One Summer At The Lake: Maid for Montero / Still the One / Hot-Shot Doc Comes to Town. Susan Carlisle
Zara’s wrathful intake of breath had caused heads to turn and half the room had heard her hissing, ‘Do you want to split up?’
The ensuing scene could have been avoided. His error of judgement had been assuming she expected to hear him say yes.
He still wasn’t sure why he’d said it. It wasn’t as if Zara had ever been anything but shallow, but that had never been a problem. In fact it had always suited him. It wasn’t her fault that her beauty budget for a month could have paid for a disabled child’s medical treatment.
Dios, but the child had really got to him, he thought, seeing not the child’s face but the disapproval and contempt etched on the beautiful face of his new housekeeper.
There were no balloons along the driveway, just a peacock who sauntered across the road at a leisurely pace, forcing him to wait, then one of the team of gardeners at the wheel of a lawnmower on the now empty lawn as he drove past. Superficially at least everything was back to normal.
It wasn’t until he drove into the courtyard that he realised how hard he had been searching for a legitimate cause for complaint. Frowning as much at the flash of insight as at the beat-up Transit van parked beside one of the estate Land Rovers, he opened the door and peeled out of the low-slung sports car he was driving.
He had taken a couple of steps across the cobbles when he saw a denim-clad bearded figure he assumed was the driver of the eyesore vehicle, who up to that point had been concealed from Isandro by his van.
He wasn’t alone. He held in his arms a tall slender figure. Isandro stopped dead at the sight. The woman wrapped in the circle of another man’s arms had her face hidden from him but the slim body was that of his housekeeper.
Anger flooded into his body, the speed and strength of the flood of emotion leaching the colour from the sculpted bones of his strong features. For the space of several heartbeats his ability to think was obliterated by pure fury as he stood with his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
As the woman emerged from the embrace, pulling away from the man’s chest, he kept hold of her upper arms, saying something that made her laugh before jumping into the van and closing the door behind him with a bang.
It was the musical sound of her laughter and not the reverberating sound of the door being slammed that shook him from his fugue.
Isandro inhaled and loosened his clenched fingers. His temper had been a problem when he was a boy but he was no longer a boy—he was a man who was known for his control and objectivity.
And he had objectively wanted to drag that guy off her. It wasn’t an overreaction, but a perfectly legitimate response to having his trust abused. This wasn’t about a public kiss—though you had to wonder at the woman’s taste. The point was this was not only his home, it was her workplace. This little scene represented a total lack of professionalism. He had given her a second chance, hoping that she would blow it, and she had not disappointed.
Feeling more comfortable having a satisfactory explanation for his moment of visceral rage, he began to walk towards her, the sound of his footsteps drowned out by the van’s engine as it vanished through the arch. He knew for a fact that he did not do jealousy, especially when the woman concerned was his employee. A jealous man would not have been amused rather than angry when his lover of the moment had been caught on camera by the paparazzi being as friendly as a person could be in public without being arrested.
Waving as John’s van drove away, Zoe held up her hand even after the van had vanished. Then taking a deep sustaining breath, she dropped it and turned around to face the figure she had been aware of in the periphery of her vision as John had given her a goodbye hug.
Before reaching him, her gaze swept over the low-slung powerful car parked the opposite side of the courtyard. It was a monster, low, silver and sleek. She hadn’t heard it arrive but then the noise of the running engine of John’s van had presumably drowned out the sound of the Spanish billionaire’s arrival. It had been the prickling of the hairs on the nape of her neck that had alerted her to the presence of the tall dynamic figure as she stood there saying goodbye to John.
If she’d acknowledged him then she’d have had no choice but to introduce him to John, which was something she wanted to avoid if possible.
She had promised Chloe she’d ask him about tonight and she would. This way she could sugar-coat his response—that it would be no was a given, that he wouldn’t go out of his way to frame his refusal nicely was an equally safe bet.
‘Good evening. I hope you had a good journey—’
He cut across her, launching without preamble into blighting speech. ‘I do not find the sight of my housekeeper with her tongue down the throat of a tradesman a particularly edifying sight. In the future I would be grateful if you kept your love life or what passes for it behind closed doors and on your own time the next time you fancy a bit of rough.’
For a second she was too startled, as much by the icy delivery as his interpretation of a simple goodbye hug, to respond to this ludicrous accusation. But when she did her voice shook with the effort to control her response. She took a deep breath and closed off her furious train of thought, tipping her head in an attitude she hoped suggested humility while she badly wanted to slap the look of smug contempt off his face.
‘I’ll keep that in mind when I feel the urge to force myself on some passing tradesman.’ Focusing her thoughts on the price of school sports kits helped her stay calm as she levelled a clear blue gaze at his dark lean face and finished her thought. ‘Though actually, for the record, on this occasion I was simply hugging a friend goodbye.’ Like it’s any of your business, you sanctimonious creep. ‘You’re right, he is a tradesman, but not rough at all,’ she added, unable to keep the note of shaky indignation out of her voice. ‘John is sweet.’ She lifted her chin. ‘And not the sort of man who judges people by appearances or what they do for a living.’
Politely framed or not, it was impossible to miss the fact he was being called a snob. For a moment Isandro was too astonished to be angry. For a long time in his life now there had been no one who would presume to tell him if he was out of line.
The moment passed and astonishment gave way to anger that caused the muscles along his angular jaw to tighten and quiver. ‘I do not care what the man does for a living!’
She arched a feathery brow and said politely, ‘Of course not.’
Isandro clenched his teeth, seriously tempted to give her her marching orders and to hell with the consequences, then he recalled the delicacy of the deal on the negotiating table and the outcome was by no means a given. Any hint of scandal now would make the old family firm walk away from the table.
‘What I care about is the man conducting his sex life on my doorstep!’
She stared, her blue eyes widening to their widest before narrowing into angry sparkling slits. He made it sound as if he’d discovered her having an orgy! What she couldn’t understand was how could anyone have seen anything sordid in a perfectly innocent hug?
He was madder than he had been when she had given him cause. His reaction to her using his house to raise funds without his permission had been clinical, but there was nothing at all clinical about his reaction to her imagined sin now.
‘The next time get a room.’ The snarled suggestion triggered a free-fall avalanche of images that made him lose his thread.
‘Get a room? John is married!’
His nostrils flared. ‘All the more reason, I would have thought, to show a little more circumspection,’ he declared austerely.
‘I would not have an affair with a married man!’ She took a deep breath. It really hurt to have to explain herself to this man but what choice did she have? ‘What you witnessed, Mr Montero, was simply a goodbye hug between friends,’ she told him stiffly. ‘That was John, Chloe’s husband. You remember Chloe?’
Taking his silence