Читать книгу: «One Summer At The Lake», страница 3

She held herself rigid as he walked past her and closed the door.

‘So?’

She shrugged and matched his tone. ‘What?’

‘Would you like to tell me what that was all about?’

Now he wants to know. ‘I was trying to explain.’

Isandro’s jaw tightened. He was furious to have been put in the position of being treated like some sort of hero and not having a clue why, and his anger was aimed at the person he held responsible for it.

‘Well, explain now.’

‘The fund-raiser was for Hannah.’

‘The child in the wheelchair?’

Zoe nodded. ‘Hannah had surgery for a spinal tumour. It was successful, they got all the tumour, but the pressure on the spinal cord caused damage and she can’t walk. The doctors can’t do anything, but Chloe, her mum, found a hospital in Boston that might be able to help. The treatment is experimental but so far the results have been really good.’

‘And all this today was for that cause?’

She nodded.

His dark brows drew together in a straight line above his hawkish nose. ‘Why on earth did you not tell me this straight away?’

She stared at him, staggered he could ask the question with a straight face…Priceless—the man was incredible. ‘Possibly because you didn’t give me a chance?’

Before he could respond there was a tap on the door and Chloe poked her head into the room.

‘I almost forgot—we’re having a party tomorrow at our house. Please come, Mr Montero.’

‘Isandro.’

‘Isandro,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m sure Zoe will drive you if you want a drink,’ Zoe was mortified to hear her friend suggest warmly. ‘Her being the teetotaller she is.’

Zoe tensed, dreading the man would respond with a crushing refusal to the invitation, but to her surprise he simply nodded and said, ‘Most kind of you.’

‘Great—we’ll see you both at seven.’

The door closed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make your excuses. I’m assuming that as you know I’m not some sort of con artist you’ll allow me to work my notice. I’m not asking for myself, but the children—’

Frowning, he cut across her. ‘They all seem to be under the impression that I gave the go-ahead for this…this…’

‘Fund-raising Fun Day.’

‘Fun?’

‘It started out as a coffee morning and then it just…’

He produced the sarcastic smile that made her want to stick a pin in him.

She clenched her teeth. ‘Got out of hand.’

‘It would seem you have a problem saying no.’ He looked at her mouth and imagined her saying yes to a lot of things…yes and please. ‘Did it not occur to you to tell me what this was about?’

She lifted her chin in response to his daunting disapproval and countered, ‘Did it not occur to you to tell me who you were?’

The retort drew a frown. ‘You have placed me in an impossible situation,’ he brooded darkly.

Logic told him his hands were tied.

Sack her now and he would go from being the hero of the hour to the villain in a breath, and while he did not care overly for his standing in the local community, what bothered him was the press getting a sniff and running with it.

With the Fitzgerald deal in the balance the timing was as bad as it could be and this was the sort of story that the tabloids loved. The wheelchair-bound child, the rich landowner…He could see the headlines now, closely followed by the deal he had spent the last six months pulling together going down the drain along with all the jobs it would bring.

As tempting as it was to let the dismissal stand—every instinct he had was telling him she was nothing but trouble—Isandro knew the more sensible alternative was letting her stay. He had no doubt whatever that he would not have long to wait before she provided him with ample legitimate reasons to dismiss her.

An image of the pale freckled face flashed into his head. ‘The child could not be treated in this country?’

Zoe smiled—the day had done some good. ‘No, the surgery is ground-breaking.’

‘And shaving your head?’ He directed a curious glance at her glossy head, the light shining from the window highlighting natural-looking glossy chestnut streaks in the rich brown. ‘A joke?’

Zoe lifted a self-conscious hand and flicked her plait over shoulder. ‘Not really. Chloe has bad days sometimes and to make her laugh I said if the day didn’t raise the money she needed I’d shave off my hair to raise more.’

‘No!’ The strength of his spontaneous rebuttal startled Isandro as much as it appeared to the owner of the hair.

She blinked, startled. ‘Pardon?’

‘It would not be appropriate for my housekeeper to go around with a shaved head.’

For a moment Zoe stared at him, her hope soaring despite the voice in her head that counselled caution. ‘Housekeeper. Does that mean…?’

‘I will be back tomorrow and I expect—’ He broke off as a great roar went up from outside. ‘I will expect things to be back to normal.’

‘So you’re not sacking me?’ Zoe lowered her gaze, appalled to find her eyes filling with weak tears of relief.

‘I will give you a trial period.’ He gave her a month.

‘You won’t regret it.’

He probably would. ‘The child…?’ He touched the back of the chair she had been spinning around in. ‘The one with the ginger hair.’

‘Auburn. That was Georgie…Georgina.’

‘She is…?’ he prompted impatiently. It was like getting blood out of a stone.

‘My niece.’ She beamed happily. He could look down his aristocratic nose at her as much as he liked—she was no longer homeless, jobless and virtually destitute.

‘She is staying long?’

‘She lives with me and her twin brother, Harry.’ In her head she could hear Laura on the phone when the scan had revealed she was carrying twins…One of each, Zoe, how lucky are we?

In the act of opening a diary on his desk, he stopped, his hands flat on the desk as he lifted his head. ‘You have two children living here? No, that is not acceptable. You will have to make other arrangements.’

Zoe stared at him, breathing deeply to distract herself from the rush of anger. ‘Arrangements? What,’ she asked, ‘did you have in mind?’

His eyes narrowed at the edge of sarcasm in her voice. ‘I know nothing about children.’

‘Except that you have no room in your twenty-bedroom house for two small ones.’

‘So you’re suggesting you move into my home.’ He arched a sardonic brow and watched her flush. ‘Or perhaps you already have?’ It struck him that this might not be so far from the truth—the child had looked very comfortable in his chair.

Zoe flushed and bit her lip. ‘Of course not.’

‘So you would agree that the accommodation that comes with the job is not suitable.’

‘It’s fine.’ It was free and in the catchment area of the twins’ school, which made it not just fine but incredible!

His dark eyes sealed to hers as in interrogation mode he ran a hand across his jaw, shadowed with a day’s growth of stubble. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong…’

Oh, sure, I bet that happens a lot, she thought, struggling to keep her placid, perfect housekeeper smile pasted in place. She could see him now surrounded by little yes men falling over themselves to tell him how wonderful he was.

‘But I was under the impression that the housekeeper’s apartment had one bedroom?’

‘A very big bedroom, and it has a perfectly comfortable sofa bed in the living room.’

‘You sleep on a sofa bed?’

He could not have looked more appalled had she just announced she dossed down on a park bench or in a shop doorway.

‘The arrangement works very well.’ She smiled brightly in the face of his undisguised scepticism. If he was looking for an excuse to give her the push, she wasn’t going to give him any. ‘I’m always up before the twins, and they are in bed before me.’ It wasn’t a room of her own that kept Zoe awake at night, it was balancing her budget.

‘In other words it is a perfect arrangement.’

Zoe pretended not to recognise the dry sarcasm. ‘Not perfect,’ she conceded calmly. ‘But a workable compromise.’ Like he knew a lot about compromise, she thought, but, smothering the prickle of antagonism, she continued serenely, ‘And if you’re thinking that the twins have a negative impact on my work, actually the reverse is true.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Having a family and responsibilities makes me ultra-reliable.’ And totally lacking in pride, suggested the scornful voice in her head.

‘You mean you need this job so you’ll bite back the insult hovering even now on the tip of your tongue.’ His hooded dark eyes slid to the soft full outline of her quite spectacularly sexy lips.

The words hovering on the tip of Zoe’s tongue involved telling him to stop staring at her mouth.

She found herself thinking with nostalgia of the days when her temporary cash shortages had been dealt with by not buying the pair of shoes she’d been drooling over, or cutting back on the number of coffees she bought in a week. Things were no longer so simple. She was still reeling over the cost of new school uniforms for the twins, who had both shot up the previous term.

‘You are speaking as if this arrangement is permanent. I assumed the children were spending their holiday with you.’

And I could have let him continue assuming that—the man is here so rarely he wouldn’t have known the difference—but no, I had to go open my big mouth.

‘No. They are my sister’s children.’ She swallowed. She didn’t discuss the details of the accident that had killed her sister and her husband or mention the underage drunk driver going the wrong way on the motorway who had been responsible for the simple fact that she was afraid if she did she would start shouting. ‘She and her husband died. I’m the children’s guardian.’

‘I am sorry.’

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

According to the grief counsellor anger was normal…It would pass, she said. There might be a time when she would stop being angry, but six months after that terrible day Zoe could not imagine a time when she would come to terms with it, stop wanting to beat her bare fists against a brick wall at the sheer terrible waste.

‘You are very young to have such responsibilities.’

‘That’s relative, isn’t it?’ Only last week Zoe had watched a programme that followed a week in the life of children who were the main carers for their disabled parents. It had made her feel ashamed—compared to them she had it easy.

‘Surely there is someone more suitable who could take care of these children?’ He scanned her up and down and shook his head.

‘My sister was my only family and Dan didn’t have any family. It’s me or social services.’ She’d do what it took to stop that happening. The children would enjoy the sort of childhood she’d had…It was far too short as it was.

Zoe closed her eyes, remembering Laura’s face the day she met Dan, and swallowed, concentrating on the anger, not the pain, as the same old question followed—why? Why Laura of all people in the world? Why did it have to be her?

He eyed her beautiful face cynically. ‘I am assuming that housekeeping was not a career choice for you.’

Zoe moistened her lips, trying to decide what the right answer to this question was. In the end she kept it simple and honest.

‘I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life.’

There had never seemed any hurry to make up her mind. She liked to travel; she liked new experiences and meeting new people.

Well, now it was her turn to step up to the mark and, yes, she would beg and be tearfully grateful to this awful man. She would grovel if necessary, even if it killed her. She would do whatever it took to keep her family together.

She gave a quietly confident smile. ‘But I never give any less than a hundred per cent, and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep this job…Anything,’ she added fiercely.

‘Anything…?’

Something in the way he said it made her feel less secure, but she wouldn’t back down—she couldn’t. She nodded.

‘Absolutely.’

Expression impassive, he brushed an invisible speck off his dark top with long brown fingers.

‘“Anything” covers a lot of territory so if you’re offering sexual favours I should tell you I normally get it for free.’

Zoe’s hands curled into tight fists at her sides as she breathed through the energising rush of anger. He was taunting her, but he knew full well she couldn’t respond and in her book that made the man a bully. She rubbed the hand that tingled to slap the expression of amused disdain off his smug, impossibly handsome face, and tilted her chin to an enquiring angle.

But would she…?

She pushed away the question and willed herself not to blush, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing her squirm. At least she was safe from any unwanted attentions—the man was obviously too much of a snob to consider sleeping with the help.

But if he did?

Her body reacted to the unspoken question and Zoe had no more chance of halting the visceral chain reaction than she did stopping her fingers jerking back from a hot object.

Taking a deep breath, she brought her lashes down in a protective sweep and wrapped her arms across her middle in a hugging gesture, glad that she was wearing a loose-fitting top. She was saved the added embarrassment of having her shamefully engorged nipples on view, but it didn’t stop her being painfully conscious of the chafing discomfort of her bra or the heavy liquid ache low in her pelvis.

Closing down this internal dialogue as her temperature rose, Zoe managed to break contact with his disturbing steely stare and lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug.

‘Jokes aside, I can promise you I shall be totally professional.’

He arched a brow and didn’t look convinced by her claim. She felt panic trickle down her spine and thought, God, please don’t let him change his mind.

‘You won’t be sorry.’ Her fingernails gouged crescents into the soft flesh of her palms as she held her breath awaiting his response, feeling like a prisoner in the dock waiting to hear his sentence read out.

His tall figure framed in the doorway, Isandro turned. He already was regretting it.

‘I am sorry for your loss, but I have to tell you I do not allow sentiment to sway my judgement, so do not expect any special favours here.’

Just how well would his judgement withstand the pressure of great legs and a stupendous mouth?

Her smile was cold and proud. ‘I won’t expect any.’

‘We’ll see. I judge by results, not promises.’ Or lips, he thought as his gaze made an unscheduled traverse of the lush pink curve of her wide mouth before he could think better of it.

‘I never had any complaints.’ The unintentional innuendo after his previous comment brought a flush to her cheeks. ‘In any of the jobs I’ve had,’ she added hastily.

‘That cannot be many. How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two, and actually—’ She lifted a hand, about to list the jobs she had done, and dropped it again, not wanting to give the impression that she didn’t have staying power. As it happened, it was too late, as his next disturbingly perceptive remark revealed.

‘What is the longest time you have remained in one job?’

Outwardly cool, inwardly thinking, Why, oh, why can I never keep my big mouth shut? she furrowed her smooth brow. ‘Is that relevant?’

‘It is if you walk after a week.’

‘I have done a number of jobs, it’s true, but who hasn’t in this job market?’ As if he knows such a lot about this job market. He may employ a lot of people in his various empires, but to him they are statistics on a chart. ‘I’ve never left anyone in the lurch. I’m totally reliable.’

‘But you don’t like to stay in one place long? You have no staying power?’

‘I have…’ She forced her lips into a smile and bit back a retort even though it choked her to do so. ‘Please don’t judge me on first impressions. I have responsibilities now that I did not have previously.’

‘We’ll see.’ He flicked his wrist and glanced at his watch. ‘My chef will be here later. You will make the arrangements.’

She nodded and produced a smile that oozed professional confidence. ‘Of course.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘What arrangements would they be?’

Unable to decide if she was joking, he regarded her with an expression of stern disapproval. ‘This is not a work experience position, Miss Grace.’

‘Of course not, Mr Monster…Montero.’ Thrown into confusion by the horrifying Freudian slip, she almost fell over in her haste to get to the door before him to open it.

‘I do not require grovelling. I require efficiency.’

She tipped her head meekly. ‘Of course.’ What he required, in her opinion, was taking down a peg or several hundred. She just hoped she was around to watch when it happened.

Passing through the door, Isandro revised his month estimate. She wouldn’t last a week. If she had mouths to feed that was not his problem—he was not a charity.

CHAPTER FOUR

IF HE FOUND so much as a curtain fold out of place she’d eat her rather grubby trainers, Zoe decided, doing a final survey of the room.

The army of volunteers had cleared away any sign of yesterday’s festivities in the grounds. The word had got around that the boss had put in an unexpected appearance the previous day and the staff had really gone the extra mile on the house. The rest of the rooms were equally pristine, about as lived-in as your average museum, but presumably cosy was not what he wanted.

Thinking the word ‘cosy’ in the same thought as Isandro Montero made her lips quirk, but not for long. She had spent a really awful night reliving yesterday’s encounter, by turns breaking out in cold sweats when she thought of how close she’d come to losing the roof over their heads and seething with resentment that she’d had to crawl to keep it.

The couple of times she had managed to drift off she hadn’t been able to escape the awful man who held their fate in his elegant, over-privileged hands. Shivering, she pushed her fingers into her hair and shook her head. Typical. She normally forgot the contents of her dreams the moment she woke up. But the dark erotic images from last night remained disturbingly fresh, as did the lingering shivery feeling in the pit of her stomach that did not diminish with each subsequent flashback.

Get a grip, Zoe, she told herself. The man only comes here once in a blue moon, so grit your teeth and give him no opportunity to criticise.

‘You don’t have to like him.’ And you definitely don’t have to dream about him, she added silently as she rubbed a suggestion of a smudge off the surface of a mirrored bureau door with the sleeve of her sweater.

Catching sight of herself, she gave a horrified gasp. The house and grounds looked terrific but she didn’t!

Rushing out into the square marble-floored hallway, dominated by the graceful curving staircase that rose to the second floor and the glass dome above that flooded the space with light, Zoe couldn’t help glancing nervously at the big front door, her heart beating fast in reaction to the image in her head of it opening to reveal the master of the house. A shiver travelled the length of her spine before she shook her head, laughing.

Master?

‘Really, Zoe!’ She shook her head again, ignoring the fact her laugh this time had a breathless sound to it. Living with all this history was making her thoughts turn positively feudal, she decided, exiting through the door that led into a long winding inner hallway and in turn to the sturdy door that led outside into the quadrangle of outbuildings at the rear of the building.

She headed across the cobbled yard, past the rows of stone troughs filled with artistically arranged tumbling summer flowers, and up the stone steps that led to the flat above what had once been a coach house but now housed what was by all accounts an impressive collection of vintage sports cars.

Inside the flat she closed the door and leaned against it, relieved that he hadn’t put in an appearance while she was looking like a scarecrow. Walking across to the fitted cupboard that housed her clothes, she grimaced at her reflection in the full-length mirror inside the door. Not exactly the image of cool efficiency she was determined to exemplify.

Stripping down to her bra and pants, she folded her jeans. When the space was limited neatness was essential but fortunately she didn’t have many clothes, which made her choice of a suitable outfit pretty easy. Padding through the living room and through the twins’ bedroom into the en-suite, she popped her dusty top in the linen basket, then pinned her hair up before she stepped into the shower. Though she would have liked to wash her hair, it took an age to dry and she was short of time.

Fifteen minutes later, wearing a crisp white blouse, a pair of narrow-legged tailored black trousers and with her hair in a fat plait down her back, she slid her feet into a pair of sensible black leather loafers. She gave herself a critical once-over, bending at the knee to see the top of her head in the angled mirror. Resisting the temptation to jazz up the sombre outfit with a pink scarf dotted with orange roses, she slid a pair of gold hoops into her ears. The sound of them jingling brought a smile to her lips as she lifted her head, more confidence in her stride as she headed across the courtyard. She was determined to make up for the disastrous first impression she had made; she could do it.

She had to do it.

Her smile faded slightly as she approached the building, tensing as she heard a car in the distance, but the vehicle that drove through the arch was a delivery van from the local butcher’s. She started breathing again, delivering the silent advice, Cool it, Zoe, before she paused to thank one of the gardeners for donating a box full of the vegetables from the kitchen garden to the raffle the previous day, and admiring the magnificent lavender tumbling from a group of barrels.

‘The smell always makes me think of summer and at night it fills the flat,’ she told him, adding warmly, ‘The flowers you cut for the house were marvellous.’ She had spent a pleasant half-hour filling bowls in several of the rooms with the fragrant summer blooms.

He tilted his head in acknowledgement and looked pleased with the compliment. ‘The other one here before you sent up to London for fancy arrangements every week. I told her it was a criminal waste.’

‘I’m sure they were very beautiful.’ The gardener might approve, but Zoe suddenly felt less secure about her amateur attempts to add a touch of colour to the house; they were hardly professional.

Resisting the impulse to run back to the house and remove all the flowers, which in her mind were fast becoming tasteless and ugly displays of amateurism, she chatted a little longer to the man before she finally excused herself.

In the end she couldn’t bring herself to dump the freshly cut flowers, deciding as a compromise not to volunteer the information she was responsible—unless directly asked, which seemed unlikely. She walked around the place a final time to double-check everything, leaving it until the last possible moment before she jumped in her car and set off to pick up the twins from school.

For all she knew Isandro Montero might not arrive until midnight; he might be a total no-show—if she was very lucky.

The narrow country lane that led to the village was in theory a short cut, but Zoe got stuck behind a tractor, and the children were already waiting at the gate when she arrived, chatting to Chloe and Hannah.

‘I’m sorry I’m late!’ she exclaimed.

‘You’re not late,’ Chloe soothed. ‘They only just got out.’ She took in Zoe’s outfit and her brows lifted. ‘Wow, you look very…’

‘Weird,’ supplied Georgie bluntly.

‘Very sexy librarian,’ Chloe corrected.

‘Are librarians sexy?’ Harry asked.

Chloe exchanged a look with Zoe, who suppressed a smile and said, ‘In the car, you two.’ Adding, ‘Do you want a lift, Chloe?’

The older woman shook her head. ‘No, I’m picking up some glasses for tonight from Sara on my way back.’

‘I hope you all have a great night, I wish I could come but…’ She lifted her slender shoulders in a regretful shrug; her babysitting arrangements had fallen through that morning.

‘You can…I know, just call me fairy godmother. You know how John’s mum is having Hannah? Well, she’s offered to have your two as well. John will pick up the twins on his way home and he’ll fetch them back in the morning.’

‘Oh, Chloe, that’s really kind but I couldn’t impose…’

‘It’s not imposing. Maud offered and they’ll have a great time, you know they will.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Yes but nothing, Cinders, you’re going to the ball and don’t forget the invite includes your utterly gorgeous boss…I tell you, if I was a few years younger I’d give you a bit of competition there.’

Zoe struggled to smile at the joke. ‘He’s not here, I’m afraid.’ She felt a guilty tug as her friend’s face fell.

‘I thought he was due back today. John’s going to be so disappointed—he wanted to thank him personally and return his hospitality. Half the people there only came because they wanted to take a look at the hall.’

Zoe’s unease increased. Short of admitting that the hospitality they wanted to return had not been given freely, she had no way of preventing the decision to treat the new lord of the manor as a community-minded philanthropist.

‘He was…is…due today,’ she admitted. ‘But when I left he hadn’t arrived.’

‘But he might do.’

‘Anything’s possible,’ Zoe admitted, but the thought of Isandro coming to a party where the glasses were borrowed and the food was provided by guests! Possible but not very likely, thank goodness!

‘Well, promise you’ll remind him if he does turn up? Tell him that we’d love to see him and he seemed very keen to come. He’s obviously making an effort to be part of the community.’

Zoe didn’t have the heart to shatter this illusion and explain that the man had only said yes to cut the scene short and get rid of them as quickly as possible.

‘If he does I will,’ Zoe promised, imagining with horror the admittedly unlikely scenario of Isandro putting in an appearance at the party. Him spending the entire evening with his lips curled contemptuously would suck the joy out of any occasion and Zoe wanted to save her friends that. On a less unselfish note she wanted to save herself from spending her precious off-duty time with a man who made her skin prickle with antagonism even before he opened his mouth and said something vile and unpleasant. The fact that half the vile things he said were actually the truth was neither here nor…Losing track of her train of thought, she shook her head slightly to banish the image of the lips that combined overt sensuality with an underlying hint of cruelty.

She was getting fixated on the man’s mouth when it was the things that came out if it that she ought to worry about.

‘John will be by around six to pick up the twins.’

Isandro did not get involved in other people’s lives. His charitable donations to selected good causes were made anonymously, and he never responded to any form of moral blackmail or sentimental sob stories, but the story of the little girl and her ‘last chance to walk’ trip to America continued to play in his mind.

Admit it, Isandro, the kid got to you.

This perceived weakness was responsible for putting the indent between his sable brows. His father had been a sentimental man, a kind, trusting man who was moved by the suffering of others. A man who taught his son the importance of charity, and led by example.

And where had that got him?

Universally liked and admired certainly—but at the end he had been a broken and disillusioned man.

Isandro had been forced to stand by helplessly and watch while the woman his father had married and her daughter had systematically robbed the family business, stealing not just from his father but from major clients. He had no intention of emulating his parent, had no room for sentimentality in his life, expected the worst from others and was rarely disappointed.

Experience had taught him that everyone had an angle and the most innocent of faces could hide a devious heart, like his stepmother and her daughter. Forced to brake hard to avoid a cat that shot across the road out of nowhere, he shook his head, banishing the thoughts of the pair of con artists who had with clinical efficiency isolated his father, alienating him not just from trusted friends and colleagues but his family, ensuring that when Isandro had passed on the concerns expressed by senior staff it had been treated as jealous spite.

Isandro would never be the man his father had been; he’d make sure of that. The possibility that his name was synonymous with cold and heartless was to his way of thinking infinitely preferable to being considered a mug.

A faint smile flickered across his face. According to the lovely Zara he was both cold and heartless among other things. She had lost it big time and reverted to her native Russian, a language Isandro had only a smattering of, so some of the choicer insults had been lost on him, before she swept majestically out of the restaurant on her designer heels.

He exhaled, feeling a fleeting spasm of regret. The woman looked magnificent even when she was spitting fury, and the sex had been excellent.

Great sex had been about the only thing they had going for them, and it had been pretty much the perfect relationship while Zara’s demands had stayed in the bedroom, but recently…He shook his head. He was not into post-mortems but if he’d lived last night again he might not have replied so honestly when Zara had pouted and asked, ‘Have you listened to a word I’ve been saying all night?’

If he’d contented himself with an honest, no frills ‘no’ he might have cajoled her out of her sulks and things might not have escalated so noisily, but he hadn’t. He’d irritably gone into more detail, rather unwisely revealing that he had minimal interest in shoes, the latest way to remove a skin blemish, or minor royals.