Mistress: Hired for the Billionaire's Pleasure (14 page)

He heard her come back in. He heard the muffled clink as she put dishes down on the table. But above all that he heard the rustle of her clothes as she walked, the tiny sigh of her breath. And he realised that, despite being so tired he could barely think straight, every nerve was wide awake and taut with awareness of her presence. Her closeness.

He opened his eyes.

‘You look shattered,’ she said softly. He could hear the smile in her voice, but also the quiet note of anguish, and had to steady himself against it. He could feel his defences slipping, and he couldn’t afford to leave himself exposed.

‘I’m fine.’

She was leaning over the table, her skin gleaming in the can dlelight. She was wearing some sort of dark top, low cut at the front, and he could make out all too easily the dark shadow of her cleavage. He felt his aching body instantly stir into life, and allowed himself a wry smile in the soft gloom. Just as well he couldn’t see more. He’d be beyond control if he could.

The smile faded as lust kicked him in the ribs. His sight might be wrecked, but there was nothing wrong with his imagination. Or his memory.

‘I hope you’re hungry?’

‘Ravenous,’ he said dryly.

‘It’s duck. The lovely man in the butcher’s shop told me how to cook it and everything, so hopefully I won’t poison you,
but
—’ She broke off, pausing to suck juice from her thumb before leaning over to take his plate. ‘Obviously advising about the meat was as far as his expertise went.’ She sounded breathless and apologetic. Orlando found he was smiling.

‘Go on…’

‘Well…I didn’t know what else to cook. Or rather, I did, but I sort of forgot that I’d have to think about other things—I mean, there’s a lot of things to think about cooking, and I didn’t know how to cook anything else,
so
…’ She put another dish in the centre of the table. ‘It’s chips, I’m afraid.’

Orlando let out a shout of laughter.

‘I know, I know, I’m a disaster. And there I was, hoping to impress you with my supreme capability and domestic excellence, and I’ve blown it. Anyway, I thought if I shredded the duck we could just, you know, help ourselves. I didn’t think we’d need knives and forks. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ Orlando lifted his glass to his lips and looked over at her as she sat down. The smile on his face felt unfamiliar. And good. And she’d just saved him from the tedious business of concentrating on cutlery and all the other complicated paraphernalia that waited to catch him out on every formally laid dining table. Which left him free to concentrate on her. ‘Duck and chips is my absolute favourite,’ he said gravely, leaning over and taking some of the velvety shreds of meat.

‘Stop it. I’m trying.’

The light of the candles cast an incandescent aura around her, so he could see the outline of her cheek, the slope and swell of her throat and chest. He felt his throat constrict with sudden, crushing desire.

‘I know you are. I’m grateful. And I owe you an apology.’

It was Rachel’s turn to mock. ‘Yes, you do. Probably more than one. Where would you like to start?’

‘Careful,’ he said lightly. ‘I struggle with the concept of admitting weakness of any kind. It would be a good idea not to push it.’

He heard her soft breath of laughter. ‘I see. And what if I tell you it’s not weakness? What if I tell you that admitting to being less than perfect is a definite strength?’

He frowned as her words sank in. His voice seemed to have deserted him. Picking up a chip, he ran it slowly around the edge of his plate, soaking up juices from the perfectly cooked meat as he played for time.

No. Don’t…

‘Well…for a start I underestimated you…assumed the worst.’

‘Oh, yes? I don’t like the sound of this.’

‘I never thought…’ he began slowly, then stopped to take a mouthful of wine. Setting down his glass carefully, he gave her an ironic smile and continued. ‘I never thought that duck and chips would work so well together.’

‘Orlando Winterton! If you think that
that
is going to do for an apology, then—’

She broke off abruptly.

‘Then what?’ he asked quietly. He knew he was straying into dangerous territory, that tiredness was making his defences slip, but it also made it difficult for him to care.

‘Then I will be extremely disappointed in you,’ she said primly.

Orlando smiled painfully. ‘I’d hate to disappoint. OK, I did underestimate you, and as a result I think I owe you a thank you as well as an apology. Would I be right in thinking that last week’s ball was orchestrated largely by you rather than Lucinda?’

‘No, not at all. She worked amazingly hard. I did hardly anything…’

‘I see. Not the flower arrangements?

‘Well, yes. But…’

‘Not the candles in all the rooms, and in the courtyard?’

‘Yes, I did that, but it was n—’

‘It was
great,
’ he said with quiet emphasis. ‘It was perfect. This house hasn’t looked like that for years. It brought it alive again, and I can’t tell you how good that felt. It’s been empty and dark for a long time.’

‘It doesn’t have to be.’

Her voice was very low, and he could sense her fear, her hesitancy, and behind it her naked longing. It made him want to get up and drag her across the narrow width of table between them and kiss the living daylights out of her.

For long, long moments neither of them moved. He heard the soft sound of her lips parting, and in the swirling, pulsing darkness in front of his eyes he pictured her tongue moving across them, moistening them…

And then, from the baby listening alarm in the kitchen, Felix’s wail cut through the silence.

‘I am hopeless, Felix,’ she whispered into his soft hair, before placing him back into the creaking depths of the antique Winterton crib. Instantly his mouth opened in a wail of protest.

‘Oh, baby,’ Rachel said in anguish, ‘you mustn’t cry. I have to go downstairs. I have to tell your gorgeous daddy that he mustn’t get anyone else to look after you.’ Felix screwed up his face and cried harder. ‘Hush-a-bye, sweetheart. Hush-a-bye…’

It was no good. Sighing, Rachel scooped Felix up and held him against her shoulder, rocking and soothing with quiet desperation. ‘I’ve already messed up with the food…Please little one,
please
…I need to talk to him. It might be the only chance I get…It’s for your sake, you know. I can’t bear the thought of leaving you…’ She paused, pressing a kiss onto the top of Felix’s head, and, dropping her voice to a whisper, added, ‘Or him. I can’t bear the thought of leaving him either…’

Standing at the window, she drew back the curtain an inch and gazed out into the darkness. There was no moon tonight, and the garden was shrouded in blackness. A hundred shades of black. She thought of the path she had discovered, the stone seat that had been hidden by tangled undergrowth and years of neglect. There was so much here that she wanted to do, so much that she had already grown attached to.

And at the centre of it all, dark and compelling, was Orlando.

On her shoulder Felix snuffled and hiccupped. Rachel felt his head lift questingly, and realised with a sinking heart that he wasn’t going to go back to sleep without a bottle.

She sighed. ‘Oh, sweetheart…You’re as stubborn as your father. I give in.’

‘You shouldn’t,’ said a low voice from behind her. ‘You’re far too nice for your own good. You should stand up to both of us.’

Cupping Felix’s head, she whirled round.

She could see nothing but Orlando’s silhouette against the light from the doorway behind him, his broad shoulders filling the space.

‘Ah.’ She sighed, turning back to face the dark garden again, swaying gently and rubbing the baby’s small, curved back. ‘I tried that earlier, remember? You asked me to leave.’

He waited for a heartbeat before answering. ‘Not as a punishment.’

She could feel him behind her. A little way away, not close. But close enough for her skin to tingle with awareness and her stomach to tighten. She spun slowly round to face him. ‘That’s how it feels,’ she said bleakly as her eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s exactly how it feels. And I know it’s unreasonable, and it’s my own stupid, stupid fault, but I’ve fallen in love with this boy…’

With a stifled sob she shifted Felix gently from her shoulder to settle him in the crook of her arm. He gazed up at her, his eyes dark and gleaming.

‘I know I had no right, because he’s not mine—he belongs to Arabella, and to you, but he’s so lovely I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want it to happen. I wish it hadn’t—’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘But it makes it all so much more painful. I was supposed to be persuading you tonight to let me stay—proving to you that I was capable and efficient and the ideal person to care for Felix. But I’ve messed it up by forgetting to cook vegetables and crying
again.
No wonder you’ve found someone else to look after him, since most of the time I’ve spent in your company I seem to have been in floods of ridiculous tears.’

‘Not ridiculous. It’s been a pretty intense week. And anyway, that’s not the reason I found someone else.’

‘Then why?’

‘I’m trying to break the habit of a lifetime and think of what’s best for someone else for a change.’

His voice was as harsh and bleak as a Siberian dawn. Rachel bit her lip as a fresh tide of tears filled her eyes. She should be pleased that he was thinking of Felix, that he wanted what was best for him. It was awful of her to be so selfish.

She swallowed. She had to respect his right to make decisions for his son. Hell, there had been enough times over the last week when she had been desperate for him to show that even he’d noticed him. Maybe if she knew that he was going to be more involved she wouldn’t mind leaving so much. If she just knew that Felix was going to be loved…

‘Just promise me…’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘Promise that whoever looks after him will love him. I know he needs someone who’ll know all about weaning and getting him into a proper sleep routine…’

She was momentarily distracted by Orlando’s soft exhalation of amusement.

‘You mean someone who’ll know how to get him back to sleep without a personal Chopin recital every night?’

‘Exactly—someone efficient and organised. But someone who’ll love him too.’

‘Arabella’s efficient and organised. I’m not sure the ability to be loving and patient exists alongside those qualities.’

At some point, she couldn’t say how or when, they had come closer together, so that now they were standing with Felix almost cradled between them. Their heads were bent downwards over him. With a wrenching sensation inside Rachel remembered that Orlando couldn’t see the way Felix’s dark eyes shone in the dim light, the contours of his beautiful mouth. She took a deep, shaky breath.

‘He’s so like you, Orlando,’ she said with quiet deliberation. ‘His eyes might be blue, not green, but they darken like yours when he’s cross or upset…And it’s there in the shape of his mouth, with its perfect cupid’s bow upper lip, and in his dark, arched eyebrows, and even in his hairline…’

It was a risk, she knew that, and the stakes were high. Orlando Winterton was the proudest, most remote person she had ever met; the barriers he had placed around himself were high and unbreachable. Slowly, hesitantly, she groped for his hand in the darkness and, taking it in her trembling one, brought it up to Felix’s head.

She looked up at him. He was standing with his head tipped back in that way that she had always taken to be indicative of disdain, but which she now understood was to enable him to make the most of his limited field of vision. In the half-light his face was shadowed and impossible to read.

Anxiety twisted inside her. If she got this wrong she could lose everything, but since she was going to end up doing that anyway it hardly mattered. If her instinct proved right, Felix might just end up with a father.

‘Even his hands are like yours. He’s got your long, tapering fingers, and your beautifully shaped fingernails.’

Orlando hadn’t moved his hand. It still rested against Felix’s cheek, and Rachel watched, mesmerised, as his thumb very lightly caressed the whisper-soft hair at his temple. When she lifted her gaze she saw that the expression on Orlando’s face was one of exquisite agony.

‘I’ll make a promise to you,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I promise that I’ll go quietly—no more arguing or pleading—if you’ll just show me that the person who will look after Felix and love him will be you.’

Orlando’s head whipped sideways, as if she’d slapped him. He spoke through gritted teeth.

‘I can’t.’

‘You can.’ She kept her tone low, determined. ‘You have to work, so of course you need the person from the agency to do all the day-to-day stuff, but you can be the one who
loves
him, the one he loves back and looks up to…’

He gave a low gasp of exasperation and pain and shook his head.

‘Not going to happen…’

Rachel took a deep breath. ‘Well, if you won’t, I’m not leaving.’

Then, heart pounding, she handed Felix to him.

‘Think about it while I get his milk.’

Orlando took his son, his gaze fixed glassily ahead as Rachel silently left the room.