Rival Attractions & Innocent Secretary

The bedroom still contained the heavy dark furniture that had originally belonged to her grandparents. Her father had never seen the necessity of replacing the cumbersome wardrobes with something more modern, even fitted. The darkness of the furniture, combined with the dark green carpet, gave the room an austere male aura, Charlotte thought, a frown furrowing her forehead as she moved towards the bed and saw that it wasn’t made up.

That meant that she would have to do it. Her father had not been a mean man precisely, but he had always hated waste, which was why Charlotte was still using the heavy linen sheets which again had come from her grandparents’ home. Since it was impossible to launder these at home in the way her father insisted upon, a weekly laundry service collected and delivered these items, and Charlotte prayed that she would find sufficient clean and aired linen in the airing cupboard to make up the bed.

It was her own fault, of course; she should have checked on these things instead of leaving it to Mrs Higham.

To her relief she found what she wanted in the airing cupboard. Carrying the sheets and bedding through into the bedroom, she put them down on the bed. Before she did anything else, she would make herself something to eat and have a cup of coffee. That was, if she could find the coffee.

It was impossible for her to eat in the kitchen, of course, and so she took her omelette and coffee through into the small sitting-room on the side of the house. From here she could look out into the back garden with its tangle of overgrown lawns and flowerbeds.

It had rained just after she had come in, a short, heavy shower, and now the late spring flowers drooped sadly under the weight of the raindrops. On impulse, after she had finished her meal, she opened the french windows and stepped outside. Half an hour later, her arms full of flowers she had had no intention of picking, she went into the pantry and deftly arranged them in two large jugs. She left one jug in the sitting-room, and took the other upstairs with her.

Until she had actually set it down on the polished desk, she had had no idea why she had picked the flowers, and now, standing back from the bright warmth of them, she felt her skin burn with self-knowledge. She was just about to snatch the jug back and remove it when she heard Oliver’s car.

The bed still wasn’t made, and, ignoring the flowers, she went quickly into the bedroom, hurriedly covering the bed in the crisp linen sheets.

She heard the car stop just as she finished, and, giving the rooms one last assessing glance, she hurried downstairs to welcome her new lodger.

‘I’ll take you upstairs,’ she told him as she opened the door to him, wondering if he would register her nervousness and guess at the cause of it, and then telling herself not to be so stupid. The way she was acting, she was practically begging him to guess how she felt. ‘Then I’ll leave you to get settled in, if you’ve got an early start in the morning.’

They were halfway upstairs, and she paused and added uncertainly, wondering if he would expect a meal, ‘The kitchen is in chaos. I’m using the pantry to cook in.’

‘It’s all right. I ate before I left the Bull.’

Charlotte opened the door to the study and walked in, waiting for Oliver to follow her. She saw the way he looked at the made-up fire and from it to the flowers on the desk.

‘It all looks very welcoming,’ he told her softly, walking over to the desk. ‘I don’t think I’ve enjoyed having garden flowers in my room since I left home. There’s something very evocative of a real home about garden-cut flowers rather than bought ones, don’t you think?’

‘Mrs Higham put them there,’ Charlotte lied, wishing she could do something about the frantic race of her heart. When he reached out and touched one of the tell-tale wet petals of one flower, she was glad he wasn’t looking at her to see the rich tide of colour burning her skin.

‘I’ll leave you to get settled in,’ she reiterated, and then fled to the door before she could make even more of a fool of herself.

Why on earth had she lied to him like that? It would have been simple enough to say that she had brought the flowers in to save them being battered by further rain, but no…she had had to go and behave like a love-crazed adolescent.

For a moment, making up the bed, she had actually lifted one of the linen-covered pillows to her face, imagining how it would feel against her skin if it carried his scent. The sharp twisting sensation that had coiled through her stomach had alerted her to what she was doing…what she was thinking. She hadn’t thought about a man in such sexually explicit terms since…since she had left her teenage years behind; and it shamed her now that her body should react so swiftly and so wantonly to the mental image of Oliver’s naked body.