The Housekeeper's Awakening

‘Then get somebody else to do the cooking and the cleaning instead of you. How difficult can it be?’

Carly flushed. She knew that housekeeping wasn’t up there with being a lawyer or a doctor, but she still found it faintly humiliating to hear Luis dismiss her job quite so flippantly.

‘Or get in a professional masseuse who could do it better than I ever could?’ she suggested again.

‘No,’ he said, almost viciously. ‘I’m sick of strangers. Sick of people with different agendas, coming into my house and telling me what I must and mustn’t do.’ His mouth hardened into a forbidding line. ‘What’s the matter, Carly? Are you objecting on the basis that providing massage for your recuperating boss isn’t written into your contract?’

‘I haven’t got a contract,’ she said bluntly.

‘You haven’t?’

‘No. You told me when I interviewed for the job that if I didn’t trust you to give me your word, then you weren’t the kind of person you wanted working for you.’

An arrogant smile spread over his lips. ‘Did I really say that?’

‘Yes. You did.’ And she had accepted his terms, hadn’t she, even if the logical side of her brain had told her that she’d been a fool to do so? In fact, she’d practically bitten his hand off, because she had recognised that Luis Martinez was offering her the kind of opportunity which wasn’t going to come her way again. A place to live and a salary big enough to make substantial savings for her future.

The smile had now left his lips.

‘I am growing bored with this discussion,’ he snapped. ‘Are you prepared to help me out or not?’

She recognised the implicit threat behind his words. Help me out or else.

Or else what?

Go out and find a new job? One which wouldn’t leave her with so much free time to study for her exams? She frowned as she thought about the champagne bill from his last party and a new resolve filled her.

‘I’d be prepared to do it, if you were prepared to give me some sort of bonus,’ she said suddenly.

‘Danger money, you mean?’ he mocked. With a grimace he swung his long legs over the side of the massage bed, but not before Carly had seen a peek of hair-roughened thigh as the robe flapped open.

‘Yes, that’s right. Danger money,’ she croaked, quickly averting her gaze once more. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Funny. I never really had you down as a negotiator, Carly.’

‘Oh? And why’s that?’

Luis didn’t answer immediately, just concentrated on stretching his hips, the way that Mary had shown him. He wouldn’t bother telling his plain little housekeeper that she had merely confirmed his belief that everyone had a price, because that might upset her, and there was no point in upsetting a woman if it could possibly be avoided. Often, of course, it couldn’t. Usually because they weren’t listening to what you were saying, or they thought they could change your mind for you.

Or they started falling in love with you, even though you hadn’t given them the slightest encouragement to do so. His mouth hardened. That had been Mary Houghton’s mistake. He’d seen it growing day by day, until in the end she could barely look at him without blushing. She’d made it clear that she was keen for a...liaison and, yes, he’d been tempted. Of course he had. She was a good-looking woman and hadn’t he read somewhere that physiotherapists made great lovers because they knew how the body worked? But it had been highly unprofessional of her, and some deep-rooted and rather old-fashioned prejudice against such things had appalled him.

He turned his attention back to Carly. At least in her he had nothing to fear because sexual attraction was unlikely to rear its head. He found himself wondering if she bothered keeping a mirror in her bedroom, or whether she just didn’t see what the rest of the world saw.

Her thick brown hair was tugged back from her face in a ponytail and she wore no make-up. He’d never seen mascara on those pale lashes which framed eyes the colour of iced tea, nor lipstick on her sometimes disapproving lips. A little blusher would have added some much-needed colour to her pale skin, and he’d often wondered why she insisted on wearing a plain blue overall during working hours. To protect her clothes, she said—though, from the glimpses he’d caught of them, hers were not the kind of clothes which looked as if they needed much in the way of protection. Weren’t man-made fabrics notoriously hard-wearing? They were also very unflattering when stretched tightly over unfashionably curvy bodies like hers.

Luis was used to women who turned femininity into an art form. Who invested vast amounts of time and money making themselves look beautiful, then spent the rest of their lives trying to preserve that state of being. But not this one. Oh, no. Definitely not this one.

His lips flattened into a wry smile. What was it that the English said? Never to judge a book by its cover. And the old adage did have some truth in it—because despite her plainness and total lack of adornment, nobody could deny that Carly Conner had spirit. He could think of no other woman who would have hesitated for more than a second at the thought of—literally—getting their hands on him. Which of course was precisely the reason why he wanted her for the job. He needed to get fit, and he needed to do it as quickly as possible—because this inactivity was driving him crazy.

All he wanted was to feel normal again. He loathed the world passing him by, so that all he could do was watch it. Because inactivity left you with time to think. It left you feeling as if something was missing. He wanted to get back on the ski slopes. He wanted to pilot a plane again. He wanted the challenge of dangerous sports to fill him with adrenaline and make him feel alive again.

His mouth twisted as he levered himself off the bed.

‘Hand me my crutches, will you, Carly?’

She raised her eyebrows.

He gave a small growl. ‘Please.’

Silently, Carly handed them over and watched as he grasped them, straightening up to his full and impressive height. It still seemed strange to see a man as powerful as Luis needing crutches, but at least he was well on the road to recovery now. Almost unscathed, he had come through an accident the doctors said he’d been lucky to survive.

He hadn’t raced professionally for five years, but the lure of an enormous charity prize organised by one of the big car manufacturers had proved too much to resist. That, and an inbuilt arrogance that he was indestructible...and a nature which loved to embrace danger in its many forms.

She remembered the day it had happened, when she’d received the phone call to say he’d been rushed to hospital. Her heart had been racing as she had driven through the narrow country roads, reaching the accident and emergency department and fearing the worst, to be told that he’d been taken to Theatre and they weren’t sure how bad it was.

His entourage had been going crazy. There had been people rushing around all over the place and getting in the way of the medical staff. Security people. PR people. Diego, his swarthy assistant, had been dealing with the press, and his lawyers were busily engaged with threats of litigation, claiming that the racetrack had been unsafe.

Carly wondered if any of them had actually remembered that they were all there because a man was sick and wounded. And that was when her old pattern of wanting to care had kicked in. She had crept upstairs to the intensive care unit, where the nurse had let her sit with him and everyone else had been barred, on the grounds that any more excitement might hinder his recovery. She remembered thinking how alone he looked, despite all his money and success. There had been no family to visit. His parents were dead and he had no brothers or sisters. Carly had been the only one there for him.

All that night she had stayed put, holding his motionless hand and running her fingertips over it. Telling the unresponsive figure who dominated the narrow hospital gurney that he was going to be okay. But the experience had been a strangely powerful one. It had been a shock to see him looking so vulnerable and for a short while Carly’s feelings towards her irascible boss had undergone a slight transformation. For a while she had felt almost tender towards him...

Until he had started recovering and had become his usual arrogant self. She had been elbowed out of the way then, when the first of a long stream of women had arrived, all vying with each other in their tiny leather miniskirts—because everyone knew that the ex-world champion was turned on by leather. She remembered turning up at the ward one day to find a stunning blonde in thigh-high boots groping him under the bed-sheet. And Carly hadn’t bothered visiting again. She hadn’t seen him again until he’d discharged himself home against his doctors’ advice.

But she suspected that the accident had changed him, as she knew that near-fatal accidents sometimes did. Even though the house was vast, it had seemed overcrowded with his people mooching around the place, not sure what to do with themselves while their boss was recovering. And Luis had been even more bad-tempered than usual. He hadn’t liked people trailing in and out of his room to speak to him, saying that it made him feel like a dying king. Demanding peace, he had sent his entire entourage back to Buenos Aires—even Diego. Carly remembered their astonishment at being sent packing. And hers. Because once again, Luis Martinez really was on his own. Only this time, he was alone with her.

Emerging from her silent reverie, she realised that his eyes were trained on her and that he was waiting for the answer to a question which, in reality, was little more than an order.

‘Yes, I’ll do it.’ She sighed. ‘I’d better go and talk to Mary and get her to run over exactly what it is you need, though I don’t know why you couldn’t just have carried on paying for her to see you privately.’

She soon discovered why, when she found Mary Houghton in the garden room, staring rigidly out of the French windows at the rain-soaked gardens outside. The bright hues of the summer flowers looked like fragments of a shattered rainbow, but all Carly could see was that the physiotherapist’s shoulders were shaking slightly.

Was the cool Englishwoman crying?

‘Mary?’ she questioned gently. ‘Are you okay?’

It was a few moments before Mary turned round and Carly got her answer from the telltale glitter in the other woman’s eyes.

‘How does he do it, Carly?’ Mary questioned in a shaky voice. ‘How does he get usually sane women like me to fall for a man they don’t even like? How come he’s dumped me in the coldest way imaginable and I still end up thinking he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread?’

Carly tried to crack a joke, anything to lighten the atmosphere and to take that terrible look of pain from Mary’s face. ‘Well, I’ve never been a great fan of sliced bread myself—which is why I always make my own.’

Mary swallowed. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Especially not to you. You work for him all the time—you probably deserve my sympathy, instead of me asking for yours.’

‘Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first woman he’s reduced to tears and you won’t be the last.’ Carly shrugged. ‘I don’t know how he does it, to be honest. I don’t think it’s calculated, or even intentional. He just seems to have that indefinable something which makes women go crazy for him. Maybe it’s inevitable when you’re that good-looking and rich and powerful and—’

‘Do you know,’ interrupted Mary, her voice suddenly urgent, ‘that I’ve never fancied a male patient before? Never. Not once. The thought had never even crossed my mind—though obviously not many men like Luis Martinez end up on the hospital wards. I can’t believe that I allowed him to see it.’ She bit her lip. ‘It’s so...so...unprofessional. And so humiliating. And now he’s asked me to go, and you know what? I deserve to be let go.’

Carly didn’t know what to say. She found herself thinking that things were rarely what they seemed. She’d always thought of Mary Houghton as cool and unflappable. She’d seen her as one of those composed Englishwomen who knew exactly what they were doing and where they were heading. And yet one lazy look from the smouldering black eyes of Luis Martinez and she was as jittery as a schoolgirl who’d just seen her pop-star idol in the flesh.

Carly looked at her. Maybe she should be glad of the hard lesson she’d learned all those years ago. Because didn’t they say that heartbreak was almost as painful as bereavement? And who in their right mind would want to be going through what the physiotherapist was clearly going through right now?

She looked at Mary. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Mary pursed her lips together. ‘Oh, I’ll get over it. And maybe it’s all for the best. Maybe I’ll start dating that sweet young doctor who’s been asking me out for weeks, and forget about a man who’s famous for breaking women’s hearts. Now,’ she said briskly. ‘Let me show you what you need to do to get Luis back to full fitness.’

‘If you’re sure you’re okay?’

‘Carly, I’m fine!’

But Carly noticed Mary delving into her handbag for a tissue and that she blew her nose for a suspiciously long time afterwards.

CHAPTER TWO

CARLY COULD FEEL her heart racing like a train, because this was weird.

It was weirder than weird.

Her hands were unsteady as they positioned themselves above Luis’s bare back and she drew in a deep breath, praying he wouldn’t guess how nervous she was. Praying that she wouldn’t behave like a ham-fisted failure as she began to do exactly what Mary had taught her. It wasn’t difficult, she told herself fiercely. Massage was a skill, yes—but it was one that thousands of people did every single day.

But even though the thought of touching Luis’s skin was making her mouth grow dry with fear, it seemed there was no way she could avoid it. He was paying her a bonus. They had agreed that this was a deal. And wasn’t it crazy to have reached this age and still be scared of touching a man? She lowered her hands towards his gleaming skin and thought about the way she’d let the past impact so profoundly on the present. Was she going to let some worthless piece of scum ruin her life for ever?

Because if she was ever going to fulfil her dream of becoming a doctor, she was going to have to touch people like this every day.

Pressing the heels of her palms deep into his silken flesh, she began to move her hands, glad he couldn’t see her face. Wouldn’t he laugh himself silly to know that she was flushed with embarrassment?

It was distracting seeing him like this—wearing nothing but a pair of close-fitting black briefs. Catching sight of him and his billionaire buddies lounging around the pool during one of the few hot days last summer while she carried out a tray of drinks was not the same thing at all.

She thought how pale her hands looked against the olive hue of his skin and noticed that her fingers were trembling slightly as they moved over his warm flesh. But to her surprise her nerves soon left her once she got into some kind of rhythm. If she concentrated on the healing aspects of the task, it was easy to push away her uncomfortable thoughts. In a way, it was the opposite of working with pastry, which needed cool, quick movements. For this, her hands were warm and oily and her movements slow and deliberate. She pushed deep into his latissimus dorsi muscles and he gave a little groan.

‘Is that okay?’ she questioned nervously.

He gave a grunt and she wasn’t quite sure if he was agreeing with her or not.

‘I’m not hurting you, am I?’

Luis shook his head and shifted a little, the rough towel rubbing beneath his crotch, which was precisely where he did not want to focus his attention. Santo cielos! No, she was not hurting him—but he wondered if she was trying to torture him. Resting his cheek against his crossed arms, he closed his eyes, unable to decide whether this was heaven or hell. Or perhaps a mixture of both.

What the hell was happening here?

He could feel her hands moving further down his back, skating tantalisingly over the taut lines of his buttocks before alighting on the tops of his thighs. He swallowed as the minutes ticked by and suddenly he found himself lost in the sensations she was producing. If she was nervous, you would never have guessed it. Apart from that nervous flutter of her fingers at the beginning, she had taken to it as if she had been born to stroke at a man’s skin like this. Who would ever have thought that his mousey little housekeeper had the touch of an angel?

Yet she had been the model of brisk proficiency from the moment she’d greeted him, with nothing but a brief smile as he had lain face down on the bed. She certainly wasn’t flirting with him, which made him wonder what was making him feel so aroused. How could Carly—plain little Carly—manage to make him feel like this? Was it because she wasn’t flirting with him and he wasn’t used to that? For a moment he imagined her requesting briskly that he lift up his buttocks, so that she could slide her hands underneath him. He thought about her taking his rapidly growing hardness between her fingers and stroking him to a blessed and swift release.

His mouth dried.

‘No, you’re not hurting me,’ he said eventually, when he was certain his voice wouldn’t come out sounding like some kind of strangled groan.

She continued to work in silence. He could feel her fingers sinking deeper into his flesh and as the muscles began to loosen up beneath her touch he couldn’t seem to stop himself fantasising about her some more. He wondered what her breasts might look like if she were to remove that hideous overall she was wearing. An image of pale mounds tipped with rosy points swam into his mind with disturbing clarity. He pictured his tongue tracing a slow, wet circle around one puckered nub and he shifted his aroused body again in a vain bid to make himself comfortable.

The movement must have registered, for her hands stilled.

‘You’re sure I’m not hurting you?’

Against the lavender-scented doughnut of a pillow on which his cheek was resting, Luis shook his head. ‘No,’ he said huskily. ‘You have a very...natural touch. I can’t believe you haven’t done anything like this before.’

‘Mary was very helpful. She showed me exactly what to do. She said that if I pressed firmly on key parts of the body...like this...that it would be effective. And then last night I studied lots of technique and tips on my computer.’

His instinctive groan of satisfaction made his words come out as a muffled drawl. ‘You have nothing better to do on a Friday night than look up massage technique?’

There was a pause.

‘I like to do a job properly. And you’re paying me a very generous bonus to do this.’

Her emphasis on the financial made him feel comfortable about interrogating her, although it didn’t occur to him until afterwards to wonder why he should be interested in her social life. ‘So is there no irritable boyfriend wanting to know why your boss is demanding so much of your time?’

There was another pause, a slightly longer one this time. She seemed to choose her words carefully. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend, no,’ she said. ‘But if I did, I don’t really think this job would be compatible with it. Not if it was a serious relationship.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because when you’re here the hours are long and erratic and because I’m living in someone else’s house and—’

‘Not why a live-in job isn’t compatible with a relationship,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘You wouldn’t need to be a genius to work that one out. No, I meant why don’t you have a boyfriend?’

Carly rubbed some more oil into the palms of her hands. It was difficult to come up with a reasonable answer to his question. Difficult to come up with anything which sounded sensible when her hands were in contact with his skin like this. If she hadn’t been feeling so disorientated by what was happening, she might have told him that her social life was none of his business. Or she might even have hinted that one dreadful experience had put her off men for ever. But she couldn’t really think of anything except how gorgeous he felt. She was being bombarded with powerful sensations and none of them were welcome—or expected.

All the blinds had been drawn and the semi-darkened room felt claustrophobic because the dimensions seemed to have shrunk. Candles were wafting out a subtle sandalwood scent and there was faint whale-like music coming from the sound system, just as Mary had suggested. She knew these small additions were intended to create a relaxed atmosphere and maybe it was working for Luis, but it certainly wasn’t working for her.

Because the unimaginable was happening. Instead of being frozen with fear, all she could feel was a slow-building pleasure whenever she touched him. She stared down at his olive-skinned body, because where else was she going to look? And even though he was wearing a pair of black briefs instead of those three terrifyingly small towels which had been covering him yesterday, they weren’t nearly as much of an advantage as they should have been. Because yes, they provided a necessary barrier of modesty—but they also emphasised the very masculine outlines of his body. They made the rocky globes of his buttocks look as if they’d been coated in liquorice, and liquorice had always been her favourite kind of sweet.

‘I’m not really interested in men,’ she said at last, her words making a mockery of her thoughts.

‘Ah. You prefer women?’

‘No!’ She was shocked by his openness, and unreasonably hurt by his assumption. She told herself that he was perfectly entitled to think what he liked about her, just as she was perfectly within her rights to tell him that her sexuality was none of his business. But something made her answer him. As if she wanted him to know. Needed him to know. ‘I’m...straight.’

‘Ah.’ He turned his head to the side and she could see the faint smile which curved his lips. ‘So why is there no man in your life?’

‘It drives me mad when people say that. It’s the first thing people ask a single woman.’ She started massaging again, pressing the heels of her hands hard against the firm flesh, aware that she was running the risk of sounding defensive but suddenly she didn’t care. ‘You don’t have a girlfriend, do you? But I certainly don’t make it sound like some kind of character fault, or start interrogating you about it.’

‘I don’t have one particular partner, no, but I certainly have girlfriends from time to time. You, on the other hand, don’t.’

Her hands stopped mid-stroke and she stared at them. She thought they looked like pale starfish in a sea of gold. ‘How do you know that, when you’re not here most of the time?’

‘Because my estate manager keeps me up to speed with what’s going on. I like to know what’s happening with someone who has the entire run of my house while I’m not here, so obviously I enquire about you from time to time. Not that he tells me anything very interesting since, apparently, you live the life of a nun.’

Carly tensed, hearing the implicit criticism in his tone. ‘There’s nothing wrong with nuns,’ she said.

‘I didn’t suggest there was. But you haven’t taken any vows since you came to work for me, have you, Carly? Certainly not poverty or obedience,’ he persisted mockingly.

‘Actually, as an employer you do seem to require total obedience from your staff—though I can’t deny that you pay very well.’

‘Which only leaves chastity,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t it?’

Carly’s heart thundered again as she forced herself to restart the massage, trying to concentrate on the slow, circular movements instead of the bizarre turn of their conversation. ‘What I do in my spare time is none of your business.’

‘He said that you always seem to have your head in a book,’ observed Luis, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And that you go to evening classes in the nearby town.’

‘And is there something wrong with wanting to improve myself?’ she demanded. ‘Perhaps I should throw a wild party when you leave. Give the gardeners and the estate manager enough ammunition to earn me a reputation.’