Maid for Advertising - Susie Tate Page 0,26

mate,” Ben said. For some reason he was grinning. I didn’t know what there was to grin about after Urvi’s brush with death, but he had never been entirely normal. “Milk and one sugar.”

“Just milk for me please, Mrs Doyle,” Kira chipped in, looking up long enough from her friend’s hand to wink at me. Shit. I hadn’t meant I’d make every bastard in the room a tea.

“Urvi?” I asked, inexplicably annoyed that I didn’t know how she took her tea. This seemed like a fundamental missing piece of information. The drive to find out every last detail about this woman was powerful now. The worst thing was that she knew how I took my tea - she’d been making it for me and all my other guests for the last three days.

“Er . . . you sure you know where the kettle is?” Urvi asked a legitimate question seeing as, no, I did not know where the kettle was. Or the tea bags. Or the milk.

“It’s my boat,” I gave her my non-answer and she bit her lip.

“’K, just milk then,” she said and I stalked from the room.

By the time the kettle was boiled I’d fired Tim Blight and cancelled the rest of the meetings and parties for tomorrow. Everyone in the kitchen had stared at me as I made the tea until I told them to “bugger off and find something else to do”, but not before I had cornered one of the other waitresses and asked her about their hours and breaks and other things I probably should have taken an interest in before. Her answers were in no way reassuring.

Chapter 8

I’m not going to sue you

Urvi

I sipped my tea and watched Jack as he quizzed Kira about diabetes as if she was in some sort of medical school oral exam. He was behaving very oddly. Okay, so I could understand he was feeling guilty. I mean I had collapsed on his boat, and a major contributing factor behind this was the lack adequate breaks and actual meals I had been allowed whilst in his employ. But emptying his entire party of all its guests? Shouting at Mr Blight so loudly in the kitchen that we could all hear it from the main salon? This was all a bit over the top.

When Kira had said “life threatening” earlier Jack’s face had paled and his eyes had started to look a little wild. They still looked wild now as he pumped her for information, and the colour was yet to fully return to his cheeks. Maybe he was worried I’d sue him for poor working conditions, or go to the press? That would be enough to spook any self-respecting business owner.

But it wasn’t as though Stella (who seemed to be Jack’s second-in-command) was that fussed or concerned – she’d just given me a dirty look after I regained consciousness, as if I was selfishly inconveniencing her and her guests with my drama. And Jack wasn’t just asking about the immediate health concerns for my condition. He was asking about the long-term management and the long-term consequences of poor control - stuff that would affect me in years to come, not whilst I was still on his boat or in his employ. And he was absorbing everything Kira was telling him with such intensity it was like he was swotting for an endocrinology exam.

I didn’t know what to make of it. He’d spent the last few days ignoring me, and now it seemed like I was the only thing he wanted to focus on. And having all of Jack Bailey’s focus was dangerous. He kept looking at me with this intense expression, and had asked how I took my tea like it was one of the secrets of the universe. It didn’t help that with his shirt rumpled, a five o’clock shadow over his jaw and his hair mussed from running his hands through it too many times, he looked even more gorgeous than usual. Somehow the imperfections in his appearance made him almost unbearably attractive. I didn’t need to start fancying Mr Out of My League again. I’d already gone through that disappointment and I had no intention of revisiting it.

And I was so tired - exhausted right down to my bones. I let the voices in the room wash over me as I sank back into the sofa and drew my feet up underneath me. My eyelids felt heavy and I decided to close them, just