recklessly wanton...?
She shuddered, looking warily up at him through the protective screen of her lashes. Why on earth was he just standing there like that? Why didn’t he say something—an accusation, a joke, a request for an explanation, a demand she pack her bags and never darken his door again—anything to break this unbearable tension?
Nervously she tried to assess his uncertain mood. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was ruffled—not a very good sign for a man who always presented a perfectly groomed image, even when relaxing in private. His saturnine face had a more than usually shuttered look, his thin mouth a tight slash across the unshaven lower half of his face that emphasised the general impression of indrawn tension. However, his crisp blue and white striped shirt and dark blue trousers were immaculately co-ordinated, so he hadn’t been in such haste to track her down that he’d just thrown on the first clothes to hand.
The silence stretched on just long enough for her nerve to break under the strain.
‘Did you want me, sir?’
Too late Vanessa realised the suggestive ambiguity of the question and she had to clench her teeth to stop herself gabbling a disclaimer into the ensuing silence. Her neatly buttoned collar suddenly felt chokingly tight.
‘I...’ He released her from the torture of his sole attention, looking around the kitchen again, as if hunting for his words. ‘Er... Am I the only one breakfasting...?’
Vanessa was aware of Mrs Riley’s sidelong glance but refused to share her silent puzzlement at their employer’s uncharacteristic vagueness. She was too busy worrying over whether he was deliberately prolonging her agony or merely unwilling to humiliate her in front of the housekeeper.
‘Why...yes. Vanessa didn’t mention that you’d brought any guests with you this time...’ Mrs Riley was saying, a faint look of bewilderment crossing her face as she watched her employer’s eyes drop as he studied his stylishly shod feet with apparent fascination.
‘No, I didn’t. So...it’s just me, then...’ His inflexion rose slightly on the last word, just enough to suggest the possibility of a question. Nobody answered immediately and his gaze swivelled suddenly back to Vanessa, who wasn’t quite quick enough to banish her look of apprehension.
He scowled at her. ‘Can I see you for a few minutes in the library, Flynn?’ He turned on his heel and was almost out the door before he halted, looking back. ‘Incidentally, Mrs Riley, I’m really not very hungry this morning, so perhaps just some toast and tea...’
‘Oh, what a pity, Mr Savage, and I’ve just put a nice pot of porridge on the stove—’
‘Porridge?’ He jerked around, looking so shocked at the suggestion that Vanessa, already primed with nerves, gave a jittery little laugh and found herself once again impaled by the focus of his attention.
‘In the library. Now!’ For Benedict Savage the quiet hiss was the equivalent of a furious shout.
‘Yes, sir!’ Vanessa muttered to empty air, rising from her seat and unhooking the cropped navy jacket that was draped over the high back.
‘Well, I never!’ said Kate Riley, crossing her arms over her ample chest and shaking her grey head so that her corrugated perm quivered. ‘You’d have thought I was offering him arsenic. He always said he liked my porridge!’
Vanessa, shouldering into her jacket and procrastinating by squaring the cuffs and lapels, soothed her injured pride absently. ‘He’s probably just in a bad mood—’
‘Mr Savage doesn’t have moods—he’s always a perfect gentleman,’ Mrs Riley pointed out with inescapable truth. ‘He never gets out of bed on the wrong side but it certainly seems as though he did this morning...’
Vanessa murmured something indistinct in answer to the unfortunate metaphor and rushed out of the kitchen, pressing cold hands to her hot cheeks.
Calm down, calm down, she lectured herself sternly as she walked down the flag-stoned hall. If he fires you, you can charge him with sexual harassment. Or was he planning to charge her...? She almost moaned aloud at the thought, its absurdity eclipsed by her horror of scandal. Whatever happened, there would be questions asked because she couldn’t possibly continue to work at Whitefield. She would have to leave the place she had come to look on as a quiet, secure haven from the madness of the world. And what was she going to tell Richard? Oh, damn, damn, damn!
‘Well...?’ Thankfully Benedict Savage had not chosen to adopt an intimidating position of dominance behind the meticulously tidy antique desk that fronted the French windows. Instead he was standing just inside the doorway, one hand resting on a walnut shelf of the book-lined wall, fingers tapping involuntarily against the aged wood as she closed the door behind her.
‘Yes, sir?’ Vanessa stood straight and tall, shoulders squared against the imminent attack.
He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry if my early arrival has caused problems, but I just needed to get away for a space of time and Whitefield seemed the place to do it. The apartment in Auckland is too accessible and...’ he shrugged with a trace of diffidence ‘...well, I know that Mrs Riley gets in a tizz about these things... Just make sure she knows that I don’t expect everything to be as organised as usual...that I don’t want any fuss...’
Vanessa was hard put to it not to let her jaw fall open. Mr Perfection was telling her he didn’t expect perfection? He was waffling about household arrangements when the real business at hand was shrieking to be settled?
She looked at the tapping fingers. Nerves? Mr Cool was nervous?
‘So, you’ll tell her that, will you?’ His fingers suddenly stopped their fluttering with a sudden slam against the wood.
Vanessa’s eyes shot back to his face to find him watching her warily. She scrabbled for foundation on a rapidly shifting ground. He was nervous of her? The notion was mind-boggling.
‘Ah, yes, yes, of course, sir,’ she assured him hastily.
‘Right.’ He took off his spectacles, cleaned their spotless lenses with a beautifully pressed handkerchief retrieved from his hip pocket, and put them on again. ‘I didn’t bring anyone with me.’
‘So you said, sir—in the kitchen, just now,’ she added as he regarded her blankly.
‘Did I? Oh, yes, of course I did.’ He pushed off the bookcase and began to pace. ‘So...where is our other guest, I wonder?’
Vanessa stiffened. ‘If you’re suggesting—’
He jumped in, correspondingly quick to suspect. ‘Suggesting what?’
‘That I take advantage of your absences to invite people to use your house—’ she began, angry that he might be trying to make up spurious reasons for terminating her employment. If he was going to fire her for sleeping with him he was going to have to admit it!
‘No, no, nothing like that.’ His answer was as swift as it seemed genuine, and edged with irritation. ‘If I didn’t trust you I wouldn’t continue to employ you, would I? I just wondered if you knew...’
‘Knew what?’ She was deeply uneasy now. Maybe she just should have opened up with an apology and explanation instead of leaving it up to him to introduce
