At His Service: Cinderella Housekeeper. Fiona Harper

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?’

      Mark’s laugh was deep and throaty. He blinked a few more times, opened his good eye, then attempted to do the same with the other, but it stayed stubbornly at half-mast.

      Ellie’s partial smile evaporated as she became conscious of the warmth radiating from him. They were practically nose to nose. He was sitting on the stool, one long leg braced against the floor, the other hooked on the bottom rung. She was standing between his legs, only inches from his chest. She knew she should move. Mark was looking back at her through bleary eyes. She picked a spot on the floor between her feet and stared at it.

      ‘You’re lucky,’ she said, succeeding in inching backwards slightly.

      Try not to look at him.

      ‘You only touched the chilli briefly. It would have been much worse if you’d been chopping them …’

      Mark caught her hand as she attempted to shuffle back further. She made the mistake of looking up. A soft, tender look was in his eyes, despite the fact that one eyeball was still pink and watery.

      ‘Thank you, Ellie.’ The sincerity in his tone was making her feel all quivery.

      She managed to shift her gaze to her hand, still covered by his. Static electricity lifted the hairs on her arm.

      ‘That’s—that’s all right,’ she stammered. Her hand jerked from his as she shook herself loose. She turned and headed for the door. ‘I’ll go and have that shower now, then,’ she added.

      Perhaps a cold one.

      She started to scuttle off down the passageway.

      ‘Ellie …?’ he called after her, a laugh underscoring his words.

      The urge to keep going was powerful, but she turned and popped her head back through the open door. ‘Yes?’

      Mark was grinning at her. She had the sudden sinking feeling she didn’t want to know why.

      ‘I was going to have a shower, remember? You were cooking.’

      Ellie closed her eyes gently and darted a moist tongue over her bottom lip, trying to work out how to salvage the situation. She looked at Mark with her best matter-of-fact expression. ‘Of course.’

      For some reason he looked very pleased with himself. He wasn’t going to tease her about this for months to come, was he? What if he guessed it was him who had got her all in a fluster?

      Once her cotton wool legs had taken her back to the chopping board she set about peeling the garlic, trying to block Mark’s view of her shaking hands with her body. She heard the scrape of his stool across the floor as he rose from his seat. Every part of her body strained to hear his movements as he left the room. She stripped the skin off a clove of garlic, leaving it vulnerable and naked, and listened to Mark whistling something chirpy as he bounded up the stairs at least two at a time.