Boss Meets Baby(109)
‘That’s usually the way of it…’ Moira sighed. ‘The man just always has so much to do! Considering he’s scarcely been Laird here for two minutes, it’s an absolute credit to his skill and dedication that he’s already achieved so much!’
Georgia frowned, thinking. ‘So his brother was Laird here before him? Is that right?’
‘Until he was killed in that terrible car accident in America…yes, he was. Nobody thought that Keir would ever come back here again…even for a visit! But Robbie’s death changed everything for him.’ The kind brown eyes of the other woman crinkled with concern around the edges for a moment, as if she’d inadvertently revealed more than she should have. ‘Look at me, standing here chatting away when I need to get on! Enjoy your drive to Lochheel, lassie. No doubt I’ll see you again later.’
For a few moments, as the housekeeper bustled away to get on with her own busy tasks, Georgia stood stock still on the gravel drive beside her car, her mind captured by what Moira had said about nobody thinking that Keir would ever come back to Glenteign and how his brother’s death had changed everything for him. Was that why he had warned her during their first dinner together that she should not be so quick to make ‘careless judgements’?
Having clearly assumed that he must love living at Glenteign, Georgia was now getting the distinct impression that he didn’t, and that there were good reasons why he didn’t…But how tragic—to live in such an amazing place, with all the advantages that most people could only fantasise about, and yet secretly wish you were somewhere else.
Sometimes the ironies of life just got to her— they really did. There was Georgia, living in a small cramped house in Hounslow, directly beneath the flight path of the planes out of Heathrow, struggling to keep her head above water, dreaming of the peace and quiet of a place like this and wishing that money wasn’t such an issue. And there was Keir, living with the complete antithesis of her own situation and yet apparently deeply unhappy. How was anybody supposed to make sense of it all?
Shaking herself out of her reverie, she got into the car, briefly studied the map she’d left on the seat, then gunned the engine and drove off. Although she would take great pleasure in enjoying the scenery as she drove, she would find Lochheel and locate the post office as quickly as she could—then get back to Glenteign to at least try and alleviate some of the burden of work that was clearly getting her new boss down…
They’d scarcely taken a moment to even glance at the cups of tea Moira had brought them at varying intervals that afternoon, they’d both worked so hard. Now, as Georgia sat in front of the elegant Victorian mirror on her dressing table and applied a deep plum lipstick, she told herself she was feeling far less tense at the idea of accompanying Keir to the classical concert than she had been earlier.
Working alongside him, seeing how effortlessly he seemed to get the measure of situations and handle them, how diplomatic and concerned he could be when addressing more sensitive issues presented to him both by letter and on the telephone, there was much to admire about the man. And that was apart from his brilliantly azure eyes and his firm, handsome jaw…
Catching the flare of her own dark pupils reflected back at her, Georgia momentarily stilled, her fingers gripping the slim metal case of her lipstick and her cheeks suffusing with heat.
Years of celibacy must have made my mind deranged if I can think for even one minute that he and I could—
She shut off the thought abruptly, already too disturbed by the erotic image that presented itself so temptingly in her mind, dropped her lipstick into her make-up bag, and pushed to her feet.
Crossing over to the bed, to fetch the blackfringed Spanish-style evening shawl that Moira insisted went with the dramatic black evening dress she’d borrowed for the evening, she almost jumped through the roof at the loud knock that sounded at the door.
‘Georgia, lassie?’
It was Moira herself. Sighing with pure relief, Georgia put her hand to her chest to still the sudden disconcerting surge of her heartbeat. For one dreadful moment there she’d thought it might be Keir. She felt quite a different person in the beautiful borrowed dress, and she needed some time to compose herself before she faced her boss. She picked up her purse.
‘The Chief is waiting for you outside in the car,’ the housekeeper continued cheerfully. ‘He asked me to come and tell you to please hurry up!’
In the middle of Barber’s Adagio for Strings—a piece of music that always reminded him that the things of this world were ultimately fragile and did not last, Keir glanced at his companion’s rapt profile and experienced a searing stab of need so great that it actually caused his heart to race.
Georgia Cameron looked so stunning that she provoked powerful stirrings of desire and longing in Keir that he could not ignore. Neither had he been blind to the admiring glances that had come her way when they’d walked into the early nineteenth-century building that was housing the concert tonight. And it was perfectly true that his male ego knew a certain sense of pride at being her escort.
Her compelling dark beauty highlighted the impact of the dramatic black satin dress she wore even more and Keir could not imagine that anyone had looked half as arresting in it before. Whoever had first bought it had had good taste, though. The black dress had an ultra-feminine style that was definitely from the 1930s or 1950s, and it was subtly sexy in a way that most twenty-first-century women’s clothing was not. Its nipped-in waist made the most of Georgia’s womanly curves, and the elegant neckline exposed flawless skin that no beauty product could hope to emulate in a million years.