a staircase winding up and leading to balustraded floors. To be met by a big-haired blonde of such magnificent proportions, shown to full advantage by pink harem pants and a toning glittery, clingy top, that Mercy had immediately felt like a small fat grey mouse, her modest five-three seeming to diminish to a mere inch or two.
Consulting a clipboard, the blonde had announced, ‘You must be Ms Howard.’ A wide white smile followed a minute scrutiny of her less than flattering boxy grey suit, sensible shoes and unwieldy handbag. ‘I’m Signor Pascali’s—’ the coy arching of one artfully darkened brow, followed by a huskily stressed ‘—friend.’ A meaningful simper, then, ‘He is interviewing at the moment, so if you’d like to take a seat I’m sure he won’t keep you waiting for too long.’
The leather and chrome seat she located beside a glass-topped table was surprisingly comfortable. But Mercy couldn’t relax even though she planted her feet together and cradled her comfy old handbag on her lap. The qualms had begun first thing this morning when Carly had gleefully apprised her of the exact identity of her hoped-for future employer.
‘I sat up half the night on the net researching the guy. Get this—he’s a living legend and he’s only thirty-one! He owns, directs and literally is the creative genius behind the Pascali Ad Agency. Worth billions in his own right, not counting a load of family dosh. His main home is here in London—presumably where you’ll be working and living—plus he owns a villa near Amalfi and an apartment in Rome. Interested in modern art. No wife and kids, so there won’t be much for you to do other than flick a duster over his Picassos and Hockneys!’ Shrugging into the navy tailored suit jacket, the one with a discreet embroidered logo of the world-famous cosmetic company she worked for on the narrow lapel, the dark colour of the sleek fabric drawing attention to her enviably straight jaw-length ash-blonde bob, she blew Mercy a kiss. ‘Must dash before I’m late again. And the best of luck—and remember, you’ve got a beautiful smile, so use it a lot!’
Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, having been up most of the night cleaning offices, which was increasingly the only type of work the domestic agency found for her because, according to one of her workmates, she was always reliable, thorough and never ever called in sick, she had found it impossible to grab the customary two hours or so of rest, getting more and more het up about the coming interview.
Coming across the job vacancy as she’d browsed through an up-market magazine while waiting for a routine six-monthly dental check-up yesterday lunchtime, it had seemed that her guardian angel was working overtime on her behalf. A live-in housekeeper was required for an Andreo Pascali, the salary quoted large enough to make her eyes pop out of her head.
On that kind of money, no living expenses—and presumably she’d be fed as well as housed—she could do a huge amount to help her brother James through his medical training, far more than she was managing at the moment even though she scraped together every penny that wasn’t needed for her share of the rent and food.
Hopelessly impractical where money matters were concerned, he’d feel utterly at sea if he finished his gruelling training—and already he was talking about eventually going on to take a higher degree in surgery—and woke up to the fact that he was saddled with a mountainous student debt.
Convinced that the job vacancy she’d happened across had been heaven-sent, she’d phoned and stated—well, more demanded, she recollected with a flush of discomfiture—that she needed an appointment for an interview. It had all seemed to fit so perfectly, given that only the day before Carly had dropped her bombshell.
The old school friend she’d shared the tiny flat with for the last two years was moving out, moving in with her boyfriend, marriage definitely on the cards.
She’d been genuinely happy for her, of course she had. How could she be otherwise when Carly had been so good to her? Two years ago, days after her twentieth birthday, she’d been at her wits’ end, stricken with grief at the death of her remaining parent, not knowing how she would manage to help her brilliant brother through his long years of training and exist on her odd job earnings now that her mother’s church pension had died with her.
Leaving school herself at sixteen on the death of her father, she’d agreed with her mother that it was her duty to earn something to put by for her much brighter younger brother’s education. She’d taken any work she could find in the village where the family had moved from the vicarage to live in a small cottage owned by the church authorities which was a guaranteed home for their mother’s lifetime.
Times had been hard but contented. She’d been planning to work full-time towards a qualification in catering and housecraft to open up a future of professional housekeeping or, more adventurously, starting up her own business catering for private dinner parties and weddings. That ambition had been put on hold but, even so, she had enjoyed the work she did find. Cleaning, tidying gardens, shopping for the housebound, dog-walking.
It had been Carly who’d stepped in at that worrisome time. She worked as a beautician in a swanky London store and had offered, ‘You can share with me. The flat’s not much bigger than a shoe box but we’d manage. You could share the rent so you’d be doing me a favour. And there are loads of domestic agencies just crying out for recruits. I could fix up some interviews. Okay?’
So she’d got a home and a job and her father’s spinster aunt, a retired schoolmistress, had offered James a home during his vacations. A quiet Cornish village where he could revise and study in peace and quiet before returning to the famous London teaching hospital for his next term of training.
Now, as the statuesque blonde escorted a tall, graceful, fine-featured brunette—probably with a whole pile of qualifications tucked up in her smart leather shoulder purse—over to the front door, telling her, ‘You will be contacted within the next day or two to let you know whether you are on the short list,’ Mercy’s spirits dropped through the soles of her brown lace-ups. She felt totally out of place.
And if that with-it, confident-looking woman might not even make a short list, what hope had she? And had been left for a further ten minutes to stew, torn between the desire to slope away, advertise for someone prepared to share the tiny flat when Carly moved out at the end of the week and carry on as before, scratching to save every penny she could, and the need to tough it out, give it her best shot. After all, she had nothing to lose except the tube fare.
Still dithering, the decision to flee or fight was taken out of her hands when the blonde bombshell beckoned from the doorway of the room she’d previously entered on the far side of the vast vestibule.
Heart thumping at the base of her throat, Mercy rose to her feet, wishing she’d at least had something more impressive to wear than the sober and sensible suit that had been bought for her father’s funeral all those years ago.
But then she heartened herself by deciding that ‘sensible’ would be a quality any employer would look for in a housekeeper, so sensible and practical was the way she would pitch it. A girl didn’t have to be a vision of loveliness to wash dishes and polish floors, did she?
And the legendary, super well-heeled Signor Pascali was only a human being, just as she was, wasn’t he?
But there were human beings and human beings was her first insane thought when the too-handsome-by-a-country-mile specimen viewed her dumpy personage across the cluttered expanse of his desk.
His lean, strong face was taut with barely concealed impatience and there was an aura of predatory stillness about the honed, whiplash tight, power-packed frame that suggested a tendency to leap on anyone who stepped out of line and tear them apart limb from limb.
The dark grey eyes continued to assess her until she felt like
