His Housekeeper Bride

She knew how to make an impact.

It was just so—so Sylvie, he thought grimly, trying to muster up some negative emotion and failing. Confused by all the foreign emotion churning in him—he was feeling happy when he should be mad—he stalked to the back door, jerked it open and shouted in the general direction of the cottage, ‘Sylvie!’

He refused to repeat himself. He’d yelled loud enough the first time.

Moments later a light came on in the cottage, then the door opened and a sleepy voice said softly, ‘I think knocking would be kinder to the neighbours at this time of night.’

He cursed beneath his breath. ‘Could you come inside, please?’ he asked, in as reasonable a manner as possible.

‘Answering to the boss at 2:47 a.m. wasn’t in the contract…sir.’

She was right. He was caught in the wrong again—and the fact only made him want to fight more. ‘Tomorrow at six.’

‘Technically, it’s today, sir—and it’s a Saturday. Do I have weekends off?’

The word sir got him all fidgety. It wasn’t right coming from her, after their shared past, and he suspected she only did it now to make a point. ‘Just come inside now!’

He heard a distinct sigh, but a figure emerged from the warm darkness.

Mark caught his breath. Tumbled curls, mussed with sleep, fell around her shoulders, catching the light until they looked like dark fire. Her face was rosy, her eyes big, cloudy—and she was wearing a slip nightie in a soft clear blue that showcased her pale skin like pearls in shimmering water.

She stood outside the door, dropped some slippers to the mat, and shoved her feet into them. She sent him an enquiring glance. ‘You did want me to come in now?’she asked, nodding at the door he still held.

‘What? Oh, yes.’ He moved back and she walked into the kitchen, throwing a cotton robe over her nightie.

He nearly growled in protest. She’d looked so sweet and silky, so touchable with her bare feet, and her body—the curves were small, but in the iridescent half-light she’d looked like a creature of magic and moonlight.

She rubbed her eyes and blinked. ‘Is this kind of awakening going to be a regular occurrence, sir? If so, I’ll have to go to bed earlier.’

‘Stop calling me sir,’ he snapped.

Sylvie sighed again. ‘Mr Hannaford is such a mouthful…but whatever you wish.’

‘I’ve already warned you about impertinence. I won’t tolerate it.’

She frowned and tilted her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not at my best this time of night. Are you saying that calling you Mr Hannaford is impertinent?’

‘I’m saying—’ He shook his head. How had they descended to this level so fast? And how could he have fallen in lust so fast with someone he’d thought of as Shirley Temple? Until he’d seen her like this, as if she’d come fresh from a lover’s bed. ‘I don’t argue with employees.’

She smiled at him, a sleepy thing of flushed beauty that made him catch his breath and his body harden with an urgency all Toni’s kisses hadn’t been able to rouse. ‘You can’t imagine how glad I am to hear that—given our…um…conversation of the past few minutes. So, to sort matters, what would you like me to call you?’

Locked into the unexpected desire that had hit him with the force of a ten-pound grenade, he said huskily, ‘Mark will do.’

The way that single crinkle between her brows grew told him what she thought of that. ‘I thought you wanted some professional distance between us?’

He shrugged, trying not to laugh. Oh, she knew how to call him on his pronouncements, and she wasn’t a bit intimidated by anything he did or said. ‘Distance seems fairly silly at the moment, given where we are and what you’re wearing—and our shared past.’

With an endearing self-consciousness she pulled her robe around her. ‘I’d feel better if you smiled.’ Her eyes were big as she stared at him with haunting uncertainty. China-doll lovely, and so tempting…

‘Please, Sylvie, call me Mark,’ he murmured—and smiled.

She swallowed and moistened her lips, her eyes still huge, unsure. ‘Thank you—Mark.’

A little half-smile lingered on her mouth. She always smiled—unless her prickly pride was touched. She seemed to have hidden laughter lurking around her, a delicious mirth he thought she might share with him if he got close enough. He took a step forward, obeying the imperative urge to imbibe her sparkling warmth, to touch—

Sylvie caught the back of her slipper on a mat as she took a hasty step back.

And he remembered at the worst possible moment what he was doing, where this was going. She was his employee, in a vulnerable position—and, much as he wanted to forget it, she was Shirley Temple. Her memory shone in his mind like starlight: for five years she’d been the girl who’d given him silent empathy when no one else had understood he didn’t want to talk, who’d been there for him when he’d felt lost and alone, cared for him when she’d had no one to care for her. She’d simply given him what he’d needed when he’d needed it, in a no cost or agenda way.

She was still doing it now—giving without taking back—and while his craving body was reminding him that she was most definitely a woman, she was only here because he’d ordered her inside. Hours after duty ended.

Her duties haven’t even begun yet, jerk. She’s barely had time to move her stuff in.

She’d suffered enough in her life, if the report he’d received this afternoon was true. She didn’t know the shallow games he played with women; she’d been too busy caring for her father until his death, bringing up her brothers. She’d only begun to have a life of her own when Joel had moved into the dorm rooms at his university. Three months ago.

His hands curled into fists of denial. He couldn’t be the hard-hearted man on the town. No matter how much he wanted to forget what this day was, he couldn’t do it to her.

‘So…what did you want to talk about?’she asked, the breathless sound in her voice sweet and pretty.

Everything about Sylvie was pretty—from her tousled curls to her pink-painted toes peeping out from the open-ended slippers. And so were the changes she’d made to his house.

His anger seemed ridiculous now. ‘I owe you an apology for my rudeness at the office.’

She yawned behind her hand with a puzzled look. ‘You yelled the street down at 2:47 a.m. to apologise?’

He felt heat creeping up his neck.

Her grin was as sweet as the look in her eyes—a mixture of woman and imp. ‘I was sure you were going to bawl me out for the presents I brought you.’

‘Why did you do it?’ he asked abruptly.

She shuffled her slippers on the floor, staring at her feet. ‘Every good thing in my life has come from you.’ She shrugged with one shoulder, her neck tilting to meet its uplift, and he knew what she was about to say. ‘It isn’t in me to do nothing but take, Mark. I know there’s nothing I can give you to thank you for rescuing my family—but I wanted to try.’

Any lingering anger, any urge to bawl her out or freeze her out, withered and died under the pure, humbling honesty of her. ‘Anything I ever gave you can never repay what you did for me.’

She looked up again, her smile shy and eager, and though he saw an echo of the Shirley Temple he remembered, she was a rosy, tumbled woman at the same time. She was both and more—and she fascinated him too much for her own good. He had to get her to stay away from him, because he wasn’t having any success in staying away from her.

‘When the deed for the house came, and the trust for us, and the card from you…You have no idea what you did for me—us.’

Her words, sincere and choked with emotion, annihilated his normal method of making a woman keep her distance. ‘You, Sylvie,’ he said quietly, wondering why he said it. ‘I did it for you.’

‘You saved my life.’ She looked at him as if he was wonderful. ‘Literally, you saved me, Mark. When the money came I was drowning. Dad was too sick to work, I was working part-time at a restaurant to make the rent, going to school, cleaning houses, doing homework at midnight. I—’ She swallowed, and then said abruptly, ‘Owning the house helped me put food on the table, paid for a housekeeper. I could stay at school, study and pass my exams.’

‘It was just money.’ He wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t stand not to see her flushed prettiness, the shining gratitude and hidden pain in those lovely eyes.

‘No.’ She took a step towards him, tender, hesitant. ‘Your house is so beautiful. I can feel your love for it in all the old furniture. I love it, too. It’s like you.’

Too many emotions crowded him; he hadn’t felt this confused since he was about thirteen, and her last comment heightened his bemusement. ‘Like me?’

She nodded, her face serious. ‘I walked in this afternoon and felt as if it was a haven in a crazy city. I felt peace. You could have made this a showplace. Instead you chose furniture that made it mellow, gentle and welcoming. It’s a family house for a family man.’

Alarm bells shrieked in his head. Don’t do it. Don’t lose it with her. And still he stepped forward, looking over her—such a delicate woman—and snarled in a freezing tone, ‘Do you see a family here?’She jerked back fast, breathing unevenly, her face white, and with such terror in her eyes he felt horrified. ‘Sylvie, I didn’t mean to—’

She lifted a shaking hand and he stopped. Just like that. He who hadn’t obeyed any woman but his mother for over a decade. Was it their past, or the shimmering tears in her eyes that halted him before her?

When she spoke it was in a half-whisper, with the shadows of her fear hovering around her like an aura of night. ‘I see the ghosts of the family that should be here. This house is the real you…it’s your haven from being the Heart of Ice. You bought this house for her. For Chloe, for both of you—it’s everything you should have had with her. The family, the babies.’

He felt the blood drain from his head, leaving him dizzy. By God, she met a sword-thrust with gentle atom bombs—and he couldn’t take any more reminders of what he’d become, what he’d always be now: a man alone.

‘Go to bed, Sylvie. Have the weekend off to settle into the cottage. Don’t worry about my breakfast. Just don’t come in here until I’m gone.’ The words grated like sandpaper in his throat.

‘All right.’ She turned and walked to the door, not wishing him a goodnight. Probably she knew it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t be. All he wanted now was for her to leave him alone. All he wanted was to drown himself in Scotch. If only he had any of the stuff in the house.

An echo rang in his heart and head—an anthem of unending loss. Not of Chloe herself—he’d accepted that a year before her death—but loss of hope. He’d lost something vital inside himself long before her death, and he’d never found it again.

At the door, Sylvie spoke again. ‘Mark?’

He gripped a dining chair, knowing that whatever she was about to say would be unexpected. She wasn’t fooled by his cover. She didn’t see him as the Heart of Ice, wasn’t intimidated by his anger, wasn’t over-awed by his power or wealth. She saw Mark. She knew what he’d once been—believed that boy was still inside him somewhere—and that scared the living daylights out of him. He couldn’t be that person again. He couldn’t open his heart to any woman. Even Sylvie.

Especially Sylvie. She was everything he’d avoided for fifteen years—the kind of woman who’d take what was left of his heart and soul and rip it to shreds.

‘What?’ He closed his eyes, waiting for the blow. He already knew she had that power.

When she spoke, he heard the shaking in her voice as strongly as he felt the trembling in his limbs. ‘Chloe deserves you to have bought this house for her. She deserves to be remembered and to be loved still. And you deserve this refuge. Time out from the cold and uncaring person you never were inside.’

He hung on to the chair like grim death as pain raced through his body and soul like a heat blast, leaving him scalded and weak. She doesn’t know the truth. Don’t tell her. Don’t say it!

‘Just go. Please.’ The words came out in a strangled voice.

The door closed behind her, and he was left alone with the endless ghost of grief, guilt and regret. All he wanted now was to talk to a friend in a black-labelled bottle.

He’d been wishing that for the past fifteen years. All he could drown himself in now was meaningless sex…and it never helped him forget who he was. What he was.

Sylvie closed the door of her new home, closed her eyes and gulped in shaking breaths.

She should never have said it. The agony in his eyes had told the truth about the infamous Heart of Ice. He wrapped himself inside a coldness that could shatter at a touch. But it was nothing but a delicate veneer, hiding his private emotions from a world that didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know the man beneath the legend.

So stupid! She’d known it was too early.

If he snarled at her like that again he wouldn’t have to fire her; she’d run like the frightened jackrabbit she was—even though she knew he’d never hurt her.

Leaning against the door, because she didn’t think her legs would carry her further, she kept trying to breathe while her ears strained for the sound of his footsteps. She was pulling herself together, ready to smile in the face of disaster. Waiting and waiting.

Only the soft lapping of waves behind her cottage greeted her.

He wasn’t coming. Of course he wasn’t—because he was Mark and she was Shirley Temple, the girl who’d handed him a wet flannel, a few glasses of water, given him some hugs and held his hand. And yet he’d treasured what little she’d done for him enough to seek the family out and save them when she’d reached desperate measures to pay the rent and put food on the table, with threats of Welfare stepping in to take the boys away.

From the moment Brenda had recognised her at the job interview today, her words had cemented what Sylvie had long suspected. Mark’s family loved him but didn’t understand him. They wanted to push him into happiness so they could stop worrying about him. It was love, but not the love he needed.

Just like her brother Simon, who tried to match her up with men all the time: men who were gentle, who wouldn’t rush her. Men who might as well have been invisible for all she could feel for them.

‘Stop reaching for the stars,’ Simon always said. ‘You’ll never see him again.’

But she’d rather live her life alone than with any man who wasn’t the one. Mark had been her childhood prince, but he might have faded from her memory if he hadn’t saved her life, saved her family…saved her from the unbearable choice facing her when the money came. And the prince of her little-girl fantasies had become her teenage hero. Then finally, when she’d seen the tabloid stories on him, seen the frozen suffering beneath the wolfish smile, he’d become her love, so entwined in her heart she’d never leave him behind.

The Heart of Ice wasn’t the boy she remembered, who’d stood beside a dying girl for years, even marrying her rather than running when it all became too hard. The boy who’d felt sick at the thought of giving a promise to love another girl because it would be a lie. Maybe all he wanted was to be left in peace with his memories but she’d given a promise, made sacred by death. At the right time she’d given up her home, her job security—and most importantly, her secure anonymity—to come to Mark and keep her vow.

Though she had nothing to speak of, she had something she could give Mark that he didn’t have: a true home, a friend…And if she could pull off a miracle, maybe she could help him learn to live again.

CHAPTER THREE

SYLVIE was in the kitchen Monday morning, making breakfast while Mark was out running, when the phone rang. She checked the oven clock: sixfourteen. She was sure Mark carried a mobile phone and a pager. She shouldn’t take his private calls. But by the fourth time it started ringing she’d realised the caller knew Mark was out. She picked up.

‘So, how’s it going, Sylvie?’ Brenda’s eager voice came the second she said hello.

‘Fine,’ she said warily. How would you describe a weekend where your employer had seemed to work all hours while you moved non-existent furniture around, aching to move your feet thirty metres but you’d been banned until Monday? And how did you say that to your employer’s sister whom you barely knew—hadn’t seen in fifteen years?

‘So, how’s Mark? Is he talking to you? Has he said anything?’

She bit her lip. This was her first real day of work. The course of wisdom was telling her to take her time—but, being Bigmouth Sylvie, she did the opposite. ‘Brenda, I appreciate you helped me get the job, but whatever Mark says to me remains between us. End of subject. I need this job, and I’m not about to risk it by being unprofessional—’

‘Sylvie, Mark needs you,’ Brenda said bluntly. ‘You’ve seen how he is. He’s not our Mark—the boy you knew.’

Sylvie sighed. ‘You can’t throw women at Mark like mud and hope one sticks. You can’t heal him; he can only do that himself. And calling me for updates is something I never agreed to. I’m only here to cook and clean.’ She almost added, For all you know, I could be romantically involved, but she remembered Brenda’s specific questions on her romantic status, with the excuse that Mark would welcome no overnight guests. ‘I haven’t seen him in fifteen years, but I’m sure of one thing: your anxiety probably makes him feel bad that he can’t make you feel better—and that makes it worse for him.’

Silence greeted her declaration for a few moments. ‘I’m sorry.’ Brenda’s voice had gone stiff and cold. ‘Wouldn’t you be anxious about your brother if he was like Mark?’

Before Sylvie could answer, the bleeping sound of disconnection filled her ear. She sighed and hung up, turning back to the breakfast she was making.

‘Thank you.’

She whirled around. Wearing exercise gear that moulded to his body like a second skin, he stood in the open doorway between the kitchen and dining room, hot and sweaty from his run, his dark-blond hair plastered to his skull. He was still breathing heavily.

‘You’re welcome.’ Her throat was thick, her heart pounding so hard it was as if she’d been running with him. Shocked by the depth of her response to him, she whirled to face the oven. She’d never felt desire in her life before, but the aching of her body, the itching in her fingertips to touch him, couldn’t be anything else. ‘I know I crossed the line, but she kept calling. She said…’ Hot colour scorched her face. She was talking about his sister!

‘I knew she would. Persistence and interference are the Hannaford middle names.’ He spoke with loving resignation. ‘The only mystery is why the other girls haven’t called or come over yet—you remember my sisters Becky and Katie—or my mother. You ought to expect them, though. Beware: they’ll dig and dig until they get what they want,’ he said, sounding surprised he’d said anything so personal.

To cut off the coldness she sensed was coming—his way of trying to keep a professional distance—she spoke in a flat tone.‘I’ll be at college.’ She opened the oven door.‘I hope coming in early to make breakfast is acceptable?’

‘For something that smells like that, you can come in before dawn.’ He breathed in deeply.‘That smells incredible. What is it?’

Trying to hide a grin of delight—Brenda had told her that he preferred health foods—she said neutrally,‘Just some home-baked muesli and fresh coffee.’

‘Home-baked? I don’t think that was in the contract.’ But the way he inhaled, the smile as he did so, told her he wasn’t about to argue. ‘I usually eat fruit.’

‘I made fruit salad, too.’ She turned back to the food before he could comment, unsure whether he would say something kind or would freeze her. ‘It’ll be ready when you are.’

Fifteen minutes later he was wolfing down breakfast as she cleaned. ‘That was superb,’ he said as he brought the bowls and cup to her.‘Thank you, Sylvie.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Strange how such polite words and praise could hide so much. Somewhere between his coming in on her conversation with Brenda and his return from the shower he’d remembered her interference on Friday night. The air was strained, the tension almost visible; it would only become worse if she apologised. All they were leaving unsaid hovered in the air between them like a comic dialogue balloon—you could choose not to read it but it was still there.

He said a curt goodbye as he was leaving—before seven.

‘I’ll have dinner waiting,’ she said, not knowing why she’d said it or what she was hoping for.

His cold reply was all she deserved for poking her nose in again.‘I’m rarely home before nine.’

He worked fourteen-hour days on a regular basis?‘I’ll have it ready for eight, in case.’

She cursed her clumsy mouth—setting rules in his home. She didn’t expect an answer, and didn’t get one.

When he roared out of the garage she shrugged, ate her share of breakfast, put on her cleaning music, ran through the house until it was sparkling, and left for college before the family he’d forewarned her about could arrive.

‘So how’s the new housekeeper?’ his brother Pete asked after the morning meeting was done, and he, Pete and Glenn, his brother-in-law, were alone.

‘Tell Bren if she wants an update to ask me herself.’

Glenn chuckled, and Pete grinned.‘The Heart of Ice stuff doesn’t work on me, bro. I’ve shared a room with you, punched you up, stood beside you when the football jocks attacked us, and covered up for you when you and Chloe did midnight flits to invent something.’

Glenn laughed again, and agreed.

Mark smiled reluctantly. They’d all been close from school days. Pete, only a year younger than him, was his Chief IT Officer, and Glenn, besides being Bren’s husband, was Financial Controller for Howlcat. Nerds United, they used to call themselves; but they’d stuck together through good times and bad, and there were no two men he trusted more.

‘So, how is she? You know Mum’s sure to call me and ask.’

Mark gave an exaggerated sigh.‘We fell in love at first sight, made passionate love all night and we are eloping on our first day off. Now will you get off my back?’

Pete’s brows lifted.‘I only meant to ask if she can cook and clean all right, since I know you did her a favour in hiring her,’ he said mildly.

Mark found himself flushing.‘She makes muesli to die for, keeps the house in perfect order.’ He tried to stop himself, but the stress in him had been building like a pressure cooker on high all weekend, and it had to come out.‘She also says everything she shouldn’t, gives me presents that make my house hers somehow, then says something so sweet I can’t tell her off. She doesn’t act like any employee I’ve known, but I can’t fire her because—’ The words burst from him.‘She’s Shirley Temple—all right? Remember the kid whose dying mother was in the hospice the same time as Chloe a lot? She’s been through hell since then, and she deserves a break.’

His brother and his friend both nodded, but there was a suspicious twinkle in both sets of eyes, and he knew what was coming.‘I saw her the other day. She’s a real cutie,’ Glenn said.

‘Adorable, if you like the type,’ Pete added, grinning.‘Pretty and sweet. Just as well you prefer sophisticated women to china dolls.’

He was lying, and they all knew it. He growled in agreement and stalked out of the conference room to his haven in Howlcat Industries, pulling off his jacket and tie on the way. Nobody bothered him in the basement lab except in an emergency—even his mother.

Why he was home by seven-thirty he didn’t know. She was his housekeeper, he wasn’t accountable to her—but the good manners his mother had instilled in him came into play. If dinner was ready by eight, he’d be there.