Sailing to Capri Read Free Page B

meant it as a joke to get us over the dark moment I’d inflicted on our evening, but when I thought about it perhaps he was right. Maybe I’d never let myself go enough, never really dissolved into the passion of the moment, never truly felt what the women’s magazines told me I should be feeling.
    “Perhaps you’re right,” I said, finally honest.
    “So you’re class then, despite appearances to the contrary.”
    I bristled again. “You have a way of getting at people don’t you?”
    “Works every time.” He smiled triumphantly. “Anyhow, now you’ll come and work for me. Right?”
    “As exactly what?” I was suspicious. After all, this was still a man talking to a woman.
    He shrugged. “My P.A. left to take care of her sick mum. I have a place in New York as well as a penthouse here, on Park Lane, and a house in Capri. Then there’s Sneadley Hall, up in Yorkshire. They all take work to keep up. You’ll be my majordomo, if you like. As well as my personal assistant, social secretary, public relations and all around gal Friday … whatever role I need you to play that day. You’ll find me a hard taskmaster. I’m tough to work for, or so they tell me.” He shrugged his big shoulders, exasperated. “It’s just that I want things done
right,
and mostly they’re not—unless I do ’em myself. But I’ll pay you more than you ever thought you’d earn. So—think you can live up to that?”
    He took my breath away. This man was a force of nature, larger than life, Shrek with brains. He was challenging me, and I was lured by his offer. Of course it was a lifesaver, but at the back of my mind I was still wary.
    He sat quietly watching me think. Then, “Listen, love,” he said gently. “Once upon a time I was young like you. I was broke. And I was in love. Now I’m none of these things, but sometimes I ask myself, if I had the chance, which of the three would I like back? Would it be youth? So I could feel the exhilarationin the sheer strength of my own body again, the kind of feeling the young take for granted? Or maybe power? So I could have the opportunity of digging myself out of that deep hole of poverty, experience the pleasure of achieving my success all over again? Or what about love? Ah, love!” His eyes closed, and he groaned softly, thinking about it. “That quintessential emotion,” he said. “No—never that. Love’s too painful. That’s all over with. There’s nothing left for me but hard work. And then more hard work. That’s the only thing that gives me satisfaction. That—and the love of a good dog.”
    I softened, listening to him unexpectedly baring his soul to
me
—a perfect stranger. Like me, he was alone, though not for the same reasons. He was alone by his own choice. Then he said, “Of course you’ll have to come and live with me.”
    I might have known it was too good to be true. I gave him that skeptical sideways look, jumping when he slammed his glass down so hard the wine slopped over onto the tablecloth. A waiter hurried over but he brushed him aside.
    “Listen to me, lass,” Sir Robert said in a low, rough, angry voice. “And never forget this.
I am a rich man.
Women pursue me. Beautiful society women, young actresses, models; they pursue me with a lust for my money in their eyes. Women I’ve never met telephone to tell me how much they admire me and to ask me to dinner. Understand this, you dumb freckled redhead,
I can have any woman I want.”
He poked a finger into my faux-furred chest.
“And I don’t want you.”
    My starburst brooch popped open under his onslaught, stabbing him. He inspected the blood oozing from his finger.
    “Well,” he said with a grin, “we’re off to a good start, aren’t we?”
    And that was the beginning of my five years of employment, and of my friendship with Sir Robert Waldo Hardwick. Quite simply the most overbearing, most demanding, most exasperating man I’ve ever known. As well as the kindest, the most understanding