At His Service: Cinderella Housekeeper: Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After / His Housekeeper Bride / What's a Housekeeper To Do?

Ellie put the vinegar bottle down on the counter and stared at him. ‘For me?’

Mark handed her the bag and she pulled a small glossy box from it. A handheld computer. She stared at it, hardly knowing what to say.

‘You got me a PDA?’

He nodded again, still unusually serious and silent. ‘You can link it up to the laptop and keep all your calendars and notes with you wherever you go. It even has a voice recorder function. I thought it might be … you know … useful when you need to make a note of something in a hurry, before you forget.’

Ellie felt like crying. She hadn’t even thought of using something like this, but it was perfect. Just what she needed.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice wavering. ‘Why did you …? I mean, what made you think of getting me this?’

He shuffled backwards. ‘Just something I read …’

She frowned at him. Where was the normally cocky and devil-may-care Mark Wilder? Why was he looking so sheepish?

Oh, great. He’d been researching her condition—probably read up on it on the Internet. While it was still an incredibly sweet gesture, it just confirmed that his view of her had changed. Now she was just the poor brain-damaged housekeeper who couldn’t keep her facts straight without the help of a bit of technology.

She wanted to be cross with him, but she couldn’t rev up the energy. Instead she put the box back in the bag and stowed it in an empty cupboard. ‘I’ll have a look properly later.’

‘You like it? You think it’ll be useful?’

He looked so hopeful, so eager, that she couldn’t help but smile and nod. ‘It’s wonderful. It’ll be a big help.’

And it would. There was no need to be sad about a tiny computer just because it signalled what she knew already—that anything more than a professional relationship between them was a total impossibility.

Mark grinned. Suddenly he was back to his old self: cheeky, confident … impossible. Ellie picked up a cook’s knife and went back to chopping something—anything—to keep her mind occupied and her pulse even. But after a few moments he walked over to the chopping board and looked over her shoulder. Ellie fanned her face. It was very warm. Had he closed the window? She glanced over at the French doors, but the embroidered muslin panels were still billowing gently.

‘What are you cooking?’

Ellie put the knife down a little too quickly. It clattered on the worktop. Despite the fact her brain told her the crush she had on Mark was pointless, the neural pathways carrying that information to her body seemed to have gone on strike.

‘Vietnamese salad,’ she said, the words tumbling out.

‘Which is—?’ He waved his hand in a circular motion as her mouth moved soundlessly.

‘Chicken and noodles and a few vegetables, with a sweet chilli dressing,’ she replied, a wobbly finger pointing to each of the ingredients in turn.

Great! Now she was babbling like a bad TV chef.

His cheek twitched, yet his face remained a mask of cool composure. ‘Hot stuff, then?’

Under different circumstances, Ellie would have thought he was flirting with her. Heat licked at the soles of her feet. She swallowed. ‘It depends on the size of the chilli.’

The look her gave her was positively wicked. ‘And you girls try and tell us boys that size doesn’t matter.’

Ellie almost choked.

Mark picked up the half-chopped chilli from the chopping board. ‘How hot is this one?’

Ellie tried very hard to focus on the bright red chilli and not on Mark’s warm brown eyes.

‘Medium, sort of. The small ones are the hottest, funnily enough.’

Stop babbling! He already knows that. Everybody knows that!

She bit her lip and turned to peel the outer stem off a stick of lemongrass.

‘Do you want this back?’

She felt Mark’s breath warm on the back of her neck as he stood close behind her. She failed to still the tiny shiver that rippled up her spine as she turned slightly to take the chilli back from him.

‘Thank you.’

She carefully eased it from his grasp, avoiding brushing his fingers, and offered up a silent hallelujah as Mark stepped back and headed for the door.

‘I’m going for a shower.’

‘Okay. Let me know if you want any of this when you come out.’

He ran his hand through his hair and rubbed the corner of one eye with his thumb. That early-morning start must be catching up with him.

But then she realised what he was about to do. ‘Don’t put your—’

Mark yelped, screwed his eyes shut tight and slapped his hands to his face. She rushed over to him, wincing in sympathy. She peeled the hand from his face and led him over to one of the breakfast stools, where she ordered him to sit down. His right eye was squeezed shut and watering.

‘Try and open your eyes,’ she said gently.

‘Very funny!’

‘I mean it. If you can manage to open them and blink a bit, the eye can do its job and wash the chilli juice away. It works a lot faster than sitting there with your fingers pressing into your eyeballs, making it worse!’

Mark groaned again, removed his hand and attempted to prise his watery eyelids apart.

‘Wait there!’ she ordered, dashing to the sink and washing her hands vigorously with washing-up liquid and scrubbing under her nails with a little brush.

‘Here, let me see.’

She moved in close and delicately placed a thumb on the smooth skin near Mark’s eye. He flinched.

‘Sorry! Did I hurt you?’

‘Um … no, it’s okay.’

She gently pulled downwards, helping to open his eye. ‘It looks a bit pink. Is it still stinging? Try blinking a few more times.’

‘It’s fading now, thank you, Nurse. How did you know what to do?’

She blushed. ‘You think with a memory like mine that I haven’t done this to myself a million times?’