Free Hired by the Brooding Billionaire by Kandy Shepherd

needed to add a unique characteristic to make her stand out in the sea of gaming heroines. He hadn’t got it right yet.
    He needed to spend more time with Shelley.
    Purely for inspiration, of course. There must be no doubt it was for any other reason. Other than to oversee the ongoing work in the garden.
    So why did the thought of that flood him with excited anticipation that went far beyond the boundaries that restricted employer and employee? Or artist and muse?
    Declan had been so engrossed in his work, several hours had gone by without him realising. He glanced down to the garden to see Shelley talking to a man—a tall, well-built man with blond hair. He pulled up abruptly, paintbrush in hand.
Who the hell was he?
    Then he realised the guy wore the same kind of khaki gardening gear as she wore. He must be the horticulturalist she’d asked could she call in to help with getting rid of some large trees she said had no place in the garden.
    The man was standing near her. As Declan watched he brought his head close to Shelley and said something that made her laugh. Echoes of her laughter reached him high up in his room.
    Declan’s grip tightened on the paintbrush. He didn’t like seeing her with another man. Was this guy a boyfriend?
A lover?
He realised how very little he knew about his beautiful gardener.
How much he wanted to know.
    He was shocked at the feeling that charged through him, like a car with a dead battery being jump-started after long disuse by a blast of electric current.
    Jealousy.
    * * *
    Shelley sensed Declan in the garden before she saw him. The vibrations of his feet on the ground? The distant slam of the door as he’d left the house? Or was it her hyper awareness of him?
    She loved working in this garden, in two weeks had achieved so much. But the day seemed...empty if she didn’t see him. Even if he came only briefly into the garden to make some quip about her passion for old garden implements. Or to ask if she’d fought off any spiders today. She would update him on her progress and go back to work, not knowing when she’d next see him.
On edge until she did.
    The days he didn’t come into the garden at all were days she felt oddly let down and went home feeling dispirited. No. Not just dispirited. Verging on depressed. Which was not like her at all.
    Today she had even more cause for concern. Her gardening buddy Mark Brown had just called around to assess what equipment he’d need for the job he was helping her with the next day.
    ‘You mean you don’t know who Declan Grant is?’ he’d asked.
    ‘He told me he produced computer games,’ she’d replied.
    ‘You could say that,’ Mark had said. ‘The guy is a gaming god, Shelley, a tech wizard. Every guy in the world my age must have grown up with Princess Alana. And she’s just one of his incredibly popular games.’
    ‘He might be well known in the gaming world, but I’d never heard of him,’ she said, on the defence.
    Mark’s words had made her feel ignorant until she’d reminded herself that when she was younger gaming had pretty much been a boy thing.
A boring boy thing.
She hadn’t known who Declan Grant was. Declan had blanked at the mention of Enid Wilson. Each to his own.
    ‘He used to go by the tag of ArrowLordX—I don’t know that he plays with mere mortals these days. He was an indie but sold out to one of the huge companies.’ Mark had looked around him and whistled. ‘This place must be worth millions—pocket change to him, though, the guy’s a billionaire.’ He’d narrowed his eyes. ‘I hope he’s paying you fairly.’
    ‘M-more than fairly,’ she’d stuttered. ‘He’s a generous employer.’
    ‘Yeah. The deal you’ve got me is good. I’ll be back tomorrow to earn it.’
    She would have liked to introduce Mark to Declan but she was scrupulous about not disturbing her employer, intruding on his privacy. If she needed a response from him she texted him. She from the garden, he in his house. The