Page 3 of Gold Digger
I threw up my hands in frustration as she limped around me to start dusting again. “I wasn’t aware that you had completed a medical degree, Miss Forest.” It was subtle, and she’d been side-on to me at the time, but I was pretty sure she rolled her eyes.
“I don’t need a medical degree to know I’d be wasting everyone’s time going to the hospital,” she said through her teeth, belatedly adding on, “sir.”
Then the bloody stubborn lunatic, no doubt attempting to walk without a limp, put all her weight through that ankle. She couldn’t hide her wince this time as all the colour drained from her face. When she swayed on her feet, I’d had enough.
“Right, that’s it,” I snapped, striding forward and then sweeping her legs from under her to catch her in my arms. She gasped in shock as I spun around with her securely held against my chest.
“What the Fraggle Rock are you doing?” she said in a horrified whisper while I carefully deposited her on the sofa, then took a rapid step back. I cleared my throat and shoved my hands into my pockets.
“Er… darling?” Mum put in. “We can’t just go around picking up the staff and plonking them onto furniture on a whim. Maybe last century, but I’m quite sure even your great-great-grandfather would have drawn the line there.”
Lottie glanced at Mum and started to spin her legs around to put them on the floor. Okay, maybe what I’d done wasn’t completely appropriate, but I was not going to witness that stark pain on Lottie’s face again. So, before she could touch the floor, I’d pulled my hands out of my pockets, leaned down, grasped her slim calves in my hands and placed them back up on the sofa, pulling a throw cushion from the side and putting it under her feet. This unexpected move meant that Lottie was forced to lie back against the arm of the sofa. She stared up at me in disbelief.
I heard a muffled snort from Mum, which I very much suspected was a laugh.
“I’mtaking you to the hospital,” I announced, and Lottie’s mouth fell open in shock.
“Oh actually, darling, don’t you have that meeting with the developers?” Mum put in, and Lottie shot her a grateful look. What the fuck is wrong with this woman? I’m offering to personally take her to get checked out. Me, Oliver Harding, the Duke of Buckingham, offering to take his cleaner to the hospital and she was looking at me like I’d grown another head. Women – and, truth be told, people in general – tended to do what I wanted them to do.
“You are not taking me anywhere, sir,” Lottie said, that fire back in her eyes. “I’m staying and finishing my shift.”
“As your employer, I cannot in good conscience allow you to work with a possibly broken ankle and wrist.” And there it was, another eye roll. Unbelievable. “You will be coming to the emergency department right fucking now.”
Her eyes flashed. Flecks of green appearing in the brown. Bloody hell, she really was beautiful.
“Go to your meeting,” she snapped, and my eyebrows shot up.
“Might I remind you, Miss Forest,” I said in a soft but lethal tone. “You aremyemployee. The only orders issued between us are going to be frommetoyou, and they will be obeyed. If you want to continue in my employment, then that is how this is going to work.” I immediately regretted the softly delivered threat. Her face paled again, this time so badly that she looked a little grey, and that green fire died in her eyes to be replaced by a look of almost panic, which I found myself absolutely despising. She glanced up at the mezzanine for a split second before looking back at me. Before I could turn to see what she was looking at, she sat up, and her small hand shot out to enclose my wrist. Again, the contact was almost electric. My heart rate picked up as I felt her skin on mine.
“Of course,” she said, her voice now devoid of the previous fight, and my chest tightened. “I understand. I’ll… I’ll leave for the day. I’ll get an X-ray. I promise. B-but I can’t allow you to take me.”
I looked down at her hand on my wrist, and she immediately released her hold. When my gaze lifted to meet hers it was like time stood still. The warm brown of her expressive eyes was impossible to look away from. That feeling of… connection, even possession, swept through me.
But it was even more than that. It was as if my very soul was looking straight at hers through her eyes and simply saying, “Oh, it’syou. There you are.”
It was official: I was losing my damn mind.
“Just go to the meeting, darling,” Mum put in. Lottie flinched, and the spell was broken. Christ, I’d forgotten Mum was even in the room. “You told me how important it is, and you can’t leave Vicky to deal with it on her own.”
I frowned in frustration. No, there was no way I could let Vicky walk in there without me. “Fine,” I bit out, checking my Rolex to see that it was already five minutes later than I’d wanted to leave. I shook my head to clear it, attempting to claw back my sanity and ignore the slight panic I felt at Lottie being hurt. She was my cleaner for fuck’s sake. And lately, she’d been taking up way too much of my headspace, which I could not afford to lose to a too-young, stubborn, scruffy girl who wouldn’t even call me by my first name. So, I forced myself to ignore the part of me that wanted to sack off the meeting, leaving Vicky right in the shit, in order to take care of my employee who didn’t even seem to like me. It was also clear that I wasn’t helping the situation. All I seemed to have done was piss her off and then scare her by threatening her job.
“I don’t have time for this anyway,” I muttered under my breath, before turning back to Lottie. “You’d better be going to the hospital,” I said, pointing at her to emphasise my point. “And you,” I transferred my point to Mum, “better make sure she takes one of the town cars.”
“Yes, darling,” Mum agreed in a bright voice, which immediately made me suspicious. My mother was not, in general, an agreeable human. I narrowed my eyes at her for a moment, but she just smiled. “Off you go then to make the family another pile of money it doesn’t need.” Now, that was more like the mother I knew and loved. “Toodle-pip.”
I glanced between Mum and Lottie, unable to shake the feeling that something was happening here that I didn’t understand, and then I stalked out of the room.
And, of course, the meeting was a complete disaster because my head wasn’t in the game enough to stop Vicky from insulting everyone there. No, my head was still focused on the way Lottie’s face had paled when she put weight through her ankle and whatpossible motivation she could have had to pretend not to be hurt.
Chapter 3
Rich people were ruthless
Lottie
“You can come down now, child,” Margot called up to the mezzanine, and my heart sank. We were totally rumbled. When there was no movement from up there, I sighed, resigning myself to losing my job.
“It’s okay, Hayley,” I said. “You don’t have to hide anymore. The jig is up.”
