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They threw sparks off each other, and Lally didn’t want to feel those sparks.

Were they for him? Or for any man at the moment?

And, either way, why?

But he didn’t need to know why; Cam told himself this. He needed to develop a three-dimensional book character, not know every aspect of his new housekeeper’s make-up.

They both dropped their gazes at the same time and Cam rubbed his face wearily.

‘Are you okay, Cam? You mentioned you don’t sleep well—I assumed that was due to stress or work pressures.’ Lally’s soft words impinged on his thoughts. ‘If there’s anything else I need to know…’

‘I’m a long-term insomniac. It’s annoying sometimes but it’s nothing to worry about.’

Though he didn’t care who knew about it one way or another, this wasn’t something he discussed often. Cam wouldn’t have held the answer back from her, though, not when her face had filled with such concern.

Lally gave a nod of acknowledgement. ‘It’s no wonder you felt like being spoiled a little. Maybe you can enjoy some more rest than usual, even if it doesn’t come in the form of sleep.’

‘Maybe I will. I’ve got my eye on the pool.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘A swim now and then would be relaxing.’ He hesitated. ‘If you hear me up and about in the middle of the night…’

‘Do you like company at those times, or to be by yourself?’ Lally’s expression had softened so much, it was almost as though she needed to find a chink in his armour and felt somehow reassured by finding it. ‘I’d be happy to heat you some warm milk or sit up and talk.’

Cam pictured them sitting at this table at midnight. Somehow he doubted that drinking milk or talking would be the first things on his mind. He’d be thinking about kissing his way up the slender column of her neck until he reached those luscious lips and closed his own over them.

The urge to kiss her now, right in this blink of time, silenced him for a moment. It was one thing to imagine, even to want, but this urge felt somehow to be more than that.

Maybe you should just ask her if she’d curl up on the sofa with you, with your head in her lap, and stroke your face with her fingers until you fall asleep, you big baby.

Or you could admit you find her more than a little intriguing and that you’re not doing a very good job of pushing back that interest.

All right, he did find her intriguing, but he wasn’t about to act on it. Theirs was a working relationship and that was exactly how Cam wanted it to be.

And that left how he wanted to deal with the rest of the day. And the next.

Cam cleared his throat and side-stepped the question. ‘I’ll take you to the market tomorrow morning and we can buy fresh produce together. I’ll be awake anyway, so it makes sense that I go with you the first time at least.’

He could tell her what foods he liked the most, could carry her basket for her.

Or throw down his cloak for her to step on if she came across a puddle in her path!

‘Excuse me.’ He got to his feet and assured himself the only thought on his mind was getting back to business.

He was not running; he was planning and retreating so he could focus on his book. A totally different thing.

Cam took Lally’s written list of phone messages and the phone itself from the table. ‘I’ll see to these and drop the phone out to you before I start writing, if that’s okay?’

‘Thanks.’ Lally glanced down at the notes he’d written for her to research. ‘And I’ll bring my research results to you as soon as I have them.’

Cam looked at the sweep of her long black lashes. ‘Other than that, perhaps you can just keep going with your housekeeping jobs.’ If Cam stayed clear for a few hours, maybe he would get these strange reactions to her sorted out a little better.

Lally rose and started to gather dishes into capable hands. ‘Good luck with the writing.’

‘Thanks.’

Cam nodded and left.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I MEANT to unpack all this as soon as we got home.’ It was the next afternoon. Lally reached into one of the string bags sitting on the kitchen counter in the apartment and pulled out several canned goods.

Her voice was raised a little to be heard over the outside noise of the refurbishing crew. Cam had to admit that right now they sounded more like a destruction mob. ‘Are you okay with that noise? It’s not driving you crazy?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I’m fine with it. If anything would get to me, I think it would be too much quiet.’

Cam understood that only too well. Maybe noise was what he needed at night.

You’ve tried that, remember? You’ve tried every trick there is. Noise or no noise; light or dark; quiet or loud; whatever, you don’t sleep beyond what your body has to have to survive. That’s all there is to it.

He returned his gaze to his housekeeper. ‘You got busy when we got back here.’ Lally had called it ‘home’ and hadn’t seemed to notice the word. But in truth where did Lally Douglas call ‘home’? She’d told him she had a room at her parents’ home; was that it? At twenty-four, didn’t she want her freedom at some point?

And why did it even matter to Cam? ‘Home,’ he’d never had. A faceless, nameless apartment in the centre of Sydney that he visited now and then hardly counted.

Yet wouldn’t it be nice to have a home? A real one? With a permanent housekeeper like Lally to look after him?

Dumb thought, Travers. This was a temporary measure, nothing more. Cam drew a breath. ‘There’s nothing in the foodstuffs that will have spoiled.’

‘No. I put the perishables away straight off, at least.’ Lally removed the remaining articles from the bags and started to pack them into the larder.

Cam resisted the urge to help. He’d crossed the line enough by insisting they shop together at the market first thing this morning. When they’d got back, he’d eaten breakfast with her—then had taken himself off to his office and proceeded to give his hero’s love-interest so many of Lally Douglas’s traits and characteristics that he’d had to delete half the work he’d written.

So he’d deleted, and he’d wrestled with his story some more, and he’d come up with what he knew was a great scene-idea—but then he couldn’t get that to work either. Without realising he did it, Cam heaved a sigh.

‘Is the writing not going well?’ Lally’s words were empathetic.

He shook his head. ‘I’ve got a scene planned in my mind, but when I try to write it I can’t visualise it properly. I can’t “see” the heroine in my mind’s eye. I’m not sure how to use their surroundings. It’s a scene that I know will work, but I can’t seem to get it to work. I think as long as the heroine remains shadowy in my mind, this problem is going to continue.’

‘What would bring her to life for you?’ Lally’s eyebrows drew together as she considered the matter. ‘Could you “interview” her? Ask her questions to get to know her?’

‘Stream-of-consciousness interviewing? I did try that about a week ago, but I didn’t get anywhere with it.’ Cam forced himself not to scowl his irritation over this. ‘I feel as though I need to somehow throw her into the middle of this scene, really get in deep there with her. Once I see how she reacts, the pieces will all come together. Maybe.’

‘Hmm.’ Lally was silent for a long moment. She tipped her head to the side and tapped her finger on her chin before her eyes lit up. ‘When Mum gets stuck on a painting, she tells my aunt the concept. Auntie takes a sheet of paper and whips out her interpretation of how she’d do the painting. Mum invariably says that’s not how the idea should be executed! Rejecting one idea helps Mum to figure out how she wants to execute it.’

‘That’s an interesting concept.’ It was Cam’s turn to frown. ‘I’d try that, if there was a chance it would rattle loose my interpretation. But how?’

‘You need a “volunteer from the audience”.’ The smile deepened on Lally’s lovely mouth. ‘Someone, or more than one person, to act out the scene for you. You don’t have to like how they do it, but it might help you figure out what you do want for the scene.’

Cam gave a surprised laugh. ‘That could just work. I’d have to find an acting society or a theatre group willing to act it.’

‘Or you and I could do it.’ The words came out in a little rush and she immediately bit her lip. ‘Not if you didn’t want us to, but if you didn’t want the hassle of trying to find real actors—if you only needed to play-act it to help you figure it out—we could do that, couldn’t we?’

‘We could.’ Her enthusiasm started to spread through him too. ‘My idea is a wheels-within-wheels kind of situation, where he’s pretending interest in her but he suspects her of being a double agent or spy or assassin. He thinks if he disarms her with food, wine and attention he’ll figure out what she’s up to.’ He went on. ‘She’s got an equal number of suspicions about him. She pretends to be “buyable” for the night, to gain access to his hotel room to search it later, and then she’s going to disappear—but he lures her to the roof top of the building after dinner when he suspects her motives are as duplicitous as his are.’

Cam drew a breath. ‘Before dinner he spends money on her, buying her a dress and other gifts.’