By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс
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stuff, he didn’t have to, which was half the appeal. No more excuses why someone was late to work, no more hinting about upcoming birthdays or favourite perfumes or sultry looks of availability. He had to endure none of that because he had Evelyn at the end of an email, and given the references she’d proffered and the qualifications and experience she’d quoted in her CV, she’d have to be in her mid-forties at least. No wonder she was over life in the fast lane. Working this way, she’d be able to take a nanna nap whenever she needed it.
The call went to the answering-machine and a toffee butler voice invited him to leave a message, bringing a halt to his self-congratulations. He frowned, not used to wondering where his PA might be. Normally he’d email Evelyn from wherever he happened to be and not have to worry about international connections or time differences. The arrangement worked well, so well in fact that half the time he’d find her answering by return email almost immediately, even when he was sure it must be the middle of the night in Australia. But here in her city at barely eleven in the morning, when she’d known his flight times, he’d simply expected she’d be there to take his call.
‘It’s Leo,’ he growled, after the phone had beeped for him to leave his message. Still he waited, and kept waiting, to see if that announcement would make his virtual PA suddenly pick up. When it was clear no one would, he sighed, rubbed his forehead with his other hand and spat out his message. ‘Listen, I need you to find me a woman for tonight…’
‘Thank you for your call.’
Leo swore under his breath as the butler terminated the message. Come to think of it, there was a damn good reason he usually emailed.
Eve Carmichael dropped the third peg in as many pairs of leggings and growled in frustration as she reached down to scoop up the offending article and fix the final item on the line. She’d been on tenterhooks all day. All week more like it. Ever since she’d known he was coming to Melbourne.
She looked up at the weak sun, willing it to dry her washing before Melbourne’s notoriously fickle weather suddenly changed seasons on her, and shivered, a spidery shiver that descended down her spine and had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the fact Leo Zamos was coming.
And then she glanced down at her watch and the spider ran all the way up again.
Wrong. Leo Zamos was here.
It made no difference reminding herself that it was illogical to feel this way. She had no reason, no reason at all, to feel apprehensive. It wasn’t like he’d asked her to meet his plane. In fact, it wasn’t like he’d made any arrangements to see her at all. Logically, there was no reason why he should—she was his virtual PA after all. He paid her to run around on his behalf via the wonders of the world wide web, not to wait on him hand and foot.
Besides, there was simply no time to shoehorn her into his busy schedule even if he did have reason. She knew that for a fact because she’d emailed him the latest version this morning at six, just before she’d got into the shower and worked out her hot water service had chosen today of all days to die, not twenty-four hours after her clothes line had turned up its toes. A sign? She sure hoped not. If it was, it wasn’t a good one.
No wonder she was edgy.
And no wonder this strange sense of foreboding simmered away inside her like a pot of soup that had been on the boil so long that it had thickened and reduced until you could just about stand a spoon in it.
Damn.
She shot a warning look at a cloud threatening to block out the sun and gave the old rotary clothes hoist a spin, hoping to encourage a breeze while cursing the fact that right now she probably had more hope of controlling the weather than she did reining in her own illogical thoughts, and there was no chance of controlling Melbourne’s changeable weather.
And then she stiffened her jittery spine and headed back to the house, trying to shake off this irrational urge to do a Rip Van Evelyn and go to sleep until Leo Zamos was safely and surely out of her city.
What the hell was her problem?
Simple, the answer came right back at her, catching her so unawares she forgot to open the back door and almost crashed into it instead.
You’re afraid of him.
It stopped her for a moment. Stilled her muscles and cemented her bones with the certainty of someone who had good reason to fear.
Ridiculous, she chided, her mind swiftly writing off the possibility, her breath coming short as she finally forced her fingers to work enough to turn the door handle and let herself in. Leo Zamos was nothing to her but the best hourly rate she’d ever been paid. He was a meal ticket, the ticket to renovating her late-nineteenth-century bungalow she affectionately referred to as the hovel, a ticket to something better in her life and getting it a hell of a lot sooner than it would ever happen otherwise. She just wished she didn’t have to spend her renovation money on appliances now, before she even had an idea of what she’d need when the final plans came in.
She glanced upward at the strips of paint shredding from the walls of the laundry and the ivy that was creeping inside through the cracks where sixty years ago her grandfather had tacked it onto the back of the bungalow, and told herself she should be grateful for Leo’s business, not a jittery bundle of nerves just because he was in town. Their arrangement worked well. That was all that mattered. That’s what she had to concentrate on. Not some long-ago dusty memory that she’d managed to blow out of all proportion.
After all, Leo Zamos certainly wasn’t wasting any time fretting about her. And in less than forty-eight hours he’d be gone. There was absolutely nothing at all to be afraid of.
And then she pulled open the creaking laundry door and heard a deep rich voice she recognised instantly, if only because it instinctively made her toes curl and her skin sizzle, “…find me a woman for tonight…” and the composure she’d been battling to talk herself into shattered into a million pieces.
She stood there, rooted to the spot, staring at the phone as the call terminated, emotions warring for supremacy inside her. Fury. Outrage. Disbelief. All of them tangled in the barbed wire of something that pricked at her skin and deeper, something she couldn’t quite—or didn’t want to—put a name to.
She ignored the niggling prickle. Homed straight in on the fury.
Who the hell did Leo Zamos think he was?
And what did he think she was? Some kind of pimp?
She swooped around the tiny kitchen, gathering dishes and piling them clattering into the sink. Oh, she knew he had his women. She’d arranged enough Tiffany trinkets and bottles of perfume to be sent to his countless Kristinas and Sabrinas and Audrinas over the last two years—and all with the same terminal message—
Thanks for your company.
Take care.
Leo
—to know he’d barely survive a night without a bed-warmer. But just because he was in her home town it didn’t mean he could expect her to find him one.
Pipes groaned and hammered as she spun the hot water tap on fruitlessly, until she realised she needed to boil the kettle first to have any hope of hot water. But finally the sink was filled with suds and the tiny room was full of steam. She shoved her hands into rubber gloves and set upon attacking the stack of dishes and plastic cups, all but hidden under the froth and bubbles.
It had been lucky the machine had cut him off when it had or she might have been forced to pick up the receiver and tell him exactly what he could do with his demands—and that would be one sure way to terminate an income flow she had no way of replacing any time soon.
But, then, did she really want to work with a man who seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable asking his PA to organise him a night-time plaything? Maybe she should just call him herself. Remind him of the duties she had agreed to undertake.
Except