Hired by the Brooding Billionaire (7 page)

‘I haven’t actually started eating,’ she said. She didn’t want to be caught at a disadvantage munching on a cheese and salad sandwich. It would be just her luck to have a shred of lettuce on her tooth when she was trying to be serious and professional around him.

His brow furrowed. ‘Do you usually eat outside? Why don’t you make use of the kitchen in the apartment?’

‘Oh, but I wouldn’t... I couldn’t. I just dash in there to use the bathroom.’

‘Please feel free to use the kitchen too,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she said, knowing she wouldn’t. She still felt like an intruder every time she went in there.

Declan put his hands behind his back, rocked on his heels. ‘You were talking to a man earlier,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘He’s the gardener who’s coming to help me tomorrow. His name is Mark Brown. I would have liked to introduce you to him but I didn’t think it was worth interrupting you with a text.’

‘Is he a friend of yours?’

His question surprised her. But she remembered how concerned Declan was about strangers intruding on his privacy. ‘Yes, he is, actually. We were at uni together in Melbourne and both moved to Sydney at about the same time. He’s a very good horticulturalist. I could have just hired a tree-removal guy but we need to be careful with some of the surrounding plants. Luckily Mark was available. I can vouch for him one hundred per cent.’

‘Lucky indeed,’ he said. His eyes were cool, appraising, unreadable. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

Shelley stared at Declan, too flabbergasted at first to speak. ‘What? Mark? No!’ She’d often got the feeling Mark would like to be more than friends but she didn’t see him that way.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Declan asked.

Those extraordinary blue eyes searched her face. There was something darkly sensual about him that went beyond handsome. Something she should not be registering.

Boss. Widower. Not for her.
Frantically she repeated the mantra in her mind. At the same time her body was zinging with awareness.

‘No. I don’t have a boyfriend. And I... I don’t
want
a boyfriend.’

‘I see,’ he said, nodding, as his speculative gaze took in her drab, serviceable gardening gear—a tad grubby after a morning spent weeding. She was also sporting protective pads made from foam and hard nylon strapped around her knees.
‘Nothing could be more unattractive or unappealing to a man,’
her sister, Lynne, had chortled when she had first seen Shelley decked out in her knee pads.

‘No. You don’t understand,’ she said to Declan. ‘I don’t want a girlfriend either. I mean, I don’t want a girlfriend ever.’
Foot in mouth again
. ‘I like men. I’m not gay. I’m happy being single.’

Was that relief that lightened his eyes? Relief she was single? That she wasn’t gay? Both?

‘No plans for marriage and family?’ he asked, which surprised her.

She shook her head. ‘Plenty of time for that yet. My career is too important to me right now.’

He didn’t reply. Of course, she couldn’t resist chattering on to fill the silence that fell between them. ‘There...there was a boyfriend in Melbourne. It didn’t work out. I’m planning to travel after I finish your job. No point in getting involved with anyone in Sydney if I’m leaving. Men...well, men are more trouble than they’re worth.’
And she just said that to a man.
Again she mentally beat her fist against her forehead.

‘I get it,’ he said and she got the distinct impression he was trying not to smile. There was another long pause, which this time she refused to fill. ‘So your
friend
Mark is coming tomorrow?’ he said finally.

‘Yes,’ she said, jumping on the change of subject. ‘Let me show you what we’ll be doing.’

Declan glanced at his watch. Shelley gritted her teeth. He always seemed to want to be anywhere but in his garden with her. At first she had found it insulting. Now she was beginning to realise it was just his way.

She’d learned now not to ask if she was boring him. Her policy was to take him as she found him. Fact was, though, she liked him way more than she should. She would be very disappointed if he cut short this time with him and headed back indoors.

Not that she would ever let him know that.

‘Come let me show you what happens when people misguidedly plant indoor plants out in the garden,’ she said.

He frowned. ‘I don’t get what you mean,’ he said.

‘You’ll see,’ she said, thankful that he started to follow her and not to stride off back to the house.

She led him to the area of garden near the eastern border with the house next door. ‘These two trees are probably the main points of contention for your neighbours,’ she said. ‘They’re
ficus benjamina
.’

‘More Latin,’ he said with that quirk of his dark eyebrow she was beginning to find very appealing. ‘Translate, please.’

‘Otherwise known as weeping fig,’ she explained. ‘A very popular potted plant. But planted out in the garden in this climate they can grow to thirty metres in height. Their roots are invasive and damaging.’ She pointed. ‘They’ve already damaged the fence and probably your neighbour’s paving and underground plumbing pipes too. They’re a tree suited to a park, not a domestic garden.’

‘So a
giant
garden invader?’ he said.

‘Exactly. They have to go.’

Declan indicated the neighbour’s house. ‘He’s already invoiced me for repairs.’

‘Really? A neighbour would do that? Did you pay him?’

He scowled. She would hate to ever see that formidable expression aimed at her. ‘I told you, I want these people off my back. I paid him.’

She shrugged. Seemed as if whatever he had paid would be water off a billionaire’s back. ‘You shouldn’t hear any more from them once Mark and I get these darn trees out—and all the potato vine twined around them. There’s a big mulberry on the other border fence—we’ll get rid of that too.’

‘A mulberry tree? I never knew we had one. I like mulberries. My grandmother had a mulberry tree and I’d spend hours up its branches.’

She had a sudden flash of a little black-haired boy with purple mulberry stains all around his mouth and mischief in his blue eyes. He must have been an adorable child.

She diverted her thoughts to the adult Declan. ‘The mulberry tree here I want to get rid of is too close to the fence. Don’t worry, there’s another one planted as a specimen tree in the middle of the lawn that we’ll leave. I like mulberries too and it’s not causing any trouble there. It’s a pity I won’t be around when the tree fruits or I’d bake you a mulberry pie.’

Oh, dear heaven, had she actually said that to her boss?
She closed her eyes and wished herself far, far away from Declan’s garden.

She opened her eyes and he was still there, tall, dark and formidable. He made a sound in response that sounded suspiciously like a strangled laugh. ‘You bake pies as well as your other talents?’

‘Little Miss Practical, that’s me,’ she said with a self-effacing laugh. ‘My grandmother taught me to cook when we—my mum and my sister—went to live with her after my father booted us out of our home.’

She flushed. ‘Sorry, too much information.’ She looked around her, frantic to change the subject. ‘Whoever designed this garden way back when really
was
paying homage to Enid Wilson. Fruit trees as part of the garden instead of in an orchard. Thyme everywhere as groundcover. Indigenous plants when they weren’t really fashionable. I think—’

As she started her next sentence a teasing gust of wind snatched off her hat. She clutched at her head in vain to see her hat tumbling along the ground.

She went to chase after it, but Declan beat her to it and picked it up. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said.

It was such an old, battered hat she felt embarrassed he was touching it. He turned it over in his hand and went to put it back on her head. The movement brought him very close.

His mouth.
For the first time she noticed his mouth. His full lips, the top lip slightly narrower than the other. The dark growth of his beard already visible at lunchtime.

Lots of testosterone.

The thought came from nowhere and paralysed her. She stood dead still, wondering what might come next, scarcely able to breathe, her heart thudding too fast.

His eyes looked deep into hers and she couldn’t read the expression in their deep blue depths. He tossed the hat aside. Then reached down and around to the back of her head.

She’d got ready in a hurry that morning and had piled her hair out of the way with only the aid of a single claw-grip clip to keep it in place. With one deft movement Declan had it undone. Her heavy mass of hair untwisted and fell around her shoulders and her back, all the way to her waist.
She felt as if he’d undressed her.

With a hand that wasn’t quite steady, she went to push away the long layers that fell across the front of her face but Declan slid it away with his. Slowly, sensuously he pushed his fingers through her hair then ran his hands over her shoulders to come to rest at the small of her back where her hair reached.

‘Beautiful,’ he murmured in a low, husky voice.

Shelley didn’t know whether he meant her or her hair or something else entirely. Shivers of pleasure tingled through her at his touch. She felt dizzy, light-headed and realised she’d been holding her breath. As she let it out in a slow sigh, she swayed towards him, her mouth parting not just for air but for the kiss she felt was surely to follow. His head dipped towards her. She didn’t know that she wanted this. Wasn’t sure—

Abruptly he dropped his hands from her waist. His expression darkened like the build-up of black cloud before a storm.

‘This shouldn’t have happened,’ he said in a voice that was more a growl torn from the depths of his being.

Shocked, she struggled to find her voice. ‘I... I...’

‘Don’t say it,’ he said, his voice brusque and low. ‘There’s nothing to be said.’ He stepped back with savage speed. ‘My...my apologies.’

With that he turned on his heel and strode away from her, leaving her grateful for the support of the sturdy trunk of the doomed fig tree.

Still trembling, she watched him, his broad shoulders set taut with some emotion—anger?—as he turned the bend in the sweep of lawn marked by the wall with the tumbledown urn and out of sight. He couldn’t wait to get away from her.

What the heck had that been about? And what did it mean for her relationship with her secretive, billionaire boss?

CHAPTER SEVEN

N
OTHING
,
AS
IT
turned out. The episode meant nothing, she realised in the days that followed. Days where she saw very little of Declan and neither of them mentioned the incident. The longer it went unsaid, the less likely it would ever be aired.

The Rapunzel incident—as she had begun to call it in her mind. Fancifully, she thought of it as: ‘Shelley, Shelley, let down your golden hair.’
Let down your hair—and then nothing.
She blushed as she remembered how she had
yearned
for him to take it further.

The moments Declan had spent releasing her hair from its restraint and caressing her had begun to take on the qualities of a distant dream. Making a joke of it—even if only to herself—somehow took the sting out of what had happened.

The way he had avoided her since both puzzled and hurt. But she couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—let it bother her. Because while she was hurt in one way, she felt relieved in another.

Nothing could come of the incident. He was the billionaire boss, she was the gardener who needed the generous salary he had agreed to pay her. She should be grateful he hadn’t taken advantage of that. Be
glad
he hadn’t kissed her. She’d worked for men who had made her feel distinctly uncomfortable to be alone with them when she’d been working on their properties. It was one reason she dressed the way she did for work.

Besides, she had another more pressing concern to occupy her thoughts.

Her sister’s boyfriend, Keith, had proposed to Lynne. The newly engaged couple wanted to live together as they planned their wedding. And the apartment in Double Bay she shared with Lynne was way, way too small for her to live with them in any privacy.

She had to find somewhere else to live—pronto. Keith wouldn’t move in until she moved out. She was happy for her sister; Keith was a really nice guy and just what Lynne needed. Neither of them was pressing her to go, but of course they wanted to start their new life together as soon as they could.

But it was a difficult rental market in Sydney. Apartment hunting meant showing up for an open day and hoping like heck she made a better impression on the letting agent than the other people lined up with her to inspect the same property. There was a one-room apartment open today in nearby Edgecliff and she needed to see it.

In the three weeks she’d been working for Declan she hadn’t taken a lunch hour, just grabbed twenty minutes to down the sandwich and coffee in a flask she’d brought from home. She’d wanted to get as much work as possible done in the shorter daylight hours at this time of year.

It was now well into August and the garden was showing definite signs of the early southern hemisphere spring: jonquils scented the air and the nodding pink heads of hellebores gave delight in the cooler, shadier corners of the garden. She had found the elusive daphne, cleared the tough kikuyu grass that was smothering it and made sure it would survive.

But today, four days after the Rapunzel incident, she needed to take an extended lunch hour. Technically, she should ask Declan’s permission for extra time off, but it wasn’t really that kind of working relationship. He seemed to take her on trust and she would never take advantage of that. She decided to keep him in the loop anyway.

After a morning’s hard work, she was fortunate she had the bathroom in the housekeeper’s apartment in which to shower and change. She needed to look smart and responsible, as though she could afford the rent, the deposit and all the other expenses that came with renting an apartment. Expenses that would take a substantial chunk out of her savings.

Lynne and Keith had sprung this on her. As she towelled herself dry she found herself wishing—unreasonably, she knew—that Keith had put off his proposal until she had finished this job and was taking off for Europe.

Six months would be the minimum lease she could sign. She could end up trapped in Sydney for longer than she would choose to be. She wanted to be in Europe by October to see the gardens in autumn. Maybe she should consider a short-term house-share or even house-sitting.

Twenty-eight and still without a home of her own—she couldn’t help but be plagued by a sense of failure when she thought about her limited options.

She slipped into the clothes she’d brought with her to change into—the world’s most flattering skinny-leg trousers in a deep shade of biscuit teamed with a businesslike crisp white shirt, and topped with a stylish short trench coat in ice-blue with contrasting dark buttons. She finished off with a blue-and-black leopard-print scarf around her neck and short camel boots with a medium stiletto heel.

Lucky for her, Lynne was a fashion buyer for a big retailer and could get her clothes at a sizeable discount. Lynne also had excellent taste in the choices she made for her, which made up for Shelley’s own tendency to slide into whatever felt most comfortable.

As she pulled her hair into a high ponytail and slicked on some make-up she thought she scrubbed up rather well.

Still feeling like an intruder in the apartment, she perched on the edge of the sofa and texted Declan.

I need to take a long lunch hour today—will make up the time.

His text came back straight away.

Can I see you before you go? Come to the front door.

Puzzled, Shelley put down her phone. She hadn’t been inside the house since the evening of her interview
.
She hoped she wasn’t to be reprimanded for anything. She had a feeling Declan hadn’t been too impressed with the way she’d brought Mark in—though arranging for extra help was quite within their terms of agreement.

She flung her fake designer tote bag—a present from a friend, who’d bought it in Thailand—over her shoulder and headed around to the front of the house.

* * *

Declan had lost count of the times he had berated himself for giving in to the temptation to free Shelley’s glorious hair from its constraints.
For touching her.
It had been out of order. Unprofessional.
Wrong.

Even if it had only been in the interests of research for Princess Estella.

Or so he’d told himself.

For a moment he had let that self-imposed force field slip—with disastrous consequences. Now she obviously felt uncomfortable around him. And he could not rid his mind of the memory of how it had felt to be so intimately close to her—and her trembling response to his touch.

He felt he owed Shelley an explanation. But he was more fluent in JavaScript than he was at talking about anything personal. How did he explain why he had to keep her at arm’s length? That he was not free to pursue another woman?

Technically, yes, he was a widower and able to marry again. But the day Lisa had died he had shut down emotionally. He had imprisoned himself in chains of grief and guilt, shrouded himself in the darkness of self-blame.

Lisa was dead. Their daughter’s life snuffed out when it had scarcely begun. How could he expect happiness, love, intimacy for himself? He didn’t deserve a second chance.

‘Survivor’s guilt—a classic case of it,’
his mother had said. His top criminal-law-barrister mother, who knew a lot about the darker side of life. She’d given him the contact details of a grief counsellor—details that still sat in the bottom of his desk drawer.

Even she had been devastated by the tragedy. She’d been very fond of Lisa and seen the birth of her first grandchild as a chance to start over. ‘To be a better grandmother than I ever was a mother,’ she’d said with brutal honesty.

But in these last days, spent mostly in solitude, Declan had decided there was only one honest way to handle the situation with Shelley. He had to get Princess Estella out into the open. Explain to Shelley that she had inspired his new creation. Ask her to model for him.

Not in a body stocking or a skin-tight spandex sensor suit, though his pulse quickened at the thought of it. No. In her gender-neutral gardening gear. But with her long hair let down. Maybe with a fan floating it around her face and behind her like a banner. He would ask her to pose for him so he could get the hair and face right for Estella.

There would be a generous modelling fee, of course. It would all be above board and without any hint of exploitation. He could draw up a contract. Maybe include a share of royalties—he could afford it.

He didn’t want dishonesty between them. Outing Estella was the only way to go.

Buoyed by the idea, he had asked Shelley to come to the house so they could discuss it asap.

At the sound of the bell at the front door he took the elevator Lisa had had installed—
‘for when we’re old and can’t make the stairs’—
down from his top-floor office to get to the door more quickly.

He would put things right with Shelley.

But the Shelley who stood on the porch outside was not the Shelley he was expecting. The only thing he recognised about her was her smile—and even that was a subdued version of its usual multi-watt radiance.

His gardener was no longer an amazon but a glamazon.

Gone was the ugly, khaki uniform, replaced by a stylish, elegant outfit that emphasised the feminine shape the uniform concealed. Narrow trousers clung to long, slender legs, the shirt unbuttoned to reveal the delectable swell of her breasts, and the high-heeled boots brought her closer to him in height and gave her hips a sensuous sway.

Subtle dark make-up emphasised the beauty of her eyes, and the lush sensuality of her mouth was deepened by lipstick the colour of ripe raspberries.

For a too-long moment he stared at her, struck dumb with admiration—and an intensely masculine reaction that rocked him.

‘You wanted to see me?’ she asked, with a puzzled frown.

He could not keep his eyes off her.

He had to clear his throat before he spoke. ‘Yes. Come in,’ he said as he ushered her through the door.

‘I hope there’s nothing wrong,’ she said with a quiver in her voice.

‘Of course not,’ he said.

But everything had changed.

He needed time to collect his rapidly racing thoughts.

He led her through the grand entrance hall, her heels clicking on the marble floor, to the small reception room where he’d first interviewed her. Light slanting through the old lead-light windows, original to the house, picked up the gold in her hair.
She brought the sunshine with her.

Immediately they were in the room she went straight to the window. ‘What a beautiful view of the garden,’ she said. ‘It’s starting to take shape. In a few weeks that wisteria arch will be glorious. I’ve trimmed it but it will need a good prune when it’s finished flowering. You have to cut it back well and truly before the buds form for...for the next season’s flowering.’

Her words trickled to a halt and she didn’t meet his eye. Did she sense his heightened awareness of her as a woman, his ambivalence? She moistened her lovely, raspberry-stained lips with the tip of her tongue. The action fascinated him.

The full impact of his attraction to her hit him like a punch to the gut. He fisted his hands by his sides. He’d been kidding himself from the get go.

This wasn’t about Princess Estella.

It was about Shelley.

It had always been about Shelley—warm-hearted, clever, down-to-earth, gorgeous Shelley. Even in the drab uniform with her charmingly eccentric interest in rusty old rakes and broken-down fountains she had delighted him from day one.

He could no longer kid himself that his attraction to Shelley was because she sparked his creative impulse. She sparked male impulses a whole lot more physical and urgent. She was a beautiful woman and he wanted her in a way he had not imagined wanting another woman after his wife had died.

He could not ask her to pose for Estella.

No way could he invite her to spend hours alone with him in his studio while he sketched her. It would be a kind of torture. That idea had to be trashed.

But he found he had to say something else to justify him calling her into the house. ‘I wanted to tell you I had a note from the neighbour thanking me for getting rid of the
ficus benjamina.
’

Now that full-beam smile was directed at him.

‘It wasn’t to...fire me or anything?’

‘Of course not.’ How could she possibly think that? He realised that under her brightness and bravado lay a deep vein of self-doubt. That although she seemed so strong she was also vulnerable. It unleashed a powerful urge to protect her.

‘That’s a relief,’ she said. ‘I was racking my brains to think of what I’d done wrong.’

He had to clear his throat of some deep, choking emotion to speak. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong.’

He ached to take her into his arms and reassure her how invaluable she was, how special. But that was not going to happen. He recognised his attraction to her. That did not mean he intended to act on it.

He now could admit it to himself. Admit the truth that welled out from his subconscious and into his dreams. Now, when he was battling the insomnia that had plagued him since the night his wife had died, in those few hours of broken sleep it wasn’t Lisa’s face that kept him awake. It was Shelley’s.

And that felt like betrayal.

‘That’s great news about the neighbour,’ she said. ‘Makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it? And, hey, you spoke Latin. Uh, instead of computer speak. That I don’t speak at all. I mean, I can use a computer, of course I can, but I—’

‘I get it,’ he said. There she went—rabbiting on again. He found it charming. He found
her
charming. And way too appealing in every way.

He realised she was nervous around him. Was he looking particularly
forbidding
today?

She twisted the strap of her handbag in her hands. ‘Thank you for telling me that but, if that’s all, I have to go. As I said, I need to take a longer lunch hour today.’

‘A date?’ he blurted out without thinking.

Jealousy speared him again. Who was the lucky guy who would be seeing her dressed up like this?

‘Not a date,’ she said with a perturbed frown.