Книга - What’s A Housekeeper To Do? / Tipping the Waitress with Diamonds: What’s A Housekeeper To Do? / Tipping the Waitress with Diamonds

What's A Housekeeper To Do? / Tipping the Waitress with Diamonds: What's A Housekeeper To Do? / Tipping the Waitress with Diamonds
Jennie Adams

Nina Harrington


Dare to dream… these sparkling romances will make you laugh, cry and fall in love – again and again!WHAT’S A HOUSEKEEPER TO DO? Jennie Adams Once burnt, forever shy, Lally Douglas wants to blend into the background, and being a housekeeper fits the bill perfectly. But soon her sexy new boss Cameron Travers has Lally wishing he would notice her in that way!TIPPING THE WAITRESS WITH DIAMONDS Nina Harrington Working as a waitress in her aunt’s bistro, Sienna Rossi is out of her depth. The dishwasher’s leaking, there’s sauce in her hair, and the frying pan’s just caught fire… What’s more, her new boss is none other than Brett Cameron – her teenage crush!







Do you ever wish you could step into someone else’s shoes?



IN HER SHOES…

Modern-day Cinderellas get their grooms!

Now you can, with Mills & Boon® Romance’s mini-series that’s brimming full of contemporary feel-good stories.



Follow these two modern-day Cinderellas as they put down their feather dusters, untie their aprons and go to the ball in:



WHAT’S A HOUSEKEEPER TO DO?

by Jennie Adams



TIPPING THE WAITRESS WITH DIAMONDS

by Nina Harrington





What’s A Housekeeper To Do?


By




Jennie Adams

Tipping The Waitress With Diamonds


By




Nina Harrington











www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)





What’s A Housekeeper To Do?


By



Jennie Adams




Dear Reader


Lally Douglas is a beautiful girl who made a bad choice in her past, and while she’s been getting on with her life, and is happy within her large, diverse family, she is keeping her heart very carefully to herself in other ways. Lally has lost some of her trust, and she doesn’t know how to forgive herself for the results of her past actions. But she loves helping people, so when she sees Cameron Travers’ ad for a temporary housekeeper she applies for the job and is determined to do it well.



Cameron Travers is a workaholic insomniac who develops properties and writes crime thriller books. He has nowhere near enough to offer in a committed relationship. He can’t even sleep at night! When Lally starts to work for him, she makes her way deeper and deeper into his affections, and eventually his love, but what does Cam have to give to a special girl like Lally? Even if she does make him feel relaxed and at peace every time she is near him, just by being herself!



This story is about acceptance, forgiveness, hope and reaching out. It’s about a man who is perfect in the midst of his unusualness and differences, and a girl who is loving and giving and good, despite the bad things in her past. Most of all it’s about the promise of happiness between two special people I believe in with all of my heart.



I hope you’ll enjoy the journey of Lally and Cam as they walk their path towards that happiness.



With love from Australia



Jennie


Australian author Jennie Adams grew up in a rambling farmhouse surrounded by books, and by people who loved reading them. She decided at a young age to be a writer, but it took many years and a lot of scenic detours before she sat down to pen her first romance novel. Jennie has worked in a number of careers and voluntary positions, including transcription typist and pre-school assistant. She is the proud mother of three fabulous adult children and makes her home in a small inland city in New South Wales. In her leisure time Jennie loves long, rambling walks, discovering new music, starting knitting projects that she rarely finishes, chatting with friends, trips to the movies, and new dining experiences.

Jennie loves to hear from her readers, and can be contacted via her website at www.jennieadams.net


For the girls in my bunker.

For cheeky lunch-time topics and midnight IMs. For the Toby addiction (yes, you L), for the Rwoooarhhh! (yes, you C). For talking me down on the phone (yes, you V). For hugs in person and hugs long distance. For being my cheer squad. For sharing the path with me with grace. For understanding about the boots.



For my editor Joanne Grant, and my senior editor Kim Young. I am blessed. Thank you.



For my precious ones, and for you.




CHAPTER ONE


‘I REALISE it’s a little unusual, conducting this kind of business in the middle of a lake.’ Cameron Travers’ mouth turned up with a hint of self-directed humour before he shrugged broad shoulders in the misty Adelaide morning air. ‘When I started wondering about this scene idea, and I knew I’d need a second pair of hands to test it out, I decided to combine our interview with some research. I hope you don’t mind too much.’

‘It’s a nice setting for a job interview, Mr Travers, even if it is unusual. I’m more than happy to oblige.’ If the man needed to row a boat around a lake at dawn to research for his crime-thriller writing, then Lally Douglas could work with that. She offered what she hoped appeared to be a completely relaxed smile because, yes, she did have a little bout of nerves going on. After all, she’d never had a ‘real’ job-interview before, let alone with a millionaire property-developer and world-famous crime-thriller author!

Cameron’s attractive mouth curved. ‘I appreciate your willing attitude. I could really do with some help for a while with the basics of day to day life so I can focus my energy on the property development I’m undertaking here in Adelaide, and to crack the challenges I’m having with writing my current book.’

The words somehow let her in. His smile let her in further. How could a simple, wry grin all but stop a girl’s breath? Lally searched for the answer in deep-green eyes fringed with curly black lashes, in a lean face that was all interesting angles and planes in the early-morning light. In the charming sense of welcome and acceptance that seemed to radiate from him.

She’d sensed he was a nice man when they’d spoken on the phone to arrange this interview. They’d both approached a local job-agency and got an almost immediate match. And now again when they met up here in this leafy Adelaide suburban park to conduct his research experiment, and her job interview.

He was quiet, thoughtful even, and, from the depths Lally discerned in his eyes, he seemed to be a man who kept his share of things to himself. He also had a lovely way of making others feel somehow welcomed by him. ‘I’d love to be able to help you so you could concentrate more of your efforts on your work.’

‘Having someone to handle housekeeping and some general secretarial work for me—very basic stuff—will free up enough of my time so I can really do that.’ Cameron Travers continued to row their small boat out towards the middle of the lake.

Not with muscle-bound arms, Lally. You’re not even noticing the muscles in his arms. You’re focused on this interview.

Eight weeks of employment as his temporary housekeeper with a little secretarial work thrown in as and when needed: that was what was on offer if she landed the job. Such a period of time in her life would be a mere blip, really.

‘Did the agency explain what I’d want from you?’ Cameron asked the question as he rowed. ‘I gave them a list of specifics when I lodged my request.’

‘I’d have the option of living in or arriving each morning. I’d cook, clean, take phone messages, maybe do a little clerical work, and generally keep things in order for you.’

Lally had no trouble parroting the work conditions. And, feeling that openness was the best policy from the start, she said, ‘I would prefer to live in. It would be cheaper than staying with Mum and Dad and travelling across the city each day to get to work.’ Well, if she had to take a job outside the family, the least she could do was choose something she felt would be interesting and make herself comfortable in it.

‘You have a good understanding of my requirements. I’ve always done everything for myself.’ His brows drew together. ‘But time is ticking away. My agent is getting twitchy. I need to hone my focus on the book and the property development and nothing else. I’m sure taking this step will be all I need to get past the writer’s block that’s been plaguing me.’

Lally didn’t know how long it took to write a top-selling novel in a crime-thriller series, but she imagined it would be quite stressful not to be able to get the story moving while the days rushed by towards a deadline.

And, for Lally, she needed to work to put some money in the coffers. When the job ended she would dig back into her usual place among her relatives and continue to look after them through a variety of gainful employment opportunities.

For their sake. Lally worked for their sake. And it didn’t mean there was anything wrong just because she’d been obliged to get out into the real workforce at this time either. No one in the entire mix-and-match brood happened to need her just at the moment. That was all.

Lally tipped her chin up into the air, drew a deep breath and forced her attention to their surroundings; South Australia in November. It was cool and misty over the lake this morning, but that was only because the park was shaded, leafy, the lake substantial and the hour still early. Later it would get quite warm.

‘It is certainly mood-inducing weather,’ Lally said. ‘For this kind of research.’

‘Yes, and the burst of rain last night has resulted in a nice mist effect here this morning.’ He glanced about them.

Lally was too interested in the man, not the scenery. She admitted this, though she rather wished she hadn’t noticed him quite so particularly. She usually worked very hard to avoid noticing men. She’d been there and made a mess of it. She still carried the guilt of the fallout. What had happened had been so awful—

Lally pushed the thoughts away and turned her attention to the dip of the oars through the water, turned her attention back to Cameron Travers, which was where it needed to be. Just not with quite so much consciousness of him as a man. She trailed her fingers through the water for a moment and quickly withdrew them.

‘You said on the phone yesterday that you have plenty of experience in housekeeping?’ The corners of Cameron’s eyes crinkled as he studied her.

Lally nodded. ‘I’ve worked in a housekeeping role more than once. I’m a confident cook, and I know how to efficiently organise my time and my surroundings. I’m a quick learner, and used to being thrown in the deep end to deal with an array of tasks. I see new challenges as fun.’

‘That sounds like what I need.’ His voice held approval, and for some silly reason her heart pattered once again as she registered this fact.

‘I hope so.’ Lally glanced away and blabbed out the first thing that came to her mind. ‘Well, it may be November, but trailing my fingers through that water made it clear it’s still quite chilly. I wouldn’t want to fall in.’

‘Or dip your hand into water that might be hiding a submerged crocodile.’ Cameron eased back on the oars a little. ‘Wrong end of Australia for that, of course.’

‘I’ve spent time in the Northern Territory and the Torres Strait islands. I have relatives up that way, on my mother’s side of the family, but I’ve never seen a crocodile close up.’ Lally suppressed a shudder. ‘I don’t want to.’

Lally didn’t want to fall into awareness of her potential new boss, either—not that she was comparing him to a dangerous crocodile. And not that she was falling into awareness.

Cameron gave a thoughtful look as he continued to ply the oars until they reached the centre of the lake. Once there, he let the boat drift. ‘It looks quite deep out here. I suspect the water would stay cold even in mid-summer.’

In keeping with the cool of the morning, he wore a cream sweater and blue jeans. The casual clothes accentuated his musculature and highlighted the green of his eyes.

Lally glanced at her own clothing of tan trousers and black turtleneck top. She needed to take a leaf out of her dress-mode book and be sensible about this interview, instead of being distracted by the instigator of it. She drew a steadying breath and gestured to the package in the bottom of the boat. ‘You said we’d be tossing that overboard?’

He’d told her that much about his morning’s mission when they’d met where the boat had been moored, at a very small-scale jetty at the edge of the lake.

‘Yes. It’s only a bundle of sand in a bio-friendly wrapping. I’ll be using my imagination for the rest.’ His gaze narrowed as he took careful note of their surroundings. ‘I need to get the combination of atmosphere and mechanics properly balanced in my mind. How much of a splash would there be? How much sound? How far out would the water ripple? The dumping would need to build tension without the reader figuring out what’s going on, so I’m after atmosphere as well.’

‘Ooh. You could throw a body over.’ Lally paused to think. ‘Well, no, the sand isn’t heavy enough for that. What are you throwing in the story—a weapon? Part of a body?’

‘Do I detect a hint of blood-thirsty imagination there?’ He laughed, perhaps at the caught-out expression that must have crossed her face.

‘Oh, no. Well, I guess maybe I was being blood-thirsty…a little.’ Lally drew a breath and returned his smile. ‘You must have a lot of fun writing your stories.’

‘Usually I do.’ His gaze stilled on her mouth and he appeared arrested for a very brief moment before he blinked. Whatever expression she’d glimpsed in his eyes disappeared.

‘If you take me on as your housekeeper, I’ll do everything I can to help you.’ When she’d applied for this job Lally had only had two criteria in her mind: it had to be temporary, and she had to feel she could do the required work. Now she realised this truly could be interesting as well, even perhaps a little exciting; there was also plenty of room for a sense of achievement and to know that she had truly helped someone.

She might only be the housekeeper, but she’d be housekeeping for a crime writer on a deadline!

If it occurred to Lally that she had been a little short on excitement for a while, she immediately pushed that thought aside.

Lally shifted on her bench seat and quickly stilled the motion. She didn’t want to rock the boat—literally. ‘I haven’t read anything suspenseful for a while. I usually save that for watching movies, but a good crime novel, curled up on a sofa…’ She drew a breath. ‘I’ll try not to badger you with questions while you’re plotting and writing. Well, that is, if you end up employing me.’

‘I doubt it would bother me if you asked questions. ’ He smiled. ‘Provided they don’t start or end with the words “How many pages have you written today?”’

‘I think I could manage not to ask that.’ That would be like her mum painting, or Auntie Edie working with her pottery, and Lally demanding an account of the time they’d spent.

Lally cast another glance at Cameron Travers. He shared her dark hair, though his was short and didn’t grow in waves, unlike her own corkscrew curls that flowed halfway down her back.

He had lightly tanned skin, and ‘come lose yourself in me’ eyes; now that she looked closely she saw very permanent-looking smudges beneath those beautiful eyes.

So, the man had a flaw in his appeal. He wasn’t totally stunning and irresistible to look at.

If you could call looking weary a flaw. ‘Will I be helping you to get more rest?’ That hadn’t exactly come out as she’d intended. ‘That is, I don’t mean to suggest I’ll be boring you to sleep at the dinner table or something.’ He probably had a girlfriend to fuss over him anyway. Or maybe one tucked in every port, just like Sam had.

Well, Sam had had a wife.

And Lally.

She was not going there.

Sam was a topic Lally rarely allowed to climb all the way to the surface of her thoughts. It annoyed her that it had happened now—twice, really, if she counted that earlier memory of the mess she’d made of her life, and several others in the process.

Lally stiffened her spine and firmed her full lips into what she hoped was a very businesslike expression. ‘I’ll help you in any way that I can. It’s just that you look a bit exhausted. That’s why I asked the question.’

‘Your help would allow me to focus my energy where I need to.’ His gaze searched hers. ‘That would be as good as helping me to get more rest. I don’t sleep much.

‘Now, are you ready to toss the sand-bundle overboard for me? It’s quite a few kilos in weight. I do need a woman to throw it, as the “passenger” in the boat, but I hadn’t stopped to think…’ He hesitated and his gaze took in Lally’s slender frame.

‘I can manage it.’ Lally flicked her hair over her shoulder where it wouldn’t get in her way.

She might be slender but she was five-foot-seven inches in height and she had plenty of strength. If she could lift her nieces, nephews and little cousins of various sizes and ages, she could toss a packet of sand. ‘Any time you’re ready. Shall I stand and drop it like a bomb—hurl it from a sitting position? Do you want a plop or a splash, water spraying back into the boat?’

‘Hurling would be fine, thank you. Preferably far enough out that we don’t get drenched in the process.’ Did Cameron’s lips go from a twitch to a half-concealed grin? ‘I think you should be able to throw the packet from a standing position, if we’re careful. I do want to try that.’

He clasped her hand to help her come upright, and there went her resolve not to notice him in the slide of warm, dry skin over her palm, in the clasp of strong fingers curled around her hand.

Lally braced her feet and gave a slight cough. ‘I’m, eh, I’m fine now, thanks. I have my balance. You can let go.’

He did so and she stifled a reaction that felt as much like disappointment as relief. It was neither, of course, because she wasn’t fazed one way or the other by his touch.

Really, how could the clasp of a hand for a couple of seconds, a down-bent gaze as he helped her up, a curve of a male cheek and the view of a dark-haired head, make her heart beat faster?

How could his gaze looking right into her eyes, and his expression focusing with utter totality on her for one brief blink in time, make her feel attractive to him, for Pete’s sake?

Trust me, Lally, you are not necessary to his very ability to breathe. You’re looking like a solid possibility as a temporary employee, maybe, but the rest?

‘Ready?’ Cameron met her gaze with raised brows.

Lally uttered, ‘Yes.’

He put the packet into her hands. It was heavy, but she invested all her effort into tossing it.

It landed several feet away with a satisfying splash and she eased back into her seat while Cameron’s eyes narrowed. He mentally cata-logued the impact—the upward splash of water droplets, water rippling out, the way the mist seemed to swallow everything just moments after it happened.

Lally watched Cameron, then realised what she was doing and abruptly looked away.

‘Thank you. At least I know now that with two in the boat, even if he’s otherwise occupied, she can toss the package over without drawing too much attention.’ He stopped and smiled. ‘Now that we’ve taken care of my research, tell me about your previous work-experience.’ Cameron’s words drew her gaze back to his face.

And put everything back in to perspective as an interview, which was of course exactly what Lally wanted.

‘You don’t need to make notes?’ Well, obviously he didn’t, or he would be doing so. She waved away the silly question. ‘I’ve worked for the past six years for my extended family, doing all kinds of things: housekeeping, bookkeeping and cooking. I’ve been a waitress at my father’s restaurant, Due per. It’s small, but the place is always packed with diners.

‘I’ve worked at my uncle’s fresh-produce store, and another relative’s fishing-tackle shop. My mother, several of her sisters and a couple of brothers are all Aboriginal and Torres Strait artists of one description or another. I’ve helped them at times, too, plus I’ve done nanny duties for my three sisters, and my brother and his wife.’

Lally drew a breath. ‘I’ve travelled with Mum on painting expeditions. Anything the family’s needed from me, I’ve done.’ Except she had avoided Mum and Auntie Edie’s attempts to get her to paint. Lally somehow hadn’t felt ready for that, but that wasn’t the point.

She fished in the deep orange, crushed-velour shoulder-bag she’d tucked beneath her seat and pulled out her references. Lally fingered the threeinch thick wad of assorted papers. ‘I gave the employment agency three, but these are the rest. I have everything here that you might want to see in relation to my work experience.’

A hint of warmth crept into Lally’s high cheeks. ‘I probably didn’t need to bring all of them.’ But how could she have cut it down to just a few, chosen just some of them over the others?

‘Better too many than not enough. May I see?’ He held out one lean hand and Lally placed the papers into it.

Their fingers brushed as they made the exchange. One part of her wanted to prolong the contact, another worried that he’d know the impact his touch had on her. The same thing had happened when he’d helped her into the boat this morning.

Cameron flicked through the pages, stopping here and there to read right through. Aunt Judith had written her reference on an indigenous-art letterhead and added a postscript: Latitia needs to pursue art in her personal time before she gets a lot older. At least Aunt Judith hadn’t labelled the reference with ‘B-’. That was what Lally got for having an aunt who’d been a schoolteacher before she left work to paint full-time.

Cameron’s mouth definitely quirked at one corner as he read Aunt Judith’s admonishment.

Her uncle’s reference was on a fruit-shop order form. Well, it was the content that counted.

‘I don’t know how you manage with so many relatives.’ The concept seemed utterly alien to Cameron.

‘Is your family…?’ Small? Non-existent? Lally cut off the question; not her business, not her place to ask.

And just because she needed her family the way she did didn’t mean everyone felt like that.

‘There’s only ever been my mother.’ His gaze lifted to her face and he gave her a thoughtful look. He cleared his throat and returned his attention to the references. As his expression eased into repose, the sense of weariness about him returned.

How did he survive in life with only one relative? His expression had been hard to read when he’d mentioned his mother. Lally imagined they must be extremely close.

‘I’m more than happy with the references.’ Cameron said this decisively as he watched a grey-teal duck glide across the water beside them. ‘Do you have computer skills?’

‘I can type at about fifty words a minute in a basic word-processing programme, and I’ve spent plenty of time on the Internet.’ Lally would do her best. She always gave one-hundred-and-fifty percent. ‘You said on the phone that you’re refurbishing the old Keisling building. I looked it up on Google. The place looks quite large; it must be a substantial project to undertake.’

Adelaide had a lot of old buildings. Lally loved the atmosphere of the city; it combined a big, flat sprawliness with all mod cons.

‘The Keisling building was initially a huge home. I’ll be converting it to apartments.’ He nodded. ‘Once the work is done, I’ll either sell it or put tenants in.’

‘There are a lot of old buildings in Adelaide that I haven’t seen.’ Lally made the comment as he began to row them back towards shore. ‘I’ve seen a reasonable amount of Australia generally, though.’ She paused as she realised the interview appeared to be over. ‘Am I rambling?’

‘Slightly, but I don’t mind. You have a soothing voice.’ Cameron continued to row. ‘I’ve travelled a lot myself. Sydney is where I keep a permanent apartment, and I’m in the same boat with that.’ He glanced at the oars in his hands and humour warmed his eyes. ‘I know a lot of Australia, but there are parts of Sydney that I don’t know at all. There’s a tendency to stick to what you need to know on local turf sometimes, isn’t there?’

‘Indeed there is.’ Now Lally could add ‘empathy’ and ‘able to laugh at himself’ to his list of attributes. Employer’s attributes. ‘Do you often travel and incorporate your writing research or settings with your property-development projects?’

‘Yes. I work long hours and need to keep occupied, so I actively seek ways to keep my mind fresh and to keep busy.’ A slight sound that could have been a sigh escaped him before he returned his attention to his rowing. ‘Property development came first for me. I got into that straight out of school, and was fortunate enough to make money and be able to expand and make a strong, successful business of it. When I needed more to keep me occupied, I hit on the idea of writing a book. I mostly started that for my own amusement because I enjoyed reading. I was quite surprised when my first book was picked up by an agent, and from there a publisher. Making a second career out of writing was an unexpected bonus.’

And now he entertained and fascinated readers around the world.

I’m not fascinated by him, Lally told herself.

But her other side wanted to know why she couldn’t be a little fascinated within reason, provided the fascination was focused on his work. ‘And you became a famous author.’

‘An author with a looming deadline and an unwelcome bout of writer’s block.’ Cameron brushed off her reference to his fame.

But he was famous. His series had gained a lot of popularity over the past few years. He had become at least somewhat a household name.

Cameron seemed to hesitate before he went on. ‘Usually I’d thrive on my deadlines, but lately? There’s the development of this property to get in motion, the rest of the business to keep an eye on via remote control and I’m more tired than usual—maybe because I’ve been pushing harder with the writing, trying to get somewhere with it.’

He didn’t just want an assistant, he needed one.

The knowledge went straight to the part of Lally that had given herself to her family so exclusively for the past six years. The part that yes, had felt just a little threatened when they hadn’t needed her at the end of her last job. Even her sisters had said no to child minding, and they were always asking if Lally could find blocks of time for that.

‘Oh, no thanks, Lally. I’ve put them all into after-school care and a sports programme for the next few months.’

‘Actually, Ray’s parents are going to have the girls after school for a while.’

And so it had gone on.

Who’d heard of Douglas children going to after-school care? The family did that! And Ray’s parents never had them.

It had felt like a conspiracy, but that thought was silly. Lally shoved it aside accordingly.

‘You need to be looked after a little, to have someone to take the stress off you so you can focus on what you most need to get done.’ Lally could care for this man for two months, and then she would go back to where she wanted and needed to be—to the heart of the family who had all been there for her through thick and thin. ‘I’ll be the best housekeeper and assistant I possibly can, Mr Travers, if you choose to employ me.’

Cameron eased the boat in towards the makeshift dock. ‘I do want to employ you.’ He named a generous salary. ‘We’ll need to figure out what days you’ll be having off, that sort of thing.’

‘I have the job? Oh, thank you!’ The wash of happiness Lally experienced had to be relief that she would be financially secure for the next two months, she decided. Her family would have helped her out, of course, they’d all offered that. But she couldn’t accept that kind of support and then just sit around and twiddle her thumbs.

So this was good. Very good. ‘Thank you, Mr Travers. I’ll do everything I can to be a valuable employee to you.’

For some reason he looked quite taken aback for a moment. Cameron let the small craft bump into the dock. ‘How soon can you start?’

‘Later today, or first thing tomorrow. Which would suit you best?’ Lally said—judiciously, she hoped, though excitement was bubbling all through her.

‘Let’s go with first thing tomorrow.’ Cameron left the boat with an agility that made it look easy. He extended his hand and offered a smile that seemed to wash right through her. ‘It will be nice to have someone else in charge of some of these things while I try…’

He didn’t complete the sentence, but Lally assured herself that that was not because he was distracted by the touch of her hand in his.

More likely he had to focus on not letting her plop into the water like that packet of sand, because she wasn’t paying as much attention to proceedings as she should have been as she wobbled her way out of the boat and onto the dock.

Pay attention, Lally, to getting your feet on solid ground—or planks as the case may be—not to the feel of warm skin against your hand!

‘Um, thank you.’ Lally detached her hand from where it had somehow managed to wrap very securely around his. She could feel the pink tingeing her cheeks again; yes, it was possible to feel pink.

‘You were about to say, while you try…?’

‘To manage two key areas of my life so they both get, and stay, under control.’ Cameron pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

He appeared quite unaware of the way that the action shifted the cream jumper across his chest so Lally could enjoy an unimpeded view of the movement of the muscles that ran beneath the layer of cloth.

She was not noticing!

To make up for her consciousness, Lally gifted Cameron Travers with a full-wattage, ‘thank you for employing me’ smile. ‘Your property work and your writing. I understand. So, seven tomorrow morning at your development site, bags packed and ready to leap straight in to whatever is on your agenda for the day? Me, not the bags, I mean.’

Cameron blinked once, and the dark green of his eyes darkened further. ‘Yes. That will be fine. We’ll eat breakfast while I give you a list of duties to start you off.’

‘Excellent.’ Lally considered shaking his hand again, and rejected the idea.

Better to keep her hands to herself. Instead, she tucked a long brown curl behind her ear and turned towards the exit of the park. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr Travers.’

‘Cam,’ he offered mildly, and took her elbow in a gentle grip. ‘Cameron, if you really must. I’ll walk you back to your car.’

‘And I’m Latitia. Well, you’d have seen that on my job application and some of the references. But I prefer Lally. Um, will your boat be safe?’ Lally’s words ran together in a breathless rush.

‘I hired the boat. The owner should be along to collect it soon.’ Cameron didn’t seem worried one way or the other.

He could probably simply buy a replacement. The man no doubt had the money to do that if he wanted.

Lally hot-footed it at his side to the exit as quickly as she could, where she immediately made her way to her elderly, fuel-inefficient station wagon, and bade him an equally swift farewell. The car seated six people, and that was important when a girl had a really big family. She needed to regroup and get her thoughts sorted between now and tomorrow, so she could approach this new work from the right perspective. From a completely efficient, professionally detached, businesslike perspective.

‘See you tomorrow.’ He turned to walk towards his own car, parked some distance beyond them.

The last thing Lally saw as she drove away was Cameron getting into a sky-blue convertible and putting the top down.

Her final thought was of how much she would love a drive through the countryside in that vehicle with him.

Even if it would only fit the two of them.

Not that she was thinking of them as ‘two’.

That would be just plain silly, and dangerous into the bargain.

Lally hadn’t protected her emotions and avoided men for the past six years to now get herself into trouble again in that respect!




CHAPTER TWO


‘HERE I am, suitcases in tow as promised.’ Lally spoke the words in a tone that was determinedly cheerful and didn’t quite cover a hint of nerves.

She pulled the suitcases in question behind her along the courtyard pathway. ‘I have more things in my car, but I can get those later. I pretty much take my whole world with me to every new job among the family; it’s a habit I’ve formed over the years. I like to surround myself with my belongings. That way I can feel at “home” wherever I am. I’m sure I’ll feel at home here, too, once I’ve settled in.’

Perhaps she’d formed the habit of chattering sometimes to try to hide things such as nerves.

Cam felt an odd need, that seemed to start in the middle of his chest, to reassure her and set her at her ease. He rose from where he’d been seated at the outdoor dining-table, and started towards her.

‘I take a few regular things along when I travel.’ Those things were mostly to do with both aspects of his work commitments: laptops, business files, his coffee machine and research materials for his writing. The coffee machine was definitely work related! ‘Let me help you with that lot; your load looks ten times heavier than you. And I’m looking forward to you getting settled here too.’

It was ages since he’d spent any significant amount of time in close company with a woman. The last effort had been a disaster, but this was different, a working relationship. Cam wanted his housekeeper to feel welcome and comfortable.

She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, and he watched much of the tension ease out of her.

Lally Douglas was a beautiful woman. It would be a very novel experience for him, to have a woman living in as his housekeeper, and to have this woman specifically. He’d anticipated someone older, perhaps in semi-retirement.

Maybe he would learn some things through contact with Lally Douglas that would help him to pin down the quirks and foibles of the female character for his book.

He did wonder why his new housekeeper carried that edge of reserve that seemed contrary to the vibrancy of her imagination, and the sparkle in her deep-brown eyes when something interested her. Cam put this curiosity down to his writer’s mind, and studied Lally for a moment from beneath lowered lashes.

She was a slender girl with skin the colour of milky coffee, and curly almost-black hair; she had thick lashes, high cheekbones and a heart-melting smile that revealed perfect white teeth when it broke over her face. Today she wore a tan skirt that reached to her knees, sandals with a low heel, a simple white blouse and a light camel-coloured cardigan thrown over her shoulders.

‘I can manage the suitcases.’ Lally gestured behind her. ‘As you can see, they stack, and the whole lot is on wheels.’

‘Yes, I can see.’ But he took the handle from her anyway. Their hands brushed and he tried, really tried, not to notice the smoothness of her skin or the long, slender fingers with perfectly trimmed, unadorned nails. Cam wanted to stroke that soft skin, wrap those fingers in his.

And do what? Bring her hand to his lips and kiss her fingertips? Not happening, Travers. He’d had this same reaction to her yesterday, and had done his utmost then to stifle it. Mixing business with awareness to a woman really wasn’t a smart idea.

Cam didn’t have time to worry about an attraction anyway right now. He saved that for when he felt like socialising, and chose companions who were not looking for a long-term involvement. Past experiences in his life hadn’t exactly helped him to trust in the concept of women in deeper, personal relationships, between the way his mother had raised him and the one relationship he’d tried to build in his early twenties that had failed abysmally.

Cam towed the load of suitcases to the doorway of the complex’s large apartment and pushed them inside before he turned back to Lally.

She had dropped her hand to her side almost awkwardly. Now she gave a small smile. ‘Thank you for that.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He gestured behind him. ‘That’s the apartment we’ll share while you’re with me. It’s the only one in the building that’s been kept in half-decent order and fully furnished, as caretakers have come and gone prior to my purchase of the place. I’ve claimed one of the bedrooms for office space, but there are two more, as well as all the other necessary amenities.’

‘That will be fine. Dad checked with the agency and confirmed your character references. ’ She bit her lip.

‘It’s best to feel certain that you’re safe.’ Cam led the way to the outdoor-dining setting and indicated she should take her seat. It was a large table, with half a dozen wrought-iron chairs padded with cushions facing each other around it. Lally and Cam sat at one end.

‘Thank you; I appreciate that you understand.’ Lally’s gaze went to the covered food-dishes and settled on the silver coffee-pot. ‘If all that’s as good as it smells, I think I’m being very spoiled on my first morning at work.’

Cam shrugged, though her words had pleased him. ‘It took less than half an hour to put together. I cooked while I tried to brainstorm some more ideas for my story.’ ‘Tried’ being the operative word.

‘I’ll make sure I have a good breakfast ready for you each morning from now on.’ As Lally spoke the words, the noise level at the far end of the site increased as two of the workers began to throw tiles off the roof into a steel transport-bin below.

Lally tipped her head to one side and her big, brown eyes filled with good-natured awareness. ‘Has the noise been interfering with your writing?’

‘No. I can usually work through any amount of noise.’ He wished he could blame his lack of productivity on that. Cam didn’t know what to blame it on, or how to fix it, other than sticking at the writing until he got a breakthrough with this tricky character, and using Lally’s help to allow him to really hone his focus on that. ‘But they only actually started the work this morning. I’ve been here less than a week myself, and most of that time’s been spent organising a work crew, working with the site boss to get our orders in for materials, that sort of thing.’

Cam liked a good work challenge. He just wasn’t enjoying it quite as much as usual this time, thanks to his problems with the book. He’d always managed both aspects of his life—the property development and the writing—and kept both in order. He didn’t like feeling out of control at one end of the spectrum.

‘It’s good that noise isn’t a problem to you.’ Lally glanced around her, taking in the large pool that looked more like a duck pond at the moment. ‘Oh, look at the swimming pool. It’s a nice shape, isn’t it? A kind of curvy-edged, squished-in-the-middle rectangle. Very mellow.’ Her gaze moved around the large courtyard area, and encompassed the building that surrounded it in a U-shape on three sides, before returning to meet his eyes.

‘I can see why you wanted this place. It will be wonderful when the work is done.’ An expression that seemed to combine interest in her new job and a measure of banked-down hurt came over her face. ‘At least I’ll have plenty to do here while my family don’t need me.’ She drew a breath.

‘Ah—your family?’

‘I’ll be back in the thick of it with them straight after this.’ She rushed the words out as though maybe she needed to do so, to fully believe in them herself. ‘I help out in all sorts of ways.’

‘I’m lucky to have you to look after me for a while.’ It was true. His body was exhausted, pushed by even more hard work beyond the usual state of tolerable weariness induced by him being an insomniac-workaholic. ‘It’ll be nice to have someone to take care of some of the very ordinary everyday tasks.’

Heaven knew, he could afford to pay for the help; he’d just never sought it before. Doing the cooking and cleaning for himself burned up time, and time was something he usually had oodles of on his hands. He still had lots of time, but, thanks to a female character who simply refused to come to life on the page for him, that time wasn’t productive enough.

Cam lifted the coffee pot, glanced at the cup in front of Lally and raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

‘Yes please.’ The colour of her eyes changed from dark brown to clear sherry and a dimple broke out in her cheek. ‘I’m ready for my first dose of caffeine for the day.’

They sipped in silence for a moment. Cam let the rich brew hit the back of his throat and give his body a boost. He’d tried leaving coffee out of his diet for a while, hoping it might have a positive impact on his sleep issues, but it hadn’t made any difference.

Lally laced her fingers together in front of her on the table and looked about her again. ‘This property would make a great base for a character in your book.’

She cast a sheepish glance his way. ‘I bought the first book in your series yesterday after our interview. It said in the back that you sometimes use your development projects as settings for your stories.’

‘I hope you’re enjoying the read.’ It made Cam happy to know he was providing entertainment for readers, but Lally had said she didn’t usually read crime novels. ‘My kind of books aren’t to everyone’s taste.’

Lally said earnestly, ‘Oh, I finished it! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the series so far. The only thing that could have made the story better would have been a love interest for your hero.’ She clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry. What would I know about it?’

Cam gave a wry grimace. ‘The need for a love interest is an opinion shared by my editor and agent. I’m quite prepared to add her in, but I’m having trouble cracking her characterisation.

‘Let’s eat, anyway.’ Cam lifted the covers off the hot food and invited her to help herself. He’d prepared bacon, eggs, sausages and grilled tomatoes, and had added fresh bread-rolls from the small bakery two blocks away. ‘I hope there’s something here that’s to your taste, but if not I have cereal, fruit and yoghurt inside as well.’

‘This will be fine. Thank you.’ She helped herself to an egg, two grilled tomatoes and a warmed bread roll. ‘I’m truly sorry for what I said about your book. It’s none of my business.’ Lally still looked stricken. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that I wished there was a female counterpart in that book.’

Cam said gently, ‘It’s all right. My ego can take some constructive criticism of my work. Who knows? I might bounce some of my ideas off you. In fact, I’ll almost certainly ask you to help with research, as you know your way around a computer and the Internet.’ That was a bonus Cam hadn’t expected to get in his temporary housekeeper.

‘Ooh. Helping will be fun.’ Lally’s eyes gleamed. ‘I can look up all sorts of interesting things for you.’

Cam smiled. ‘Perhaps I should just be grateful that my editor and agent waited until my sixth book to talk to me about the need to include this new character.’

‘Yes. You escaped it until now.’ Her grin started in the depths of chocolate eyes, crinkled the skin at their corners and spread across her lips like sunshine.

Teasing; she was teasing him.

And Cam was enjoying being teased. A corresponding smile spread across his face and they stared at each other; the atmosphere changed and suddenly he was looking deep into her eyes and the humour was gone. His hand lifted towards her.

He dropped it back to his side. They broke eye contact at the same time.

Cam reminded himself that this awareness he felt towards her, and that she perhaps felt towards him, wasn’t a good thing. Cam lived a chronically busy lifestyle. It had been that way for years. He pushed himself to survive, survived to push himself more. By doing both, he filled the endless hours in which he could never manage to sleep properly.

There was no breaking that cycle. He had to live with it. It was the only way he could live. It certainly wasn’t a cycle that lent itself to him getting into any kind of meaningful relationship with a woman. He’d proved that fact in the past.

Yet, you’re thirty-two now. What if you get hit with one of those biological urges and need to settle down, produce children or something?

Like his mother had produced and settled. Well, she’d produced.

Cam shoved the conjecture aside. It was quite pointless.

Lally took another sip of coffee and looked at him over the rim of the cup. ‘This is very nice. Thank you. I have to admit, I hang out for my first dose of coffee each morning.’ She gestured towards the far side of the building. ‘The work crew seem to know what they’re doing. If they keep on at that cracking pace, the work will be done quickly.’

‘That’s my goal.’ Cam glanced towards the crew and then let his gaze trail slowly back over the courtyard area; a small frown formed between his brows. ‘I’m not quite sure what to do out here. It needs something.’ He didn’t know what; surely getting the place organised into apartments was enough anyway?

He was only going to rent or sell them, so what did it matter if he thought the courtyard lacked soul? ‘I want to have the pool converted so it’s heated for year-round use. The courtyard and surrounding gardens need to be brought up to scratch as well.’

‘The place will be a hive of activity for the next while.’

They ate in silence for a few moments. Cam watched Lally’s delicate movements, observed the straightness of her back in the wrought-iron chair.

Her fingers were lovely. If Cam had to create a female love-interest for his book, she would have hands like Lally’s, he decided. They’d look good wrapped around a gun, a champagne glass or an assassin’s throat while his heroine resisted the threat with all her worth, or the woman could even be an assassin.

Cam had lots of ideas. He just couldn’t seem to hone them into something coherent. He cleared his throat. ‘The duties list…’

‘Do you have a written list for me?’ Lally asked her question at the same time.

They stopped and each took a sip of their coffee. Lally drew a breath that lifted her small breasts beneath the cowl-neck top. Her hair was loose about her shoulders, as it had been yesterday.

Her top was sleeveless, and Cam wanted to stroke his fingers over the soft smoothness of her skin. She had strength in those slender arms, despite her small size. So much for deciding he wasn’t going to notice her appeal.

While Lally nibbled on a bite of tomato, Cam fished a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. ‘I’ve jotted down a few basics for now.’ He handed it across the table to her.

While she read, he got on with his meal.

Lally finished the last of her tomato and egg while she read through the duties list. Though his gaze wasn’t on her, she felt his consciousness of her, and had to force herself to concentrate on the words in front of her.

The list included taking care of his laundry, cleaning the apartment, meals and changing the linens. She would be in charge of his mobile phone during the hours he was writing, take messages and make the decision as to whether to interrupt him or not depending on what messages came through from his Sydney business.

There were a few lines about how to deal with the work crew, but he mostly wanted to handle that for himself.

‘That all seems very reasonable.’ Lally glanced up.

‘I may ask for other duties as time progresses. Once the crew begins to get the apartments up to speed, I may send you in to clean them ready for occupation.’

‘I’ll be glad to do that.’ Lally wanted to work hard for him. ‘I like to keep busy. The task doesn’t matter, just so long as I’m occupied.’

Had she made herself sound boring?

Why would it matter if you had, Latitia? You’re his housekeeper. You don’t have to be interesting, just productive and helpful.

‘I’m good at multi-tasking through phone calls.’ Lally’s phone usually ran hot with calls and text messages. Yet, in the beaded bag at her feet, her phone was still and silent. The contact from her family had all but stopped since Lally had realised she was going to have to go outside normal channels to look for a job.

A man in a hard hat strode across the courtyard towards them. He stopped just short of their table. ‘Morning, Mr Travers. Sorry to interrupt, but I’m ready to discuss these plans any time you are.’ He gestured to the clipboard in his other hand. ‘The crew should be in this morning to start the work to get that swimming pool up to speed too. They’ll have to drain it, to do the work to turn it into a heated pool, but the water’s too far gone to fix by shocking it with chlorine and balancing agents, so you’re not losing anything on that score.’

Cam glanced towards the building. ‘What other plans are on for today?’

‘Makes the most sense to strip all the apartments at once, so that’s what we’ll be doing.’ The man’s gaze shifted to Lally and lingered. ‘We, eh, you don’t need any of the other apartments until all the work is done, so this’ll streamline the process.’

‘Thank you.’ The words emerged in a deeper than usual cadence. Cam frowned and then said, ‘Let me introduce you. Jordan Hayes, this is my housekeeper, Lally Douglas. Lally, meet my site manager.’

The man stuck out a hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’ Lally shook his hand, reclaimed her own, and got to her feet. ‘I’ll leave you both to your discussion. I’d like to get started on my workload.’ Her gaze shifted to the breakfast table. ‘I’ll clear this away once I’ve settled my belongings inside.’

Lally slipped away before Cam could think of anything to say in response, and then the site manager spoke and Cam forced his thoughts onto the work here.

Cam didn’t want to examine the tight feeling that had invaded his chest when Lally had slipped her hand into the other man’s grip. If that reaction had been possessive, Cam had no right to it. His mouth tightened. He did his best to relax his expression as he spoke to the manager. ‘We’ll go into my office and talk there. It will be a bit quieter.’

Perhaps if he tucked himself away in there after this talk—focused on the property development, checked in with his Sydney office for the morning and then attacked his writing—he would get his thoughts off fixating on a certain brand-new, temporarily employed housekeeper.

For the truth was she had looked far too good when she’d arrived this morning, pulling a bunch of suitcases along behind her while her hips swayed and her legs ate up the ground beneath her feet in long strides. Cam had noticed how good she looked, far too much.

It was one thing to do such minor and insignificant things as notice the shape of her hands, he told himself, but that noticing had to stop.

Cam led the way into his office, the site manager behind him.

He would put Lally Douglas right out of his mind and not think about her again until lunchtime.

It wasn’t as though he couldn’t control his mild attraction to her. How ridiculous would that be?




CHAPTER THREE


‘YOU’RE quite sure you’re okay, Aunt Edie?’ Lally had her mobile phone jammed between her shoulder and her ear. It felt right there, and so it should. Usually she spent a lot of her day with a phone in that exact position, talking with one relative or another while she went about her work and various family members checked in with her.

Today she’d had to phone Auntie herself; she had only received a couple of text messages all morning, mostly from two of her teenage cousins who’d recently got their first-ever mobile phones.

Of course, she’d been kept busy with calls and a few text messages coming in to Cam’s mobile. It felt a little intimate to take all his calls and messages. What if a woman phoned?

And what if the phone he gave her was purely for business and he had another one for his social life? Lots of people did that.

Right. Why was Lally fixating on Cam’s social life, anyway? She should be fixating on her family’s silence. Lally had kept so close to all her family in the past. It felt unsettling now not to hear from them much.

‘You’re working an outside job,’ she muttered. ‘They probably don’t want to call and disturb that.’

‘Beg pardon, dear?’

‘Oh, sorry, Auntie. It was nothing; I was just talking to myself.’ She was talking to Auntie, who seemed quite happy to talk, so what was Lally worrying about anyway?

Lally whisked eggs in a bowl and quickly poured the results over a selection of cooked vegetables in a heated pan on the stove. ‘Promise me you’re well, Auntie. You’re taking all your meds? You’ve got Nova coming over to sort them out for you for the start of each day? Because I could drive over at night during my time off.’

‘I’m fine, Lally. Nova comes every day, but even if she didn’t I could cope. You just enjoy your work out there in the world where you might meet—’ Her aunt coughed. ‘We all think you’ll do a very good job, just as you always do, dear.’

‘Thank you. I appreciate that.’ And Lally did. She was being quite silly to feel displaced. For heaven’s sake, she’d only been at the new job for half a day. By the end of the week she might be getting so many calls and messages from her family that her new boss would be quite angry with her, if he didn’t see that she always kept working throughout those calls and messages, hard and at speed.

And, of course, she would put answering his mobile first.

Lally had learned a long time ago to multitask. Cameron seemed to live that way too. It was something they had in common.

What you have in common is that he’s the boss and you’re the employee, Lally. Try to remember that!

‘Shouldn’t you be focusing on your new job this morning, Lally?’ Auntie asked the words into the silence, almost as though she’d read Lally’s mind.

‘I am.’ Lally glanced around the kitchen. Cam had left no mess, so it had been easy to give the whole area a deep clean. Now Lally sprinkled fresh, chopped herbs into the frittata and turned it down to heat through.

With a light salad, that would take care of their lunch, and this afternoon she’d see about their dinner. So far she’d cleaned most of the rooms, settled her things into the room across the small hall from Cameron’s bedroom, looked over the pantry supplies, made a list of things she would need to buy soon and organised this meal.

And had taken Cameron’s messages. None of them had sounded unbearably urgent, though the content of many of them from his Sydney office had brought it home to Lally that Cameron truly dealt in big dollars.

Lally prepared the salad with cherry tomatoes, lettuce, mushroom slices and slivers of avocado mixed with a tangy dressing; that job was done. She checked on the frittata; it was almost cooked.

Sam had liked tangy dressing on his salad.

The thought slid sideways into Lally’s mind; it wasn’t welcome. She so rarely thought about Sam. If getting out and working with a man would make that a common occurrence, Lally was not going to be pleased. ‘I’m working and talking at once, Auntie. I can talk. Tell everyone else they can call me too. Even if just early in the mornings, or in the evenings, if they’re worried that much about my job. I’m sure I can fit in some calls—’

But her aunt had already rushed out a, ‘Love you,’ and disconnected the call at her end.

Well!

Lally drew a deep breath. ‘It might have been nice to get to say “I love you” back—’

‘Whatever that is, it smells wonderful.’ The deep words sounded over the top of hers and cut them off abruptly. ‘Sorry, were you on the phone?’

‘Oh. I didn’t realise you were there.’ She’d been talking out loud like a loon. ‘Um, no, I’m all finished with my phone call. It was my phone that time, but I have a heap of messages from yours.’

‘On the phone to the boyfriend?’ Cam’s words were unruffled, and yet something in his tone made Lally seek his gaze.

His eyes were shielded by those long, silky lashes.

‘I should have brought this up at our interview. I apologise that I didn’t, but I’ll cover it now.’ She did feel guilty, even though there was no need. ‘I like to speak with family members when I have a moment. I’ll do it discreetly, I won’t disrupt you in any way, and I always keep working. I can assure you I don’t lose any work time or concentration over the calls I make, and of course I’ll always use my own phone.’

‘Family.’ Cameron’s expression was complex. He ran his fingers through his short hair. ‘Of course that’s not a problem. You’re welcome to keep whatever contact you need.’

‘Thank you.’ Lally considered telling him there was no boyfriend, but he’d probably figured that out anyway. In any case, it wasn’t important. ‘I appreciate you being understanding about my need for contact with my family.’

Now, if Lally could just get her family to come back on board with that contact.

‘I can see you’ve been busy.’ Cameron’s glance roved the kitchen, dining room and lounge areas, before it came back to rest on her, and his expression softened. ‘Thank you for what you’ve done already to help make me comfortable.’

‘That’s what I’m here for.’ But his praise and appreciation wrapped around her just the same.

Being needed: it was an issue for Lally. She knew it; she would even admit it. Until now she’d thought it was all just about family relationships for her.

And it was. This just felt sort of similar because she was helping him, too, and that was what she did for them. Her happiness certainly had nothing to do with that softening of his expression when his gaze rested on her. She wasn’t looking for tenderness from him, for goodness’ sake; that would be ridiculous.

Lally was too wary to consider something like that with a man again anyway. And she was still young, she justified to herself. She had plenty of time to think about getting back into the dating game. And she’d been really busy with family commitments.

Busy enough that they might have pushed her out so she’d find time for a social life again?

Her family had been known to stick their noses into each other’s lives at times. Lally had been guilty of it too. In a big, loving family that would always happen, and she’d had her share of them hinting that she could do with getting out more.

But they wouldn’t take it this far, would they? Of course they wouldn’t…

‘Lunch is almost ready now, if you want to take a seat in the dining room.’ Lally would far rather eat lunch than go on thinking about that topic. She gestured to the freshly polished dining-table. ‘Or we can eat outside, if you’d prefer? It’s frittata. I hope that’s okay.’

‘Inside will be fine, and I eat most things.’ He paused and the hint of a smile lifted the edges of his mouth. ‘No artichoke. Other than that, I’m very agreeable about food.’

‘That will make cooking for you a dream. I’d like to take advantage of the fresh markets for produce for a lot of our meals.’ She wanted to feed him on the freshest items available, because she thought it might help with whatever had been exhausting him—lack of sleep, long hours, book stress, whatever the problem. Even if it didn’t, it would put his body in a good place, health-wise.

Yes, fine, she was acting like a little mother. Why not, when she’d had a hundred or so relatives to practice those skills on? They all deserved to be loved to bits and looked after as much as possible, especially considering how much they’d had to put up with from her.

Not that she felt the need to earn their love. Well, that would be just silly, wouldn’t it? And she didn’t feel like a little mother; she felt like a determined housekeeper.

Lally turned the frittata onto a serving plate, carried it and the salad to the table she’d set, and took her seat. ‘I hope you’ll eat while the food is hot and at its best, and have as much as you want. I made plenty. I do have a bunch of messages from your phone, but I think they can all wait until after you’ve eaten.’

Now she sounded as though she was very generously allowing him to eat his own food, and making his work-related choices for him while she was at it. ‘What if your editor rings?’ Lally asked suddenly. ‘Or your agent?’

‘You’ll be able to tell if they need to speak to me urgently, otherwise they can wait.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘I’m too professional to ask you to dodge them on my behalf if they phone and then ask for a progress update—though there might be certain days when I’ll be tempted to do that if things keep going the way they have for the past few weeks.’

‘You can’t help it if you’re in the middle of a sticky patch with your muse,’ Lally declared. ‘These things happen. It must be quite amazing to be internationally famous too. You probably have fans chasing after you and everything. Lots of women—’

The words burst out of her and Lally’s face flooded with heat.

‘I can’t say I’ve been particularly chased, at least not to my knowledge.’ Cam drawled the words. He felt far too pleased that Lally’s words—when she’d got to the ‘women’ part of her statement—had sounded as though she was quite jealous at the thought of such a thing happening.

Two seconds later he realised that wasn’t exactly the response he should have to her. And he didn’t want women chasing him; he’d rather go and find them when he felt the need.

Cam helped himself to a piece of the frittata and some salad and took a first bite. The frittata was perfect, the accompanying salad the exact counterpoint for it; the zing of tangy dressing hit Cam’s tongue, completing the experience. ‘Did you make the dressing yourself? Where did you learn your cooking skills?’

‘I did make the dressing. I learned to cook from two parents who both love it, and do it very differently but equally as well.’ Lally’s smile softened at whatever memories were in her head. ‘What they didn’t actively teach me, I guess I’ve learned by observation anyway.’

She seemed to take her skill level as nothing out of the ordinary.

‘Your father runs a restaurant; I momentarily forgot that.’ She’d told him that at their interview, and Cam had spent a few moments piecing together her family history in his mind. Torres-Strait Aboriginal mother, Italian father; the surname of ‘Douglas’ suggested that her father might not be fully Italian.

‘Dad’s mother married a Scotsman, just to keep things interesting.’ Lally’s lovely smile lit her face again.

‘You have a diverse family tree.’ Cam returned the smile, and gestured to his plate. ‘The food is delicious, thank you. I think I’ve struck it lucky with you, Lally, if this meal and the work you’ve got through already are any indication.’

‘You’re welcome for all of it.’ Her skin didn’t show a blush. Yet somehow he suspected one had just happened—by the change to the sparkle in her eyes, perhaps?

What would she be like in the middle of passion?

Cam cut the thought off. The answer to that question was that it was not his business to wonder.

‘I’ve done as much work as I could this morning.’ Lally seemed flustered as she pulled the duties list from her pocket and flattened it on the table beside her plate. She glanced at it and raised her gaze to his face. ‘I’ll do all that I can to look after you, help you start to feel more rested and focus on what you need to do with your time.’

‘I appreciate that.’ Surely in another week or two he would get back to sleeping at least the four to four-and-a-half hours a night he usually got? Cam didn’t expect Lally to be able to do a thing about that. Why would she? All the experts had failed to give him any long-term solutions that didn’t involve knocking himself out at night with medications he didn’t want to let become a habit in his life.

‘I haven’t forgotten about book research.’ Her finger rested on a point on the list. ‘I’m ready to help you with that in any way required.’

‘I have a research project for you for after lunch, actually.’ Cam went on to explain what he needed. ‘I have two laptop computers. What I’d like you to do is use the second laptop and get the prohibition laws about using these substances in this state…’ He jotted the names of several chemical compounds onto the bottom of her list.

‘I’ll do the rest of the research myself. Some of it has to be handled carefully; I don’t want you dealing with anything that could be potentially dangerous to you.’ He paused. ‘At least I can still make forward progress with my lead character’s investigations and activities to some degree, even if other aspects of the story are being difficult.’

Lally’s eyes widened and her soft lips parted. ‘You take care with your research? You keep yourself safe?’ Her words were so genuine, filled with concern for him.

Cam got that strange feeling in his chest again. ‘Always. I always take care.’ He was even more determined to take care of her in this admittedly small way.

As their gazes met and held, Cam was very conscious of her.

She was conscious of him. It was there in her guarded expression, the rejection and the self-protectiveness in every line of her body, and didn’t fully manage to conceal the interest beneath.

They threw sparks off each other, and Lally didn’t want to feel those sparks.

Were they for him? Or for any man at the moment?

And, either way, why?

But he didn’t need to know why; Cam told himself this. He needed to develop a three-dimensional book character, not know every aspect of his new housekeeper’s make-up.

They both dropped their gazes at the same time and Cam rubbed his face wearily.

‘Are you okay, Cam? You mentioned you don’t sleep well—I assumed that was due to stress or work pressures.’ Lally’s soft words impinged on his thoughts. ‘If there’s anything else I need to know…’

‘I’m a long-term insomniac. It’s annoying sometimes but it’s nothing to worry about.’

Though he didn’t care who knew about it one way or another, this wasn’t something he discussed often. Cam wouldn’t have held the answer back from her, though, not when her face had filled with such concern.

Lally gave a nod of acknowledgement. ‘It’s no wonder you felt like being spoiled a little. Maybe you can enjoy some more rest than usual, even if it doesn’t come in the form of sleep.’

‘Maybe I will. I’ve got my eye on the pool.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘A swim now and then would be relaxing.’ He hesitated. ‘If you hear me up and about in the middle of the night…’

‘Do you like company at those times, or to be by yourself?’ Lally’s expression had softened so much, it was almost as though she needed to find a chink in his armour and felt somehow reassured by finding it. ‘I’d be happy to heat you some warm milk or sit up and talk.’

Cam pictured them sitting at this table at midnight. Somehow he doubted that drinking milk or talking would be the first things on his mind. He’d be thinking about kissing his way up the slender column of her neck until he reached those luscious lips and closed his own over them.

The urge to kiss her now, right in this blink of time, silenced him for a moment. It was one thing to imagine, even to want, but this urge felt somehow to be more than that.

Maybe you should just ask her if she’d curl up on the sofa with you, with your head in her lap, and stroke your face with her fingers until you fall asleep, you big baby.

Or you could admit you find her more than a little intriguing and that you’re not doing a very good job of pushing back that interest.

All right, he did find her intriguing, but he wasn’t about to act on it. Theirs was a working relationship and that was exactly how Cam wanted it to be.

And that left how he wanted to deal with the rest of the day. And the next.

Cam cleared his throat and side-stepped the question. ‘I’ll take you to the market tomorrow morning and we can buy fresh produce together. I’ll be awake anyway, so it makes sense that I go with you the first time at least.’

He could tell her what foods he liked the most, could carry her basket for her.

Or throw down his cloak for her to step on if she came across a puddle in her path!

‘Excuse me.’ He got to his feet and assured himself the only thought on his mind was getting back to business.

He was not running; he was planning and retreating so he could focus on his book. A totally different thing.

Cam took Lally’s written list of phone messages and the phone itself from the table. ‘I’ll see to these and drop the phone out to you before I start writing, if that’s okay?’

‘Thanks.’ Lally glanced down at the notes he’d written for her to research. ‘And I’ll bring my research results to you as soon as I have them.’

Cam looked at the sweep of her long black lashes. ‘Other than that, perhaps you can just keep going with your housekeeping jobs.’ If Cam stayed clear for a few hours, maybe he would get these strange reactions to her sorted out a little better.

Lally rose and started to gather dishes into capable hands. ‘Good luck with the writing.’

‘Thanks.’

Cam nodded and left.




CHAPTER FOUR


‘I MEANT to unpack all this as soon as we got home.’ It was the next afternoon. Lally reached into one of the string bags sitting on the kitchen counter in the apartment and pulled out several canned goods.

Her voice was raised a little to be heard over the outside noise of the refurbishing crew. Cam had to admit that right now they sounded more like a destruction mob. ‘Are you okay with that noise? It’s not driving you crazy?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I’m fine with it. If anything would get to me, I think it would be too much quiet.’

Cam understood that only too well. Maybe noise was what he needed at night.

You’ve tried that, remember? You’ve tried every trick there is. Noise or no noise; light or dark; quiet or loud; whatever, you don’t sleep beyond what your body has to have to survive. That’s all there is to it.

He returned his gaze to his housekeeper. ‘You got busy when we got back here.’ Lally had called it ‘home’ and hadn’t seemed to notice the word. But in truth where did Lally Douglas call ‘home’? She’d told him she had a room at her parents’ home; was that it? At twenty-four, didn’t she want her freedom at some point?

And why did it even matter to Cam? ‘Home,’ he’d never had. A faceless, nameless apartment in the centre of Sydney that he visited now and then hardly counted.

Yet wouldn’t it be nice to have a home? A real one? With a permanent housekeeper like Lally to look after him?

Dumb thought, Travers. This was a temporary measure, nothing more. Cam drew a breath. ‘There’s nothing in the foodstuffs that will have spoiled.’

‘No. I put the perishables away straight off, at least.’ Lally removed the remaining articles from the bags and started to pack them into the larder.

Cam resisted the urge to help. He’d crossed the line enough by insisting they shop together at the market first thing this morning. When they’d got back, he’d eaten breakfast with her—then had taken himself off to his office and proceeded to give his hero’s love-interest so many of Lally Douglas’s traits and characteristics that he’d had to delete half the work he’d written.

So he’d deleted, and he’d wrestled with his story some more, and he’d come up with what he knew was a great scene-idea—but then he couldn’t get that to work either. Without realising he did it, Cam heaved a sigh.

‘Is the writing not going well?’ Lally’s words were empathetic.

He shook his head. ‘I’ve got a scene planned in my mind, but when I try to write it I can’t visualise it properly. I can’t “see” the heroine in my mind’s eye. I’m not sure how to use their surroundings. It’s a scene that I know will work, but I can’t seem to get it to work. I think as long as the heroine remains shadowy in my mind, this problem is going to continue.’

‘What would bring her to life for you?’ Lally’s eyebrows drew together as she considered the matter. ‘Could you “interview” her? Ask her questions to get to know her?’

‘Stream-of-consciousness interviewing? I did try that about a week ago, but I didn’t get anywhere with it.’ Cam forced himself not to scowl his irritation over this. ‘I feel as though I need to somehow throw her into the middle of this scene, really get in deep there with her. Once I see how she reacts, the pieces will all come together. Maybe.’

‘Hmm.’ Lally was silent for a long moment. She tipped her head to the side and tapped her finger on her chin before her eyes lit up. ‘When Mum gets stuck on a painting, she tells my aunt the concept. Auntie takes a sheet of paper and whips out her interpretation of how she’d do the painting. Mum invariably says that’s not how the idea should be executed! Rejecting one idea helps Mum to figure out how she wants to execute it.’

‘That’s an interesting concept.’ It was Cam’s turn to frown. ‘I’d try that, if there was a chance it would rattle loose my interpretation. But how?’

‘You need a “volunteer from the audience”.’ The smile deepened on Lally’s lovely mouth. ‘Someone, or more than one person, to act out the scene for you. You don’t have to like how they do it, but it might help you figure out what you do want for the scene.’

Cam gave a surprised laugh. ‘That could just work. I’d have to find an acting society or a theatre group willing to act it.’

‘Or you and I could do it.’ The words came out in a little rush and she immediately bit her lip. ‘Not if you didn’t want us to, but if you didn’t want the hassle of trying to find real actors—if you only needed to play-act it to help you figure it out—we could do that, couldn’t we?’

‘We could.’ Her enthusiasm started to spread through him too. ‘My idea is a wheels-within-wheels kind of situation, where he’s pretending interest in her but he suspects her of being a double agent or spy or assassin. He thinks if he disarms her with food, wine and attention he’ll figure out what she’s up to.’ He went on. ‘She’s got an equal number of suspicions about him. She pretends to be “buyable” for the night, to gain access to his hotel room to search it later, and then she’s going to disappear—but he lures her to the roof top of the building after dinner when he suspects her motives are as duplicitous as his are.’

Cam drew a breath. ‘Before dinner he spends money on her, buying her a dress and other gifts.’

‘It really is wheels within wheels.’ Lally’s eyes were like stars. ‘Oh, but that sounds so exciting. We could role-play the whole evening from beginning to end. It wouldn’t have to be an exact match, but it could be a lot of fun!’

‘Let’s do it.’ Cam’s smile spread until it was as wide as hers. ‘It’ll have to be late in the day. If we’re going to do this I want the right atmosphere, time of night, all of it.’

Happiness filled her face. ‘Tonight?’

Cam couldn’t seem to look away from that happiness. ‘Yes, we’ll do it tonight. We’ll leave here at seven p.m. I’d better get on the computer and figure out where we can go that will provide the kind of backdrop I want.’ He started to turn away; he had to turn away. ‘Can you manage that?’

‘Of course.’ She did a little bounce on the balls of her feet. ‘I’ll go on with other work until you’re ready for us to leave.’

He looked at her and tried not to think about the curve of the side of her face, her cheek, her chin and her lush lips that looked soft and kissable. ‘We’ll be out until around midnight, so feel free to take some time off this afternoon before we leave. I don’t want to over-tire you.’

‘I’ll take a nap for an hour if I can get to sleep,’ Lally conceded, but with a glow of anticipation still all over her face.

Somehow Cam doubted she would relax into sleep in this mood, but he wasn’t a good one to gauge her chances. Just because he wouldn’t have been able to sleep in the afternoon didn’t mean she might not be able to nod off any time she decided she wanted to.

‘I’ll see you at seven.’ He glanced at her clothes. ‘You can come dressed as you are now, or in something similar; it doesn’t really matter. Choosing clothes in the same way the female character would do that tonight will be part of our role-play. I’ll need to locate a big hotel that has boutique stores. We’ll shop there, enact the time in the dining room, and then go up on the rooftop for that part.’

Her eyes widened. ‘It—it won’t cost you a lot, will it? I didn’t mean to suggest…’

‘Something that might get my writing back on track after weeks of it driving me crazy because I haven’t been able to get there?’ He felt lighter than he had in all those weeks. ‘If it costs me a little to organise this evening and I get a result, I will be more than happy, so don’t give that another thought. Whatever I spend I’ll be able to tax-deduct, anyway.’

‘Well, I guess.’ Lally frowned. ‘Make sure it’s a hotel that does clothing hire, or has cheap stores. We can go through the motions, buy or hire what we have to, I guess, but keep the expense right down.’

Cam smiled at the earnest face looking at him. ‘You need to think of it as a cross between Cinderella and—I don’t know—winning a shopping spree or something.’

‘Oh, well, okay. I guess.’

‘Good.’ Cam turned away. ‘I’ll see you when it’s time to go.’



‘This is it. The boutique shops inside should provide what we need.’ Cam spoke to Lally as he handed his car keys to a parking valet. He paused on the footpath that led into the hotel itself.

Lally drew a big breath. ‘So we’re all set for our night’s acting. Oh, I hope it’ll be fun, and you’ll go back later and your story will just pour out of your fingertips because your imagination will have worked out what you want to do. The hotel looks awfully fancy.’

Her anticipation was so sweet that Cam just had to smile. Lally might enjoy wearing some different clothes, too, he thought with a hint of fondness that crept up on him. She dressed nicely already, but sometimes he felt she dressed to try not to be noticed. ‘I haven’t fully explained the final part of the evening when we’ll go up on the rooftop: you’ll be entirely safe, but I need an unanticipated reaction out of you. If you don’t mind.’

‘Your mysteriousness is making my imagination run wild.’ Lally admitted this with a smile as she met Cam’s gaze. ‘I don’t mind. You can surprise me. That can be part of the fun too.’

Cam cleared his throat. ‘Thanks for being a good sport about it. You truly won’t mind being dressed up and having your hair and make-up done?’

‘Hair and make-up too?’ Her eyes widened. ‘I imagine I’ll feel as though I’m being thoroughly spoiled.’

Lally gave her answer to Cameron and tried to gather her concentration. Cinderella; he’d said to think of it as that.

Her boss in a dinner suit; that was a big part of the reason for her distraction. In truth, Lally did feel like Cinderella—well, Cinderella with a slightly weary but anticipation-filled prince at her side.

A prince who looked divine clothed this way, and wore his exhaustion more attractively than should be legal.

When she’d first emerged from her room and seen Cameron waiting for her, Lally’s pulse had raced.

‘Thank you for agreeing to this,’ he’d said, and clasped her hand briefly before leading the way outside to his car. Beautiful car, gorgeous driver. Cameron had relaxed her with easy conversation during the trip, and even now as they walked through the hotel he somehow made her feel special whether he was looking all about him to research his book or not.

A night out of time, that was what this would be for Lally. She could do it, of course she could, and have a whole lot of fun in the process!

Cam led her straight to the grouping of boutique clothing-stores with fashionably sparse window-displays. Lally glanced around the opulent hotel’s interior; that opulence tied in with what she saw here. A qualm struck; she leaned towards Cam and whispered urgently, ‘That looks like a designer original dress in the window.’

‘It is, but from my research there are plenty of non-designer dresses in the shop as well.’ Cam stepped inside without giving Lally a chance to argue it one way or another. ‘And here’s our shop assistant ready to help us.’

‘But the money,’ Lally whispered, and tugged on his arm. ‘It all looks expensive. You can’t…’

He turned and gave a reassuring smile. ‘These purchases are a legitimate business expense. I’ll claim them against tax, and I get to give a great housekeeper the gift of a few things after we’ve used them for my research—if you’d like them. You’ll let me do that rather than throwing them out, won’t you?’

‘Throw?’ Lally bit back a gasp. He wanted her to let him buy the things and then give them to her, but she’d thought if that happened it would be in a very inexpensive way.

‘It’s not hurting anything, Lally.’ He said it in such a businesslike way. ‘I need this kind of setting. You understand?’

Lally calmed down a little. This was just work, when all was said and done. Unusual, maybe, but still work.

If her awareness of him suggested differently, well, she would get that sorted out. She would. She’d just watch very carefully to make sure they didn’t end up buying a dress that cost a ridiculous amount of money.

‘Good evening. How may I help you?’ The saleswoman was already sizing Lally up.

‘We need a dress. Something bright, flattering and elegant; a handbag; earrings, and I think…’ Cam’s gaze shifted to Lally’s neck and lingered there. ‘Yes, a necklace. I’ll know what I want for that once we choose the dress. Hmm…’ He turned to the saleswoman.

‘I don’t know much about this, but something that will suit her colouring, bring out the brown of her eyes and make the most of her hair. That’s what I want.’

You should be in colours, Latitia. You were born for them on all sides of your family tree!

Mum had said that to her—recently, actually, now Lally thought of it. She had given Lally an almost disappointed look when Lally had shrugged her shoulders and said she preferred plain colours, and shades that blended rather than stood out. Mum had looked away and muttered something about ‘long-term hibernation behaviour. ’

A week later Lally had finished working at the fishing-tackle-and-bait store, and she’d no longer been needed in the next job she’d had lined up in the family. The whole family had been just fine getting along without her, and she’d ended up with Cam.

Now they were shopping, and he had his arm loosely against her shoulders; when had that happened?

Lally looked away in case she was gaping over the list he’d just given the saleswoman. Lally’s glance fell on a mirror on the shop-wall that showed their reflections. Cam had a spark of enjoyment in his eyes.

Worse was the corresponding sparkle in her eyes.

More dangerous still was how much she liked the look of those two reflections; side by side.

Lally could count on one hand the number of times she’d been out on a date since the disaster of Sam six years ago. The last time must have been over a year ago. Those dates had been pleasant enough, she supposed, but in a very controlled way for her, and she’d never looked for a repeat.

Her reaction just now hadn’t felt controlled. Plus, this was not a date!

‘Nothing designer,’ Lally said with about as much spine in her tone as an overcooked noodle. She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Maybe you have a sale rack?’

‘Perish that thought.’ The sales lady said it with good humour, disappeared for a moment and returned with a garment over her arm. ‘Perhaps you’d like to try this? It’s middle range, though it’s an odd thing to be told not to include designer choices!’ She held up a flow of deep-red silk.

‘Oh, it’s…gorgeous.’ The words poured out of Lally’s mouth before she could stop them; to her credit she tried to back-pedal as soon as it happened. ‘That is, I’m not sure. It’s awfully noticeable—the colour and style…’ Lally broke off and turned to Cam. ‘I guess that doesn’t matter. It’s only to help you to figure out what you want.’

‘That’s right. It seems…as good a choice as any.’ He nodded. ‘I’m having fun, Lally, and that’s got to be good for my muse. So, go and try the dress on, please.’

‘It will make you look absolutely radiant, dear.’ Somehow the woman had her hustled through the store and into a changing room with the dress pushed into her hands before Lally quite realised what had happened. Her last glimpse before the dressing room door closed was of Cam turning to examine a shelf of evening bags with a purposeful and cheerful glint in his eyes.

Lally locked the dressing-room door, turned to the mirror, and saw a bright-eyed girl with red silk clutched in her hands.

‘It won’t fit,’ she muttered, not sure if she was being hopeful, practical, hedging her bets or trying to talk herself out of a love affair that had already taken wings the moment the saleswoman held up the dress.

‘You’re such a predictable female, Lally.’ She muttered the words beneath her breath. ‘The first time someone throws a pretty dress at you, and all your past decisions about fashion choices and colours go out the window.’

Oh, but this was different. This wasn’t for her, not really. This was for research so Cam could look at Lally and choose a whole different look for his book character.

It was reverse psychology, and it would work; Lally just knew it would. Lally was just the human mannequin for the evening, as cardboard and one-dimensional as could be.

She was filled with a lot of excitement for someone who was one dimensional, though.

‘Are you done?’ Cam’s voice sounded from outside the cubicle. ‘May I see the dress on you?’

Lally was done. She’d simply been standing there staring mutely at the transformation that had appeared in the mirror. She didn’t feel much like a mannequin; she felt like a girl in a gorgeous dress.

‘I’m not sure if this…’ Lally put her hand on the door latch, unlocked it and pulled it open.

‘You…’ The single word trailed away as Cam’s gaze slowly travelled from her head to her toes and back again.

‘It seems to be the right size.’ Lally resisted the urge to fidget with the hem or twitch the fabric over her hips. The dress fitted like a glove and flowed over her curves in all the right ways.

‘It’s perf—That is, I’m sure it’ll be fine for our purpose, to help me figure out what the heroine in the story would wear.’ Cam gave one slow blink and his voice deepened as he held out his hand. ‘Put these on with it, please.’

A drop-necklace and set of dangling earrings were settled into the palm of her hand, and her fingers were curled closed over them. ‘I slipped out to the jewellery store beside this one while you changed into the dress.’

‘Okay, well, I’ll put them on.’ Their fingers brushed as Lally made sure she had a proper grip on the items.

Her heart was pounding. It was so stupid, but she fell silent as she withdrew her hand. Had Cam’s hand moved away quite slowly, as though he might have been almost reluctant to lose the contact?

‘There’s a bag too.’ His voice was deep and he cleared his throat before he went on. ‘I’ll give that to you when you come out.’

Lally could have put the necklace and earrings on in front of him, but she was rather glad for a moment to herself. She had to pull herself together.

The earrings were simple gold with a pearl drop that bumped against her neck when she moved her head. The matching pearl-drop necklace nestled between her breasts. It would have been difficult to find a set to create a better foil for the dress.

No, Lally, it suits you and the dress perfectly.

Lally tucked her hair behind her ears to showcase the earrings. They really needed an upswept hairstyle; so did the dress. Lally took another proper look in the mirror.

The dress was deep red with a crossover V-neckline that cupped her breasts. It was deceptively simple, clinging in beautifully cut lines until it fell in loose folds to just below her knees. The hem was handkerchief-cut and swirled as she moved.

Cameron had dressed her the way she would have dressed herself six years ago. No; he’d dressed her the way that eighteen-year-old would have dressed six years on if she hadn’t hidden herself in bland colours.

She hadn’t hidden herself. She’d outgrown colours.

Have you, Lally? Because you look great in this, vibrant and alive and ready to take on the world. Ready to participate in the world, not avoid it from within the heart of your family.

Oh, this was silly! Lally was helping Cam; they were doing research. She wanted to get on with that and leave these other thoughts behind her. He’d look at all this, and it might look good on her, but it would help him see how he wanted to dress his heroine. He might put his character in faux fur, or shiny pink plastic, or dress her in blue velvet.

Lally gathered her other clothes into her hands, flung the door open and stepped out. She joined Cam at the service counter where he’d just finished paying for his transaction. ‘I’m ready to get on with the rest of our research.’

And that was what this was truly all about.




CHAPTER FIVE


‘THE hairdresser is next.’ Cam made this announcement and led Lally towards the hotel salon. He pressed a small sparkly bag into her hands as they walked. His other hand held a bag the saleswoman had kindly supplied for Lally’s day clothes. ‘In the scene, the female character would make out that she wanted to be showered with as much “spoiling” as she could get.’

‘And your male lead would be determined to do that, to keep her suspicions at bay about his real motives. They’ll be deep in their false roles.’ Lally took the small bag; she couldn’t take her eyes from his face. The grooves at the sides of his mouth were deep. His face had the kind of stillness that concealed attraction and awareness.

Though she knew she shouldn’t, though there were a thousand reasons why it would be better if she failed to react to this at all, Lally’s gaze locked with his. Her fingers closed about the short strap of the bag, she drew a deep, deep breath and admitted, to herself at least, that she was equally attracted to Cam. That had to stop right now. They had to get the fun back and avoid these other inappropriate responses to each other. It was probably just the atmosphere getting to both of them, anyway.

Somehow Lally got through the appointment with the hair stylist. It helped that Cam sat on a lounge in the waiting area and buried his nose in a magazine.

Half an hour later Lally got up from the chair with her curls artfully drawn away from her face in a high pony-tail with just a few tendrils trailing down her back.

‘Shoes.’ Cameron murmured the single word as his gaze tracked over her hair and the vulnerable nape of her neck.

‘You’ll have to decide about your heroine’s hair,’ Lally said, and hoped the desperate edge couldn’t be heard in her tone. ‘It’s probably ice-blonde, straight and swept up in a bun away from her model-gorgeous face.’

‘Uh, yes. Perhaps.’ Cam drew her to a shoe shop.

Lally’s transformation to Cinderella-dressed-for-the-ball reached its final moment as they stepped through the door. She spotted the sandals immediately. They were third row down on an elegant stand, they had their own name—Grace After Midnight—and she had to have them.

Six inch stiletto gold-and-black heels; tiny criss-cross gold-and-black strips across the instep. Elegant ankle straps. All of Lally’s sensible thoughts and cautions disintegrated for that moment of time. She forgot the purpose of the night, forgot everything—well, not Cam, but he did take second place to the shoes for a minute.

‘I’ll pay for these myself.’ They were in her hands before she finished speaking the words, on her feet moments later. They fit like a dream; these shoes were meant to be.

Lally had her credit card and there were fifty dollars in the pocket of the skirt that had gone into the dress shop bag with her other clothes. She held her hand out to Cam. He came back into focus, and so did his grin that held outright amusement—was that a hint of enchantment?

Of course it isn’t, Lally. It so totally isn’t! ‘I need the bag, please.’

‘No. I’ve got this.’ Cam paid for the shoes and hustled her out of the store.

‘You don’t understand. I had to have them, you see.’ How did she explain the compulsion that took a pair of shoes from stage prop to girl’s best friend? And how that meant she couldn’t let him pay for her pure indulgence.

‘And I’d have paid that much or more for any choice that you made.’ With those few words, Cam dismissed the matter.

And he truly did dismiss it. The glint in his eyes was a good-humoured one, but it also warned her that arguing would be futile. He tucked her arm through his and led her towards the hotel’s restaurant. ‘You look great, Lally. You’re made for bright colours.’

‘That’s what Mum says.’ Business, Lally! She must remember tonight was about his work, no matter how he’d been looking at her or how it felt to walk at his side and feel as though she were made to belong there.

‘Over dinner we’ll discuss where this has put you in terms of figuring out your heroine,’ Lally declared, and led the way with determination towards their dining table.



Lally looked amazing; the thought washed through Cam yet again as he escorted his housekeeper into the restaurant. She looked amazing, was dressed amazingly and walked incredibly in heels that would have stopped a lot of women in their tracks.

He’d told Lally she was made for colours. What he hadn’t said was that she was made for all of this—the dress, the shoes, the lovely hair, the sparkle in her eyes…

Yes, he had needed this research for his story. Seeing Lally in the clothes had somehow made her more vibrant and real to him, and that had, indeed, already helped him to start seeing his book’s heroine.

Not an ice-blonde, but a woman in her late thirties with elegant looks and straight brunette hair in a cap-cut to her head. A woman who wore classic black. Lally’s reverse-psychology theory was working. Her quirky approach to the problem had got him well on the way to resolving it.

He’d thought that to fix his writer’s block he needed a housekeeper to free up his time so he could concentrate better.

What he’d needed was tonight’s insights.

‘This way, please.’ The waiter seated them with a flourish at the table Cam had booked earlier. The man’s gaze rested for a long moment on Lally’s beauty.

Cam could only silently agree.

‘I feel quite transformed.’ Lally’s fingers toyed with the clasp of the small bag in her lap after the waiter walked away. ‘Cinderella ready for the ball, except the shoes aren’t glass.’ Her lips pressed together. ‘Well, this isn’t about me. What would your book character be wearing? What would she have bought in the shop?’

‘The shoes are better than glass.’ They revealed the beauty of Lally’s calf muscles, the delicate shape of her feet, the slender ankles. But that wasn’t something Cam should tell his housekeeper. ‘My heroine would be in a black dress. Full length and fitted. She’s in black stiletto-shoes with a closed toe and heel—what do you call those?’

‘Pumps?’

‘Yes.’ Cam nodded. ‘She’s wearing diamonds, a choker around her throat, a thick tennis-bracelet style of cuff on her right wrist. Earrings that are a carat apiece.’

‘You’re working her out! That’s great.’ Lally glanced down at the bag in her lap. ‘The diamanté on this is amazing. It looks so real.’

Cam thought about avoiding her gaze when she raised it, but in the end he simply returned it and hoped he didn’t look too guilty. Or too sheepish. ‘They are real, but there aren’t many, and they’re very small. The bags with fake stones cost nearly as much.’

He added somewhat craftily, ‘It’s the perfect size for a small ladies’ handgun.’

‘Ooh.’ Lally’s eyes lit up and she leaned forward in her chair, her whole face alight with interest and excitement. ‘Is she an assassin? A double agent?’

‘Close to that.’ He knew he was being mysterious, but the desire to tease her just a little had got hold of him. Cam’s gaze tracked over her hair and the sweep of her neck, the soft nape, and he forgot about his characters.

Instead, Cam wanted to kiss Lally right there at the base of her neck, to inhale the scent of her skin and brush his lips over the side of her neck and across her face. He felt ridiculously proud that he’d been able to distract her about the cost of the bag. ‘Don’t tell anyone what ideas I have in mind for the heroine.’ He winked. ‘I have to keep the book’s secrets until it hits the shelves, otherwise my career as a writer is over.’

‘I won’t tell a soul.’ She crossed her heart with her fingers, joining in the fun. ‘I guess it’s all right to confess I’m enjoying the dress, and I love the shoes. I had a pair that were similar when I was fresh out of high school.’ Lally made this admission almost guiltily. ‘They were cheaper, and not quite as pretty, but they made me feel…’

‘Beautiful? You are.’

Maybe he shouldn’t have said it—probably he shouldn’t have said it—but the words were out.

‘Thank you.’ Lally registered Cam’s words and tried not to let her feelings melt. If she simply felt complimented, that would be okay, still manageable. The charming man tells the girl she looks great, the girl appreciates his words of admiration and takes them for what they are: a compliment. The same as he might give to any other woman while they were working on an unusual project together.

But she didn’t feel only complimented; she felt Cam’s awareness of her, and hers of him. She felt the consciousness that flowed back and forth between them that had been beneath the surface from the start of the night, but hidden under the excitement and fun factor of their research and role-playing.

That consciousness was there. Even now as they sat here, Cam’s upper body leaned forward as though he’d like to close the distance of the table that separated them and press a soft kiss to her lips.

Lally’s body leaned in too, until she forcibly stopped herself and straightened her spine.

She had to remember that Cameron Travers was her employer, not a man she would like to melt into, to kiss and be kissed by.

‘We should choose something to eat.’ Lally dropped her gaze to the menu; she flipped it open and stared blindly at the entrées. ‘Do you need us to choose anything specific for research purposes?’

‘No. Just choose what you’d like to eat.’ Cam, too, turned his attention to his menu.

You see? They were being perfectly sensible.

Eventually the list of dishes unscrambled itself enough that Lally could read it: tuscan prawns; artichoke and sweet-potato soup—Cam would avoid that one—lamb, leek and bread broth; baked cheese bites in puff pastry with a dark-plum dipping sauce.

‘I think I’ll have the broth.’ Lally rejected the appeal of spicy prawns, of sensually melted cheese in pastry. ‘Yes, the broth. Something healthy and ordinary. It seems exactly what I’d like.’

She was a sensible, ordinary girl, after all, even if she had allowed herself to be swept up in the purchase of a lovely dress and a pair of stunning shoes.

Over all, Lally had progressed past being influenced by emotions, sudden whims or anything else uncontrolled.

Sam had taught her that lesson—well, in truth, the pain she had caused out of knowing him had taught her. Lally’s good cheer wobbled.

In that moment Cam glanced at her, smiled and said softly, ‘Thank you, Lally, for being such a good sport tonight. I’ve really enjoyed myself, enjoyed the research. I’ve got ideas coming into focus in my mind. You’ve helped me to get the muse back on track.’

‘You’re welcome. It’s been my pleasure to help you.’ Lally pushed those other unhappy thoughts far away.

Cameron’s eyes moved over his menu, but a smile lingered on his face. After that he led the conversation onto the topic of his property development; maybe he knew she needed that easing of tension.

He talked about the challenge of obtaining good workers in locations all around Australia wherever he purchased properties to develop, and the properties themselves. Lally relaxed and her happiness came back.

‘You’ve certainly developed some interesting projects over the years. Several of my family members might be interested in the art gallery you mentioned in the tourist township on the Queensland coast.’ Some of them might like to have work exhibited there, if the gallery manager was interested.

Their entrées arrived and Lally dipped her spoon into the broth. It was thick with chunks of lamb, loaded with fresh colourful vegetables, and the aroma was spicy. She took the first taste onto her tongue and closed her eyes while the flavours exploded on her palate.

Cameron cut a piece from a Tuscan prawn, popped it into his mouth and chewed. He gestured towards her soup bowl. ‘How is it?’

‘Fabulously interesting and totally yummy.’ Lally smiled in wry acceptance. She was wearing a beautiful red dress and killer heels—would it really hurt for her to eat exciting food too?

They talked about nothing much. It should have been totally unthreatening; instead, a rising consciousness seemed to fill the air between them once again until every breath she took held the essence of that consciousness, whether Lally felt ready to feel like that or not.

When Cam picked up his fork and knife, Lally realised they’d both been sitting there staring at each other in unmoving silence.

At what point had they put down their implements and simply sat in quiet stillness?

Almost…like lovers.

The way you used to stare at Sam across a dinner table, totally besotted, and with no thought for anything beyond the smooth words, smoother smiles and the looks he used to send your way?

‘How, um, how would your heroine behave at this point of the evening?’ They’d finished the entrées; Lally sipped her water and told herself she had to do better than this.

‘Here we are.’ A waiter deftly reordered their table setting and offered Cam a choice of wines to go with their main course. Cam had chosen flame-grilled steak; Lally, Barramundi fillets with a creamy herbed-lemon dressing.

‘I’d like Chardonnay, please.’ Lally felt pleased that her voice sounded normal. They’d opted out of the wine to start with, and she’d appreciated that too.

Cameron examined the labels of the wines the waiter had brought and approved a Chardonnay for Lally and a red for himself. The waiter poured and left, and they started their meals.

Cam answered her question then. ‘The heroine would be doing her best to distract the hero and keep his mind jumping so he doesn’t have time to wonder what she’s up to.’ He glanced at his plate and then hers. ‘For us, for now, I’d like descriptions of the food so I can use the dishes in the book, I think. I can see the characters eating these meals.’

‘Oh—okay. The fish is moist and flaky; the sauce is tart enough to balance the creaminess.’ Lally did her best to describe the combination of textures and tastes.

She could see Cam making mental notes, and she tried to feel that they’d left behind their consciousness of each other, but it felt as though it still simmered beneath the surface.

There had to be some way to stop that simmering. It was inappropriate for her to simmer in this setting.

And if your boss is simmering?

Well, Lally didn’t know—and what were they anyway, a matching set of human saucepans?

‘Do you think you’ll take on other property-development projects in Adelaide?’ Yes, that was the way to express an everyday, businesslike interest and nothing more—ask a question that made her sound as though she wanted to be assured he wouldn’t be leaving after a few short weeks!

‘Tell me about your family. You mentioned art and restaurants.’

Cam spoke at the same time. They both stopped. He brushed his hand over the back of his neck.

If Lally got started on family, they would still be here when the place closed for the night. And she did want to know what his future plans might be, even if that made her nosy.

‘I may take on further projects here.’ Cam didn’t seem to make too much of her question. He started to talk about other buildings in various parts of Adelaide. ‘There’s a block of apartments, dilapidated but in an area that I know would resell really well. I put an offer in on those earlier today.’

As though there was nothing exciting or fascinating about buying up another building; perhaps to him there wasn’t. He bought and sold in dollar figures she could only dream about. She found his ability to write stories fascinating, too, his imagination and his interest in hands-on research. The dimple in his chin, the groove on his forehead…

Are not fascinating, Lally!

All right, fine; as a person, Cameron Travers was interesting—complex, busy, bordering on workaholic. And an insomniac. And, for whatever reason, Lally found all of this a little too intriguing for her own calm and controlled state of mind.

They made their way through the remainder of the meal. Cameron occasionally jotted notes on a small note-pad he drew from his trouser pocket, but Lally felt as though his attention never left her, never left them. Which was quite silly, because this wasn’t about her or them.

Finally, they finished the last sip of their coffee. Lally pushed away her half-eaten dessert of a profiterole filled with crème custard and coated in crunchy strands of caramelised sugar. ‘That’s delicious, but I can’t fit it all in.’

Cam patted his flat stomach and pushed the platter of cheese and crackers into the middle of the table. ‘I’m done there too.’ He glanced at his watch and met her gaze with eyes that were piercing and interested, weary, alert and conscious of her all at once. ‘It’s after eleven. Will you come and do the final step of tonight’s adventure with me now?’

Deep tone. Words meant to be about his work. Expression that was somewhat about that. Yet…

‘That’s what we’re here for.’ Lally agreed while her senses were in a muddle reacting to him.

She agreed before her brain engaged at all, really. That was dangerous, as was the feel of his arm holding her fingers tucked against his side as they left the restaurant after he paid for their meal. She could feel the muscles over his ribs moving as he walked; his skin beneath his shirt was warm against the back of her fingers.

He felt lean and fit—he was lean and fit—and gorgeous and appealing into the bargain. Lally shouldn’t be feeling these responses to him because she needed to protect herself. She was not ready to tackle another relationship with a man, and, even if she was, that man wasn’t going to be a millionaire, incredibly focused, fabulous and famous temporary boss: Cam was way out of her league.

So, what was she about, leaning against his side this way?

They climbed into a service lift that took them to the top of the hotel.

‘It’s only five storeys high, but I do want to go all the way to the roof for this.’ Cameron said it almost as though he felt he should apologise for this fact.

‘Whatever works best for your story.’ Lally told herself she had overcome her momentary lapse, that she had herself well in hand now.

That theory lasted until she looked into Cameron’s eyes and her pulse started to throb at her wrists and at the base of her neck. And—oh, it was silly—she suddenly she felt a bit…nervous too.

‘That’s exactly what I wanted to see, Lally—the edge of caution, even though at this stage you don’t believe you’re in any true danger.’ His words were a glide of consonants and cadence that crossed her senses like the brush of velvet over her skin. ‘That’s a look I can describe for my heroine to good effect in the book.’

The lift stopped and they stepped out onto the flat rooftop area of the building. Cam glanced around and led her towards the edge with a firm grip on her arm. ‘You don’t suffer from vertigo or anything like that?’

‘No. I don’t.’ Even so, Lally made no bones about leaning into his firm hold now; it was a long drop to ground level. Too bad if that made her look clingy just at the moment. ‘What?’

‘Look at the drop for me. Then we’re going to act out…’ He led her close enough that she could look over.

As Lally truly registered that they stood five storeys up on a deserted rooftop late at night, her imagination kicked in. What did Cam plan to write about this setting? What did he want her to do?

Lally glanced at her boss, and adrenalin and excitement coursed through her veins. It seemed necessary to speak in a hushed tone, and she whispered, ‘This is going to be a real rush, isn’t it? Like skydiving or something. My instincts are telling me it will be exciting. My heart’s in my throat already and I don’t even know yet.’

‘I don’t know what you’ll think.’ His fingers tightened their hold around her arm. ‘But we’re going to find out.’




CHAPTER SIX


‘YOU’LL be completely safe, Lally, but you may not feel safe for a moment or two.’ Cam’s gaze searched her face.

‘Whatever it is, I’m ready.’ Lally ignored the breathless edge to her voice and the nervous tension that went with it.

Cam clasped his fingers loosely about her elbows. ‘This would all happen very fast. She wouldn’t have time to think, but for the point of this exercise I’ll talk you through some of it. I want your thoughts on what her reactions would be.’

It was automatic for Lally’s hands to come up and splay against his chest through the cloth of his dinner jacket. The evening bag was over one of her wrists. ‘I think your heroine would feel her heart-rate speed up, and she would tell herself to be careful. Be very careful.’

Cameron’s glance rested briefly on her mouth. ‘She doesn’t know whether he intends to kiss her, attack her, accuse her, hold her at gunpoint, try to overpower her or throw her over the edge. Is he on to her secrets?’

‘And is she on to his?’

No sooner had Lally got the question out than Cam drew her back a little from the edge. He swept her up in his arms in a lightning-fast move. One hand came under the back of her thighs, the other cupped behind her shoulders. Her handbag was jammed between their bodies. His face was inches from hers.

They were a safe distance from the edge but, oh, it didn’t feel safe in those first moments. Lally caught her breath and a soft gasp of sound left her parted lips. Her free hand locked around the back of his neck.

‘Easy.’ Cam felt Lally’s arm lock around the muscles in his neck, and he took two long steps, not towards the edge but parallel to it. ‘Sorry. I need to know how my male lead would feel carrying her.’

‘If he’s doing it to get closer to the edge, she’d be fighting him.’ Lally’s words brushed against his temple and cheek. ‘She’d struggle to get free.’

Lally was tense, but not struggling.

Cam had to think about his characters. The research. He could see the characters clearly in his mind.

That was great; his instincts told him he would be able to write this scene. He had his female character fixed now, defined, he knew who she was and that she would work well for his story. That issue was resolved for Cam.

What wasn’t resolved was his desire for the woman in his arms. That had been getting further and further away from his control since they’d first schemed this idea up earlier today. Maybe the excitement of it, the sheer fun of planning and executing it, was why Cam hadn’t controlled his other responses to Lally very well.

‘Yes, she would struggle to get free, but I’ll deal with working that out for myself or we can role-play it elsewhere. Even though we’re away from the edge, I don’t want to risk losing my balance or anything while we’re up here.’ He tried to sound focused and interested in the research. Not distracted…

‘If he does intend to throw her, the best thing she could do is refuse to release her hold on him, unless he was prepared to go over with her.’ Lally made this observation with what judiciousness she could find in the face of her distraction. Being held this way, held close to Cam’s broad chest, made thinking difficult. ‘Or unless he had the capacity to subdue her some other way before he tossed her over.’

In tandem with her words, Lally’s hand locked harder about his neck.

Cam moved his body enough to allow her to get her other hand free. ‘In the scene, she would struggle to get that hand loose.’

Lally added it to her hold about his neck. ‘So she’d hold on like this?’

‘At this stage, yes.’ God, his voice was way too deep, and his entire body seemed utterly focused on what he held.

And what he held was Lally Douglas in a flowing, beautiful dress that made her look both sultry and alluring. He felt the brush of the soft fabric over his hand where he held her in his arms; the hem wrapped around his trouser legs. He held Lally, her face upturned towards his, excitement and an edge of uncertainty stamped on that face.

It was not because she didn’t feel safe with him. There was apprehension of another kind, the sort a person felt when they entered uncharted territory with someone they found attractive.

Are you cataloguing her reactions now, Travers, or your reactions to her?

Cam stopped walking and murmured, ‘She would quite probably try to reach for the gun in her purse.’

‘Yes.’ Her words whispered into the stillness. She didn’t move.

Cam’s focus was on her face, his gaze touching on each feature—eyes, cheeks, nose, finally lingering on her mouth. His look, filled with want, desire and something perhaps deeper than both of those things, drew Lally’s gaze to his eyes and locked it there. Her breath stilled all over again. All around them was darkness and city silence, which was no silence at all, but it still shrouded them in isolation here while the world went by below.

Darkness and aloneness and consciousness.

Cam’s gaze met hers once more in the dimness, and everything slid into a different place for Lally. The evening; the slow meal and their talk about his writing and work projects; her determination not to look too deeply into herself: it had all mixed in together and blurred into this one moment that was so much more than the compilation of those parts. That really had nothing at all to do with those parts.

‘I shouldn’t have picked you up like this.’ He murmured the words, but he didn’t let her go.

Instead his hand wrapped more firmly behind her shoulders and he shifted to stand with his legs splayed apart.

His head lowered towards her. ‘Tell me not to…’

‘Not to…?’ But Lally knew. She looked into his eyes and she couldn’t say the words. How could she say those words to Cam when his gaze was on her this way, desire stamped across his cheekbones, burned into the shadows beneath his eyes, etched over lips that softened and dipped towards hers?

She should say no. She needed to protect her emotions and not take risks, but Lally could only wait while her lips softened in anticipation.

And then he was there. The kiss she had secretly longed for was happening.

His lips tasted faintly of coffee, and were both firm and gentle as he softly kissed her, oh, so softly, as though they had all the time in the world and all he wanted to do was this.

She’d thought she was holding her own, that she had control over this evening with him. That she had at least held on to a little of what it was all about, remembered they were doing this for his research and no other reason.

Well, this didn’t feel like research. Her lips softened beneath his and when he slid her slowly down his body until her feet touched concrete it felt natural and right to let his arms close around her, to step fully into his embrace and let the kiss take them where it would.

Cam made a soft sound in the back of his throat. He deepened their kiss, his lips caressing hers, moulding to hers, tasting and giving and taking. One hand splayed against the small of her back; the long, lean fingers of the other wrapped around her jaw.

Lally responded with a deepening of desire for him, but she also softened for him. Her emotions melted into a puddle inside her; if he’d wanted, he could have walked straight in and…

Well, she wasn’t sure. Taken whatever he wanted? Hurt her because she wasn’t ready to trust a man again, wasn’t sure she could ever do that again? She wasn’t sure she could trust herself.

Lally became conscious of just how intimately they were pressed together; their bodies were flush against each other from chest to knee. Cam’s fingers were stroking up and down her bare shoulders and back. Hers—were in his hair, clasping his shoulder while her entire body seemed to strain for closeness with his.

Oh, Lally. What are you thinking?

Lally forced her mouth to leave his, her body to draw back. Each action felt as though it took an aeon to execute. She shouldn’t feel anything towards Cam, not in this way. He was her boss; she was his employee. Lally felt panicked.

Think how Cam kissed you, Lally. How he drew a response from you so easily and so thoroughly, made you feel as though you were receiving your first ever real kiss.

Sam had made her feel that way. With Sam, it had been her first ever kiss. First kiss, first everything.

That was hardly the point here.

Well, what was the point? She couldn’t let herself be affected by what they had shared in these moments. She couldn’t let herself care again—

Lally forced herself to meet Cam’s gaze and opened her mouth to speak, to play this down, to say something about work or characterisation or research.

Anything.

But her lips still tingled from the press of his. Even now her body begged her to step back into his embrace, to take their kiss even further, prolong the closeness and connection.

Finally Lally found words. ‘I’m not looking for an involvement. Not that I’m suggesting you are. This…We forgot ourselves for a moment. There’s no need to make a fuss about it, but it mustn’t happen again; it’s not wise. You’re a busy man with loads on your plate, and your struggle to sleep to deal with, let alone a recalcitrant muse and a highly demanding business in Sydney. And I work for you!’

‘I know.’ He swallowed hard. Regret etched lines into his face that hadn’t been there before. ‘I understand all of that, Lally. It was wrong of me to kiss you. I’m not looking for a relationship. I don’t—that’s not in my agenda, and it’s not smart to mix work with that anyway. And you’re quite right. You wouldn’t want…’

Whatever he’d been about to say, he cut the words off, but the message was there anyway. He agreed with her. This kiss shouldn’t have happened. They had to respect the boundaries of their working relationship. He didn’t want her, not really. Not like that.

Lally drew a breath and blurted, ‘I didn’t mean to set up this night to lead to this.’

‘I know.’ His words were deep and genuine. ‘I had a problem with my writing, you thought of a great solution. We both got excited about it and in that excitement, for a few moments, we forgot ourselves.’

His summary of events left out a few things—such as the way they’d both become more aware of each other as the evening had worn on—but Lally nodded. ‘That’s right. I’m glad we got that sorted out.’ She forced a relieved smile. ‘Phew. Well, are we finished here? Do you have what you need for your research? Maybe we should head home—I mean, back to your property development.’

‘I have everything I need.’ Cam watched emotions flit across Lally’s face and felt them churn inside him. Kissing her had been amazing. Yes, he’d made all sorts of comments on how that had come about and why it shouldn’t have and everything else. Those comments were real and true; they just weren’t all of it. And they didn’t even begin to touch on how he’d felt inside himself as a result of these shared moments. Cam didn’t want to examine those feelings, but the thoughts came anyway.

He’d kissed her softly in a way he had never kissed any other woman. He’d kissed Lally after trying to ignore the need to do it all night. He’d kissed her to pay homage to her beauty and how lovely she looked in that dress. He’d done it because something inside him had needed to.

He couldn’t tell her any of that. Because Lally didn’t want this. She’d made that clear and she’d looked scared when she said it. Scared from somewhere inside that Cam shouldn’t mess with because she could end up getting hurt, and the last thing he wanted was to hurt her.

He wanted to know what had hurt her, but he mustn’t mess with that either. He had no right, no claim on her, aside from being her very temporary employer, nor would he ever seek to change that. Cam didn’t want this either; he couldn’t pursue it. He’d only end up disappointing her, not being what she needed. He’d proved that about himself already.

He was an insomniac, workaholic, novelwriting businessman who couldn’t stay in one place, couldn’t rest, had no idea how to be a family. He and his mother might have been linked during his childhood but she hadn’t wanted him. And Cam had learned not to be wanted.

He’d tried to break out of that once, in his midtwenties. Gillian…

Cam had built up Gillian’s expectations, and when she’d realised just how much of him would never be hers, when she had come to understand just how much his past history and his insomnia impacted on his daily life, she’d been let down, disappointed and ultimately hurt. She’d wanted and needed more than he’d been able to give her. She’d been right to want that, and right to walk away.

They’d gone their separate ways and Cam had learned a lesson. He didn’t want to hurt a woman like that again. He didn’t want to set himself up for that kind of loss again either. He knew what he could and couldn’t have.

Yet tonight Cam had forgotten all that past history, that painful learning-curve that he’d sworn not to repeat. He’d kissed a slip of a girl on a rooftop, had found all this tenderness and all these other responses to her inside him. He hadn’t simply wanted to give them to her, he’d felt driven to bring them to her. That wasn’t something he’d experienced with Gillian; it wasn’t something he’d ever experienced with any woman.

That fact perhaps had driven him to kiss Lally. It had certainly made his reactions to her even more dangerous. He forced his arms to drop away from her, forced himself to take a step back. Every fibre of his body and mind seemed to object at once. If he drew her close again, he knew he wouldn’t want to let go at all. He’d take her hand, lead her back through this hotel, take her home and make her his completely.

Not happening, Travers.

‘We should go.’ He led Lally back the way they had come and ushered her into the service lift.

As the doors closed, Lally turned to him and said quietly, ‘Your book—did we achieve what you needed?’

It was a ploy to get the focus off them and back to the reason for this evening. Cam acknowledged this and did his best to further it. ‘I’ve decided the female character will be an undercover special-services officer, but she’s a double agent with marksman skills and a history as a hired assassin as well…’ Cam talked about his story until he had Lally out of the hotel and safely ensconced beside him in the car.

In the car’s dim interior, Cam could hear every breath Lally took, smell the soft scent of her skin and whatever lotion she’d rubbed into it after her shower tonight. He tried not to notice any of it.

‘I’m glad the research was successful and that you have a good understanding of this new character you’re bringing into your story.’ Her fingers fidgeted with the small bag in her lap. ‘You know, I really shouldn’t keep any of these things.’

‘Please. Maybe you’ll wear them some place again one day.’ And think of me. Was that what Cam wanted? His eyebrows drew together.

As they passed beneath a streetlight, Cam glanced towards her. The breeze had whipped at her hair, dishevelled it just enough to make him want to bury his hands in it, caress his fingers over her scalp and use that touch to tilt her head so he could kiss her neck, kiss her chin and find his way back to soft lips.

You’re not thinking about kissing her, remember?

They’d researched; that research had led to a kiss that shouldn’t have happened. A kiss that had blown him away, because she’d been so giving and he’d loved that and had wanted to give back in equal measure. Cam drew the convertible to a halt in an allotted space inside the property-development site. No matter how tempting, no matter how much she soothed him—no matter anything—he had to take due care that nothing like this happened again.

A woman like Lally deserved better than an insomniac workaholic who had no sense of family or ability to meet a woman’s deep needs.

There was no other way for Cam. No other way that he knew.




CHAPTER SEVEN


‘HE PUSHES himself so hard, Auntie. I really want to help him find a way to get more sleep. It’s the one thing I think I might be able to do for him, beyond the work I’m already doing.’

A week had passed since the night Lally and Cam had role-played, when he had tried to ‘toss her over’ the top of the hotel.

Lally had revisited those moments more often than she wanted to admit—not the pretend tossing, but the kissing that hadn’t been about role-playing at all.

Cam had placed his lips over hers and it had felt like the sweetest kiss of all time, sweet and gentle and tender, and Lally needed to forget it. She must have built it way up in her mind, anyway, mustn’t she? For how could she feel such a depth of reaction and response to something that, for him, must only have been the result of place, time and circumstance, nothing more?

She couldn’t start to have feelings about Cam, or towards Cam, not like those.

Lally bit back a sigh. ‘He’s my employer.’ She put a certain emphasis on the word ‘employer’; yes, that drew even more attention to her need to hold him to that role in her thinking.

If she thought of him in that light, spoke of him in that light, then eventually she would accept he was only in that light for her.

Lally glanced about her. It was only just past dawn, but already the markets were teeming with life. Mum stood with her arm linked through Aunt Edie’s. Well, that was family; you all looked after each other.

Lally felt a sudden tug of emotion as she acknowledged that thought. For six years she’d built her life around looking after everyone as best she could, and then they hadn’t needed her.

‘I’ve missed everyone. You didn’t mention how Jodie is getting along. How could I not ask about one of my sisters? Thanks for meeting me here this morning for coffee and talking about so many of them.’ She’d asked them to come and had used wanting to help her boss as her reason. And that had been the reason. Mostly.

They’d talked. Mum and Auntie had brought her up to speed on all the gossip about the family—well, almost all. Lally reiterated that she could take calls and text messages at work, that her boss wouldn’t mind.

Mum and Auntie seemed fine about that, but Lally still came away from that part of the conversation wondering if there was more under the surface. Maybe she should have just asked, but a part of her was scared of the possible answer.

Perhaps the issues with her employer were behind her general sense of unease. He’d done an exemplary job of avoiding her in the past week, aside from meal times, handing over work-lists and asking her to do various specific jobs for him. Another research trip had needed two sets of hands, not one.

He hasn’t avoided you at all, Latitia. You’ve seen loads of him.

Lally frowned. That was right, she had seen loads of him, so why did she almost feel as though she was missing him?

‘Jodie’s fine,’ Mum said.

Lally bit her lip. ‘Good. I’m glad.’ She was. And, if the answer to her other question was that she wanted Cam all over her with gentle feelings, and maybe the need to kiss her again, then she needed to stop longing for things that were completely out of the question. She was better off without them, because she really wasn’t ready to face that kind of emotional gymnastics again.

You don’t deserve ever to have a meaningful fulfilling relationship. Not after all the harm you’ve caused in the past.

The thought sent a shaft of pain through Lally’s chest. ‘What were we talking about?’

‘You were telling us about your hunky new employer,’ Auntie declared, and a grin split her weathered brown face.

‘My boss has insomnia,’ Lally said primly, and in a depressing tone focused on stopping Auntie’s speculations. ‘I woke three times last night, and every time I could see a strip of light beneath his office door and knew he was in there, working.’

Lally had been restless; she’d been restless ever since the night he’d kissed her, to be honest. ‘I wanted to know about bush foods and remedies for Cam in case there might be something that would help him sleep better.’

Her voice softened when she said his name; it went completely to mush just like that. And, because that was such a give away, Lally felt a blush build beneath her skin. She needed to put Auntie and Mum off the scent, not encourage more speculation.

‘Fresh food is a good start, of course.’ Auntie spoke as she examined Lally’s face.

‘For Cam, yes.’ Mum chipped in with her opinion, and a gleam in her eyes that definitely seemed to hold a hint of satisfaction.

Could the family have conspired to get Lally out into the world, as she’d wondered, with a view to her meeting a man, maybe?

Lally glanced at her watch and found a sudden need to become highly time-efficient. ‘I should get on with my shopping while we finish this talk.’ Lally strode to the nearest fruit stall and lifted a ripe pawpaw. If this also happened to mean that she wasn’t quite so obviously the centre of their speculation, well, that was purely happenstance.

Mum and Auntie quickly caught up with her, and Lally decided, if they were talking, she might as well spit out something else that she’d avoided once already this morning. It was bothering her. She was better off dealing with it so it could stop doing so.

Lally turned. ‘This job is the first one I’ve had where I wasn’t working for family. I want to do well at this, but I also need to know I’ll be coming back to the family the minute my work is done for Cameron Travers. Someone will need me, won’t they?’

‘Oh, well, I’m sure they will, but haven’t you found spreading your wings to be fun? It sounds as though it has been.’ Mum went on, ‘You say your employer bought you a dress and a handbag, and you helped him with research on the roof of a hotel at midnight?’

Well, not at midnight, but Lally supposed that was near enough. And, yes, it had been exciting. It just had also become somewhat complicated by the end of the night. ‘Yes, we did some research for his current book.’ Lally paid for the pawpaw and set it gently into the bottom of her shopping basket. ‘But, truly, the only reason I brought up his name this morning is because I want to try to help him sleep better. He looks so exhausted.’ She turned to her aunt. ‘Do you have any ideas?’

Auntie’s wrinkled face creased into even deeper lines. ‘There are bush foods and remedies; it depends on why he’s that way in the first place. Has he seen a doctor?’

‘I asked him about that the other day. He’s visited doctors and sleep specialists, done all the sleep studies. I think he’s tried everything he’s been told to try and come to the end of the line with no real solutions.’ Lally hesitated. ‘It’s not that he’s not alert, because he always is—he’s sharp as a whip—it’s just that…’

‘He’s sharp while he’s pushing himself, can’t relax, only sleeps until the edge is off his exhaustion, then he wakes and it’s on again for another day for him.’ Auntie nodded.

She transferred her hold from Mum’s arm to Lally’s and they made their way through the remaining market-stalls. Lally worked through her shopping list while Auntie talked.

‘You remember the tribal elder I took you to visit when you were a girl?’ Auntie named the elder. ‘He has a store. He and his wife know just about all there is to know about this kind of thing. It might be worth giving them a call.’

Lally did remember, and wished she’d thought of this earlier. ‘Thanks. That’s exactly what I need.’

They completed the shopping. ‘Thanks for meeting me this morning. I should get back to work.’

Mum laid her hand on Lally’s arm. ‘If you’re interested in your boss…’

Yes, there was definitely a gleam in Mum’s eyes that said ‘the plan is working.’ Auntie’s too.

Lally’s mouth formed words before she could stop them. ‘You all ganged together to say there was no work so I’d get out more, didn’t you?’

She wanted to be angry, to say ‘how could you?’

But Mum gave a sheepish nod and came right out and admitted it. ‘We wanted you to have some fun, Lally. Maybe this boss…’

‘He kissed me and I kissed him back, but it was a bad idea on both our parts and neither of us wants it.’ Lally drew a breath. Apparently her mother still possessed the ability to get her to confess, even when it should have been Mum doing the confessing. ‘I just care about his insomnia issues. It’s in my nature to care. I’ve always cared about the family.’

Lally gave Mum a stern stare. ‘Even when they’ve tossed me out on some made-up pretext without so much as a by your leave.’

‘The family cares about you, Lally.’ Mum sighed. ‘Please don’t be angry. Maybe we shouldn’t have done that, but it’s only for two months. We wanted to help, to see you enjoy yourself, maybe just make some nice friends.’

‘Or meet a man friend?’ Lally shook her head. ‘I wish you hadn’t. You don’t understand.’ But she wasn’t mad, and she gave Mum a hug to make that clear. ‘It’s too late to change anything now, but I’d appreciate it if you all didn’t do this again.’

‘We interfered too much. I’m sorry, Lally.’ Mum looked guilt-ridden.

Lally let it go. ‘It’s okay.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘In a family the size of ours, interfering happens. I know that.’ Lally couldn’t explain why she didn’t want a man in her life again. She bit her lip.

Auntie had wandered a little distance while Lally and Mum talked. She returned now and glanced at her watch. ‘Are you ready to go, Susan?’

‘Indeed I am.’ Mum gave Lally another hug.

Auntie gave Lally a hug.

Lally hugged both of them back, and then there were more quick words and waves. There was no need to say anything to Auntie about the rest of it.

They disappeared, and Lally walked towards the exit of the market. It was only a few blocks back to her boss’s development; maybe the walk would help her to clear her mind. At least she knew what her family had been up to now. They’d better all start contacting her again, or she would have something to say about that!

Lally glanced into her basket, checked the contents one last time and realised she’d forgotten the baby-spinach leaves she’d wanted to use in a warm chicken salad for lunch. She turned around and strode back into the heart of the market again.

‘Lally, wait up, I’ll carry the basket for you.’ It was Cam’s voice, morning-roughened and deep.

He’d called from behind her; Lally turned her head and looked over her shoulder and there he was, his gaze fixed on her as he strode forward through the crowd.

Her heart did a ridiculous lift. The world seemed suddenly brighter simply because she’d caught a glance of his face, a glimpse of a smile and softened expression directed her way.

Oh, Lally, can’t you do better than that at resisting how he makes you feel? Do you want to end up out of your depth again? He’s already made it clear he isn’t interested.

Lally just couldn’t trust again. The risks were too big. So she had to focus on the ways she could be a good employee to him.

As he joined her, Lally examined his face for signs of weariness—she found them. ‘You couldn’t sleep again this morning?’

‘No, and I’m sorry if I disturbed you last night.’ He scrubbed a hand over his jaw; it bore a day’s beard-growth. That combined with a pair of jeans, black T-shirt, and shades pushed up on his head, looked just a little disreputable. Appealingly so.

Not noticing, Lally!

She said quickly, ‘You didn’t disturb me. I was already awake. I’m just sorry you haven’t been managing to sleep more.’

‘That’s how it is.’ He took her arm and raised his eyebrows. ‘Where are you headed? When I first spotted you, I thought you’d finished and were ready to go home.’

He’d walked here just to meet her, to carry the basket for her; Lally handed it over and Cam held it easily in one hand.

She drew a breath. ‘I forgot to get baby spinach. I want it for our lunch.’ Healthy foods, healthy ingredients; she would try to help Cam eat well and sleep better. She had to try. ‘Have you had a check-up lately for your insomnia? There might be new treatments. I meant to ask that when we discussed this the other day.’

‘I have check-ups a couple of times a year.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘So far, permanently fixing it for me hasn’t worked out. I know it’s not something people can put up with.’

Now, what did he mean by that?

‘Let’s get the spinach. Over there?’ He waited while she made her purchase, and then walked with her back to the exit. They walked through and started back home along the suburban streets.

Lally had to stop thinking of it as home. It wasn’t even particularly home-like; the project was going to be full of rental apartments, for goodness’ sake, and Cam wouldn’t even be staying here once the work was done. Just because she’d become used to thinking of all sorts of places among her family as home didn’t mean she could add Cam’s property-development project to that list.

Lally didn’t know what he’d meant about people not putting up with his insomnia, but was the answer all that relevant? She could try to help him, that was all.





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