London Falling (4 page)

You stay here.” She walked a few more steps, but it continued to follow her.

She returned to the pile of towels and patted them. The dog bounded over and hopped on the bed. “Stay.” She walked away and once again the dog pattered after her. “No way are you sleeping in my room.”

She ran down the hall to her room, but the puppy couldn’t stop in time and slid past her door. Luckily, she slammed the door before the puppy could return. After climbing back into bed, she scissored her feet to re-warm the sheets.

The puppy whimpered outside the door. She put a pillow over her head.

She could still hear the whimpers. It had to stop sometime, right? Scratch, scratch. Whimper. Scratch.

She marched over to the door and swung it open. “You can’t take no for an answer can you?” The dog sat down, but his tail swept the floor. She stomped back to the kitchen, grabbed the towels and made up a bed for it on the floor near her bed. The puppy promptly circled the towels and curled up in a ball. It looked up again when she hopped into bed, but she turned off the light so she couldn’t see the big brown eyes begging to come up with her.

“Here’s some advice, Puppy. As soon as he comes home, you’re ‘outta here, so don’t even bother getting comfortable. It’s not worth the effort, believe me.”

The dog sighed. She didn’t even know dogs could sigh.

Aimee flipped onto her side and curled into a ball, trying to warm her fingers and toes. Her stomach felt raw and empty, but she ignored it. It was the middle of the night, and besides, she had to ration her food.

Especially now that she had two mouths to feed.

Simon trudged up the steps to his house and wished he could transport himself directly into bed. He hadn’t felt this crap in ages. Merry Christmas to him.

There was a light coming from the window in the old servant’s entrance that he must have forgotten to turn off before he left. When he opened the front door, the hall light was on too. Typical. Thinking too much about work, and not enough about what he was doing. He punched in the alarm code and dropped his bag next to the door.

In the distance, dance music beat out a rhythm.

“What the ?” Had his brother decided to pay him a visit? Just like Blake to show up unannounced on Christmas day, when he was supposed to be in St. Bart’s. Simon followed the sound of the music downstairs. Blake was spending too much time in nightclubs if this was now his music of choice.

A strange sound, like two forks racing each other across the tile floor, came from the kitchen. Odd. The sound got louder and then something covered in black fur careened around the corner and launched itself at him.

“Bugger and blast!”

“Holy crap!” a female voice said from the kitchen as something crashed to the floor. Had Blake brought one of his girlfriends-of-the-month over to his house? And a Scottish terrier puppy? As he rubbed the little fellow behind the ears, Simon prepared to be social. He really didn’t have the energy for this tonight, but he’d say hello before he collapsed into bed.

A woman stood on a stool in front of the cooker wearing rubber gloves and holding a bottle of cleaner, her mouth open in surprise.

“You’re home,” she said.

The American accent, the pajama bottoms and the unruly red hair forced his muddled brain to start working.

She’d left his house yesterday.

And the alarm had been on when he walked in the door today.

Adrenaline took over for his aching muscles. “You! How did you get in here?”

Her face turned white as she stepped off the stool. “You locked me in.”

“Right. I locked you in my house. If I locked you in the house, explain how this dog got in here.” He looked around the kitchen, noticing the open baskets of food, and his brain finally clicked on. “Was this a set-up from the start? Who’s helping you? Where are they?” He strode from the room and up the stairs yelling, “You’ve been caught! Come out and show your faces so I can beat you to a bloody pulp before I call the police.” Unfortunately, his voice cracked at the end. Not a good sign.

The Yank followed him upstairs from the kitchen. “There isn’t anyone else. Really, you locked me in. Your dog was in the window well so I let it in through the window. It could have frozen to death out there.” She grabbed his pullover and turned wide eyes to his face. “Please don’t call the police.”

He shrugged off her rubber-covered hand. “I don’t have a dog.”

As if to protect herself, she crossed her arms and backed away from him.

“Then whose dog is this?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask your accomplices while you’re rotting away in jail?” To see if any of the paintings had been nicked, he stalked into the drawing room. “I expect you’ll pay me back for every single thing you’ve filched.” Everything was there, even the ugly as sin Vermeer his grandmother had given him. “What have you taken?” He strode into the hall.

“Nothing, I swear. I’ve been cleaning. If you would just look around, you’d see.”

“Right. You mean to tell me that you broke into my house and spent …”

two days cleaning my house? He froze in astonishment. The floor shone with what could only be hours of polishing, and the furniture was clear of dust and the post he typically stacked there. What was she up to? “What have you done with the post?”

“What post?”

“The post that was by the door?” Was she slow? She hadn’t seemed it before, but that would explain her crazy behavior.

She wrinkled her eyebrows. “Oh, you mean the mail. For a second, I thought you were talking about an actual post. That would have been strange.” The Scottie circled around her feet as she spoke. “I sorted everything and stacked it in your study.” She wrung her hands together, as if waiting for a sentence to be handed down from a judge.

He rubbed the ache that pulsed at the base of his skull. His skin felt clammy. If he could just make her disappear, he could fall arse over elbow into bed and sleep off whatever this was. “Explain this to me again. How did you get inside?” The adrenaline was gone, but something foul had taken its place.

“I really wasn’t trying to get trapped inside, it just sort of happened.

When you left you locked me in.” She kept speaking, but her voice was drowned out by the ringing in his ears. “And then the puppy …”

He was either going to pass out or puke. “You’ve got five minutes to get you and your dog out of here.”

“But but it’s almost midnight! On Christmas night. You can’t do that to me. I cleaned your house and now you’re going to throw me out on the street with no money and no place to go?” She stalked over to him, stopping only when they stood toe-to-toe. “Are you really so unfeeling? So uncaring? You can’t do that. You can’t.”

He flinched at the volume of her voice. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to get her out of there before he puked. Not caring about anything except getting to the loo before he lost it, he shoved past her.

“Where are you going?”

He couldn’t answer her. His feet were moving, but they seemed to be detached from his body, and his focus narrowed to the putrid feeling at the back of his throat.

“What are you doing?” She followed him into the small room just as he dropped to the floor and lost the entire contents of his stomach. “Oh. Oh!”

“Get out!” He was going to lose it again.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What does it look like?” He sucked in some air. “I’ve got the lurgy.”

She stepped away. “The lurgy?”

Why wouldn’t she just go away? “Influenza.” Now the dog was in here too, staring up at him with concerned eyes. He was a damned circus show, and he felt both pairs of eyes on him while he lost it again. The bitter smell was so bad, he threw up again.

A cupboard door opened and water splashed in the basin, and then a cool cloth landed on the back of his neck. She removed it while he dry heaved two more times and replaced it without touching his skin once.

When the urge to puke abated somewhat, he sat back on his heels. “This is just the topper to an all-around fantastic Christmas.”

“I’ll be back,” she said, before she and the dog disappeared.

He was right knackered, so he sat down, leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. At least the tile was clean.

The Scottie’s nails clicked across the floorboards and then galloped downstairs. A few seconds later, he heard them returning and continuing upstairs. Did she have stuff in every room of his house? “Glad you made yourself at home,” he mumbled. His mobile cut into his thigh, so he retrieved it from his pocket and placed it on the floor. When he heard their feet on the stairs again, he pushed himself onto all fours, but the room spun and he couldn’t make it all the way to his feet. Thank God she was finally leaving so he could die in peace.

“Can you make it upstairs?”

“This can’t be happening.” He pulled a stack of money from his wallet and tossed it at her feet. “Take it. Just take it. Whatever you need, take it and go. I don’t care anymore.”

“You need to lie down in bed.”

He’d never wanted to be rid of someone more in his entire life. “If I lie down in bed will you leave?”

She held out her hand.

“Bloody Yank.” Ignoring her hand, he pulled himself up by the sink ledge, supporting his weight on the counter until the blackness lifted from his vision. He stood.

She tucked her body under his shoulder and wrapped her arm around his waist.

“I’m not an invalid,” he said.

“The longer you argue with me, the longer it takes to get upstairs to bed.”

He pulled away, but she kept a hand on his arm. “Right anxious to get me into bed, are you?” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

She rolled her eyes, but started walking toward the staircase.

Clearly, his mind was addled if he was spouting off nonsense like that and allowing a strange woman to help him up to bed when he should be tossing her out on her arse. He inhaled against another wave of nausea and closed his eyes. This day had to be over soon.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He nodded and forced his legs to move. The concern in her voice, as well as the tentative placement of her hand on his arm told him she was harmless, although he wasn’t certain he could trust his–hopefully empty–gut.

As they climbed, the puppy hopped up to the landing and waited. Simon stopped again a few steps from the top and summoned the energy to finish the climb. The woman paused with him, and the flyaway curls on her head tickled his chin. Somehow staggering the remaining steps to his room, he paused in the doorway to catch his breath.

His jaw dropped. The lamp gave a soft glow to the spotless room. No clothes were strewn on the floor, no towel was thrown over the en-suite door, and the bed was made. His books were neatly stacked on the nightstand, not tossed to the floor in their usual manner. The sheets were pulled back on one side and called to his weary body. She’d even put a bucket next to the bed.

“Come on,” she said, dragging him the final few steps.

He collapsed into the bed. She removed his shoes and pulled the sheets and duvet over his fully-clothed body and placed her hand on his forehead.

Her eyes seemed way too big for her pixie-like face. As their eyes met, something passed between them, some sort of communication, but his head was too fuzzy to translate it into normal thought.

She yanked her hand back. “I put a glass of water on the nightstand and a bucket on the floor right here in case you get sick again.” She moved the bucket closer to the bed. “Do you need anything else?”

There was no silent communication. He was imagining things. Curling up on his side, he pulled the lavender scented sheets around his head. “No. I What’s your name again?”

“Aimee.”

“That’s right. You’re no longer locked in, Aimee. Please get your things and find your way out.”

She picked up his shoes and put them inside his wardrobe, flipped off his lamp and headed for the door.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“Goodnight.” The door clicked shut behind her.

He shoved the pillow underneath his head and groaned. No one had tucked him into bed since his mother had died fifteen years ago.

He was almost sorry to see her go.

The puppy followed Aimee down the stairs to the bathroom where Simon had tossed the money and his cell phone. Aimee shook her head in disbelief as a burst of horrified laughter escaped her lips. What the hell had just happened? He’d really come home, puked, and gone straight to bed. It was too ridiculous to believe, yet there was his money, tossed on the floor. After all that worry!

And now what was she going to do? He was too sick to discuss her salary, and he’d commanded her to get out of his house. She checked his wallet. He didn’t even have enough money to pay her for her completed work. Her situation hadn’t changed one iota in the last twenty minutes, because she still had nowhere to go. Unfortunately, impressing him with her cleaning skills was not going to work, at least until he got better.

Okay. So, plan A wasn’t going to work. She stared at his money trying to come up with Plan B. How in the hell was she going to get 1,183 pounds?

There was the thin chance that the police had found Rodney and her stuff, in which case, she was out of here as soon as possible. A trip to the police station was a good idea now that she could leave the house.

But she had little hope for that situation to right itself. Even if they did find Rodney, she wasn’t even sure he’d taken her stuff. It seemed much more likely, now that she thought about it, that the whiney woman he brought back to the hotel that night had done it. Then again, Rodney had been pretty pissed at Aimee. They could have been in it together. If the cops found Rodney, they would at least have a lead.

She crouched down on the floor and picked up the wallet and cell phone.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, right Puppy?”

The dog tilted its head, his big brown eyes staring up at her.

She was almost starting to like this dog. Almost. Probably because he/ she seemed to be the only person-uh, mammal-on her side, and he couldn’t tell her that her plan was positively ludicrous. And it would most likely fail, but she had to do something. She tightened her fingers around the thirty-five pounds and went downstairs to get her boots, the puppy following right behind.