by Lucy King
‘Is something wrong?’
Very. On a number of levels. Lowering the loupe and hoping her concerns didn’t show on her face, she glanced up at him. ‘Would you mind if I did another test?’
‘Be my guest.’
Bella rummaged around in the drawer for her touchstone and gently rubbed the ring against it. Then she added a drop of liquid and observed the results. Well, that was something to be thankful for, she supposed. ‘Did you bring anything else for me to take a look at?’
He nodded, dug his hands into the pockets of his coat and spilled the contents on the table. As he did so his sleeves inched up and Bella’s gaze instinctively dropped to his wrists. Her mouth dried. Tanned, strong and sprinkled with a smattering of fine dark hairs, they were completely mouth-watering. Up until now she’d never really thought a man’s wrists particularly worthy of attention. Now they’d shot straight into the top five. Or at least Will’s had.
Unable to help herself she slid her gaze to his hands and was instantly assaulted by the vision of those hands roaming all over her, exploring her, lingering and seeking, the long brown fingers delving and probing as they roused her. The vision was so vivid, so real, that Bella’s temperature rocketed and her heart thundered.
Oh, this really had to stop. She’d never been so distracted. Certainly not when jewellery was in the picture. And right now, with the discovery she’d just made, she really couldn’t afford to be.
Dredging up every ounce of concentration she possessed, Bella swallowed hard and turned her attention to the tangle of pieces piled on the table.
God, they were exquisite. And if genuine, worth a fortune.
‘May I?’ she said, casting a quick glance up at him.
‘By all means.’
She picked up an art deco sapphire and diamond brooch and caught her breath. She put it back down and let a gold and emerald necklace slither through her fingers. Feeling like a child in a sweetshop, she felt her heart start pounding with anticipation. She’d never seen jewellery like it. Probably wouldn’t ever again. If there was more where these pieces came from Will Cameron would have quite a collection.
Assuming of course that her suspicions didn’t turn out to be correct.
As the excitement winding through her turned to trepidation Bella found a newer loupe in the drawer and braced herself to examine the rest.
Piece by piece, she performed the same tests. Taking her time as she scrutinised each item. Telling herself that she wanted to be sure, that she wasn’t stalling.
But she was. Just a little. Because with every passing minute her heart sank a little further.
As she put the last piece back down Bella stifled a sigh. She didn’t know who she was more disappointed for—herself for having had her illusions shattered or Will, who was only interested in the value of the objects and was, in all likelihood, going to be devastated.
‘Well?’ he said, arching an eyebrow.
‘I’m afraid I can’t give these a value,’ she said cautiously. At least not the sort of value he was after.
‘Why not?’
There was no way she could skirt around it. No way she could soften the blow. She could only hope that he wasn’t the type of man to shoot the messenger.
Making herself look him in the eye, she took a deep breath and said, ‘Because they’re synthetic.’
CHAPTER TWO
SYNTHETIC?
Will tensed. Impossible. They couldn’t be. He must have misheard. Been distracted by the effect Bella appeared to be having on him or something. Because she was certainly distracting.
The minute he’d laid eyes on her, standing there stock still, staring at him from inside her shop, he’d clocked the long dark hair, the body poured into a clingy dress and the knee-high boots, and a shaft of awareness had shot through him making his gut tighten and his blood heat.
When she’d finally sprung into action and let him in, he’d fought back the nausea that always surged up inside him at the sound of a lock sliding into place by resolutely focusing his attention on something else. In this case, her.
Within a split second of running his gaze over her curves, the simmering awareness had turned to lust. Which had swelled to almost uncontrollable proportions when he’d spotted the flush hitting her cheeks and a reciprocal flame of desire flickering in the depths of her darkening eyes. He’d taken her hand, her scent enveloping him and vaporising his equilibrium, and had had to drum up every ounce of control he possessed not to haul her into his arms, push her back and spread her over the table.
Once he’d managed to rein in that oddly violent reaction, he’d toyed with the idea of asking her out for dinner. God knew after spending the last couple of months sorting out his father’s estate, he could have done with a bit of distraction and some light female company.
There was nothing particularly unusual about that. Will liked women; they liked him. He was currently single and he had no problem with affairs, as long as they remained hot and short. With his DNA anything else was out of the question.
No, what was unusual was that to his growing frustration it appeared that, while he still ached with raging desire, Bella had obliterated whatever spark of attraction she’d experienced, and had retreated behind an air of aloof detachment.
Which wasn’t just unusual. It was baffling. And strangely disappointing, since he could barely remember the last time he’d had the opportunity to explore the heady delights of searing mutual attraction.
Not that he let it show, of course. No. He’d got used to arranging his face so that it didn’t reveal what he was thinking or feeling years ago.
Perhaps a bit too well, Will thought, frowning and shifting in the chair. From the way her head was tilting and her eyebrows were creeping up, Bella was obviously waiting for some sort of response.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw and snapped his mind from perplexing women and evaporating dinner plans to the startling revelation that the samples he’d grabbed from the front of the safe and brought to be valued were synthetic.
How the hell could the stuff be synthetic? The collection had been built up over decades. Generations of his male ancestors had given the finest jewellery to their wives, and he was pretty sure that while virtually every single one of them had been lousy at keeping their marriage vows, they’d always bought the best.
Setting his jaw, he arched an eyebrow. ‘Synthetic?’ he echoed.
Bella nodded. ‘The settings are real. The metal is genuine. And original. But the stones are paste.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Pretty much. You see here?’ She held up the engagement ring his father had given to his mother, and leaned forwards.
Will’s initial instinct was to jerk back, but as that would imply he considered her some sort of threat—which was absurd—he held himself steady, even if it meant her proximity made his skin tighten and tingle.
Forcing himself to keep his eyes on the ring and well away from her mouth and the alluring way it moved, Will dragged his attention to what she was saying. ‘The lustre is too dull and the light comes in at all the wrong angles. I’d need to double check, but I suspect the originals have been replaced with cubic zirconia.’
As her words sank in Will’s blood chilled and he ruthlessly suppressed the mind-scrambling effect Bella seemed to have on him.
How on earth could this have happened? As far as he knew, the collection hadn’t left the safe it was stored in for years. ‘When?’
‘It’s impossible to say, but the settings look as if they’ve been manipulated recently. Probably within the past year or so.’
His jaw tightened and he sat back, making sure that his expression didn’t reveal any hint of his thoughts. He might not care about the collection per se, or even the unforeseen plummet in its value, but he did care that the discovery that someone had been ransacking it had been made on his watch. He was its current custodian and it was therefore up to him to find out who and why and how far they’d gone. And then dec
ide what he was going to do about it.
‘I am sorry,’ she said quietly, giving him a look full of sympathy he really didn’t need.
Resisting the temptation to toss the whole lot in the bin, Will stuffed the jewellery back in his pockets. ‘I trust your conclusions will remain confidential,’ he said curtly.
Bella nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Good. In that case, I’d like you to take a look at the rest of the collection.’
‘There’s more?’
Her eyes widened and sparkled, and Will’s mind briefly went blank. Determinedly switching his focus to the dozens of boxes still in the vault and what might be lurking within them, he pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘A lot more.’
‘When?’
‘Now?’
‘I’ll get my things.’
For someone who’d just been told that the ten items of jewellery in his possession were in fact worthless fakes, Will appeared remarkably sanguine, thought Bella as they purred through the streets of central London. If it had been her, she’d have been wailing from the rooftops and tearing her hair out.
Quite what reaction she had been expecting she wasn’t sure, but it certainly hadn’t been complete indifference.
However, the moment they’d climbed into his car—his chauffeur-driven blacked-out-windowed car, no less—Will had hauled out his smartphone and had remained glued to it practically ever since, issuing a barrage of instructions to a string of poor hapless souls on the other end of the line, only one of which appeared to relate to the rest of the jewellery he wanted her to check out. The vast majority apparently pertained to some kind of complicated share-dealing business, which no doubt accounted for the chauffeur-driven car, the cashmere coat and the six-figure watch he wore.
There’d been a brief hiatus when Will had switched from making calls to checking his emails, during which Bella, feeling she ought to make some sort of stab at conversation, had established that she’d been recommended to him by Phoebe’s fiancé, Alex.
For one heart-stopping moment, it had struck her that Will might be the man Phoebe had been referring to in her email, but she’d dismissed the thought almost as soon as it had flitted into her head because Will Cameron did not strike her as the sort of man who went on blind dates.
Or the sort who delighted in small talk for that matter, judging by the monosyllabic way he’d answered her questions and had then effectively put an end to any more by resuming his calls.
Bella might have considered his absorption in his phone the height of bad manners if she hadn’t been so relieved. Trying to control all the thoughts and emotions swirling around inside her was bad enough. Having to engage in any further conversation on top of all that—without ending up babbling like an idiot—might well have been one challenge too great.
Right now, it was a toss-up as to what was uppermost in her mind. The number one spot, she suspected, ought to be occupied by fascination with the outcome of her earlier investigations. In position number two should be anticipation at what she might find when she checked out the rest.
But she had the unsettling feeling that both fell way below the increasingly perplexing effect Will seemed to have on her.
When she’d leaned forwards earlier to explain what she’d discovered, she’d inadvertently found herself so close to him that she’d been able to make out tiny flecks of navy in the blue of his eyes. So close she’d been able to see a few fine silvery hairs at his temples and so close she’d felt the warmth of his breath on her hand. She’d had to imagine she was stapled to the chair to stop herself from leaping up and throwing herself across the table at him. Because her brain might be missing in action but she was pretty sure that that was not the kind of service he was after.
Now, within the confines of his car, she was even more spine-tinglingly aware of him. The enclosed space intensified his whole presence. His voice seemed to reach right down inside her and wind itself around her nerves. His legs stretched out a hands-width from her, and his taut energy made her shiver.
As much as she might wish otherwise, every hormone she possessed was sitting up and panting. Her eyes kept being drawn to the hard thighs encased in denim and her hands itched to reach out and touch him. Every now and then, when they went round a corner, his shoulder would brush against hers and she had to clamp her palms together and twist her fingers around each other to stop her from taking advantage and accidentally on purpose falling into his lap.
It really was most disconcerting. Made even more so by the knowledge that, while she was burning up with lust, Will couldn’t be less affected by her. He certainly didn’t seem to be suffering from any kind of distraction. Even when she thought she’d caught him checking out her legs, the expression on his face and the look in his eyes had been utterly unfathomable, which was annoyingly unflattering.
By the time the car finally drew to a halt somewhere in the depths of the City Bella was in such a state that when the chauffeur materialised at the passenger door to open it, she nearly tumbled onto the pavement in her haste to escape.
Teetering on her heels and grabbing onto the door for support, she gulped in great breaths of fresh air and cast a shaky smile of thanks in the direction of Will’s driver.
Really, anyone would think she’d never experienced attraction before. Never felt desire. And she had. Loads of times. Not quite as mind-blowing or as instantaneous as this, but still.
Summoning strength to her legs, Bella released her vice-like grip on the car door, drew her shoulders back and tightened her grip on her equipment case and her wits. With superhuman effort she pushed Will Cameron’s disturbing effect on her from her mind, and reminded herself that she was nearly thirty-five, sensible and mature, and it was high time she started acting like it.
A bank, she thought, glancing up. That was where they were. Not that it was like any bank she’d ever ventured into. No. No high street logo or hole-in-the-wall for this bank. Only a discreet gold plaque screwed to the wall and a front door that was right this second sweeping open to reveal an opulent hallway and a middle-aged man wearing a morning suit and a polite smile.
‘Good afternoon, Your Grace,’ he said, with the hint of a bow.
‘Good afternoon, Watson,’ said Will, putting a hand on the small of Bella’s back and propelling her forward.
Bella’s heart stuttered and she nearly tripped over the doorstep, startled as much by the form of address as by the feel of Will’s hand on her back.
Your Grace? A bow? Who exactly was this Will Cameron with his chauffeur-driven car, his jewellery collection, his title and a bank that knew him by name? And how was it possible that her skin could burn beneath his hand despite the several layers of clothing between them?
‘Is everything ready?’ said Will.
Watson inclined his head. ‘As you requested, sir.’
‘Excellent. Thank you.’
‘If you’d like to follow me?’
‘You’re a duke?’ Bella muttered, just about managing to stay upright as Will manoeuvred her along the corridor in Watson’s wake.
Will nodded. ‘I am.’
‘Wow. I’ve never met a duke before.’ At least not a real one. There had been that friend of her mother’s, but he only claimed to be a duke on the Saturdays he gatecrashed various social events across the country and tried to persuade people to part with their fortunes.
‘There aren’t that many of us. But it’s no big deal.’
Not to him, maybe, but then he wasn’t the one who was wondering if he oughtn’t to stop and curtsey. ‘Rather young to be a duke, aren’t you?’ she murmured in the absence of knowing what else to say or do.
‘The third Duke of Hawksley was eight months old when he took on the title. I’m thirty-six. Hardly young.’
But hardly the wizened old buffer she’d mentally plucked from the Dukes R Us casting agency either.
Bella frowned as something about the name niggled at the edges her brain. For some annoyingly out-of-reach reas
on it seemed familiar. ‘Why didn’t you say anything, Your—uh—Grace?’
‘I didn’t mention it because I prefer not to use the title,’ he said, sounding as if he was gritting his teeth. ‘And “Will” will do.’
Will will do what? Bella wondered, and then began to drown in the heat that flooded through her at the thought of exactly what she’d like him to do.
She’d like him to swerve off to the left, drag her down some dusty deserted corridor and back her up against a wall. She’d like him to lift her up, wrap her legs around his waist and crush his mouth down on hers. She’d like him to run his hands all over her and drive her mindless with need. Most of all she’d like him hot and hard and deep inside her.
At the bolt of desire that thumped her in the stomach Bella went dizzy and stumbled. Would have hit the floor had Will not caught her arm and steadied her.
‘Are you all right?’
Bella dragged in a breath and blinked a couple of times as she fought to wipe her head of the images. Oh, good Lord. She was fantasising. About Will. A duke. So much for thinking she didn’t go for the cynical weary type, she thought dolefully. And so much for sensible and mature.
Wishing she could give herself a good slap, she pulled herself together. She could stop fantasising right now. Because if she didn’t, she could well find herself getting completely carried away and have them riding off into the sunset together before the day was out. Which, given his indifference to her, was as unlikely as it was inappropriate.
‘I’m fine,’ she said a little shakily, wriggling away from beneath his grip before she did something really unhinged like deliberately letting her knees collapse and falling into his arms. ‘Absolutely fine. These heels weren’t designed for this carpet, that’s all.’
A pathetic excuse if ever there was one but it would have to do. And it did very well until Will slid his eyes right down her body to the heels she’d unfairly blamed for her stumble.
His gaze was so laser-like, so intense, that it felt as if her clothes were disintegrating in its wake, leaving her standing there in front of him completely naked. And then, at the thought of that, she went so hot and trembly she nearly stumbled all over again.
