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She looked up at him and shivered.
‘You’re cold.’
She started to protest, but he swung his jacket off and carefully hung it round her shoulders. It must be the night for clichés. This, too, was something he’d done more times than he could remember too—one of his moves, part of the game.
But it wasn’t like that with Ellie. She’d been cold, and he’d done something to remedy that. He wasn’t playing any games. Mainly because he didn’t know what the rules were with her. She made him feel different—unpolished, uncertain—as if he wasn’t in control of whatever was going on.
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?’
