What's A Housekeeper To Do?

by Jennie Adams

  ‘It’s not your fault that your mother can’t settle down.’ Lally did not believe that Cam was the same as his mother. ‘And if you can’t sleep, you can’t sleep. Any person who knows you and love—cares about you, shouldn’t ever feel anything about that other than empathy with your difficulties with that.’

  Lally managed to stop her flow of words, but she couldn’t stop what she’d almost said pouring through her heart. It rolled over her and consumed her.

  She’d fallen in love with Cam. The knowledge was deep down inside her, true, total and absolute. She’d fallen for him before she’d ever made love with him, and of course she should have known that that was so.

  Why else would she have needed that intimacy so much, if not to put into expression what was inside her heart for him?

  Oh, Lally. How could you fall in love with him? How can you protect yourself now that you’ve done that?

  She had never felt this way about another person. Not Sam, and that shocked her, because she thought she’d loved Sam so much. Only Cam had said he’d tried to love once before and failed. That was his past, his secret—that he’d loved.

  And don’t expect him to love you, Lally. Don’t expect it.

  ‘I just want to do the mosaic for you.’ For him, for her, to leave her mark here on this piece of property that would make a great family home, for a very large family to come and go. But not for Cam, who had almost no family and didn’t want one of his own, and had only bought this place to develop it.

  But he could be happy as part of a family. He wouldn’t have to settle into one place to do that. If he needed to travel, couldn’t he do that with someone at his side?

  Oh yes, Lally? And would he choose you to be that someone? A woman who broke up a marriage? Had an affair with a married man? Sent a woman into a care facility and her children into foster care?

  Lally hadn’t been able to do anything to help them. Sam should have done that but instead he’d walked away. Lally’s thoughts put an end to any dream she might have had. She’d lost her right to dream, and all she could see that she had left to lean on in that moment was her professionalism. If she returned her focus to her work, maybe she would manage to get through this without Cam realising that she had discovered she loved him.

  She didn’t want him to know. It wouldn’t change anything, would it? ‘It shouldn’t take me long to do the mosaic and have the water-feature put in. I’m happy to work with Jordan.’

  ‘You’re here for eight weeks.’ Cam spoke as though he felt he needed to be assured of that.

  It was her chance to say, no, the moment she finished the mosaic she would leave. Or turn around right now and walk away.

  Lally couldn’t do it.

  She couldn’t find it inside herself to lose any of the time she had left here, no matter what. Even though that probably made her a masochist. ‘Yes. I’m here to take care of housekeeping duties, build the pebble mosaic and anything else that’s required for your book research or your phone messages. You don’t need to sacrifice time to help me with the mosaic. I’ll be fine on my own.’ She forced the words out. They had to be said. She would finish here, leave her gift, but that was all. ‘It will be…better if I just do it.’

  Cam’s deep green gaze sought her eyes and locked. Oh, she wanted simply to let all the emotions inside herself loose, throw herself into his arms and hope for some miracle to make it all somehow work out.

  But life wasn’t that simple. Cam didn’t want her with the kind of feelings she had for him, and if he did she’d have to explain her past—and Lally couldn’t face seeing his reaction to that.

  ‘Then I’ll spend some time in my office now,’ Cam said. ‘Do some writing and catch up on my Sydney business interests.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea.’ They’d had one special night. They’d made love. Lally had fallen in love with her boss, but that didn’t mean he’d suddenly developed the same feelings towards her. Nothing had changed between them other than there was now the awkwardness of knowing what they had shared.

  Well, Lally could finish out her time here without letting that history or her current feelings get in the way of doing a good job as his employee.

  She could. She would! ‘I need to get working too. I want to prepare a good meal for tonight, as well as do some preliminary work on the mosaic.’ No matter how hard she wanted to work on the mosaic, or how quickly she hoped to get it finished, she did have to make sure that taking care of her boss still came first.

  Because Lally was the housekeeper, with a side order of helping him with his book research if required.

  And Cameron was the boss. He was a little unconventional in his requirements at times, perhaps, because of his career as an author, but still the boss.

  There couldn’t be more between them. He hadn’t offered more, and she needed to convince herself she didn’t want or need more. Life had limits. In the case of ‘Lally and Cam,’ the limits were that there couldn’t be a ‘them’ outside working together for a very temporary amount of time.

  Lally wasn’t sure she could lose that much, not yet. She didn’t know how she would at all. So for the next five days she focused solely on doing her work on the mosaic and on looking after Cam. Her boss spent long hours in his office in the apartment, working. Sometimes at night she heard him out swimming laps in the pool. She swam, too, but never again at the same time as him.

  Lally pushed her emotions down inside her and worked. And, despite doing that, or maybe because of it, the mosaic came together beautifully. When Lally stood back from the work on Friday night and dusted her hands down her legs over the denim cut-offs, she tried to give the mosaic an objective examination. Was it truly good? Or did she just want it to be, and so that was what she saw?

  Lally admitted she not only wanted this work to be good, but she needed that, as her gift to Cameron. This was the part of herself that she could give to him and that he was prepared to keep. That was how Lally felt.

  Oh, God. How could she walk away and leave him? Lally’s heart filled with so much love for him in that moment that she hurt.

  ‘It’s brilliant.’ Cam’s quiet words sounded from a few steps behind her, deep words in the most gentle tone of voice, and then he was there. Lally had to do what she could to seem normal to him, while she felt her heart must truly be breaking in two, because she loved him so much. Yes, she could give him this, but she felt as though her one true opportunity to deeply give her love to him had been and gone too quickly.

  Words rushed around inside her, came from her heart, filled her mind and had to be stopped before they crossed her tongue.

  I don’t want to leave you.

  I don’t know if I can stop loving you.

  Can’t there be a chance for us? Can’t I be someone that you want enough that you overcome your hesitations about commitment? Can I hide my past from you, keep that secret and love you?

  Of course that couldn’t happen.

  Oh, she hated this!

  Lally turned slowly and tried simply to appear happy about his compliment, and about a job that he seemed to feel was well done. ‘Thank you. I only finished it minutes ago. I was looking at it, trying to be objective. You’re truly satisfied with it?’

  His gaze shifted from the mosaic to her face. ‘You’ve done an amazing job. You have true artistic talent, Lally. I think, if you wanted, you could do mosaics for a living.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Lally prayed that all her feelings weren’t written across her face and tried to give him a simple, ordinary smile. If it was a little wobbly around its edges, she couldn’t help that. ‘I think the results work. The water feature is great; your site boss really came through with sourcing that.’

  Cam’s face relaxed into something close to a smile. ‘He’s a good site boss. I’d use him again any time. I didn’t have the successful bid on the other property here in the city, but if anything else came up…’

  ‘I imagine he’d be very happy to hear you’d use him ag
ain.’ What if Cam told her that was enough now and let her go?

  Suddenly Lally had her family on her mind. All the aunts, uncles, cousins, her sisters, brothers and parents. She’d missed them, and had worried, had wanted to get back to working with them. Yet now…

  ‘It’s a weird thing to ask, but I’m hoping I can talk you into going out for a fast-food meal instead of making dinner tonight.’ He hesitated. ‘You’ve worked really hard. We could go to a restaurant, of course, it’s just—would you come out for a hamburger? If you’re in the mood for that kind of food.’

  ‘You don’t have to reward me.’ She didn’t want him to feel that he needed to do that. ‘I loved doing the mosaic. It made me happy to do that for you.’

  Cam’s face softened.

  She wanted to believe it softened with love towards her, but he was just showing appreciation.

  And yet, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and came close to shuffling his feet before he glanced up at her through the screen of his lashes. ‘Will you come and eat salty junk-food with me—ham bur ger and fries? And maybe a completely nutrition-empty fizzy drink to go with them? Just…do that?’ Not for a reward, just to do it.

  ‘I will.’ The words escaped her before she had any chance of recalling them.

  Lally admitted she didn’t want to take the words back.

  If Cam wanted her company for an hour to go and eat fast food, she decided she would give herself that. There wouldn’t be many more memories; maybe she should take them where she could find them.

  ‘Good. That’s good.’ Cam took his hands out of his pockets and half-turned before he swung back to her. ‘Half an hour? Time for you to shower off the dirt?’

  ‘Yes.’ She started towards their apartment.

  His apartment, she corrected, in which she was a tempo rary, employed guest.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CAM stood in the centre of the living room, waiting for Lally. He didn’t fully understand his edginess. No; that wasn’t right. Cam knew the source of his inner upheaval. He’d been this way since he and Lally had returned from their trip to collect pebbles. He’d been edgy since they’d made love.

  They’d both acknowledged they couldn’t go there again, and Cam didn’t need to know Lally’s reasons for that. Yet in other things she was such an open girl. And Cam felt the need to understand her depths, even if his own weren’t making a lot of sense to him right now.

  Did he feel so affected by their love-making because it had followed sleeping beside her, sleeping whilst holding her? He’d never slept with a woman in his life. Sleep for him, solo, hadn’t been a possibility for more than a certain amount of time. Sleeping with a woman in his bed? Yet with Lally he had slept, slept longer and better. He’d relaxed with her even in the face of wanting to make love to her.

  Then he had made love to her. And now Cam had this urge to make sure she couldn’t leave his employment, to find some way to keep her with him. Yet they couldn’t remain lovers; it had been a mistake to let things go that way. If she stayed longer than the agreed time frame, was it even possible that they could relax into each other’s company in a purely platonic way and be happy simply as boss and employee? As property developer–thriller writer and housekeeper?

  Cam’s mind told him that when the work on this complex was done—which would only be a few weeks away now—he had to let Lally go, say goodbye, move on with his life and forget her. That would be the smart thing to do.

  So why ask her to go out to eat with him?

  Because you’ve been here, and she’s been here, and days have passed while you’ve both tried hard to get on with things, but you’ve missed her.

  ‘I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.’ Lally spoke in a carefully neutral tone from behind him.

  He turned and took her in. For an hour or so there’d be nothing to do but concentrate on each other, and Cam wanted to concentrate on her, and somehow without putting them in a worse place than they were now. He resisted the urge to jam his hand through his hair. Did he truly know what he wanted about anything any more? ‘I really do like you in red.’ His voice deepened despite himself. ‘It’s vibrant. It suits you.’

  She’d dressed casually in a black skirt with splashes of tiny red flowers over it. The skirt flowed to mid-calf and swirled about her legs when she walked; sandals left her feet beautifully revealed. Her hair was up in a pony-tail, she had gold, dangly earrings in her ears, and she wore a fire-engine red, clingy, sleeveless blouse that showed her slender curves to perfection and accentuated the long lines of her arms and the narrowness of her waist.

  Cam’s body noted all these things, but it was something a lot deeper than awareness that locked his eyes to hers and made it impossible to look away. Something that came from way deep down inside him and gave him pleasure to see her dressing in a way that allowed all of her vibrancy to shine out.

  ‘You look beautiful.’ The words escaped without his control.

  Lally’s face glowed beneath her tan and she dropped her gaze. ‘Thank you. I bought the blouse at a stall at the market a few days ago; I guess it just caught my eye.’ She seemed almost surprised by this, or perhaps a little discomfited.

  ‘Bright colours suit you.’ He’d told her so before, but this time her gaze rose to his and there were a thousand questions in her eyes.

  But she only said, ‘Thank you,’ and suggested they get going.

  Cam took his cue from her and hustled her to his car, and they drove the twenty minutes’ drive to the restaurant. ‘One of the workers mentioned this place and said the food’s good, a cut above the ordinary.’ Cam told her the name of the restaurant. Yes, he was making small-talk, but that was a start. If they could relax…

  ‘I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t been there. I think it’s a little more ritzy than an average fast-food outlet.’ Lally seemed to be trying hard, too, and Cam hoped that she might want this time with him as much as he wanted it with her.

  ‘So long as the food is salty, hot and at least a little bit fatty, I’ll be happy.’ He forced the words out and worked hard to produce a natural smile. ‘There are just days—’

  ‘When you want that kind of food.’ Lally smiled a little, and then her smile became genuine.

  Cam knew his had too.

  Lally glanced again at Cam’s face and some of her tension eased away. She didn’t understand how she could relax in his company when her heart was aching so much. But she would rather be here with him than anywhere else in the world, and if she could have this, and they could enjoy them selves, well, she wanted it. She was glad he’d asked for this time.

  Cam found a parking space and they walked the better part of a block to get to the restaurant.

  The place was busy with a good cross-section of patrons; families, singles, people in business wear and tourists were all represented. Lally looked around and acknowledged she was happier in this moment than she’d been for days.

  Just a little focused time with him, and she felt this way. Later she might feel twice as bad, but for now Lally was going to take what she could get.

  A woman around Lally’s age appeared and led them to a table tucked into a corner. She stared at Cam as they were seated, and then said, ‘Oh, my God—aren’t you Cameron Travers, the crime-thriller writer? I love your books. Oh, would you sign something for me?’

  Cam signed the back of one of the paper menus for the woman and smiled her away. The back of his neck was red, and once they were alone he looked at Lally with a slightly trapped expression.

  Delight washed through her, and she laughed. ‘How often does that happen?’

  ‘Not often, thankfully,’ he growled. He lifted the other paper menu from the table and buried his nose in it. ‘And we’re short a menu now.’ Cam lowered the one he held and laid it on the table so they could both look at it.

  And, in the face of his discomfort at being recognised as a ‘star’, Lally relaxed the rest of the way into his company and just let
herself enjoy their time together for what it was.

  She was tired of trying to work things out in her head and heart. She loved this man with all her heart; that was fact. She couldn’t avoid it or do anything about it, and there would be pain when she left him, but she wanted to try to enjoy her time with him until she had to leave. Was that so dangerous or foolish or silly? Probably.

  They ordered the house special of a gourmet ham burger on a sour-dough bread roll baked on the premises and toasted to perfection, and a basket of fresh-cut chips. Lally gave up any pretence at being ladylike, picked up her ham bur ger in both hands and took a bite.

  The tastes exploded on her tongue: the most divine, melt-in-your-mouth meat patty, crisp, fresh salad greens, spiced beetroot, succulent tomato, a barbecue sauce and mayonnaise that were both to die for. She watched Cam’s face across the table as he, too, tried the ham bur ger.

  His smile started in his beautiful green eyes and spread until it turned up the corners of his mouth. ‘Do you think the trip was worth it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She’d have said so anyway for other reasons, but Lally simply smiled and went on, ‘And we haven’t even tried the chips yet.’ She reached for the bowl in the centre of the table at the same time Cam did. Their fingers brushed, and his stilled where they touched hers.

  He lifted his lashes and looked at her, and just for a brief moment his fingers stroked over hers before he took a chip, she took one too and they both ate.

  ‘The, um, the chips are great too.’ They were a perfect counter-balance for the delicious ham bur ger.

  Cam reached for another one. ‘The menu says they’re oven baked, but they’re so good I’ve decided to forgive the lack of excess fat.’