The Forbidden Innocent by Sharon Kendrick Read Free Book Online

can see for myself that you’re making good progress.’ He gave a half-impatient wave of his hand at the neat pile of paper beside her. ‘I meant, your life here—generally. Your salary. That kind of thing.’
    Despite the sudden drying of her mouth, Ashley bit back a smile. He made it sound as if he were asking a battalion of his troops whether they were satisfied with their rations! The requisite pep talk for the staff.
Because that’s all you are to him,
she reminded herself. ‘It’s fine. Honestly. It’s more than fine.’
    ‘You’re not bored?’
    ‘I try never to be bored, Jack.’
    ‘I’m very pleased to hear it. I always think that boredom indicates a lack of imagination.’ He stared into her wide-spaced eyes—as lush and green as any spring meadow. ‘No complaints with the way you’re being treated?’
    Complaints? She stared up into his piercing blackeyes. Not exactly
complaints,
more like frustrations, a whole litany of them—all of them minor and none that she would ever dare express to
him.
Because there wasn’t an employment tribunal in the land which would uphold her protest of having a too-sexy boss.
    As happened with all jobs, she’d quickly settled into a routine. She’d soon got used to the big house and the fact that her meals were cooked for her—and that the cleaners changed her sheets and left a little vase of flowers on the window sill. Just as she got used to the dramatic landscape outside her window and working for an enormously wealthy landowner. But working for Jack was different from anything she’d ever done before and that was everything to do with him. Because she’d never been attracted to any of her bosses before. It was unprofessional—and Ashley tried very hard not to
do
unprofessional. But it wasn’t easy—not when every day she was shoehorned into close proximity with him.
    And Jack Marchant would tempt a saint.
    It wasn’t just his iron-hard physique—which had been honed during his army years and had stayed with him ever since. Nor was it his ruggedly handsome face—which could veer so distractingly between forbidding and animated. No, Ashley decided—it was every part of him. The mocking sense of humour. The keen intelligence. The occasional glimpse of understanding—like the day she’d told him about her financial predicament.
    Yet she suspected that there was a side of himself which he kept hidden away—and which made him somuch of an enigma. The inner disquiet which seemed to burn within him—which made her heart want to reach out to him and to ask what troubled him. He
must
be troubled—for why else would she hear his footsteps pacing the floor in the dead of night?
    She would lie there, listening and trying to imagine what had caused it. Was he aware that his tread on the wooden corridors always woke her—and that she lay there longing to go down and comfort him? But the subject had never been brought up again. Not after that first time when he had asked her if she believed in ghosts. And it wasn’t the kind of thing you could just casually mention over morning coffee.
    Sometimes he ate with her and sometimes she ate alone—picking at the delicious food which Christine prepared and served in the room they called the Garden Room. Jack told her that he wanted to make the most of the daylight hours, which were so short in winter, so he gave her every afternoon off and they would resume work at four, once the light had begun to fade, and then would carry on until just before dinner.
    After lunch each day, he would disappear to the stables to ride his horse and Ashley would wrap up warmly to walk round the estate—revelling in the wildness of the distant moorlands and aware of the beauty of her surroundings in a way she’d never been before. Was that Jack’s influence too, she wondered—that somehow, subtly, he seemed to have awoken all her senses?
    But one day, he turned up late for the meal and spent most of it scowling. Ashley watched as he