After Hours.... Christy McKellen
piano. He bristled, remembering the way he’d felt the last time Cara had started to mess with his environment.
Sighing, he rubbed a hand through his hair, attempting to release the tension in his scalp. They were just flowers. He really needed to chill out or he was going to drive himself insane. Jemima would have laughed if she’d seen how strung-out he was over something so inconsequential. He could almost hear her teasing voice ringing in his ears.
A noise startled him and he whipped round to see Cara standing in the doorway to the room, dressed in worn jeans and a sloppy sweater, her face scrubbed of make-up and her bright blue eyes luminous in the soft afternoon light. To his overwrought brain, she seemed to radiate an ethereal kind of beauty, her long hair lying in soft, undulating waves around her face and her creamy skin radiant with health. He experienced a strangely intense moment of confusion, and he realised that somewhere in the depths of his screwed-up consciousness he’d half expected it to be Jemima standing there instead—which was why his, ‘Hello,’ came out more gruffly than he’d intended.
Her welcoming smile faltered and she glanced down at her fingernails and frowned, as if fighting an impulse to chew on them, but when she looked back up her smile was firmly back in place.
‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’ She tipped her head towards the piano behind him. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but the spring sunshine inspired me to put fresh flowers in most of the rooms—not your bedroom, of course; I didn’t go in there,’ she added quickly. ‘The house seemed to be crying out for a bit of life and colour and I wanted to do something to say thank you for letting me stay, even though you said I didn’t need to.’
‘Sure. That’s fine,’ was all he could muster. For some reason his blood was flying through his veins and he felt so hot he thought he might spontaneously combust at any second.
‘Oh, and I stripped and remade the bed in the room next to yours,’ she added casually. ‘It looked like the cleaners had missed it. I gave it a good vacuum, too; it was really dusty.’
The heat was swept away by a flood of icy panic. ‘You what?’
The ferocity in his tone obviously alarmed her because she flinched and blinked hard.
But hurting Cara’s feelings was the least of his worries right then.
Not waiting for her reply, he pushed past her and raced up the stairs, aware of his heart thumping painfully in his chest as he willed it not to be so.
Please don’t let her have destroyed that room.
Reaching the landing on the top floor, he flung open the door and stared into the now immaculate bedroom, the stringent scent of cleaning fluid clogging his throat and making his stomach roll.
She’d stripped it bare.
Everything he’d been protecting from the past had been torn off or wiped away. The bed, as she’d said, now had fresh linen on it.
He heard her laboured breath behind him as she made it up to the landing and whipped round to face her.
‘Where are the sheets from the bed, Cara?’ he demanded, well past the point of being able to conceal his anger.
Her face was drained of all colour. ‘What did I do wrong?’
‘The sheets, Cara—where are the sheets?’
‘I washed them,’ she whispered, unable to meet his eyes. ‘They’re in the dryer.’
That was it then. Jemima’s room was ruined.
Bitterness welled in his gut as he took in her wide-eyed bewilderment. The woman was a walking disaster area and she’d caused nothing but trouble since she got here.
A rage he couldn’t contain made him pace towards her.
‘Why do you have to meddle with everything? Hmm? What is it with you? This need to please all the time isn’t natural. In fact it’s downright pathetic. Just keep your hands off my personal stuff, okay? Is that really too much to ask?’
She seemed frozen to the spot as she stared at him with glassy eyes, her jaw clamped so tight he could see the muscle flickering under the pressure, but, instead of shouting back this time, she dragged in a sharp, painful-sounding breath before turning on the spot and walking out of the room.
He listened to her heavy footsteps on the stairs and then the slam of her bedroom door, wincing as the sound reverberated through his aching head. Staring down at the soulless bed, he allowed the heat of his bitterness and anger and shame to wash through him, leaving behind an icy numbness in its wake.
Then he closed his eyes, dropped his chin to his chest and sank down onto the last place he’d been truly happy.
* * *
Oh, God, please don’t let this be happening to me. Again.
Cara wrapped her arms around her middle and pressed her forehead against the cool wall of her bedroom, waiting for the dizziness and nausea to subside so she could pack up her things and leave.
What was it with her? She seemed destined to put herself in a position of weakness, where the only option left to her was to give up and run away.
Which she really didn’t want to do again.
But she had to protect herself. She couldn’t be around someone so toxic—someone who clearly thought so little of her. Even Ewan hadn’t been that cruel to her when he’d left her after she’d failed to live up to his exacting standards. She’d never seen a look of such pure disgust on anyone’s face before. The mere memory of it made the dizziness worse.
There was no way she was staying in a place where she’d be liable to see that look again. She’d rather go home and admit to her parents that she’d failed and deal with their badly concealed disappointment than stay here with Max any longer.
She’d never met anyone with such a quick temper. What was his problem, anyway? He appeared to have everything here: the security of a beautiful house in one of the most sought-after areas of London, a thriving business, friends who invited him out for dinner, and he clearly had pots of cash to cushion his easy, comfortable life. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more incensed she became.
Who was he to speak to her like that? Sure, there had been a couple of little bumps in the road when she’d not exactly been at her best, but she’d worked above and beyond the call of duty for the rest of the time. And she’d been trying to do something nice for him in making the house look good—pretty much the only thing she could think of to offer as a thank you to a man who seemed to have everything. What had been so awful about that? She knew she could be a bit over the top in trying to please people sometimes, but this hadn’t been a big thing. It was just an empty guest room that had been overlooked.
Wasn’t it?
The extremity of his reaction niggled at her.
Surely just giving it a quick clean didn’t deserve that angry reaction.
No.
He was a control freak bully and she needed to get away from him.
As soon as she was sure the dizziness had passed, she carefully packed up all her things and zipped them into her suitcase, fighting with all her might against the tight pressure in her throat and the itchy heat in her eyes.
She’d known this opportunity had to be too good to be true—the job, working with someone as impressive as Max and definitely being invited to stay in this amazing house.
But she wasn’t going to skulk away. If she didn’t face up to Max one last time with her head held high she’d regret it for the rest of her life. He wasn’t going to run her out of here; she was going to leave in her time and on her terms.
Taking a deep breath, she rolled her shoulders back and fixed the bland look of calm she’d become so practised at onto her face.
Okay. Time for one last confrontation.
She found