“Will you behave?” Agnes tapped her toe in a sure sign she was losing her patience. “She can’t kiss her boss. That path leads nowhere good.” She glared at Donna. “Don’t. Do. It. Again.”
“I’m not stupid. If Duncan has anything to give, it will only ever be physical. His heart belongs to Fiona.” And she was okay with that. Honestly. She’d known it was the case from the moment she’d stepped into the mansion. A love like Duncan’s for Fiona could never be replaced. There was no room inside him for anyone else. That’s why she’d been brutal with herself where he was concerned. She refused to feel anything for him, other than pity, and maybe a dash of caring. That was it. Nothing more. “He just asked so nicely.”
“And that’s all it took?”
For a second, Donna was worried Aggie was going to have a heart attack. She climbed off her stool. “Maybe you should sit down for a minute.”
“Just don’t tell her to calm down,” Mairi said. “She doesn’t take that well.”
“Look,” Donna faced her sisters. “It was only a kiss. It’s over now. You heard Duncan. He’s my boss, and this complicates things. He just kissed me because I was the only woman here.” She swallowed hard but wouldn’t let them see how much that hurt. She’d gone into that kiss with her eyes wide open. “Of course he’d turn to me when he started to feel…needs again. I’m the one he’s used to. It will pass.” And then she would have to watch him kiss another woman like he’d kissed her. Maybe it was time to look for another job.
“I don’t have a problem with you kissing Duncan,” Mairi said. “He’s sexy, in a lives-alone-in-the-wilderness-building-bombs-and-planning-conspiracy-theories kind of way, but that isn’t enough to sustain a relationship. You’d be much better off with a nice geeky boy. I have a few I’m still trying to match up. You can join my dating agency, and I’ll let you have your pick.” She smiled hopefully.
Agnes shook her head. “You just want to get another name off your list. This isn’t about Donna. It’s about you making another match.”
“It’s totally for Donna’s benefit too,” Mairi argued.
This was getting out of hand. “I don’t want one of your lonely-heart geeks, and I don’t want Duncan either. I’m perfectly fine on my own. Mr Right will turn up eventually, but at the moment, I don’t have time for a man in my life. I have enough problems to deal with.”
A hand-drawn troll appeared behind her sisters. Liar, liar, pants on fire, it said.
Donna ignored it. “This…” She waved a hand to encompass pretty much her whole life up until that moment. “This is just a phase. Everything will go back to normal soon.”
There is no normal, Gandalf said from beside the easel. Really, you should know that by now.
Katniss Everdeen, her latest sketch in the pages of The Hunger Games, appeared beside Gandalf and looked up at Tolkien’s wizard. Do you need me to take him out? I will if it’s for the good of the people.
“That’s great,” Aggie said, “but what else are you going to give the guy if he asks nicely?”
That was it. She was done with unwanted advice and sarcasm, from real and imaginary people alike. “Out. Everybody out.” She pointed at her drawings too. “All of you leave now.”
“Donna,” Agnes said as she looked around. “Who are you talking to? Have you snapped? It’s the pressure of this ball, isn’t it? I knew it would be too much for you.”
“Oh,” Mairi said as she pointed at a painting. “That’s your underwear set.”
As one, they turned to stare. And there she was, splashed across a massive canvas. It showed her standing in front of the studio windows. The beams of light hit her skin in a pattern that made it glow. She looked beautiful, otherworldly, ethereal.
For a long time, they all stood staring at it.
Agnes wrapped an arm around Donna’s waist and pulled her into a hug. “I understand,” she said softly. “If someone saw me like that, I’d kiss him too.”
“It’s just a painting.” But Donna’s voice shook.
“That isn’t just a painting.” Agnes stroked Donna’s hair.
Mairi looked around Agnes to snag her attention. “What the hell. Just go for it. Have some fun, Donnie, we’ll be there to pick up the pieces afterwards. You can count on us.”
“I know, but this isn’t fun.” No, it had the potential to break her heart. If she let it. “It was just a kiss,” she muttered.
And her sisters enfolded her in a group hug.
***
Duncan was in purgatory. Suspended between the heaven of kissing Donna and the hell of betraying his dead wife’s memory. Only, it hadn’t felt like a betrayal. It had felt like…home. A home he couldn’t return to if he didn’t get things sorted out.
He barrelled through the door to his office, picked up the phone on his desk and dialled his lawyer.
“What now?” Janine Myer said when she answered the call.
“Is that the way you answer the phone to all of your clients?” he barked at her.
She wasn’t intimidated. It was one of the reasons he was happy to pay her exorbitant fees. “Only the ones who’re difficult and time-consuming to deal with.”
He fought a smile. There was no time for amusement. He was a man on a mission. “I need you to rewrite Donna’s contract.”
“Okay, hit me with it. What changes do you want, and why?”
“First, I want a clause in there that says she can’t quit.”
There was silence.
“Janine?” He paced his office, scowling at the dark walls as he passed them.
“That’s illegal. You can’t force a person to continue working for you. There’s a word for it. It’s slavery.”
“Is there anything we can do to stop her wanting to leave?”
“Try being nicer to her,” came the droll reply.
“I’m trying. Why the hell do you think I’m calling?”
“I wish I knew.” She sighed. “The answer to your first demand is no, we can’t amend your housekeeper’s contract to stop her quitting the job. What’s your second point?”
“I’ve been reading up about the ‘me too’ movement,” Duncan started.
“Wait a minute,” Janine interrupted, then shouted to her assistant. “Brian, cancel my next appointment. This is going to take a while.”
“Funny, very funny.”
“I wasn’t being funny,” Janine said. “Carry on. This, I’ve got to hear.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered if every woman in his life set out to be difficult, or if he just attracted a type. “This whole ‘me too’ movement is about consent first, right?”
“Basically, it’s about asking men to resist the temptation to be arseholes.”
“Right.” He nodded as he walked over to his window. “And part of that is making sure you don’t abuse your position of power.”
“Yes…”
“And I’m in a position of power over Donna. I control her job, income, home, transport, that sort of thing.”
“Is there a point in here?”
“I need you to amend the contract so that Donna won’t feel as though she has to say yes to any personal requests I make of her.”
There was a choking noise on the other end of the line. “You want me to add a clause to her contract stating that if her boss asks for sex and she says no, it won’t jeopardize her job? Do you have even an inkling of how wrong that is?”
“Did I say anything about sex? I just want to ask her out for dinner. And you know Donna, she can’t say no to people at the best of times. I want to give her the power to say no. As far as I can see, that puts me in the right.”
There was hysterical laughter, and Duncan could do nothing other than wait it out. He stared out of the window, and to his surprise, he saw an old woman dressed in a twinset and pearls, pushing a wheelbarrow full of what looked like glitter across his lawn. He rubbed his eyes. No. She was still there. And she was making decent progress too.
“Okay
,” Janine said when she’d finally calmed down. “You want to date your housekeeper, but there’s a conflict of interest, and from your earlier request, I’m guessing you don’t want to remove that conflict of interest by firing her.”
“No.” On that he was firm. Donna needed to stay at the mansion. And he needed Donna. “Just make it so she will feel secure enough to say no to me.”
“Have you really thought about this? Are you sure you want to change the dynamic between you and the only member of your staff you haven’t managed to get rid of yet?”
“I don’t want her to leave, and I don’t want her to feel powerless.” He wasn’t sure about anything else.
“Okay.” Janine’s tone grew serious. “I can’t stop her from leaving, but I can even out the power dynamic some. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“All right then. Let’s hash out some ideas.”
Chapter 14
Donna spent the night worrying about her situation with Duncan. Did he regret the kiss? Would he ask her to leave? Or worse, would he give her the speech about how it was all a mistake? How he’d slipped and plastered his lips to hers by accident. She could take rejection, she even expected it, but she couldn’t handle Duncan telling her it was a mistake and he regretted it. After a night spent tossing and turning, she decided that her best course of action was to avoid Duncan as much as possible.
Unfortunately, Duncan wasn’t on the same page, and he called her into his office straight after breakfast. As soon as she set foot inside, she noticed things had changed. All of the framed drawings, mostly of Fiona, were piled on the floor.
“Oh, good, you’re here.” Duncan took the last picture from the wall. “Do we have any white paint kicking around? I can’t look at the colour of these damn walls a minute longer.”
He didn’t want to talk about the kiss? This was about paint? Did that mean the kiss meant so little to him that it hadn’t even registered? He was carrying on as usual, and she’d been up all night thinking about it. Worrying about what to do. How pathetic was that?
“Donna, do we have any white paint?”
She straightened her shoulders. If he was going to ignore it, then she could too. She was a professional. She could do her job—even if she couldn’t look him in the eye while she did it. “You want to paint the walls?”
“Aye.”
“By yourself?”
“You have a problem with that?”
She held up her hands. “No. It’s just that we normally contract that kind of job out.”
“I’m a painter. If I can prepare a canvas with white paint, I can prepare these walls.”
“As a canvas?” Maybe it was her, but it seemed Duncan was a whole lot harder to understand these days.
“I just want to paint the damn walls white.”
And less patient. Which was saying something.
“Fine. I’ll get the paint. Did you have anything else you wanted to talk about, or can I get back to work?” Did that sound snippy? Oh, she hoped not.
His eyes darkened, and she felt his gaze shoot straight to the bits of her she was trying to convince to forget him. She’d had her taste of him. Common sense said it was more than enough. Unfortunately, her horny bits didn’t run on common sense, they ran on desperation.
He picked up a pile of papers and handed them to her. “I need you to sign your new contract. As you can see, I’ve upped your salary, so there’s no need to go looking for work elsewhere.”
She took the document and stared at him. “I don’t need more money.” Although, she wasn’t an idiot. “But it would be nice, thank you.”
He ran a hand through his hair and perched on the edge of the massive wooden desk. The desk that was big enough to fit two bodies tangled together. The kind of desk that a woman could bend over and press her front to, feeling the cool wood on her skin as a man came up behind her and…
“Are you listening to me?”
The temperature in the room seemed to have shot up a few degrees. “Is it hot in here? It feels like it’s hot. I’m just going to open a window.” She hurried over to the sash window and proceeded to do just that.
“I was saying,” he said. “Janine said it’s illegal to make you sign something saying you won’t resign. But I don’t want you to leave, so I took some other measures.”
“Other measures?” She turned to look at him and tripped over a pile of books. When she bent to right them, she stilled. The book on top looked to be her missing copy of The Hobbit. Had he looked in it? Had he seen her drawings? She couldn’t ask him without giving herself away, and she did not want Duncan to know they were hers. Very carefully, she piled the book with the others. “I didn’t know you liked Tolkien,” she said as casually as she was able.
He seemed confused for a second until she pointed to the book. “Oh, that. I found it outside. Someone must have dropped it.”
“Do you want me to take it to my office and find the owner?” Please, please, please…
“I’ll look for them myself. There are some drawings in there I want to talk to them about.”
Pure, unadulterated panic swept through her and she had to fight the urge to run. “Are you sure? It’s no trouble.”
“Forget about the book. I want to talk about the contract.”
It was hard to forget about the book. But she reminded herself that she had the keys to every room in the building, and she could sneak in and remove it when he wasn’t around.
“As you’d see, if you actually looked at the contract, I’m changing the nature of our relationship. In academic terms, you now have tenure. No matter what you do—unless it breaks the law—I can’t fire you. Your job is one hundred percent protected.”
“What?” Her legs found the chair behind her, and she sat down with a thump.
“I couldn’t gift you your apartment on the third floor, because it’s part of the mansion, but I have stipulated that if you felt you had to leave for any reason—which you won’t—then the trust would pay for accommodation of your choosing for the rest of your life.”
Okay, so now it was hard to breathe. The papers shook in her hands, and she tried to still them, which just made things worse.
“As for the car,” he said, staring at her intently. “I’ve given it to you. The ownership papers are in there.” His voice deepened. “And if for any reason you felt forced out or had to leave without a job to go to, I’ll pay your salary at the time of your departure for the following five years.”
It felt like the room was spinning, and Donna had to bend over to stop herself from passing out.
“Damn it, this was not the way it should have gone,” Duncan muttered as he strode from the room.
Donna focused on breathing steadily while the blood rushed back to her head. She only realised he’d returned when she felt a cold cloth on the back of her neck and a glass of water was thrust under her nose.
“Take a drink,” he ordered.
She could do nothing other than obey. Her hand shook as she drank, and she looked up to find herself staring into dark eyes as Duncan crouched in front of her.
“What have you done?” she asked him. “This is completely over the top. People don’t do things like this.”
He shrugged, his broad shoulders rippling under yet another tartan shirt. “I’m trying to be a modern man. I know I’m a throwback, and I’m trying to even out the power discrepancy between us.” He ran his hand through his hair again. “I want to give you the tools to say no to me if you want to. Without feeling as though you’d lose something if you did.”
The silly, sweet, completely irrational man. “I can’t sign this. It would tie you to me forever. You would be paying for me for the rest of your life. That isn’t right. You’ll only regret it.”
His gaze captured hers and took away her ability to breathe. “Don’t you know that without you I wouldn’t have the rest of my life to regret anything? Before you knocked on my door, I was heading for destruction and I
didn’t care. You’ve kept me here these past few years. I don’t understand the how or the why of it, but I know that I owe you far more than you could ever take from me. Don’t think I don’t remember the night you picked me up off the driveway and cleaned out my rooms. You saved my life—even though I resented the hell out of you for months for doing it. Just sign the papers, Donna, so that I can ask you out to dinner.”
“And what if I say no?”
“Then we’ll carry on as usual.”
Bless his crazy, over-complicated heart. “Has it occurred to you that the generosity of this contract might make me feel obligated to go out with you?”
His jaw dropped. “No. That hadn’t occurred to me. Thanks for that.” He stood and paced. “How the hell do people date these days? It’s only been eighteen years since I last did it, and it’s like I’m on a different planet.”
“Is that what you’re trying to do? Date me?” The idea seemed unbelievable.
“Aye. And it isn’t going well.”
He looked so affronted that she burst out laughing.
“Now, that’s good for my ego,” he said wryly.
Donna put the papers on his desk. “I appreciate the gesture, and the effort you must have gone to in getting this written up. I know it must have entertained Janine no end. But I’m not signing the contract.”
“No!” He picked them up and thrust them at her. “You have to, so we can go out for dinner.”
Honestly, it was painful to watch Duncan trying to claw his way into the twenty-first century. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for us to date, and I’m not sure there’s room in your life for anyone other than Fiona.” There. She’d put the crux of the matter out there. The elephant in the room—his past.
He winced, but his eyes held hers. “Does this have to be more than a few dates? Can’t we enjoy each other’s company and see where this goes?”
She felt as though someone had clenched her heart and was squeezing it firmly, but she kept the smile on her face. This was going nowhere, and the fact he couldn’t see it meant he was just deluding himself. She’d been right when she’d explained things to her sisters—Duncan’s libido had woken, and this was him dipping his toe back in the dating pool, with someone safe.
Can't Stop the Feeling: Romantic Comedy (Sinclair Sisters Trilogy Book 2) Page 13