“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
He flicked his cool gaze back to the driver. “You weren’t.” But he’d bored of the conversation, and it was obvious in his demeanour. He returned to his emails and dealt with yet another simple matter.
The car cruised onwards, and gradually the scenery outside changed.
Built up suburban ugliness gave way to fields and pastures. Green grass met blue sky and even Caradoc, who denied his British heritage at every opportunity, felt a stirring of something in the pit of his stomach.
For a brief time in his life, this had been home. Before his mother had discovered Gower’s numerous affairs and left the marriage for a film producer named Max, Caradoc had lived –presumably happily – in a mansion amongst these verdant hills. He couldn’t remember that time, but he’d seen photographs.
The memory was like sharp glass in his skin.
He didn’t like to think of that day.
At nineteen, he hadn’t deserved to come home and find his mother half dead, overloaded on a near-lethal combination of prescription medications. She’d been foaming at the mouth, and her saliva had bubbled over the photographs. Pictures from his childhood. Baby Caradoc, a younger Gower, and his mother Sasha, glamorous and adoring.
Sasha had eventually recovered. Caradoc had not. The wounds of rejection were scored in his soul, and a few conciliatory visits with a fading Gower would not heal them over.
Nothing could do that.
If it weren’t for the circumstances he was in, would he have been so distracted by the woman at the wheel of the powerful luxury car? Or was it only that he was in desperate need of an alternative focus? Her gentle fragrance had filled its interior now, surrounding him in a tantalising web of sensuality.
She wore her hair in a bun at the nape of her head, but a tendril had escaped. It ran like a vine down her fine, swan-like neck, curling gently and vibrant against the creaminess of her skin.
He wondered how long her hair was. It was difficult to tell when it was pulled back, but he liked to imagine it fell halfway down her back. If she were naked it would be glorious, like a Titian masterpiece against her milky flesh.
He flicked his eyes away, but his body had charged up a gear. His blood was beginning to thrum with the promise of physical satisfactions.
What was she like? A woman who shied away from the indulgence of pleasure for pleasure’s sake? Or was she more like him? A woman who was open to brief interludes of sex so long as it was consensual and safe?
Would she come to him easily? Or would he need to pursue her? To seduce her? Either option filled him with the heady promise of anticipation. For both would bring about the same result. Her, in his bed, her legs spread in invitation, her hair fanned against the crisp white pillows.
Though he didn’t know it, he smiled, and it transformed his face. He went from good-looking to stunning and Finn just happened to glance at him at that exact moment.
Caradoc flicked his gaze towards her and their eyes met in the mirror. His chest flickered with the beat of certainty.
Caradoc Moore made a living placing bets, and he would bet his last dollar on the fact that he would take this woman and make her body his.
And Caradoc Moore was almost always right.
CHAPTER TWO
He deliberately held her gaze until she was forced to look back at the traffic. He could see a delicate pulse point firing in her throat and it brought him pleasure.
“You must work odd hours,” he drawled, his Boston accent deep and husky.
“Yes.”
She was running scared! Not of him, but of the magnetic attraction that had begun to throb heavily between them. It had caught her off guard. Good. He had the advantage.
Gently, gently, he reminded himself. She was not one of his errant CEOs being raked over the coals. Nor was she one of the women he usually went for; women who were every bit as hungry for quick gratification as he was.
“Do you ordinarily take assignments such as this?”
Again, her eyes flew to his in the mirror. Had he ever seen any quite so green? They were like moss, or fresh-cut lawn.
“Out of London, I mean.”
“Oh.” She blinked back to the road. It was getting dark now; dusk light surrounded the car. “Sometimes.”
She was being deliberately evasive. It was a technique people employed without realising it, and it was one of the most obvious red-flags of weakness. Caradoc saw such verbal brevity as a desperate plea to back off, and therefore he never did.
“It must make a personal life difficult.”
Her lips formed a perfect circlet of surprise and her fingers wrapped around the wheel with a sound of leather on leather. His arousal jerked in response. “I don’t see that’s your place to ask,” she said finally, stiffly.
So she was shy. Modest. Coy. Was she also kind? Kind in a way that made her vulnerable? “I’m sorry,” he said the words easily despite the fact he rarely used them. In most instances they showed weakness. Here, they served his purpose. “I’m looking to be distracted. Now I’m the one who’s prying.”
He could see her prevaricating. Yes, she felt sympathy for him, and it would be her undoing. Her eyes seemed to shift colour at the moment she decided to relax in his company, and take her cues from him and his seemingly innocent line of enquiry. “I like to be busy,” she said honestly. “And there’s always plenty of work for people like me.”
Gently, gently. “You must be away from home often.”
Her smile was indulgent. “Home is a mad-house, in any event. I don’t mind escaping for stretches like this.” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, goodness. Only, I didn’t mean that anything about this is good for me.” She shook her head slowly. “That was insensitive, sir.”
“Please,” he said with a shake of his head. “Don’t worry.”
But she did! She had, momentarily, forgotten that his father had just died, and she’d been about to launch into a prattling rundown of her room-mates’ failings.
“Why is your home a mad-house?” He pushed, very wiling to pick up the conversation. Was there a husband? A boyfriend? Children? The former he could dispense with. But the latter? He wouldn’t become a party to home-wrecking. Not when there were children.
She began to speak, but her voice was tempered. She was weighing up each sentence, careful not to get carried away in her narrative. “Well, I live with my best friends. I have done for years. Connie is a school teacher – fourth grade – and our lounge room is constantly overflowing with assignments and research projects she’s conducting. All of last year we had to put up with twenty seven little jars of pineapple heads that she was trying to coax to put down roots.”
Her laugh was like sand, brushing across the desert. He found it disturbingly mesmerising. “Do pineapple tops grow in London?”
“No,” her eyes met his and they were laughing too. “But every morning, she’d warm them with a hair dryer and tell us that she was sure she could see something happening.” Finn shook her head and then flicked the indicator on. She turned the car off the main road, onto a small lane that cut away from it at a right angle.
“She’s forgetful and hare-brained and ludicrously addicted to those crappy singing shows, but she’s the kindest person you’ll ever meet.”
Caradoc didn’t much care for kindness. Loyalty, yes. Integrity, certainly. Kindness? What was that, but an emotion that exposed one to harm?
“The pineapples eventually ended up in the rubbish, and Connie had to break the news to her students that their experiment hadn’t worked.”
Every word now made him want her more. Her lips moved with a kind of grace as she spoke and her accent was enchanting.
“Then there’s Cliff.”
“Cliff?” He repeated, his heart thundering in his chest.
“Yeah. My other flatmate. Connie and Cliff.” She smiled at him in the mirror, then wished she hadn’t, when her whole body seemed to tremble in a fierce sense of
recognition.
“They’re a couple?” He pushed, wanting confirmation that she was single.
“No. Gosh, no. In fact, to start with, they couldn’t stand one another. Cliff and I used to date.”
“Used to?”
“Yeah, years ago.”
“But you don’t now?”
“No.” She furrowed her brow, and she wondered if she was sharing way too much with this gorgeous American. She was certainly not in the business of discussing her private life with clients. In fact, she’d never disclosed more than her name to anyone else she’d worked for. What was it about him that was exerting such power over her?
“Why not?”
Finn’s even white teeth bit down onto her lower lip. The gesture caught Caradoc’s attention. “You know,” she said with ambivalence. “These things happen.”
It was a frustrating uninformative response, but without wanting to overplay his hand, he could hardly interrogate her further. “Yes,” he agreed. Gently, gently.
“I’m not being deliberately vague,” she said after the silence had crackled for several seconds. “I’m a private person, that’s all.”
“As am I,” he murmured, not wanting to feel the swelling of appreciation for her confession.
“Then you’ll understand how strange it must be for me to speak so openly to someone I hardly know.”
He imagined then saying the words that were forming in his mind. The promise that they would know one another very, very well in the coming days, if he had his way. Which he was sure he would.
Instead, he nodded with an effort at appearing unconcerned.
“Perhaps you would feel more inclined to share your stories if I told you some of mine.”
The offer was not what he’d intended to say at all. But he could hardly retract it.
Her curiosity was obvious, and it rewarded his strange statement. Curiosity was good. Curiosity spoke of her interest quite plainly. She nodded.
“What would you like to know?” He settled back in his seat and tried to see this as another meeting. She was the company he wanted to bet against and he was simply getting her measure. He could give her enough information to draw her in; to make her interest and curiosity threaten to eat her alive unless she indulged it.
His smile was encouraging but it hid the machinations of his mind.
For the first time, but certainly not, as it turned out, the last, he thought of her as a small creature, being hunted by him across the fields. Their playing field wasn’t at all level, but she didn’t seem to realise that.
“Anything,” she shrugged, and slowed down expertly to let a line of ducks cross their path.
“I presume you know most of my biography.” His certainty was not arrogance. In America, he was, after all, as well-known as Donald Trump had been in his zenith.
“I’m sorry,” she bit down on her lip again. “I really don’t.”
Well, that was novel. “What do you know?”
She waved a hand through the air. “That you’re in finance. That you were born here but live in America.”
“That’s all?” He drummed his fingers against his knee. How far were they from Bagleyhurst? If he had his way, he would carry this woman straight through that enormous corridor up to whichever bedroom he could find first and slowly strip her naked.
“I don’t need to know more,” she said honestly. “Not to do what I do.”
God, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been more disastrously attracted to a woman. Her allure was her unavailability, he assured himself. Unlike most of the women he slept with, who were obviously out to meet a man like him.
“Some clients are well-known, so I guess I do know their history. But I don’t research who I’m driving. I simply take people where they want to go.”
“I see.”
He stared out of his window contemplatively. Did it change things? That she knew nothing of who he was and what he was capable of? He couldn’t have said. His reputation was well-established. If she googled him, she’d see that when he wasn’t busy running unprofitable companies into the ground he was making his way through Manhattan’s social elite.
“So?” She prompted, slowing down again. This time, it was for bits of detritus that were strewn across the bitumen. She compressed her lips together. “Looks like an accident’s happened here.” She pointed across the verge. “They’ve cleared it off though, but I’d say it’s fresh wreckage.” She eased the car gently down the road and then speeded up once more.
Caradoc was shaping his sentence in his mind when the car began to make a strange warbling noise
“Oh, darn it,” Finn swore with endearing sweetness.
“A problem?” His tone was business-like. A delay or problem was never welcome to Caradoc, particularly not given what he was anticipating at the end of this trip.
“No,” she said, flicking the indicator on and pulling over onto the side of the road. She cut the engine and stepped out of the car. Caradoc did likewise.
The problem was immediately obvious. A flat rear tyre glared at them disapprovingly.
He looked left, then right. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Yes,” she said with a nod.
He pulled his cell from his pocket and stared at it. “I have no coverage.”
“Coverage?” She lifted her face to his.
“To call Roadside Assist.”
Now her laugh was delightful, like church bells pealing on a warm Sunday morning. “Whatever for? It’s only a flat.”
Caradoc was not accustomed to being laughed at.
“Would you mind waiting over there?” She nodded towards the verge. “I’d suggest you wait in the car but you look like you weigh a bit and I’d sooner not jack you up as well as this.”
“Jack …” He closed his eyes and turned away from her. When he’d regained himself enough to face her once more, she’d lifted the boot and was pulling a tyre from it.
Belatedly he realised that she’d also pulled all of the bags from the trunk – his suitcase and workbag, and a small black leather tote which he presumed must belong to her. She travelled light for a lengthy appointment.
It was freezing, but he shrugged out of his coat and moved to drape it over her shoulders.
It smelled like him; it was warm and soft. Finn’s eyes were enormous when she lifted them to his face. “That’s okay.” Was that her voice, so husky and inviting? “I don’t want to get grease on it.”
“I don’t care if you do,” he said with an equally desirous timbre.
“Seriously,” she murmured throatily. “Please take it back. You’re my client. I can’t have you getting hypothermia.”
“Oh, but you can?” He prompted.
She placed the tyre down on the road and lifted her hands to the lapels to remove the jacket. But Caradoc placed his broad, masculine hands on her shoulders and curled them around her slender shape. Gently, he turned her to face him. They were only inches apart. Every fibre of his body was alert and energised. He arranged the coat so that she could slide her arms into it properly, but it was enormous on her.
“I’m only going to be a minute,” she said discordantly, simply trying to break the strange hum of desire that was tracing circles around them.
He didn’t respond. His hands had moved back to her shoulders. His eyes were boring into hers with an intensity that made her blood boil. He had fine lines around his eyes. Laughter lines. Did he laugh often? For some reason, Finn thought not.
“Sir,” she went to take a step backwards but the car was right behind her.
“I’m torn between telling you to call me Caradoc and letting you continue calling me sir. You see, I like it when you say it. It’s very … sexy.”
“Sexy?” She cleared her throat and her eyes darted past him, down the road. “That’s … not what I’m trying to be,” she promised and he absolutely believed her.
“No,” he nodded slowly. “I don’t think you have to try very hard at a
ll.”
She closed her eyes to bank down on the simmering sense of desire. She was a professional. Women in her industry had to work hard to get past the stupid stereotypes and she wasn’t about to let one handsome man undo her. “You should wait on the verge please. I won’t take long.”
She was running scared. Gently, gently, he told himself, but it was with impatience and irritation that he stepped away from her. His eyes though he kept firmly trained to her face, so he saw the disappointment that briefly clouded her features before relief breathed out of her.
She didn’t look at him. Instead, she bent down and lifted the tyre as though it weighed nothing, and carried it to the side of the car. Back to the boot she went, to lift a box from beneath the upholstery. There was a jack. She crouched beside the car and placed it carefully, then began to work.
Caradoc felt, for one of the first times in his life, utterly inadequate. He could pinpoint the reason for a company’s weakness with military precision, but he had never learned something as simple as tyre-changing.
Yet this woman managed it deftly. Her face was beautiful. She concentrated on the job until it was completed, then lifted the damaged tyre back in the boot. As she did so, her leather-clad hands worked over the rubber until she found it.
“Look,” she beckoned, all awkwardness forgotten. “It can be the tiniest thing sometimes that chinks the armour.”
He moved towards the tyre to be closer to her. He could see something shiny embedded in the wheel.
“It’s small,” he remarked, wishing he could touch her once more.
“Yes.” She slid her arms out of his jacket and shrugged it off her frame. “It can be the most surprising thing, sometimes, that leads to problems.”
Was she being deliberately cryptic? He took the jacket with a frown on his face. “You did that expertly,” he complimented.
“Changed the tyre?” She would have smiled except the easy sense of friendship she’d been errantly enjoying was gone. In its place there was now just awareness. And that made her as uncomfortable as heck. “It’s about as easy at it gets.”
Still, Caradoc felt at fault for knowing so little about the machinations of vehicles.
The Terms of Their Affair Page 2
