Secretary on Demand by Cathy Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

hope you’re not going to launch into a load of psychobabble about workaholic fathers.’
    â€˜So you admit you’re a workaholic.’
    â€˜I don’t admit anything of the sort,’ he said, sotto voce . ‘And just in case the ground rules of this contract have escaped you, you’re employed to look after Eleanor for a few hours a day after you leave work, not to analyse me.’
    â€˜Smells wonderful in here,’ Shannon exclaimed, ignoring his remark.
    â€˜Mrs Porter always does the cooking when Dad entertains his women friends at home,’ Eleanor said. ‘I laid the table. I wasn’t too sure where the soup spoons went, so I thought I’d just stick them in the bowls.’
    â€˜Excellent!’ Kane said heartily, avoiding eye contact with Shannon. He moved over to the stove and flicked on the fire, looking dubiously inside the saucepan as though not too sure what his next move should be.
    â€˜I think you’re meant to pour it into the bowls,’ Shannon said, and Eleanor gave a stifled giggle. ‘Surely,with all those women friends you’ve been entertaining, you must have got to grips with the basic food-serving procedure.’
    â€˜Oh, Mrs Porter usually does all that,’ Eleanor informed her earnestly. ‘Doesn’t she, Dad? She had to leave tonight because her son is poorly. He’s twelve years old and he twisted his ankle in a game of rugby at school.’
    â€˜A dangerous sport. I’m surprised schools allow it,’ Shannon said piously. ‘On the whole, I’d say it was a darn sight more dangerous than home economics, actually.’
    â€˜Or woodwork, even,’ Eleanor replied, tucking into her soup and licking her lips after every mouthful. ‘Last week, Claire Thompson hurt her finger when her bowl dropped on her hand.’
    Shannon made tutting noises under her breath. The soup was delicious. No wonder he used Mrs Porter whenever he entertained at home. All those hundreds of women who probably flitted in and out of his life like ships in the night. Did they know, she wondered, when they started dating Kane that they would end up as a ship in the night?
    â€˜And I can remember getting a paper cut once at school,’ Shannon mused in the startled voice of someone putting two and two together and suddenly arriving at the correct answer. ‘Perhaps schools should ban paper.’
    Eleanor started to laugh. ‘Or food at lunchtime, in case someone spills some over themselves and gets burnt!’
    â€˜Or desks! A child can get a nasty bang on the edge of a desk if she’s not careful!’
    â€˜Oh, shut up, the two of you,’ Kane said, smiling at his daughter. Her face was flushed. ‘And you can starton your home economics course,’ he added, wiping his mouth with his napkin and sitting back in the chair, ‘by clearing away these bowls to the sink.’
    By the end of the meal, Eleanor was becoming more what Shannon envisaged an eight-year-old child should be like. Her voice was less of a whisper and she was laughing as she related things that had happened at school, what people had said, what games they played at break.
    â€˜When are you going to be coming to stay with me?’ she asked Shannon, pausing on her way out of the room to hear the answer.
    When Shannon looked enquiringly at Kane, he said, raising his hands in mock surrender, ‘I’ll be a bit late home next Monday. Can you make it then after work? Carrie will collect Eleanor from school as usual and then she’ll leave when you get here to replace her.’
    So that was settled. It was only when Eleanor had been escorted upstairs by her father, and Shannon was left alone in the stillness of the kitchen, that she felt a sneaking suspicion that she had somehow been manipulated. She also had the uneasy feeling that she was being drawn into a family unit which would somehow undermine her bid for freedom.
    Part of