Brazilian Boss, Virgin Housekeeper

‘What are you—what are you doing?’

‘I’m repaying the compliment,’ he answered, an enigmatic little smile playing round his lips. ‘Now I am staring at you.’

Saying no more, Eduardo freed her wrists, then started to unbutton the shapeless red white and blue patterned cardigan she wore.

‘Now what are you doing?’ she asked nervously, the touch of his strong muscled thighs in the tough denim of his jeans all but burning her skin through the slightly flimsier material of her own.

‘I have a question for you.’

He locked his arms round her waist and Marianne stared up at him as if in a dream, yet fully and shockingly aware of the barely civilised, almost feral state of arousal reflected back at her from his haunting blue eyes. It was all she could do to keep breathing, never mind answer him.

‘If I asked you to come to me tonight and share my bed…would you?’

The day Maggie Cox saw the film version of Wuthering Heights, with a beautiful Merle Oberon and a very handsome Laurence Olivier, was the day she became hooked on romance. From that day onwards she spent a lot of time dreaming up her own romances, secretly hoping that one day she might become published and get paid for doing what she loves most! Now that her dream is being realised, she wakes up every morning and counts her blessings. She is married to a gorgeous man, and is the mother of two wonderful sons. Her two other great passions in life—besides her family and reading/writing—are music and films.

To my fellow romance authors and readers of romance everywhere—may we continue to hold out for love, hope and happy endings in these turbulent times, come what may!

NOTHING deterred her, it seemed. Not even weather that felt as if it was blowing in straight from Siberia, Eduardo mused. For the past three weeks he had taken to visiting the small historic market town more frequently than when he had first moved to the area—ostensibly drawn to a certain exhibition that had been running in the town hall—and he hadn’t been able to help noticing the girl strumming her guitar at the side of the road, singing mournful folk songs and looking like some pretty waif straight out of a Dickens novel. Didn’t she have parents, or people that cared about her? Apparently not…

It frankly appalled Eduardo that she was reduced to singing for her supper on the streets instead of earning her living by more comfortable means. It dawned on him that she was the first person to stir him out of his solitary existence for months—a state that had begun even before he had set foot on British shores from Brazil and made the impulsive decision to reside there. Well…the turbulent events of the past two years might have taken their toll, resulting in him becoming somewhat reclusive and distant from the rest of the human race, but he was definitely not looking for remedies to rectify that situation, he reminded himself. No…His interest in the girl was just a passing curiosity that would no doubt quickly fade. At any time she could move on, and he would likely never see her again. He paused to put a note into the tatty tweed cap that lay on the ground at her feet, and weighted it down with two fifty pence pieces to keep it from being snatched away by the wind.

‘That’s a pretty song,’ he murmured.

‘Thanks…but that’s far too much.’

She stopped strumming and reached for the note, pressing it back into Eduardo’s gloved hand. Their glances caught and held, and he had the most disturbing sensation that the ground had somehow shifted beneath him.

‘Too much?’ He raised a bemused eyebrow, certain he’d misheard her.

‘Yes. If you want to donate some money to a charity there’s a church just up the road, collecting for the local homeless…St Mary’s. I’m neither a charity nor homeless.’

‘But you have a hat with coins in it. Is that not why you stand here singing?’

A great irritation surfaced inside Eduardo, and he could hardly fathom the reason for the intensity of it—other than that he wasn’t used to having his generosity rejected. Why was he even wasting time talking to such a strange girl? He should simply walk away, abandon her to her peculiar philosophy of singing for mere pennies and leave her be. But he found he could not. Even though the waif had insisted she was neither in need of charity nor a home, somehow her predicament had got to him—reached past his usual iron-clad defences and caused a surprising dent. It was—as he had concluded earlier—just that this was the first time for months that he had voluntarily made contact on purpose with someone else, and he hardly welcomed his considerate action being thrown back in his face.

‘I sing because I’m compelled to…not for the money. Haven’t you ever done something just for the sheer love of it and for no other reason?’

Her question struck him silent for a moment, and he barely knew what to do with the discomfort that made his skin prickle and burn and his throat lock tight.

‘I—I have to go.’