The Man Behind the Mask

by Maggie Cox

  ‘This is the figure I had in mind,’ he said out loud, pushing the piece of paper he had scribbled on towards her.

  Peering at what he had written, Marianne leaned back silently in her chair.

  ‘Well?’ Impatiently Eduardo tapped his pen on the blotter.

  ‘It’s too much.’

  ‘We are not going down that route again, are we?’

  ‘I’m not being deliberately difficult, Mr De Souza—’

  ‘Eduardo.’

  She flushed a little. ‘Is it right that I call you Eduardo when I’m an employee of yours…not a friend? It wouldn’t seem right. Anyway…what I meant was what you’re offering seems far too generous. Especially when you consider that I’m living in, and all my meals are included as well.’

  Looping some soft strands of dark honey hair round her small ear, Marianne lifted her chin. All of a sudden Eduardo’s entire attention was commanded by her mouth…her pretty, sweetly shaped lips in which he’d just detected an intriguing tremble. Erotic heat poured violently through his blood stream, and never had he known such instantaneous torrid desire grip him with quite such commanding force before. It took him a moment to collect himself enough to speak.

  ‘There are not many employees, I am sure, who would protest about being paid too generously,’ he commented dryly. ‘You are certainly one of a kind, Marianne.’

  ‘That may be so. But, like I told you before, I’m not a charity case. You should pay me the rate you would normally pay someone taking up this position.’

  ‘How do you know that this is not the rate I would normally pay?’

  ‘I don’t. But I think it’s in your nature to be kind…to help those you see as less fortunate. All I ask is that you pay me the true rate the post commands. That will be more than good enough.’

  She believed it was in his nature to be kind. The idea almost froze Eduardo in his seat. After all that had happened, kind was the last word he would have used to describe his nature. Peevishly, and to prove her wrong, he snatched the paper towards him and wrote down a different figure—deducting at least five per cent from the usual house keeper salary Marianne had suggested he pay her. He pushed it back to her and got up from his seat.

  Examining what he had written, he heard her softly murmur, ‘Thank you.’

  Watching her stand, he let his gaze hungrily scan her slender upright figure, noticing that the neck of the too large cream sweater had slid tantalisingly down over a pale smooth shoulder…a perfectly edible and bewitchingly feminine shoulder. Eduardo stared, his heart thudding. Not only did he feel aroused, but his body and mind were suddenly consumed with one passionate, compelling idea—a need and a desire he seemed to have no control over. And he was quite aware that made him vulnerable in an area where he had actively sought to protect himself—feelings and emotions.

  Marianne started to walk towards the door. ‘Ricardo is going out to the woodshed to get some kindling for the morning. I need a breath of air, and I said I’d go and help him. Excuse me.’

  ‘Marianne?’

  ‘Yes?’ She stopped and turned.

  ‘You are getting on well with Ricardo, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘You like him?’

  ‘What’s not to like? He’s a very pleasant young man, and easy to get along with.’

  ‘You talk as though you were twenty years older than him, instead of there being just a year’s difference in age between you!’

  She frowned and folded her arms, looking uncomfortable. ‘I expect I come across as older in the way I speak some times, because I’m used to taking charge of things. Habit, I suppose…’

  ‘Did he inform you that he is going to be away for a few days from tomorrow? He is due some time off, and is meeting up with friends in London who have travelled over from Brazil.’

  ‘He did mention it…yes.’

  ‘And you are not uneasy at the idea of being alone with me in the house while he is gone?’

  Her eyes fixed candidly and unwaveringly on Eduardo’s face. ‘Why should I be? You’re my employer as well as—as well as a friend…I feel perfectly safe with you’

  ‘I am gratified that you admit to owning me as a friend at last, when earlier you seemed to discount that and refer to me only as your employer!’

  ‘We were starting to become friends before you offered to help me out with a job and a home…weren’t we?’ She visibly flushed as she said this.

  ‘Well…’ His desire seeming in conveniently and almost pain fully to increase, Eduardo affected a dismissive shrug. ‘You had better go and find Ricardo, then, and get on with what you were doing.’

  ‘Do you need anything before I go?’ Marianne asked innocently.

  Eduardo almost prayed out loud to the Mother of Guadeloupe for strength at the vivid pictures that came into his mind following such a question, and his voice was gruffer than he meant it to be when he answered. ‘No. I do not need anything at all. If I do…Ricardo can attend to it when he returns.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Stepping outside into the corridor, Marianne closed the door quietly behind her…

  Having prided herself on surviving without too much mishap, providing meals and beverages through out the day for Eduardo and herself after Ricardo had left for London, as well as attending to the rest of the housework, Marianne fixed her sights on a long hot bath and then relaxing with a good book. But she wasn’t entirely at her ease.

  Two things had unsettled her. Firstly, the realisation that for someone who seemed so interested in a photographic exhibition that he would visit it more than once Eduardo didn’t seem to have any personal photographs of his own. There were certainly none on display in the house, and that struck her as rather odd. Maybe for some reason Eduardo was trying to lose his past? she speculated. Or at least leave it behind? Secondly, earlier on that afternoon he had had a visit from his physiotherapist. The man had seemed pleasant enough, but after he had gone Marianne had knocked on the sitting room door to offer Eduardo a cup of tea, and the strain on his face and the faint beads of sweat standing out on his forehead had shocked her. She hadn’t had to ask if he was in pain. The evidence had been staring her right in the face.

  As she had been about to leave him to go and make the tea, she hadn’t been able to help turning back and saying crossly, ‘I thought a therapist was meant to ease pain…not cause it!’

  ‘What do you suggest I do?’ Eduardo mocked bitterly, lifting his injured leg onto the couch and barely suppressing a groan. ‘Fire him?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, hurrying forward to help him, then felt redundant when she saw that he had already settled himself quite satisfactorily, without any aid from her. ‘I don’t mean to interfere.’

  ‘You have appointed yourself my personal guardian angel I see,’ he commented, and before Marianne knew what was happening he had captured her hand, held it, then stroked her knuckles with the slightly roughened pad of his thumb.

  The sensual heat that ricocheted through her was like a ruthless thief, stealing every scrap of moisture from her mouth and making her heart hammer. Inside her cotton bra, her nipples stiffened hotly and pain fully. Never before had she experienced such a torrid reaction to a man’s touch. Her bones had turned fluid as a river, and it was hard to see how she remained standing she was so shaken.

  Before she could come to her senses Eduardo released her hand to fix a cushion more securely behind his back. Then he smiled at her…really smiled…and it was like being miraculously treated to a stunning glimpse of the real man behind the aloof, pain-filled mask that he normally wore. Her reason bound and gagged for debilitating seconds, Marianne experienced an almost un controllable urge to touch the skin round his jaw. She instinctively knew it would be like rough velvet. She wanted to smooth back the tantalising lock of dark wheat hair that had strayed boyishly onto his brow. So stunned was she by the power of that desire, she had to bite her lip and clench her hands to stop her from following its force
ful command.

  ‘I think that cup of tea would be most welcome now,’ Eduardo remarked, with just a hint of an amused curl of his lip, as though he was quite aware of the effect he had had on her and—shockingly—did not regret it in the least.

  Once she had reached on the other side of the closed sitting room door, Marianne had gratefully breathed again with more ease, leaning back against the oak panelling to compose herself. But it had been quite a few moments before she had been able to move freely again. Eduardo’s electrifying touch had all but set her on fire, and had been an utter revelation. Closing her eyes, she’d put her hand up to her throat and dreamily relived it again. At last, willing herself to move, she had dazedly made her way back down stairs to the kitchen.

  In the early hours of the morning, with the long shadows from the stately trees reflected into the room by the moon light and the ticking of the bedside clock for company, Marianne was wide awake, and about as far from sleep as it was possible to be. With a resigned sigh she switched on the pretty fringed lamp on the cabinet next to her. Punching her feather pillow a couple of times to re in state its plump ness, she arranged it more com fort ably behind her back, then reached for her book. But her gaze couldn’t help straying towards her guitar, still in the same position against the wall where Ricardo had left it for her.

  It seemed like eons since she had played. Who would she disturb if she strummed a few gentle chords? Ricardo was away, and Eduardo’s rooms were on the floor above Marianne’s. Swinging her legs out of bed, her book discarded, quiet excitement gripped her at the idea of making music again. Perhaps if the snow started to disperse she could visit the folk club and get to do some singing?

  Just as she was reaching towards the instrument a loud thud—much too loud to ignore in the haunting quiet of the house—sounded clearly from the floor above.

  Turning rigid with fright, Marianne could swear she heard her own heart beat echo round the room. Then, with all thoughts of three a.m. ghosts or departed spirits determinedly quashed, another far more frightening thought galvanised her into action. Hurrying back to the bed, she grabbed up her dressing gown, quickly pulled it on over her nightdress, then slid her feet into her slippers. Stepping outside into the dimly lit corridor outside her room, shivering now not at any sound but at the almost uncanny silence that enveloped her, she didn’t linger. Moving like a will-o’-the-wisp to reach the imposing stair case, and with her heart in her mouth, she urgently ascended the carpeted steps to the upper floor.

  Hesitating for the scantest second, Marianne rapped loudly on the door to Eduardo’s rooms.

  ‘You may as well come in!’ he answered, his voice definitely disgruntled.

  Bracing herself, she entered. The fire that must have been blazing brightly in the marble fire place earlier on that evening had died to flickering orange embers, but even though all the lamps were turned off the heavy drapes had been left undrawn. Illuminating moon light helped Marianne locate Eduardo almost instantly. Sitting upright on a sofa, he was nursing what looked like a cut hand. Immediately she saw the cause. A broken lamp lay drunkenly on the heavy oak coffee table in front of him, and shards of glass from the bulb were every where. The moon light made them glitter like tinsel.

  ‘You’ve hurt your hand! Let me see.’

  Not bothering with a greeting, Marianne flew across the room to his side, gently taking his bloodied hand in her own. Withdrawing a clean folded handkerchief from her dressing gown pocket, she examined the perfectly neat long cut that was oozing blood for any evidence of glass, then care fully wrapped his hand in the white linen square. Hearing his ragged breath, easily sensing the tension in his body, she felt her stomach grip tight with concern. She glanced up enquiringly into his eyes. Eduardo stared back at her with a burning gaze hot enough to melt steel. It seared her soul with its almost uncanny power, the reddened rims round his eyes and raw pain that she witnessed there almost making her gasp. He resembled a man who had not either slept nor seen daylight for weeks and had all but reached the end of his endurance. Fear and concern flooded her insides.

  ‘I am sorry if I woke you,’ Eduardo murmured, scraping his hand with frustration though dark wheat hair that had already received plenty of similar rough treatment, she saw. ‘I did not realise that you would have heard my stupid accident with the lamp. I got up too suddenly and my leg did not support me for a moment. I fell towards the table—my aim to sweep the lamp out of the way as I went down. Instead I landed on it, and—well…’ His smile was both rueful and despairing. ‘You can see the result.’

  ‘The wound looks clean to me, and will probably heal in next to no time. Why don’t you put your feet up on the couch, and I’ll go and get a dustpan to clear up the broken glass?’

  Flying down the corridor and then two flights of stairs to the kitchen, switching on all the lights as she went to illuminate her way, Marianne was back in the shortest time, noting with satisfaction that Eduardo had done as she’d re quested and put his feet up. For the first time she realised that he was still wearing the clothes he’d had on during the day, although several of the buttons on the light blue shirt were casually undone, the formally smart black trousers were creased and his feet devoid of socks or shoes. Switching on another lamp that stood on the shelf of a nearby bookcase, she cleaned up the broken glass with long-practised efficiency, leaving the cleaning implements near the doorway to take away later. Then she returned to the silent male figure on the couch.

  ‘I’d better take another look at that cut…just to make sure it’s as clean as I first thought.’

  Sitting down beside him, feeling her body grow warm at the contact with his—albeit out of practical necessity and not intimacy—Marianne efficiently re-examined the cut. Seeing to her satisfaction that all was well, she care fully bandaged the handkerchief round Eduardo’s hand again, tying the ends into a firm knot to secure it.

  ‘You’ll live. It will throb a bit, that’s all, and probably won’t even leave a scar. The lamp took the brunt of the damage, by the look of it. The fixing is all bent out of shape. Can it be rescued? It looks expensive.’

  Sensing the man beside her tense even more, Marianne came face to face with his disparaging scowl.

  ‘Do you think I care about what it is worth?’

  She lifted her shoulders in a thoughtful shrug. ‘To some people it might be a prized possession.’

  ‘I do not have any “prized possessions”, so you need not concern yourself about that!’

  ‘All right, then…I won’t. Shall I go and make you a hot drink? Some warm milk with some brandy in it, perhaps…? Something that might help you sleep?’

  ‘You’d be wasting your time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Only a miracle would help me sleep.’

  ‘Still…it’s better to try something than do nothing at all and resign yourself to the worst.’

  ‘Marianne?’

  ‘Yes?’ By now she had risen to her feet, and as Eduardo’s searing blue gaze examined her she was suddenly conscious that she stood before him in her dressing gown. It was a practical, no-nonsense kind of garment—neither pretty nor flattering—but still… Marianne was hardly immune to the intimate spell the night could cast, and beneath the soft dove-grey wool her body’s long-sup pressed need for touch was stirring vividly to life.

  ‘You must think me extremely ill-mannered.’ The rich voice was slightly hoarse, as though he spoke over a throat that pained him. ‘I did not thank you for helping me, and I want you to know that I am not ungrateful.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I would do the same for anybody.’

  ‘And that very nicely puts me in my place, does it not?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your regard for my welfare is not particular…why should it be? It is merely a practical reaction on your part that you would employ with anybody in similar need. Tell me…has there ever been anyone in your life who did command your particular regard, Marianne?’

  The m
an on the sofa studied her with such an expression of burning curiosity that she knew there was absolutely no possibility whatsoever of wriggling out of giving him an answer. Seriously troubled, Marianne struggled to summon the words that would reveal the truth of her past—the situation that she should have revealed to Eduardo from the moment he had offered her a job and a home but unfortunately had not…

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MARIANNE’S clearly uncomfortable glance settled on the dying orange embers of the fire, and Eduardo saw her shiver.

  ‘Shall I put some more coal on? It’s grown a little chilly in here,’ she said. ‘After you have answered my question,’ Eduardo said firmly. For some reason his heart beat was accelerating a little at what she might be going to tell him. ‘Shut the door,’ he advised. ‘Then you will not feel so cold.’

  She did as he suggested, then stepped silently towards the fire place. Thrusting out her hands, she stole whatever heat remained and then, wrapping her arms round her slim frame, said quietly, ‘There was a man once that I cared about…we were married for less than a year.’

  Married? He didn’t echo the word out loud in astonishment or perhaps in protest, as his instinct dictated, but Eduardo felt it resonate through him like a thunder clap—a precursor to a storm of feelings and disturbances he hardly knew how to contain.

  ‘It does not seem conceivable that you were married so young,’ he commented instead. ‘Too young. What happened? Did you divorce?’

  ‘No.’ Turning her bewitchingly pretty face towards him, Marianne held Eduardo’s gaze with resolute steadiness. ‘He—he died.’

  ‘Died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘A very rare form of cancer.’ Her shoulders hunched.