Maggie Cox - Brazilian Boss, Virgin Housekeeper

‘What are you—what are you doing?’

‘I’m repaying the compliment,’ he answered, an enigmatic little smile playing round his lips. ‘Now I am staring at you .’

Saying no more, Eduardo freed her wrists, then started to unbutton the shapeless red white and blue patterned cardigan she wore.

‘Now what are you doing?’ she asked nervously, the touch of his strong muscled thighs in the tough denim of his jeans all but burning her skin through the slightly flimsier material of her own.

‘I have a question for you.’

He locked his arms round her waist and Marianne stared up at him as if in a dream, yet fully and shockingly aware of the barely civilised, almost feral state of arousal reflected back at her from his haunting blue eyes. It was all she could do to keep breathing, never mind answer him.

‘If I asked you to come to me tonight and share my bed…would you?’

The day Maggie Coxsaw the film version of Wuthering Heights , with a beautiful Merle Oberon and a very handsome Laurence Olivier, was the day she became hooked on romance. From that day onwards she spent a lot of time dreaming up her own romances, secretly hoping that one day she might become published and get paid for doing what she loves most! Now that her dream is being realised, she wakes up every morning and counts her blessings. She is married to a gorgeous man, and is the mother of two wonderful sons. Her two other great passions in life—besides her family and reading/writing—are music and films.

By

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my fellow romance authors and readers of romance everywhere—may we continue to hold out for love, hope and happy endings in these turbulent times, come what may!

NOTHING deterred her, it seemed. Not even weather that felt as if it was blowing in straight from Siberia, Eduardo mused. For the past three weeks he had taken to visiting the small historic market town more frequently than when he had first moved to the area—ostensibly drawn to a certain exhibition that had been running in the town hall—and he hadn’t been able to help noticing the girl strumming her guitar at the side of the road, singing mournful folk songs and looking like some pretty waif straight out of a Dickens novel. Didn’t she have parents, or people that cared about her? Apparently not …

It frankly appalled Eduardo that she was reduced to singing for her supper on the streets instead of earning her living by more comfortable means. It dawned on him that she was the first person to stir him out of his solitary existence for months—a state that had begun even before he had set foot on British shores from Brazil and made the impulsive decision to reside there. Well…the turbulent events of the past two years might have taken their toll, resulting in him becoming somewhat reclusive and distant from the rest of the human race, but he was definitely not looking for remedies to rectify that situation, he reminded himself. No…His interest in the girl was just a passing curiosity that would no doubt quickly fade. At any time she could move on, and he would likely never see her again. He paused to put a note into the tatty tweed cap that lay on the ground at her feet, and weighted it down with two fifty pence pieces to keep it from being snatched away by the wind.

‘That’s a pretty song,’ he murmured.

‘Thanks…but that’s far too much.’

She stopped strumming and reached for the note, pressing it back into Eduardo’s gloved hand. Their glances caught and held, and he had the most disturbing sensation that the ground had somehow shifted beneath him.

‘Too much?’ He raised a bemused eyebrow, certain he’d misheard her.

‘Yes. If you want to donate some money to a charity there’s a church just up the road, collecting for the local homeless…St Mary’s. I’m neither a charity nor homeless.’

‘But you have a hat with coins in it. Is that not why you stand here singing?’

A great irritation surfaced inside Eduardo, and he could hardly fathom the reason for the intensity of it—other than that he wasn’t used to having his generosity rejected. Why was he even wasting time talking to such a strange girl? He should simply walk away, abandon her to her peculiar philosophy of singing for mere pennies and leave her be. But he found he could not. Even though the waif had insisted she was neither in need of charity nor a home, somehow her predicament had got to him—reached past his usual iron-clad defences and caused a surprising dent. It was—as he had concluded earlier—just that this was the first time for months that he had voluntarily made contact on purpose with someone else, and he hardly welcomed his considerate action being thrown back in his face.

‘I sing because I’m compelled to…not for the money. Haven’t you ever done something just for the sheer love of it and for no other reason?’

Her question struck him silent for a moment, and he barely knew what to do with the discomfort that made his skin prickle and burn and his throat lock tight.

‘I—I have to go.’

Knowing his expression had become frozen and uncommunicative, as was his usual habit, Eduardo shrugged, suddenly eager to return to the anonymity of the rest of the passersby and the ponderous but familiar burden of his own tormented thoughts.

‘Please yourself. You’re the one that stopped to talk to me—remember?’

‘I did not deliberately stop for the purposes of talking to you!’ he flashed, his temper suddenly ignited by the girl’s unflinching hazel gaze.

‘I see that now. You merely wanted to make yourself feel good by leaving me a ridiculously generous amount of money, then walk away again satisfied that you’d done your good deed for the day. Is that it?’

‘You are impossible!’

Wishing with all his heart that he had ignored that bothersome rogue impulse to reach out to someone who he’d genuinely believed to be in need, Eduardo gripped the ivory handle of his walking cane and moved awkwardly away. He had practically reached the end of the street before his acute hearing once again picked up the strumming of the girl’s guitar, along with her mournfully toned voice.

Had she been watching him? It troubled him deeply to realise that she must have been doing exactly that—else why wait so long to resume singing? Yes, she had been watching him…watching him walk away like the cripple he now was, he reflected savagely. Was she by any chance feeling sorry for him? The thought was like corrosive acid in his blood. Well, if he was ever unlucky enough to see her again he would make a deliberate point of ignoring her, he vowed. Who the hell did she think she was anyway—rebuffing his goodwill like that… mocking him, almost?

But as Eduardo painfully forced his stride into a more rapid pace, the question she’d asked echoed tauntingly round his brain and constricted his already tortured heart without mercy. Haven’t you ever done something just for the sheer love of it and for no other reason? To his profound shame, moisture stung the back of his eyelids and, murmuring a vehement curse, he walked blindly on into the centre of town, hardly caring that his injured leg was taking unfair punishment—all because an insignificant slip of a girl had scorned his money and pricked his pride…

The temperature had plummeted to near freezing. Barely able to feel any sensation at all in her numbed fingers as they moved over the guitar strings, Marianne decided to call it a day. The idea of a mug of creamy hot chocolate nursed in front of a roaring fire drew her swiftly homewards, and she strove hard to blot out the fact that she would be returning to an empty house. A silent, echoing mausoleum, where everything from the daintiest ornament to the lovely music room with its shining grand piano was a haunting reminder of the husband and friend who had been taken from her much too soon…