Housekeeper at His Command: The Spaniard's Virgin Housekeeper / His Pregnant Housekeeper / The Maid and the Millionaire. Caroline Anderson

he feels badly about the way he so grossly underpaid you, and I know he wants you to have a holiday. And as for me—’ he spread his finely made hands expressively ‘—I owe you. It’s not beyond my capabilities to find you suitable work and accommodation within one or other of my companies.’ Not a shadow of his ongoing loathing at the thought of seeing her walk off into the sunset with no visible form of support showed on his face as he invited, ‘Tell me of your life before you came to Spain.’ Miguel had told him what he knew, what she’d confided. He wanted to know more.

      ‘Why?’ Izzy swung her legs around and wriggled into a position where she was directly facing the man seated at her side. She caught her breath, mesmerised by the sheer brilliance of his eyes, horribly aware of the tightening tingle of awareness deep in her tummy. Was he, at last, actually interested in her as a human being? A woman?

      It was a thought too sweet to be ousted by acknowledging its sheer stupidity—until he countered blandly, ‘Think of it as a job interview. If I’m to place you within one of my companies I need to know I’m not trying to push a round peg into a square hole.’

      Extreme humiliation claimed her. No wonder her family was irritated by her, called her stupid. Of course he wasn’t interested in her as a flesh-and-blood woman. Why the heck should he be? She had none of the social graces, the dazzling beauty and sophistication that would raise a flicker of interest in a man such as he.

      Squashing the desire to tell him to mind his own business, that she’d find work without his help, she glumly acknowledged that she couldn’t afford to be defiant just because her feelings had been hurt. Feelings she had had no right to have in the first place. Talk about cutting her nose off to spite her face! She needed work. He’d promised to place her.

      ‘My CV’s nothing to write home about,’ she mumbled, her hands twisting in her lap with sheer embarrassment.

      Her family had always drummed it into her that unless she applied herself academically she would get nowhere. Wrongly, she decided with hindsight. Because she had always known she could never begin to approach the scholarly brilliance of her older, doted-upon brother, she hadn’t even tried. Now she was being obliged to spell it out.

      ‘No qualifications. A string of going-nowhere jobs. And then Dad found me work in his office—he was a solicitor. Just making the tea, really, and running errands. Then he retired—’

      ‘To New Zealand, to be with your doctor brother.’

      ‘James is a brilliant surgeon,’ Izzy corrected, knowing full well her brother would have insisted on that distinction. She pinkened because Miguel must have told him this stuff, which reminded her that Cayo would have been checking out his uncle’s new and—in his initial opinion—dodgy housekeeper. Miguel would have relayed what he knew about her because she’d confided heaps about her background to explain what she’d been doing in Spain in the first place.

      ‘And you took work in Spain, leaving your job and your home because you and the man you were in love with had a falling out.’

      Cayo cut to the chase. It figured. She could be fiery-tempered, headstrong enough to act on impulse without calmly thinking out the consequences. But she was also warm-hearted, and hadn’t a mean or ungenerous bone in her delectable body.

      ‘Are you still in love with him?’ It was a struggle to keep his tone uninterested when he was illogically incensed by the possibility—for some reason he was totally at a loss to understand.

      He was left clenching his teeth against some unwise and possibly ridiculous frustrated outburst when, her chin up, she came back with, ‘That is absolutely none of your business!’

      Miguel obviously hadn’t relayed the whole story of her soppy crush on Marcus, the way he had used her and laughed at her behind her back, and she certainly wasn’t going to lay what amounted to her further stupidity and humiliation on the table for him to gloat over or pity her for.

      ‘I take that as a yes.’ The dismissive tone he could turn on at will was at odds with what he could only describe as his anger. Miguel had been short on details of the English love of his housekeeper’s life, and he hadn’t pressed, hadn’t been remotely interested, cynically deciding that any male Izzy Makepeace professed to be in love with had to be loaded, and that clearly the English guy had seen through her and given her the elbow—hence her removal to hunting pastures new.

      But he knew differently now. She wasn’t the avaricious slapper he had named her. She had loved the English guy. Still loved him.

      He forced himself to unclench his jaw. As she had said, it was none of his business. So why did the pretty certain knowledge that Izzy would regret her impetuosity and return to her lover, or that he, like any red-blooded male, would track her down and claim her leave him feeling so sour?

      Change the subject.

      Cool, impersonal tone.

      He didn’t do staff interviews. His personnel officer handled that. But he’d give it his best shot. It couldn’t be too difficult.

      ‘Having seen how you so brilliantly transformed the grotty hovel that was Miguel’s home under his unlamented former housekeeper’s tenure, I would say your talents lie with the domestic’

      ‘Talents?’ In spite of herself, Izzy went bright pink with pleasure. ‘No one’s ever linked that word with me before,’ she confessed. Praise coming from this elevated being would be pretty rare, and she knew she would always treasure it—which was horribly feeble, and a rather shameful fact that wild horses wouldn’t drag from her.

      His heart, never the mushiest of organs, seemed to swell with sympathy. He recalled, now, something Miguel had said, that he’d ignored as would-be heart-tugging propaganda.

      ‘Reading between the lines, I’d say her family treated her appallingly. Forever comparing her unfavourably with her brother, making her feel third-rate.’

      ‘I believe you lived in the shadow of your brother, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have your own strengths. Different, but equal,’ he remarked gently.

      That brought her head up, and a slight frown to mar the smooth perfection of her brow. Miguel had certainly been giving his tongue full rein! She shrugged, a slight, defeated gesture.

      Quite unaccountably, it moved him to say, ‘You must have felt unloved. A lonely feeling, as I know. I was six years old when I overheard my father tell Tio Miguel, “If you feel so strongly, you spend time with the mocoso. By being born he cost me my adored wife’s life. I’ll see that my staff feed and clothe him, and he will be educated, but other than that I want nothing to do with him!”’ His eyes hardened at the memory, but his voice was still gentle as he admitted, ‘Until then I had tried every way I knew to make Papà notice me, love me. After that I stopped trying. I made my own life—with Tio Miguel to guide me when he was around.’

      Appalled, Izzy opened her eyes very wide. They flooded with over-emotional tears. What a terrible thing for a lonely, motherless little boy to overhear! Her own nagged-at childhood didn’t come near such a truly dreadful trauma.

      A frown scoring his brow, Cayo managed to stop his fingers from brushing away the silvery teardrops. ‘I’m not looking for sympathy,’ he denied shortly, genuinely perplexed by the way he’d opened up to her. He had never repeated what he’d overheard to a living soul—not even Tio Miguel. In fact he hadn’t even hung around to hear his uncle’s response, he remembered, just run to the stables and sobbed himself to sleep. It was not an episode he had ever wished to talk about. So he didn’t understand himself, and thoroughly loathed that state of affairs.

      ‘I am merely pointing out that, regardless of what others might think of you, you do have talents and it’s up to you to make something of your life. As I have done,’ he proffered on a bite.

      Make something of her life—as he had done? Thanks, but no thanks! Her tender heart twisted. Sure, he was a massively successful, wildly wealthy business tycoon, but apart from his uncle he cared for no one. Not even his gloriously beautiful mistresses, whom Miguel