Rival Attractions & Innocent Secretary(22)

Charlotte blinked and waited for enlightenment.

'Not safe … not these days,' he told her warningly. 'They'll have to be replaced.'

In her mind's eye, Charlotte saw another nought being added to his  original estimate and suppressed a faint sigh. 'How long do you think it  will be before you're finished?' she asked him fatalistically.

'Well, provided we don't come up with any more set-backs … should be all done middle of next week or so.'

Smiling weakly, Charlotte stepped over what she guessed were her old  kitchen units and what now looked like a pile of firewood, and headed  for the door into the hallway.

Mrs Higham should have been today. To Charlotte's surprise she had been  quite approving when Charlotte informed her about Oliver. Mrs Higham  sometimes had a rather unconventional attitude towards her work,  preferring to choose for herself which tasks she would and would not do,  rather than be directed, and because Charlotte knew how difficult it  would be to replace her she had put up with her eccentricities. She had  already asked her to clean through the rooms which were going to be  Oliver's and make up the bed, but it might be as well to check that she  had.

Charlotte heard the workmen driving away as she opened the room into the  bedroom which her father had used as his study. The window was open,  allowing the newly rehung curtains to move gently in the breeze. Her  father's old desk stood under the window to catch the best of the light.  The house still retained its original bedroom fireplaces, thanks to her  father's refusal to entertain any modernisation, and Charlotte saw with  a small start of surprise that Mrs Higham had left a fire laid in the  grate, and filled a basket of logs.

Oliver was certainly getting star treatment, she acknowledged wryly as  she saw the trouble the cleaner had gone to. She had certainly never  left a fire laid in her bedroom, Charlotte reflected as she opened the  door into the bedroom.

The bedroom still contained the heavy dark furniture that had originally  belonged to her grandparents. Her father had never seen the necessity  of replacing the cumbersome wardrobes with something more modern, even  fitted. The darkness of the furniture, combined with the dark green  carpet, gave the room an austere male aura, Charlotte thought, a frown  furrowing her forehead as she moved towards the bed and saw that it  wasn't made up.

That meant that she would have to do it. Her father had not been a mean  man precisely, but he had always hated waste, which was why Charlotte  was still using the heavy linen sheets which again had come from her  grandparents' home. Since it was impossible to launder these at home in  the way her father insisted upon, a weekly laundry service collected and  delivered these items, and Charlotte prayed that she would find  sufficient clean and aired linen in the airing cupboard to make up the  bed.

It was her own fault, of course; she should have checked on these things instead of leaving it to Mrs Higham.

To her relief she found what she wanted in the airing cupboard. Carrying  the sheets and bedding through into the bedroom, she put them down on  the bed. Before she did anything else, she would make herself something  to eat and have a cup of coffee. That was, if she could find the coffee.

It was impossible for her to eat in the kitchen, of course, and so she  took her omelette and coffee through into the small sitting-room on the  side of the house. From here she could look out into the back garden  with its tangle of overgrown lawns and flowerbeds.

It had rained just after she had come in, a short, heavy shower, and now  the late spring flowers drooped sadly under the weight of the  raindrops. On impulse, after she had finished her meal, she opened the  french windows and stepped outside. Half an hour later, her arms full of  flowers she had had no intention of picking, she went into the pantry  and deftly arranged them in two large jugs. She left one jug in the  sitting-room, and took the other upstairs with her.

Until she had actually set it down on the polished desk, she had had no  idea why she had picked the flowers, and now, standing back from the  bright warmth of them, she felt her skin burn with self-knowledge. She  was just about to snatch the jug back and remove it when she heard  Oliver's car.

The bed still wasn't made, and, ignoring the flowers, she went quickly  into the bedroom, hurriedly covering the bed in the crisp linen sheets.

She heard the car stop just as she finished, and, giving the rooms one  last assessing glance, she hurried downstairs to welcome her new lodger.                       
       
           



       

'I'll take you upstairs,' she told him as she opened the door to him,  wondering if he would register her nervousness and guess at the cause of  it, and then telling herself not to be so stupid. The way she was  acting, she was practically begging him to guess how she felt. 'Then  I'll leave you to get settled in, if you've got an early start in the  morning.'

They were halfway upstairs, and she paused and added uncertainly,  wondering if he would expect a meal, 'The kitchen is in chaos. I'm using  the pantry to cook in.'

'It's all right. I ate before I left the Bull.'

Charlotte opened the door to the study and walked in, waiting for Oliver  to follow her. She saw the way he looked at the made-up fire and from  it to the flowers on the desk.

'It all looks very welcoming,' he told her softly, walking over to the  desk. 'I don't think I've enjoyed having garden flowers in my room since  I left home. There's something very evocative of a real home about  garden-cut flowers rather than bought ones, don't you think?'

'Mrs Higham put them there,' Charlotte lied, wishing she could do  something about the frantic race of her heart. When he reached out and  touched one of the tell-tale wet petals of one flower, she was glad he  wasn't looking at her to see the rich tide of colour burning her skin.

'I'll leave you to get settled in,' she reiterated, and then fled to the  door before she could make even more of a fool of herself.

Why on earth had she lied to him like that? It would have been simple  enough to say that she had brought the flowers in to save them being  battered by further rain, but no … she had had to go and behave like a  love-crazed adolescent.

For a moment, making up the bed, she had actually lifted one of the  linen-covered pillows to her face, imagining how it would feel against  her skin if it carried his scent. The sharp twisting sensation that had  coiled through her stomach had alerted her to what she was doing … what  she was thinking. She hadn't thought about a man in such sexually  explicit terms since … since she had left her teenage years behind; and it  shamed her now that her body should react so swiftly and so wantonly to  the mental image of Oliver's naked body.

* * *

While Oliver made several journeys up and down the stairs with his  possessions, Charlotte worked diligently on some paperwork she had  brought home with her, determined to keep out of his way and not to  embarrass either herself or him by trying to put their relationship on  anything other than a business footing.

When he had finished, he rapped briefly on the sitting-room door and then came in.

'That's finished. I was wondering if you'd like to go out for a drink  somewhere … to celebrate our joint appointment this afternoon.'

Charlotte felt her heart leap, but almost immediately she shook her head. 'No, thank you,' she told him dampeningly.

He was just being polite, she told herself, trying to ignore the  possibility of a more sinister purpose in his invitation. She was almost  sure that Vanessa was wrong … almost sure. His offer of a drink was  simply a polite gesture, which she was pretty sure he expected her to  refuse.

Certainly he didn't look particularly disappointed when she did.

'Well, perhaps another time,' was all he said, and then he cheerfully  excused himself, going back upstairs, leaving her to wish that she  weren't the sort of person she was and that she had the kind of  self-confidence so evident in women like Vanessa. That she was the kind  of woman who knew that no man would ever ask her out simply out of  compassion or good manners, but because he was attracted to her and  found her desirable.

The thought of Oliver finding her desirable sent such a charge of  sensation through her that her body tensed against it. How was it  possible for him to make her feel like this? Desire … it was something she  had comfortably assumed would never dominate her life. She had thought  that, if she didn't inspire sensual need in men, than at least she had  the advantage of being free from experiencing it herself, but now she  was discovering that all her comfortable and safe beliefs about herself  were being swept aside … that she could indeed experience desire, and that  it was a sharp, raking, painful sensation which made her body ache  restlessly and her mind fill with such wanton mental images that she  could feel the heat they generated crawling up under her skin.