- -
- 100%
- +
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
COMING NEXT MONTH
CHAPTER ONE
LISA grimaced when the couple on the television screen started ripping each other’s clothes off.
‘As if people really act like that,’ she muttered as she reached for the remote.
If there was one thing Lisa couldn’t stand it was over-the-top love scenes in movies. As much as she appreciated she might not be a typical viewer, Lisa felt pretty sure sex was never the way it was portrayed in Hollywood.
She literally cringed when the man lifted the by now half-naked woman onto the kitchen counter and thrust into her. Or pretended to. The camera was on their faces. When the grunting and groaning started, Lisa pressed her finger firmly on the off button. She’d had enough of watching such ridiculous goings-on, thank you very much. Time to go upstairs and make sure Cory was asleep. It was after nine o’clock and tomorrow was a school day.
Lisa was halfway up the stairs when the phone rang.
Darn, she thought as she hurried on up the stairs and turned left, popping her head into Cory’s bedroom on the way to her own bedroom.
Good, he was asleep.
Once in her bedroom, she closed the door behind her—so as not to risk waking her son—and picked up the cordless phone.
‘Hello,’ she said, fully expecting it to be her mother at this hour. All her girlfriends were married with children and were too busy each evening for gossipy chats.
‘It’s Gail, Lisa,’ a woman’s voice said down the line. ‘Gail Robinson.’
Lisa decided she’d best sit down. When one of her employees rang her on her personal line on a week night, it usually meant there was some problem or other.
‘Hi, Gail. What’s up?’
‘I’ve sprained my ankle,’ Gail said dispiritedly. ‘Slipped down that rotten steep driveway of ours. I’ve been sitting here with my foot in a bucket of iced water for ages but it’s still up like a balloon. There’s no way I can do Jack Cassidy’s place tomorrow.’
Lisa frowned. Jack Cassidy was one of her newer clients. Sandra—her assistant-cum-bookkeeper—had signed him up whilst Lisa was away with Cory on a week’s cruise of the South Pacific during the recent school holidays. A bachelor, Mr Cassidy owned a penthouse apartment in Terrigal which apparently had acres of tiled floors and took ages to clean. He also liked his sheets and towels changed and his weekly linen washed, dried and put away, not something her cleaners usually did. Their standard service lasted four hours and covered cleaning all floors, bathrooms and kitchens, not doing laundry or windows. Laundry could be very time-consuming and windows dangerous.
But he’d apparently talked Sandra into finding someone who would do the extra.
Gail took five hours to do everything, for which Clean-in-a-Day was paid one hundred and fifty dollars, with Gail’s cut being one hundred and twenty. Their rates were very competitive.
‘I’m really sorry to let you down at the last minute,’ Gail said unhappily.
‘That’s all right. I’ll get someone else.’
‘On a Friday?’
Lisa knew why Gail sounded sceptical. Friday was the busiest day for housecleaning. Everyone wanted their homes to be clean for the weekend. Clean in a Day was fully booked on Fridays. Lisa had a couple of names she could ring if she was really desperate, but they were women who had not been through her rigorous training course and might not clean as thoroughly as she liked.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said briskly. ‘I’ll do it myself. And Gail…’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t stress about the money. You’ll still get paid.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I’m well aware how tight things are for you at the moment.’
Gail’s husband had been made redundant a few weeks earlier. She really needed her cleaning money.
‘That’s very good of you,’ she choked out.
Lisa winced. Dear heaven, please don’t let her start crying.
‘Will you be up at the school tomorrow afternoon to pick up the kids?’ she asked quickly.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll give you your money then.’
‘Gosh, I don’t know what to say.’
‘Don’t say a word. Especially not to the other girls. Can’t have my sergeant-major reputation tarnished. They’ll think I’ve become a soft touch and start taking advantage.’
Gail laughed. ‘I can’t see that happening. You have a very formidable air about you, you know.’
‘So I’m told.’
‘You always look so perfect as well. That’s rather intimidating.’
‘It’s just the way I am,’ she said defensively.
Lisa had heard such criticisms before. From girlfriends. From her mother. Even her husband. When he’d been alive…
Greg had complained incessantly about her compulsive need to have everything look right all the time. The house. The garden. Herself. The baby. Him.
‘Why don’t you lighten up a bit?’ he’d thrown at her more than once. ‘You’re nothing like your mother. She’s so easygoing. I thought daughters were supposed to be like their mothers!’
Lisa shuddered at the thought of being like her mother.
Despite Greg’s nagging, she held on to the belief he hadn’t really wanted her to be like her mother. He’d certainly liked inviting people back to their house, knowing she and it would always be neat and tidy.
‘By the way, I don’t have keys to Mr Cassidy’s place,’ Gail said, reefing Lisa’s mind back to the problem at hand. ‘He’s always home on a Friday. I just press the button for the penthouse at the security entrance and he lets me in.’
Lisa’s top lip curled. Pity. She hated having a client around when she cleaned.
‘He’s a writer of some sort,’ Gail added. ‘Works from home.’
‘I see.’
‘Don’t worry. He won’t bother you. He stays in his study most of the time. Only comes out to make coffee. Which reminds me. Don’t attempt to clean his study. Or even to go in. He made that clear to me on my first day. His study is off limits.’
‘That’s fine by me. One less room to clean.’
‘That’s exactly what I thought.’
‘Will I have a parking problem?’ Lisa asked.
Terrigal was the place to live on the Central Coast. Only an hour and a half’s drive north from Sydney, it had everything to attract tourists. The prettiest beach. Great shops and cafés. And a five-star hotel, right across from the water.
The only minus was demand for parking spaces.
‘No worries,’ Gail said. ‘There are several guest bays at the back of the building. You have the address, don’t you? It’s on the main drag, halfway up the hill, just past the Crowne Plaza.’
‘I’ll find it. Well, I’d better get going, Gail. Have to have everything shipshape tonight if I’m to be out all day tomorrow.’
Which she would be. Terrigal Beach was a good fifteen-minute drive from where she lived at Tumbi Umbi. If she dropped Cory off at school at nine, she’d be cleaning by nine-thirty, finished by two-thirty, then back to pick up Cory at three.
‘See you at the school around three. Bye.’
Lisa hung up and hurried back downstairs, making a mental list of jobs-to-do as she went. Load dishwasher. Hang out washing. Wipe over tiles. Iron Cory’s uniform. Get both their lunches ready. Decide what to wear.
Loading the dishwasher wasn’t exactly rocket science and Lisa found her thoughts drifting to tomorrow.
Penthouses in Terrigal were not cheap. So its owner was probably rich.
A writer, Gail had said. A successful writer, obviously.
No, not necessarily. Jack Cassidy could be a wealthy playboy who’d inherited his money and dabbled in writing as a hobby.
When Lisa started wondering if he was good-looking, she pulled herself up quite sharply. What did she care if he was good-looking or not?
She had no intention of dating, or ever getting married again. She had no reason to. And she had every reason not to.
For once you let a man into your life, sooner or later he would want sex.
The unfortunate truth was Lisa didn’t like sex. Never had. Never would. No use pretending.
She found sex yucky. And no pleasure at all. Not quite repulsive, but close to.
She’d suspected this about herself from the moment her mother had told her the facts of life at the age of ten, a suspicion which had grown over her teenage years, then was confirmed, at the age of nineteen, when she’d finally given in and slept with Greg. Though only after they’d got engaged. And only because she’d known she’d lose him if she didn’t.
He’d thought she would warm to lovemaking in time. But she never had. Sex during her marriage had been given grudgingly, and increasingly less often with the passing of time, especially after Cory was born. It was not surprising that she hadn’t fallen pregnant again.
Lisa had been shattered by her husband’s tragic death when she was twenty-five and poor Greg only twenty-eight. She had loved him in her own way. But she never wanted to go there again. Never wanted to feel guilty about something she had no control over.
Lisa knew she could never force herself to like physical intimacy. So the only sensible solution was to remain single and celibate, even if it meant she sometimes felt lonely.
Lately, she’d been feeling very lonely. Which was odd. She was busier than ever with the business. And her son was always on the go. Her leisure hours were filled with taking him to his various school and sporting activities.
It was at night, after Cory had gone to bed, that she felt the loneliest. She missed having someone there to talk to. Or to sit with whilst she watched television.
Her one solace was reading. She loved books, especially thrillers. Loved the way they could take her away from her day-to-day, rather humdrum existence into a world of excitement and suspense. Her current favourites were a series of action novels written by an Australian author, Nick Freeman.
Lisa had never read anything like them. They were simply unputdownable. During the last few months, she’d devoured all five of them.
Unfortunately, she’d finished the last one a few nights back, and passed it on to her mother, as she had the others in the series.
By comparison, the new book by another author that she’d brought home from the library yesterday seemed tame. And boring. Which meant she wasn’t looking forward to going to bed tonight, as she had when she knew she was going to be swept away into Hal Hunter’s rather wicked but fascinating world.
Whenever Lisa didn’t have a good book to read at night, sleep would often elude her. She suspected that tonight would be one such night.
‘Cleaning that penthouse tomorrow will do you good, Lisa, my girl,’ she told herself as she closed the dishwasher door. ‘Make you really tired.’
The thought occurred to her that she should ring Jack Cassidy and let him know of the change in his cleaning arrangements. It could prove awkward, explaining things on his doorstep in the morning.
Lisa turned on the dishwasher and trudged back upstairs, turning right this time and making her way down to the fourth bedroom, which she’d converted into a study soon after starting up her business. It was not a large room, but large enough to house her computer.
It only took her a few seconds to bring up Jack Cassidy’s file and to print out his address and phone number.
Lisa picked up her fax-phone, punched in the number, than sank back into her office chair as she waited for her client to answer.
Several rings went by before a deep, gruff voice snapped, ‘Yep?’
‘Mr Cassidy?’ she said in her best business voice. ‘Mr Jack Cassidy?’
‘Yeah, that’s me. And who might you be?’
‘My name is Lisa, Mr Cassidy. Lisa Chapman. I’m from—’
‘Stop right there, sweetheart. Look, I know you’re probably only doing your job but I’ve had a gutful of telemarketers ringing me at all hours of the day and night. This is my private and personal number and I keep it for private and personal calls. If I want something, I go out and buy it. From a shop. I don’t even buy over the internet. I also never answer stupid bloody surveys. Do I make myself clear?’
Clear as crystal, Lisa thought with a mixture of empathy and frustration. She too hated people trying to sell things to her over the phone and had recently started being less than polite when telemarketers called her in the evenings.
But he could have had the decency to wait till he found out if she was one of those.
Lisa opened her mouth to clarify her identity when she heard the unmistakable click of the call being terminated.
Her head jerked back to stare down at her handset. He’d hung up on her! The hide of him!
After slamming her own phone back down, Lisa sat there for a full minute with her hands clenched over the arm-rests of the chair and her teeth gritted together. Never in all her life had anyone hung up on her. Never ever!
Don’t take it personally, her brain argued.
But it was difficult not to. Men were supposed to be polite to women, no matter what. And he’d been rude. Very rude.
What to do? No point in trying his number again. He’d probably hang up on her before she got two words out. And if he did that, she’d blow a gasket.
She glared at his printed-out file. It showed no email number. Clearly, he was a privacy freak. Or he just didn’t like computers. Or the internet. Maybe he wrote in longhand.
He did have a fax number, she noted. She could send him a fax, explaining the situation. But something inside Lisa rebelled against giving Jack Cassidy that courtesy.
No, she would just show up on his doorstep in the morning and have great pleasure watching him cringe with embarrassment, once she explained who she was.
CHAPTER TWO
LISA’S stomach tightened as she drove across Terrigal Bridge and turned left at the small roundabout.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea not to fax Jack Cassidy last night. Embarrassing the man no longer held such appeal this morning. She was the one who was going to end up being embarrassed.
Lisa scooped in a deep, lung-filling breath as she drove up the hill, then let it out slowly, relaxing her stomach muscles and reassuring herself that there was nothing for her to be embarrassed about. Or to feel nervous about. She was being silly. This was just another cleaning job. One she’d never have to repeat, thank goodness.
Feeling marginally better, Lisa glanced around as she drove down the hill which led to Terrigal Beach. She hadn’t been out this way for ages. When she took Cory to the beach these days, they usually went to Wamberal, or Shelly’s Beach. Terrigal’s cove-like shape meant it rarely had a big surf, which was great for tourists and families, but not relished by nine-year-old thrill-seekers.
But my, it was beautiful, especially when the sun was shining. Although it was still only springtime, the beach had a fair share of people in the water, and even more stretched out on the golden sand.
Lisa could see why wealthy Sydneysiders bought beach-houses here. And penthouse apartments. Especially ones whose balconies faced north, with an unimpeded view of the sparkling blue sea and the long stretch of coastline.
Jack Cassidy’s place would have all that, Lisa realised by the time she turned into the driveway of the pale blue, cement-rendered apartment block. Despite the building only being three storeys high, its position was second to none.
Lisa’s nervous tension had returned with a vengeance by the time she walked round to the front entrance and pressed the button marked ‘Penthouse’ on the security panel.
‘Come on up, Gail,’ Jack Cassidy’s deep male voice growled through the intercom.
Lisa opened her mouth to explain once again who she was when the intercom clicked off and the front door began to buzz.
Giving vent to a groan of sheer frustration, Lisa pushed her way in, the door automatically closing and locking behind her.
She just stood there for a long moment, trying to calm her thudding heart. What was it about this man which rattled her so? She was normally very cool when it came to dealing with difficult clients and situations. Cool and composed.
Time for some coolness and composure right now, Lisa, she lectured herself as she practised some more deep breathing, taking in her surroundings at the same time.
The foyer was cool and spacious, with a marble-tiled floor and lots of windows. Despite the amount of glass, you couldn’t hear the traffic or the sea from inside, which meant the windows had to be double-glazed. A no-expense-spared building, Lisa conceded as she bypassed the lift at the back of the foyer to take the stairs, walking briskly up the grey-carpeted steps to the top floor.
No large foyer up there. Possibly the architect hadn’t wanted to waste valuable floor space, although the landing was large enough to have a hall stand and wall mirror set beside the one and only door, perhaps put there for people to check their appearance before knocking.
Before she could do little more than give her face a cursory glance, the door was wrenched open by a very tall, very tanned, very fit-looking man in dark blue jeans and a chest-hugging white T-shirt.
Jack Cassidy, Lisa presumed, her neck craning a little as she looked up into his face.
He wasn’t handsome. Not the way Greg had been handsome. But he was attractive, despite the three-day growth on his chin and the hard, almost cold grey eyes which swept over her from head to toe.
‘You’re not Gail,’ were his first words, delivered with his now familiar lack of charm.
Lisa bristled inside, but maintained what she hoped was a professional expression.
‘You’re absolutely correct,’ came her crisp reply. ‘I’m Lisa Chapman from Clean-in-a-Day. Gail sprained her ankle yesterday and won’t be able to do your place today. I did try to explain this to you last night on the phone, but you hung up on me.’
He didn’t look embarrassed at all. He just shrugged. ‘Sorry. You should have said who you were up front.’
If apologies had been an Olympic event, his would not have even qualified for a semi-final.
‘You didn’t exactly give me much opportunity,’ she said with a tight little smile. ‘But not to worry. I’m here now and I’ll be doing your place today.’
‘You have to be kidding me.’
Lisa gritted her teeth. ‘Not at all.’
His eyes flicked over her again, this time with a coolly sceptical expression. ‘You’re going to clean in that get-up?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ came Lisa’s tart reply.
She had never subscribed to the theory that a cleaner had to look like a chimney sweep. Today she was wearing white stretch Capri pants, white trainers and a chocolate-brown singlet top which showed off her nicely toned arms and honey-coloured skin. Her platinum-blonde hair was up in a white scrunchie, the way she always wore it when cleaning. Her jewellery was a simple gold chain around her neck, a narrow gold watch on her wrist and small gold hoops in her ears. Her make-up was subtle and so was her perfume. In her roomy straw hold-all—currently slung over her shoulder—was a navy, chef-size apron and two pairs of cleaning gloves, along with her calorie-friendly packed lunch and a bottle of chilled mineral water.
‘I assure you I will leave here with your place spotless and without a mark on my clothes,’ she informed him, a tad haughtily.
‘You know what, sweetheart? I believe you.’
Lisa gritted her teeth. She was within a hair’s breadth of telling him she was not his sweetheart, but the owner of Clean-in-a-Day, when he stepped back and waved her inside.
The uninterrupted sight of the spectacular living area compelled Lisa to forget her irritation, her love of all things beautiful drawing her forward till she was standing in the middle of the spacious room, surrounded by the sort of place she dreamt about owning one day. She almost sighed over the huge tinted windows, the amazing view, the acres of cream marble tiles and the wonderfully clean lines of the furniture. Nothing fussy. Everything classy and expensive. Cool leathers, in cream and a muted gold colour. The coffee-and side-tables were made of a pale wood. The rugs blended in. Nothing bright or gaudy.
Ever since she’d been a child, Lisa had hated bright colours, both in décor and clothes. She could not bear the recent fashion of putting loud, clashing colours together, oranges with pinks, and electric blues with lime greens. She literally shuddered whenever she saw red anywhere near purple.
‘I do realise that there are a lot of tiles to clean,’ he said abruptly from just behind her. ‘But Gail never had a problem.’
Lisa swung round to face him, grateful that he hadn’t thought she’d been envying him his house.
‘They won’t be any problem to me, either,’ she said swiftly. ‘I’ve been cleaning houses for years.’
‘You continue to amaze me. You look like you’ve never had a chipped fingernail in your life.’
‘Looks can be deceiving, Mr Cassidy.’
‘For pity’s sake, call me Jack. Now, a few instructions before I get back to work. Do you know about the extras I like done?’
‘You wish your sheets and towels to be changed, washed, dried and put away.’
His eyebrows lifted, then fell, his expression betraying a slight disappointment that he hadn’t caught her out in some way.
‘You’ll find everything you need in the laundry,’ he told her. ‘My bedroom is the last door on the left down that hallway,’ he said, pointing to his right. ‘My study is the first door. Did Gail warn you I don’t like to be disturbed when I work?’
‘She did mention it. She said you were a writer of some sort.’
Lisa almost asked him what kind of books he wrote, but pulled herself up in time. She’d always instructed her cleaners during their training never to become too familiar with male clients, especially ones who were in the house whilst they cleaned.
The corner of his mouth lifted in a wry fashion. ‘Yeah. A writer of some sort just about describes me at the moment.’
The sound of a telephone ringing somewhere in the penthouse brought a scowl to his face. ‘Damn! I should have switched on the answering machine. Still, I doubt it’s telemarketers at this hour in the morning. I’d better answer the darned thing,’ he grumbled before turning and marching off down the hallway to his right. ‘You might not see me later,’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘I’m on a deadly deadline. Your money’s on the kitchen counter. If I don’t surface, just leave when you’re finished.’
When he disappeared into his study and shut the door after him Lisa was flooded by a weird wave of disappointment.
The realisation that she’d actually been enjoying their conversation shocked her. What was there to like about it? Or about him?
Absolutely nothing, she decided emphatically as she whirled and went in search of the laundry.
CHAPTER THREE