Worlds Apart (9 page)

“Thank you. Sorry,” she mumbled. “Desperate. No, not desperate. Oh drat, yes, I was.” Desperate for the loo. Desperate for the job. Desperate to kiss you.
Don’t say anything else just in case brain slips up and tells mouth to speak.
Roo was pretty sure her face was bright red. It felt hot enough to fry an egg.

“Desperate for a shower?”

His gaze slide from her damp hair to her face.

“Strange…itching,” Roo muttered.
Damn that sounds even worse.

“You’ve picked up a friend on your travels.” Niall pointed to her shoulder. “Going to freak out?”

Roo looked at where he was pointing and smiled. “Oh, a spider. No, I don’t mind spiders, but I can’t cope with worms or earwigs. Come on outside, little fella. Which way?”

Niall opened a door at the end of the corridor and Roo stepped out on to a paved area with a lawn beyond. She picked up the spider’s thread and let it dangle over a windowsill. When the spider settled and Roo was unattached, she went back inside. Roo didn’t even step on an ant if she could help it. All life had a purpose, even wasps. Though she wasn’t too sure about Tom, her ex-boss. Or snakes.

Taylor came strolling up the hallway, followed by the biker, a tall, muscular guy with dark, straggly hair that brushed his shoulders.
Wow, is this where all the good-looking guys in the country have been hiding?
Roo couldn’t help but notice the swiftness with which Niall disappeared. She’d been hoping he’d offer her coffee.

“Couldn’t you stop running?” Taylor asked. “Straight through the house and out the back?” He gaped at her hair. “You usually shower when you use the bathroom?”

“Yes,” Roo mumbled. “Sorry. I like to be completely clean after I’ve used the loo.”
Shut up. “
Not that I really
needed
the shower. It’s just a strange habit of mine. Dates back to diapers. No, forget I said that.”
Shut up, you twit.
Both guys stared at her with their mouths open.
“
I had to save a spider. Not a tarantula or anything, just a—”

Taylor made a slashing motion across his throat and gestured to the guy behind him. “Roo meet Jonas. Jonas, this is Roo, our new PA. Jonas is an investigator like me so you’re working for him too, taking messages, making appointments, typing up his illegible notes.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Roo shook Jonas’s hand.

Wow, firm grip and big anthracite eyes.
He pulled her forward slightly and his nose twitched.
Is he sniffing me?

“Back at you,” he said and let her go.

“Come into the office.” Taylor gestured for Roo to go ahead and she tried not to limp.

“What happened to your heel?” Taylor asked.

Well, he was a detective. Of course he’d notice.

“It fell off. I tried to stick it on but it came off again on the way here.”

“Maybe the glue wasn’t strong enough. What did you use?” Jonas asked.

“Um…” Roo mumbled.

“Let me have a look and see if I can fix it,” Jonas said.

Roo sat on the chair in front of the small desk and took off her shoe. When she pulled the heel out of her purse, she tried to peel off the gum, but of course the damn stuff was solid now. Jonas took the heel from her hand.

“You trod in—oh.” He laughed. “Wrong end. I’ve never seen anyone try that before.”

Taylor sat behind his desk. “What?”

“Sticking a heel on with chewing gum. I’ll just be a minute. There’s something in my bike tool kit I can use.”

Jonas slipped out and Taylor stared at her, tapping his pencil on the desk. Roo tried to look efficient, organized and keen, and tried really hard not to tap her foot in time to Taylor’s taps.

“Your blouse is fastened up wrong,” he said.

Oh shit.
Roo fumbled with the buttons.

“Right. No need to wait for Jonas. He knows how I operate. I’ll run through what we do. The calls you’ll get will be to do with surveillance, intelligence gathering, serving of court papers, tracing people who’ve skipped owing money, investigating insurance claims, checking alibis for court cases, tracing missing people in adoption scenarios and acting as a go-between. Stuff like that.”

Roo wondered if she was supposed to take notes because she’d forgotten most of that already. Taylor looked across at her and she tried to think of an intelligent question.
When do we break for coffee? How long do I get for lunch? When will I get paid?

“When do we br—what do you do most of?” she asked.
Wow, that was close.

“Observing people in connection with false accident or sickness claims, and matrimonial work—checking assets and following husbands and wives who suspect each other of cheating.”

“Right.”

“We work for private individuals, companies, solicitors, councils, government departments, insurance companies, banks and we do subcontract work for other companies like ours.”

Roo nodded. He could have been talking gibberish.

“If I’m not here to answer the phone, all I need you to do is take a message. If it’s an enquiry about a job, I’ll contact the caller later. You got that?”

Roo nodded. It was the safest thing to do.

“When I’ve accepted a job, I need you to start a file, using the client’s name, summarizing the instructions they’ve given. Name, date, contact details and what the job is. There’ll be an estimate of cost to sort out and I’ll show you how to do that. Everything has to go in that file. Every detail, no matter how insignificant it might seem. If we get written correspondence, it has to be scanned in, but we keep the physical copies too. Okay?”

Roo nodded. Her head was going to fall off in a minute.

“Photos are printed out on that machine. Back up everything.”

“Right.”

Jonas came in with her shoe and handed it to her, heel attached, then leaned against the window.

“Thank you.” Roo slipped it on her foot.

“One thing that will save me some time is if you ask a couple of questions of the caller to determine whether it’s a case I’d want,” Taylor said.

Oh for a pencil.

“If you get a call from someone who suspects their partner of cheating, ask them if they have kids or if they run a business together. If the answer to either one of those is yes, then they don’t need my services. The relationship has already broken down and it will never be right again.”

Roo frowned. “But—”

“No buts. Their lives are wrecked and they’d be paying me to confirm it.”

“But it could be that by the time they want to hire you, they’re ready to face the truth and you’d be denying them that chance. I don’t see what’s wrong in helping them to do that.”

She glanced at Jonas, hoping to see him agree but his face was blank.

Taylor leaned across his desk. “And that’s what I do for people who don’t have kids and don’t work together.”

Roo gulped. “But—” Taylor glared, but she carried on. “Maybe their partner
isn’t
having an affair.”

Jonas laughed. “You know the chances of that being true?”

“They don’t get as far as phoning a company like ours until they have evidence they can’t ignore,” Taylor said. “Once the dynamics of their relationship have changed, everything they once trusted is open for re-examination. It’s all over, they just don’t yet know it.”

“That’s…sad,” Roo whispered.

“That’s life,” Taylor said. “You can’t be emotional about this. If you care, you can’t do the job.”

She swallowed hard. “I don’t think you
can
do a job without caring. I mean if you discover someone’s been unfaithful, don’t you at least feel sorry for the innocent one?”

“No.” Taylor shook his head. “No such thing as the innocent one. There’s any number of explanations as to why relationships break down. If a guy’s cheating on his wife, could be he has good reason to. Maybe she makes his life a living hell. Maybe she won’t have sex with him. Maybe she nags at him all the time or says
but
a lot. Or could be he’s an arrogant sod who wants his dinner on the table at seven every night, then his comfort fuck
and
his attractive secretary on the desk each lunchtime. So long as there are no kids involved and the couple doesn’t work together,
and
the client doesn’t sound like a raging lunatic, I’ll probably take the case.”

Roo frowned. “But—”

“That’s enough. I’m not paying you to question my business decisions.” Taylor got to his feet and beckoned Jonas to come with him.
He’s going already?
He hadn’t even shown her what computer programs he used.

“I—”

“Shut up,” Taylor snapped. “Sit there, take messages, tidy up and don’t throw anything away. Even a chicken could do that. I’ll be back after lunch.”

He walked out after Jonas and slammed the door so hard, Roo flinched.

“What bit you on the butt this morning?” she muttered.

Well, she’d dealt with surly bosses before and coped. Roo looked around the room and wondered where to start. Maybe tidying would give her a better idea of what Taylor did. She picked up a box to lift onto the desk, the bottom fell out and papers cascaded onto the floor.

“Shit.”

“Even a chicken?” Jonas laughed.

“Don’t ask.” Taylor was so annoyed with himself he could barely speak.

“I’ll meet you there.” Jonas headed for his bike.

Taylor breathed a sigh of relief once he was driving away from Sutton Hall. Everything had gone wrong from the moment he’d opened the door to Roo. He groaned. No point blaming her for the fact that he’d spent a sleepless night trying to figure out what the hell he’d done on the lawn with Niall.

He knew what he’d
done
, he just wasn’t sure
why
he’d done it. What was he supposed to say this morning?
Nice wank. Let’s do it again sometime.

Not going to happen.

So he’d tried to pretend it hadn’t happened in the first place.

Impossible.

Flirting with Roo would have gone some way to helping him get his head straight, but instead she’d annoyed him so much he’d wanted to sack her. Actually, make that yank her into his arms and shut her up with a kiss. Instead, he’d shouted at her and she now thought he was an asshole. He was.

Taylor pulled onto the road toward Harrogate, Jonas accelerating away in the distance. What the hell was it about Roo? Even as his cock was unfurling in his boxers, he’d told her to shut up. He was an idiot. Roo was the perfect chance to prove to himself and to Niall that he was into women. Maybe it was time to break the rule about fucking the help. Maybe
not
doing it had been the reason he’d lost his three PAs. The thought cheered Taylor. When he got back, he’d suggest taking Roo out to dinner to welcome her to the company. Nothing wrong in following up lust at first sight.

Niall heard the door slam, felt it in his bones and shuddered. Was he the cause of Taylor’s bad temper? Niall dropped onto the red cushion in the corner of the attic room, closed his eyes and released a deep sigh. This morning, when he’d gone downstairs, Taylor had acted as though nothing had happened last night, though not hard to miss the guy had gone out of his way to avoid him. No accidental brushing allowed. Niall sighed. The ladder he’d dared to approach and then struggled to climb had turned into a slide and Niall had slithered to the bottom of the board to end up back where he started.

Maybe not quite. Taylor
did
want him, but fought the attraction. Though it wasn’t enough that Taylor was attracted, not enough to spill into each other’s hands, not enough if they eventually fucked each other. Body and soul, Niall wanted his love. More than wanted—needed, had to have it. It was as essential to him as the air he breathed.

Shivers trickled the length of his tattoo. Time was running out. Niall had to accept that love might not come from Taylor and that the sacrifice Niall made had been for nothing. He shook his head and opened his eyes. Not for nothing. He didn’t regret these weeks spent with Taylor, even if it hadn’t been the time of joy he’d wished for. One truth remained—Niall would love him until the day he died, because everything that was wrong about Taylor was Niall’s fault.

Now Roo was downstairs and in theory another rival, though Niall was considering revising his strategy. For the first time, this was a woman he actually liked, and judging by Taylor’s yells and the slamming of the door, maybe one that Taylor didn’t know how to handle. Her reaction to the spider had pleased Niall more than he could say. Roo was impossible to predict and that was refreshing. Did he have the energy to pursue her too? Should he?

Perhaps he had no choice. There was little point repeating past mistakes. Time to try something different.

Roo had just finished arranging all Taylor’s books on the shelves when the phone rang.

She picked it up, blew out a breath and said, “Good morning. ICU Investigations.”

A strangled sob was the response and Roo’s heart clenched.

“My name’s Roo,” she said. “What’s yours?”

“Alice,” a woman whispered.