At His Service: Cinderella Housekeeper: Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After / His Housekeeper Bride / What's a Housekeeper To Do?

No. That was a stupid idea. Why would someone throw a party if they didn’t actually want to be at it themselves?

‘What are you doing skulking up here? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

Ellie stopped breathing momentarily as Charlie appeared from nowhere.

‘Don’t do that!’ Ellie whispered sharply, pressing her palm to her chest in an effort to slow her galloping heart. ‘And I’m not skulking.’

Charlie stopped smiling and looked concerned. ‘You’re a bag of nerves,’ she said, while giving Ellie’s arm a reassuring rub. ‘Come on, chill out. It is a party, after all …’

Ellie nodded. ‘I know. But I need this to go well. I can’t lose this job, Charlie, I can’t—’

Without warning her eyes filled, and the party below glittered even harder than before.

‘Hey!’ Charlie’s voice was gentle and her arm rested around Ellie’s shoulders, pulling her close. ‘What’s all this about?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Did you tell him … Mark Wilder … about me?’

Charlie’s three frown lines appeared above her nose. ‘All I told him was that you were an old friend of mine and I thought you’d be perfect for the job. I wasn’t lying, Ellie.’

Ellie scratched at a non-existent mark on the banister with a blunt fingernail. ‘No. I mean, did you tell him about how I have problems with … about my …?’

Charlie’s voice was low when she answered. ‘No, I didn’t tell him about the accident or how it’s affected you. It’s up to you whether you want to share that information with him.’

Okay, so Charlie had believed her when she’d sworn blind she had it in her to be a top-notch housekeeper. Now she just had to prove her right. Ellie’s chest rose then fell deeply as she let out a huge breath. ‘Right. Thank you.’

A soft look appeared on Charlie’s face. ‘Do you really think being here, moving away from home, will help you … you know … get over things?’

Suddenly Ellie needed to sit down. Her legs folded under her with the grace of a collapsing deckchair and she grabbed on to the banister with both hands. Charlie’s arm appeared, firm and protective, around her shoulders.

‘There’s more to this sudden desire for a new job than just needing fresh scenery, isn’t there, Ellie? Why did you really want to leave Barkleigh in such a hurry?’

Blast. Why did Charlotte Maxwell have to be so perceptive under her devil-may-care exterior? Ellie stared at the milling guests below. Their only problems were deciding which diamond to wear or which sports car to drive.

A feeling of loss washed over her, so deep, so overwhelming that she thought she might just dissolve into nothing right there on Mark Wilder’s landing.

Sometimes she wished her brain would just finish the job and give up working all together. Then she could just evaporate. She’d be happy then, feeling nothing, remembering nothing. It was this half-in, half-out thing her memory did that was driving her to distraction.

‘I can’t go home,’ she whispered. ‘I just can’t.’

‘Why?’

‘Remember Ginny? Chloe’s godmother and my oldest friend?’

Charlie nodded. ‘Yes, I remember her.’

Ellie didn’t want to say it. Hearing the words spill out of her own mouth would remind her of everything she’d lost. Of everything she longed for.

‘She’s pregnant.’

She didn’t look up. Couldn’t.

Charlie’s hand stopped stroking her arm and slid down over her wrist until their fingers meshed, Charlie’s red fingernails bright against her pale skin. Ellie gripped her hand, hanging on to it as if it would anchor her.

‘I know it’s awful, but I think if I have to see her every day for the next eight months, seeing her grow bigger, seeing how happy she is with Steve, I might just go properly bonkers. I just had to get away.’

She was happy for Ginny and Steve, really she was, but how could she watch them add to their happy little family when her own had been wiped from the face of the earth? It was too … too … blatant.

Charlie didn’t say anything, just hugged her tight. ‘Do you want me to get you anything? A glass of water?’

Ellie shook her head. ‘No. I’m just tired. I think I’ll just stay here for a few seconds and then go to bed. You go on and enjoy the party.’ She nodded to the hall below, where the rather good-looking man she’d seen Charlie with earlier was searching the crowd. ‘I think someone’s looking for you.’

Charlie smiled, and her eyes never left the man as he moved this way and that. ‘If you’re sure?’ she said.

‘I’m sure.’ Ellie gave her a shove in the right direction and Charlie headed off down the stairs. The man spotted her, and the look he gave her as she descended was pure magic. Ellie sighed. At least someone was happy.

She moved a little further to the left, so she could see more of the hall. Mark was still leaning on the mantelpiece, and he had that distant look in his eyes again.

Her mind wandered back to his smile in the wedding photo. She’d seen him smile plenty of times tonight, but not one of those smiles had lit up his face like his smile for the woman in the wedding photo. Where was she now? What had happened? For the first time she realised there were scars beneath his good-humoured persona. From wounds that maybe hadn’t fully healed. Her hand flew to the locket around her neck. She knew all about the pain those kinds of wounds could cause.

As if he sensed she was watching him, Mark paused, his glass raised halfway to his lips. And then he turned his head and met her gaze. She froze. Could it be any more obvious she’d been staring at him and only him? She didn’t think so.

Still, he didn’t look cross. He wasn’t smiling that irritating twinkly smile—wasn’t mocking her. The other occupants of the room melted away, their conversation drowned out by a loud thudding sound.

Oh. That was her pulse.

Heat crept up her cheeks, but still she hadn’t moved. And moving at this point would be a really good idea.

Still staring at Mark, she took a couple of wobbly steps backwards, then turned and fled along the corridor. For some reason she ignored her bedroom door and headed for the back staircase. She needed space, distance. And she didn’t think she’d get that with only a ceiling and a couple of walls separating her from Mark Wilder.

The stupid stilettos strangled her ankles as she clattered down the back staircase. She paused at the bottom. No one was around, so she tiptoed down the corridor into the kitchen.

Ellie stole a smoked fish thing off a platter of canapés and popped it in her mouth. As she slid past a waitress carrying a tray of cocktails she pilfered one of those too, knocking it back and shuddering as whatever it was hit the back of her throat.

She edged past the round table near the French doors. An abandoned tray stood on the table, cluttered with champagne flutes, some empty, some full. She plucked one of the full ones and nipped out of her favourite escape route into the garden.

A wave of muffled laughter wafted past her on the clear night air. She took a sip of champagne, but barely tasted it. There was something she had to do first, before she could enjoy it properly.

Her feet were killing her.

She sat on a low stone wall and fiddled with the microscopic buckles. Pretty soon she’d flicked the shoes off and she hooked the satin straps under her fingers and headed into the garden.

The flagstones were cold and rough on the soles of her feet, and she veered in the direction of the lawn and sank her toes deep into it. Heaven! She closed her eyes and took another sip of champagne. The canapé was the first thing she had eaten all evening, and on an empty stomach it wasn’t hard to feel the bubbles doing their work.

Funny how parties always sounded more inviting when you were on the outside. All she had wanted to do when she was in there was escape, yet now she was out here she felt strangely alone.

She took a few more steps on the springy grass, letting the blades invade the spaces between her toes. She wriggled them and drained the flute of its contents. Goosebumps flourished on her upper arms as she heard a low masculine voice behind her.

‘Caught red-handed!’

A powerful pair of hands clamped down on Ellie’s shoulders. The champagne glass slid out of her hand and bounced off her foot. She instinctively ducked down and forwards, wriggling out his grip, then swung round to face him.

He blinked groggily at her. ‘What’s the matter?’ he slurred. ‘Don’t you like me?’

His name might have deserted her, but she hadn’t forgotten this man. The floppy pale hair, the arrogant smirk. She didn’t know who he was to Mark, but if the rest of his friends were like this, he could keep them.

He draped an arm across her shoulders. ‘What d’you say we go for a little walk?’

She had to handle this carefully. He might be a pain in the behind, but he was Mark’s guest too, so losing her temper would only get her in trouble. ‘I’d rather not, thank you.’

His eyes were glassy and his breath reeked of whisky. She carefully peeled his arm off her shoulder. He lost his balance now he wasn’t leaning on her for support, his feet sliding on the dewy grass. His smile faded.

‘Hey! There’s no need to be hoity-toity about it.’

‘I didn’t … I …’ Oh, what was the use? He’d probably take any conversation as encouragement of some sort. The best thing to do was get out of here before she really did get hoity-toity with him.

She turned and walked back towards the house. He lumbered after her, stumbling slightly, and managed to grab hold of her arm and haul her towards him.

Something flashed white-hot inside her head. She dreaded these surges of anger, but could do very little to contain herself when they struck. She was going to blow, whether she liked it or not.

‘Get off me!’ she yelled.

He made a curious gurgle that she interpreted as a laugh, and clamped her to his chest. His lips made contact with the skin beneath her ear and slid down her neck in a slobbery trail.

‘Ugh!’

Enough was enough. No more Miss Nice Guy. She swung Charlie’s killer sandals wide and brought them crashing down on his temple.

Mark had suddenly had enough of standing around talking to the same people, having the same conversations he’d had last week. He needed fresh air.

Instinctively he headed for the kitchen, then paused at the threshold. Why had he come this way? He had the feeling he was looking for something but had forgotten what.

Nonsense, his conscience said. You know exactly why you’re here … who you’re looking for.

But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t there.

So he ducked past the busy catering staff and out of the French windows to the small lawn.

The floodlights on the outside of the house made the dark night even blacker, and it took him a few moments to realise he wasn’t alone. A movement at the end of the lawn caught his eye and he made out two silhouettes. He almost grinned and shrugged it off as a couple of guests slipping away to get friendly, but something made him look again.

Piers was up to his old tricks, it seemed. He was a notorious flirt. The only reason Mark had invited him was because he needed his firm’s specialist legal knowledge on a recording contract he was putting together. Still, Piers was relatively harmless, and most of the females in their circle of acquaintance knew how to deal with him. Mark peered deeper into the darkness. Just who was he with this time, anyway?

And then he was running, the sound of his own blood rushing and swirling in his ears. He worked out regularly enough, and his legs were pumping beneath him, but somehow he seemed to make torturous progress, like the slow-motion running in a dream.

The woman Piers was slobbering over was Ellie.

And there was no way he was going to let some jumped-up little twit who worked for his daddy’s law firm foist himself on one of his staff. She might not know how to—

Mark almost slipped on the damp grass.

Perhaps she did.

He watched as Ellie gave Piers a first-class whack with her shoes. Piers stumbled and fell on the damp grass, clutching a hand to his head. Mark finally skidded to a halt in front of them and yanked Piers up by his collar. His right fist was itching to make contact with that pretty face. He ought to flatten him for treating Ellie that way.

‘Mark, no!’

The panic in her voice was all he needed to make him reconsider. He released the slimy runt and gave him a shove in the direction of the house.

‘Go home, Piers. You’re drunk.’

Piers wiped saliva from the edges of his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Steady on, Mark!’

He marched towards Piers and stopped inches from his face. Piers might have a reputation for being a ladies’ man, but Mark had never suspected how nasty he could be with it. How could a man who appeared so polished during the working week turn out to be such a rat? Once again he’d believed the best in someone, only to be utterly disappointed.

‘No. You steady on,’ he said, with more than a hint of controlled fury in his voice. ‘Don’t ever set foot in this house again. In fact, don’t bother to set foot in my offices again, either. As of Monday I will be seeking new legal representation—you and your firm are fired.’

Piers tugged at his tie and stood as tall as the whisky would let him.

‘Now, look here. I could sue you for assault, manhandling me in that way!’

‘Yes, you could. And I could tell the paparazzi hiding in my front bushes how you got plastered at my party and tried to grope one of my guests. I’m sure the partners at Blackthorn and Webb would welcome the publicity, don’t you?’

Piers turned tail and lurched towards the house. Mark watched until he was out of sight, then faced Ellie. ‘I’m so sorry about that. Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’ Her voice quivered enough to call her determined face a liar.

‘You gave him one hell of a clout with those shoes!’

The shell-shocked expression gave way to a delightfully naughty smile. ‘You should have warned him I was dangerous to mess with.’

The fingers of Mark’s right hand wandered to the spot near his left collarbone, where she’d bitten him only a few weeks earlier. At the time he’d been livid, hadn’t found it funny in the slightest. Tonight, however, he found he couldn’t find it anything but, and he started to laugh.

To his surprise, Ellie joined him. Softly at first, with a giggle that hinted she was holding more of it in than she was letting out. But eventually she was laughing just as hard as he was, and the more he saw her eyes sparkle and her cheeks blush, the more he wanted to keep the moment going.

Look at her. When she smiled like that, lost the glare and the frosty expression, she was … Not beautiful. At least not in the way Hollywood and the media defined the word. But he couldn’t stop looking at her.

And why would he? She was laughing so hard she’d gone pink in the face and her eyes were squeezed shut. Any minute now he thought she’d keel over. It was adorable. Just as she threatened to make his prediction come true, she clutched at the air to steady herself. Her hand made contact with his upper arm and all the shared laughter suddenly died away.

Ellie looked away and tucked and escaped curl into the clip on top of her head. It bounced back again, unwilling to be leashed. His desire to reach forward and brush it away from her face was almost overpowering, but he’d done that so many times with other women. It would be too much of a cliché.

She looked up at him and shivered.

‘You’re cold.’

She started to protest, but he swung his jacket off and carefully hung it round her shoulders. It must be the night for clichés. This, too, was something he’d done more times than he could remember too—one of his moves, part of the game.

But it wasn’t like that with Ellie. She’d been cold, and he’d done something to remedy that. He wasn’t playing any games. Mainly because he didn’t know what the rules were with her. She made him feel different—unpolished, uncertain—as if he wasn’t in control of whatever was going on.

He looked at the warm light spilling from Larkford’s every window. He really ought to get back to his guests.

She moved slightly, and the friction of material between his fingers reminded him he was still holding the lapels of the jacket firmly. He really should let go. But Ellie was looking up at him, her eyes soft and unguarded, just as they had been when she’d stared down at him from the landing.

He’d liked that look then, and he liked it now. There wasn’t a hint of greed or artifice in it. And that was a rare thing in his world. It was as if she saw something that surprised her, something that everyone else missed.

He’d seen her skirting the edge of the party, boredom clear on her face. And when he’d turned back to Melodie and the record producer he’d been chatting to he’d suddenly seen the whole gathering through Ellie’s eyes, as if he’d been given X-ray specs that cut out the glare and the glitter, revealing everyone and everything for who and what they really were. Not much of what he’d seen would benefit from close scrutiny.

But out here on the lawn everything felt very real indeed. Uncomfortably so. His heart was hammering in his chest—and it wasn’t from his race across the lawn.

She was tantalisingly close, her feelings clearly written in her face, floating across the surface. He felt her warm breath on his neck, sending shivers to the roots of his hair. He clenched the lapels of the dinner jacket, pulling her closer until only a molecule of air prevented their faces from touching. Normally he’d go in for the kill now, take the advantage while he had it, but he waited.

What for, he wasn’t exactly sure.

The world seemed to shrink into the tiny space between his lips and hers. At least Ellie was aware of nothing but this, nothing beyond it. And, since remembering past or future was a struggle sometimes anyway, she finally let go and just existed in the moment. This particular moment revolved around a choice, one that was hers alone: to flow with the moment or push against it.

She was so tired of fighting herself, tired of pushing herself, of always keeping everything under constant surveillance. Just once she wanted to follow an impulse rather than resist it.

She wanted this.

Hesitantly, she pressed her lips against his, splaying her hands across his chest to steady herself. For a moment he did nothing, and her heart plummeted, but then he pulled her to him, sliding his hands under his suit jacket to circle her waist, and kissed her back.

All those women who fluttered and twittered merely at the sight of him would have melted clean away if they’d been on the receiving end of a kiss like this. Every mad hormonal urge she’d been fighting for the last few weeks roared into life and she didn’t resist a single one.

It was a kiss of need, exploration … perfection.

She didn’t need to think, to struggle to remember anything. And she wouldn’t have been able to if she’d tried, not with Mark’s teeth nipping at her lower lip, his hands sliding up her back until they brushed the bare flesh of her shoulders. Ellie reached up to feel the faint stubble on his jaw with her fingertips. He groaned and pulled her close enough to feel the muscles in his chest flexing as his arms moved. She let her head drop back when his lips pressed against the tingling skin just below her jaw, and she slid her fingers round the back of his head, running them through the short hair there and feeling him shiver.

A tray clanged inside the kitchen, and the noise cut cleanly and smoothly through the night air. They both froze, and the moment they’d shared shattered along with the glasses landing on the kitchen floor.

There was a horrible sense of déjà vu as they stared at each other, neither sure of what was going on and what they should do next.

Mark grasped for words inside his head. Say something!

He reached for her. ‘Ellie …’

Come on, smooth talker! Where’s all your patter now?

She stared back at him, wide-eyed and breathless. Then, before he could get his thoughts collected into syllables, she bolted into the house.

See? Unpredictable. He couldn’t have guessed she was going to do that. After all, it wasn’t the normal response he got when he kissed a woman—quite the reverse.

He raced after her and burst through the French windows into the kitchen. Precious seconds were lost as he collided with a fully laden waiter. The clattering of trays and muttered apologies masked the sound of her bare feet slapping on the tiles as she tore out of the kitchen and down the passageway that led to the back stairs.

He dodged another waiter and ran after her, only to be corralled by a group of guests.

‘Mark!’

He turned to find Kat, looking all dishevelled and misty. Her puppy-dog eyes pleaded with him.

‘It’s Razor …’

She sniffed, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. Mark looked hopelessly at the staircase to his left, then at Kat, and back to the staircase. Kat hung on to his sleeve. He knew her well enough by now to realise that full meltdown was only seconds away. He put his own desires on the back burner and guided her through the crush in the drawing room to his study.

The boy wonder had undoubtedly been his usual considerate self, and Mark’s shoulder was the one designated for crying on these days. He’d resisted that in the beginning, but he was too much of a sucker for a forlorn female to just pat Kat on the head and say, There, there.

As he ushered her into the study and shut the door he reasoned to himself that Ellie wasn’t going anywhere for the moment. It would probably be better to give her a few minutes before he went after her—some thinking time. So he allowed Kat to spill out the whole sorry story and soak his shirt with her tears.

Ellie sat in the dark, shivering despite the central heating. She couldn’t bear to turn on the light and see Sam’s picture on the bedside table. Her eyes were sticky with tears and her nose was running. With a loud sniff she toppled back onto the mattress and curled into a ball.

‘What was I thinking?’

Oh, but thinking hadn’t been the problem. It was what she’d done that had messed everything up. Thoughts were fleeting, easily lost, erased or misplaced. Actions, however, were a little more concrete. And in this case definitely more memorable.

Just the memory of Mark’s lips on hers was enough to make her flush hot and cold again.

How could she have done this to Sam? Wonderful, loving, dependable Sam? She was sure he would have been happy to think she would find someone else and rebuild her shattered life, but Mark Wilder! He was the worst kind of womaniser there was.

She searched the darkness above her head for an answer, desperate to make sense of it all.

But Mark hadn’t seemed like a womaniser tonight in the garden, quite the reverse. He’d sent Piers Double-Barrelled packing, backing her up and taking her side, and he hadn’t even taken advantage of the situation when she’d been vulnerable and heaving with hormones. She could have walked away …

Maybe it wasn’t about Mark. Maybe it was a symptom of her decision to break free, to learn to live again. Perhaps part of herself that she’d thought had died and been buried along with Sam had sprung to life again. She was a young woman still. It was just a healthy interest in the opposite sex, a natural response to a good-looking man.

But that train of thought derailed just as fast as the last one had.

It was only since meeting Mark that she’d been anything but numb. He was a catalyst of some kind. And … and if it was just about pent-up desires, she wouldn’t have rejected Piers. He was suave and attractive, but it didn’t stop her experiencing a wave of revulsion every time she thought of him.

So she was back to Mark. Her brain was swinging in wild arcs, but it always came back to Mark. What was she going to do about that … about him?