Barely Yours Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’ve finally got a moment to sit down, relax and catch my breath. But it seems like no sooner have I got good and comfy on the sofa, when I hear the front door open.
    “Everyone home?” calls out Will’s – I mean Mr Cavendish’s – now familiar voice.
    “Just through here,” I call back.
    He walks through to the living room. As always, he’s immaculately dressed, but he looks tired out by his working week and I know just how he feels. For once, his usually-perfect hair is all messy and dishevelled and his normally-broad shoulders are even drooping a little. With a big sigh, he flops down onto the sofa next to me, tantalisingly close.
    “You promise me this is Friday?” he chuckles.
    “Absolutely,” I confirm with a grin.
    “Great,” he says. “That means I only have to go in the office for maybe six or seven hours tomorrow. And how’s Tabitha?”
    “Finally asleep,” I stage whisper, lifting my hand to my mouth for emphasis, although in truth her bedroom is up two flights of stairs. “We ran around the park for hours today. I think I finally succeeded in tiring her out.”
    “Thank you,” he nods. “This has been a great start. Now I think we both deserve a drink.”
    Oh baby, you read my mind, I think, imagining a large glass of crisp, chilled white wine.
    “I’ll make us both a pot of tea,” he says a moment later, shattering my fantasy. “Fortnum and Mason’s sell the most exquisite teas on the planet. We have practically every blend here in the house and I know just the thing. They do the most delicate Darjeeling. I’ll rustle us up a pot right away!”
    “Thank you, that sounds great,” I say, hoping that I’m making a good enough job of masking my disappointment, as Will rises from the plush turquoise sofa and heads down the corridor to the kitchen.
    Shucks , I think. A nice cup of English tea wasn’t exactly what I had in mind to kick off my Friday night with.
    But even so, I am looking forward to getting to know Will – I mean Mr Cavendish – a little better. After all, he’s my boss and he trusts me all day to look after his most precious possession: his daughter. So it makes sense that we should at least know a little bit about each other ... right?
     
    §
     
    God Damn. I’d never noticed before just how good this man smells. But right now, now that he’s sitting right next to me on the sofa, I’m totally intoxicated by his cologne. It’s heady but not overpowering, nothing at all like the cheap scent college boys on a night out – the kind of smell I’m used to. No. He smells spicy like cedar wood and cardamom, but there’s also a lightly sweet fragrant tone, too – something like jasmine. You’d think that would be feminine, but on Will; if anything, it makes him even more masculine.
    And right now, half-drunk on his scent (not to mention the fact that he’s mere inches away from me), I’m actually kinda glad that he didn’t serve wine. I don’t think I could have handled it.
    I pull my eyes away from him, worrying my no-doubt dilated pupils will give away my crush, and instead cast my gaze around the living room.  Which is huge . I mean, you could legit have fifty people in here for a cocktail party, no problem. So I totally didn’t expect him to come and sit right next to me. He could have sat anywhere at all in this gigantic room.
    “How about you?” he says, forcing me to turn back towards him, those dark eyes once again smouldering in my direction.
    Which is when I realize that while I’ve been lost in la-la land, daydreaming about just how f-ing good he smells, he’s obviously just asked me a question. Jeez. He must think I’m a total space cadet. And on top of everything, why would he employ someone with an attention span like mine to look after his daughter? I’m totally gonna get fired. Nice work, Chrissie!
    “I’m sorry?” I say as I feel myself blushing a deep crimson.
    “I said, have you ever been to France?”
    Oh yeah. I remember now.