re the most difficult woman I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Better than being the easiest,’ she retorted, then wished she hadn’t when his eyes lit with an unsettling gleam.

  Emily swallowed. ‘I’m sure you have things to do, so don’t let me keep you.’

  ‘You want me to go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You haven’t thanked me for the flowers yet.’

  ‘I’m sure I did.’

  Lucas moved closer. ‘But not in the way I hoped. I walked all the way here to see you, clutching that damn bouquet, only to get thrown out in the street for my pains, remember. You owe me, Emily Warner.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She backed away, her mouth suddenly dry. ‘And I’ve obviously given you the wrong idea by inviting you to my room.’

  He shook his head. ‘You made it clear this morning that you don’t want me. Which makes no difference. I still want you.’

  Too late she realised she had nowhere to go. Lucas had backed her up against the bed, the edge of which fitted nicely behind her knees. If he moved only a fraction, she would fall. She shivered as she pictured all too vividly what might come next.

  ‘Just a kiss, Emily,’ he whispered. ‘As thanks for the flowers, or goodnight, or whatever reason suits you best—’

  At the first touch of his lips on hers Emily’s legs buckled. She sat abruptly on the bed and Lucas fell on his knees beside her, hauling her against his chest to kiss her with such force and hunger that she yielded to him, powerless to control her response.

  ‘You see what you reduce me to?’ he demanded roughly, raising his head a fraction. ‘Does it give you a kick to see me on my knees?’

  She shook her head wordlessly, and Lucas stared down into her flushed face for a moment as though expecting her to speak. When she remained silent he released her and got wearily to his feet.

  ‘Time I went, obviously.’ He pulled on his jacket and, utterly deflated, Emily scrambled to her feet.

  ‘Thank you for bringing my jacket back.’ She took in a deep breath and folded her arms across her chest. ‘It’s no use. I lied, Lucas. You know very well that I do—’ She stopped, biting her lip.

  ‘What?’ he demanded, his face tense.

  ‘Want you.’

  He lunged towards her in triumph, but she held out fending arms. ‘No, Lucas. It doesn’t change anything. Even,’ she added deliberately, ‘if the worst comes to the worst.’

  Lucas, abruptly still, gave her a look which raised the hairs on the back of her neck. ‘What the hell are you saying? If you are expecting my child, surely you can’t expect me to stay tamely out of your life?’

  Emily met the look head-on. ‘If we had created a child within a relationship it would be different. But in our case it was an accident I keep feeling I should have prevented.’

  ‘How do you work that out? In that particular situation you didn’t stand a chance, against me or any other man frantic to make love to you.’ Lucas leaned against the door, arms folded. ‘Tell me—purely as a hypothesis—if I hadn’t been ill, and we’d gone through the accepted mating rituals of dining out and trips to the theatre and so on, before we finally became lovers, would you feel different on the subject?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, because it doesn’t apply in this case. If you hadn’t been ill, it wouldn’t have happened—any of it,’ she said tartly. ‘I’m just your cleaner, remember.’

  ‘How could I forget? You keep reminding me often enough.’ He looked suddenly tired. ‘All right, you win. But,’ he added, his eyes spearing hers, ‘keep your promise, Emily.’

  ‘To tell you the worst?’ she countered. ‘I’ll leave a note for you next Monday. I should know by then.’

  Lucas gave her a long, hard look, hesitated as though he meant to say something, then, with a muttered curse, opened the door and strode out to race down the stairs at a rate that terrified her. Emily ran to watch him out of sight, but the street door closed so softly it was some time before she went down to make sure he’d gone. And, instead of allowing herself the relief of tears, she looked through Nat’s kitchen cupboards to borrow a vase, rescued the undamaged blooms from the sheaf of daffodils and tulips, and carried the result up to her room. Which looked depressingly empty now Lucas had removed his forceful presence from it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE rest of the week dragged by. Emily seized the phone expectantly every time it rang, but it was never L
ucas. Not that she had really expected to hear from him after sending him away. But she’d hoped. And missed him so badly by the end of the week that after finishing her Friday session at the Donaldsons’ she gave in to impulse and ran across the street to see him. But turned away before she even reached the entrance to his building, afraid Lucas wouldn’t even let her through the door.

  Emily trudged back to Spitalfields, cleaned Mark’s rooms, checked that nothing needed doing in Nat’s, went early to bed to toss and turn through another restless night, then woke next morning to find that she was not expecting Lucas Tennent’s child after all. Limp with relief, along with other emotions she put down to hormonal imbalance, she rang Lucas immediately, but her euphoria faded when his recorded voice told her to leave a message. Unwilling to entrust this particular piece of news to his answer-machine, Emily was forced to keep to the original, unsatisfactory plan of leaving a note for Lucas after her Monday cleaning session.

  Ginny was visiting in-laws with Charlie, so with no Saturday morning rendezvous with her friend to brighten her day, Emily went shopping locally to pass an hour or two. Later, laden with bags, she treated herself to the rare indulgence of a fry-up in the Market Café to put off returning to her room.

  From then on, Emily’s weekend went rapidly downhill. Back in her solitary room, all set to put in a good few hours on her laptop now her worries were over, she experienced her first run-in with writer’s block. After a frustrating session of scrapping every sentence the minute it came up on the screen, she gave up at last in disgust. Feeling headachey and out of sorts, she took her shopping down to Nat’s kitchen and listened to his radio while she spent a more productive session making vegetable soup and her mother’s special recipe for tomato sauce. Catering sorted for the immediate future, Emily made sure Nat’s kitchen was pristine afterwards, consigned her pots of sauce to his freezer, ready for future pasta suppers, and took her container of healthful soup up to her room.

  Afterwards, Emily stood at the window, staring moodily over the rooftops towards the backdrop of City towers as she wondered how to fill the rest of the day. One of the new paperbacks she’d bought or a session in front of the television were the only options in the ancient, empty house she’d never actually been alone in before. Mark was away on a course, Nat was restored to his wife and family and, worst of all, Lucas’s recorded message was the only response to two more phone calls. She wished now that she’d agreed to go home for the weekend. But when her mother had suggested it Emily had been waiting for nature to inform her of her fate, too tense to enjoy a stay in the little cottage her parents had bought when they vacated the vicarage. But now everything was back to normal again it would have been good to spend time at home. Andy, his wife Bridget and their two small sons usually came to share the Sunday roast when Emily was down, and in her present mood she would have enjoyed their boisterous company. Instead, she was rapidly growing bored with her own.

  Emily had never welcomed any morning more thankfully than the one which dawned the following Monday. She set off for her cleaning sessions with a feeling of escape, so glad to quit the elegant green walls of her solitary confinement that she walked briskly, revelling in the noise and bustle of traffic and passers-by. But when she left the Donaldsons’ immaculate flat later her mood deteriorated as she crossed the cobbled street to Lucas Tennent’s building. It would be strange, now, to work there in his absence. She’d given up trying to ring him over the weekend, which meant a note on his kitchen jotter. On her way up in the lift, Emily wondered whether to try for humorous and light or just to ask him to ring her.

  But when Emily unlocked Lucas’s door a note was unnecessary. He was in the hall, waiting for her. Without a word, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her surprised, parted lips with a hunger she responded to so fiercely she felt his heart thud against her as he yanked her up on tiptoe against his chest.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she panted, when she could.

  ‘I’m waiting for you,’ he said raggedly, and began kissing her again until Emily found the strength from somewhere to push him away a little.

  ‘Aren’t you well?’ she demanded, touching a hand to his forehead.

  ‘Now you’re here I’ve never felt better,’ Lucas assured her with a triumphant smile. He seized her by the waist and swung her round in a dizzying circle, then set her on her feet with a look of horrified apology. ‘Hell, I’m sorry—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not pregnant,’ Emily blurted.

  Lucas stood utterly still, the animation draining from his face. ‘When did you know?’ he said conversationally.

  ‘Saturday morning.’

  His eyes glittered. ‘Two days ago? And it never occurred to you to contact me?’

  Emily’s chin lifted. ‘Of course it did, but you weren’t around. I couldn’t leave that kind of message on your machine. So I thought I’d just leave a note today, as promised.’

  ‘Would you have preferred that to telling me face to face?’ he demanded.

  ‘No. I’m very glad to see you,’ she told him. Which was an understatement. ‘You haven’t told me why you’re at home, by the way.’

  ‘I decided to take more time off.’

  ‘You could have rung to tell me.’

  ‘Do you think I’m a fool, Emily? If I had you wouldn’t be here now.’ His eyes narrowed, putting her antennae on red alert. ‘So. There’s no outcome to worry about, after all.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You must be pleased.’

  ‘Of course I am.’ She looked away. ‘If you’d rung me over the weekend, I could have put you out of your suspense.’

  Lucas took her chin in his hand and raised her face to his. ‘You made it pretty plain that night that you wanted nothing more to do with me. Did you really expect me to ring you after that?’

  ‘No,’ she said gruffly.

  Lucas thawed enough to smile a little. ‘I’ve been away. I went down to visit my mother. The night I came to see you I had some crazy idea about asking you to go with me, but that didn’t work out.’

  Emily could have cried. After the endless, boring weekend she’d just endured it was painful to think she could have been with Lucas. Even if it had meant meeting his mother.

  ‘I hoped you’d ring, because I wanted to explain things a bit better than I did last time.’ She paused, searching for a way to make him understand.

  ‘Go on,’ he prompted.

  She looked him in the eye. ‘The thing is, Lucas, if I had been pregnant I couldn’t have handled a relationship with you—of any kind—based on obligation.’

  Lucas frowned. ‘So if the worst had come to the famous worst, how would you have wanted things arranged? It would have been my child as well as yours. Even if you’d refused to have anything to do with me yourself I would have demanded a father’s rights. Unless—’ He stopped abruptly.

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘You’d decided not to go through with it.’

  Emily swallowed. ‘A termination?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Though that never occurred to me.’

  She shivered. ‘It never occurred to me, either. Good daughter of the vicarage that I am.’

  ‘So you are. I’d forgotten that.’ He rubbed a hand over his chin, eyeing her soberly. ‘It would have made life doubly awkward for you if there had been a child.’

  ‘Very true,’ she agreed. ‘I suppose I would have coped somehow; so would my parents. But I’m grateful it didn’t come to that. Though if it had I’m sure you and I could have come to an amicable agreement of some kind. About the baby, I mean.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so,’ he said dryly. ‘But, since there is no baby, where do we go from here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh come on Emily,’ he said impatiently. ‘After what happened the moment you were through my door, can you honestly deny the chemistry between us?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Then no more of this nonsense
about employer and cleaner.’ He smiled evilly. ‘Or I’ll dispense with your services, Miss Warner.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Would you really do that?’

  ‘Damn right I would, if it was to my advantage.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ she said hotly. ‘You know I need the money.’

  ‘All’s fair in love, Emily!’

  ‘Love?’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you mean lust?’

  ‘I know exactly what I mean,’ he cut back.

  They stared at each other in hostile silence for a moment, then Lucas held out his hand. ‘Come and sit down for a moment.’

  ‘I need to make a start—’ she began, then thought better of it. If he really was giving her the sack she wasn’t working for free. ‘On the other hand, Mr Tennent, if you are dispensing with my services I might as well get back to the jobs I’m paid for.’

  Lucas grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him until they reached the familiar sofa.

  ‘Sit,’ he commanded.

  Emily’s eyes flashed fire, but in the end she perched on the very edge of the sofa, her back ramrod-straight.

  ‘Good,’ approved Lucas. ‘Now listen.’

  ‘If you really want to put an end to my cleaner/employer objections you can stop ordering me about, for a start,’ she snapped, and he grinned and sat down beside her.

  ‘That’s my girl. Or do you object to the term “girl”?’

  She sniffed. ‘It’s better than your usual “woman”.’

  ‘I like the sound of that,’ said Lucas, his eyes softening.

  ‘Well, I don’t—’

  ‘I meant “usual”. It implies continuity.’ He took her hand. ‘So let’s sort this out. I am thirty-one, single, solvent, and with no significant female presence in my life at this moment in time other than you, Miss Warner. You are—how old?’

  ‘Twenty-four, but—’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. You have recently severed all connection with the unspeakable Mr Denny, and unless you met someone new last week I take it there’s no man in your life right now other than me.’ Lucas leaned close. ‘You’ve seen me at my worst—so no nasty surprises there—we both enjoy each other’s company, and physically we’re very definitely compatible. Are you with me?’