“Okay,” Janine said when she’d finally calmed down. “You want to date your housekeeper, but there’s a conflict of interest, and from your earlier request, I’m guessing you don’t want to remove that conflict of interest by firing her.”
“No.” On that he was firm. Donna needed to stay at the mansion. And he needed Donna. “Just make it so she will feel secure enough to say no to me.”
“Have you really thought about this? Are you sure you want to change the dynamic between you and the only member of your staff you haven’t managed to get rid of yet?”
“I don’t want her to leave, and I don’t want her to feel powerless.” He wasn’t sure about anything else.
“Okay.” Janine’s tone grew serious. “I can’t stop her from leaving, but I can even out the power dynamic some. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“All right then. Let’s hash out some ideas.”
Chapter 14
Donna spent the night worrying about her situation with Duncan. Did he regret the kiss? Would he ask her to leave? Or worse, would he give her the speech about how it was all a mistake? How he’d slipped and plastered his lips to hers by accident. She could take rejection, she even expected it, but she couldn’t handle Duncan telling her it was a mistake and he regretted it. After a night spent tossing and turning, she decided that her best course of action was to avoid Duncan as much as possible.
Unfortunately, Duncan wasn’t on the same page, and he called her into his office straight after breakfast. As soon as she set foot inside, she noticed things had changed. All of the framed drawings, mostly of Fiona, were piled on the floor.
“Oh, good, you’re here.” Duncan took the last picture from the wall. “Do we have any white paint kicking around? I can’t look at the colour of these damn walls a minute longer.”
He didn’t want to talk about the kiss? This was about paint? Did that mean the kiss meant so little to him that it hadn’t even registered? He was carrying on as usual, and she’d been up all night thinking about it. Worrying about what to do. How pathetic was that?
“Donna, do we have any white paint?”
She straightened her shoulders. If he was going to ignore it, then she could too. She was a professional. She could do her job—even if she couldn’t look him in the eye while she did it. “You want to paint the walls?”
“Aye.”
“By yourself?”
“You have a problem with that?”
She held up her hands. “No. It’s just that we normally contract that kind of job out.”
“I’m a painter. If I can prepare a canvas with white paint, I can prepare these walls.”
“As a canvas?” Maybe it was her, but it seemed Duncan was a whole lot harder to understand these days.
“I just want to paint the damn walls white.”
And less patient. Which was saying something.
“Fine. I’ll get the paint. Did you have anything else you wanted to talk about, or can I get back to work?” Did that sound snippy? Oh, she hoped not.
His eyes darkened, and she felt his gaze shoot straight to the bits of her she was trying to convince to forget him. She’d had her taste of him. Common sense said it was more than enough. Unfortunately, her horny bits didn’t run on common sense, they ran on desperation.
He picked up a pile of papers and handed them to her. “I need you to sign your new contract. As you can see, I’ve upped your salary, so there’s no need to go looking for work elsewhere.”
She took the document and stared at him. “I don’t need more money.” Although, she wasn’t an idiot. “But it would be nice, thank you.”
He ran a hand through his hair and perched on the edge of the massive wooden desk. The desk that was big enough to fit two bodies tangled together. The kind of desk that a woman could bend over and press her front to, feeling the cool wood on her skin as a man came up behind her and...
“Are you listening to me?”
The temperature in the room seemed to have shot up a few degrees. “Is it hot in here? It feels like it’s hot. I’m just going to open a window.” She hurried over to the sash window and proceeded to do just that.
“I was saying,” he said. “Janine said it’s illegal to make you sign something saying you won’t resign. But I don’t want you to leave, so I took some other measures.”