you could take pity on me and not wear that tight sweater again, I’d be very much obliged.’
With her face flaming a vibrant scarlet, Liadan turned without a word and hurried back to the kitchen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘LEAVE that. I think you’ve done enough for one day, don’t you?’
‘I’m only setting the table for your dinner. It won’t take a minute. I haven’t made anything fancy tonight—just a lasagne with a salad.’
Flushing a little, because seeing him again had reminded her that he had all but reduced her to a puddle on the floor with that electrifying brush of his fingers across her breast, as well as his comment about her sweater, Liadan continued to lay the table. At lunchtime she had taken him soup and sandwiches, leaving the tray as usual on top of the beautiful grand piano that she itched to play. Apart from a polite inquiry about her head, he’d let her appearance pass without comment, his work commanding his attention again almost immediately. Liadan had been glad to leave him to eat his lunch in peace and return to the kitchen to eat hers.
But now Adrian wasn’t absorbed by work. Dressed in casual black jeans and a chocolate-brown sweater that highlighted his exceptional physique in a way that made Liadan a little more than hot under the collar, he smiled at her as he came into the room, his face looking less careworn than it had in days. That smile had her spirits soaring as high as a bird and she was fiercely glad that she had prevented him from seeing that despicable rag masquerading as a newspaper that Steven had shoved under her nose earlier.
‘Why don’t you join me?’
‘You mean, eat in here with you?’
‘Would it be such a hardship, Liadan?’
‘No.’ Liadan frowned as she straightened up from the table. ‘It wouldn’t be a hardship at all. That wasn’t what I meant. It’s just that—’
Looking amused, Adrian casually rubbed his hand round the back of his neck. ‘It’s just that what?’
Did he really have to ask? Liadan wondered in exasperation. He’d already emphasised more than once that he was paying her to do a job for him, nothing more. Sitting down in his grand dining room to eat dinner with him would be too awkward for words. It would make it hard for her to remember that she was just his housekeeper and not something far more intimate, and to Liadan’s mind it was best if she kept the distinction between their roles clear. At the end of the day, Adrian was her employer and she his employee. She needed to hold onto this job if she was going to keep her little house and that had to be her priority. Not some pie-in-the-sky hope that her relationship with her employer might become more personal.
‘It would be better if I just ate in the kitchen as normal. You should relax and unwind after your day’s work. Dinner won’t be long.’
She accidentally came into contact with his arm as she brushed past him to get to the door, and almost leapt out of her skin when Adrian caught her by the wrist to waylay her.
‘What if I’m in the mood for some conversation?’ he asked idly, his deep, penetrating gaze drifting over her features. Even with that stark white dressing peering out from under her unruly curls, her face was bewitching, Adrian thought hotly. Her pretty mouth had a naturally gorgeous pout to it and her cute retroussé nose was probably the envy of all her friends. But when it came to her eyes, those long-lashed sapphire-blue orbs that excited him with the merest glance…Well, if he were a poet instead of a fiction writer, he’d write poems to her beauty till the day he died. Feeling the fragile bones of her wrist beneath his fingers, he tightened his hold a fraction longer than necessary before letting go, just to remind himself what touching her could do to his already-heightened senses.
‘Did Kate ever join you for dinner?’ Her voice sounded a little breathless and with an undeniable throb of pleasure Adrian knew that his touch had been the cause.
‘No. She was a busy little body who liked to get on with her work so I never asked her.’
‘So you would have…asked her, I mean, if she’d been predisposed?’
‘Suddenly I’m in uncharted waters, Liadan. What exactly are you getting at?’
‘I’m your housekeeper, Adrian, not your dinner guest. It’s best we keep things clear, don’t you think?’
For a moment his expression was as implacable as iron. Then in the next second his facial muscles seemed to visibly relax and he issued her with a brief but slightly weary smile. ‘You’re right, of course. Thank you for the timely reminder.’
Knowing that she had been the cause of his sudden return to formality and realising it was probably too late to rescind, Liadan reluctantly left him alone to go and see to the dinner. But as she returned to the kitchen she was unable to easily dismiss the powerful longing that stirred inside her—even when she crossly told herself it was utterly and irrevocably futile.
Later that evening, long after Liadan had gone to bed, Adrian pulled out a single drawer in his writing desk and extracted the slim black volume that lay there. Flicking through its thickly embossed pages, he frowned down at an address and telephone number that he’d inscribed there long ago. His mind made up on what he was going to do, he picked up the telephone and started to dial.
The sun streaming into her room was too bright, like an upturned can of daffodil-yellow paint exploding onto a cream carpet. It was an assault on the senses—an abomination. Her head throbbing, Liadan groaned, got out of bed on legs that felt like rubber and irritably closed the offending gap between the curtains.
‘Liadan! Are you in there?’
A loud rapping on the door followed Adrian’s harshly raised voice making Liadan freeze where she stood as realisation dawned. What on earth did she think she was doing, going back to bed? It was seven-thirty in the morning, her clock said so, and she should have been up at least two hours earlier to lay the fire in Adrian’s study. Grabbing her robe off the bed, she hastily shoved her arms into it and opened the door.
Adrian glowered. ‘You scared the hell out of me! What’s wrong? Does your head hurt?’
Not wanting to admit that it did, that she was surely suffering from some kind of delayed reaction to her impromptu detour into the ditch, that her whole body felt as though she’d been knocked down by a marauding elephant, Liadan grimaced. ‘I’ll be okay in a minute. I’m sorry I overslept. Just give me a chance to jump in the shower and I’ll—’
‘Get back into bed.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve seen corpses with more colour than you.’
Not mincing his words or caring whether she was offended or not, Adrian strode menacingly into the room as Liadan backed feebly away towards her tumbled bed. One glance at the jumbled up bedclothes told Adrian what he’d already suspected. She’d had a bad night, a terrible one, most likely. Her pale skin looked almost translucent this morning even in the dimmed light of the room, and there were dark, telling circles beneath her drowsy eyes. He could have kicked himself for allowing her downstairs yesterday, never mind allowing her to prepare lunch and dinner for him.
‘Get back into bed and stay there. I’m calling out the doctor to come and check you over. I’d
