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withdrawing your offer? Have you decided that you don’t need someone to cook and clean for you?’
    For a long moment they stood, two combatants at war with one another. It was Brad who broke the terse stillness. ‘No,’ he said stiffly. ‘Unlike you, I don’t play games. I offered you the job and it’s yours. I’ll send some men and a truck over here tomorrow to move you. Since there’s no room in my home for this furniture, I’ll arrange to have it stored.’
    ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said tightly.
    ‘Backing out?’ he queried drily, a cynical smile curling one corner of his mouth.
    That was exactly what she had planned to do, but the superior gleam in his eye clouded her reason. ‘No,’ she heard herself saying, ‘it just won’t be necessary to hire a truck. This place came fully furnished. I can move everything that’s mine in a couple of trips with my car.’
    ‘Fine!’ Brad threw over his shoulder as he turned and slammed out the door.
    Sara stood immobile. She knew she should run after him and tell him that she hadn’t actually meant ever to move into his house, but her pride held her back. If she reneged now it would look as if she didn’t have a sincere bone in her body.
    The rest of the day she spent packing and arguing with herself. Late in the afternoon she took a load of paintings and a few sculptures over to the Grimes Gallery. Margarete Grimes had agreed to store them to save Sara the trouble of moving them around with her.
    Margarete was a pleasant, middle-aged woman with an excellent head for business. Her husband was the artist in the family and in an effort to combine his skill with a steady income, they had opened a gallery several years earlier. It was through Margarete’s skill as a saleswoman that they had met with great success. Having worked with the art community for so long, nothing shocked her, but she did raise an eyebrow when Sara gave her Brad’s name and address and explained about her new position.
    ‘It really is only a business relationship,’ Sara explained, feeling the need to make this point perfectly clear.
    ‘Of course, dear,’ Margarete smiled, and Sara left feeling completely compromised.
    That night, as she lay in her bed, the arguments continued to run through her mind, preventing sleep. She had to leave her present residence, and this job with Brad Garwood provided her with a place to live. She just couldn’t move in with Steve and Helen. Besides, not only did the housekeeper’s job provide her with an abode, it also paid enough that she could replenish her savings.
    If only Brad Garwood could have been an elderly woman instead of such a disturbingly virile male! Arrogant, and ill-tempered, too, she added with a hostile grimace.
    And how was she ever going to explain this situation to her mother? ‘I’ll tell her it’s an honest living and that I’m getting paid for what women have done for free for years,’ she muttered, pounding her pillow into a more comfortable shape. ‘Well, I won’t put it exactly that way,’ she amended, closing her eyes and falling into a restless sleep.
     

CHAPTER THREE
    Crawling out of bed the next morning, Sara made herself a cup of coffee and reconsidered her position. Maybe it would work out all right if she moved in with Steve and Helen for a short time. She could help Helen with the housework and her brother and sister-in-law would have a live-in babysitter. Still, she hated to accept the solution. Steve was much too over-protective and her schedule simply did not coincide with that of Helen’s and the children.
    A knock on the door interrupted this mental debate. Answering it, she was startled to find Brad Garwood on her doorstep dressed in jeans and a pullover.
    ‘I’ve come to help you move,’ he announced, inviting himself inside, his manner coolly indulgent as if this was a necessary nuisance to be got out of the way with despatch. ‘I couldn’t get any work done, worrying about you falling