Cathy Williams: Hired for the Boss's Bedroom

Leo pushed himself away from the doorframe and turned his back on her. ‘You should loosen up,’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘You might find that life’s less hard work when you’re not continually arguing the finer points. You might actually enjoy being subservient…’

‘Subservient? I—I can’t think of anything worse…’ she stammered.

‘No? Funny. Every woman I have ever known has ended up enjoying being controlled…not in the boardroom, of course…’

He was standing right in front of her and Heather took a couple of little steps back.

‘Good for them.’

‘You are not like them, however. That much I’ll concede. But I guarantee there’s one order I can give you that you’ll jump to obey.’

‘What?’ she flung at him defiantly, her nerves skittering as he produced a wicked grin.

‘Leave now, or else watch me undress.’

Cathy Williamsis originally from Trinidad, but has lived in England for a number of years. She currently has a house in Warwickshire, which she shares with her husband Richard, her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma, and their pet cat, Salem. She adores writing romantic fiction and would love one of her girls to become a writer—although at the moment she is happy enough if they do their homework and agree not to bicker with one another!

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OF COURSE, Leo had known what his mother was thinking when she had said, without any hint of inflection in her voice, that they had hoped he might have arrived a little earlier—several hours earlier, she could have said, were she to have been absolutely precise. Instead, she had held back her obvious disappointment and had listened to his excuses without comment.

Meetings had overrun. An urgent call had come through just as he had been leaving the office. Inevitable Friday traffic. Leo had kept the excuses brief, knowing that his mother would never actually tell him exactly what she was thinking, would never express disapproval or condemnation. In fact, he doubted whether there had been any need at all to make excuses, but politeness had driven him to apologise just as politeness had driven his mother to respond as she had, without any hint of censure.

‘Daniel,’ she had said eventually, ‘has popped out to see Heather. Just next door. The quickest way is to walk across the fields to her house, but I expect you would rather drive. Or, of course, you could wait here. I told Heather that he was to be back no later than seven.’

‘I’ll walk.’ He would not take the car because, as a city gent, a billionaire who had no time for country walks, he would never choose to wait.

So now here he was, sampling at first hand the extensive acreage that surrounded the exquisite country house which he had bought for his mother over six years ago following his father’s death.

Leo had never stepped foot beyond the neatly manicured gardens surrounding the house. Naturally, he had known that the grounds stretched as far as the eye could see, encompassing fields and a thickly wooded area which became lush with lilac lavender during the warm summer-months. Hadn’t he, after all, carefully read the reports sent to him by the people he had commissioned to find the property in the first place? Hadn’t he duly noted the practicality of his mother living in a house which would not, in due course, find itself surrounded by housing estates due to greedy building contractors having no respect for open space?

But only now, as he tramped across the endless fields, inappropriately clad in handmade leather shoes and a pale-grey suit which had cost the earth, did he appreciate the true size of his investment. Surely his mother, now edging towards her seventies, didn’t ever explore the furthest reaches of the estate?

It occurred to him that in truth he had no real inkling as to what his mother did from one day to the next. He dutifully telephoned three times a week—or considerably more now that Daniel had landed on the scene—and was told that she was fine, Daniel was fine, the house was fine, life was fine. Then he would attempt to have a conversation with Daniel, which elicited much the same response but in a rather more hostile tone of voice. The details of this fine life were never painted in, so he was at a loss to know whether his mother actually realised just how much walking this hike to ‘the house next door’ entailed.

He cursed himself for thinking that he would enjoy the fresh air and exercise. Fresh air, he acknowledged—swatting past some brambles, while the summer sunshine reminded him of the folly of venturing out in the countryside wearing a jacket—was best confined to those brief mini-breaks called holidays which he took a couple of times a year—usually combining them with work, women or, more often than not, both. As for exercise, he got ample amounts of that at his London gym where he thrashed out the stress of his high-powered job on a punching bag and then cooled down with fifty-odd laps in the Olympic-sized swimming pool. No one could accuse him of being unfit. This, however, seemed to require a different sort of stamina. He found himself wishing that he had had the foresight to bring his mobile phone with him, because he could have usefully used the time to make a couple of calls, which he would now have to do when he returned to the house.

Heather’s house, his mother had assured him, couldn’t be missed—it was a small, white, cosy cottage and the garden was spilling over with flowers of every description. Her face had softened when she had said this, and he had wondered whether Heather was one of her pals from the village, someone with whom she shared gossip once a week over pots of tea.

Or something along those lines, at any rate.

It was a heartening thought. Somehow he felt less of the guilty older-son, knowing that his mother had someone virtually on her doorstep with whom she could pass the time of day. And less of the guilty absentee-father, knowing that this kindly neighbour had also bonded with his son.

The cottage in question leapt out at him without warning, and his mother was right; there was no danger of him missing it. ‘Strike out west and head for the house that looks as though it belongs in the pages of a fairy tale’. Leo hadn’t realised that so many types of flora existed, and he surprised himself by pausing for a couple of seconds to admire the profusion of colour.

Then he circled the cottage, noting the white picket-fence, the clambering roses, all those tell-tale signs of someone who was seriously into clichés. He almost expected to spot a couple of garden gnomes peering out from between the riot of flowers that bordered the little stone path to the front door, but fortunately he was spared that particular horror.