by Penny Jordan
A pair of swans and their signets sailed out from beneath one of the willows and out into the middle of the river, and Courage saw the sunlight bounce off cameras as tourists on a boat taking them down the river saw them as well and started to photograph them.
Sunshine warmed the red brick of the buildings as Courage and her grandmother crossed the road. A discreet black gold-lettered plaque outside one of them listed her grandmother’s specialist as one of its occupants. Courage dutifully pressed the intercom buzzer and waited.
‘So it’s all agreed, then. I’ll arrange for you to have the necessary tests and once we’ve got the results we can make a firm date for the operation.’
Courage suppressed a small sigh of relief as the specialist smiled at them both and started to stand up. There had been several moments during the consultation when she had feared that her grandmother was going to back out and refuse outright to go ahead.
Quickly she, too, got to her feet, determined to get her grandmother out of the consultant’s chambers before she tried to change her mind.
But her grandmother had already forestalled her, saying firmly to the specialist, ‘I still don’t see why I can’t wait and have the operation later. No, Courage,’ she announced, before Courage could interrupt her, ‘don’t think I’m not grateful to you for what you want to do, but I still don’t like the idea of you spending your money on me… On an operation I could have anyway if I just waited.’
‘We’ve already been all through this, Gran,’ Courage told her. Courage looked appealingly at the specialist. ‘I’ve already explained to Gran that with hospital waiting-lists becoming increasingly long it might be that she has to wait more than another two years…’
Please don’t let him say anything to her grandmother about how much more serious her condition was than she herself believed, Courage prayed inwardly as she watched him frown slightly as he looked from her anxious face to her grandmother’s stubborn one.
‘Your granddaughter is quite right,’ he said calmly at last. ‘Unpalatable though it is, it is an unfortunate fact of modern-day hospital and medical finances that funds can only be stretched so far, and, that being so, hos pitals are now being forced to prioritise their operating- lists. Of course, we all realise that these days seventy is no age, and—’
‘It’s the full allocation of our biblical three score years and ten,’ Courage’s grandmother interrupted him. ‘And to be honest with you…’ She paused, her expression making Courage’s heart suddenly start to thump heavily in foreboding.
Was it just the clear, cruel light of the strong summer sunshine that made her grandmother look so unfam-iliarly tired, so vulnerable and shrunken somehow…? Of course, Courage hadn’t been able to spend as much time with her as she would have liked over the last few years, just flying visits, in the main, when her grandmother had kept her so busy that she had barely had time just to sit and look at her.
‘It’s funny how your ideas change… When I was a young girl I wanted to live forever… But old age doesn’t seem such a very appealing prospect once it’s close at hand… I sometimes wonder if—’
‘Gran—’ Courage started to protest worriedly. But her grandmother shook her head and said firmly.
‘Oh, it’s all right, I’m not senile yet… It’s just… sometimes… I feel so… so tired,’ she admitted.
‘Oh, Gran.’ Courage’s eyes filled with tears. She looked helplessly at the specialist, a tiny shiver of anxious fear running down her spine.
Her grandmother admitting to feeling tired… admitting that life… No, it was impossible… Her grandmother…
‘All the more reason to have this operation as soon as possible,’ Courage heard the specialist intervening firmly. ‘I promise you that afterwards you’ll look back on what you’ve said and laugh. You’re tired because your heart’s under such an awful lot of pressure,’ he explained gently.
‘It still seems such a waste of money,’ Courage’s grandmother protested, but there was less conviction in her voice this time, less determination as she looked from the specialist towards Courage.
‘Of course it’s not a waste,’ Courage reassured her fiercely, swallowing back her tears as she took hold of her hand and told her thickly, ‘Gran, you’ve done so much for me over the years, please let me do this one little thing for you… It would mean so much to me… You mean so much to me,’ she added huskily. ‘You’re all I’ve got, Gran, and I don’t want…’
She shook her head, unable to go on. ‘I love you so much,’ she told her grandmother.
On the other side of the desk the specialist cleared his throat emotionally.
‘My secretary will write to you just as soon as a date had been arranged for tests… It will mean an overnight stay in hospital, of course.’
‘It’s all right, Gran,’ Courage told her grandmother lovingly, squeezing her hand. ‘Hospitals aren’t like they used to be. It will be more like staying in a hotel these days.’
‘And just as expensive,’ her grandmother commented caustically, adding, with a return to her normal manner, ‘And there’s no need to tell me how much hospitals have changed, my girl. I think I’m in a rather better position to know that than you.’
‘Yes, Gran,’ Courage agreed meekly, too thankful to see her rallying round to take her to task for her comment.
One of the many ways in which her grandmother gave time to her local community was via a hospital-visiting scheme for those patients who had no one close of their own to visit them.
‘I’m not in my dotage yet, you know,’ she added severely.
‘No, Gran,’ Courage agreed meekly.
‘Well, I’m ready for bed even if you aren’t,’ Courage informed her grandmother the next evening. She wanted to be at work early in the morning. The new cook was due to arrive at ten and Courage wanted to have her desk cleared of the morning’s post and all her other routine chores finished before she arrived so that she could show her the kitchens and go through everything with her.
‘Courage, as grateful as I am, I do still feel your money should be saved for when you have a family,’ her grand-mother said quietly. ‘When I was your age, I’d been married for two years and had had your father…’
‘Things were different then, Gran,’ Courage told her gently. ‘These days our sex has far more options open to it… You were the one who encouraged me to think in terms of a career…who told me how important it was for me to be able to be independent…’
‘And so it is,’ her grandmother confirmed stoutly. ‘But I still can’t help thinking… That business all those years ago with your stepfather and that daughter of his… It didn’t…’
‘My decision to concentrate on my career has nothing to do with them,’ Courage denied, not entirely truthfully. ‘Perhaps I haven’t met the right man yet, Gran…’ Or perhaps she had met him and been rejected by him, a tiny inner voice taunted her.
At sixteen? She had been far too young…too immature…too inexperienced to know the first thing about love—the kind of love needed to build a strong, secure marriage, the kind of marriage she wanted. And he had been a stranger. And if the mixture of guilt and anxiety she felt whenever any man approached her sexually really was based on some deeply concealed psychological reaction to what had happened with him, and not, as she had always preferred to tell herself, an unfashionable lack of strong sexual desire, then…
Then, what?
She was being ridiculous, she told herself sternly. Just because for some odd reason hearing Gideon Reynolds’ voice yesterday afternoon had reminded her of the past, of him, that was no reason for her to feel she had to go burrowing around in the depths of her subconscious. Hadn’t she got enough to worry about with Gran, without that kind of silly emotional self-indulgence?
It was probably the shock of Gran’s ill-health that was bringing all these old memories to the surface, she told herself comfortingly. And now that Gran had seen the specialist, and agreed to allow her to pay for her treatme
nt, no doubt she should soon be back to normal, the ghosts of her past firmly sent back to where they belonged.
It was just gone six o’clock in the morning when Courage arrived at work on Wednesday. Her grandmother had shaken her head in disbelief last night when Courage had told her what time she planned to be at work, but Courage had laughed.
‘In the hotel trade you get used to working all kinds of different shifts,’ she had told her. ‘And to working right through on a double shift sometimes, if it becomes necessary.
‘If you’re not careful you’ll be the one who needs to go into hospital, not me,’ her grandmother had warned her darkly.
It looked as if it was going to be another fine day, Courage decided as she glanced at the clear blue sky. There was no warmth in the sun as yet and the lawns were heavy with dew, calm and untouched, like the day itself. Courage loved this time of the morning; it was one of her favourite times of the day. Humming to herself, she let herself into the house and headed straight for her office.
Half an hour later she was deeply immersed in her work, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she prepared a new worksheet for the cleaning staff. Although she could not fault their work, she suspected that their current routine could be reorganised to be more efficient.
She frowned as she stopped typing for a moment. What exactly did Gideon Reynolds have in mind for this dinner party he was planning for tomorrow? And he hadn’t informed her yet how many people he would be bringing back with him when he returned from his trip, or what his plans for them were. Because he wanted to test her?
She had already arranged for three of the guest suites to be made ready. Would that be enough? Her stomach rumbled protestingly as she pondered the matter, reminding her that she had left home without breakfast.
She glanced at her watch. Almost seven. She might as well grab the opportunity to make herself a coffee and have a piece of toast while she could. As she poured cold water into the filter coffee-machine Courage acknowledged that the kitchen was well-planned, even if Alfonso had complained, his lip curled in disgust, that it was a ‘cook’s kitchen’ not a chef’s. In other words, a woman’s and not a man’s.
Well, she hoped the new cook she had engaged to take his place agreed with him, Courage decided as she heated up some milk in the microwave and removed her toast from the toaster.
She had just taken her first bite of it, still standing up, when the kitchen door was unexpectedly thrust open and Gideon Reynolds strode in demanding angrily, ‘What the hell are you doing here, and where’s Alfonso?’
Courage stared at him in shocked confusion, her toast forgotten.
‘You weren’t supposed to be coming back until later today,’ she heard herself saying weakly. She could feel the fine skin of her face burning with hot colour—not just because of his unexpected appearance, not even because of the way he had spoken to her, like a child caught out in some misdemeanour. No, the reason for her heightened colour had a far more direct cause than that.
Did he make a habit of striding around the house like that, his body very plainly completely nude apart from the thin, very thin silk boxer shorts he was wearing?
Courage had seen equally nude men before, plenty of them, but for some reason, she couldn’t take her gaze off this one. It remained disobediently riveted to the muscled male torso of the man now standing less than a couple of metres away from her, his eyebrows snapping together in an irritable frown as he waited for her to respond to his question.
Courage knew she ought to look away… She wanted to look away. There was no way that those silk shorts came anywhere near remotely concealing the extremely male anatomy of her new employer. Covering it, yes. Concealing it—no.
Gripped by a paralysing fascinated and shocked awe, Courage knew that it wasn’t just her face, but her whole body now that was covered in that betraying give-away scarlet flood of female awareness of him. Was that line of silky dark hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his shorts, really as temptingly soft to touch as it looked? Was it…?
Courage could hear someone breathing with shaky heaviness. Embarrassed, she realised it was herself. She was trembling as well, she recognised, and her heart was beating far too fast.
All because of Gideon Reynolds?
Quickly she wrenched her gaze away from his body. She felt as cold now as she had felt hot before, her teeth threatening to start chattering. She must be in some kind of shock, she told herself, and no wonder… He was the last person she had expected to see… Especially dressed, or rather undressed like that…
‘Is something wrong?’
The earlier irritation had left his voice now and it was suddenly as smooth as cream, the look in his eyes as she glanced briefly towards him alerting her to the dangerous situation her foolishness had created…
Did he think, perhaps, that she had been giving him a come-on? she wondered uncomfortably. If so, she must correct that impression. Couldn’t he tell the difference between shock and desire? she wondered crossly. What woman wouldn’t stare at a man who strode totally unexpectedly into a kitchen dressed only in… in what he was wearing… Especially when that man was her employer and she…
This was his home, she reminded herself.
‘You gave me a shock,’ she told him, lifting her head and forcing herself to meet the look in his eyes head-on. ‘You said you’d be returning late this evening…’
‘So I changed my mind.’ He gave a careless shrug, adding with a frown, ‘What are you doing here anyway? It isn’t nine o’clock yet.’
‘I…I wanted to get here early. To…’ She paused, suddenly flustered by the way he was watching her. ‘I really think you ought to get dressed before we continue this discussion,’ she told him primly.
‘Do you? You do surprise me,’ he responded softly. ‘From the look you were giving me five minutes ago I’d have said that what you really wanted was the exact opposite to that statement… What’s wrong?’ he taunted her, as Courage flushed in mortification. ‘And don’t even bother trying to tell me that you’ve never seen a man dressed like this before…
‘Not that your reaction wasn’t flattering,’ he continued, ignoring her small gasped protest. ‘Flattering, but really rather overdone. I know that all men are supposedly over-vulnerable to their egos where their male attributes are concerned… But since I’m quite well aware that mine are…relatively modestly average, you’re rather wasting your time. And in any case, isn’t it supposed to be what you do with it that’s really important, not what size it is…?’
Courage didn’t know what to say or do. No man, especially not one whom she hardly knew, had ever spoken like this to her before, and her flush deepened as Gideon continued smoothly.
‘From the way you were looking at me anyone would think you’d never seen a man’s body before, and we both know that that’s very far from the truth. Now, I repeat, where is Alfonso? I’ve got a busy day scheduled and I want my breakfast.’
The speed with which he changed from taunting sexual male to boss caught Courage off-guard. She stared at him in confused silence for several seconds before managing to stammer, ‘Alfonso. Well, actually, he’s… he’s gone…’
‘Gone? Gone where, and why?’
Haltingly Courage explained, her gaze firmly focused on a spot just to one side of him as she acknowledged the danger of allowing it to stray anywhere near his body.
‘I have taken on a new cook… subject to your approval, of course. She’ll be arriving this morning… At ten…’
‘Ten.’ He gave her a grimly derisory look as he glanced at the kitchen clock.
Courage followed his gaze. It was just gone seven-thirty.
‘I’ve got a meeting with my accountants in the city at nine-thirty,’ he told her. ‘What would you have done if you’d found yourself in this situation in your previous post: a hotel full of guests who needed feeding and no chef?’
‘That would never have happened. I’d have cooked for them myself, if necessary,
’ Courage informed him quickly.
Too late, she saw the trap he had so neatly sprung on her as she watched the mocking smile curl his mouth.
‘I’ll have fruit juice, coffee, toast—wholemeal bread—oh, and some fruit muesli with natural yoghurt. Bring it up to my room as soon as it’s ready, will you? You do know where my room is, don’t you?’
Oh, yes, she knew where his room was. But if he thought she was going to make his breakfast for him…
Indignantly she opened her mouth, and then closed it again as her normal cautious good sense overtook her sense of outraged female pride.
What he was asking for was, in fact, no less—although certainly rather less politely put—than requests she had had in the past from her employers to help out by taking on tasks in an emergency which were, strictly speaking, outside her remit.
It had never even occurred to her to refuse them…
But it had never been something so personal as making their breakfast that they had asked for, and neither had they ever made her feel as Gideon Reynolds was doing—that they enjoyed using their authority over her to compel her to perform a more personal task than she would normally have been expected to do.
But if she refused, and he dismissed her, how on earth was she going to pay for Gran’s operation?
All the doubts and forebodings she had felt when she had originally taken the job now returned. Accepting Gideon Reynolds’ offer of a loan had trapped her, taking the control of her professional life out of her own hands.
If Gideon Reynolds commanded that she get down on her hands and knees and scrub his floors, there would be very little she could do about it.
Swallowing her anger, she turned away from him, asking as calmly as she could, ‘How do you prefer your coffee?’
‘Black, filter and plenty of it,’ came the cool response. ‘And for future reference, I prefer my muesli to be home-made…’
‘I’ll pass that information on to the cook,’ Courage told him stonily. ‘Shall I defer taking her on until you have had a chance to interview her yourself, by the way?’