He left a smile on her face—a ridiculously happy smile. She told herself it wasn’t because she was stupidly in love with him. It was simply great to know he didn’t expect her to be his slave. He was going to cook for her. Which probably wasn’t so wonderful since he liked cooking. Nevertheless, Daisy felt much better about the situation.
Ethan was still in an ebullient mood when he breezed into the kitchen, carrying the Saturday Morning Herald which must have been delivered to the door. He couldn’t have gone far to get it. He was only wearing the short black silk robe, which she’d found so disturbing before becoming intimately involved with the body beneath it. Daisy had no problem with looking him over now. It gave her a pleasurable sense of possession.
She had to remind herself he was not her man.
Ethan Cartwright was his own man.
But she didn’t mind at all being his mistress when he dumped the newspaper on the kitchen bench, drew her into his embrace, cheerfully declared it was a beautiful morning and kissed her in a lovely, lingering sensual way that made her feel beautiful, even though she knew she wasn’t.
‘Now for breakfast!’ he said, setting her aside to take command of the kitchen. ‘You can sit on one of the stools on this side of the bench, drink your coffee and watch me work.’
‘Okay. What are you going to surprise me with?’
The green eyes danced teasingly. ‘The challenge is to serve you something that meets your yummy mark.’
He was yummy. As Daisy made herself comfortable on a stool, she decided to consider herself lucky to have this experience with him. The trick was in not hankering for the whole moon and stars package.
He raided the refrigerator for eggs, butter, tomatoes, bread, Spanish onions. Daisy admired his deft movements as he lined up more ingredients from the pantry… Ethan Cartwright, very much in control of what he was doing.
Though there had been that frightening loss of cool when he’d woken up and found her gone from his bed. Had he thought she’d skipped out on the deal? He should have known she’d keep her word. Perhaps he had been scarred by other women who had taken him for a ride, using him for what he could give and not giving what he wanted back. Had something like that happened with his ex-fiancée—a recent serious relationship gone sour because of a lack of integrity?
He started cutting up the tomatoes and onions, shooting an oddly weighing glance at her. ‘I’ve lined up a job interview for you if you want it, Daisy.’
A job? A real job? She hadn’t managed to snag one interview for any of the positions she had applied for in the past two months. Either there were too many applications to wade through and hers was missed or her work résumé—minus her stint with Lynda Twiggley, which should have been the jewel in her crown but couldn’t be mentioned due to the circumstances of her sacking—had not impressed enough.
‘I’m desperate for one,’ she cried. ‘Please tell me about it.’
‘I was chatting to one of my clients yesterday—he runs a publishing house—and he mentioned needing a good PR person for marketing, but he was dreading dealing with the response to advertising the position. Said it was a nightmare wading through the mountain of applications these days, trying to find the gold amongst the dross.’
Daisy grimaced at hearing the other side of the coin. Everything to do with the job market these days was difficult.
‘So I told him about you,’ Ethan ran on. ‘Said you’d been behind the organisation of the Magic Millions Carnival earlier in the year. Told him I’d snaffled you to run a special project for me, coordinating and dealing with a diverse workforce, which you’d done without a hitch, and was about to move on. He more or less decided on the spot to interview you before advertising the job. You’re to call him on Monday morning if you’re interested.’
Just like that…on Ethan’s personal recommendation, she’d zoomed straight to the top of the list. Daisy was too stunned to speak. Ethan looked enquiringly at her and she shook her head at the injustice of it all. ‘It’s not what you are. It’s who you know,’ slipped out of her mouth.
‘Connections do cut through a lot of time-wasting,’ he remarked. ‘But this isn’t a case of jobs for the boys. I’m not passing my client a lemon. I wouldn’t do that. I’m confident you’re capable of pulling off anything you set your mind to.’
She flushed with pleasure in his high opinion of her. ‘Thank you, Ethan. And thank you for recommending me. I won’t let you down.’
His mouth tilted in an ironic little smile. ‘No. You’re not into letting people down, are you, Daisy? Forgive me for doubting you, even for a moment.’
The moment when he’d thought she’d gone. ‘You can count on me to keep my word, Ethan,’ she quietly assured him.
‘Yes. I believe I can,’ he said, and this time his eyes twinkled with his smile. ‘I’ll give you all the job details after breakfast. I’ve written them down.’
She smiled back. ‘Great! Thank you again.’
His smile stretched into a grin. ‘And may I suggest you don’t wear brown to the interview. This is a guy, not a Lynda Twiggley. You’ll be fronting for his publishing house. He’ll want you to power-dress. Red is good. You look great in red.’ His gaze dropped to her kimono. ‘And orange and yellow and green.’
She laughed, a lovely bubble of joy dancing inside her. ‘Okay. Not brown.’ The future was definitely looking up for her, regardless of how and when this time with Ethan ended.
Breakfast was, indeed, yummy. Ethan cooked a tomato salsa with a spicy touch of Tabasco sauce, placed a poached egg in the middle of each serving and accompanied it with fingers of French toast. They shared the newspaper while they ate, which put Daisy in a very relaxed mood, no longer worrying about what they’d do for the rest of the weekend.
They played tennis. They swam and lazed around the pool. He beat her at Scrabble, right at the death, scoring eighty points with a seven-letter word which Daisy declared was grossly unfair since she’d led all the way. She asked him to teach her some of the board games he played with his friends, which he willingly did. It was fun. There was not one boring or unpleasant moment, probably because underlying everything was a highly acute sexual awareness of each other, a constantly buzzing excitement that was ready and eager to burst into arousal with a touch or a kiss.
After their swim.