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19
Tasha reread the email she’d received from Ziggy for the tenth time, her fingers hovering over her keyboard as she tried to find the right words to answer his query about still not receiving a copy of her P45. If he didn’t receive it soon he was going to have to put her on an emergency tax code.
When she’d agreed to take on the job, she hadn’t considered all the administrative implications, nor the silly little lies she’d have to tell as a result. She’d known the dual incomes would likely tip her into a higher tax bracket, which was why she’d opened a separate bank account to pay her Juniper Meadows wages into. That way she’d not be tempted to spend any of it until she’d got to grips with it all. What she hadn’t considered was the effect it would have on her tax code. Taking a deep breath, she began to type.
Sorry for the confusion, I should’ve mentioned that my previous employer put me on gardening leave and they are going to continue to pay me for the next couple of months until the end of my notice period so I won’t get my P45 for a while. I knew Rhys wanted me to start ASAP and I was eager to get started myself, so I’ll just have to take the tax hit and sort it out later. I should’ve mentioned it to you when I sent through my payroll details.
She pressed send before she lost her nerve over lying to him. Sitting back with a sigh, she rubbed her suddenly queasy stomach. She really hadn’t thought through all the messy implications when she’d let Simon talk her into doing this. It had been easy enough at the start to tell herself that she wasn’t really deceiving the Travers family because at the end of the day she was working damn hard and doing her best to make her new role a success. But the little fibs and lies by omission were already starting to wear her down, not that what she’d just sent to Ziggy could be classed as either of those. It was an outright lie and she felt sick at the idea he might one day find out the truth.
Her phone rang, startling her, and she reached for it with trepidation. Had Ziggy seen through her so easily? Relief, and something else as well, flooded her when she saw Rhys’s name on the screen. She’d hardly seen him the past few days and she rather missed his warm, easy presence. ‘Hello?’
‘Hey! I’ve got the stuff you wanted from the printer’s. I was going to drop it off but I’ve got the dogs with me and they’ll probably eat my upholstery if I leave them in the car. Any chance you can come and give me a hand?’
Grateful for the distraction, Tasha closed her laptop and stood up. ‘Of course. Are you at the car park now? I’ll walk over and meet you.’
Between them they managed to juggle the dogs and the two boxes of paper, although, to be fair, most of the work was done by Rhys. An A4 box dangled from the fingers of one hand, the plastic strips that had been used to seal it cutting deep grooves into his fingers. With his other hand, he did his best to control Hope’s Labradors as they dragged him here, there and everywhere, determined to sniff at every bush and tree. Tasha had offered to swap her smaller box when Rhys had stopped to adjust his grip, but he’d told her it wasn’t far and picked it up again. Stubborn man.
Delilah trotted daintily at her heels while Samson roamed ahead without a lead, though she noticed he never got far enough ahead of Rhys to get out of sight. Tasha was happy to walk behind him, not wanting the puppies to jump up and muddy her jeans. Besides, she was quite enjoying the view. Her sister’s joke the evening before she’d arrived at Juniper Meadows about finding someone tall, dark and handsome came back to her. She’d found that all right, but what could she possibly do about it? Maybe there’d be someone interesting at the party, someone who could distract her from these inappropriate thoughts about Rhys.
When they reached the lodge, Rhys dropped the box he was carrying on the table on the deck. ‘I need to give these guys a run. Do you mind if Delilah stays with you?’
Tasha glanced down at the little dachshund. She still wasn’t completely comfortable around the dogs, but this would be as good an opportunity to get over that as any. ‘We’ll be fine.’
It didn’t take long to get Delilah settled. Having toed off her trainers, Tasha tested the floor beneath her feet to find a particularly warm spot from the underfloor heating and covered it with the fleecy throw off the back of the sofa. ‘Let me take this off,’ Tasha murmured, moving slowly as she unclipped the lead. Delilah gave herself a shake, her ears flapping comically around her face. She trotted towards the throw, gave it an experimental sniff before deigning to settle herself down. Tasha found a shallow bowl in one of the cupboards and filled it with water, setting it down near the throw, then turned her attention to the two boxes from the printer’s.
By the time Rhys returned a good forty minutes later, Tasha was busy sorting and stacking the different activity sheets into piles ready to be made into packs. ‘How’s it looking?’ he asked after he’d left the three larger dogs resting on the deck after their exertions.
Tasha held up one of the colouring pages Amelia had designed full of different Easter-related objects. ‘I think they’re going to be a hit.’
‘I think you’re right.’ Rhys picked up the one that she thought was particularly good with delicate sketches of leaves, flowers and different trees on both sides. The idea was for the children to track down each one and take a photo of it. They would then submit their gathered entries to a special email account Tasha had set up to claim a prize. ‘This is such a simple idea. I can’t think why it never occurred to me.’
‘Maybe because you were busy with one or two other things,’ Tasha suggested gently, not liking this habit he had of talking himself down. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who works as hard as you do, Rhys. What I’m doing is easy in comparison. You have to remember that everything here is new to me. It’s so much easier to look for things to change when you are a fresh pair of eyes than try to be innovative when you’ve literally lived and worked in the same place your entire life.’ She reached across the table towards him without thinking. ‘This is what I do for a living. Looking at ways to do things differently is what I’ve been trained to do.’
Rhys laid his hand on top of hers. ‘Well, you’re very good at it.’
It was only after he touched her that she realised the inappropriateness of her action and yet she couldn’t find it in her to pull away. She wanted to comfort him, to let him know how much she admired what he did for the estate, for his family. She wanted a lot more than that, she was beginning to realise, but it would be foolish in the extreme to start something she knew had no future. Simon would demand her return sooner or later. Probably sooner, once he realised Tasha wasn’t going to snoop around for the information he wanted. Or was she simply making excuses to avoid intimacy? How much longer was she going to let Jonny’s betrayal hold her back? Rhys was a decent man, and there was no denying her attraction to him. As long as she made it clear she wasn’t looking for anything serious, maybe they could have a little fun together. It was a reckless idea and Tasha might be a lot of things, but reckless had never been one of them.
Maybe it was time to change that.
‘I’m so glad you hired me for this job. I feel like a different person and I really like working here.’ She took a breath and gathered her courage. ‘And I really like working with you.’ She blushed at the admission, wondering if he’d be able to read between the lines.
20
‘I really like working with you too.’ Rhys looked much more like himself as his familiar broad smile lit up his handsome features. ‘You’re a real asset to the estate.’
She’d either been too subtle or he was trying to be polite. Either way that little dash of courage faded, and Tasha pulled her fingers out from beneath his. ‘I’m glad you think so.’
Rhys looked down in surprise, as though he hadn’t been consciously aware of their hands touching until she’d drawn away. ‘Yes, well.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Can I help you with these?’ He gestured towards the stacks of paper.
Tasha shook her head, having gone from missing him being around to suddenly feeling desperate for him to leave. ‘It won’t take me long to sort them out and I’ve got a couple of days left to do it.’
Rhys stood up. ‘Is there anything else pressing you need to do this afternoon?’
‘Well, I should probably double-check everything is ticked off on my to-do list…’
He circled the table until he was standing next to her chair. ‘That doesn’t sound particularly pressing to me.’ There was something in his eyes, something tempting that she wanted to respond to, but it had been so long since she’d flirted with a man she felt completely out of her depth.
‘Wh… what did you have in mind?’ Oh God, what if he wanted to go upstairs? Had she made the bed that morning? Was her towel from her morning shower still sitting in a damp pile on the floor? Would she remember where everything went, given how long it had been since she’d had sex? The closest she’d got to being intimate with a man since she’d broken up with Jonny had been one drunken fumble at a work’s Christmas party, which she’d immediately regretted. The guy she’d kissed had thankfully been of the same mind because neither of them had spoken about it again.
