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“Well”—he folded his arms—“I’m telling you now. There’s no uniform with the job. Wear what you like.”
She tucked a strand of her dirty blonde hair, which wouldn’t curl but wouldn’t lie straight either, behind her ear and considered her boss. “I do wear what I like.”
“What I mean is you can wear more relaxed clothes, if you want. I want you to be comfo
rtable here. This isn’t just your job. It’s your home too.”
“And it only took you two years to notice,” she muttered before smiling at him. “Thanks. I’ll take that into consideration.” She headed for the door.
“Don’t forget to fire the gardener. I want it done today.”
She tugged open the door, and in her haste to get away from her annoying boss, promptly fell down the steps and into the garden. Humiliated, she jumped to her feet, dusted herself off and shouted, “I’m all right.” Before running for her car, which she kept parked at the back of the house.
Food. That’s what she needed. And caffeine. Everything would look better with both firmly in her stomach.
Chapter 2
Duncan watched his housekeeper trip down the back steps. She righted herself before he could rush to the rescue and then hurried away before he could say anything more to her. The woman was as graceful as a ballet dancer until she got flustered. It was one of her more endearing quirks. And she had many quirks. He might not have been paying attention to her in the first year or so after she started working at the mansion, but she’d become increasingly fascinating to him over the past few months. From watching her, he got the feeling that there was a whole lot more to Donna Sinclair than she let people see.
As he followed her out of the back door and watched her disappear in a cloud of dust, he heard whistling and turned to find the gardener, Bill, wheeling a barrow from the front of the house. He hated whistling. But he hated what this guy had done to his wife’s roses even more.
The sight of the stalky stubs, where flowers once bloomed, had made his fingers itch to reach for the whisky. It had been eighteen months since he’d last tasted a good dram. And he instinctively knew it would be many more before he could trust himself to taste it again. He’d come to that realisation the morning he’d woken with a vague recollection of what had transpired the night before, to find that strangers had cleaned up around him. It had been the humiliating kick up the backside he’d needed. Even now, the main thing he could remember from the night he’d set out to drink himself to death, was that he’d been overly concerned about protecting Fiona’s roses.
And now this bastard had trashed them.
“Morning, Mr Stewart,” the man said. “Another fine day in paradise.”
Duncan had only met the gardener once before, when Donna had introduced them, and he hadn’t warmed to him then. And he definitely didn’t feel any warmer now. He’d met his type before, he was one of those men who couldn’t take orders from a woman, no matter how much smarter and more capable she might be. His blatant disregard for Donna’s instructions was another mark against him. Only Duncan got to ignore his housekeeper, everyone else had bloody well better toe her line.
“Tell me something,” Duncan asked, his keen artist’s eye taking in details about the man. It told him that the gardener was in his fifties and fit for his age. There was an arrogant air about him that rubbed Duncan up the wrong way—probably because the only arrogance he tolerated was his own. “Did my housekeeper tell you to leave the roses alone?”
The man puffed out his chest and scoffed. “Aye, that she did. That lassie doesn’t know the first thing about gardening, and I told her so.”
Another strike against the man. It wasn’t his place to give Donna a hard time—that was Duncan’s job. And his alone.
“Well, you can pack up your gear. You’re fired. The order to leave the roses alone came directly from me.”
Bill’s face turned purple, and his hands clenched into fists. “You can’t fire me. I might have only been working at the mansion for a few months, but I’ve been doing this job for thirty years. I know how to care for roses.”
“You were told to leave them alone, but you didn’t. So you’re fired.” As far as Duncan was concerned, this conversation was over. He turned to leave.
A hand curved round his forearm, making him stop. He glared back at the man, watching as the awareness hit him that not only was Duncan at least twenty years younger, he was a good head taller and twice as broad—all of it muscle. The gardener released his hold as though his fingers were on fire, but the outrage in his eyes didn’t dim.
“You can’t fire me. Your housekeeper does the firing.”
“My housekeeper works for me.”
Bill licked his lips in an action that reminded Duncan of a cold-blooded lizard. “I want the same severance she gives everybody else you fire. I won’t be missing out just because you decided to man up and do the deed yourself for a change.”
Duncan stilled. “I don’t give severance pay, and I won’t be conned into starting now.”
“That’s a bold-faced lie,” Bill snapped. “Everybody knows when you’re fired from Kintyre Mansion you leave with a hefty cheque to see you over. I want my cheque. You can’t steal from me. I want what I’m owed.”
Duncan took a step towards him, looming over the man. “I don’t hand out severance pay. Get your gear and get off my land before I physically remove you from it.”
Bill’s face twisted in rage. “You’re trying to steal from me. That money is mine by rights. You’re just being tight-fisted because you haven’t sold a painting in years. Everybody knows you’re a washed-up has-been, but I’ll be damned if I’ll suffer an unpaid, unfair dismissal because you’re tight for money. You haven’t heard the end of this. I’ll get the money owing to me, one way or another.” He turned and strode back around to the front of the house.
What the hell? Severance pay? Duncan watched him go as suspicion bloomed. If Donna had been handing out cheques when she fired staff members, they weren’t coming from the house account. Which meant they could only be coming from one place: her pocket. The staff had been taking advantage of her soft heart. And he was damn well going to put a stop to that straight away.
