Читать книгу The Australian Affairs Collection - Margaret Way - Страница 57

CHAPTER SEVEN

NOTHING, AS IT turned out. The episode meant nothing, she realised in the days that followed. Days where she saw very little of Declan and neither of them mentioned the incident. The longer it went unsaid, the less likely it would ever be aired.

The Rapunzel incident—as she had begun to call it in her mind. Fancifully, she thought of it as: ‘Shelley, Shelley, let down your golden hair.’ Let down your hair—and then nothing. She blushed as she remembered how she had yearned for him to take it further.

The moments Declan had spent releasing her hair from its restraint and caressing her had begun to take on the qualities of a distant dream. Making a joke of it—even if only to herself—somehow took the sting out of what had happened.

The way he had avoided her since both puzzled and hurt. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—let it bother her. Because while she was hurt in one way, she felt relieved in another.

Nothing could come of the incident. He was the billionaire boss, she was the gardener who needed the generous salary he had agreed to pay her. She should be grateful he hadn’t taken advantage of that. Be glad he hadn’t kissed her. She’d worked for men who had made her feel distinctly uncomfortable to be alone with them when she’d been working on their properties. It was one reason she dressed the way she did for work.

Besides, she had another more pressing concern to occupy her thoughts.

Her sister’s boyfriend, Keith, had proposed to Lynne. The newly engaged couple wanted to live together as they planned their wedding. And the apartment in Double Bay she shared with Lynne was way, way too small for her to live with them in any privacy.

She had to find somewhere else to live—pronto. Keith wouldn’t move in until she moved out. She was happy for her sister; Keith was a really nice guy and just what Lynne needed. Neither of them was pressing her to go, but of course they wanted to start their new life together as soon as they could.

But it was a difficult rental market in Sydney. Apartment hunting meant showing up for an open day and hoping like heck she made a better impression on the letting agent than the other people lined up with her to inspect the same property. There was a one-room apartment open today in nearby Edgecliff and she needed to see it.

In the three weeks she’d been working for Declan she hadn’t taken a lunch hour, just grabbed twenty minutes to down the sandwich and coffee in a flask she’d brought from home. She’d wanted to get as much work as possible done in the shorter daylight hours at this time of year.

It was now well into August and the garden was showing definite signs of the early southern hemisphere spring: jonquils scented the air and the nodding pink heads of hellebores gave delight in the cooler, shadier corners of the garden. She had found the elusive daphne, cleared the tough kikuyu grass that was smothering it and made sure it would survive.

But today, four days after the Rapunzel incident, she needed to take an extended lunch hour. Technically, she should ask Declan’s permission for extra time off, but it wasn’t really that kind of working relationship. He seemed to take her on trust and she would never take advantage of that. She decided to keep him in the loop anyway.

After a morning’s hard work, she was fortunate she had the bathroom in the housekeeper’s apartment in which to shower and change. She needed to look smart and responsible, as though she could afford the rent, the deposit and all the other expenses that came with renting an apartment. Expenses that would take a substantial chunk out of her savings.

Lynne and Keith had sprung this on her. As she towelled herself dry she found herself wishing—unreasonably, she knew—that Keith had put off his proposal until she had finished this job and was taking off for Europe.

Six months would be the minimum lease she could sign. She could end up trapped in Sydney for longer than she would choose to be. She wanted to be in Europe by October to see the gardens in autumn. Maybe she should consider a short-term house-share or even house-sitting.

Twenty-eight and still without a home of her own—she couldn’t help but be plagued by a sense of failure when she thought about her limited options.

She slipped into the clothes she’d brought with her to change into—the world’s most flattering skinny-leg trousers in a deep shade of biscuit teamed with a businesslike crisp white shirt, and topped with a stylish short trench coat in ice-blue with contrasting dark buttons. She finished off with a blue-and-black leopard-print scarf around her neck and short camel boots with a medium stiletto heel.

Lucky for her, Lynne was a fashion buyer for a big retailer and could get her clothes at a sizeable discount. Lynne also had excellent taste in the choices she made for her, which made up for Shelley’s own tendency to slide into whatever felt most comfortable.

As she pulled her hair into a high ponytail and slicked on some make-up she thought she scrubbed up rather well.

Still feeling like an intruder in the apartment, she perched on the edge of the sofa and texted Declan.

I need to take a long lunch hour today—will make up the time.

His text came back straight away.

Can I see you before you go? Come to the front door.

Puzzled, Shelley put down her phone. She hadn’t been inside the house since the evening of her interview. She hoped she wasn’t to be reprimanded for anything. She had a feeling Declan hadn’t been too impressed with the way she’d brought Mark in—though arranging for extra help was quite within their terms of agreement.

She flung her fake designer tote bag—a present from a friend, who’d bought it in Thailand—over her shoulder and headed around to the front of the house.

* * *

Declan had lost count of the times he had berated himself for giving in to the temptation to free Shelley’s glorious hair from its constraints. For touching her. It had been out of order. Unprofessional. Wrong.

Even if it had only been in the interests of research for Princess Estella.

Or so he’d told himself.

For a moment he had let that self-imposed force field slip—with disastrous consequences. Now she obviously felt uncomfortable around him. And he could not rid his mind of the memory of how it had felt to be so intimately close to her—and her trembling response to his touch.

He felt he owed Shelley an explanation. But he was more fluent in JavaScript than he was at talking about anything personal. How did he explain why he had to keep her at arm’s length? That he was not free to pursue another woman?

Technically, yes, he was a widower and able to marry again. But the day Lisa had died he had shut down emotionally. He had imprisoned himself in chains of grief and guilt, shrouded himself in the darkness of self-blame.

Lisa was dead. Their daughter’s life snuffed out when it had scarcely begun. How could he expect happiness, love, intimacy for himself? He didn’t deserve a second chance.

‘Survivor’s guilt—a classic case of it,’ his mother had said. His top criminal-law-barrister mother, who knew a lot about the darker side of life. She’d given him the contact details of a grief counsellor—details that still sat in the bottom of his desk drawer.

Even she had been devastated by the tragedy. She’d been very fond of Lisa and seen the birth of her first grandchild as a chance to start over. ‘To be a better grandmother than I ever was a mother,’ she’d said with brutal honesty.

But in these last days, spent mostly in solitude, Declan had decided there was only one honest way to handle the situation with Shelley. He had to get Princess Estella out into the open. Explain to Shelley that she had inspired his new creation. Ask her to model for him.

Not in a body stocking or a skin-tight spandex sensor suit, though his pulse quickened at the thought of it. No. In her gender-neutral gardening gear. But with her long hair let down. Maybe with a fan floating it around her face and behind her like a banner. He would ask her to pose for him so he could get the hair and face right for Estella.

There would be a generous modelling fee, of course. It would all be above board and without any hint of exploitation. He could draw up a contract. Maybe include a share of royalties—he could afford it.

He didn’t want dishonesty between them. Outing Estella was the only way to go.

Buoyed by the idea, he had asked Shelley to come to the house so they could discuss it asap.

At the sound of the bell at the front door he took the elevator Lisa had had installed—‘for when we’re old and can’t make the stairs’—down from his top-floor office to get to the door more quickly.

He would put things right with Shelley.

But the Shelley who stood on the porch outside was not the Shelley he was expecting. The only thing he recognised about her was her smile—and even that was a subdued version of its usual multi-watt radiance.

His gardener was no longer an amazon but a glamazon.

Gone was the ugly, khaki uniform, replaced by a stylish, elegant outfit that emphasised the feminine shape the uniform concealed. Narrow trousers clung to long, slender legs, the shirt unbuttoned to reveal the delectable swell of her breasts, and the high-heeled boots brought her closer to him in height and gave her hips a sensuous sway.

Subtle dark make-up emphasised the beauty of her eyes, and the lush sensuality of her mouth was deepened by lipstick the colour of ripe raspberries.

For a too-long moment he stared at her, struck dumb with admiration—and an intensely masculine reaction that rocked him.

‘You wanted to see me?’ she asked, with a puzzled frown.

He could not keep his eyes off her.

He had to clear his throat before he spoke. ‘Yes. Come in,’ he said as he ushered her through the door.

‘I hope there’s nothing wrong,’ she said with a quiver in her voice.

‘Of course not,’ he said.

But everything had changed.

He needed time to collect his rapidly racing thoughts.

He led her through the grand entrance hall, her heels clicking on the marble floor, to the small reception room where he’d first interviewed her. Light slanting through the old lead-light windows, original to the house, picked up the gold in her hair. She brought the sunshine with her.

Immediately they were in the room she went straight to the window. ‘What a beautiful view of the garden,’ she said. ‘It’s starting to take shape. In a few weeks that wisteria arch will be glorious. I’ve trimmed it but it will need a good prune when it’s finished flowering. You have to cut it back well and truly before the buds form for...for the next season’s flowering.’

Her words trickled to a halt and she didn’t meet his eye. Did she sense his heightened awareness of her as a woman, his ambivalence? She moistened her lovely, raspberry-stained lips with the tip of her tongue. The action fascinated him.

The full impact of his attraction to her hit him like a punch to the gut. He fisted his hands by his sides. He’d been kidding himself from the get go.

This wasn’t about Princess Estella.

It was about Shelley.

It had always been about Shelley—warm-hearted, clever, down-to-earth, gorgeous Shelley. Even in the drab uniform with her charmingly eccentric interest in rusty old rakes and broken-down fountains she had delighted him from day one.

He could no longer kid himself that his attraction to Shelley was because she sparked his creative impulse. She sparked male impulses a whole lot more physical and urgent. She was a beautiful woman and he wanted her in a way he had not imagined wanting another woman after his wife had died.

He could not ask her to pose for Estella.

No way could he invite her to spend hours alone with him in his studio while he sketched her. It would be a kind of torture. That idea had to be trashed.

But he found he had to say something else to justify him calling her into the house. ‘I wanted to tell you I had a note from the neighbour thanking me for getting rid of the ficus benjamina.’

Now that full-beam smile was directed at him.

‘It wasn’t to...fire me or anything?’

‘Of course not.’ How could she possibly think that? He realised that under her brightness and bravado lay a deep vein of self-doubt. That although she seemed so strong she was also vulnerable. It unleashed a powerful urge to protect her.

‘That’s a relief,’ she said. ‘I was racking my brains to think of what I’d done wrong.’

He had to clear his throat of some deep, choking emotion to speak. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong.’

He ached to take her into his arms and reassure her how invaluable she was, how special. But that was not going to happen. He recognised his attraction to her. That did not mean he intended to act on it.

He now could admit it to himself. Admit the truth that welled out from his subconscious and into his dreams. Now, when he was battling the insomnia that had plagued him since the night his wife had died, in those few hours of broken sleep it wasn’t Lisa’s face that kept him awake. It was Shelley’s.

And that felt like betrayal.

‘That’s great news about the neighbour,’ she said. ‘Makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it? And, hey, you spoke Latin. Uh, instead of computer speak. That I don’t speak at all. I mean, I can use a computer, of course I can, but I—’

‘I get it,’ he said. There she went—rabbiting on again. He found it charming. He found her charming. And way too appealing in every way.

He realised she was nervous around him. Was he looking particularly forbidding today?

She twisted the strap of her handbag in her hands. ‘Thank you for telling me that but, if that’s all, I have to go. As I said, I need to take a longer lunch hour today.’

‘A date?’ he blurted out without thinking.

Jealousy speared him again. Who was the lucky guy who would be seeing her dressed up like this?

‘Not a date,’ she said with a perturbed frown.

Of course she would be perturbed. He had no right to ask about her personal life. She would be quite within her rights to tell him to mind his own business.

He could not deny his relief that she wasn’t going out with a man. But if it wasn’t a date, why and where was she going?

He forced his voice to sound casual, unconcerned. ‘Lunch with a friend? It’s quite okay for you to stay as long as you like. I know what hours you’ve been putting in out there in the garden.’

Her mouth twisted downward. ‘Nothing as nice as lunch with a friend, I’m afraid. I have to look for somewhere to live. I share with my sister but she’s just got engaged and her fiancé wants to move in.’

‘There’s no room for you?’

‘No. It’s a tiny apartment.’ She sighed. ‘Now I’m heading off to inspect a place in Edgecliff. Along with all the other people desperate to find somewhere with reasonable rent close to the city. I want to stay in this area.’ She held up both hands with fingers crossed. ‘So wish me luck.’

She turned on her high-heeled boot. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Declan followed her to the door, opened it for her, watched her start down the steps. ‘Stop,’ he called after her.

She turned. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll miss the inspection time if I don’t leave now. I have to find parking and—’

‘Don’t go. You don’t need to. You can stay here, in the apartment.’

He didn’t know what had possessed him to make that offer. It was all kinds of crazy. To have her actually living on the premises would do nothing for his resolve to keep things between them strictly on an employer-employee basis. He should rescind the offer immediately.

‘You already have the key,’ he said. ‘Just move in.’

* * *

Shelley was so taken aback she stood with one foot on the bottom of the step, the other on the pathway.

‘Are you serious?’ she asked.

He shrugged those broad shoulders. ‘You need a home. The apartment is empty. It makes sense.’

‘But I... I shouldn’t... I couldn’t—’ Excitement fluttered into life only to be vanquished by caution.

‘It’s there for staff. You’re staff.’

‘Yes, I am, but...’

How to express her feelings that she was scared of living in such close proximity to him? She found him too attractive to be so near to him twenty-four-seven. Now she could go home, go out, try and forget the Rapunzel incident and how it had made her feel. Living here, knowing he was on the other side of a wall, might not be so easy.

As far as she knew Declan lived alone in the enormous house. A team of cleaners had come in on the last two Tuesdays and stayed half the day. The delivery van of an exclusive grocery store had also swept up the gravel drive several times. But no one else had come, not during the day anyway.

His house would become not just her place of employment, but also her home. Just her and him—the man who sent shivers of awareness through her no matter how she tried to suppress them.

Right now he towered four steps above her, dark, brooding and yet with something in his eyes that made her think he would be hurt if she knocked back his offer of the apartment.

The apartment that would solve her problem of where to live.

A solution that might bring more problems with it than it solved.

He shrugged again. ‘Of course, if you’d rather live in a cheap apartment in Edgecliff...’

‘No. Of course I wouldn’t. I’d love to live in the apartment. It’s beautiful. The poshest staff quarters in Sydney, I should imagine. Your lucky housekeeper—she must have been thrilled when she saw how it was decorated.’

He fell silent for a moment too long. ‘It was prepared for our nanny,’ he said. ‘The wonderful woman who used to be my nanny when I was a child. But...but she never moved in.’

‘Oh,’ she said. Classic Shelley foot-in-mouth moment. He looked so bleak that if he had been anyone else, she would have rushed to hug him. But she stayed put on the step.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

The history of her working relationship with Declan would be punctuated by endless repeats of the word sorry. ‘I need to think before I speak.’

‘You weren’t to know,’ he said. He shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. ‘So what’s it to be? Yes or no?’

‘I want to say yes but I need to know what the rent is first. I... I might not be able to afford it.’

No might about it. She almost certainly wouldn’t be able to afford the rent and the realisation brought with it a fierce regret. She would love to live in that apartment.

‘No rent,’ he said.

‘But—’

‘No buts.’ The words were accompanied by a dark, Declan scowl.

‘But—I mean not but. I mean...if I don’t pay rent I—’

‘This is staff accommodation. You’re staff. End of story.’

‘I have to pay my own way.’ She had never been able to accept a gift that might have been tied with invisible strings.

‘If you insist on a monetary transaction I will rescind my offer.’

She had no doubt he meant it. ‘No! Please don’t do that. I’ll work on Saturdays. For free. Well, not free. My labour in return for accommodation.’

‘There’s no need for that. However if you insist—’

‘I insist. When can I move in?’

‘Whenever you want.’

‘Saturday. This Saturday. I’ll start the extra work next Saturday.’

‘It’s a deal,’ he said. ‘Just remember not to use the door into the house—it’s the one in the kitchen.’

‘Of course not. I don’t have a key, anyway.’

‘The key you have operates both doors.’

‘I’ll respect your privacy,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

He nodded.

‘I don’t have a lot of stuff to move in,’ she said, bubbling with excitement now that she could accept the reality of the situation. ‘Most of my possessions are stored with my grandmother at Blackheath in the mountains. I hope you don’t mind if my sister gives me a hand to move in.’

‘So long as I don’t have to meet her,’ he said.

‘I’ll make sure of that,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Declan.’

He acknowledged her thanks with another nod.

She looked down at her smart outfit. ‘Now I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go,’ she said. ‘I just might drive on down to Double Bay and treat myself to a café lunch.’

She bit down firmly on words that threatened to spill and invite him to join her for lunch. The fact that he was her boss didn’t stop her. There was no law that said work colleagues couldn’t share a bite to eat—she did it all the time.

No. She didn’t voice the invitation because it would sound perilously close to asking him on a date. And that was never going to happen.

She thanked him again and walked down the pathway, happy with the unexpected outcome of her meeting with Declan. She had a beautiful home until her contract here came to an end and she flew away to fulfil her dreams.

For her heart’s sake she just had to keep well clear of Declan in the hours that were hers to spend as she pleased.