by Liz Fielding
‘Not all of it,’ she protested. ‘Just the main rooms.’
‘And the bedrooms, unless we’re going to camp on the lawn. And the bathrooms. And the kitchen.’
‘I’ll do the kitchen before you get there. Really, it’s not that bad.’
Her mother sipped her tea.
‘Seven days, eight adults,’ she prompted. ‘All I’m asking is an hour a day from each of you and in return you get to stay in an ancient and historic manor house. I promise,’ she continued before her mother could raise any other objections, ‘that no one at the WI will have holiday pictures to beat yours. Not some pokey little cottage, not even an apartment in a stately home, but the whole place, four-poster beds and a ballroom included, to yourselves.’
‘I don’t know, Tash—’
‘You should read Emma Hadley’s history. I’ve scanned it and printed it so you can take a copy with you. The illustrations are beautiful,’ she said. ‘You could give a talk. I’ll make a PowerPoint presentation for you.’ A tiny giveaway muscle in the corner of her mother’s mouth twitched and, confident that she was hooked, Tash sat back. ‘Of course, if it’s too much for you, I could give Harry a call. If he and Lily have got nowhere booked for half-term I’m sure he would love to help…’
‘You will be staying with us?’ her mother asked, matching her guilt play and trumping it. ‘Not just cleaning up the kitchen and then running away back to London?’
That was the thing with mothers. They could see through you, right down to the bone. A bit like a sculptor she knew…
‘Oh, I’ll have to be there,’ she said. ‘I’ll be holding an open day on the last Saturday. With afternoon tea. Is there any chance of a few of your scones?’
‘Is there any chance that you will be coming to Cornwall next year?’
She was a mere amateur compared to her mother.
‘You can count on it. I’ve decided to take up surfing.’
Her mother, ignoring that, stood up. ‘I suppose I’d better go home and get everyone organised. We’ll bring our own bedding. And towels,’ she added. ‘Mice will almost certainly have made nests in the linen cupboards.’
Oh, joy…
‘I’ll ask one of the boys to pick you up on Saturday morning.’
‘No need. Darius…Mr Hadley has loaned me his Land Rover.’
‘Darius Hadley?’ Her mother frowned. ‘That name rings a bell. Would I have seen him in Celebrity?’
‘I couldn’t say,’ she said truthfully.
*
Tash still had the keys and she had Darius’s permission to do whatever it took to sell the house. No need to disturb him when he was so busy. Except, of course, someone would have to inform the security people that he would be having house guests.
And an open day on the Saturday.
What should she do? Text, phone and leave a message or go and see him? Her mother would not be amused if the police arrived mob-handed to evict them. She had to be sure he’d got the message and if he was working flat-out he might not check his phone.
She would just have to go and see him.
It was quicker to take the Underground than drive across London or take the bus and, since there was a truck completely blocking his street, she’d clearly made the right decision.
There was quite a crowd watching the drama and she spotted Patsy among them. ‘What’s going on?’
‘They’re loading up the horse. Darius!’ she called. ‘You’ve got company.’
He appeared from behind the truck, sweaty, dusty. There was clay in his hair and smeared across his cheek where he’d wiped away sweat with the back of his hand and a week’s worth of beard only added to the piratical look.
‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘I just need to see this on its way.’
‘Take your time.’
His face split in a wide grin. ‘I always do.’
Oh, yes…
She caught Patsy’s eye and hoped she hadn’t said that out loud. Judging by the eye-roll, she didn’t need to. ‘Have you sold the house yet?’ she asked.
‘No, but I’m working on it.’
‘If there’s anything I can do—’ she produced a business card ‘—give me a call.’
‘I can’t afford help,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m here. I’ve offered my family a week in the country in return for their help cleaning the place up.’
‘Well, now, I can’t afford to take my boy away this half-term. If you need more hands, I’ll work for board and country air.’
‘Well, thanks. The more the merrier.’
‘Clear it with Darius and give me a ring,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘See you later.’
Tash pressed herself against the wall as the truck started up and Darius joined her as it slowly pulled away, the crated horse lashed down in the back. They watched it pull out into the main road and disappear, then he looked down at her.
‘You look like ice cream. I’d kiss you,’ he said, ‘but I stink.’
‘It’s a good stink.’ Earthy clay, freshly sawn pine mingled with the sharp scent of honest sweat and, lifting a hand to his face, she rubbed her palm against his beard. ‘And I want to try this.’
He lifted her hand, touched it to his lips. ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ he said, tucking her arm around his waist and, with his arm around her shoulder, headed up the street. ‘I haven’t been to bed since I got out of yours.’
She stopped. ‘You took time out to take me to Hadley Chase when you were that pushed?’
‘Don’t…’ He touched the space between her brows. ‘Don’t frown. I was already struggling. The house, a whole lot of mess being dragged up from the past… You fired me up.’ He unlocked the door to a small mews cottage at the end of the street. ‘How do you feel about being my muse?’
His muse? For just a moment the image of herself as his inspiration sparkled in her imagination. She forced herself back to earth. ‘It sounds a bit Pre-Raphaelite to me. I’m getting images of scantily dressed women lounging around a cold and draughty studio while louche men discuss their vision. I think I’ll pass.’
‘I didn’t say becoming my muse, I said being her.’
‘I don’t get a choice?’
‘Neither of us do, apparently.’
‘Oh… Well, I’m glad to have helped,’ she said, leaning against him briefly. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘Patsy kept me fuelled up. Have you been trying to get hold of me?’ he asked, taking a phone out of his back pocket. ‘The battery on this is flatter than a pancake.’
‘I did leave a message, but I thought if you were working you wouldn’t pick it up.’
‘It’s that important?’
‘I haven’t sold the house,’ she said quickly, ‘but it was too important to leave to chance.’
‘Scrub my back and you’ll have my full attention,’ he assured her, kicking off his boots in the tiny lobby, peeling off his T-shirt and letting it lie where it fell.
On the outside, the cottage fitted with the rest of the street. Inside, it was bare polished wood floors, white walls, spare steel lamp fittings and old rubbed leather chairs.
He slipped the buckle of his belt, let his jeans fall, stepped out of them and, naked, walked up the open staircase that led to a sleeping loft, not stopping until he reached a granite and steel wet room.
‘If you’re going to scrub my back you’d better lose the clothes or they’ll get soaked,’ he warned as he flipped the tap. His eyes gleamed wickedly. ‘Or you could leave them on. Either way works for me.’
‘Behave yourself.’ She hadn’t come dressed down. She’d wanted to make an impact, wanted him to notice her and even before she reached for the hem of the clinging cross-over top she was wearing she could see that she had. ‘I have to go home on the Tube.’
She unhooked the swirl of printed chiffon that stopped six inches above her knee, kicked it away and stepped out of her shoes.
‘Stop right there,’ he said when she was down to the champagne lace bra and
panties that she’d bought with birthday money and even in the sale had cost twice anything else she wore next to her skin. ‘I really want to see those wet.’
‘When you can do more than kiss my hand,’ she said, but took her time over removing them since he appeared to like them so much. ‘Turn round.’
His eyes were focused on her breasts. ‘Do I have to?’
Oh, boy. That was a tough one. His thick dark curls, the streaks of clay on his cheeks, his chest, water sluicing over his skin gave him the elemental look of some tribal chieftain who’d battled the elements and won through.
Every primitive instinct was urging her to take a step forward, press her body against his and go for it but the dark hollows in his temples, beneath his eyes warned her that it was the last thing he needed.
She picked a gel off the shelf, made a circular gesture with her finger and after a moment he turned, placed his hands flat against the granite, bracing himself, or more likely propping himself up.
His finely muscled back, narrow waist, taut buttocks were, if anything, even more distracting.
Get a grip, Tash. You can do this…
She applied the gel to his hair, stretching up on her toes to ease out the dried-in clay with her fingers, leaning into him to massage his scalp—her body, breasts sliding against him as the soap cascaded down his back.
He groaned as she repeated the process. ‘Dear God, woman, what are you doing?’
‘Torturing myself,’ she said as she applied gel to a sponge and began working it into his shoulders.
‘That makes two of us. If you have something important to tell me you’d better get on with it, while I can still think.’
‘I’ve organised a cleaning party for the house. We’ll be staying there from Saturday for the entire week.’
‘Staying?’ He half turned to look at her.
‘Relax. It’s just my family.’ She worked the soap down his back, into the hollow above those gorgeous tight buttocks.
‘No…’ he began, then caught his breath as she used her hands to work the soap between his thighs.
‘The Cornwall holiday fell through so I offered them a week in the country in return for a little light housework.’
‘I can’t ask your family to clean my house,’ he said.
‘You didn’t—I did,’ she said, getting down on her knees and working the foam behind his knees, over his totally gorgeous calves. ‘Patsy’s volunteered, too.’
‘Patsy?’
‘I saw her in the street. She said I should run that by you.’
‘The whole damn street will know every detail within an hour of her coming home.’
‘It’s just an old house,’ she reminded him. ‘A lot of dull portraits, a couple of four-poster beds and a kitchen out of the Ark. I just need you to tell Ramsey and the security people that we’ll be there,’ she said. ‘Now you can turn around.’
He turned and for a moment the breath stopped in her throat. He might not have been to bed in a week, but one part was still wide awake and ready for action.
Everything slowed down as she dropped the sponge and used her fingers between his toes, his ankles, the tender spot behind his knees, the smooth skin inside his thighs. Then she stood up and soaped his chest, his stomach.
At one point he reached for her but she tutted. ‘No touching…’
His legs were trembling by the time she reached the parts that did not know when to lie down and quit.
‘Sweet heaven,’ he said, leaning back, clutching at a rack holding a pile of towels, his eyes closed as she took him in her palm, stroking him until, with a shuddering sigh, he spilled into her hand. And then she flipped off the water, put her arms around his neck and kissed him very gently. ‘Now, go to bed.’
Darius, dazed, barely able to speak, reached up and pulled a towel down from the rack, wrapped it around her and pulled her warm, wet body against him. ‘Stay with me,’ he begged.
‘Is that what a muse would do?’ she asked, looking at him, her eyes dark, intense, searching. A smallest of frowns defeating her smile. ‘Be there so that when you wake up you can draw her sated, replete, every desire satisfied?’
‘I left a note,’ he said. ‘I left the picture…’
‘Why?’
‘You were sleeping. Taking it would have been as if I was stealing something intimate from you.’
‘Oh.’ She leaned her forehead against his chest so that he shouldn’t see her eyes. See what she had been thinking. ‘If you want it, Darius, take it. It’s yours.’
He took a step back, lifted her chin, reading her as easily as most people read headlines. ‘You thought it was a kiss off?’ he asked. ‘A Darius Hadley sketch in return for some hot sex?’
‘No! Maybe.’ Her shoulders dropped. ‘I don’t know you, Darius.’
‘No, you don’t,’ he said, pulling another towel from the rack, wrapped it around his waist. ‘If I ever did anything that skanky I would sign and date it so that it would be worth something. A realisable asset.’
‘Darius…’
He didn’t wait for her mumbled apology. She hadn’t trusted him and that was a deal-breaker. He picked up the receiver of the landline beside the bed, punched in a fast-dial number.
‘Ramsey? Darius Hadley.’ He didn’t bother with the courtesies. ‘My agent has organised a clean-up of the house. Please inform the security people that they will be resident on site from…’ He looked across at Natasha, hovering in the doorway of the wet room, a towel clutched to her breast.
‘Today,’ she said on a gasp. ‘I’m going down there today to turn on the water, clean up the—’
‘From today,’ he said, despite everything, unable to take his eyes off her as Ramsey droned on about the inadvisability of letting a group of strangers into the house. The damp strands of hair clinging to pink cheeks, creamy shoulders and it was all he could do to stop himself from going to her. Begging forgiveness…
This was the madness. The same madness that had seized his father. Wanting a woman beyond sense, beyond reason.
‘Your objections are noted but, to tell you the truth, Ramsey,’ he said, cutting him off, ‘I don’t actually care what you think. The only reason I don’t just sign the whole lot over to the Treasury is because someone has to protect the tenants and I know that won’t be you.’ He cut off Ramsey’s protest. ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked, returning the receiver to the cradle, but leaving his hand on it, anchoring him to the spot.
Tash swallowed. His face was shuttered and the apology bubbling up in her throat died unspoken.
Shouting at him when he’d behaved like a jerk had been a momentary bump in the road, no more than a shake-up. Doubting his honour was, apparently, a damned great rock. She’d crossed some invisible line and the damage was terminal.
‘There’s just one more thing,’ she said, clutching the towel to her breast. Being naked had, in an eye blink, gone from the most natural, most perfect thing in the world to the most awkward.
This definitely came under the ‘never mix business with pleasure’ rule but, despite the lack of encouragement to continue, there was still business to be done.
‘Unlike Morgan and Black, I can’t afford to put on a three-course lunch at the Hadley Arms, so I’m holding an open day on Saturday week,’ she said. ‘I’ll be serving afternoon tea. On the lawn if the weather holds, in the ballroom if it doesn’t.’ There was still no response. Not even a sarcastic comment about cake. He just kept his hand on the phone as if waiting for her to go so that he could make another call. ‘While I have no doubt that potential buyers and the property press would like to meet you, it’s not essential.’ Not one word. ‘That’s all.’
She gathered her clothes, made it downstairs on rubber legs, pulling them on over still damp skin as she headed for the door, banging it hard shut behind her. So that he’d know she’d gone. So that she couldn’t go back.
Damn, damn, damn… How could she have got it so wrong? How could she have got herself so
involved?
Involved was for the future, when she was established, with a man who was ready to settle down, raise a family. It wasn’t for now and it certainly wasn’t with a man who had heartbreak stamped all over him. She’d known from the first moment she’d set eyes on him that he wasn’t a man made for happy ever after. This was supposed to be a fling. Hot, fast, furious and, like the bronze of an anonymous nude figure, something to rub your fingers over in passing when you were old and remember with a smile.
Okay. The bronze wasn’t going to happen. Her career, on the other hand, still needed to be rescued. That deal was still on. It was back to strictly business.
Which was what she’d wanted in the first place. Until she didn’t.
‘Natasha?’ She’d reached the corner of the street without being aware how she’d got there and practically bumped into Patsy as she came out of the corner shop carrying a bundle of files. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Oh, um, yes… Just in a hurry,’ she said, suddenly aware of damp strands of hair clinging to her cheek and neck, that her top, pulled on over damp skin, was twisted, telegraphing what had just happened as loudly as if she’d posted his drawing on Facebook. ‘There’s so much to do. I, um, told Darius you had volunteered to join the clean-up party.’
‘Let me guess. He said no.’
‘No.’ He hadn’t. He’d muttered about gossip but he hadn’t actually said no. Why would he? She’d been posting pictures of Hadley Chase all over the Net and there was nothing Patsy could tell the neighbours that they couldn’t see for themselves. ‘I’ll be glad to have you if you’re still up for it.’
‘I’ll be there, rubber gloves and dusters at the ready.’
‘It won’t all be work,’ she assured her. ‘Does your boy like fishing?’
She grinned. ‘I guess we’ll find out.’
Tash opened her bag and took out one of the new business cards she’d ordered off the Net—Natasha Gordon, Property Consultant—and offered it to Patsy. ‘Email me if you have any special food requirements. And everyone is bringing their own bedding. Is that okay?’
‘None and no problem. I’ll come tomorrow afternoon straight after school if you like? Help you get the bedrooms ready.’
