Indecent Deception

‘You’re so thin you look anorexic. You’re not, are you?’ he prompted with a sudden frown.

‘Of course I’m n-not,’ she snapped in frustration.

A mocking grin slanted his mouth. ‘I couldn’t cope with an anorexic. I’m crazy about food.’

It didn’t show anywhere on that long, lean body. He didn’t carry an ounce of surplus flesh. His black jeans hugged sleek thighs and narrow hips, his sweater delineating a muscular chest and a stomach as flat as a washboard. About there she dragged her gaze away from him, angry with herself.

Blaze, at Rosie’s prompting, was obediently retrieving her rabbit from the floor and receiving a beatific smile in reward. Chrissy couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. There was no sign of irritation or impatience in his dark, mobile features.

‘I’ve got a job offer for you,’ he told her almost in an aside.

Chrissy tensed like a greyhound scenting a hare. ‘Where? Who with?’ she demanded.

‘I talk better on a full stomach. Don’t get excited,’ he warned. ‘It’s not in London and it might not appeal to you.’

So this was why he was here. His conscience had pushed him into further effort on their behalf. She reddened fiercely. It was petty of her but he was the last male in the world she wanted help from. It smacked too much of noblesse oblige and stung her pride. But then what was pride when it came to Rosie? And why was she getting excited? She might not get the job whatever it was and, even if she did, where would they live and what about Rosie? One problem simply led to another.

In the cab, Rosie stayed anchored to Blaze. She sat there very solemn and quiet and on her very best behaviour, but no way would she return to Chrissy.

‘No...no want Kissy,’ she said quite clearly.

‘Kissy?’ Blaze cast Chrissy a sudden lancing look of derision. ‘She’s not Kissy. She’s Mummy,’ he informed Rosie firmly. ‘Mummy. Say it.’

Rosie obliged.

‘What the heck do you th-think you’re doing?’ Chrissy spat at him furiously.

‘I’ve got no time for women who won’t let their children call them Mother—’

‘It’s nothing to do with you!’ Chrissy vented in an explosive response. ‘How dare you interfere—?’

‘I know exactly what I’m talking about.’ He was quite unrepentant. ‘She needs to know who you are.’

Chrissy bit down on her tongue. She was angry, but did it matter? After today, she was unlikely to see him again, and Rosie would soon forget. Since she couldn’t trust him with the truth, she would keep quiet.

He took them to a really fancy hotel where the head waiter treated them to an incredible amount of personal attention. As soon as Rosie was settled, Chrissy unleashed her impatience. ‘The job,’ she reminded him.

‘Live-in. Child not objected to. It’s a big house,’ he volunteered, lounging back in his chair to regard her with clear, cool eyes. ‘One permanent occupant, occasional guests.’

Her brow furrowed. This she had not expected. ‘A private house?’

He nodded.

‘Where?’

‘Your home stomping grounds.’

Chrissy tautened in dismay. That was equally unexpected. ‘How close?’

‘About five miles from Southfork.’

Chrissy reddened. Her father had christened his home The Towers. It hadn’t really matched up with the Spanish arches and the lamp-posts lining the drive. The locals had gone one better.

‘What’s the job?’ she asked anxiously, striving not to think of what it would be like to be working so close to her own home.

Blaze was tucking into an enormous fry-up with gusto. There was silence for several minutes. She could have screamed. He had her hanging on his every word. Finally, he let his knife and fork rest and lifted his coffee instead. ‘Cook...housekeeper...general maid of all work. I’ve got to be honest. The job description would have to be fairly elastic. If you can’t be flexible, it won’t suit you.’

‘Are you telling me that I’m likely to be worked to death?’

‘No. Other staff will be brought in if it’s necessary. Right now, there’s no need for them,’ he asserted. ‘The house is being extensively renovated. It’s in one hell of a mess and mostly unfurnished. The owner hasn’t moved in yet and you would be left to your own devices quite a lot. There is a phone, though, and the use of a car. So what do you think?’

‘Any idea of the salary?’

He came back with a very generous quote. ‘Not a lot, I know, but you wouldn’t have any bills to worry about.’

Chrissy grinned. ‘Are you kidding? I’d be in clover.’ And then she strove to suppress her excitement and be sensible. It was too good to be true. There had to be more drawbacks than he had mentioned. ‘Why am I getting a chance?’

‘Someone else backed out at the last minute. Took one look at the state of the house and said, ‘No way’,’ Blaze revealed.

‘I have no references—’

‘If you can cook worth a damn, you’re in,’ he assured her.

She bit her lip. ‘What’s he like...? The owner, I mean.’

Blaze lazed back in his seat with a reflective air. A satiric brow elevated. ‘He’s not likely to come creeping into your bed in the middle of the night, if that’s what you mean—’

‘Th-that thought hadn’t even occurred to me!’

He raked grimly amused eyes over her pink cheeks. ‘He does have a sex life, though.’

Chrissy studied her plate. ‘H-hardly anything to do with me.’

‘He likes a quiet life in every other way. Prefers horses to people, spends most of his time outdoors. He’s not fussy about his surroundings. You won’t be expected to polish the furniture to a mirror shine—’

‘If he gets married all that will change,’ she mused absently.

‘He’ll never get married,’ Blaze countered with a sardonic smile. ‘No reason to, every reason not to.’

‘How soon could I get an interview?’ Chrissy pressed.

‘You’ve just had it,’ Blaze told her carelessly, his attention switching to Rosie, who was striving hopelessly to stretch a short arm far enough from her high-chair to filch a mushroom off his plate.

‘Stop that, Rosie. You can’t have it,’ Chrissy admonished by rote. ‘Are you saying that I can have the job on your recommendation?’ she said, turning back to Blaze.

Rosie got her mushroom.

‘If you want it, it’s yours.’

‘He must be a very good friend.’ As bait, it failed, drawing no response. Sensing that Blaze was becoming bored with the subject, Chrissy asked, ‘How soon could I start?’

‘As soon as you can get yourself up there.’

Rosie was now casting languishing looks at the fried tomato.

Blaze surrendered and cast Chrissy a look of reproof. ‘You should have let me order her a proper meal. She’s starving!’

‘She just likes eating off other people’s plates.’ She watched him sipping his coffee, the cup cradled elegantly in one lean hand.

If this job panned out, she would probably see him again. Torbald Manor, his late grandfather’s home, would only be about ten miles away. Did he still live there? Her brow furrowed. She wasn’t very well up on the rules of aristocratic inheritance. The title, she was aware, had gone to his uncle, and even if Blaze had been next in line, it couldn’t have gone to him. His mother had never married his father.

‘He’s illegitimate!’ Elaine had gasped when she found out. ‘Would you believe it...? I mean, in a family like that!’

‘Are you finished?’ Blaze regarded her expectantly.

‘Yes.’ She pushed away her cup as though she had finished. She could feel his impatience.

‘I have to be in Brighton by noon.’

In the cab, he got a call on his mobile phone. Something about a horse-box and an accident. His language was choice. Chrissy wanted to cover Rosie’s ears. She sent him a dirty look but he was too intent on the call to notice. The cab dropped them off seconds before he completed the call.

Sending a fleeting glance at his watch, he breathed, ‘Transport...that’s a bit of a problem...’

‘Transport?’ she repeated uncertainly.

‘Can you catch the train to Reading?’

She nodded.

‘Right, make it tomorrow afternoon, OK?’ He unlocked his car, reached in for a notepad and scribbled something down on it. ‘Call that number when you arrive and someone will come and pick you up. Ask for the head lad—’

‘The head what?’

‘Ask for Hamish,’ he rephrased tersely. ‘He’ll ferry you back to the Hall.’

Ten seconds later he was in the driver’s seat. Ten after that, he was gone. Rosie’s bottom lip wobbled alarmingly. They had been dumped without ceremony.

Mrs Davis was hovering in the hallway, quite an achievement in so cramped a space. ‘You seem to have solved your problems,’ she said archly.

‘Sorry, I—’

‘Don’t think I don’t know who he is. Well...well...well, I thought to myself last night,’ she confided. ‘Fancy it being him,’ I said to my Stan. He’s decided to meet his obligations, has he? Not before time—’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Chrissy was trying to edge past the older woman.

Mrs Davis pursed her lips, her sudden congeniality waning at the lack of feedback. ‘He doesn’t want anyone to know, does he? But anyone with eyes in their head could tell she was his kid. Same hair, same eyes. You should have sold your story to a newspaper. They pay a lot for that sort of stuff...’

As the penny dropped, Chrissy’s jaw dropped with it. She was implying that Rosie was Blaze’s child. ‘Of course she’s n-not his,’ she stammered in horror. ‘She’s got absolutely n-nothing to do with him!’

Mrs Davis stepped back but she had the last word. ‘But he pays your rent when he has to,’ she said with a smirk.

Just because Rosie had black hair and blue eyes! On such slender possibilities to assume... The cheek of the woman! Clearly she spent too much time reading the murkier tabloids. However, Mrs Davis didn’t have the power to hold Chrissy’s thoughts for very long.

She swept Rosie up into an exuberant hug. ‘We’ve got a job, Rosie! Use of a car, did you hear that bit? This man is going to eat as if he’s staying at the Ritz,’ she swore feelingly. ‘Whatever it takes, we’ll stick it out.’

‘This man’, she repeated to herself. For goodness’ sake, Blaze hadn’t even given her his name! ‘The Hall’, he had said. Her brow furrowed. It didn’t ring any bells of recognition, yet she would have believed that she knew every sizeable house within a ten-mile radius of her former home.

‘I’m sorry that we were so late,’ Chrissy said again, hoping to lighten the atmosphere.

‘Aye,’ Hamish responded dourly and that appeared to be the height of his conversational ability since she had got little else from him since he’d picked them up in a Land Rover at the station. A bomb scare had thrown the trains into chaos. They had been lucky to get on a train at all. But the explanation hadn’t cut much ice with Hamish.

He was a wiry little Scotsman with the build of an ex-jockey. He had taken one look at her and Rosie and his astonishment had been palpable. Evidently they weren’t what he had expected. She had seen him squinting at her naked wedding-ring finger, watched his weather-beaten face go tight with disapproval. The chill in the air was not her imagination.

Chrissy’s nerves were starting to respond to that chill. What if Blaze had taken too much upon himself in hiring her? What if Hamish’s boss was as taken aback by the sight of them as Hamish had been? Rosie was asleep under her arm, a dead weight of toddler exhaustion. Chrissy didn’t feel much livelier. All she wanted was a bed for the night. Tomorrow she would worry herself to death about the future, not tonight.

The headlights illuminated trees and hedgerows and little else, but she knew exactly where they were even if she didn’t know where they were going to end up. Then Hamish turned off the road into the village and up a long, steep lane. In her time, it had been overgrown and pot-holed. Now it was trimmed and surfaced.

‘Mrs Easton’s house!’ she exclaimed involuntarily.

‘Westleigh Hall,’ Hamish corrected.

‘But I thought it was derelict.’ Chrissy had never seen the house because it was so far from the road, but she did recall the old lady in the funny hats in church. She had died and the house had lain empty ever since.

‘Practically. The guv’nor’s got vision.’ Hamish looked as if he might actually have said more, and then he glanced at her and compressed his lips.

They drove past a brightly lit lodge. The Hall was a grey stone edifice, built on irregular lines. That was all she saw in the flare of the headlights because it was in complete darkness.

Hamish took her cases and Chrissy struggled out with Rosie, trying not to wake her. The front door wasn’t locked. He reached for a light switch and then muttered, ‘Electric must still be off.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ Chrissy groaned.

He disappeared and she heard him banging about through cupboards. He returned with a torch and showed her into a vast, cheerless kitchen. ‘There should be some food in the fridge. I’ll be leaving you, then,’ he said.

And he did. She sank down on a chair with Rosie. She wanted to put her head down and cry. There was no heat, no light. Well, what did you expect, Chrissy? she asked herself. You’re not a guest, entitled to expect a three-star welcome. You’re the housekeeper. Rising upright, she settled Rosie into a huddle on a sagging armchair. She covered her with her coat and prayed that she would stay asleep while she searched out a bed for them both.

Climbing those stairs was the creepiest experience Chrissy had ever had. The torchlight cast weird leaping shadows and accentuated dark, forbidding doorways. She shone it into room after room and discovered three sparkling new bathrooms, but there appeared to be only one furnished bedroom.

At the end of the huge landing, a corridor ran off unexpectedly to the left and a narrow flight of stairs disappeared up into the gloom of the attics. At least, she assumed they led to the attics, for her explorations had been forced to a halt by an untidy stack of floorboards. Between her and the remainder of the upper floor stretched a ten-foot-wide chasm of bare joists.

The discovery gave Chrissy quite a start. Just suppose that she hadn’t been looking where she was going? Blaze hadn’t been joking when he’d said that the house was in a state. And presumably the one furnished bedroom was for her.

She lugged up the cases, scanned the room with a sigh and then hauled a battered chaise-longue over to the side of the king-size divan. Opening up their luggage, she made up a bed for Rosie on the chaise-longue. Rosie, who twisted and turned all night long, was murder to share a bed with.

Downstairs the fridge revealed three bottles of champagne, a wizened tomato and an abandoned lunchbox with mouldy contents. She found biscuits in a cupboard but what she really wanted was a decent cup of tea.

Unfortunately the ancient range in one corner was stone-cold. Her mouth tightening expressively, Chrissy surrendered. It was obvious that nobody gave two hoots about her comfort! Lifting Rosie, she carried her upstairs. At least if she went to bed she would be warm.

Naturally there was no hot water in the nearest bathroom. It didn’t surprise her. Shivering with cold, she checked on her sister, cosily snuggled up beneath her blankets, and then she doused the torch and dived into the chilly embrace of the bed. She slept instantly, felled at last by the traumas of the past week.

But once she started having the dream—that dream unlike any other in her experience—it seemed so real that she briefly thought she was awake. Where once she had been cold, she was hot in the grip of an amazingly erotic fantasy where she lay in a shameless tangle of limbs.

It wasn’t she lying there while male hands roamed slowly, expertly over every quivering inch of flesh tantalisingly shielded by a thin layer of cotton. It wasn’t she who arched and moaned when knowing fingers skimmed over the straining mounds of her breasts, her nipples tightening instantly into an almost painful sensitivity. And most certainly it wasn’t she who dragged him hungrily down to her in the darkness and virtually crashed into combustible collision with the hot, hard urgency of his devouring mouth.

The surge of excitement that engulfed her was reassuringly unreal. She was a burning current, a blazing fuse wire hurtling at a breakneck pace towards dynamite, nothing on her mind but the terrible need for that imminent explosion. And then somewhere in the darkness there came a tiny recognisable sound, a faint gurgle as Rosie mumbled in her sleep, a sound so inherently familiar that Chrissy’s eyes shot wide open and then she knew she was awake. Oh, lord, did she know, still trapped beneath the demanding weight of an all-male body.

Tearing her swollen mouth free, she jerked her head away with a rising moan of horror. ‘Get off me!’ she gasped, stricken.

Two things happened almost simultaneously. Suddenly she was free. Suddenly the air was blue with male outrage. No awakening could have been more violent or terrifying. Sixth sense told her who had been taking advantage of her virtually inanimate body while she had believed she was dreaming. But sixth sense was choosing an identity almost more threatening than that of a total stranger, so she refused to listen to it.

A lamp went on, illuminating the scene. Sitting bolt upright, clutching the duvet to her like a protective cocoon, Chrissy was shattered into complete silence by the sight that met her frightened gaze.

‘What the hell are you doing in my bed?’ Blaze raked at her from between gritted teeth.

Chapter 3

Chrissy took one glazed look at him and then closed her eyes. ‘D-don’t you think you ought to put some clothes on?’

‘I want an explanation!’ Blaze grated as though he were the one with the grounds for most complaint.

She could still see him in her mind’s eye. Six feet three inches of lean, all-male virility and not a stitch of clothing to interrupt the view. Embarrassment, bewilderment and incredulity held her in paralysis. What was he doing in this house? What was he doing in the only bed? What, worst of all, had she allowed him to do to her?

‘W-will you get out of here?’ she spat, lifting her lashes too soon and catching a glimpse of his long golden back view as he hauled up a pair of jeans.

‘This is my room!’ he roared back at her.

Chrissy was trembling. ‘You’re going to w-wake Rosie...’

‘Rosie?’ Aghast, he strode round to her side of the bed and stared down in disbelief at the small curled-up shape showing only a fluff of tousled hair above the blankets. ‘She’s in here as well? We might’ve—she might’ve seen— Bloody hell!’

Without warning, he bent down, scooped Chrissy bodily out of the bed and, striding to the door, he deposited her on the landing. Then, practically on tiptoe and with an exaggerated care which would have been sheer comedy in any other circumstances, he closed the door. He needn’t have bothered. Rosie slept like the dead.

‘We’ll discuss this downstairs,’ he bit out fiercely.

‘I’d l-like to know w-what you’re doing here,’ Chrissy dared, shivering with cold and barefoot into the bargain.

‘Downstairs,’ he repeated with arrogant emphasis. ‘And the explanation had better be good.’

Ignoring him, Chrissy went back into the bedroom and crossed the floor to where her case lay open. Pulling out an outsize sweater, she donned it in haste.

‘If you wake that baby, I’ll hit the roof!’ he spat like an avenging angel.

‘Nothing short of an earthquake wakes her when she’s really tired,’ Chrissy muttered.

‘Am I supposed to be grateful for that?’ He took the stairs two at a time.

‘W-well, it’s more than I’ve got to be grateful for,’ Chrissy shot at him shakily. ‘How d-dare you put your filthy hands on me?’

‘Hell’s teeth,’ he seethed. ‘I didn’t know it was you!’

He strode into the kitchen, illuminating lights all the way.

‘I thought the electricity was off,’ she breathed irrelevantly.

‘Switched off. The builders forgot to put it on again.’ Blaze threw himself down on a chair by the scarred kitchen table and fixed smouldering sapphire-blue eyes on her shrinking figure. ‘What were you doing in my bed?’

‘It’s the only bed in the house,’ she protested, wondering how on earth he was managing to make her feel the one most in the wrong.

‘The furniture I had in storage was supposed to arrive this afternoon.’ In the long pause, he studied her intently and there was a new, disturbing light in that all-enveloping gaze. ‘I didn’t check when I came in. I put on the electric, came upstairs and got into bed in the dark. I didn’t want to wake you and the kid up by making a lot of noise—’

‘Your consideration o-overwhelms me.’ Furniture in storage. The truth had been shouting at her from the instant she sat up in that bed. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it. ‘Th-this is your h-house, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, and I’m a lot like Baby Bear when I find someone uninvited in my bed,’ he drawled sardonically.

He hadn’t denied it. Westleigh Hall belonged to him yet he had hired her without telling her that fact. Indeed he had deliberately deceived her. A deep flush carmined her fine skin. She was so shaken by the realisation that her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. This was her employer. Blaze Kenyon. What was he playing at? What was to happen now? Had he offered her the job as a cruel joke?

Dimly she had assumed that her new boss might be a little strapped for cash and that was why he was willing to take on someone without references or any real experience. Blaze’s Ferrari put paid to that idea. She found it hard to believe that Blaze had not been able to find someone more suitable...someone without a child in tow.

‘I didn’t know it was y-your bed... It was the only bed,’ she reminded him in an undertone. ‘We had to sleep somewhere. There was no light, no food, no heat—’

‘Money for food.’ With a flourish, Blaze slapped down a handful of notes and a small sheet of paper instructing her to do some shopping. It had been sitting on the top of the fridge, which was taller than she was. With only the aid of a torch, she would never have seen it.

‘We only got here at t-ten.’ She explained about the bomb scare. ‘I didn’t see the note.’

‘I was expecting food tonight,’ he divulged grimly.

Chrissy understood why women occasionally battered men to death. She thought of their joyless arrival and the complete absence of anyone willing to show them how to settle in.

‘If the furniture didn’t come, Hamish should have taken you back to the lodge to spend the night with him and Floss,’ Blaze mused impatiently. ‘Weren’t you prepared to accept the offer?’

She nearly told him the truth, but that might get the charmless Hamish into trouble. If there was the smallest chance that she could work here...and she couldn’t afford not to fight for that chance...it wouldn’t be a good idea to get on the wrong side of Blaze’s other employees. ‘I didn’t want to bother them,’ she muttered. ‘I think he was busy.’

‘I pay him to be busy at what I tell him to be busy at.’ It was chillingly cold and she suppressed a shiver. ‘Why don’t you put on the kettle? I could do with something warm...considering that the something that was warming me up appears to be out of bounds.’

‘K-kettle?’ she echoed jerkily, naïvely unbalanced by that softly added double entendre.

‘The object with the spout and the flex.’

Mercifully she espied it on the top of the fridge. She filled it although she felt more like throwing it at him. ‘W-why didn’t you tell me that I’d be working for you?’

‘I didn’t want you to turn it down without thinking it through,’ he murmured flatly. ‘You weren’t going to get a second chance. I need a housekeeper without a lot of fancy ideas and you need a job. Basically, that’s all there was to it.’

But she sensed something more. Biting at her lower lip, she glanced across at him. His shirt hung open, framing the muscular brown breadth of his chest and the curling black hair hazing his pectorals before it arrowed down over his flat stomach. In the act of staring, she caught herself up and shut her eyes on an aching sense of chagrin and confusion. Was she becoming like all the rest? Couldn’t she take her eyes off him? Or was it that much harder now since that night all those years ago when he had touched her and the whole world had vanished as though he had pressed a destruct button somewhere deep down inside her?