Hired by the Brooding Billionaire (6 page)

In his experience, most women squealed at even the thought of a spider. Sydney was home to both the deadly funnel web and the vicious redback—he would not be surprised if they had taken up abode in the shed.

Shelley turned to face him. ‘I’m not bothered by spiders,’ she said.

‘Why does that not surprise me?’ he muttered.

‘I’d never be a gardener if I got freaked out by an itty-bitty spider,’ she said in that calm way she had of explaining things.

‘What about a great big spider?’ There was something about her that made him unable to resist the impulse to tease her. But she didn’t take it as teasing.

‘I’m still a heck of a lot bigger than the biggest spider,’ she said very seriously.

Was it bravado or genuine lack of fear?

‘Point taken,’ he said. He looked at her big boots that could no doubt put an aggressive spider well and truly in its place.

‘Snakes, now...’ she said, her eyes widening, pupils huge in the gloom of the shed. ‘They’re a different matter. I grew up on a property out near Lithgow, west of the mountains. We’d often see them. I’d be out riding my horse and we’d jump over them.’ She shuddered. ‘Never got used to them, though.’

‘Have you always been so brave and fearless?’ he asked.

‘Is that how I appear to you?’ she asked. ‘If so, I’m flattered. Maybe I do a good job of hiding my fears—and snakes are one of them.’

‘Not too many snakes in Darling Point,’ he said, wondering about her other fears.

‘I hope not, it’s so close to the city,’ she said. ‘Though I’ll still approach the undergrowth outside with caution. I’ve been surprised by red-bellied black snakes in north shore gardens.’

Could the fantasy warrior woman forming in his imagination vanquish snakes under foot? Or evil-doers in the guise of snakes? Hordes of alien shape-shifter spiders? No. This new princess warrior would be more defender than attacker. Saving rather than destroying. But would that make the character interesting to the adolescent boys who were his main market?

He realised how much he’d changed since he’d created the assassin Alana with her deadly bow and arrow. Then he’d been angry at the world with all the angst of a boy who’d been told too often that he’d been unplanned, unwanted. His parents had been surprised by his mother’s pregnancy. He’d been told so often he’d been ‘an accident’ but the sting of the words never diminished, never lessened the kick-in-the-gut feeling it gave him. Destruction, death even, had been part of the games he’d created with so much success.

Now he’d suffered the irreversible consequence of death in real life rather than in a fantasy online world where characters could pick themselves up to fight again. He could never again see death as a game.

Shelley reached into her tool bag and pulled out a pair of thick leather gauntlet gloves. ‘I dare a spider to sink its fangs through these,’ she challenged.

‘I hope they don’t get close enough for that to happen,’ he said.

Gloves.
There was something very sensual about gloves. Not the tough utilitarian gardening gloves Shelley was pulling onto her hands. No. Slinky, tight elbow-length gloves that showed off the sleek musculature of strong feminine arms, the elegance of long fingers. He itched to get back to his study and sketch her arms. Not Shelley’s arms. Of course not.
He could not go there.
The arms of fictional warrior Princess As Yet Unnamed—he gave himself permission to sketch hers.

‘There’s a treasure trove in here,’ Shelley exclaimed in delight as she poked through corners of the shed that had obviously been left undisturbed for years.

He had to smile at a woman who got excited at a collection of old garden implements. You’d think they were diamond-studded bracelets the way she was reacting. It was refreshing. Shelley was refreshing. He had never met anyone like her.

‘Looks like a bunch of rusty old tools to me,’ he said.

A motley collection of old garden implements was leaning against the wall. She knocked off the dust and cobwebs from a wooden-handled spade before she picked it up and held it out for him to examine.

‘This is vintage,’ she said. ‘Hand forged and crafted with skill. Made to last for generations. It’s a magnificent piece of craftsmanship. Valuable too. You’d be surprised what you could sell this for. Not that you probably need the money.’ She flushed pink on her high cheekbones. ‘Sorry. That just slipped out.’

‘You’re right. I don’t need the money.’

He had accumulated more money than he knew how to spend and yet it kept on rolling into his bank accounts. He didn’t actually need to work ever again. Did his private work for little recompense. The odd hours his work entailed were something to keep the darkness at bay. Since Lisa and their baby had died he had suffered badly from insomnia. Sleep brought nightmares where he was powerless to save his wife and daughter. Where he tortured himself with endless ‘if onlys’ repeated on a never-breaking loop.

‘What do you plan to do with these tools?’ he said.

She brandished the shovel. ‘Use them, of course. Though they’ll need cleaning and polishing first.’ She looked up. ‘I’ll do that on my own time,’ she added.

He liked her honesty. Doubted that Shelley would charge him for five minutes that she wasn’t working.

‘No need for that,’ he said. ‘Count restoring these heirloom tools as part of your work here.’

Heirloom?
Where did that word come from to describe decrepit garden implements? Was it an attempt to please her?

He so nearly added:
I’ll come down and help you with them.
But he drew the words back into his mouth before there was a chance of them being uttered. There would be no cosy sessions down in this shed, cleaning up tools, chatting, getting to know each other.

Shelley was his gardener. And, unwittingly, his muse. That was all she could ever be to him.
No matter how he was beginning to wish otherwise.
That was all any woman, no matter how lovely or how endearing, could be.

* * *

Shelley cautiously let herself into the apartment attached to the back of the house with the key Declan had given her. Even though she had his permission, she felt like an intruder. She sucked in a breath of surprise when she got inside. The apartment was more generous in size than she had imagined. Heck, the
shed
here was bigger than the apartment where she lived. This appeared positively palatial by comparison.

The decoration seemed brand-new—stylish in neutral tones with polished wooden floorboards and simple, timeless furnishings in whitewashed timber and natural fabrics. It was posh for staff quarters—which was what she assumed the apartment was.

Had anyone ever lived here since it had been renovated?

She’d taken off her boots at the door. On feet encased in tough woollen work socks, she tiptoed through the rooms: a living room furnished with a stylish, comfortable-looking sofa and a big flat-screen television set; a dining area; a smart, compact kitchen; a bedroom with a large bed and an elegant quilt; a small, immaculate bathroom. It was the most upscale granny flat she’d seen—it wouldn’t be out of place on the pages of a design magazine. There was a door at the end of the kitchen she thought might be a pantry. But it was locked and she realised it must be the door into the house. That made sense for staff quarters.

Shelley trailed her hand along the edge of the sofa and wondered about Lisa, Declan’s late wife. She must have been a nice person to go to so much trouble to decorate this apartment for a housekeeper. She herself had been in too many grotty staff facilities to know the difference.

Her heart contracted inside her at the thought of the tragedy that had played out in this house. Lisa had had her whole life ahead of her, everything to look forward to. And Declan. How could he ever get over it?

She herself had trust issues. Would find it difficult to ever trust a man enough to love again. But loss on this scale was unimaginable. Could Declan ever let himself trust in a future again?

Subdued by the thought, she once again reminded herself how lightly she would have to tread around this man. And that she must not—repeat not—let herself be attracted to him for even a second. She sensed giving into that would lead to heartbreak the like of which she had never even imagined.

CHAPTER SIX

S
HELLEY
WAS
BECOMING
Declan’s guilty pleasure. From the windows of his office that took up most of the top floor of the house, he could watch her unobserved as she worked in the garden below.

Her energy and output were formidable as she systematically went about getting his garden back into shape. Right now she was on her hands and knees weeding a garden bed in the mid-morning sunshine. They’d had a discussion about the use of herbicides and come to the mutual decision to use an organic-based poison only when needed for the toughest of the garden invaders.

Garden invaders.
He was taken by the term, wondered if he could use it for Princess No-Name’s game. Not that young male gamers were likely to be interested in gardens—but invaders, yes.

However the pros and cons of spraying weeds were not on his mind as he watched Shelley below in the garden. He admired the way she performed such mundane tasks as weeding or pruning with such strength, grace and rhythm. The play of her muscles, the way she stretched out her arms and long legs and massaged the small of her back after she’d been working in the one place for any length of time all appealed.

Now she was kneeling and he tried to ignore the way her shapely backside wiggled into his view when she leaned forward to locate and pull weeds.

Dammit—when had gardening ever been sexy?

He pushed the answer to the question he had posed himself to the back of his mind.
Since Shelley had become his gardener
.

She’d been here two weeks and he was more and more impressed by her. Her professionalism. Her knowledge. Her unfailing good humour. And that was on top of her beauty. Was she too good to be true? He kept contact with her to a minimum but he was super aware of her all the time she was on the property.

Too aware.

He had to remind himself he had vowed not to let another woman into his thoughts. Guilt and constant regret dictated that.

Even though he’d been told over and over again he was not responsible for Lisa and his daughter’s deaths, he blamed himself. He should have responded quicker when Lisa had told him she was getting rapidly increasing contractions. Not begged for ten minutes to finish the intricate piece of code he’d been writing. Ten minutes that could have made a difference.

His fault
.

His own, obsessed workaholic fault.

Selfish, self-centred and single-minded.
He and Lisa hadn’t quarrelled much—they’d had a happy marriage—but when they had, those were the accusations she had hurled at him. The anger had never lasted more than minutes and she’d laughed and said she hadn’t meant a word of it. But he knew there was some truth there.

Because Lisa had told him she wasn’t ready to have children. Had wanted to spend a few more years establishing her career in marketing before they started a family. He’d cajoled, wheedled, begged her to change her mind. Because he’d wanted at least three children to fill up the many empty bedrooms of this house. Children who would grow up knowing how loved and wanted they were.

And look what had happened.

Lisa’s death cast a black shadow on his soul. And Alice...he could hardly bear to think about Alice, that tiny baby he’d held so briefly in his arms, whose life had scarcely started before it had ended.

Their deaths were his fault.

He didn’t deserve a second chance at happiness.

Down in the garden, Shelley leaned back on her heels and reached into the pocket of her sturdy gardener’s trousers and took out her mobile phone. He hadn’t heard it ring from where he was but she was obviously taking a call. He was near enough to see her smile.

As she chatted she looked up at the house, the hand that wasn’t holding her phone shading her eyes. She couldn’t possibly see him from here. He didn’t want her to think he was some kind of voyeur. Just in case, he stepped back from the light of the window into the shadows of his office.

The furnishings in his shades-of-grey workspace were dominated by a bank of computer monitors. This was where he lived, his bedroom in the turret above.

Separate from the computers was a large drawing board he had set up to catch the best light from the window. He’d done some preliminary work on Princess No-Name on the computer. Design software could only do so much.

Now he’d gone back to sketching her with charcoal on paper. The old techniques he’d learned from his artist grandmother. Pinned up on a corkboard above the drawing board were sketches of various angles of the princess warrior’s head, her arms, the curve of her back. On the sketchpad was a work in progress of her—okay, of Shelley—looking over her shoulder with her hair flowing over her neck.

But the old ways had their limitations too. What fun he could have using motion-capture software to animate his princess warrior character. But to do that he would have to ask Shelley to model for him. To dress her in a tight black spandex suit that revealed every curve. To attach reflective sensors to her limbs and direct her to act out movements from the game.

In the anonymity of a big, professional studio—perhaps.

In the intimacy of his office?
No way.
Much too dangerous.

Further back from the window, though still in the good light, was his easel, where he had started a preliminary painting of the character in acrylic paint. The painting formed the only splash of colour in the monotone room where he spent so much time alone.

The painting was pure indulgence; this kind of image would not be easily scanned for animation. He hadn’t painted for years, not since before he was married. But his newly sparked creativity was enjoying the subtle nuances of colour and texture the medium was able to give Princess No-Name.

Shelley’s warrior strength and warm blonde beauty had kick-started his imagination but her connection to nature was what was now inspiring him to create his new character. He’d found himself researching the mythical Greek, Roman and Celtic female spirits of nature and fertility. Gaia. Antheia. Flora. The Green Woman. Mother Nature.

He was painting his Shelley-inspired warrior heroine in a skin-tight semi-sheer body stocking patterned with vines and leaves. The gloves that hugged her arms to above her elbows were of the finest, palest green leather. She strode out in sexy, thigh-high suede boots the colour of damp moss. As contrast, he’d painted orange flower buds in various stages of unfurling along the vines.

It would be only too easy to imagine Shelley wearing the exact same outfit. He drew in his breath at the thought of it.

But he could not go there.

Better he reined in his imagination when it came to thinking too closely about Shelley’s shape.

He had purposely used Princess Alana’s body as a template for Princess No-Name. Shelley’s slim, toned arms were there, yes. But he did not want to focus on her breasts, her hips, her thighs to the extent it would take to draw them. That could be misconstrued.

She was his muse—that was all.

His imagination filled in his princess warrior’s glorious mane of hair with fine brushstrokes.
If only Shelley would let her hair down for him.

He modelled his new creation’s face on Shelley’s strong, vibrant face—with her lovely lush mouth exaggerated into artistic anime proportions. Her eyes were the exact same nutmeg as Shelley’s, with added glints of gold and framed by the kind of long, long lashes that owed more to artifice than nature.

His princess was inspired by Shelley, but she was not Shelley—he had to keep telling himself that. His new warrior was a distinct character in the unique style of his bestselling games. She would be a worthy successor to Princess Alana.

A name flashed into his head.
Estella.
He thought the name probably meant star—bright and shining and bold. Yes. It was perfect. Princess Alana. Princess Estella. It fitted. And gave a vague nod to ‘Shelley’.

Maybe her weapons could be ninja throwing stars—sharp and deadly. No. Too obvious, and far too vicious for his Princess Estella.

Wonder Woman had her golden lasso of truth. Maybe Estella could have a magical lariat to incapacitate and capture.
But not kill.
He didn’t want Princess Estella taking lives. He kept on painting, working in a fluorescent green lariat looped around her shoulder.

He stepped back, looked at his work with critical, narrowed eyes. Estella was gorgeous; she would make an awesome warrior heroine. But there was something lacking; he needed to add a unique characteristic to make her stand out in the sea of gaming heroines. He hadn’t got it right yet.

He needed to spend more time with Shelley.

Purely for inspiration, of course. There must be no doubt it was for any other reason. Other than to oversee the ongoing work in the garden.

So why did the thought of that flood him with excited anticipation that went far beyond the boundaries that restricted employer and employee? Or artist and muse?

Declan had been so engrossed in his work, several hours had gone by without him realising. He glanced down to the garden to see Shelley talking to a man—a tall, well-built man with blond hair. He pulled up abruptly, paintbrush in hand.
Who the hell was he?

Then he realised the guy wore the same kind of khaki gardening gear as she wore. He must be the horticulturalist she’d asked could she call in to help with getting rid of some large trees she said had no place in the garden.

The man was standing near her. As Declan watched he brought his head close to Shelley and said something that made her laugh. Echoes of her laughter reached him high up in his room.

Declan’s grip tightened on the paintbrush. He didn’t like seeing her with another man. Was this guy a boyfriend?
A lover?
He realised how very little he knew about his beautiful gardener.
How much he wanted to know.

He was shocked at the feeling that charged through him, like a car with a dead battery being jump-started after long disuse by a blast of electric current.

Jealousy.

* * *

Shelley sensed Declan in the garden before she saw him. The vibrations of his feet on the ground? The distant slam of the door as he’d left the house? Or was it her hyper awareness of him?

She loved working in this garden, in two weeks had achieved so much. But the day seemed...empty if she didn’t see him. Even if he came only briefly into the garden to make some quip about her passion for old garden implements. Or to ask if she’d fought off any spiders today. She would update him on her progress and go back to work, not knowing when she’d next see him.
On edge until she did.

The days he didn’t come into the garden at all were days she felt oddly let down and went home feeling dispirited. No. Not just dispirited. Verging on depressed. Which was not like her at all.

Today she had even more cause for concern. Her gardening buddy Mark Brown had just called around to assess what equipment he’d need for the job he was helping her with the next day.

‘You mean you don’t know who Declan Grant is?’ he’d asked.

‘He told me he produced computer games,’ she’d replied.

‘You could say that,’ Mark had said. ‘The guy is a gaming god, Shelley, a tech wizard. Every guy in the world my age must have grown up with Princess Alana. And she’s just one of his incredibly popular games.’

‘He might be well known in the gaming world, but I’d never heard of him,’ she said, on the defence.

Mark’s words had made her feel ignorant until she’d reminded herself that when she was younger gaming had pretty much been a boy thing.
A boring boy thing.
She hadn’t known who Declan Grant was. Declan had blanked at the mention of Enid Wilson. Each to his own.

‘He used to go by the tag of ArrowLordX—I don’t know that he plays with mere mortals these days. He was an indie but sold out to one of the huge companies.’ Mark had looked around him and whistled. ‘This place must be worth millions—pocket change to him, though, the guy’s a billionaire.’ He’d narrowed his eyes. ‘I hope he’s paying you fairly.’

‘M-more than fairly,’ she’d stuttered. ‘He’s a generous employer.’

‘Yeah. The deal you’ve got me is good. I’ll be back tomorrow to earn it.’

She would have liked to introduce Mark to Declan but she was scrupulous about not disturbing her employer, intruding on his privacy. If she needed a response from him she texted him. She from the garden, he in his house. The only time she saw him was when he chose to seek her out.

By the time she looked up to see Declan heading towards her, Mark had gone.

It was lunchtime and she was sitting near a bank of azaleas—already budding up for spring—to shelter from the light wind that had sprung up. As her employer approached she put her sandwich back into the chilled lunchbox she brought with her to work and schooled her face into a professional gardener-greeting-boss expression.

She couldn’t let it show how happy she was to see him. How his visits had become the highlights of her day.

Her boss. A grieving widower. Not for her.
She had taken to repeating the phrases like a series of mantras. Now she had to add:
her
billionaire
boss—totally out of her league
.

But when she looked up to see him heading towards her she couldn’t help the flutter of awareness deep inside her, the flush that warmed her cheeks. Her knees felt shaky and she stumbled as she got up to greet him.

She’d got used to his abrupt ways, his sly humour that she didn’t always get, the way he challenged her to justify her decisions. But she would never get used to the impact of his tall, broad-shouldered body and his extraordinarily handsome face.

This was the first time she’d seen him dressed in anything but black. His jeans were the deepest indigo—only a step away from black really, but it was a step. His sweater was charcoal grey, open at the neck to reveal a hint of rock-solid pecs and pushed up to his elbows to bare strong, muscled forearms.

‘Don’t get up,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise I was interrupting your lunch.’