A clatter of something falling echoed from below.
Jen jerked straight, her heartbeat picking up its pace.
Was it him? Was he lurking downstairs trying to see why she wasn’t slaving away in his garden?
Silence rang from below. She didn’t know much about her employer yet, but she knew enough to know silence wasn’t something that occurred around him unless it had something to do with his writing.
She tiptoed to the stairwell and stared into the gloomy bowl of the boathouse.
Nothing moved. No sound.
Did something just fall? All on its own?
Shivering in her borrowed coat, she forced herself to creep down the stairs. Both boats lolled in the water, looking ordinary and non-threatening. She scurried to the open door and walked out into the chilly, early-spring air.
No one stood outside. No lurking man with a curled grin and a mocking gleam in his eye.
No one at all.
A movement flashed to the side of her and she whipped around and thought she saw something or someone rustle through the edge of hedges. Then everything went quiet once more. Maybe she’d been wrong, merely letting her imagination go wild.
Yet as she strode toward the bleak mansion, she still felt the hair on her neck rise.
She was being watched.
But by whom?
Chapter 3
She was definitely a mouse.
And he had no interest in mice.
Cam stood by the bay window, in his usual place, a place where the words seemed to flow better than anywhere else. His transcriber sat in her usual place, a place she seemed to have become used to during the last week. She perched herself on his big leather chair, behind the massive desk his wife had bought him after the success of his third novel.
He’d never liked that desk.
He rarely sat in that chair.
“Did you want to stop?” The mouse’s crisp, upper-class English voice cut through his thoughts.
Realizing he’d been quiet for several minutes, he straightened. “No. We’re not done.”
Ms. Douglas responded in her docile way, her fingers poised on the keyboard, her focus centered on the screen. During the past week—during the hours and hours he’d dictated, during the series of mornings they’d spent together—he’d never once seen another hint of the stubborn courage she’d displayed in their first meeting.
Unreasonable as it was, he felt disappointed.
He should be grateful for her quiet demeanor; it let him focus on what was important, his writing. He should appreciate her undemanding presence; he’d had too many women in his life who demanded everything. He should enjoy the fact she barely scratched the surface of his life; he had far too many scratches already.
Instead, her whole attitude irritated him.
He wanted to see a spark in her eye or hear a jab in her voice. Even a flash of annoyance on her placid face would be welcome. It would at least be something amusing to concentrate on in this prison he occupied.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stop?” Again, her voice came, bereft of emotion.
Women had always given him emotion. If nothing else.
“No,” he snapped. “Shoosh. I’m thinking.”
She acquiesced, as always, her focus never leaving the screen, her hands draped on the keyboard, waiting.
He frowned at her. And at himself.
Why did his gaze seem to latch onto her as soon as she came to his library door? Even in the midst of dictating the best story he’d ever told, his attention still was snagged over and over again by…Her.
He couldn’t understand the draw.
Dressed in a simple buttoned-up shirt and jumper, with another one of her plain wool skirts that routinely hit below her knees, she exuded nothing womanly or provocative. The colors she chose were what he’d call bland or muted or boring.
Mousy.
His mouth quirked into a quick grin.
She must have caught the movement or perhaps some instinct alerted her. Turning her head slowly, she gave him a look. A look he’d received a hundred times in their brief acquaintance. A look he’d begun to despise.
Her look gave him nothing.
No irritation or annoyance. No responding humor or amusement. Not a touch of anything at all.
His smile disappeared.
As if satisfied she’d banished his humor, the mouse turned her focus back to the computer. The movement made the blonde fluff of her short hair swish on her brow.
Even the color of her hair wasn’t interesting. It was blonde, a kind of boring blonde. He supposed one could claim it matched her very white skin. One could also say her skin was the kind most English women prized—fair and porcelain. He hadn’t spotted a freckle or a mole on that face of hers. He supposed one could claim she had pretty skin.
He’d say her skin was rather drab. Along with her hair and her clothes.
So why did he keep staring at her? Why did he have an urge a time or two or three to walk over and mess her hair, something he’d done long ago to get a girl’s attention? Why the hell did he want her to really look at him?