Page 27 of An Unholy Affair
‘Don’t you lock it?’
‘Only at night.’ She led the way into the kitchen, put her bag on the table and swept a book under a newspaper. ‘There’s no point, really. I don’t have anything worth stealing and some of my parishioners like to know they can drop by whenever they like.’
Jack didn’t want to imagine what might happen if his clients knew where he lived. He was at one end of the privacy scale and Eveline at the other.
‘Do you have a list of what you need to do?’ he asked as she dashed around the room, piling up crockery and paper.
‘Kind of. I’m sorry about the mess. I work quite a lot and don’t have anyone to help with the domestic side of things.’
Jack could tell how embarrassed she was. ‘Eveline.’
She froze at the sound of her name.
‘Please let me help.’
Turning to face him, her face was etched with insecurity. He wanted to draw her into his arms and kiss away every line of worry.
‘I want to help. I’ll do anything you want.’
Her cheeks coloured to match her hair.
Jack tried to lighten the mood before his thickening cock became too obvious. ‘Washing pigs, vacuuming their sty, cooking a ten-course meal for the Bishop, or writing next Sunday’s sermon. Whatever you need.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, come to think of it, scrub the sermon idea unless I can get AI to do it.’
Her smile was hesitant. ‘I’m not used to people offering to help. It’s usually the other way around.’
I bet. ‘Well, I was almost on my hands and knees in front of you earlier, begging you to—’Shut up!Vivid fantasies flashed through his mind and he willed his gaze not to drop to her skirt.
Eveline turned her back and fished her notebook out of her bag.
‘There’s a meeting in the church in a couple of hours that I need to set up for,’ she began, her voice a breathy blur. ‘And before that, I have to feed the pigs, pick the last of the flowers and arrange them in the church. Then do the dishes, vacuum downstairs, make a cake and answer emails. Also, I need to write to the Bishop, ring Foxbrooke Haven to discuss a project, and see if I can work out what’s going on with the boiler.’
Holy shit. ‘And does your to-do list ever get done?’
She gave him a rueful smile over her shoulder and shook her head. ‘It may only be me living here, but it’s like Piccadilly Circus sometimes. People don’t bother removing their shoes, so it gets dirty really easily.’
He went to take his off, and she shook her head.
‘I’d rather you didn’t, I don’t know what people’s feet have tracked in. Luckily, it’s either flagstones or floorboards in most of the downstairs.’ She chewed her lip, and he swallowed. ‘If I show you the vacuum cleaner, could you start with that? I can dash and do the pigs and the flowers.’
Jack opened his arms. ‘Your wish is my command.’
Ten minutes later,Jack considered sending a video of himself cleaning a threadbare rug to Cyrille. His French friend considered himself to be the ultimate arbiter of taste, and Eveline’s vacuum cleaner would horrify him. It was a beige monstrosity, older and heavier than Finn, louder than Estelle, and only effective if run back and forward over the same spot several times.What a piece of shit. Jack knew how to clean, but why bother when you could pay someone else to do it?
Last week he’d been lounging on the balcony of his immaculate Monaco flat, a glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in his hand. Now, stripped down to a tight undershirt, he was breaking a sweat trying to clean a house where the layers of grime went back to the Georgian era.
The living room contained moth-eaten sofas, a couple of tatty armchairs, faded curtains, and scratched wooden furniture. On the walls hung cracked and dismal oil paintings of previous vicars. The rectory seemed frozen in time—the house of an old man from the nineteen-hundreds, not a beautiful young woman in the twenty-first century. Did vicars makeanymoney? Whatever Eveline did earn, she didn’t spend it in IKEA.
Over the roar of the vacuum, he heard a shout. He flicked it off and turned. Eveline was in the doorway, an enormous bunch of flowers in her arms.
‘Beautiful,’ he said without thinking.
She stared down. ‘I agree. I plant throughout the year, so I’ve got flowers most months.’
‘What are they?’
