At His Service: Cinderella Housekeeper. Fiona Harper

pulled deftly into a passing place. Before the car had fully stopped Ellie had popped her seat belt and staggered out of the car, stumbling forward, gulping in damp country air. She was shaking, her whole body quivering.

      Mark sat paralysed in the driver’s seat, too stunned to move. Then, coming to his senses, he unbuckled himself and ran after her. It didn’t take long to catch her as she straggled up the lane, half in a dream state.

      He grabbed her wrist and pulled her firmly to him. Her head lodged just under his chin, and for a split second she moulded against him before pushing him away again.

      He should have remembered she was surprisingly strong for a woman so soft and rounded-looking. He managed to grab one of her wrists before she darted off again down the middle of the road.

      She turned to face him, fury in her eyes. ‘I asked you to stop the car!’

      Her free arm waved around wildly and she pulled and tugged the other, trying to twist it out of his grasp.

      Mark stared at her. What on earth was wrong with her? Why such angst over a stupid tractor? Puzzled as he was, he held on to her as gently as he could without letting her run down the lane into oncoming traffic. Ellie swung towards the middle of the road as she attempted to wrench her arm away from him again, all the while pressing a flattened palm to her chest and breathing in shallow gasps.

      The nasal blast of a horn pierced the air and Mark grabbed her back out of the path of an approaching car. He stumbled backwards with her until his feet were on the grassy verge, the gnarled twigs of the ancient hedgerow piercing his back.

      Ellie’s mouth worked against his chest. He could feel her jaw moving, feel the moist warmth of her breath through his pullover. She might have been trying to shout at him, but nothing remotely resembling a word was included in the few noises tumbling out of her mouth. Her tiny hands balled into fists and she punched him on the chest. Twice.

      He might not know what was going on here—clueless, as always—but one thing was certain: whether she knew it or not, Ellie needed him in this moment. She needed someone to be angry with, someone to fall apart on. And, hey, wasn’t he the most likely candidate to light her fuse at the moment, anyway? He might as well take the brunt of whatever this was.

      No way was he about to brush this situation off with a joke. It was time to face the challenge he’d walked away from so many times over the last decade. No amount of sequins or cash would defuse the situation. He was just going to have to be ‘real’ too. He hoped to God he still had it in him.

      She was still trying to push away from him, but now the tears came. She gulped and cried and sobbed as if she’d never stop. He swallowed rising fear at such intense emotion, whispered words of comfort in her ear and waited for the squall to wear itself out. Eventually the sobbing became shallower and she surrendered to it, burying her face in his jumper. All those crying sessions with Kat now just seemed like practice sessions leading up to this moment—and he was thoroughly glad of the training.

      How he wished he could do something to ease her pain. It was so raw. Perhaps if he held her long enough, tight enough, something of him she needed would seep through the damp layers between them in a kind of osmosis. He wanted to make up the missing parts of her. Loan her his uncanny ability to shield himself from everything, to feel nothing he didn’t want to.

      His fingers stilled in her curls as he thought what a poor exchange it would be. He had nothing to give her, really. She could teach him so much more. Her determination, her ability to say what she felt whether she wanted to or not. She knew how to live, while he only knew how to dazzle.

      The sky turned to lavender-grey as afternoon retreated. Mark let the thump of his heart beat away the minutes as Ellie became motionless against him, pulling in deep breaths. She peeled her face from his chest, the ridge marks of the wool knit embedded on her hot cheek, half blinded by the thick tears clogging her eyelashes. Mark held her face tenderly in his palms and looked deep into her pink-rimmed eyes, desperate to soothe away the tempest he didn’t understand.

      Ellie stared back at him.

      He could see weariness, despair, the ragged depths of her soul, but also a glimmer of something else. Her eyes were pleading with him, asking him to give her hope.

      His voice was soft and low. ‘Tell me.’

      It was not a demand, but a request. Ellie’s lips quivered and a tear splashed onto his hand. Never taking his gaze from her, he led her to the passenger door and sat her on the edge of the leather seat, crouching to stay on her level, keeping her hands tight between his.

      Ellie let out a shuddering sigh as she closed her eyes. Her top lip tucked under her bottom teeth. He could see she was searching for words. Her pale green eyes flipped open and looked straight into his.

      Her voice was low and husky from crying. ‘It was just a panic attack. I get them sometimes … Sorry.’

      He wasn’t sure he was buying this. A forgotten voice inside his head—his conscience, maybe?—poked and prodded him and dared him not to let this slide. Whatever she needed to say was important. And it was important she said it now. So he did the only thing he could do. He waited.

      For a few minutes no one spoke, no one moved, and then she dipped her head and spoke in a low, hoarse voice. ‘My husband and daughter were killed in a car accident on a wet day like this,’ she said, looking down at their intertwined fingers.

      ‘I’m so sorry.’

      Well, that was probably the most inadequate sentence he’d ever uttered in his life, but it was all he could come up with. Lame or not, it was the truth. He was sorry for her. Sorry for the lives that had been cut off too early. Sorry he hadn’t even known she’d been married. He squeezed her hands tighter.

      ‘It was almost four years ago now. We were driving home from a day out shopping. I’d bought Chloe a pair of sparkly pink party shoes. She never even got to wear them …’

      There was nothing he could say. Nothing he could do but let her talk.

      ‘The police said it was joyriders. They’d been daring each other to go faster and faster … There was a head-on collision at a sharp bend on a country lane. Nobody could stop in time—the road was too wet.’

      How awful. Such a tragedy. He wondered how she’d found out. Had the police come knocking at her door? A word she’d muttered earlier came back to haunt him.

       We?

      He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. ‘You were in the car too?’

      She sniffed and hiccupped at the same time, then looked at him, a deep gnawing ache in her eyes. ‘I was driving.’

      Mark pulled her back into his arms. He could feel her salty tears on his own cheek, smell her shampoo as she laid her head on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and drank in her gentle fragrance. Her soft ringlets cushioned his face, a corkscrew curl tickling his nose.

      ‘Feel,’ she said. At first he didn’t understand, but she pulled his hand away from her back and placed it on the right side of her head. Where there should have been smooth bone beneath skin and hair there was a deep groove in her scalp. Mark stroked the hair there too. Gently. So gently.

      ‘The police told me there wasn’t anything I could have done,’ she said quietly. ‘But I don’t remember. And it’s like having a huge question mark hanging over my life. I’m never going to know that for sure. What if I could have reacted a split second faster or turned the wheel another way?’

      She drifted off into silence again.

      His voice left him. He’d never imagined …

      And he realised how stupid he’d been now. He should have curbed the adolescent urge to show off around her, racing his car down the winding lanes. All this was his fault.

      Ellie sighed and relaxed into him. It felt perfect, as if she’d been carved to fit there. In recent weeks he’d not been able to stop himself fantasising about holding her close