The person gasped, jumped back, one foot catching on the corner of a palate of clay pots. The misstep sent her to her behind on the concrete floor.
“Oh, no.” Sara leaped forward. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” The figure—a young woman, a few years younger than Sara—rose from the floor and brushed dirt off the back of black jeans she wore with a green-and-white striped long cotton sweater. With her head ducked low, it was difficult to see her face.
Sara stepped closer. “You’re sure?”
The other woman peeked at her through her long dark hair, then lifted her chin. “Wait a minute.” She inspected Sara, her brows arching. “I know you.”
“You can’t.” Panic closed like a fist on her throat. That was four months before. She’d escaped London and the notoriety.
“I do.” The stranger shook back her glossy hair. “I’m Imogen Hart. I think we shared a cover once.
Celeb!
magazine?”
Sara could only stare as she finally recognized the gorgeous young singer. Just last week she’d watched the pop sensation perform on one of the late night talk shows. “We shared a cover?”
Imogen made a face. “You probably avoid the tabloids and gossip magazines like the plague. I, on the other hand, have a grandmother who sends me
everything
. Then she quizzes me about the clippings during our Sunday phone calls.”
“Oh. Well, it’s true I didn’t relish seeing my face everywhere.”
“Or the fact that they hooked you up with the creepy old dude.”
Quite the way to talk about the world’s premiere media mogul and one of the richest men on earth.
“It… I…” She shrugged.
“I assume it’s not true,” Imogen said. “Last week someone wrote that I’m in a
ménage
relationship with that Swedish boy band—who by the way, are four big dicks that can’t carry a tune in a paper bag. Granny was
not
pleased and told me if I was dating even one of them to steer clear of the meatballs.”
Sara thought she might like Granny very much. “That sounds like good advice.”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to lay low this week, but the shooters found me.”
“
Shooters
?”
“The paps. Paparazzi. Sometimes they hang around my gate and follow me when I leave. Sometimes they pay for tips from people like stylists or restaurant servers.”
“Oh.” Sara remembered the crowd she’d seen on her way into the nursery. “Did you by any chance go inside YoGert’s?”
“Yeah, and Gert let me duck out the back, bless her. The photographers gathered at the entrance, all set for their gang bang.”
At Sara’s horrified expression, Imogen nodded. “That’s what they call it when they descend all at once. Gross.”
“Gross,” Sara echoed, recalling how the photographers would surround her in a wedge, their cameras raised overhead, their voices taunting her with question after question.
Did you set a wedding date?
Where’s your engagement ring?
Were you there when he told his wife?
She’d been filled with revulsion and shame and the kind of anxiety that still visited her when she supposed a group of strangers was staring at her. Though none of it had been her fault, she’d felt dirty, and not the Joaquin, good kind of dirty.
Joaquin…
Shoving him out of her head, Sara returned her attention to the younger woman. “What are you going to do now?”
Imogen sighed. “I can’t skulk in here much longer. They’ll figure it out. And I left my car down the road—I have to get back to it.”
“I have an idea.” It came to Sara in an instant. “They’re looking for you, alone and in that striped sweater.”
“Yeeesss?”
She was already stripping off her hat and sweatshirt. “Put this on over your sweater. Pile your hair under the cap. We’ll hurry to my car, and then I’ll drive you to yours.”
Imogen gaped. “You’d do that for me?”
“We once shared a cover, right?”
“Right.” Imogen grinned. “It makes us almost sisters.”
Sisters who didn’t avoid the pursuers after all, however. As Imogen and Sara exited the nursery a sudden shout startled them both. Sara clutched Imogen’s arm and looked to her left to see the pack of photographers racing their way, cameras up and already taking shots.
Eyes on the predators, Sara continued to hustle Imogen to the passenger side of her car.
“Keep your head down,” Imogen advised, ducking into the seat.
Sara raced to get in the driver’s side, and managed to get the engine running. They shot from the parking lot like the hounds of hell were after them.
Imogen chuckled. “Good job. Thwarted the bastards. They hate when they’ve cornered the prey but end up with crappy shots anyway.”
Sara’s heart knocked against her ribs, recalling other times when she hadn’t been so lucky.
Did you screw him in your uniform?
Will you sign a pre-nup?
What’s it like to break up a marriage?
Which she hadn’t done—at least not intentionally. But the world still held her complicit. And now it suddenly struck her that though she hadn’t gone to bed with her married London employer, there was no denying she’d slept with her single boss in Malibu.
Joaquin.
His laugh, his kiss, the way he might look at her if he learned of the scandal…
Sara swallowed her groan and realized escaping thoughts of the man and the repercussions of her past were proving impossible.
Chapter 8
The morning following the butler’s day off, Lulu and RJ left Nueva Vida for their own homes, and Joaquin found the new quiet less soothing than he’d supposed when he’d waved off the pair of teenagers. The two remaining females in his life were nowhere to be seen. He wandered from his bedroom to the kitchen to the deck, his gaze catching on the sweep of the ocean in front of him.
That sight—though still awesome—wasn’t soothing, either.
His conscience nagged at him.
He decided a sweaty beach run might clear his mind.
He’d barely dampened his T-shirt when he caught sight of a familiar figure. Down the sand, Sara’s friend and fellow butler, Charlie Emerson, puttered about on a weathered deck that led from the beach and into a covered outdoor living space.
Upon seeing him she paused, and he put on the brakes to do the cordial thing and say hello. “Morning!”
Charlie smiled and smoothed hair that had been rolled into a composed knot of shining brown. “Good morning to you as well. Can I offer you something…water?”
Suddenly his throat felt parched.
“You can,” he said, and by the time he’d mounted the short flight of steps from the sand she had an icy glass in hand.
He swallowed half down. “Good.”
She glanced up as the sky. “It’s going to be warm today.”
“I’m a native, but I’ve been out of the area for a while. I forgot just how warm.” The sun beamed down like every summer song, though the breeze off the ocean kept the temperature pleasant. He looked past Charlie into the house. “Is my favorite charity runner Wells at school today?”
She nodded. “Last few weeks before the end of the year.”
“Cute kid.”
At that, Charlie’s countenance changed. A moment before she’d been serenely lovely. But the compliment aimed at the boy made her usual smile warm, and her new expression divulged a much more lively beauty than before.
“Yes. Though come September, we’ll be glad to see a new year of pencils and crayons arrive, I suspect.”
He laughed. “I don’t envy you keeping a six-year-old busy for the summer.”
“He has a nanny for that,” Charlie put in, then changed the subject. “Your household? How is everyone? I understand you’re hosting your sister.”
“I’m not sure sixteen is any easier to entertain than six. She had some friends at the house, but they’ve gone home this morning.”
Thinking about Essie made him uneasy again. Yesterday, with RJ and Lulu underfoot, he’d not had to do much but pull out the food Sara had prepared. But his half-sister was without her peers now, and he couldn’t stop thinking of her last text to him.
I love you.
How could she? Hadn’t he been an absent, lousy brother all her life?
Charlie tilted her head. “We could have you guys over for dinner,” she said slowly. “Mr. Archer is on a business trip which makes our world quieter, too.”
He hesitated. “I don’t want to impose.”
“No imposition.” She waved that off. “Tomorrow night. You bring the residents and staff of Nueva Vida over around six.”
“You realize the ‘residents and staff’ of Nueva Vida are me, my sister, Essie, and Sara.”
“Exactly. And it will be Wells and me, and I’ll invite our other friend from the butler academy, Emmaline, who recently moved to the area. It will give me a chance to ask Sara about how her appointment went for the new landscaping job yesterday.”
So that’s where she’d been
. The woman had exited the house before breakfast and returned after eleven pm. Could she have been getting her hands dirty all that time? “It was a long day for her.”
Charlie’s brows shot up then pinched together as she frowned. “I’m sure the meeting was only slated to take about an hour.”
Joaquin shrugged as if he hadn’t a care in the world. But where could Sara have been the rest of the time? On a date? Or maybe worse, avoiding him?
Damn
. He should have made some effort to text her while she was out. You know, something casual.
Hope all is well. How’s that hickey? I can’t stop thinking about the way you felt coming apart in my arms.
“She’s special, you know,” Charlie said. “Sara, I mean.”
The sudden fierceness in her voice made his own cool. “Of course. She does her job well.” He didn’t want Sara’s BFF guessing that besides her work at the house she’d been dancing the horizontal mambo with Joaquin. If she chose to tell, that was her business, but he’d keep his mouth shut. “I should get going.”
Charlie inclined her head. “Enjoy the rest of your run.”
He handed back his empty glass. “Thanks, Charlie. I mean that.”
He hoped she understood the subtext—he appreciated that Sara had such a loyal friend.
“Until tomorrow, Joaquin.”
Which left the rest of today, he thought, jogging down the steps to the sand.
Hours to share with two females who had found their way into his living space—the space he’d presumed would be like every other he’d had since moving to live on his own. An all-bachelor pad used merely as a place to sleep and store his clothes.
Now his life was complicated by the XX factor.
She wanted to find a way to feel closer to you.
Sara had said that’s why Essie had played
New Kid
. And what had he done? Left the house and never connected with his sister yesterday or today, unless pulling hummus from the refrigerator and pita chips from the pantry counted.
Wasn’t it time he reached out?
Like he knew how to engage a teenage girl.
Back at Nueva Vida, he was still devoid of ideas. But when he came down from his shower, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he found Essie and Sara in the kitchen, baking cookies.
Chocolate chip cookies.
Hmm. There could be an upside to this XX invasion
.
Sara slid him a look over a now-tense shoulder.
Shit.
For sure he should have reached out to her before now, too. And not with a text. Or at least not only a text.
Flowers? Candy?
What kind of sex thank-you was appropriate that didn’t smack of romance as well?
Even more clearly he saw the reasons you didn’t sully what was a workplace—for Sara—with an intimate relationship. It made sending the right message even more dicey.
But looking at her, neat as a pin in a starched white apron over her khaki skirt and black T-shirt… He couldn’t regret what they’d done. And Christ, he wanted to sully her all over again.
“How was your run?” she asked, her tone polite.
“Good.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “The weather’s great.” His gaze slid to Essie. “Right, Es?”
“Yeah.” She had her eyes directed at her phone as she munched on a cookie.
Nobody had offered him one yet. And just as he had the thought, Sara passed him a small plate with two piled on, as well a glass of iced tea.
“It’s close to lunch, but…”
“Thanks, Mom,” he answered, dutiful, and she shot him another look.
He held her gaze and then let his drift to her mouth, remembering those soft, rosebud lips against his own.
She made an abrupt about face, but he’d seen the new flush on her cheeks.
Yeah, it was his damn fault this was awkward. Maybe he could have left her some special kitchen gadget to express his gratitude. He marveled at them during infomercials on the nights he couldn’t sleep. Devices that cored and peeled pineapples in one step. An avocado dicer that kept fingers away from the sharp blades. But he’d neglected to even extend that simple gesture.
He grimaced. “I should have thanked you for your kindness night before last, too, Sara.”
Swinging about on her heel, she stared at him over Essie’s head, eyes big. Her face had turned an even deeper pink, and she looked a little panicked around the edges.
“It was nice of you to bring me my jacket,” he continued.
She visibly relaxed, then turned back to the counter, removing cookies from a baking sheet with a spatula to join others on a rack. “Yes, well, I thought it a shame you didn’t have any covering.”
It was his turn to stiffen. Was she—? Oh, hell, she was. She threw him a small but wicked smile over her shoulder. The saucy butler was being bad again by alluding to his lack of condom. Which only made his thoughts detour to the kind of intimacy he’d settled for instead. In his mind’s eyes he saw her body, splayed on the bed, the dark blue panties and bra yanked low to give him access to her flesh.
“I warmed up quick, however,” he murmured.
“Not
too
quick,” she added.
Oh, this was getting more dangerous by the second. Between the innuendo and the actual memories, his body was reacting like a man who had a second chance.
And there wouldn’t be a second opportunity to play in Sara’s bed.