by Kim Lawrence
A gleam flashed in his dark eyes. ‘I’ve never had any complaints.’
It took a few seconds, but when the penny dropped her face flamed. She brought down her lashes in a protective sweep to shield her eyes. Head down, she swept off the scarf she had tied over her hair. Ruffling it with her hand as it slipped down her back, she struggled to maintain a professional attitude given the reel of lurid images now playing in her head.
Isandro felt the hunger flare, his body hardening as he watched the river of glossy silk settle down her narrow back. The sexy little black outfit was gone and she was back in jeans, complete with a tear in one knee and belt loops he could have hooked his fingers into and jerked her…The effort to suppress his lustful imagination drew a short harsh rasp from his throat.
‘This still doesn’t tell me why I find you down on your hands and knees like some…’
Her head lifted; her blue eyes shone with anger. ‘Servant?’ she bit back. ‘Maybe because I am.’
‘You are the housekeeper.’
She shrugged, not sure why he was making such a big thing of this. It wasn’t as if the workings of a vacuum cleaner were alien to her. ‘Call it multitasking…’
‘I call it inappropriate. What sort of first impression would it give if I had walked in with a group of important guests and the first thing they see is the housekeeper down on her knees?’ He shook his head.
‘You didn’t walk in with…’
Isandro’s expression made her wish she had held her tongue.
‘It is totally inappropriate to your position here.’
‘What was I meant to do? Drag poor Susie in with her abscessed tooth? Her mother says the poor girl is in agony.’
‘You were meant to delegate.’ It amazed him that she had not grasped this basic precept.
‘I don’t like telling people what to do.’ Zoe found it was easier and less stressful to do things herself.
‘Delegation is part of your job. Scrubbing floors is not.’
His coldness hit her like a slap in the face. ‘I wasn’t…’ She bit her tongue and bowed her head.
The show of humility did not fool Isandro for one second. He knew full well it was an act. She was about as humble as a battle cruiser.
‘Part of your job is also learning the difference between showing sympathy and being a soft touch.’
Zoe’s head lifted at the suggestion. ‘I’m not a soft touch!’ she protested indignantly.
‘People take advantage of you.’ His annoyance that she was either unable or unwilling to see this was etched on his hard features.
‘You didn’t!’ She closed her eyes and lifted a hand to her head, let her chin fall to her chest and thought, Please let me die now. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. It just sort of slipped out.’
‘Not because I did not want to, if that is what is bothering you. Did you get any sleep?’ The violet smudges under her eyes showed up clear against her translucent skin, as did the handful of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
She nodded. ‘And I woke with a bit of a headache.’ His mobile lips twitched. ‘Called a hangover.’
Zoe shuddered as she got to her feet. ‘I can’t imagine why people drink.’
‘Not everyone has your zero tolerance. For some people it’s their drug of choice, and it’s legal.’
‘What’s yours, or don’t you need one? Sorry…I keep forgetting…Can I take your order for dinner, sir?’
‘You can’t go from trying to kiss my face off to calling me sir. Neither are what I expect of my housekeeper. I will settle for a happy medium.’
The mortified colour rushed to her cheeks as she pressed her teeth into her full lower lip. ‘I am sorry for last night. I really am. But what you did for Chloe and John, that was…very kind.’
His features froze. ‘That stays within these walls. Is that understood?’
Before she could reply to this terse warning, the front door swung open and the twins rushed in. At least Georgie rushed. Harry walked with his nose in a book.
‘No, not here. I’ve told you, the flat—’
‘We know. You forgot to put the key under the mat.’ Georgie looked at Isandro and grinned. ‘We have to keep out of your way.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Don’t you like kids?’
‘It depends on the kid.’ He strolled across to the boy, a skinny child with strawberry-blond hair. ‘You’re Harry.’
Harry nodded.
‘Run along, children.’ She pulled the key fob out of her pocket and tossed it to Georgie. ‘I’ve left you some sandwiches for eleven. I’ll be over at lunchtime.’
‘What’s that you’re reading?’ Isandro looked at the title on the spine. ‘You like the stars?’
Of course he did. Skinny, undersized boys with books and no friends always did. Isandro knew because he had been one himself. In his case he had grown twelve inches at sixteen and gone from being the despised wimp to the jock that everybody wanted to know.
Harry nodded, his face suffused with pink.
‘On the wall on my desk I have a photo of the Horse-head nebula. Have you seen it?’
‘We’re not allowed in the house. Especially your office.’ So Harry was not a rule-breaker. ‘I like looking at the night sky, but I want to be an astrophysicist when I grow up.’
Zoe blinked. This was news to her.
‘Cool,’ Isandro said.
‘Run along, children.’ She was both pleased and relieved when they both did as she asked—with Georgie, you never knew.
‘You, too,’ Isandro said when they had left. ‘Ring the agency first and get a replacement for…whatever her name is.’
‘Susie.’
‘Then take the rest of the day off. I’m off to London.’
She assumed when he left that they would not see him for some time. She had understood that this was the norm. But over the next few weeks he kept arriving unexpectedly, sometimes spending a night, sometimes not even that long.
At first mystified by his behaviour, she realised that he was hoping to catch her out, though it did seem a lot of trouble to go to. Never knowing when he would turn up made it difficult to relax…and though trying to catch her out made sense, it didn’t explain the occasion he brought Harry a book full of photos of galaxies and nebulae.
The little boy looked forward to his visits…but was he the only one? Why would anyone look forward to a visit from someone who blew hot and cold? Who was cold and remote one moment and relaxed and friendly the next?
As they approached the crossroad Alex slowed for a red light. Isandro shut down the tablet and looked through the window, dragging a hand through his dark hair. He had planned to spend the weekend in London, but at the last moment had decided to drive down to Ravenwood, reasoning he could spend the weekend reading the report without distractions. Sure, no distractions at all, mocked the voice in his head.
‘Is that…?’
Pushing away the thought, Isandro followed the direction of his driver’s nod. ‘Yes, it is, Alex,’ he confirmed.
‘Are they alone?’
Isandro, who had been looking for that glossy dark head attached to a body he had spent some time thinking about, nodded. All right, not just some time—a lot of time. He was finding it pretty much impossible to think about anything but his housekeeper, who did not know the meaning of ‘unobtrusive’.
‘It looks like it.’
Which in itself was strange. While Zoe Grace might not be about to win any prizes for her housekeeping skills, when it came to her youthful charges she took the role extremely seriously. He could not imagine her allowing the twins to wander around town unaccompanied.
‘Shall I pull over?’
Isandro nodded and unclipped his seat belt as the car drew to a halt on a double yellow. When he reached the twins they were still on the pavement. They appeared to be arguing—and more significantly there was still no sign of their aunt.
It was Harry who saw him first. Seeing the relief on his freckled face, Isa
ndro experienced an emotional tightening in his chest.
Isandro controlled his strong inclination to hug him, aware that the boy had already measured him up as an unlikely male role model. It would be nothing short of cruel to allow the boy to become reliant and then fade out of his life.
Instead he gave the boy a manly pat on his painfully skinny shoulder. The kid could do a lot better than him for a father substitute. Did his aunt’s determination to sacrifice her own needs for her charges extend to her choice of partner? Would she choose the ‘good father’ material over a good lover? The woman was probably determined to be a martyr. She’d probably end up alone or with some boring loser whom she deemed solid and responsible.
‘We’ve lost Aunty Zoe. Actually, we ran away and now we’re lost, too.’
For which Isandro correctly read his sister had run and he had followed. There was no doubting who the dominant and reckless twin in this equation was.
‘We’re not lost,’ his sister interrupted. ‘And if you hadn’t made me come back…’
‘It was stealing!’
‘It was not stealing. We were bringing it back, and that’s borrowing, isn’t it?’ she appealed to Isandro for support.
‘Borrowing without permission is stealing. And running away from your aunt is…Have you any idea how worried she will be?’ An image of a terrified Zoe flashed into his head and he hardened his heart against their stricken expressions. ‘She will be frantic!’
The twins exchanged worried glances.
‘We didn’t think,’ Georgie admitted.
Isandro steeled himself against the quiver in her voice and struggled to maintain his stern expression as he ushered them towards the car. The sniff was too much for the ruthless captain of industry to withstand.
‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed. ‘I’ll ring your aunt and let her know—’
‘You can’t,’ they said in unison.
He shook his head. ‘Why can’t I?’
‘Her phone wasn’t charged. It died on her when Aunt Chloe was talking.’
He exhaled. If he had been in Zoe’s position—which was unlikely, because not only would he not have let his phone battery run down, he certainly wouldn’t have taken on responsibility for this pair of demons—he would now be retracing his footsteps.
The demons regarded him with the expressions that said they had total faith that he would come up with a solution.
‘Right, then, where were you when you ran away, and where were you before that?’
The terrible clawing panic in her stomach when she had turned to tell the twins to get a wriggle or the car would be clamped would stay with Zoe for ever. When she found them she would never let them out of her sight again…always supposing she didn’t throttle them.
She jogged along the pavements, retracing her footsteps, stopping occasionally to ask people if they had seen two children, oblivious to the stares that followed her progress. She kept telling herself over and over like a mantra, Tomorrow this will just be a memory. I’ll laugh about it with Chloe.
Tomorrow seemed a hell of a long way away, though, and Chloe was still in Boston!
By the time Zoe had worked her way to the boat-hire booth her heart was thudding so hard she felt as if it would crack her ribs. She was only kept going by the strong conviction that had gradually taken hold that the twins were out there on the river.
It was so obvious. Why hadn’t she smelt a rat when the wilful youngster who would never take no for an answer had not argued or even tried to cajole when she’d refused to take them out in a kayak. Now of course it made sense. Georgie hadn’t suddenly become malleable, she’d simply cut out the arguing, and she’d dragged Harry with her.
The ticket booth was closed, but before a frantic Zoe could think of what to do next a boy came around the corner carrying a padlock and a large bunch of keys. He removed the earphones from his ears when he saw her.
‘Sorry, we’re closed.’
‘I’m looking for my niece and nephew,’ she said before he could put the earphones back in. ‘They’re seven years old. I think they might have gone out in one of your kayaks.’ The effort to stay calm and not sound like an unbalanced lunatic made her voice shake, but she was pretty proud of her effort.
‘Sorry, we’re closed.’
She watched, her pent-up fear tipping over into rage, as he began to insert the earphones.
Her eyes narrowed, she stepped forward and snatched them out, drawing a yelp from the boy. ‘My niece and nephew—they wanted to go out in a kayak. Have you seen them?’ she yelled, fighting the impulse to shake the information from the stupid boy who was backing away from her.
‘I don’t know what your problem is, miss, but the public are not allowed here. There’s a sign. It’s health and safety.’ He pointed to a no-entry sign on the wall of the booth.
Give me strength! ‘I’ve been trying to tell you what the problem is. I’m looking for two children, a boy and girl. So high…’ She held her palm at the appropriate height. ‘They wanted to go out…’ She closed her eyes, seeing Georgie’s expression when she had refused their request. God, but she really should have seen this coming. ‘I think they might be out there.’ She swallowed as her eyes moved to the horizon where the grey water of the river met the darker grey sky. ‘In one of your canoes.’
‘No children allowed in the kayaks without a responsible adult. Besides, we’re closing early—there’s a storm coming.’ His phone rang and he wandered away with it pressed to his ear.
When Zoe took the situation into her own hands the youth was close enough for her to hear him say, ‘No way…outside the pub at five.’ But not close enough, thanks to a tree, for him to see her wade into the shallow water and push out a stray canoe that had not yet been dragged onto the artificial beach.
She’d been kayaking before, she reminded herself as she managed on the third try to clamber into the swaying boat. Of course on that occasion Laura had been paddling, and she’d been only five years old, but this was a detail. How hard could it be?
Five minutes later Zoe had gone several hundred yards. But she had no idea whether she was heading in the right direction. She didn’t have the faintest idea where they were! She was acting on intuition, but wasn’t that another name for blind panic?
She squared her shoulders and dipped her oar into the water. She had to stay positive.
The obvious sensible thing to do would have been to go to the police…so why was she just realising that now when she was literally up the creek? Then the rain started.
The downpour was of biblical flood proportions. Within two minutes she was drenched. Her hair plastered against her skull; the water streamed down her face, making it hard to see. More worrying than her wet clothes was the water sloshing around in the bottom of the canoe.
Trying to see past the rain that was now being driven horizontally by a gale-force wind into her face, she recalled the weather man’s prediction of light showers and laughed.
The hysterical sound was whipped away by the wind, which was again blowing her in the wrong direction. Head bent, she paddled hard but, despite the fact her arms felt as though they were falling off, she made no headway. She put oar down for a moment to ease the burning pain in the muscles of her upper arms and shoulders, flexing her stiff fingers as she balanced it across the canoe.
She saw it happening as if in slow motion. She lunged forward, one arm outstretched and the other holding onto the edge of the wildly rocking kayak. Just as her fingers touched the oar a current carried it away out of reach. Her centre of gravity lost, Zoe struggled to pull back, but just when it seemed inevitable she would be pitched into the grey swirling water she managed to recover, collapsing back with a sob of laughing relief into the canoe.
It hardly seemed possible that a couple of weeks ago she had decided that this stretch of the river, with its series of shallow waterfalls and half-submerged stone slabs where people sunbathed and children paddled in shallow pools, made for a really lovely a
fternoon stroll. Pretty, but not dramatic.
Today it did not lack drama. The river was wild white water, full of dark swirls and hidden obstacles. The boulders she strove to avoid were only just visible above the foaming white water. Zoe paddled with her hands but soon recognised it was hopeless. The kayak would never survive.
Feeling surprisingly calm in the face of impending disaster, Zoe was in the middle of telling herself she was overreacting when the kayak hit a submerged rock. The jarring motion as it glanced off sent the flimsy craft rocking sideways. Thrown off balance, Zoe lurched sideways, throwing her body weight sharply to one side to right the canoe. For a moment it seemed to work, but it was hit by an extra-strong squall of wind and simply carried on going.
This time there was no reprieve and the immersion in the shockingly cold grey water took her breath. For a moment she panicked, flailing around blindly as she tried to free herself from the upturned canoe, hampered by clothes that dragged her downwards. When she did she surfaced almost immediately, choking as she gasped for air. Behind her the canoe was making its way upside down through the churning white water, before it vanished over the top of a weir.
That could have been me.
But it won’t be. The twins would be all alone, they need me. Focusing on that one thought and not the cold seeping into her bones, she struck out strongly, aiming for the opposite bank, where she would be likely to see someone who could raise the emergency services. Zoe was a strong swimmer with no fear of the water, but even so the going was tough and her progress, hampered by her clothes, was torturously slow.
As she swam she was distantly aware of a sound above the echoing roar of the water and her own heartbeat but she didn’t allow it to distract her. She couldn’t stop. She had to keep going. Every second she wasted the twins could be…No, she wouldn’t think like that. She needed to focus.
‘Focus, Zoe,’ she said to herself—but the water filled her open mouth and, choking, her head went under.
As she was lifted unceremoniously out of the water she continued to kick feebly, right up to the moment she was hauled over and left utterly disorientated in an inelegant heap in the bottom of what seemed to be a small motorboat.