When Richard had gone Vanessa asked him sharply, ‘What did you say that for?’
‘Because I decided that your idea has definite possibilities after all.’ And then he neatly curtailed her desire for further discussion on the subject by drawling sarcastically, ‘I can quite see the appeal you two might have for each other. You make a magnificently matched pair, negative and positive, fair and dark—an earthy god and a giggling goddess. If you breed true, your children will be a race of thoroughbred Titans! Shall we get on and do the service areas now?’
He turned on his heel and stalked into the house, leaving Vanessa open-mouthed and furious at his insulting audacity.
CHAPTER FIVE
A WEEK later Vanessa was feeling as if she had been flattened by a runaway truck.
She only had herself to blame. She had known her employer would not be able to bear being bored for much longer than a few hours. He might have decided he needed a holiday, but he didn’t really want one.
What he really wanted, she’d realised after days of watching him restlessly poke and pry and question everything she had done or planned to do, was change. He was rebelling against the subtle regimentation of his well-ordered professional life and her impulsive suggestion had provided him with the perfect challenge, an opportunity to be whimsical, since she couldn’t believe he really intended to give up his peripatetic lifestyle to languish in the backwater of a small-town inn.
Unfortunately, his method of indulging a personal whimsy had proved to be every bit as serious, meticulously planned and competitive as everything else he did. First, he’d decided that he needed to know every detail of Whitefield’s history and reconstruction; he had even called Robert Taylor down for a special consultation, and had gone over all Vanessa’s old reports with a fine-tooth comb. Then he had started to prowl.
With the Duesenberg only a fond memory—how Vanessa wished that Dane Judson had leased it for a week instead of merely a weekend—there was nothing to lure Benedict away from the house, and everywhere she’d turned he’d seemed to be relentlessly underfoot. After having had virtual free run of Whitefield for most of the last three years it had been extremely disconcerting to have to confer and defer to a higher power and Vanessa had disliked it even more than she had expected that she would.
She couldn’t even get on with her routine daily duties in peace because she was constantly being interrupted with requests for information or assistance. It had been a strain trying to maintain the proper barrier of correctness between them when his own reserve had slipped a little further each day, but somehow she’d managed it, even though it meant her patience was worn to a frazzle. For all his apparent willingness to treat her as an equal, she knew from bitter experience that it didn’t do to trust the motives of rich young employers, no matter how benevolent they might seem. Better to be safe in discretion than risk the sorry consequences of being caught out of your place.
Kate Riley, who didn’t live in and had only relatively brief face-to-face encounters with their employer, had had a much rosier view of the proceedings.
‘He’s turning out a bit of a surprise, isn’t he—not so stuffy as we all thought?’ she said approvingly as she buttered scones for his afternoon tea three days after his arrival. He had told her he would prefer plain, hearty country cooking to the more sophisticated menu of New Zealand delicacies he invariably asked Vanessa to draw up for his visitors—another valuable point in his favour. Country born and bred, Kate didn’t consider a man a real man unless he ate plenty of meat and potatoes. And butter, she declared, was what had made the country great!
‘You know, I think his real trouble was he never learned to enjoy himself,’ she continued, adding lashings of her own blackberry jam. ‘What good has having all that money done him, I ask you? Rush, rush, rush...no wonder he never had much to say for himself; the poor man’s brain must have been in a constant whirl. This is the first time he’s come without his secretary at his heels and look at the good it’s done him already! He’s as happy as a sandboy, pottering about the place. A real chip off the old block.’
Vanessa, who didn’t know what a sandboy was but knew that Benedict’s fax-modem had been running hot late into the night, every night, thought that was going too far.
‘He was only very vaguely related to Judge Seaton, you know. I don’t see any similarities between them at all,’ she murmured.
‘We’ll see,’ was all Kate replied, investing the time-honoured phrase with its customary smugness.
He certainly shared at least one of the old judge’s less endearing traits, Vanessa had to admit later that day, when she found herself barring the way to the small room which led off the butler’s pantry.
Stubbornness.
‘I would prefer that you didn’t,’ she said, using the advantage of her height to block him looking over her shoulder, past the door he had managed to whisk open.
‘Why? What have you got to hide?’ He had wandered into the kitchen for a cold drink and then lingered to inspect the bells which had just been rehung in the pantry, though not reconnected yet. Vanessa had been polishing a canteen of silver, trying so hard to ignore his disruptive presence that she hadn’t been quite quick enough when he had spied the discreet panelled door set back into the far pantry wall, overlooked in his previous glance at the pantry and adjoining larder and scullery.
‘Nothing,’ she said, hanging desperately on to the door-handle and trying to pull it closed behind her. Unfortunately he had moved too close for her to do so without brushing against his body. ‘Because there’s nothing much to see. All it needs is a floor-sand and a paint job—’
‘Then you won’t mind me having a look.’
‘You never wanted to look before.’ She dropped her shoulder as he attempted to duck underneath it.
He straightened and gave her a quizzical smile. In a white shirt and casual, double-breasted navy blazer, one hand thrust into his trouser pocket, he looked lazily relaxed, but there was a distinct threat in his closeness and the steadiness of his gaze. Her awareness of the sinewy strength that lay under his clothes made her doubly nervous.
‘I’ve never been interested before,’ he said simply. ‘You complained that I wasn’t taking a personal enough interest in the inn. Now that I am you seem to resent it. Did you think you could set parameters to my interest? Defend your own hallowed piece of turf when you have free run of mine? Are you refusing to let me see your room, Flynn?’
Vanessa swallowed at the silken enquiry. She had acted purely on instinct and now she was being made to feel thoroughly foolish.
‘And what if I did?’ she asked, more out of nervousness than defiance.
‘I’d respect your right to privacy.’
He lifted a hand at the same moment as he spoke and she flinched at the sudden movement, then flushed when she saw that he was merely removing his glas
ses.