wise. I never guarantee anything—that way nobody is ever disappointed.’
Fran didn’t believe him for a moment. For instance, there was the art student he’d sponsored and her strange, tortured sculpture in the other room. She thought about that as she ate her supper—astonishingly palatable, considering—and thought there was a great deal more to this man than met the eye.
She sipped the wine and wondered if it was hideously expensive or if it was just Josh’s company and the fact that she had found herself somewhere to live and an income for the short term at least that made everything seem better.
He swirled his glass, sniffed the wine and sipped it, and set it down with a nod of satisfaction. ‘Good choice, for a self-confessed philistine,’ he said with a grin. ‘The casserole’s good, too. If you didn’t nag so much, you’d be perfect.’
High praise, indeed. She bent over her plate so that her hair fell forward and disguised the colour in her cheeks, horribly conscious of his eyes on her.
‘You need to learn to take a compliment,’ he said softly.
‘Lack of practice,’ she told him.
‘Now you’re fishing.’
She didn’t bother to follow that one up. There was no point. It had been so long since anybody had paid her a compliment of any sort that she couldn’t remember it.
‘Fran?’
‘Leave it, Josh, it’s not important.’
She kept her eyes fixed on her supper, and after a moment she heard the scrape of his fork against the plate again. It wasn’t over, though. Even on such short acquaintance, she knew him better than that, and he would return to the subject, she’d stake her life on it.
Thank goodness it would soon be time to settle him down for the night, and she could go into that lovely room with a book from the groaning shelves in his library and just be herself. She needed the job, but more than that she needed time to recover, time to put herself back together and let herself heal.
Maybe then she’d be able to take a compliment and dare to believe it.
CHAPTER THREE
THE bed was gloriously comfortable. Fran didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, but she went out like a light, even though her door was open so she could listen for Josh. In fact, she didn’t wake until the first grey light of dawn teased at the edge of the curtains, and then she jumped guiltily out of bed, pulled on her dressing-gown and went into his room on tiptoe.
He was fast asleep still, his left arm flung above his head, his right arm in its cast resting across his waist. He must have been restless in the night because the pillow she’d put beside his leg to hold the quilt off it had ended up on the floor, and the quilt had slipped sideways and was pulling on his foot, turning it outwards.
Rats. She should have checked him earlier, because she didn’t want the pulling of the quilt to twist his femur before it had healed. Creeping quietly across the room, she tucked the pillow in beside his leg again and eased the quilt up to relieve the pressure.
He stirred, murmuring something unintelligible, and then his lids fluttered open and he looked at her with sleep-glazed eyes.
‘Morning,’ she said softly. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you, but the quilt was pulling on your foot.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, his voice gruff. ‘It keeps slipping. I must have kicked the pillow out of the way. How did you sleep?’
She gave a sheepish smile. ‘Rather too well. I meant to keep an eye on you, but I just didn’t wake up. How about you?’
He shrugged. ‘Not too bad. Better than usual. There’s nothing quite like being in your own bed in your own home.’
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