Passion Follows Pain (Passion Series Book 3) (2 page)

I liked the look of Hobart from what I could see from my seat in the back of the taxi. We were leaving the city behind now, heading towards what appeared to be a more affluent part of town, past some big club by the water which roused my curiosity, but a place I knew, I was never likely to frequent.

Finally the driver turned into a quiet street, high on a hill and pulled the taxi into a concrete driveway leading down to an attractive brick home. When I climbed out of the car, stretching briefly, my eyes scouting around to see my surroundings, I found my gaze settling on a house across the road. It was huge, sprawling, intimidating looking and if I was honest with myself, almost scary looking. If the door had opened and Herman Munster had walked out, I doubt I would have been surprised. I wondered who lived in such a big, slightly scary looking house that I felt sure would not look out of place in the middle of a horror movie. It appeared that no one was home, all closed up, curtains drawn but there was a car in the driveway a big old Rolls Royce by the looks of things, so whoever owned the house must have had money. I could see a few more cars parked in a massive carport next to the house, so the owners were obviously very wealthy or a lot of people lived in it.

Still, it was not my concern at all, and I turned my back on the house that appeared to lord it over the others in the street from its vantage point on the hill, and made my way to the front door of the house that marked the beginning of a new life for me.

I knocked on the door, nerves taking flight in the pit of my stomach, like the frantic flutter of butterfly wings, as I waited to see what my employer was going to be like. Debbie had told me that Mrs Appleby was very nice and sounded like a sweet old lady but a voice over the phone compared with the reality of being face to face with someone inside their home was a different thing altogether.

I heard a voice call out to ‘hold on’ and that she was ‘coming’ and faintly from inside I could hear the clatter of what had to be her crutches on a tiled floor.

When the door finally opened, I looked nervously into the eyes of my employer or that was my intention, but my gaze missed the mark and I ended up only seeing the top of her head, before dropping my gaze to the tiny frail looking woman standing before me. She was propped up and looking extremely uncomfortable, quite obviously finding the crutches challenging. She raised a hand to wave me in and wobbled alarmingly to the point where I dropped my bags and jumped forward, slipping my arms around her to stop her falling.

“Oh bless you child.” She gasped, her voice lilting and warm, flowing over me, relaxing me, making me smile. “I hope you’re Arissa Petros because this is going to be a trifle embarrassing if you’re not?” She chuckled, an almost musical sound to me and my heart warmed even more for this woman.

“I am and you must be Daisy Appleby. My friend Debbie explained how you were after someone to help care for you and your home, prepare meals and do the housekeeping in exchange for board? I can’t tell you how thankful I am for this opportunity to work for you Mrs Appleby.” I gave her a tentative smile.

The older woman straightened, getting herself propped up on her crutches again. “Come in dear. Grab your bags and let’s try that again. Follow me, I’ll show you your room.” She started off down the hallway and I hastily grabbed my bags, and followed her into the house.

“Mrs Appleby I wanted to thank you for giving me this job when I have no references besides years of caring for my father.” I started to say but my employer stopped suddenly and turned towards me, moving carefully on her crutches.

“Please dear, for starters, call me Daisy. You make me feel really old when you call me Mrs Appleby and your friend was very persuasive. She made it abundantly clear to me how important this opportunity was to you. You know of course that it is only a temporary position and once this plaster is off my leg, I will be able to look after myself again?”

I gave her a shy smile, liking this woman more and more every moment. I didn’t trust easily, I was normally wary of anyone I met, although my father had kept me shut away from most social interaction, but something about Daisy made feel more relaxed, safe almost. She was kind and gentle. I didn’t need to spend long with her to know that. I could see it in her eyes. I was very good at reading a person by the look in their eyes. I’d had years of experience with my father. I would always look closely at his face to read his expression so I’d have time to prepare, to brace myself to deal with whatever mood I could see behind those mean eyes of his.

Daisy’s eyes were warm and kind, they sparkled with good humour and just that earliest clouding of what would probably later develop into cataracts.

“Here we are.” She stopped by a doorway, indicating that I should go in before her. When I stepped into the room, I gasped, my eyes widening. The room was beautiful, so pretty, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. A double bed dominated the room, adorned in a thick frilled quilt in creams and baby blue colours. The bed was piled high with pillows and cushions and looked so pretty I worried about sleeping in it and messing it all up. The carpet was a thick cream pile that was soft under my feet. The walls were painted a rich buttercup yellow and were covered with paintings of landscapes, flowers and even one painting that looked like the city of Hobart from my limited knowledge of it. There was a comfortable looking recliner chair, a small round table and chair by the floor to ceiling window. A large flat screen TV was mounted on the wall on one side of the room, with chest of drawers below it. Two doors led off the room; one I could see was the bathroom, a small but well-appointed en-suite, the other a walk in robe.

“This is all for me?” I asked, my tone filled with both wonder and awe.

Daisy didn’t answer me so I turned my head to her and found her watching me, a strange look on her face as she studied my expression. I felt myself blush and dropped my eyes from hers, suddenly self-conscious of my behaviour.

“Of course child, this is your room, do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I reluctantly turned away from the room and met her eyes again. “I can’t thank you enough for giving me this chance to work for you and to stay in such a beautiful room. I...I’ve never seen anything like it before.” I knew I was repeating myself but I simply felt so overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of everything the room had to offer.

“I find that hard to believe child. You would have had some pretty room for a little girl when you were younger, surely?” I could hear the question in her tone.

“I...my…my mother died when I was six and my father raised me from then but well…he…my father…he…he wasn’t so worried about pretty girl rooms…you know?” I gnawed on my bottom lip while my thoughts drifted back to my bedroom at home. A narrow single bed with inadequate bedding on it. Sheets that were rarely changed, only if my father agreed to give me fresh linen for it. A narrow window with a grill, that was there to keep me in and a bathroom which consisted of only a toilet and wash basin. There was no shower, I had to ask to use that and I’d only been given permission once or twice a week. The rest of the time, I’d made do with the wash basin. There was one cupboard in the room for my clothes but I didn’t have much anyway so that hadn’t mattered. The floor was lino, old, hard and cracking, the walls painted a dull sort of grey colour.

As I looked around the room that I would have while I looked after Daisy, I felt tears threatening at the back of my eyes. I didn’t cry, I’d trained myself not to cry. Crying was a weakness, a loss of control, and I had learned years ago that no tears, no emotion, equalled no fun for my abuser. I blinked rapidly to stop the tears from falling as I walked slowly around the room, my fingers trailing gently over everything, the bed, the table, the chest of drawers. It was unlike anything I could have imagined from its warmth, the sunlight streaming in through the huge window to the thick carpet, the paintings, a bathroom with a shower for me and a TV, this, this was heaven.

“I don’t know what to say Daisy, it’s so beautiful, thank you, thank you.” I smiled at her, my lips trembling and I bit into the bottom one to hide the tremor. “Now, what would you like me to do for you first? Do you have a schedule for me to follow? Please, I need you to give me instructions, a roster, whatever you have so I do everything exactly as you wish.”

She gave me an odd look before smiling warmly at me. “You just unpack your bags my dear and then when you’re ready you come out to the kitchen, and we’ll go through a bit of a routine but don’t go getting yourself all worked up about this, it’s not written in concrete, there’s no exchanging of blood as part of a pact or anything like that. I just want someone to assist me not be my slave and to be honest the company will be nice too, although I imagine a pretty young thing like yourself, you’ll be wanting to get out on weekend nights and go clubbing? Like the young ones do?”

I barely contained the shudder of revulsion that ripped through my body. God, I could think of nothing worse. Dancing, crowds, men? No thank you. “No, I don’t go to clubs, in fact I’ve never been to one before in my life.”

She snorted at me in surprise. “You’re serious girl? Never? Have your friends, boyfriends never taken you to a club to dance at all?”

“My…my…dad was very strict and he didn’t like me to go out much.” That was putting it mildly I thought to myself. He never let me go anywhere. “I didn’t have a lot of friends and I’ve never had a boyfriend. My father didn’t like me having anything to do with boys.” My mind drifted to the only man I’d had in my life, my father.

I dropped my eyes and as a result I never saw the frown that crossed Daisy’s face or the more searching look she gave me.

“Oh dear, so you had a very sheltered upbringing then? Well, I’m not complaining. From a selfish point of view, if you’re home instead of out partying, then I’m going to appreciate the company.”

She propped her crutches firmly under her arms and hobbled to the door. “I’ll leave you to unpack and when you’re ready, you come and see me and we’ll go through the things I need you to help me with.” She smiled at me before leaving the room, leaving me to stand in my beautiful room, hugging myself with the first real feeling of happiness I’d felt in more time than I could remember.

When my bags were all unpacked and I’d taken the time to wash my face and brush my hair until it lay smoothly over my shoulders, I hesitantly left the room and made my way through the house in search of Daisy.

I found her sitting on a recliner lounge chair, her plastered leg on the foot rest, sound asleep. I stared at her for a moment unsure what to do but reluctant to wake her. I looked around the room, noticing the beautiful paintings hanging on the wall, similar to the ones in the room I was staying in. She obviously liked paintings.

The room was beautiful too, the colours warm and the décor welcoming from the moss green lounge to the decorative things hanging around the room and the beautiful solid timber furniture.

I turned and made my way to the kitchen gasping when I saw all it had to offer. It wasn’t huge, but definitely bigger than anything I was used to with its black granite bench tops, timber cupboards and stainless steel fridge, stove and dishwasher. Still, looking at the dishes in the sink and surrounds, the remains of burned food stuck to the stove top, I could clearly see that Daisy had been struggling.

I started rinsing off the dishes and opened the dishwasher staring at it in confusion. I’d never used one but surely it couldn’t be that difficult? I loaded up everything that was lying around and hunted around in the cupboards until I found a box of things called power balls which announced boldly on the side of the box that they were going to stun and amaze me with the brilliant clean and shine they’d put on my dishes. Following the diagram on the box, I managed to work my way through what I needed to do with it and when another search of the cupboards revealed the instructions for the dishwasher, I quickly worked out what buttons I needed to push and turned it on.

With a smile of satisfaction at my achievement, I turned my attention to cleaning down the benches, washing the baked on food off the stove top and when the kitchen gleamed to my satisfaction, I looked over at Daisy to see if she was stirring.

She was still sound asleep and I hesitated, again unsure what to do with myself now. A glance at the clock revealed it was just gone 4pm so it wouldn’t be much longer before dinner time, well, dinner time at the time I was used to having to have it prepared by. I had no idea what time Daisy would want dinner.

I opened the fridge to see if there was anything there waiting to be cooked, but there was nothing. I rummaged around and found some ham, tomatoes and eggs, Daisy sure had plenty of eggs. I would wait until she woke and see if she would like an omelette for her dinner.

A scratching noise at the back of the house drew my attention, and I headed towards the long floor to ceiling windows at one end of an area off the living room, which looked like a family room or rumpus room I guess. There were sliding glass doors that led out to the backyard and I followed the sound until with a cry of delight, I found the source of the noise, a little dog scratching at the door to get inside.

When he saw me he gave a high pitched bark, but despite the noise, his tail was wagging so hard, his whole body swung from side to side. I opened the door, reaching down to pat him and after a tentative sniff of my fingers, he rushed forward, bouncing around me excitedly. I patted his wriggling little black and tan body, as he licked me wherever he could make contact with my skin and I laughed at his antics. He was so cute. I’d never been able to have a pet, my father wouldn’t allow it so to see that Daisy had a dog was just the icing on the cake for me. This job was going to be everything I needed. Not only did it give me somewhere to live, but I had an employer who was really nice and kind. She had a beautiful home and had given me a room unlike anything I could ever have imagined. Then to top it all off, she had a cute little dog who appeared to think I was as great as I thought he was.