IMOGEN ADJUSTED HER earbuds, did a quick little shimmy to make sure they weren’t going to fall out and then hit ‘play’ on the playlist her father had sent her. She stilled, waiting for the first song, and then grinned at the sixties Southern Californian surf music that filled her ears.
Perfect! Threading-cotton-through-the-eye-of-a-needle-first-time perfect. Here she was on an island, a slow thirty-minute boat ride off the coast of Brazil, listening to surf music. She pinched herself. Twice. And then eyed the vacuum cleaner at her feet, reminding herself that she was here for more than just tropical holiday fun. A detail that was ridiculously difficult to bear in mind when everywhere she looked she was greeted with golden sand, languid palm trees, serene lagoons and gloriously blue stretches of perfect rolling surf.
Still, in a few hours she could hit the beach, or go exploring through the rainforest, or…
Or maybe find out what was wrong with her aunt.
Her smile slipped, but she resolutely pushed her shoulders back. She’d only been here for three days. There was time to get to the bottom of whatever was troubling Aunt Katherine.
Switching on the vacuum cleaner, she channelled her inner domestic goddess—singing and dancing as she pushed the machine around the room. This was the only way to clean. Housework was inevitable so you might as well make it as fun as you could.
She’d been so quiet for the last three days, but the lord of the manor, Jasper Coleman, didn’t like noise, apparently.
Each to his own.
She shrugged, but the corners of her mouth lifted. At eleven o’clock every day, however, he went for an hour-long run. A glance at her watch told her she had another fifty minutes in which to live it up before she’d have to zip her mouth shut again and return to an unnatural state of silence—and in which to dust, vacuum and tidy his living and dining rooms, his office and the front entrance hall. She meant to make the most of them.
She glanced around at the amazing beach-house mansion. While she might refer to Jasper Coleman as lord of the manor, his house didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to an English manor house. The wooden beams that stretched across the vaulted ceilings gave the rooms a sense of vastness—making her feel as if she were cast adrift at sea in one of those old-fashioned wooden clippers from the B-grade pirate movies starring Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster that she used to love so much when she was a kid. A feeling that was solidly countered by the honey-coloured Mexican tiles that graced the floors, and the enormous picture windows that looked out on those extraordinary views.
She angled the vacuum cleaner beneath the coffee table. She should love this house. But the artfully arranged furniture and designer rugs looked like something out of a lifestyle magazine for the rich and famous. Everything matched. She repressed a shudder. Not a single thing was out of place.
Now if she owned the house… Ha! As if. But if she did, it’d look vastly different. Messier for a start. Her smile faded. There were shadows in this house, and not the kind she could scrub off the walls or sweep out of the door. No wonder Aunt Katherine had become so gloomy.
And those two things—Aunt Katherine and gloomy—just didn’t go together. The weight she’d been trying to ignore settled on her shoulders. She had to get to the bottom of that mystery, and not just because she’d promised her mother. Aunt Katherine was one of her favourite people and it hurt to see her so unhappy.
Another surfing song started and she kicked herself back into action. She had a house to clean, and she’d achieve nothing by becoming gloomy herself. She turned the music up and sang along as if her life depended on it, wiggling her backside in time with the music and twirling the vacuum cleaner around like an imaginary dance partner. While the rooms might be tidy, they were huge, and she had to get them done before Mr Coleman returned and locked himself away again in his office to do whatever computer wizardry he spent his days doing. In a suit jacket! Could you believe that? He wore a suit jacket to work here on an island that housed precisely four people. Just…wow.
The second song ended and her father’s voice came onto the recording. This was one of the joys of her father’s playlists—the personal messages he tucked away in among the songs. ‘We miss you, Immy.’
She rolled her eyes, but she knew she was grinning like crazy. ‘I’ve only been gone three days.’ She switched off the vacuum cleaner, chuckling at one of his silly stories involving the tennis club. He recommended a movie he and her mother had seen, before finishing with, ‘Love you, honey.’
‘Love you too, Dad,’ she whispered back, a trickle of homesickness weaving through her, before a movement from the corner of her eye had her crashing back to the present. She froze, and then slowly turned with a chilling premonition that she knew who’d be standing there. And she was right. There loomed Jasper Coleman, larger than life, disapproval radiating from him in thick waves, and her mouth went dry as she pulled the earbuds from her ears.
Her employer was a huge bear of a man with an air of self-contained insularity that had the word danger pounding through her. A split second after the thought hit her, though, she shook herself. He wasn’t that huge. Just…moderately huge. It was just… He was one of those men whose presence filled a room. And he filled this room right up to its vaulted ceiling.
A quick sweep of her trained dressmaker’s eyes put him at six feet one inch. And while his shoulders were enticingly broad, he wasn’t some barrel-chested, iron-pumping brawn-monger. Mind you, he didn’t have a spare ounce of flesh on that lean frame of his, and all of the muscles she could see—and she could see quite a lot of them as he’d traded in his suit jacket for running shorts and a T-shirt—were neatly delineated. Very neatly delineated. That was what gave him an air of barely checked power.
That and his buzz cut.
So…not exactly a bear. And probably not dangerous. At least not in a ‘tear one from limb to limb’ kind of way. None of that helped slow the pounding of her pulse.
‘Ms Hartley, am I right in thinking you’re taking personal calls during work time?’
He had to be joking, right? She could barely get a signal on her mobile phone. She started to snort but snapped it short at his raised eyebrow. It might not be politic to point that out at this precise moment. ‘No. Sir,’ she added belatedly. But she said it with too much force and ended up sounding like a sergeant major in some farcical play.
Oh, well done, Imogen. Why don’t you click your heels together and salute too?
‘Not a phone call. I was listening to a playlist my father sent me. He’s a sound engineer…and he leaves little messages between songs…and I talk back even though I know he can’t hear me. So…’ She closed her eyes.
Too much information, Immy.
‘I expected your aunt to have made it clear to you that I demand peace and quiet when I’m working.’
Her eyes flew open. ‘She did!’ She couldn’t get Aunt Katherine into trouble. ‘But, you see, I thought you’d already left for your run.’
She glanced at his office door and had to fight the urge to slap a hand to her forehead. She was supposed to check if that door was open or closed. Open meant he was gone and she could clean this set of rooms without disturbing him. If it was closed that meant he was still working…and she had to be church-mouse quiet. Biting her lip, she met his gaze again. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot to check your office door. It won’t happen again, Mr Coleman, I promise.’
He didn’t reply. Nothing. Not so much as a brass razoo. Which was an odd expression. She’d look it up…if she could get an Internet connection. She eyed him uncertainty. He might not be a big bear of a man, but he fitted her image of a bear with a sore head to a T. Which might not be fair as she