Maid for Montero

Chapter NINE



‘I THOUGHT I had already made that clear.’

‘But after?’ Isandro was hot for her now, but Zoe did not anticipate the situation would last and when he lost interest, what then? ‘When I am no longer flavour of the day?’

‘That moment,’ he purred, stroking the silky smooth skin of her forearm, ‘feels like a long way off.’

‘But it might not be.’

‘Well, that is catered for. You will continue to live in the gatehouse for as long as it pleases you. It seems to me a win, win situation.’

He could say that but he wasn’t on the brink of falling in love. Who was she kidding? Zoe thought bleakly. She was already in love and had been for the past weeks. She was going to be devastated when this was over, but she was going to be devastated anyway so why not have some weeks of delicious mind-blowing sex with this gorgeous man to remember and some financial security for the twins?

‘All right, but no.’ She twisted away from the hand that reached for her, knowing that once he touched her she wouldn’t be able to think straight, let alone consider consequences. ‘There have to be some rules.’

Isandro stared at her, taken aback—he made the rules.

‘I don’t want this to affect the twins. I don’t want them to know about us. We have to be discreet. We know this is just sex but they are just…’ Whichever way she looked, there were aspects to this arrangement that didn’t feel right.

He tipped his head. ‘That seems fair.’ He tangled his fingers in her hair and kissed her mouth. ‘Do not look so worried. We have weeks of pleasure ahead of us. You are not some little girl seeking the attention of men and mistaking it for love. This is an equal relationship of two people who know what they want.’

‘What do you want?’

‘You, querida, you in so many ways.’

She shivered. ‘Many ways?’

His smile made her heart flip. ‘Come here and let me show you.’

Zoe and the twins had been established in the gatehouse for six weeks. Her passion with Isandro had not flagged, and six weeks was new ground for him. Abiding by rules set by someone else was also new and on occasion frustrating.

There came a tapping on the window of his study—which had recently been knocked through to make room for the extra office equipment he needed since he had made the decision to do more work from home.

Isandro looked up from the computer screen.

When the red-headed figure at the window saw him she began to gesticulate wildly. A second later she vanished, and there was a clattering sound.

With a sigh Isandro levered himself up from his chair, stretching the kinks from his spine as he walked towards the window. Pulling up the sash, he leaned out. Georgina was lying beside an overturned crate she had presumably dragged over to the window and fallen off. She was picking herself up.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Looking for you, obviously.’ Ever irrepressible, she dusted off the seat of her jeans.

‘Did you hurt yourself?’

The kid treated the question with the scorn she appeared to think it deserved, shaking her head and looking offended by the question.

Like aunt, like niece, he thought.

‘I would have gone to Chloe but they’re not back until tomorrow. I can’t wait to see Hannah again and she’s walking with crutches, and there isn’t really anyone else.’

So not first choice, or even second. ‘I feel honoured.’

‘If Zoe died, would we get put in a home?’

His half-sardonic smile snuffed like a candle caught in a chill draft and Isandro did suddenly feel as though a cold fist had plunged deep into his belly.

‘Zoe is not going to die.’

‘No…?’ Her niece sounded scarily uncertain.

‘What has happened to your aunt Zoe?’ he asked, ruthlessly reining in his imagination and struggling to keep his tone light.

‘She says she’s fine but she doesn’t look fine and she—’

He held up a hand. ‘Wait there. I will be with you momentarily.’

Snatching up his jacket on the way out, he paused only to close his laptop before leaving the house. Outside Georgie was trotting around the side of the house to meet him when he emerged.

‘Zoe sent you?’

She shook her head. ‘She’ll be mad with me,’ she predicted gloomily.

‘She doesn’t need to know that you came to get me.’

Her eyes flew wide with shock. ‘That would be lying!’ Children were a minefield.

‘Of course it would, and of course you should never lie…especially to your aunt.’

The child looked unconvinced as she climbed into the passenger seat of his car.

‘Now tell me what is wrong.’

When they arrived at the lodge they entered through her open back door where Harry, his face scrunched in concentration, was standing on a kitchen chair trying to open a tin with an opener that looked like an antique. His small fingers looked perilously near the razor-sharp edges.

Conscious it might not be a good idea to startle him, Isandro walked across and, after a friendly pat on the shoulder, extricated the tin from his grip.

‘Let me—there’s a knack to this. There you go.’ He glanced at the label. ‘Chicken soup.’

‘Mum always gave us chicken soup when we were sick. I thought I’d make Zoe some.’

‘Good idea, but let’s wait until we see if she wants to eat just now.’

‘Until she stops throwing up, stupid,’ his sister inserted critically.

‘I’m not stupid.’

Isandro cleared his throat. ‘How about if you two go?’ Two expectant faces turned to him. ‘Go to the shop and get me some…’ He paused. ‘Are you allowed to walk to the shop?’

They both shook their heads.

‘Right, well…’ Madre di Dios, give me a room of CEOs any day of the week.

‘We could clean out your car. It was very messy. For money,’ Georgie offered.

Her brother cast her a sideways warning look. ‘For free.’

His sister sighed heavily.

‘That would be very helpful.’ His car had been valet cleaned the previous week. ‘I will go and see how your aunt is feeling, but don’t worry. It sounds like she has the flu bug that is doing the rounds.’ He moved towards the hallway.

‘Are you Zoe’s boyfriend?’

Isandro might not be good with children but he did not fall into that trap. He paused and turned. His amused expression was not a direct denial but he hoped they took it as such. ‘Is that why you came to get me? Because you think I am her boyfriend?’

‘No, we came to get you because she was saying your name in the night. She woke us up and when we went in she was awake but really hot.’

‘I told you it was just a nightmare,’ Harry said.

A woman’s nightmare…children certainly had a way of keeping a man’s ego in check.

Isandro made his way to the bedroom at the front of the cottage. The door was ajar, and he pushed it open and found the curtains in the airy room pulled shut. The light filtering through the striped fabric illuminated the figure in the bed lying with one arm curled around her head.

He was used to feeling the tug of sexual attraction when he looked at her, used to feeling the electrical tingle when she was close. As he stared at her now, looking both vulnerable and utterly desirable—they were both there but there was something else in the mix, something he struggled to define as he stood nailed to the spot while something imploded in his skull.

Then she moved and shifted, groaning softly before she licked her lips as her eyelashes fluttered against her cheek. ‘Harry.’

‘Not Harry.’

The eyelashes parted to reveal blue blurry eyes. ‘Oh, God,’ she groaned. ‘What are you doing here?’

He had had more enthusiastic welcomes. ‘How are you feeling?’

She raised herself groggily up on one elbow, causing the nightdress she wore to slip over one shoulder. He felt a stab of inappropriate lust.

‘Fine,’ she croaked.

‘I admire the stiff upper lip, naturally, but an honest answer would be more helpful.’

Zoe turned her head on the pillow and aimed a look of simmering dislike on him. He wanted to know what she felt like? Fine, she’d tell him.

‘I feel like death warmed up. Happy?’ She lowered herself with a groan onto the pillow. ‘And I suppose I look that way, too.’

‘Pretty bad,’ he agreed, his mocking smile vanishing as her lips began to tremble. ‘Are you crying?’

‘Oh, well, so sorry I couldn’t manage to put on my make-up for your benefit, but nobody asked you here.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

‘Georgie came to get me.’

‘Oh, God, she shouldn’t have.’

‘They are worried.’

Zoe clapped a hand to her aching head and groaned. ‘I told them I’m fine. It’s just a bug or something.’

‘Symptom-wise, could you be a little more precise?’

‘If I tell you will you go away? I have cymbals playing in my head, I ache all over and I feel sick…’ She gave a him a narrow-eyed glare of ‘Is that precise enough for you?’

‘Very succinct. I am assuming our date tonight is off.’

Zoe didn’t have the energy to prise her eyelids apart but she found the strength to correct him.

‘We don’t have a date. It’s just sex. Do I know it’s just sex? he asks me, like I’m a total idiot,’ she mumbled. The comment he had made in the aftermath of the frantic love-making session they had fitted in while the children were having their riding lesson had been playing in her head all through the long interminable night.

‘So how is our patient?’

This time Zoe’s eyes didn’t open as she resisted the temptation to declare she was nobody’s patient.

‘Doctor, who sent for you?’ He had to have heard what she’d said. She comforted herself with the thought that doctors, like priests, couldn’t blab about their patients. Presumably the Montero name, or possibly the cheque book, had made the man forget that GPs no longer made house calls at the weekend, she brooded, with a cynical sniff that became a cough.

Neither man answered her question.

‘Beyond the general crankiness, she has a headache, joint pain and obviously a high temperature.’ Isandro’s glance slid once more to the figure lying on the bed. Her nightdress clung damply to her and the pinpoints of bright red colour stood out livid against the pallor of her skin. ‘Nausea…have you been sick?’

Now they decided to acknowledge she was there. ‘Mind your own damned business!’

The middle-aged medic laughed and suggested that Mr Montero might like to leave while he had a chat with the patient.

The doctor confirmed that Zoe had a dose of the bug doing the rounds and suggested she take an analgesic for her temperature, get plenty of rest and take lots of fluids.

‘Which is what I was doing,’ Zoe told Isandro.

‘What can I get you?’

‘Just go away and leave me alone.’

When the cranky invalid refused point-blank to be nursed or cosseted he did the next best thing—he offered to take the twins off her hands for the rest of the day.

An offer that did not strike him as odd until with the twins in tow he bumped into a school friend of Dana’s in a hands-on science exhibition. Emma, who had her youngest in tow, was one of the few mutual friends that he had stayed in contact with after the divorce. Her parting shot of ‘I’d really like to meet the woman who has domesticated you!’ had stayed with him.

Ridiculous, of course—he hadn’t changed in any fundamental way. He could walk away from this relationship at any time. He enjoyed the twins, they amused him…though they were exhausting.

Denial, Isandro, mocked the voice in his head.

The next day Zoe felt tired. Her head ached and things still hurt, but she was well enough to get up, which was just as well as she had promised to go the airport this morning to pick up Chloe, John and Hannah. She also needed to drop the kids off for their science field trip before—oh, God, just thinking about the day ahead made her headache worse.

‘Get a wriggle on, you two!’ she yelled, pulling open the front door as Harry vanished to find his rucksack he had left ‘somewhere.’

‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’

Zoe reacted to the angry voice like a bullet zinging past her ear and spun around to face the tall figure who was striding up the path to the front door. He looked dauntingly angry, but Zoe, refusing to be daunted, pressed a hand to her throbbing head and returned belligerently, ‘I might ask you the same thing. I thought you had a meeting in Paris today.’

‘It was cancelled.’ The lie came smoothly. Intercepting the direction of her gaze, he lifted the hand that held a large bouquet of flowers. ‘The gardener heard you were unwell.’

It seemed unnecessary to Isandro to explain that he had told him. ‘He says you prefer the flowers that have a scent to the hothouse roses…?’

‘I do! How lovely of him,’ she exclaimed, taking the fragrant ribbon-tied posy and lifting it to her nose. ‘I must thank him.’

‘I will pass on your message and you will go back to bed.’

Her chin went up at his dictatorial attitude. ‘You can’t just waltz in here and order me around. I’m fine and I have to pick up Chloe and co from the airport after I’ve taken the twins to—’

‘Bed!’ Isandro thundered just as the postman opened the garden gate.

‘Nice morning,’ the man said as he handed a pink-faced Zoe her letters.

‘Well, thank you for that.’ Zoe glared up at Isandro.

Georgie’s voice cut across her. ‘Isandro’s here, Harry, he’s taking us to school.’

Mortified, Zoe shook her head. The boundaries of their relationship did blur on occasion but she was sure they would not stretch to the school run! ‘No, no, he’s not…Georgie, go—’

‘Yes, I am. Go get in the car,’ he said, directing this order to the twins, who ran out before Zoe could say a word.

‘You’re not!’

‘I am.’ Ignoring her squeal of furious protest, he snatched the car keys that were dangling from her fingers and put them in the pocket of his well-cut trousers. ‘Now be a good girl and go back to bed.’

‘Do not treat me like a child.’ Even if I sound like one.

He looked impatient. ‘You are clearly still unwell. You look terrible.’ It was not his job to make her better, so why the hell had he taken it on himself to do so?

She gave a twisted smile. ‘Thanks.’ He must be right otherwise the comment would not have made her feel like crying.

‘If you drag yourself out of bed unnecessarily you will only delay your recovery.’

In a perfect world another twenty-four hours would have been nice. ‘So now you’re a doctor.’

‘You are a very bad patient.’

‘I need to—’

‘Has it not occurred to you that Chloe and her family will not thank you for infecting them with your flu bug?’

Zoe’s face fell. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

Hands on her shoulders, he turned her around. ‘So go back to bed, and for once in your life, woman, let someone else be in charge.’ He broke off at the sound of a car horn. ‘That is my car.’

He was being summoned by a pair of kids, and he was responding!

Zoe tried to remember the last time she had felt in charge and gave a small bitter laugh. ‘This from the world’s biggest control freak!’ she muttered as the door closed.

By the time she reached her bed Zoe was too tired to undress. She fell on top of it fully dressed and fell into a deep sleep.

When she woke, the afternoon sun was shining through the window and she wasn’t alone. She raised herself up on one elbow and gazed down at the man lying beside her. He too was fully dressed and sound asleep.

Or maybe not.

Isandro opened his heavy-lidded eyes and stretched a hand above his head; he had not slept the previous night but fortunately he survived well on catnaps.

He looked so gorgeous that it hurt; the pain was physical.

She was trailing her fingers lovingly down his cheek when it hit her. ‘Chloe!’ she yelped, glancing with horror at the time on the digital display of her alarm. ‘I thought you were—’

She bit her lip—an assumption she should not have made. He had taken the twins to school because that had been pretty much a fait accompli, but the last thing Isandro wanted was involvement in her domestic life. He just wanted her in bed…for how long?

She pushed away this depressing thought.

‘Relax, I have sent a car for them.’ He gave a yawn. He was sure that nursing did not involve falling asleep beside your patient, but the last twenty-four hours had taught Isandro that he was not a natural nurse and when Zoe had thrashed around restlessly and muttered his name in her sleep he had found himself unable not to respond. His physical closeness had seemed to soothe her.

‘Their flight arrived on time and they are on their way home.’

‘Thank you…I’m really sorry about being a nuisance…’

He reached and placed a hand behind her neck, his fingertips sending little flickers of electricity through her body as they pushed into her hairline.

‘You are always a nuisance.’ She turned his ordered life into total chaos and yet still he kept coming back for more…?

Zoe struggled to read his expression. ‘The twins can be very—’

‘I never do anything I do not want to do, querida.’

‘You can’t want to run the twins around and—’

He dragged her face down to his until their noses were touching. ‘Right now I want—’

‘Do you always get what you want?’ she whispered against his warm lips…God, but he smelt incredible.

‘I have that reputation.’

‘What was that for?’ she asked huskily when the long, languid kiss ended.

‘Chloe sent her love.’

‘Not like that, she didn’t.’

His throaty laugh made her grin.

‘You shouldn’t be kissing me. I’m probably infectious.’

He stroked her cheek. ‘I have an excellent immune system. I never get ill.’

You never get in love. She pushed the thought away. Why spoil what she had by wishing for something she never could have? It was hard sometimes.

‘Thanks for this morning.’

He shrugged and levered himself into a sitting position before dragging both hands through his sexily ruffled dark hair.

‘You should go. The twins will be home soon.’ She swung her legs over the side of the bed, not seeing the flicker of annoyance that moved across his taut lean features. ‘I really am feeling better now. I needed that sleep.’

After scanning her face, he nodded and got up from the bed. ‘I have arranged for Rowena to pick up the twins after their field trip,’ he said, rising with fluid grace to his feet. ‘And there is something that Mrs Whittaker called a casserole in the fridge. Apparently all you have to do is heat it up.’

‘That’s so kind of her.’

‘I’m flying to Paris in the morning.’

By the time he turned back at the door Zoe had wiped her face clean of the ludicrous disappointment she had felt at his casual disclosure. ‘Oh, and Polly is not expecting you in work until Monday.’

As the door closed she picked up the phone. ‘Polly—no, that’s why I’m ringing. I’m fine—I’ll be in work tomorrow.’

Even if it killed her it was too late not to fall in love with Isandro, but she was damned if she was going to let him micro-manage every aspect of her life. She had to make her own decisions, stay independent. He wasn’t going to be around for ever.