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

It was all very predictable. But predictable was good. At least he knew what to expect from this self-serving approach, even if his choice in female companions only inflamed the tabloid gossip about his private life. He hadn’t even met half the women the papers had paired him with. And the ones he did date were just like the woman walking next to him: happy to use him for their own ends.

Good for them. It was a dog-eat-dog world and he’d learned one vital piece of wisdom early on: the woman who talked of love and commitment was the one who turned and bit you on the butt when you were least expecting it. He had the scars to prove it.

They moved inside the old theatre. Had they redone the décor in here? It had seemed opulent and elegant last time he was here, but now the crimson walls screamed at him, and the gold leaf everywhere just hurt his eyes.

He hadn’t planned on coming to the awards this evening, but duty had called. Or, to be more accurate, duty had cried and pleaded down the phone in the shape of his newest and youngest signing, Kat De Souza.

They reached a flight of stairs and he held back and let Melodie walk up the sweeping staircase in front of him. Her dress was shimmering silver, backless, with a neckline slashed almost to her navel. It clung in all the right places. And Melodie certainly had places. Mark did his best to appreciate the view, but his pulse was alarmingly regular. Just another indicator that he was out of sorts tonight. Must be the jet lag.

An usher led them to their table at the front of the auditorium. Kat was already there, with her boyfriend du jour. This one was a drummer, or something like that. Mark pulled out Melodie’s chair for her and made the introductions, then leaned across to Kat.

‘Nervous?’

Her head bobbed in small, rapid movements.

‘Sorry I woke you up and snivelled down the phone at you the other day.’ She paused to twirl one of her long dark ringlets around a finger with a bitten-down nail before looking up at him again. ‘The time differences are so confusing, and I was in a bit of a state.’

He remembered. Technically, although he’d been the one to ‘discover’ Kat, after he’d walked past her busking on the Underground, he wasn’t her personal manager. He was careful not to get too close to his clients nowadays, normally leaving the legwork to his junior associates. He’d been in the business long enough to pay his dues, and had ridden more tour buses and slept on more recording studio floors during all-night recording sessions than he cared to remember. He’d paired Kat up with Sasha, a hip, energetic young woman at his firm who had the potential to go far. But where he’d hoped there would be female bonding, there had only been friction.

In the end he’d decided to step in and take an active interest for a few months—ease the teething process, if you like. Kat was only seventeen, and a bit overwhelmed at her sudden shove into the spotlight. She needed stability at the moment, not constant bickering. A happy client was a productive client, after all.

Mark smiled back at Kat and waited for her to finish fidgeting with her hair. ‘Who needs sleep, anyway?’ he said, giving her a little wink.

‘I’m so grateful you changed your plans and flew in at the last minute. I’m frantic! I don’t know whether I’m more scared of winning or not winning. How crazy is that? And I reckon I need all the support I can get.’

The scruffy excuse for a musician sitting next to her swigged a mouthful of champagne out of the bottle and produced a proud burp. Mark shifted position and tried to block his view of him with the avant-garde floral arrangement exploding from the centre of the table.

Great choice of support, Kat. First class.

Proof, yet again, that his client was young and naive and definitely needed a guiding hand.

With the uncanny knack females had of confirming his opinions of them, Kat reached for the glass of champagne in front of her and swung it towards her lips. Mark’s arm shot out in a reflex action that stopped the flute reaching its destination.

‘Hey!’

He prised the glass from her fingers. ‘No, you don’t, young lady! You’re underage.’

Kat’s chin jutted forward as she had one of her teenage Jekyll and Hyde moments, switching from sweet and grateful to sour and belligerent in the snap of a finger. ‘Chill out, Mark! You can’t tell me what to do, anyway. You only manage my career, not my personal life.’

Okay, technically she was right. And if it had been anyone else on his agency’s books he would have minded his own business. But it just didn’t seem right to sit there and do nothing.

‘No, you’re right. I can’t tell you what to do, but I can advise you. It’s my job to look after your best interests. It’s what I take my fifteen percent for, after all.’ He placed the glass out of reach behind the spiky centrepiece. ‘Anyway, you don’t want to be tipsy when you collect the award later. And I mean when, not if.’

When in doubt, flatter. It always worked. He raised his eyebrows and waited for the thaw.

Kat’s blistering stare softened a fraction. Girls of her age could be fiendishly stubborn. It was just as well he seemed to have the knack of charming each and every female he met, whether they were nine or ninety. Kat continued to glower at him, but he knew he’d won. He would let her back down gracefully without pressing the point further.

‘Water is better for my voice, anyway,’ she said, lounging back on her revolting boyfriend to give him a defiant kiss.

Mark beckoned a waiter and smiled to himself while his face was hidden.

Six months ago no one had heard of Kat De Souza. Despite her youth, she had a wonderfully mature soulful voice. Not only that, but she wrote the most amazing love songs and played the acoustic guitar to accompany herself. Her pared-down debut single had been a smash hit, catapulting her to overnight fame. His firm’s expertise and connections had helped, of course, but she had ten times the talent of some of his other clients. Securing a recording deal had been a breeze. Now he just had to make sure that the pressure and the insanity of the music industry didn’t derail her before she got to where she was destined to go.

He watched Kat bite her thumbnail down to a level that surely had to be painful. Mature talent, sure, but she was still just a scared schoolgirl underneath all the bluster. He was glad he’d shuffled his life around to be here tonight.

At that moment a wave of unexpected tiredness rolled over him. He hid a yawn and ignored the jet lag pulling at his eyelids.

It was going to be a long night.

Once Ellie had rustled herself up something more filling than biscuits to eat from the well-stocked larder, she decided to give herself a tour of Larkford Place. Tomorrow she’d get her Post-it notes out and label every door in the house—which was saying something. It seemed as if there were hundreds of them, all leading to rooms and corridors you wouldn’t expect them to.

The scraps of coloured paper would be gone again by the time her boss returned, of course. It wasn’t everybody’s taste in décor. But in the meantime they’d help her to create some new neural pathways, remember the layout of the house. So, hopefully, when she wanted to cook something she’d end up in the kitchen and not the broom cupboard. She’d had to resort to this technique when she’d returned to the cottage after the accident, which had seemed utterly ridiculous. How could she have lived in a house for almost a decade and not remember where her bedroom was?

But it had all sunk in again eventually. And it would happen here at Larkford too, if she had time and a little bit of peace and quiet so she could concentrate. She mentally thanked Charlie again for organising things so she could have a week here on her own before her boss arrived back from wherever that red carpet was. Had Charlie mentioned New York …?

As she wandered round, she was pleased to find that the inside of Larkford Place was as lovely as its exterior. It oozed character. No steel and glass ground-breaking interior design here, thank goodness. Just ornate fireplaces and plasterwork, high ceilings and ancient leaded windows.

Ellie’s jaw clicked as she let out a giant yawn. Fatigue was a normal part of her condition—due to the fact she had to concentrate on things most people did automatically. And today had been a day that had required an awful lot of mental and emotional energy. No wonder she was ready to drop. It was time to check out the housekeeper’s apartment above the old stables, so she could crash into bed and become blissfully unconscious.

She pulled a couple of bags out of the boot of her car as she passed it, and made her way up the stairs to her new home. But when she opened the door, the smell of damp carpet clogged her nostrils. And it wasn’t hard to see why. Water was dripping through a sagging bulge in the ceiling, and the living room floor was on its way to becoming a decent-sized duck pond. There was no way she could sleep in here tonight.

So she dragged her bags back to the main house, up the stairs and into one of the guest rooms on the first floor. By the time she’d left a message with a local plumber and placed some kitchen pans underneath the damaged ceiling to catch the worst of the dripping water, the yawns were coming every five seconds. She only made it through half of her unpacking before she decided it was time to stop what she was doing and tootle down the hallway to the bathroom she’d spotted earlier before falling into bed.

But as she lay there in the dark, with only the creakings of the old house for company, she found she could close her eyelids but sleep was playing hide-and-seek. Running away from home had seemed such a good idea a few weeks ago, but now she was second-guessing her impulse.

What if she proved Charlie’s unspoken fears to be right? What if she wasn’t up to the job?

And she needed to be up to this job, she really did—for so many reasons.

She’d just about come to terms with the fact that the accident had not only destroyed her perfect family, it had also altered her brain permanently. She would never be the same person she’d been before that day, never be the Ellie she knew herself to be.

Sometimes it felt as if she were inhabiting the body of a stranger, and she could feel her old self staring over her shoulder, noticing the things she couldn’t do any more, raising her eyebrows at the mood swings and the clumsiness.

She rolled over and tried another position. Was it possible to haunt yourself? She certainly hoped not. She had enough ghosts to outrun as it was.

She sighed and clutched the duvet a little closer to her chest.

Maybe she’d never be that person again, but this job was her lifeline, her chance to prove to herself and everyone else that she wasn’t a waste of space. This was her chance to be normal again, away from the judging eyes and the sympathetic glances. She was just going to have to be the best darn housekeeper that Mr Mark Wilder had ever had.

As the awards ceremony dragged on Mark was proved right. It had been an incredibly long night.

Melodie was irritating him. The package was pretty, but there wasn’t much inside to interest him. He had tried to engage her in talk about the music industry, but even though she was trying to veer her career in that direction she seemed superbly uninformed about the business.

The show was good, but he had the feeling he’d seen it all before—the pseudo-feuds between cool, young indie bands, the grandpa rockers behaving badly as they presented awards and the hip-grinding dance routines by girls wearing little more than scarves. Well, maybe he didn’t object to the skimpy dresses that much, he thought with a chuckle. He was tired, not dead.

The only highlight of the evening had been Kat’s victory in the ‘Best Newcomer’ category. Nobody else might have noticed the way her hands shook as she held the supposedly funky-looking trophy, but Mark had. She’d accepted her award with simple thanks, then performed her latest single, sitting alone on the stage except for her guitar and a spotlight. The whole audience had been silent as her husky voice had permeated the sweaty atmosphere. When she’d finished, even the most jaded in the crowd of musicians and industry professionals had given her an ovation.

The remainder of the ceremony was a blur as Mark tried to keep his eyes open. He began to regret the two glasses of champagne he’d drunk. He hadn’t eaten since the flight this morning, and the alcohol was having a less than pleasant effect on him. Instead of mellowing him out, everything jarred. All he wanted to do was get home and sleep for a week solid.