Free Your Room or Mine? by Charlotte Phillips

let’s wrap this up. You can email my secretary the final details of your specification and quote. Potential start date?
    â€˜Two weeks’ time,’ she said. ‘I have to wrap up my current job and I’ve got scheduled maintenance contracts to keep up for my ongoing clients.’
    â€˜Fine,’ he said. ‘In that case I’ll be away when the work starts.
    He pressed a button on his smartphone and held it in front of them. An overstuffed work schedule appeared.
    Reading upside down as he clicked through the days, Izzy could see practically every day was taken up with meetings or conferences.
    â€˜Back on the seventeenth after a series of meetings in Manchester,’ he said. ‘So I’ll be away when you get started for a day or two. When I’m around I work quite demanding hours, so I’ll have my secretary supply you with a set of keys for the house, then you can come and go as you need. I assume you don’t have a problem working unsupervised?’
    She shook her head faintly. All about work. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this. No reference to anything else going on between them. Not that it was a problem, she could do professional perfectly well.
    â€˜Good. If you need to ask me something you can call my secretary.’
    She noticed he didn’t offer her his private mobile number or suggest she drop him a quick text.
    â€˜She’ll pass a message on and I’ll get back to you in due course but unless it’s something major I’d prefer not to be disturbed. Just use your own judgement, you obviously know a damn sight more about gardens than I do.’
    â€˜Define something major,’ she said immediately, she’d been caught out before with picky clients.
    He sighed.
    â€˜Big remodelling changes that we haven’t discussed today, I guess. I wouldn’t be ecstatic if I came home to find you’d turned my driveway into a lawn, for example. Try not to piss off the neighbours, I can do without the grief, and I like privacy so think high fences and dense foliage. Don’t go chopping down any trees without the nod from me first.’
    â€˜Something on that kind of scale would always be agreed with you at the planning stage,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to worry, I understand exactly what you want.’
    â€˜Do you?’ he said, holding her gaze with a look in his eyes that spoke of a whole different agenda.
    Her heart upped the beat and she licked her suddenly-dry lips.
    â€˜Yes,’ she said, returning his gaze as steadily as she could. Not easy with the distraction of major stomach flutters. The anticipation that he might reach for her at any moment seemed to have focused all her senses on his every move. Both their encounters so far had been so exciting that she couldn’t help wondering how it might be next time. The thought scrambled her mind when she tried to concentrate on making notes.
    He turned off the diary listing.
    â€˜You need to be careful you don’t burn out,’ she said.
    He glanced at her and she nodded at his phone as he pocketed it.
    â€˜That diary is stuffed beyond all reason. Doesn’t look like you ever take a day off.’
    He smiled a little.
    â€˜I don’t. Even if I’m home at the weekend there’s always case files to review, stuff to be done. It’s the way I like to work.’
    He began to walk back to the house. She shut her notebook and followed him, picking her way over loose rubble and making a mental note to order in a skip and topsoil. There was a lot of surface rubbish to clear.
    â€˜Why put so much pressure on yourself?’ she said. ‘I mean, you’ve just spent a fortune renovating this house and now you’re having the garden done. From the outside it looks like you’ve already made it.’
    He stopped walking.
    â€˜I’ll never make it, Izzy,’ he said. ‘I could work 24-7 for the rest of my life