later she opened the door and froze. The moonlight had evaporated and she was left standing in the pitch-dark.
Don’t panic, Ellie. Think!
There had to be logical way to deal with this.
‘Okay,’ she whispered out loud, ‘my room is the—’ she counted on her fingers ‘—third on the left…I think.’ All she had to do was feel for the doors and she would be back in that wonderfully comfortable bed in no time.
She tiptoed close to the wood panelling, letting her left fingers walk along the surface in search of door fames.
One…
Two…
She meant to creep slowly, but with each step her pulse increased, adding speed to her steps.
Three…
She opened the door and made a quick dash for the bed. Ever since she was a child she’d had an irrational fear that some shadowy figure underneath would grab her ankles when she got close. She’d even perfected a sprint and dive manoeuvre in her teenage years. She decided to resurrect it now.
Big mistake.
She tripped over a discarded shoe and stumbled into a solid wall of…something.
It was warm. And breathing.
Oh, heck.
There was somebody in the house! A burglar, or an axe-wielding maniac…
Her brain short-circuited. Too much information at once. Too much to process. Thankfully, more primal instincts took over. She backed away, hoping she hadn’t got muddled and that the door was still directly behind her. But she hadn’t made more than two steps when a large, strong hand grabbed her wrist.
Ellie’s stomach somersaulted and she froze. Without even thinking about why or how, she lunged at him, whoever he was, and shoved the heel of her hand under his chin, causing him to grunt and stumble backwards.
Mother, I will never moan about the self-defence classes you made me go to in the village hall again!
In the surreal slow-motion moment that followed, she wondered why a burglar would be bare-chested in March, but before the thought was fully formed in her head his other arm grabbed her and he fell, taking her with him. She came crashing down on top of him, and then they lay winded in a tangle of arms and legs on the floor.
Here, he had the advantage. She didn’t know how, but she could sense he was taller than her, and if the chest she’d just landed on was anything to go by he had five times as many muscles. Somehow as they’d fallen they’d twisted, and she was now partly pinned underneath him, her legs trapped. She started to wriggle.
I should have paid more attention at those classes, instead of gossiping at the back with Janice Bradford.
Because the man obviously had no intention of letting her loose. In one swift movement he flipped her onto her back, his hands clamping both her wrists and digging them into the scratchy wool rug while his knees clamped her thighs together. The air left Ellie’s body with an ‘oof’ noise.
She flailed and struggled, but it was like trying to dislodge a lump of granite. Eventually she lay still beneath him, every muscle rigid. His toothpaste-scented breath came in short puffs, warming the skin of her neck. Panic fluttered in her chest.
It dawned on her that her original assumption that he was a burglar might be a tad optimistic. Things could be about to get a lot worse.
She had to act now—before he made his next move.
In a moment of pure instinct, she lifted her head and sank her teeth into the smooth skin of his shoulder. Then, while he was yelping in pain, she used every bit of strength in her five-foot-five frame to rock him to her left, getting him off-balance and thereby gaining enough momentum to swing him back in the other direction. The plan was to fling him off her so she could escape.
The plan was flawed.
He tumbled over, all right, but as she tried to crawl away he got hold of her right foot and dragged her back towards him. Ellie tried to stop herself by twisting over and clawing at the rug, but large tufts just came away in her fingers. And then she realised she was travelling further than she’d scurried away. She was being dragged back towards the bed.
That was when she started shouting. A wave of white-hot anger swept up her body.
How dared he?
‘Get out of my bedroom!’ she screamed. ‘Or I’ll—’
‘What?’
He was angry, but there was something more in his voice—confusion?
Harsh light flooded the room, accompanied by the click of a switch. Ellie peeled her face off the carpet and blinked a few times, desperate to focus on anything that might give her a clue as to where the door was. Her eyes began to adjust, and she made out a tall figure against the pale blue of the wall.
Pale blue? Oh, help! My room is a kind of heritage yellow colour.
She crinkled her eyelids until they were almost shut, and swivelled her head to face her attacker. Through the blur of her eyelashes she saw a pair of deep brown eyes staring at her. There was something about them…Had she dreamt about a pair of eyes just like that before she’d woken up? Half a memory was lodged somewhere, refusing to make sense.
Ellie’s chest reverberated with the pounding of her heart and she felt the fire wash up her face and settle in the tips of her ears. He looked as astonished as she felt.
She had seen those eyes before, but not in her dreams. They hadn’t been scowling then, but laughing, twinkling…
Ellie let out a noise that was part groan, part whimper as the memory clunked into place. She started to collect her limbs together and move away.
‘I’m…I’m…so sorry! I got lost in the dark…’ She shot a glance at him, but his face was still etched with confusion. ‘I mean, I thought you were a—a maniac.’
He blinked. Something told her his assessment of her hadn’t been dissimilar.
‘Mr Wilder…I…’
‘I know who I am. Who on earth are you?’
She licked her lips—they seemed to have dried out completely—and cleared her throat. ‘I’m Ellie Bond, your new housekeeper.’
One month earlier
Ellie’s limbs stopped working the moment she crossed the threshold of the coffee shop. The woman in the red coat was early. She wasn’t supposed to be here yet, but there she was, sitting at a table and reading a newspaper. After a few seconds the door swung closed behind Ellie, hitting her on the bottom. She didn’t even flinch, mainly because she felt as if she’d swallowed a thousand ice cubes and they were now all jostling for position as they slowly melted, spreading outwards through her body.
The woman’s long dark hair almost touched the tabletop as she bent over an
