Housekeeper at His Command: The Spaniard's Virgin Housekeeper / His Pregnant Housekeeper / The Maid and the Millionaire. Caroline Anderson
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actually. In his estimation the animal’s intelligence would be on a par with its looks. Zilch!
Hanging on to the lead for grim life as the little dog shot off like a greyhound out of a trap, Cayo wondered if once again he’d been mistaken. Did the animal have enough intelligence to be heading for his mistress, or was it careening off in any direction just for the heck of it? And then he saw her.
Sitting on the bone-dry earth, one leg tucked beneath her, rubbing the ankle of the other. Her washed-out denim skirt was rucked up to thigh level. She had lovely legs, firm rounded thighs—the sort of thighs a man could dream of moving between.
Anger at his entirely inappropriate line of thought made his voice sharp as he lashed out. ‘What do you think you’re doing? We had things to discuss this morning. Did you forget? Or were you born lacking in common courtesy? And what’s wrong with your ankle?’ he added after a beat of breath. Eyes narrowing, he moderated his tone—because he recognised that his harsh verbal onslaught stood in the stead of the more physical and metaphorical promised pleasure of wringing her dainty little neck!
He’d been worried about her—anxious on her behalf. The thought that she might have taken herself out of the hotel grounds and got herself lost in a city that could present danger to a solitary and unwary female had she wandered into one of the more unsavoury areas had made him taste fear for the first time in his life.
Over the top, he recognised with shaming hindsight. Totally. He didn’t feel that protective of her!
Did he?
Madre de Dios, he was losing his marbles! Ever since she’d been around he’d been losing his fabled cool! And now she was just sitting there, cuddling the ugly pup who was frantically licking her face, ignoring him!
Planting his feet apart, he bit out in his best boardroom-silencing tones, ‘I asked you a question. What is wrong with your ankle?’
Emerging from the excess of doggy devotion that had gone some way to compensate for His Lordship’s yelling at her, Izzy tossed back her head, setting the wild silky exuberance of her long hair flying, and answered as coolly as her crossness at being unfairly bawled out would permit.
‘Nothing much. I tripped, and twisted it a bit. But it’s much better now. Thank you for asking,’ she added with an injection of sharp sarcasm, setting Benji back on the ground and hoping she could get to her feet without any real lack of dignity. She paused to lob at him, ‘I thought it was more than early enough to get a walk in before you surfaced. I didn’t twist my ankle on purpose, and I didn’t ask you to inconvenience yourself and come to look for me. So don’t snap and snarl at me! I can’t think what we have to discuss anyway, although I hadn’t forgotten. But might I suggest you make a proper appointment in future? You know—state a time and place, for example!’
She glared up into his lean, darkly handsome face and immediately wished she hadn’t. He did things to her that should be prohibited by law. And he was trying not to smile. That made it worse—made hot tears of anger well into her eyes. She was telling him off, being serious, and he thought she was funny!
Desperate to hide her reaction—the pulse-racing physical desire that flooded her whenever she was around him, or even thought about him, come to that—she scrabbled awkwardly to her feet, biting her lip and clumsily hopping on one foot. Because her wretched ankle did still hurt. She hoped he didn’t see the way her colour came and went. She couldn’t control the way heat exploded deep in her pelvis and made her feel weak and fluttery all over. It was a source of shame to her and she’d just die if he guessed what he did to her.
‘Here—’ Strong hands reached out to steady her, spanning her small waist. Her head was lowered, the silvery blond curls all over the place. He had the finger-itching impulse to run his hands through the shimmering strands, to lift swathes of it to his face and breathe in the faint flowery perfume of it. Instead he asked with commendable, drawling cool, ‘Can you put all your weight on that foot?’
Beast! Izzy’s head shot up, angry tears once more flooding her eyes. Did he have to state the obvious? That she was overweight! She’d never be a size zero, but did he have to rub her nose in it?
‘It really hurts?’ Cayo supplied softly. The sight of her tears was making his heart clench, and he surprised himself with a genuine wish that he could take whatever pain she was feeling away from her and bear it himself.
Suddenly his heart felt like marshmallow. Just because there were genuine tears sparkling in her beautiful eyes? Could a man of his age go senile?
‘Don’t cry.’ Where had that husky note come from? A frown darkened his brow. Stamping hard on the pressing urge to drop his head, close her eyelids with his lips, kiss the tears away, then trail a route down to her lush pink mouth, feel her lips parting for him, inviting him, to touch her with his hands, all of her, he gritted his teeth. He ignored the insistent ache in his groin and lifted her into his arms, striding back through the trees, the little dog trotting in his wake.
Izzy gasped as her whole body melted into his strong arms, her breathing shallow and erratic. The huffy disclaimer that her angry tears had nothing to do with the discomfort in her ankle and everything to do with his obliquely pointing out that she was a stranger to any regime of dieting and strenuous work-outs had disappeared at the speed of light.
Held by him, this close to him, their combined body heat seemed to ignite into a violent sexual conflagration, turning her mind to mush and her body to a quivering, needy wreck. She expelled a shaky moan, wound her arms around his neck and snuggled her head into his hard-muscled shoulder, wallowing in illicit sensational excitement, almost exploding with it as they reached the sun-drenched lawns.
He said, with an intensity that scorched what little was left of her brain, ‘I’ll get someone to look at that ankle.’ And then, coming out of nowhere, ‘And then I’ll kiss it better myself. Would you like that?’
Kiss it better? Would she like that?
Would she like to win the Lottery and as a bonus discover the secret of eternal youth?
She knew to her everlasting shame that she would like him—absolutely love him—to kiss every inch of her body. Her face flamed with acute mental discomfort. She who had never had any trouble holding on to her virginity, never given that state a thought, wanted him, this gorgeous man, to take it from her.
So what did that make her?
Incredibly stupid, she supplied with self-loathing. ‘Kiss it better’? Get real, girl! He’d said the sort of thing people the world over said to humour any child suffering some minor hurt.
So he was treating her like a child now, was he? An overweight child! He had the knack of making her so angry she wanted to throw things—straight at his arrogant, too-handsome head, preferably! He was the only person in the whole world who could turn her normally good-natured placid self into a seething, emotional wreck! Reduce her to wanting to boil him in oil and make mad, passionate love to him at the same time!
As far as she was concerned he was incredibly dangerous. How long would it be before she made a monumental fool of herself? Letting him know that she was so in lust with him she didn’t know what to do with herself?
He’d either laugh till his head dropped off or shoot her one look of grim distaste and make sure he never came within a hundred miles of her ever again!
True, he seemed to have changed his mind about her being a gold-digger without a moral worth mentioning. But that didn’t mean he’d be over the moon if he realised an overweight, poorly dressed domestic servant wanted to get up close and personal with an elevated being such as he.
The only thing to do was take herself off, pronto. She would insist Cayo took her back to his lofty luxurious castle and then explain to Miguel that she didn’t want to be a companion. If he decided to return to Cadiz at the end of the summer he’d have to find another housekeeper. It would, of course, mean failing at yet another job, she thought disconsolately as she stared at her bound ankle on the footstool.
At least