fitting her first piece of paper into the exact angle of the wall, but even she could see that in doing so she had made a mistake.
The wallpaper would have to come off. It was just as well that she had bought a couple of extra rolls to allow for mistakes.
She had just started work when she heard the doorbell. Frowning, she stood still. What if David Hewitson had ignored her rejection and had after all come round in an attempt to persuade her to sell out to him?
Well, if he had, he would very soon learn his mistake, she decided angrily as she marched downstairs.
But when she opened the front door the man standing there was instantly recognisable, her heart rocketing about inside her chest as he smiled down at her and said softly, ‘Hello, again. Can I come in?’
Luke. Luke was here. Her heart was ricocheting around inside her chest like a rubber ball; she felt sick and giddy, light-headed and ridiculously, impossibly happy.
‘Er—yes…Is it the phone again?’ she asked him breathlessly as she turned back into the hallway and he followed her.
‘Actually, no. I’m at a bit of a loose end this morning, and I thought I’d come over and give you a hand with that decorating.’
Melanie gaped at him. ‘But that’s—’
‘Very neighbourly of me,’ he supplied for her.
She had been about to say that it was totally unnecessary, but now she stared uncertainly at him and said hesitantly, ‘It’s very kind of you, but there’s really no need—’
‘Oh, yes, there is,’ he contradicted her, adding teasingly, ‘I can see you aren’t used to decorating. The way you were doing it, anyone sleeping in that room would wake up seasick. Always lived at home up until now, have you?’ he suggested casually, heading for the stairs. ‘I’m surprised your family has let you come and live in such an isolated spot all on your own.’
Her heart was thumping frantically. As always she felt a mixture of panic and shame fill her at the thought of having to admit that she had no family. A feeling of guilt, as though she were somehow to blame…as though her lack of family somehow made her a second-class citizen.
The years of institutionalised living had left their mark, and a very deep sense of loss and pain that no amount of mature logic could entirely overcome.
‘There really is no need for you to do this,’ she repeated huskily, ignoring his question about her family.
If he was aware that her avoidance was deliberate he gave no sign of it, telling her cheerfully, ‘None at all, other than the fact that it gives me the opportunity to be with you.’
Before she could react to such a blatant piece of flattery he added thoughtfully, ‘In fact, I’d have thought you’d have preferred to hire a decorator.’
‘I wanted to do it myself,’ Melanie told him, unwilling to admit that it was necessity as much as anything else that forced her to tackle the redecoration herself.
‘Really? Personally I’ve always found that when it comes to wallpapering two pairs of hands are always better than one.’
He had reached the top of her stairs and, even though he had only been in the house once before and then only briefly, he seemed to know instinctively which door to open.
But, then, in his job Melanie imagined that he must need to have a good eye for details and the memory to go with it. She wondered what had made him choose such a career. A private detective. She had always imagined such men as small, anonymous characters who could slip unnoticed about their business. He was anything but unnoticeable.
‘Mm,’ was all he said as he surveyed her attempts to remove the crooked pieces of wallpaper. ‘If I could make a suggestion?’
Melanie waited, realising that he was going to do so whether or not she gave him her permission.
‘Because of the slope of the ceiling and the dormer windows, it might be an idea to take the paper right up over the wall, along the ceiling and down the other side. A room like this would probably at one time have had a dado rail at chair height. We could, if you like, break up the busyness of the floral paper by fixing a new rail and taking the patterned paper down to that level, and then putting a toning plain paper on the lower half of the walls.’
We…Was there any sweeter or more emotive word in the English language, especially when it encapsulated the two of them in a small private circle of intimacy, when it seemed to bond him to her almost, when it seemed to suggest that he—?
With a tiny gasp of shock, Melanie shook herself free of the insidious pull of her own weakness, and said breathlessly, ‘I don’t think I could tackle that kind of thing…and…’
‘No need. I wasn’t suggesting you should,’ he told her drily. When she made no response, he told her casually, ‘Look, this case I’m working on down here has gone off the boil a bit, so to speak, and I’m likely to have some time on my hands. How would it be if I took over as your decorator?’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t let you do that,’ Melanie objected, but her heart was racing with frantic excitement as she acknowledged how much she already wanted the dangerous intimacy he was promising her.
‘At least not without…not without paying you.’
‘Paying me?’ Suddenly he was frowning at her, his eyes curiously cold where they had been warm. The way he was looking at her made her shiver as she reacted automatically to the sharpness of his voice by stepping back from him.
It seemed he had read the meaning of her body language because immediately his expression changed, his eyes softening back to their original warmth. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that…well, the kind of relationship I had in mind for us wasn’t exactly one of business. However, if you really feel you have to offer me some form of repayment, how about payment in kind?’
She couldn’t help it. She looked immediately and betrayingly at his mouth, blushing vividly as she remembered how it had felt against her own. It was a very masculine mouth. Looking at it made her tremble inside and dig her teeth quite sharply into her own bottom lip, as she fought to banish the dangerous images tormenting her senses.
‘If you would agree to allow me to use your phone until my own is installed, that would be more than payment enough,’ she heard Luke saying, and instantly her fair skin flamed with guilty heat as she prayed that he hadn’t realised what she had been thinking.
Desperate to distract his attention, as if she were a vulnerable creature of the wild seeking sanctuary, she said quickly, ‘That’s…that’s fine by me. But this dado rail; do you really think—?’
‘I’m sure of it,’ he interrupted her. ‘Come over here and look at these marks on the wall.’
In order to do as he suggested she would have to stand so close to him that their bodies would be touching. A small shudder of sensation burned through her and she knew that if she did as he suggested, if she felt the heat and strength of his flesh against her own, she would be helpless to control the foolish response of her own flesh.
‘Yes, I can see them from here,’ she fibbed, adding nervously, ‘What do you suppose happened to it—the rails?’
‘Who
