Housekeeper at His Command: The Spaniard's Virgin Housekeeper / His Pregnant Housekeeper / The Maid and the Millionaire

‘You remembered that!’

‘How could I forget? You are the only woman I know to let me feel the sharp edge of her tongue.’

‘I bet!’ She tugged her hands away from his. The fleeting moment of rapport had vanished. It had felt so very good. But now it might never have happened. She wished it hadn’t!

Long, gold-tipped lashes swept down to veil her eyes, because it really hurt to translate what he meant. Hordes of beautiful, sexy, exquisitely dressed, sophisticated and suitable women flattering him outrageously and hanging on his every word. Not a single one with any reason or desire to even think about bad-mouthing him!

Mental images of some nameless, long-legged lovely wrapped all around him, cooing sweet nothings and purring with pleasure, rose up to choke her, blinding her to the arrival of a waiter with the cold drinks Cayo had ordered.

With a brief nod of thanks he leaned towards her, his eyes soft, and assured her, ‘That was a compliment, amada.’

Stop it! she shrieked inside her head. When he was nice to her, her emotions went haywire! Her hand shaking, she lifted a glass, her fingers curling around the ice-cold surface. She drank the most refreshing grapefruit juice she’d ever tasted as if she were stranded in a desert and dying of thirst.

Setting the empty glass back on the table with unnecessary vigour, Izzy wished she were impervious to Cayo’s charismatic good-looks, but she knew she never would be—not in a million years.

She was thrown completely off-balance when he captured her hand and said, in that slow, sexy drawl, ‘Time to talk. As friends.’

Her hand felt so small and delicate within his, her fingers curling in response. He had the unprecedented and urgent need to lift it to his mouth, plant kisses deep within her palm.

He didn’t do soppy, romantic gestures!

And he wasn’t going to start with Izzy. Izzy was out of bounds!

Which was a pity!

Scrub that thought!

His features as impassive as only he could make them, he gently untwined her fingers from his and carefully replaced her hand back on her lap. ‘You up for it?’

‘For what?’ Her voice sounded funny, as if she were drunk, Izzy decided. Just because he’d briefly held her hand again. Time to get a grip.

‘I want to discuss your decision to leave Miguel’s employ.’

‘Oh. Right.’ Izzy perked up. At least she told herself she did. She’d made the perfectly sensible and correct decision to leave, and naturally Cayo would want to discuss the best way to go about getting her back to Las Palomas, as she’d requested, where she could pack the remainder of her gear and say her farewells to Miguel. ‘Go ahead.’

‘I understand your decision to leave,’ Cayo assured her gently, determined to prevent her taking off like a scalded cat. He wanted her to leave Las Palomas only when he had decided his guilt over his shockingly bad judgement had been relieved. ‘His work’s the only companion Tio Miguel needs, always has been, and as it’s my firm intention to get him to agree to make Las Palomas his permanent home he won’t need a housekeeper. Staying in his employ would make you feel like a spare part.’

Izzy nodded her agreement, the sudden painful lump in her throat not allowing her to vocalise. He understood, and he would do everything in his considerable power to facilitate her removal from the lives of the super-elevated Garcias with all haste.

Deflation hit her. A decision made in a blinding moment of unadulterated common sense was one thing. But being faced with the imminence of a very uncertain future, with the responsibility of a small puppy to add to her anxieties, was quite another. Perhaps common sense wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Sparkling dark eyes enhanced by incredibly thick black lashes rested on her slightly trembling pink mouth. ‘I won’t ask you to alter your decision, only to delay it.’

He caught his breath as she lifted her eyes to his. So wide, so vulnerable. The thought of her, jobless, homeless, wandering Spain in the hope of picking up work, was inconceivable. He wouldn’t let it happen. He might be the tough nut described in the financial papers, but he wasn’t a monster.

‘Give it a couple of weeks or so—at least until after the Summer Ball. Leave straight away and Miguel’s feelings would be hurt—especially if you ungraciously refuse to accept the new wardrobe he specifically wanted you to have. I know he feels badly about the way he so grossly underpaid you, and I know he wants you to have a holiday. And as for me—’ he spread his finely made hands expressively ‘—I owe you. It’s not beyond my capabilities to find you suitable work and accommodation within one or other of my companies.’ Not a shadow of his ongoing loathing at the thought of seeing her walk off into the sunset with no visible form of support showed on his face as he invited, ‘Tell me of your life before you came to Spain.’ Miguel had told him what he knew, what she’d confided. He wanted to know more.

‘Why?’ Izzy swung her legs around and wriggled into a position where she was directly facing the man seated at her side. She caught her breath, mesmerised by the sheer brilliance of his eyes, horribly aware of the tightening tingle of awareness deep in her tummy. Was he, at last, actually interested in her as a human being? A woman?

It was a thought too sweet to be ousted by acknowledging its sheer stupidity—until he countered blandly, ‘Think of it as a job interview. If I’m to place you within one of my companies I need to know I’m not trying to push a round peg into a square hole.’

Extreme humiliation claimed her. No wonder her family was irritated by her, called her stupid. Of course he wasn’t interested in her as a flesh-and-blood woman. Why the heck should he be? She had none of the social graces, the dazzling beauty and sophistication that would raise a flicker of interest in a man such as he.

Squashing the desire to tell him to mind his own business, that she’d find work without his help, she glumly acknowledged that she couldn’t afford to be defiant just because her feelings had been hurt. Feelings she had had no right to have in the first place. Talk about cutting her nose off to spite her face! She needed work. He’d promised to place her.

‘My CV’s nothing to write home about,’ she mumbled, her hands twisting in her lap with sheer embarrassment.

Her family had always drummed it into her that unless she applied herself academically she would get nowhere. Wrongly, she decided with hindsight. Because she had always known she could never begin to approach the scholarly brilliance of her older, doted-upon brother, she hadn’t even tried. Now she was being obliged to spell it out.

‘No qualifications. A string of going-nowhere jobs. And then Dad found me work in his office—he was a solicitor. Just making the tea, really, and running errands. Then he retired—’

‘To New Zealand, to be with your doctor brother.’

‘James is a brilliant surgeon,’ Izzy corrected, knowing full well her brother would have insisted on that distinction. She pinkened because Miguel must have told him this stuff, which reminded her that Cayo would have been checking out his uncle’s new and—in his initial opinion—dodgy housekeeper. Miguel would have relayed what he knew about her because she’d confided heaps about her background to explain what she’d been doing in Spain in the first place.

‘And you took work in Spain, leaving your job and your home because you and the man you were in love with had a falling out.’

Cayo cut to the chase. It figured. She could be fiery-tempered, headstrong enough to act on impulse without calmly thinking out the consequences. But she was also warm-hearted, and hadn’t a mean or ungenerous bone in her delectable body.

‘Are you still in love with him?’ It was a struggle to keep his tone uninterested when he was illogically incensed by the possibility—for some reason he was totally at a loss to understand.

He was left clenching his teeth against some unwise and possibly ridiculous frustrated outburst when, her chin up, she came back with, ‘That is absolutely none of your business!’

Miguel obviously hadn’t relayed the whole story of her soppy crush on Marcus, the way he had used her and laughed at her behind her back, and she certainly wasn’t going to lay what amounted to her further stupidity and humiliation on the table for him to gloat over or pity her for.

‘I take that as a yes.’ The dismissive tone he could turn on at will was at odds with what he could only describe as his anger. Miguel had been short on details of the English love of his housekeeper’s life, and he hadn’t pressed, hadn’t been remotely interested, cynically deciding that any male Izzy Makepeace professed to be in love with had to be loaded, and that clearly the English guy had seen through her and given her the elbow—hence her removal to hunting pastures new.

But he knew differently now. She wasn’t the avaricious slapper he had named her. She had loved the English guy. Still loved him.

He forced himself to unclench his jaw. As she had said, it was none of his business. So why did the pretty certain knowledge that Izzy would regret her impetuosity and return to her lover, or that he, like any red-blooded male, would track her down and claim her leave him feeling so sour?

Change the subject.

Cool, impersonal tone.

He didn’t do staff interviews. His personnel officer handled that. But he’d give it his best shot. It couldn’t be too difficult.

‘Having seen how you so brilliantly transformed the grotty hovel that was Miguel’s home under his unlamented former housekeeper’s tenure, I would say your talents lie with the domestic’

‘Talents?’ In spite of herself, Izzy went bright pink with pleasure. ‘No one’s ever linked that word with me before,’ she confessed. Praise coming from this elevated being would be pretty rare, and she knew she would always treasure it—which was horribly feeble, and a rather shameful fact that wild horses wouldn’t drag from her.

His heart, never the mushiest of organs, seemed to swell with sympathy. He recalled, now, something Miguel had said, that he’d ignored as would-be heart-tugging propaganda.

‘Reading between the lines, I’d say her family treated her appallingly. Forever comparing her unfavourably with her brother, making her feel third-rate.’

‘I believe you lived in the shadow of your brother, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have your own strengths. Different, but equal,’ he remarked gently.

That brought her head up, and a slight frown to mar the smooth perfection of her brow. Miguel had certainly been giving his tongue full rein! She shrugged, a slight, defeated gesture.