The Housekeeper's Awakening

Throwing her discarded uniform into the laundry basket, she washed her face and changed, but as she brushed her hair and tied it back into a ponytail she wondered how she was going to fill the hours until supper. And what on earth she was going to say to Luis when she saw him again. How could she have told him about her virginity like that?

Her muddled thoughts were disturbed by a knock on the door and her dread was complicated by the thunder of her heart when she opened it to find Luis standing there.

But on his face wasn’t the anger she had been anticipating. Wasn’t that a trace of amusement she could read in his dark eyes?

‘You have to realise,’ he said drily, ‘that if you want a man to run after you, it’s usually better to choose a man who can actually run.’

She swallowed. ‘I didn’t want you to run after me.’

‘Oh, but I think you did,’ he said, dark eyebrows rising. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘You have a better one? Like pretending nothing happened?’

‘Nothing did happen.’

‘No?’

She shook her head. ‘No!’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Look, why don’t you open the door properly and let me in, so that we can have this conversation in private?’

‘Is

that an order?’

‘If that’s what it takes—then yes, it’s an order.’

Carly hesitated, but she could see from his expression that he wasn’t going anywhere. He wanted to satisfy his curiosity. He wanted to know why and at the end of the day he was still her boss, wasn’t he? If they had to have this conversation then surely it was better without the risk of Simone or one of the other staff coming past and overhearing them.

‘Oh, very well. Come in, if you must,’ she said ungraciously, opening the door wider.

Luis walked into the room, his heart beating out a primitive tattoo as she closed the door behind him. He had just spent the last hour telling himself that this was a bad idea and that he should forget what had almost happened.

But he couldn’t forget it. Or maybe he didn’t want to. He couldn’t forget the look of shame on her face as she’d blurted out her innocence to him. And he couldn’t forget the way she’d made him feel when he’d kissed her. It had felt sweet and soft and powerful. But most of all it had felt dangerous, and he had always been hooked on danger.

He heard her footsteps behind him and turned to look at her. Beneath the light tan her face was tight with tension and she was chewing the inside of her lip. He found himself wanting to take that look of anxiety away. He wanted to make her melt again, only this time, he wanted to do it slowly.

‘So why are you here, Luis?’

‘Not to apologise, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

She seemed to have difficulty meeting his gaze. ‘Then, why?’ she whispered.

‘I want to know why you spoke about your virginity like that.’

She flinched, as if his bluntness had startled her, but she treated his question in the same way she might have treated a polite enquiry about the weather. ‘And how was that?’

‘As if you were ashamed of it.’

Now some of her poise seemed to desert her because she stared at the floor and started rubbing her toe against the Persian carpet. There was a long pause before she lifted her head to meet his gaze. ‘Why should that surprise you?’ she said. ‘It’s not exactly something to be proud of, is it? We live in an age where we’re bombarded by sexual images, and people who don’t conform to the norm of having amazing sex all the time are regarded as freaks. Most women of twenty-three aren’t like me.’

‘You make it sound like a burden,’ he said.

‘In many ways, it is.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Yet when I gave you the opportunity to liberate yourself from this state of self-imposed purdah, you turned and ran away.’