‘Twice. But on both occasions the house was packed with the Anderson family and various friends. Great fun, but definitely not peaceful.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I’ll join you and Lowri to laze the day away tomorrow—including the daily swim.’
Hester liked his programme very much. Even the swim.
‘Tell me,’ he said idly, as though the answer were of no particular importance, ‘why was there such a gap between your last job and the next one, Hester?’
‘It wasn’t planned. When Leo and Julia won the leads in a new television series in LA, I looked for another post right away and sorted the one in Yorkshire quite quickly. But the Herricks were needed in LA weeks sooner than expected and the Rutherford baby isn’t due until early October, so a temporary job seemed the ideal way to fill in the time.’
‘Wouldn’t you have liked a holiday before getting down to work again?’
Hester was silent for a while. ‘I’d been asked to go to the South of France,’ she said at last, gazing out at the starlit garden, ‘but the holiday fell through at the last minute.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘The friend who invited me cancelled at the eleventh hour.’
‘Why?’
‘He received a sudden job offer and barely had time to apologise before boarding the plane to head west for fame and fortune.’
Connah shot her a searching glance. ‘Were you unhappy about that, Hester?’
She shook her head. ‘Only where the cancelled holiday was concerned.’
‘You mentioned fame and fortune, so I take it the man is an actor. Would I know him?’
She shrugged. ‘You might. He played a psychopath in one of those film noir type thrillers recently. It won him rave reviews, which led to a role as Julia’s wicked brother in the American series she’s starring in with Leo. Though the fact that he really is Julia’s little brother probably helped with that.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Keir McBride.’
Connah shook his head. ‘Never heard of him.’
Hester chuckled. ‘He’d be mortified if he knew.’
‘Is he very pretty?’
‘Very. He’s fair, like Julia, with bright blue eyes and angelic good looks. They made his psychotic performance all the more chilling.’
Connah’s face looked stern in the dim light. ‘Had you known him long?’
‘Off and on for the three years I worked for his sister. But in the period before the Herricks’ big break he was out of a job and came to “rest” for a while at their house. Leo and Julia were out in the evenings, performing in their respective shows, so Keir took to spending time with me most evenings after I put the twins to bed. We got on so well he asked if I fancied a holiday with him in the Herricks’ farmhouse in the Dordogne once Julia and Leo left for LA. But then, out of the blue, he got the offer of a lifetime, so no holiday.’
‘Will you see him again?’ said Connor, seized with a sudden desire to rearrange the actor’s angelic face.
‘I doubt it. If Keir makes a success of his part in the series—which he will because, pretty face or not, he’s a brilliant actor—he’s bound to get more offers over there. If things go well for him, I doubt that he’ll come back to this country any time soon.’ Hester smiled crookedly. ‘Believe me, it was no romance. Keir was out of work, short of funds and I was right there, captive company for him every evening. The bird in the hand.’
Connah gave her a searching look. ‘If you’d gone with the Herricks to LA you could have gone on seeing McBride. Why did you refuse?’
‘It was too far away from my family. Also, at that stage Keir was based in the UK and wanted us to see something of each other now and then. But in the end he went off to LA too.’ Hester shrugged. ‘At which point I answered a couple of advertisements for temporary summer jobs and one of them was yours.’
‘Which is my great good fortune—and Lowri’s.’ He frowned. ‘You do so much more than just look after her, I should be paying you a far larger salary than I do.’
‘Certainly not,’ she said promptly. ‘A free holiday in a place like this is recompense enough.’
‘I wouldn’t call it free exactly,’ he said dryly. ‘Looking after Lowri is no sinecure.’
‘But I enjoy it. If I didn’t, I’d be in the wrong job, Connah!’
‘At last,’ he said in triumph. ‘You finally brought yourself to say my name.’
She hadn’t brought herself to it at all. His name had tripped off her tongue all too easily. Probably because here in this starlit, scented garden the world they’d left behind could have been on another planet.
‘I wonder how Sam’s getting on,’ she said idly.
‘After I rang my mother to tell her we’d arrived I gave Sam a call while you were putting Lowri to bed. All’s well in the house and Sam was about to take a stroll down to his local for a pint. I thought he’d have seized the chance of a holiday abroad somewhere, but apparently he had his fill of globe-trotting when he was in the army. He prefers Albany Square in peace and quiet on his own.’
‘So he told me.’ To her embarrassment, Hester was suddenly overwhelmed by a huge yawn.
Connah smiled. ‘You’re tired. I’m sorry to lose your company, but I think it’s time you went to bed, Hester. You’ll have a full day tomorrow—as usual.’
Hester rose at once to assert herself in housekeeper role before she lost sight of why she was really here. ‘I’ll take these glasses into the kitchen on my way. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, Connah,’ he corrected.
‘Goodnight, Connah,’ she repeated obediently.
‘Much better,’ he said, and gave her the smile which knocked her defences flat.
The following day was spent as planned—swimming, reading or just lazing in the sun. Connah joined Hester and Lowri for their morning swim, then retreated to his room afterwards to ring his mother again. She assured him she was feeling better and asked to speak to Lowri. He beckoned from his balcony and the child came running upstairs to chatter happily to her grandmother about the Casa Girasole and the wonderful time she was having with Daddy and Hester.
‘Lowri sounds very happy, Connah,’ said his mother, when Lowri had raced back down to the garden. ‘Miss Ward is obviously doing an excellent job with her.’
‘So much so that I’m not looking forward to the day she leaves us.’
‘Lowri will be in school soon after that. And next school holiday, God willing, I shall be fit enough to take charge of my granddaughter myself.’
‘Of course you will,’ he said firmly, and wished he could believe it. ‘With that in mind, take good care of yourself, Mother. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.’
Connah returned to his small balcony to look down at the pool. Hester was lying back in a garden chair under an umbrella, listening as Lowri perched at her feet to read aloud from one of the books provided by the school for the summer holiday. He smiled wryly. He wouldn’t have thought of bringing the books with them, but Hester had produced one straight after the morning swim. And Lowri had begun reading without the slightest protest. Whatever Hester wanted, Lowri would do, Connah realised. It was a disturbing thought. He rubbed his chin, frowning. Lowri had been fond of Alice, who had been a fixture all her young life and taken for granted. But because Lowri had settled to life away at school so well there’d been no problem when Alice left to get married.
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