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more stupefied when he answered. “You’re my housekeeper?”
    No fucking way!
    I tried to grapple with the idea of the super-handsome, young guy in front of me being stuffy, old Mr. Stanford. The guy in the hallway looked to be thirty—no more than thirty-five at the very, very most. As I stared at him in disbelief, several things became apparent to me.
    Firstly, the dog in the hallway must be his guide dog that he took to work (or wherever he went every day), which gave greater credence to the fact that this must be Mr. Stanford. Secondly, the guy’s eyes, although startling blue, were staring at the wall slightly to the left instead of at my face, which indicated to me that he was, in fact, blind.
    But the last thing that occurred to me was that the man, no matter how gorgeous he was, looked as sick as a dog. Well—not his guide dog who looked to be in the best of health, but…. Shit! You know what I mean. He was still holding his head as if warding off a headache of mega proportions, and now that I looked closer, his nose was red as if it had been wiped a hundred times with a tissue.
    He was waiting for my answer, but I still had to make sure. “You’re Mr. Stanford?”
    “Yes. Patrick Stanford. And I’m still waiting to find out who you are.”
    “Oh. Sorry. Jake Manning. I’m your housekeeper. Shit, man. Get back to bed before you collapse. You look terrible.”
    Now that the introductions were made—kind of—I relaxed and walked toward the man. The dog sniffed me once and seemed satisfied with my presence, so he took off to the back of the house. Patrick Stanford, however, hadn’t moved. “Who are you? You can’t be my housekeeper. Her name is Mrs. Huntley.”
    He was holding on to the wall as if it were the only thing keeping him upright. Close up he was even more beautiful—and even more noticeably ill. I touched his—yummy!—nicely naked bicep and turned him gently back to the bedroom. “You need to keep up with the news, Mr. Stanford. Mrs. Huntley got sick of your crap ages ago.”
    He allowed himself to be pushed into the bedroom where he collapsed face-first on the bed. He lay there for a minute giving me a lovely view of his tight arse in cotton before he curled up and pulled the blanket over him. He hacked out a couple of coughs and finished it up with a glorious snort. “What was your name again?”
    “Jake.”
    “Jake? Well, Jake, you can go home again. I’m sick. I don’t need you today.”
    I laughed as I collected three empty glasses from his bedside table. “Yeah, whatever.”
    He frowned in my direction, his blue eyes missing my face and looking over my shoulder instead. “I mean it.”
    I pulled the quilt up over his shoulder and made for the door, chuckling. “I can’t. My boss is a real arse wipe and would totally freak if I didn’t do the dishes.”
    He coughed in response, and I went to the kitchen. The bottle of orange juice was in the fridge, but its lid was missing. I looked around and found it on the floor. Not placing the lid back on the bottle was extremely unlike the Mr. Stanford I knew, so I figured the guy must be really sick. I poured a glass of the orange liquid and took it back to the bedroom. The man in the bed was blind but he wasn’t deaf. He heard me coming and turned his face in my direction.
    “Here,” I said as I placed the glass on the cabinet next to the pillow. “It’s orange juice.”
    He sniffed and reached out a hand, searching for the container. I watched him dispassionately. He found the glass and struggled to sit up before taking a long drink and sighing with satisfaction. I didn’t move. He tilted his head toward me. “What?”
    I shook my head at his attitude. “I was just waiting for your manners, man.”
    “My what?”
    “Your manners. You know? Please, thank you, sorry? Do those words feature in your vocabulary at all? Shit. I just brought you a glass of juice and the least you could’ve said was thank you.” I realized I was