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He looked at the warm light spilling from Larkford’s every window. He really ought to get back to his guests.
She moved slightly, and the friction of material between his fingers reminded him he was still holding the lapels of the jacket firmly. He really should let go. But Ellie was looking up at him, her eyes soft and unguarded, just as they had been when she’d stared down at him from the landing.
He’d liked that look then, and he liked it now. There wasn’t a hint of greed or artifice in it. And that was a rare thing in his world. It was as if she saw something that surprised her, something that everyone else missed.
He’d seen her skirting the edge of the party, boredom clear on her face. And when he’d turned back to Melodie and the record producer he’d been chatting to he’d suddenly seen the whole gathering through Ellie’s eyes, as if he’d been given X-ray specs that cut out the glare and the glitter, revealing everyone and everything for who and what they really were. Not much of what he’d seen would benefit from close scrutiny.
But out here on the lawn everything felt very real indeed. Uncomfortably so. His heart was hammering in his chest—and it wasn’t from his race across the lawn.
She was tantalisingly close, her feelings clearly written in her face, floating across the surface. He felt her warm breath on his neck, sending shivers to the roots of his hair. He clenched the lapels of the dinner jacket, pulling her closer until only a molecule of air prevented their faces from touching. Normally he’d go in for the kill now, take the advantage while he had it, but he waited.
What for, he wasn’t exactly sure.
The world seemed to shrink into the tiny space between his lips and hers. At least Ellie was aware of nothing but this, nothing beyond it. And, since remembering past or future was a struggle sometimes anyway, she finally let go and just existed in the moment. This particular moment revolved around a choice, one that was hers alone: to flow with the moment or push against it.
She was so tired of fighting herself, tired of pushing herself, of always keeping everything under constant surveillance. Just once she wanted to follow an impulse rather than resist it.
She wanted this.
Hesitantly, she pressed her lips against his, splaying her hands across his chest to steady herself. For a moment he did nothing, and her heart plummeted, but then he pulled her to him, sliding his hands under his suit jacket to circle her waist, and kissed her back.
All those women who fluttered and twittered merely at the sight of him would have melted clean away if they’d been on the receiving end of a kiss like this. Every mad hormonal urge she’d been fighting for the last few weeks roared into life and she didn’t resist a single one.
It was a kiss of need, exploration…perfection.
She didn’t need to think, to struggle to remember anything. And she wouldn’t have been able to if she’d tried, not with Mark’s teeth nipping at her lower lip, his hands sliding up her back until they brushed the bare flesh of her shoulders. Ellie reached up to feel the faint stubble on his jaw with her fingertips. He groaned and pulled her close enough to feel the muscles in his chest flexing as his arms moved. She let her head drop back when his lips pressed against the tingling skin just below her jaw, and she slid her fingers round the back of his head, running them through the short hair there and feeling him shiver.
A tray clanged inside the kitchen, and the noise cut cleanly and smoothly through the night air. They both froze, and the moment they’d shared shattered along with the glasses landing on the kitchen floor.
There was a horrible sense of déjà vu as they stared at each other, neither sure of what was going on and what they should do next.
Mark grasped for words inside his head. Say something!
He reached for her. ‘Ellie…’
Come on, smooth talker! Where’s all your patter now?
She stared back at him, wide-eyed and breathless. Then, before he could get his thoughts collected into syllables, she bolted into the house.
See? Unpredictable. He couldn’t have guessed she was going to do that. After all, it wasn’t the normal response he got when he kissed a woman—quite the reverse.
He raced after her and burst through the French windows into the kitchen. Precious seconds were lost as he collided with a fully laden waiter. The clattering of trays and muttered apologies masked the sound of her bare feet slapping on the tiles as she tore out of the kitchen and down the passageway that led to the back stairs.
He dodged another waiter and ran after her, only to be corralled by a group of guests.
‘Mark!’
He turned to find Kat, looking all dishevelled and misty. Her puppy-dog eyes pleaded with him.
‘It’s Razor…’
She sniffed, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. Mark looked hopelessly at the staircase to his left, then at Kat, and back to the staircase. Kat hung on to his sleeve. He knew her well enough by now to realise that full meltdown was only seconds away. He put his own desires on the back burner and guided her through the crush in the drawing room to his study.
The boy wonder had undoubtedly been his usual considerate self, and Mark’s shoulder was the one designated for crying on these days. He’d resisted that in the beginning, but he was too much of a sucker for a forlorn female to just pat Kat on the head and say, There, there.
As he ushered her into the study and shut the door he reasoned to himself that Ellie wasn’t going anywhere for the moment. It would probably be better to give her a few minutes before he went after her—some thinking time. So he allowed Kat to spill out the whole sorry story and soak his shirt with her tears.
Ellie sat in the dark, shivering despite the central heating. She couldn’t bear to turn on the light and see Sam’s picture on the bedside table. Her eyes were sticky with tears and her nose was running. With a loud sniff she toppled back onto the mattress and curled into a ball.
‘What was I thinking?’
Oh, but thinking hadn’t been the problem. It was what she’d done that had messed everything up. Thoughts were fleeting, easily lost, erased or misplaced. Actions, however, were a little more concrete. And in this case definitely more memorable.
Just the memory of Mark’s lips on hers was enough to make her flush hot and cold again.
How could she have done this to Sam? Wonderful, loving, dependable Sam? She was sure he would have been happy to think she would find someone else and rebuild her shattered life, but Mark Wilder! He was the worst kind of womaniser there was.
She searched the darkness above her head for an answer, desperate to make sense of it all.
But Mark hadn’t seemed like a womaniser tonight in the garden, quite the reverse. He’d sent Piers Double-Barrelled packing, backing her up and taking her side, and he hadn’t even taken advantage of the situation when she’d been vulnerable and heaving with hormones. She could have walked away…
Maybe it wasn’t about Mark. Maybe it was a symptom of her decision to break free, to learn to live again. Perhaps part of herself that she’d thought had died and been buried along with Sam had sprung to life again. She was a young woman still. It was just a healthy interest in the opposite sex, a natural response to a good-looking man.
But that train of thought derailed just as fast as the last one had.
It was only since meeting Mark that she’d been anything but numb. He was a catalyst of some kind. And…and if it was just about pent-up desires, she wouldn’t have rejected Piers. He was suave and attractive, but it didn’t stop her experiencing a wave of revulsion every time she thought of him.
So she was back to Mark. Her brain was swinging in wild arcs, but it always came back to Mark. What was she going to do about that…about him?
His attraction to her was genuine, there was no mistaking that, but it wouldn’t last. Men like him didn’t stay with women like her. After a couple of months it would fizzle out and she’d be left alone again. And in search of a new job.
She didn’t want an affair, or a fling, or a one-night stand. Settling for less than the all-encompassing love she’d had for Sam seemed like being unfaithful to his memory. It would be like losing the Crown Jewels and replacing them with paste and nickel that made your skin turn green. This thing with Mark, whatever it was, it couldn’t go anywhere. It couldn’t be anything.
She sniffed again and stretched out a little. Why? Why be interested in someone like him? She could say it was the money, or the success, his looks and his charm, but it wasn’t any of those things. Tonight she’d glimpsed something else behind the cheeky, boyish charm. Something darker and deeper that resonated with a similar something inside her too.
A faint hint of Mark’s aftershave drifted into her nostrils. She looked up, half expecting to see him standing there, waiting for her, but the room was empty. Then she realised she was still wearing his jacket. His masculine scent clung to it, and she was reminded of the moment he’d put it on her in the garden.
He’d seemed so vulnerable standing there. For a man who had women drop at his feet on a daily basis he’d almost seemed unsure of himself. Not at all what she’d expected.
She whimpered and covered her face with her hands, even though there was no one there to see her blush.
How was she going to face him in the morning?
CHAPTER SIX
MARK stumbled downstairs some time after ten. He’d intended to get up earlier, but he hadn’t dropped off until dawn and then his sleep had been heavy, full of dreams where he was running from unseen predators. He’d wanted to be fresh and calm this morning, to deal with the aftermath of last night’s events with just a little panache.
He didn’t have to search hard for Ellie, though; he could smell something delicious wafting from the kitchen, and he followed the mouthwatering smell like a zombie.
Well, almost like a zombie. His heart rate was pattering along too fast for him to be considered officially dead. Was he…was he nervous?
He’d spent hours last night in his study, going over and over it all in his head. Not that he’d come to any earth-shattering conclusions. He had a housekeeper. She kissed like a dream. That was about the sum total of it.
All he’d done was kiss her. It was hardly a big deal.
All he’d done… He should listen to himself.
If it had just been a kiss, his heart wouldn’t be flapping around inside his chest like a fish out of water.
He liked Ellie. And not in the let’s-have-dinner-at-the-Ivy kind of way he normally liked women. It felt different. As if this kind of liking had a different shape, was a different kind of entity all together.
Now, that was a scary thought.
Like Helena, Ellie was one of those delicate beings, beautiful in their frailty like an orchid or a butterfly. And that made her even more dangerous. He knew he couldn’t resist getting drawn in by women like that, finding himself wanting to protect them, to care for them until they were whole again. It was a weakness, he knew, but one that he channelled into his clients these days, by being the best manager in the business. At least they paid him for his devotion.
That kind of woman sucked everything out of a man until he had nothing left to give. And then she took what he’d done, all the tender, loving care he’d given, and bestowed it on someone else, someone who didn’t remind her of the pain. Someone who didn’t remind her of who she used to be when she was just a shell, empty and hurting.
He couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t be that for anyone again.
So he would just have to deflect Ellie, dazzle her, and move things back to where they should be—on a purely professional level.
If he could talk a highly strung diva down from demanding three-hundred-pound-a-bottle mineral water that had been blessed by a Tibetan priest in her dressing room, he could surely manage this. And then he would invent a reason to go and stay at his flat in London for a few days. It wasn’t running away; it was self-preservation.
‘Morning,’ he said, overcompensating a little and sounding much too relaxed as he entered the kitchen. Ellie had her back turned to him. She was stirring something in a saucepan on the hob and returned his greeting in a cool, clipped voice, not looking up from the pan.
‘What are you doing?’
Ah, yes. This is the smooth wit and banter you are famous for…This will charm the socks off her and sort everything out.
Ellie didn’t say anything, just stirred harder.
‘It smells great. What is it?’
‘I decided to make a big batch of bolognaise and freeze it in smaller portions for quick suppers,’ she said in a starchy voice. ‘Would you like me to stop and fetch you breakfast?’
That was the last thing he wanted. Far too awkward.
‘It’s okay. I’m more than capable of getting my own coffee.’
He grabbed himself a mug of coffee and sat down at the circular wooden table near the French windows that led to the garden. Ellie was pushing what he now recognised as beef mince round the pan with a wooden spoon. It spat and hissed, the only sound in the rapidly thickening atmosphere.
He cleared his throat. ‘Ellie, listen…’
‘Look, Mark, I know where this is going.’
‘You do?’ He rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand.
‘I do. And let’s not go there.’
Good. They were reading off the same page. Why, then, had his stomach bottomed out like a plummeting lift?
‘Okay,’ he said, not trusting himself with anything more complicated. It seemed as if Ellie was doing fine on her own, anyway. She took a deep breath in readiness for another speech.
‘You’re my boss. You spend your time flitting around the globe and living the high life. And I’m…’ She looked at the ceiling, searching for the right word.
‘I know I’m your boss—of course I know that—and you’re…’
Surprising? Appealing? Unforgettable? Those were the words that filled his head. None of them were the right ones to come out of his mouth, though.
‘You’re…’
Ellie’s gaze wandered down from the heavens and settled on him. ‘I’m your housekeeper.’
‘Right.’ That was correct. But it didn’t feel like the right answer.
She shook her head, her curls bouncing slightly. ‘To be honest, you and me, it’s just—’
‘Complicated?’
She shrugged one shoulder. ‘I was going for tacky or predictable, but your word works too.’
Ouch.
‘I’m your employee, and I think we should keep our relationship on a professional basis,’ she said, turning to face him fully.
‘I agree with you one hundred percent.’
He looked hard at her, trying to work out what she was thinking. Her words were telling him she was fine, but her tone said something entirely different.
‘You seem upset…’
She waved the wooden spoon in dismissal.
‘Upset? I’m not upset!’
‘Good.’
She gave him a blatantly fake smile, and returned her attention to the meat in the pan.
‘Annoyed, then?’
More frantic stirring.
‘Nope. Not at all.’ She started jabbing the wooden spoon at the remaining lumps.
Ellie might be different from a lot of women he knew in a lot of ways, but the whole pretending to be fine when she clearly was not was horribly familiar.
‘Ellie, I know I may have been a bit impulsive last night, but I don’t think we…I did anything wrong.’
‘Oh, you don’t?’ she said through clenched teeth.
‘No. Do you?’
Now he was totally lost. Why did women have this secret agenda that read like code to normal human beings—men, in other words?
The pan spat ferociously as Ellie added a jar of tomatoey gloopy stuff and mixed it in. She turned to face him and took a step away from the counter, still holding the dripping spoon.
‘You’re unbelievable, do you know that? You live in a lovely little Mark bubble where everything is perfect. You haven’t got a clue what real life is like!’
He thought he did a pretty good job of living life, thank you very much, and he didn’t much care for someone he hardly knew judging him for it.
‘I don’t?’
‘No! You don’t. Real people have real feelings, and you can’t just go messing around with them. You live in this rarefied world where you do whatever you want, get whatever you want and everything goes right for you. Not everybody has that luxury. And you waste it, you know? You really do.’
Something in her stare made him hold back the smart retort poised on his lips. Through the film of tears gathering in her eyes he saw determination and an honesty that was surprising—and not a little unnerving.
Something was very wrong, but as usual he was totally mystified as to what was going on inside her head. Why was she blaming him? He hadn’t been the one to start it last night. She had kissed him, remember? And he certainly hadn’t meant to mess around with her feelings, but perhaps he had…without realising it.
Maybe he was clueless. He needed to consider her accusation a little more fully before he gave a real answer.
Ellie made use of the silence to ram her point home. ‘I think it’s best for both of us if we just put that…you know, the…’
A crack in her anger showed as she desperately tried to avoid using the word ‘kiss’. It would have been funny if she hadn’t been giving him the brush-off.
‘Let’s just put what happened last night down to champagne and temporary insanity, okay? I don’t want to lose this job.’
He nodded just once. ‘And I need to start looking for a new housekeeper like I need a hole in the head.’
Finally she breathed out and her shoulders relaxed a little. ‘I’m glad we understand each other,’ she said with a small jut of her chin, and turned her attention back to the bolognaise sauce.
She was right. He knew she was right. It was just…
Aw, forget it. He’d spent the last decade fooling everyone—even himself—that he was ‘living the dream’. He might just as well return to that happy, alpha-wave state and forget that he’d ever yearned for anything more.
If you can, a little voice whispered in his ear. If you can…
Mark disappeared back to London the next day, much to Ellie’s relief. But it didn’t stop him coming back to Larkford again the following weekend. Or the one after that. During the week she could relax, enjoy her surroundings, but the weekends were something else. Stiff. Awkward. And, although she’d never expected anything more than a professional relationship with the man, now they were operating on that level it just seemed, well…weird.
And that was how it continued for the next month or so.
So, there she was on a Saturday afternoon, hiding out in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal, even though she needn’t start for hours yet. But it was good to keep herself busy and out of a certain person’s way. Not that it had been hard today. He might be at home, but he was obviously working; he’d hardly left the study all day. They were keeping to their separate territories as boxers did their corners of the ring.
She was still cross with herself for being too weak to control her brain’s fried electrical signals. They still all short-circuited every time he appeared. It was as if her neurons had rewired themselves with a specialised radar that picked up only him as he breezed around the house, as calm as you like, while her fingernails were bitten so low she’d practically reached her knuckles.
Blip. Blip. Blip.
There it went again. Her core temperature rose a couple of notches. He was on the move; she just knew it. She stopped chopping an onion and listened. After about ten seconds she heard what she’d been waiting for—footsteps in the hall, getting louder.
She kept her eyes on her work as Mark entered the kitchen. The coffee machine sputtered. Liquid sloshed into a cup. The rubber heel of a stool squeaked on the floor. Silence. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristled.
Just carry on as if he’s not there.
The knife came down hard on the chopping board—thunk, thunk, thunk—so close she almost trimmed her non-existent nails. She threw the onion pieces into a hot frying pan where they hissed back at her. According to the recipe they should be finely chopped. The asymmetrical lumps looked more like the shapes Chloe had produced as a toddler when left to her own devices with paper and safety scissors.
She sliced the next onion with exaggerated care and flipped the switch for the extractor hood above the hob. It was too still in the kitchen. Too hot. She plucked a papery clove of garlic from a nearby pot.
Only one more left.
That gave her an idea, stunning in its simplicity. She turned to face Mark with what she hoped was a cool stare. He sat looking straight back at her, waiting.
‘I need to go out—to get some things I can’t find at the local shops from the big supermarket. Is there anything you’d like me to get you that’s not on the shopping list?’ She nodded to indicate a long pad hanging on a nail where she always listed store cupboard items as soon as they’d run out. She even managed a smile on the last few words, so delighted was she at the thought of getting out of the house and into fresh, uncomplicated air.
He just lifted his shoulders and let them drop again. ‘Nope. Nothing in particular.’
Most housekeepers would be glad of having a boss with such an easygoing nature, but the contrast with her own jangled emotions just made her want to club him over the head with his large wooden pepper mill. She strode to the other side of the room and snatched her handbag from where it hung on the back of a chair.
It wasn’t more than a minute later that she was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car, turning the key in the ignition.
Nothing.
‘Come on, old girl!’ she crooned, rubbing the dashboard. ‘Don’t let me down now. You are my ticket out of here—at least for the afternoon.’ She tried again, pumping her foot frantically on the pedal. Her old banger coughed, threatening to fire up, then thought better of it. She slapped the steering wheel with the flat of her hands.
‘Traitor.’
She collected her bag and strutted back into the kitchen, chin in the air. Mark was still sitting on the stool, finishing his coffee.
‘Problems?’
‘Car won’t start. I’ll have to go another day, after I’ve had the old heap looked at.’
Mark stood up and pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket. ‘Come on, then.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll take you.’
‘No, it’s okay. Honestly. You’re busy.’
‘No problem,’ he said with that lazy grin of his, the one straight out of a toothpaste ad. ‘I could do with getting away from my desk and letting things settle in my head, anyway.’
Ellie groaned inwardly. Now the afternoon was going to be torture rather than escape. She followed him reluctantly to his car. It was a sleek, gunmetal-grey Aston Martin. She could almost see his chest puff out in pride as he held the passenger door open for her.
Boys and their toys. What was the theory about men with flash cars?
Mark didn’t need to take his eyes off the road to know that Ellie had shifted position and was now staring out of the window. He was aware of every sigh, every fidget. And her body language was yelling at him in no uncertain terms—back off!
What if she’d been right all those weeks ago when she’d shouted at him? He’d given the whole thing a lot of thought. Did he live in a ‘Mark bubble’? A self-absorbed little universe where he was the sun and all revolved around him? Did he now waltz through life—well, relationships—without a backward glance?