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‘Actually, I like it the way it is,’ she said as he closed the door behind them, and he remembered why he had wanted to talk to her in the first place.
‘Yeah, right,’ he said, edging past her when she paused to look up the curving staircase. ‘Diane said you used to work here. Is that true?’
A faint colour invaded her creamy cheeks as he spoke. ‘I might have done,’ she said, and he sensed she wasn’t as comfortable with it as Diane had implied. Her steps definitely slowed as she reached the kitchen. ‘Where is Diane, anyway? Did she suggest I might be interested in working for you? Is that what this is all about?’
He dumped the carriers on the pine table before he looked at her again. ‘Diane’s in London,’ he said flatly. ‘I’m sorry if you expected she’d be here. I’m afraid there’s only me.’
Fliss’s soft lips pressed together for a moment. ‘But she did suggest that I might be glad of a job, didn’t she?’ She gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘I should have known.’
Matt hesitated only a moment. ‘If you know Diane at all then you should know that she’d never suggest I employed any woman under the age of fifty. Especially not someone she seems to regard as a rival.’
He heard her suck in a breath. ‘You’re joking, right?’
He hadn’t been, but Matt regretted being so honest. ‘Yeah, maybe,’ he said, knowing Diane would definitely not approve of him saying that. ‘Anyway, forget it. Which do you prefer? Tea or coffee? I have both.’
She hesitated. ‘Um—tea would be nice,’ she said at last. ‘Do you need any help?’
Matt’s mouth compressed. ‘Why? Do I look as if I do?’ He plugged in the kettle. ‘No, don’t answer that. My ego’s not up to it at the moment.’
A trace of humour touched her lips. ‘I’m sure that’s not true either.’ She wrapped her arms about her midriff. ‘What did Diane tell you about me?’
Matt didn’t want to get into that. ‘Not a lot,’ he said, not altogether truthfully. He unloaded some steak and a couple of pre-cooked meals into the fridge. ‘I guess Amy’s at school right now, isn’t she?’
Fliss nodded. ‘She’s in year five at the village primary. You must have seen the school as you drove through.’ She paused and then went on. ‘So—do you need a housekeeper?’
Matt was taken aback. He wasn’t used to people speaking their minds so openly. Since his return, the opposite had been true. Even his mother verbally tiptoed about him, as if she wasn’t entirely sure what he might do if she said the wrong thing. But Fliss Taylor…
‘I—I need some help around the house,’ he agreed neutrally.
‘And when Diane told you I used to work for Colonel Phillips, you thought snap! She can work for me, too.’
Matt abandoned the rest of the shopping and propped his hip against one of the mahogany units. ‘It wasn’t quite like that.’
‘But that is why you approached me in the car park,’ she persisted, and he gave a concessionary shrug.
‘All right. I admit, I thought about it.’
Her brows drew together. ‘But now you’ve changed your mind?’
‘No! Yes!’ Matt heard the kettle boiling and turned gratefully to make the tea. He sighed. ‘You make it sound as if I could have no other reason for speaking to you. We’re not exactly strangers, for pity’s sake. I mean, I made no complaint about your daughter dumping her rabbit on my doorstep, did I?’
‘Gee, thanks.’
Her sardonic response was hardly unexpected and he turned to face her again with weary compliance. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘That was uncalled-for. You both thought the house was empty. I know that. But, just for the record, when I first came out of the showroom and saw you across the car park, the idea of asking you to work for me was far from my mind.’
And that was true, he conceded, half amused by the admission. But with the sun adding gold lights to the coppery beauty of her hair, she’d been instantly recognisable. And, although the prospect of offering her a job had given him a reason to speak to her, he might have done so anyway.
Or not.
Her sudden decision to leave the doorway and cross the room towards him disrupted his thought processes. For a crazy moment, he wondered if something in his face had given her the impression that he was attracted to her and he moved almost automatically out of her way.
He realised his mistake when she cast him a pitying glance and reached instead for the two mugs he’d filled with hot water. With casual expertise, she spooned the two used tea bags into the waste bin and then said drily, ‘I don’t like strong tea. Do you?’
Matt felt furious with himself as he shook his head. For heaven’s sake, he was doing everything he could to reinforce the opinion she probably already had of him. Cursing under his breath, he opened the fridge and pulled out a carton of milk. He set it down on the counter beside her rather more heavily than was wise and predictably some spilled onto the marble surface. He swore again. ‘Sorry.’
Fliss added milk to both cups. Then, cradling hers between her palms, she said softly, ‘Did I do something wrong?’
Matt felt a wave of weariness envelop him again. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s not you. It’s me. Like I said before, I’m not finding it easy to—to interact with people.’
Fliss frowned. ‘Is that why you’ve moved out of London?’ she asked, and then coloured. ‘Oh, sorry. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘No.’ He conceded the point. ‘But it’s the truth.’ He picked up his own cup and swallowed a mouthful of tea. ‘I needed some space. London offers very little of that.’
She absorbed this, her eyes on the beige liquid in her cup, and, against his will, he noticed how long her lashes were. For someone with red hair, they were unusually dark, too, but lighter at the tips, as if bleached by the sun.
His jaw tightened. As if it mattered to him. She could be a raving beauty, with a figure to die for, and he wouldn’t be interested. He wondered what she’d say if he told her that.
‘I suppose Diane’s parents said this house was for sale,’ she ventured now, and Matt accepted that she deserved some explanation.
‘No,’ he assured her. ‘As you might have guessed, Diane isn’t in favour of me moving out of London. I found the house on a property website. It sounded exactly what I was looking for so I bought it.’
‘Sight unseen?’ She was obviously surprised.
‘Well, I had Joe Francis, an architect friend of mine, look at it,’ he said, a little defensively. ‘And I did speak to the Chesneys. They seemed to think it was OK.’
‘And what do you think, now that you’ve moved in?’
‘I like it.’ He smiled in spite of himself. ‘I’ll like it better, of course, when it feels less like a mausoleum and more like a home.’
Fliss glanced about her. ‘Colonel Phillips didn’t think it was a mausoleum.’
‘No, well, he probably kept the place furnished.’ He paused, wondering how much he should tell her. ‘That’s what I was doing in Westerbury. Buying some furniture that won’t look out of place in these rooms.’
‘From Harry Gilchrist,’ she said, and Matt quirked an eyebrow.
‘You know him?’
‘He lives in the village,’ she said regretfully. ‘I suppose he recognised you.’
Matt finished his tea and set his empty mug down on the counter. ‘Did he ever,’ he said, pulling a wry face. ‘Oh, well, I guess a week is better than nothing.’
‘You might be surprised.’ Fliss finished her own tea and, to his surprise, moved to the sink to wash up the cups. ‘Most of the villagers tend to mind their own business.’
‘Do they?’
Matt spoke almost absently, his eyes unwillingly drawn to the vulnerable curve of her nape. She’d tugged her hair to one side and secured it with a tortoiseshell clip, and the slender start of her spine was exposed.
He wasn’t thinking, or he would have looked away, but instead his eyes moved down over the crossed braces of her dungarees. A narrow waist dipped in above the provocative swell of her bottom, the loose trousers only hinting at the lushness of her hips and thighs. Her legs were longer then he’d imagined, her ankles trim below the cuffs of her trousers.
‘What do you mean?’
Her words arrested whatever insane visions he had been having, and he shook his head as if that would clear his brain. For God’s sake, what was he doing? And what was she talking about? He was damned if he could remember.
‘I beg your pardon?’
His apology was automatic, but her expression as she turned towards him fairly simmered with resentment. ‘You said, Do they?’ she reminded him tightly. ‘What did you mean?’
Matt didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. For a moment there, he’d been entertaining himself with the thought that he was just the same as any other man. Of course, he wasn’t, but she didn’t know that. And she probably thought he was leering at her like any other member of his sex.
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