Fiona Harper - At His Service - Cinderella Housekeeper - Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After / His Housekeeper Bride / What's a Housekeeper To Do?

‘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?’

More frantic stirring.

‘Nope. Not at all.’ She started jabbing the wooden spoon at the remaining lumps.

Ellie might be different from a lot of women he knew in a lot of ways, but the whole pretending to be fine when she clearly was not was horribly familiar.

‘Ellie, I know I may have been a bit impulsive last night, but I don’t think we … I did anything wrong.’

‘Oh, you don’t?’ she said through clenched teeth.

‘No. Do you?’

Now he was totally lost. Why did women have this secret agenda that read like code to normal human beings—men, in other words?

The pan spat ferociously as Ellie added a jar of tomatoey gloopy stuff and mixed it in. She turned to face him and took a step away from the counter, still holding the dripping spoon.

‘You’re unbelievable, do you know that? You live in a lovely little Mark bubble where everything is perfect. You haven’t got a clue what real life is like!’

He thought he did a pretty good job of living life, thank you very much, and he didn’t much care for someone he hardly knew judging him for it.

‘I don’t?’

‘No! You don’t. Real people have real feelings, and you can’t just go messing around with them. You live in this rarefied world where you do whatever you want, get whatever you want and everything goes right for you. Not everybody has that luxury. And you waste it, you know? You really do.’

Something in her stare made him hold back the smart retort poised on his lips. Through the film of tears gathering in her eyes he saw determination and an honesty that was surprising—and not a little unnerving.

Something was very wrong, but as usual he was totally mystified as to what was going on inside her head. Why was she blaming him? He hadn’t been the one to start it last night. She had kissed him, remember? And he certainly hadn’t meant to mess around with her feelings, but perhaps he had … without realising it.

Maybe he was clueless. He needed to consider her accusation a little more fully before he gave a real answer.

Ellie made use of the silence to ram her point home. ‘I think it’s best for both of us if we just put that … you know, the …’

A crack in her anger showed as she desperately tried to avoid using the word ‘kiss’. It would have been funny if she hadn’t been giving him the brush-off.

‘Let’s just put what happened last night down to champagne and temporary insanity, okay? I don’t want to lose this job.’

He nodded just once. ‘And I need to start looking for a new housekeeper like I need a hole in the head.’

Finally she breathed out and her shoulders relaxed a little. ‘I’m glad we understand each other,’ she said with a small jut of her chin, and turned her attention back to the bolognaise sauce.

She was right. He knew she was right. It was just …

Aw, forget it. He’d spent the last decade fooling everyone—even himself—that he was ‘living the dream’. He might just as well return to that happy, alpha-wave state and forget that he’d ever yearned for anything more.

If you can, a little voice whispered in his ear. If you can …

Mark disappeared back to London the next day, much to Ellie’s relief. But it didn’t stop him coming back to Larkford again the following weekend. Or the one after that. During the week she could relax, enjoy her surroundings, but the weekends were something else. Stiff. Awkward. And, although she’d never expected anything more than a professional relationship with the man, now they were operating on that level it just seemed, well … weird.

And that was how it continued for the next month or so.

So, there she was on a Saturday afternoon, hiding out in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal, even though she needn’t start for hours yet. But it was good to keep herself busy and out of a certain person’s way. Not that it had been hard today. He might be at home, but he was obviously working; he’d hardly left the study all day. They were keeping to their separate territories as boxers did their corners of the ring.

She was still cross with herself for being too weak to control her brain’s fried electrical signals. They still all short-circuited every time he appeared. It was as if her neurons had rewired themselves with a specialised radar that picked up only him as he breezed around the house, as calm as you like, while her fingernails were bitten so low she’d practically reached her knuckles.

Blip. Blip. Blip .

There it went again. Her core temperature rose a couple of notches. He was on the move; she just knew it. She stopped chopping an onion and listened. After about ten seconds she heard what she’d been waiting for—footsteps in the hall, getting louder.

She kept her eyes on her work as Mark entered the kitchen. The coffee machine sputtered. Liquid sloshed into a cup. The rubber heel of a stool squeaked on the floor. Silence. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristled.