London Falling (3 page)

“Kiera Knightly and Posh Spice. And those were business dinners. You know they’re two of my oldest clients.” Great. His father was now reading the tabloids. Even though nothing they ever printed was true, their odd fascination with Simon was just one more thing for his father to criticize.

“Well, I hope you haven’t changed your mind, because I sent out the invitations two weeks ago,” Lucy said.

Simon sighed. The last thing he wanted was a slew of people invading his personal space, because his home was his only sanctuary against the tabs. He turned to Lucy, who was planning the event. “Is everything on track then?”

“As long as you pull your act together and clean up that dust-bin you call home.” Lucy raised her eyebrow at him. God, she looked like their father when she did that. “Have you found a maid yet?”

“It’s under control.” Or at least it had been. If only it weren’t so difficult to find someone who wouldn’t betray his personal life to the tabloids. The call of money was too much for most people.

Theodora had been perfect, having been personally recommended to him by Victoria Beckham, but then Theodora had to go and break her leg two days before she started, which reminded him that he needed to check on the flowers he’d sent her.

“I interviewed someone today, but she didn’t have a work permit.” And he was still feeling guilty about letting that American woman leave without taking any money.

Why wouldn’t she accept his charity? Crikey, it was Christmas Eve and she was stuck in a homeless shelter. He wished he could have hired her. She was such a mixture of pride and desperation. A lethal combination, as he knew only too well. When he’d opened the door today, she’d stood before him like an army general, yet she looked like the slightest puff of air could carry her away. But he couldn’t take the chance that she wasn’t out to frame him, although she was a right good actress if that was the case.

“How hard can it be to find a maid, Simon?” his father asked before sighing in disgust. “You’ve only a week ‘til the event.”

Simon clenched his fingers on the arm of the sofa. For once, his father had a point.

How hard was it to hire a maid?

After he’d left, Aimee had sat frozen on the floor of the entry hall, terrified that motion detectors were scattered throughout the house. But once she realized that there wasn’t a sensor in the entry by the front door, she’d forced herself up. She couldn’t sit in the hall for however long he was gone.

Moving a quarter inch at a time, she’d slithered across the floor in front of the living room door, until she could see the far corners of the room. No sensors. She’d done the same for the other rooms on the first floor, and the first room on each new floor, but she only found window and door sensors.

After that, she’d searched for cleaning supplies and gotten to work.

Now, she flopped in a heap on the floor of his bedroom as she evaluated her work. Although the rest of the house was furnished in antiques, Simon’s bedroom was sleek and modern, painted a blue-gray color with off-white trim. A steel-gray, down comforter covered the platform bed, centered between two floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the front of the house. The worn floorboards were stained a dark chocolate and covered in a soft cream rug that matched the sheets. Although the design was stark, the room still had a warm, comfortable feeling to it that could not have come from Mr.

Masculinity.

So what woman had designed this room? Girlfriend? Fiancée? Some ice-princess who wouldn’t be caught dead sleeping in last year’s style? Strangely, there didn’t seem to be a sign of any current-or former-girlfriends anywhere around the house, and Aimee had looked.

Her shoulders slumped, and she hung her head. She hadn’t been this tired since she battled pneumonia a few years ago. If only she could curl up in the warm comforter for just a few minutes. She snorted. Like having him discover her asleep in his bed wouldn’t get her kicked out in about two seconds flat.

Aimee’s stomach growled. If she was going to clean his entire house before he returned home, she needed to eat something in addition to the muffin the hotel had given her this morning. She headed downstairs to the kitchen, but a cursory search of the cabinets and pantry turned up little more than a tin of flour and some anchovies. The refrigerator was just as desolate, with jars of condiments, including something called HP sauce, but no real food. She leaned her head against the freezer door, as her predicament took on a whole new dimension.

She was locked inside a house with no food.

An in-depth search of the drawers turned up restaurant napkins, chopsticks, sauce packets, and takeout menus, which wouldn’t do her any good since she couldn’t open the front door. And she didn’t have any money.

He hadn’t been lying when he said he had nothing to offer her except a glass of water. Her head lifted. There had to be food somewhere in this house. A storage room, perhaps?

No luck, but she finally found some gift baskets in the dining room and tore into them, knowing that crackers and cheese wouldn’t last more than a few days. Today was still Christmas Eve. It felt like a week since the concert, but it had only been twenty-four hours. If he didn’t come home the day after Christmas, she would have to reevaluate her plan, because starving to death wasn’t high on her priority list.

Voices sounded outside the window. She stopped chewing so she could hear. A woman’s voice. And a man’s.

He was home.

Her heart smacked into her ribcage. It was too soon! She wasn’t ready.

She swallowed the crackers and stood, but the dry crumbs made her cough.

Fortunately, the voices drifted away from the window, and she slumped back in her chair.

How in the hell had she gotten into this mess? She wanted to go back in time, un-invite Rodney and ask someone else on this stupid trip. But there wasn’t anyone else, because all of her classmates had family obligations over Christmas break. And she had no family. The emptiness of her life filled the room around her. If only she hadn’t responded to Rod the Bod’s flirtations and invited him on this stupid trip, she’d have been sitting in a youth hostel right now trading stories with other students and planning her sightseeing itinerary for tomorrow.

Thank God she hadn’t slept with him.

She crumpled up her empty packages and threw them in the trash.

Feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t get her out of this predicament. Cleaning this pig-sty would. There was no way he could refuse to pay her if she’d already done the work.

She spent the next several hours scrubbing the front entry and bathroom until they sparkled.

Before bed, she decided to take a few minutes to price out an airline ticket, but she searched high and low and couldn’t find a phone. Phone jacks.

But no phone. And if he had a computer, it must have been a laptop that he’d taken with him. What was with this guy? No food and no phone. Did he even live here?

Forty-five minutes later, she found an old desktop computer in an attic storage room that she lugged down the stairs and hooked up to the internet connection in the study, but after searching Expedia for cheap tickets, her hope sank deeper than the Titanic.

The only available seats were in first class. And 1,183 pounds.

She looked up at the beamed ceiling, as if the money were taped to the dark wood above. Somehow, she had to come up with that amount of money and hope that the flight was still available when she had the money to buy it.

At the last minute. Over the holidays. A roar filled her head, numbed her limbs and escaped in a giant trembling mess.

Her degree. Her career. Her financial situation. Everything depended on getting back in the next two weeks.

She gripped the desk. There had to be a way out of this. As her thoughts tumbled about her brain, only one solution kept popping to the surface. She had to convince him to pay her more. There were other jobs she could do around the house, such as organizing the papers in his study. And she was an awesome cook, when she actually prepared her own meals. Once he came home and let her fill up the pantry, she could pre-cook and freeze his food for several weeks, like a meal delivery service.

She’d buckle down and work her way out of this, like she always did.

As long as she could convince him to hire her.

And pay her more than the going rate.

And he came home before she ran out of food.

Chapter Two

Aimee woke to rustling outside the window. She froze in place and hoped whoever was there wouldn’t see her lying on the bed in the dark. A pattering of rain hit the glass, accompanied by an eerie gust of wind. In case someone was looking at her from the window, she opened her eyes just a slit and saw the shadow of black iron, highlighted by the dim London night sky.

Her heartbeat evened out a tiny bit. She’d forgotten that the basement windows in the maid’s quarters were covered by iron bars, so she was probably safe. She scooted her trembling body against the headboard and kept watch on the window. Hours passed, or maybe minutes, as the wind blew outside. Every so often, a limb from a dormant rose bush just outside the window scraped against the glass. Surely that was what woke her up? Just the storm blowing a limb against the glass. She stared out the window for a few more minutes, reassuring herself that the sound came from the branches. Her eyelids grew heavy again, and she slipped back under the covers.

Someone sneezed. She bolted upright in bed, back against the headboard, her heart not only beating outside her chest, but falling to the floor in stunned fear.

Someone was out there.

Okay, get a grip. Breathe. There were bars on all the basement windows and alarms on all the doors. No one could get in without triggering the alarm.

Unless they had a saw that cut through metal bars.

She swung her feet over the edge of the bed and tip-toed across the freezing tile floor to peek outside the window.

A furry form outlined the top of the window well.

“Eeek!” She slammed her body against the wall.

Whatever it was sneezed again. She inched her way to the window. Two dark eyes stared back at her.

It was just a black cat. She released her breath. The cat must have seen her because it jumped into the well, nudged its tiny body through the bars and bumped its head against the glass. It wasn’t a cat, but a puppy. A wet and shivering puppy.

How had a puppy gotten in the back yard? It wasn’t as though the dog could have scaled the garden walls and been trapped back there by accident.

The walls were made of cement block and had to be at least ten feet tall–and there wasn’t any space between the houses for a gate. Someone must have put the dog in the back yard on purpose. Or else the puppy belonged to Simon the Heartless. What kind of man went away and left his puppy outside in the freezing rain?

Poor doggy. That must be what that small shed was for. Had that heartless jerk even left any food for the dog?

“Go on doggie. Go back to your doghouse. There’s no food for you down here.”

The puppy quirked his head, almost as if he could understand her.

“Go on doggie. Jump.” The puppy just stared at her with the most woebegone expression on his face. She tapped on the window. “Come on.

Jump.” Minutes went by and the puppy simply stared back at her.

If she ignored the dog, maybe it would get bored and go back to its shed.

She padded back to the bed and climbed in, curling her frozen toes into the warm sheets. The clock said 2:34. Geez, she was never going to get any sleep.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the puppy. What if it slept all night in the freezing rain? What if it was trapped?

Could a puppy jump the three feet necessary to escape the window well?

Would it freeze to death or catch pneumonia out there? Did dogs even catch pneumonia?

Darn it. She had to see if she could get the dog inside and warm him up, because there was no way Mr. Heartless would hire her if she allowed his dog to get sick and die in his window well. It wasn’t like the dog could make this house any dirtier.

She turned on the bedside light and walked over to examine the window.

Upstairs, the windows had alarm sensors screwed into the sills, but there weren’t any white boxes on this window. That was probably why the bars were there. Still, what if the window was alarmed?

The puppy sneezed again. It was going to freeze to death, and she would get the blame. She turned the lock, closed her eyes and shoved.

Complete and utter silence. She breathed a sigh of relief.

The puppy’s tail whipped back and forth. That was a good sign wasn’t it?

She steeled herself for the contact as she reached for the puppy. Fur. Wet fur.

And a beating heart. She dropped the puppy on the floor where it promptly shook and splattered muddy water all over the pristine white walls.

She slammed the window shut, ran to the bed, and jumped in. It followed her. “Please don’t come up here,” she said, but the dog clearly didn’t understand and attempted the long leap to the mattress, leaving muddy paw prints on the comforter. “Aaaeek!” Aimee pushed to the other side of the bed, but the dog couldn’t make the jump and crashed to the floor.

Peering over the edge of the bed, she confirmed that the dog was still okay. It was small, with a long wet nose, big brown eyes, and one flopped-over ear. If it were a stuffed animal, it would have been adorable.

“Okay Puppy. Let’s get one thing straight.” The puppy sat down and tilted his head as if he wanted to understand every word. “I’m not a dog person. You’re smelly and wet and you just weird me out. I’ll let you sleep in the kitchen, but don’t expect more than that. Okay?” Nothing from the dog, just his large dark eyes staring at her.

Aimee took a deep breath, jumped off the bed and ran across the hall to the storeroom for towels. The puppy bounded after her, slid across the tile floor, and ran smack into the washing machine, before it rolled onto its feet, shook off, and proceeded to lick her feet.

“Eeew!” Aimee took off, and the puppy pattered after her as she hurried to the kitchen. After she dropped the towels on the floor, the puppy sniffed the makeshift bed and sat down. “Okay. You stay here.” She turned and walked away, but the pitter-patter of paws on the tile floor followed her. “No.