by Fiona Harper
So much for an even keel. The world was still stubbornly off-kilter and refusing to go right side up.
She lifted Chloe’s blue teddy from where she’d placed it on her pillow the night before and pressed it to her face. For a while it had smelled of her daughter, but the scent of strawberry shampoo had long since faded. Ellie kissed it with reverence and placed it beside the case.
She’d only allowed herself a few treasures from home, and they had been the first things she’d pulled from her luggage when she’d unpacked. Propped on the bedside table was a single silver picture frame. The photo it held was her favourite of her and Sam together, taken on their honeymoon. They’d handed their camera to the retired couple in the next hotel room and asked them to take a snap on the day they’d travelled home.
She preferred this picture to the forced poses of her wedding photos. They were laughing at each other, hair swept sideways by the wind, not even aware of the exact moment the shutter had opened. She traced a finger over her husband’s cheek.
Her beautiful Sam.
He had been so warm and funny, with his lopsided grin and wayward hair. When he’d died it had been like losing a vital organ. Living and breathing were just so hard without him.
They’d met on the first day of primary school and been inseparable ever since, marrying one week after they’d both graduated from university. Sam had taken a teaching post at the village school and she’d commuted to the City, working as a PA for a big City firm, and they’d saved to buy the rundown cottage on the outskirts that they’d fallen in love with. They’d transformed the tumble-down wreck bit by bit, scouring architectural salvage yards for stained glass, old taps and doorknobs. They had even rescued an old roll-top bath out of one of their neighbour’s gardens—removing the geraniums before it was plumbed in.
When the last lick of paint had dried, they had proclaimed it their dream home and immediately started trying for a family. The following spring, they’d come home from the hospital with Chloe, a tiny pink bundle with fingers and toes so cute they’d verged on the miraculous. Ellie had almost felt guilty about being more happy than a person had a right to be.
But one wet afternoon had robbed her of all of it.
Her smile dissolved and she pushed the frame flat and folded the photo up in her pyjamas before tucking it into a well-padded corner of her sturdiest case.
When she’d moved back home after her rehabilitation, well-meaning friends and family had taken one of two approaches—some had wanted her to freeze-frame time and never do anything, the rest had dropped great clanging hints at her feet about moving on with her life. Their insensitivity had astounded her.
Move on? She hadn’t wanted to move on! She’d wanted things back the way they were before. Chloe’s pink wellies in the hallway. Sam bent over the kitchen table marking homework. But that was impossible. So she’d settled for hibernating in the present. But hibernating hadn’t taken long to become festering. Perhaps she should be glad that events in the village had forced her to leave.
She zipped up her bulging case, then sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the elegant surroundings.
Her journey had led her here, to Larkford Place. Unfortunately only a brief pit-stop. She hadn’t a clue what she’d do next. She could stay at the cottage for a few weeks if there weren’t any holiday bookings. But that would be going back, and now she was finally ready to move forward she didn’t want to do that.
However, she didn’t really have much choice after last night.
It was time she hauled her things down to the car. She picked up a case in one hand and stuffed a smaller one under her other arm, leaving her hand free to open the door. She tugged it open and froze.
Mark Wilder was standing straight in front of her, fist bunched ready as if to knock.
Mark dropped his hand, stuffed it in his back pocket and pulled out a wad of folded twenty-pound notes. He held them out to Ellie.
‘I thought you might need this.’
She stared at him as if he was offering her a hand grenade.
‘For the shopping,’ he added.
‘Shopping?’
‘Yes. Shopping. You know, with money…’
He waved the notes in front of her chin. Her eyes moved left and right, left and right, following the motion of his hand.
‘Money?’
This was harder work than he’d thought it would be.
‘Yes. Money. It’s what we use in the civilised world when we’ve run out of camels to barter with.’
‘But I thought…’ She fidgeted with a small silver locket hanging round her neck. ‘You’d…I’d be…’
Colour flared on her cheeks and she stepped away from him. He looked at the notes in his hand. She didn’t seem to understand the concept of shopping, which was a definite minus in a housekeeper. His decision to view last night as an embarrassing one-off started to seem premature.
He stepped through the door frame and followed her into the room. There were cases and bags on the bed. They were lumpy enough to look as if they had been filled in a hurry. The zips weren’t done up all the way, and something silky was falling out of the holdall nearest to him. He really should stop looking at it.
Ellie followed his gaze and dived for the bag, stuffing the item back in so deep that most of her arm disappeared. Now he was just staring at a pile of cases.
Cases? He tilted his head. Oh. Right. She thought he was going to give her the sack.
Well, as tempting as the idea might be, he couldn’t afford to do that at present. Firstly because he’d never hear the end of it from Charlie, and secondly because he really did need someone here to look after the house while he was travelling. He was due on another plane in less than twenty-four hours and he simply didn’t have the luxury of finding someone else. It had been hard enough to fill the position at short notice when Mrs Timms had decided to leave.
Maybe it was time to work some of the legendary Wilder magic and put this Ellie Bond at ease. If he showed her he was laughing off the incident last night, it might help her relax.
Mark waited for her to finish fiddling with the bag, and then pulled a smile out of his arsenal—the one guaranteed to melt ice maidens at fifty paces.
‘Well, I’m glad to see you’re still in your own room, anyway.’ He threw in a wink, just to make sure she knew he was joking. ‘With your track record, we can’t be too careful.’
Hmm. Strange. Nothing happened. No thaw whatsoever.
‘There’s no need to go on about that. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be here, and I’m not familiar with the layout of the house yet, and I just…the moon went in…I counted three instead of four…’ The babbling continued.
There was one thing that was puzzling him. If she’d wanted a bathroom, why had she trekked down the hall?
‘Why didn’t you just use the en-suite?’
She stopped mid-babble. ‘En-suite?’
He walked over to a cream-coloured panelled door on the opposite wall to the bed, designed to match the wardrobe on the other side of the chimney breast. He nudged it gently with his knuckles and it clicked open. Her jaw lost all muscle tone as she walked slowly towards the compact but elegant bathroom.
She shook her head, walked in, looked around and walked out again, still blessedly silent. Actually, his new housekeeper seemed relatively normal when she stopped biting and yelling and babbling.
He had a sudden flashback to the night before—to the baggy blue and white pyjamas that hadn’t been quite baggy enough to disguise her curves—and he started to get a little flustered himself.
‘I have a…bathroom…inside my wardrobe?’
He gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘Actually, it’s not quite as Narnia-like as it seems. The wardrobe is that side.’ He pointed to an identical cream door the other side of the chimney breast. ‘We just had the door to the en-suite built to match. Secret doors seem to suit a house like this.’
The look on her face told him sh
e thought it was the stupidest idea ever.
‘I thought it was fun,’ he said, willing her to smile back at him, to join him in a little light banter and laugh the whole thing off as an unfortunate first meeting. She just blinked.
‘Anyway,’ he continued with a sigh, ‘let’s just see if we can get through the next twenty-four hours without something—or someone—going bump in the night.’
‘I told you before. It was an accident,’ she said, scrunching her forehead into parallel lines.
It looked as if she was tempted to bite him again. Humour was obviously not the way to go. Back to business, then. That had to be safe territory, didn’t it?
‘Okay, well take this for now.’ He placed the money on the chest of drawers while she watched him suspiciously. ‘I’m getting a credit card sorted out for the household expenses, and a laptop so we can keep in touch via e-mail. I just need you to sign a few forms, if that’s all right?’
She nodded, but her eyes never left him, as if she was expecting him to make a sudden move.
Mark wandered over to the bed, picked up the sad-looking blue bear sitting next to one of the cases and gave it a cursory inspection. He wouldn’t have expected her to be the sort who slept with a teddy, but, hey, whatever rocked her boat. He tossed it back on the bed. It bounced and landed on the floor. Ellie rushed to scoop it up, clutched it to her chest and glared at him.
He raked his fingers through his hair. It was time to beat a hasty retreat.
‘I’ll see you at dinner, then?’ He raised his hands on a non-threatening gesture. An insane image of him as a lion tamer, holding off a lioness with a rickety old chair, popped into his head. He wouldn’t be surprised if she growled at him.
‘Fine.’ It almost was a growl.
‘Would you join us? I’ve invited Charlie to dinner, to say thank you for finding me a—’
The word hellcat had been poised to fall out of his mouth and he stopped himself just in time.
Not hellcat. Housekeeper! Just try and remember that.
‘—for finding me a housekeeper at such short notice. I thought it would be a good way to break the ice before I disappear again.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. Her eyes told him she’d rather walk on hot coals.
Fine. If she wanted to keep it cool and impersonal, he could keep it cool and impersonal. Probably.
‘If you could be ready to serve up at eight o’clock…?’
Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
He backed out through the door and started walking towards the main staircase. Charlie had a lot to answer for. Her perfect-for-the-job friend was perfectly strange, for one thing! He took himself downstairs and sat on the velvet-covered sofa in front of the fire. Jet lag was making it hard to think, and he had the oddest feeling that his conversation with Ellie had just been weird enough for him still to be asleep and dreaming.
She was clearly barking mad. If the ‘lost-my-bedroom’ incident had planted a seed of suspicion in his mind, their talk just now and what he had seen early this morning had definitely added fertiliser.
His body clock was still refusing to conform to Greenwich Mean Time, and last night he’d dozed, tossed and turned, read some of a long-winded novel and eventually decided on a hot shower to clear his head. On the way to his bathroom a flash of movement outside the window had prompted him to change course and peer out of the half-open curtains.
Down in the garden he’d spotted Ellie, marching round the garden, arms waving. She’d been talking to herself! At six in the morning. In her pyjamas.
Pyjamas.
Another rush of something warm and not totally unfamiliar hit him. The pleasant prickle of awareness from the close proximity of a woman was one of the joys of life. But he didn’t think he’d ever experienced it after seeing a woman wearing what looked to be her grandad’s pyjamas before. Silk and satin, yes. Soft stripy brushed cotton, no. There it went again! The rush. His earlobes were burning, for goodness’ sake!
He’d practically had a heart attack when she’d charged into him in the dark last night. He’d been in such a deep sleep only moments before he’d hardly known who he was, let alone where he was. The small frame and slender wrists of his captive might have fooled him into thinking it was a lad he’d held captive, but when the light had flickered on he’d realised he couldn’t have been more wrong. It certainly hadn’t been a boy he had by the ankle, intent on dragging him down to the local police station. He’d started to wonder if he’d been dreaming. Those soft blonde curls belonged on a Botticelli cherub.
Just then the bite mark on his left shoulder began to throb.
No, not an angel—his instincts had been right from the start. A hellcat.
It would be wise to remind himself of that. He didn’t have to like this woman; he just had to pay her to keep his house running. He would keep his distance from Ellie Bond and he would not think of her in that way—even if there was something refreshingly different about her.
Insanity, he reminded himself. That’s what’s different about her. A woman like that is trouble. You never know what she’s going to do next.
A yawn crept up on him. He told himself it would be a bad idea to fall asleep again, but there was something very soothing about watching the logs in the fire crackle and spark. He pushed a cushion under his head and settled to watch the flames shimmer and dance.
When he opened his eyes again the flames had disappeared and the embers were just grey dust. Now and then a patch of orange would glow brightly, then fade away again. He pulled himself out of the comfortable dent he had created in the sofa.
From somewhere in the direction of the kitchen he could hear female voices. Was Charlie here already? He looked at his watch. He’d been asleep for more than three hours. He walked towards the dining room and met Charlie, coming to fetch him. His stomach gurgled. His sleep patterns might be sabotaged, but his appetite was clearly on Larkford time.
‘Now, don’t go upsetting my friend, Mark. She needs this job, and you are not allowed to mess it up for her.’
Hang on a second. He was the employer. Surely this was all supposed to be the other way round? Ellie was supposed to do a good job for him, try not to upset him. At the moment he was wondering whether his house would still be standing when he returned in a few weeks.
He opened his mouth to say as much, then decided not to bother. There was no arguing with his bossy cousin when she got like this. It had been the same when he’d tried to talk her out of taking a stray kitten home one summer, when he’d been fourteen and she’d been ten. Charlie had worshipped that cat, but he’d never quite forgotten the lattice of fine red marks the animal had left on his hands and forearms after he’d agreed to carry it back to the house for her.
Unfortunately it had taken another twenty years before he’d been cured of the habit of trying to rescue pathetic strays of all shapes and sizes.
Helena had been like that. Soft, fragile-looking, vulnerable. And he hadn’t been able to resist her. Something inside him swelled with protective instinct when he came across women like that. And Helena had been the neediest of them all. Not that he’d minded. He would have gladly spent all his days looking after her.
Three months after Charlie had found the kitten, when its tummy was round and its fur had a healthy sheen, it had disappeared and never come back. That was the problem with strays. It was in their nature to be selfish.
So he avoided strays altogether now, both feline and female.
Oh, women always wanted something from him. But he made them play by his rules, only mixing with women who wanted simpler things: money, fame by association, attention. Those things were easy to give and cost him nothing.
Mark was pulled back to the present by the aroma of exotic herbs and spices wafting his way. Charlie didn’t need to steer him any more. The smell was a homing beacon, leading him up the corridor and into the dining room. He dropped into a chair opposite Charlie and waited, all his taste buds on full alert.
<
br /> There was a glimpse of an apron and blonde hair through the doorway as Ellie disappeared back into the kitchen to fetch the last in a succession of steaming dishes. Mark swallowed the pool of saliva that had collected in the bottom of his mouth. He hoped she wouldn’t be too long.
She finally appeared. At least he thought it was her. She was cool and collected and quiet, and set down the last dish in an array of lavish Thai recipes. Not a hint of growling or biting about her.
Good. He was glad she’d pulled herself together.
His stomach, however, didn’t care how the transformation had happened. It grumbled at him to just get over it and start shovelling food in its general direction. Which he did without delay.
CHAPTER FOUR
ELLIE dished up. Her heart jumped so hard in her chest she was sure the serving spoon must be pulsing in her fingers. What was happening to her? Mark Wilder had done nothing but walk into the room and sit down and her body had gone wild. She finished doling out the food and sat down, careful to keep her eyes on her plate lest her stampeding hormones concentrate themselves and get ready for another charge.
The man was insanely good-looking!
The TV cameras hadn’t done him justice at all. No longer did she want to scold the reporter for drooling; she wanted to congratulate her for forming a coherent sentence.
Last night she’d been too shocked to register the weird physiological response he provoked in her, and this afternoon she’d been too angry. At herself, mainly, but she’d vented at him instead. It was her stupid brain injury that was to blame. She’d never had problems with runaway emotions before that. Now, any little thing could trigger overwhelming frustration, or rage, or despair.
