This was the first time she’d really got stuck in, and that only because she’d managed to farm Chloe out to one of her playmates from school.
The thought of her five-year-old daughter automatically brought a smile to her lips.
At least she had no worries on that front. Chloe had taken to the school and her classmates like a duck to water and that had been an enormous source of relief.
She stuck on her gardening glove, wriggled her hand into the undergrowth, half her mind still playing with the thought of her gorgeous raven-haired daughter, so different physically from her, and the other half preoccupied with the unwelcome thought that she might find one or two bugs in addition to the can, and was about to reach for the offending object when a voice said from behind her,
‘Thought I might find you here. Hope I’m not interrupting anything.’
The shock of the voice sent her falling face-first into the bush, and when she emerged, after a short struggle with greenery, earth and some unfortunate spiky things, she was decidedly the worse for wear.
‘What are you doing here?’ She hadn’t even rescued the can!
Max Forbes, in the bracing winter sunshine, looked horribly, impossibly good. The brisk wind had ruffled his dark hair so that it sprang away from his face in an endearingly boyish way that was at odds with the powerful angularity of his features, and as his trench coat blew open she spotted a casual attire of dark trousers and a thick cream jumper with a pale-coloured shirt underneath. The shock of seeing him in her garden and the impact of his presence made her take a couple of steps back.
‘Be careful you don’t fall into the bush again.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Now that her slow-witted brain had come to terms with his looming great masculine presence, her thought patterns suddenly shot into fifth gear, and the realisation that Chloe was out for the morning was enough to render her weak-kneed with relief.
‘Actually, I’ve just come from your neighbours down the road. Small world, wouldn’t you say? Thompsons. Live three houses away.’
‘I don’t know the names of the people here, aside from the elderly couple opposite.’
‘So I thought I’d drop in, see whether you’d managed to find yourself a job as yet.’
Standing opposite him, head tilted at an awkward angle because without heels she was a good ten inches shorter than him, Vicky felt small, grubby and disadvantaged. The long braid hanging down her back was an insult to anyone with a sense of style and there was mud and soil all over her face, clothes, hands—probably in her hair as well. Her sturdy wellingtons were covered in muck. When she removed the gardening gloves, she would doubtless find that they matched the state of her nails.
‘It’s only been three days and no luck yet. Thank you.’ She refused to budge even though the cold was seeping through her jumper and waxed jacket and making her shiver. She stuck her hands in the pockets of the jacket and glared at him.
‘Too bad.’
‘I’m sure something will turn up.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Jobs in typing pools are thin on the ground. ’Course, you’ll have no trouble getting something much better paid with infinitely more prospects, but who needs that sort of work?’
There was a veiled amusement in his voice that only made her more addled and crosser than she already was.
‘Look, why don’t we go inside? I’ve got time for a cup of tea and you can tell me all about Australia.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ A telltale pulse was beating rhythmically in the hollow of her neck and the little bud of panic that had begun to sprout the minute she’d heard his voice flowered into full bloom.
They couldn’t possibly go inside. Chloe wasn’t around, but signs of her were everywhere. He didn’t know that she had a child and that was the way she intended it to remain. It had been the only piece of sheer luck since meeting him. She’d answered the advertisement and had sheepishly omitted to mention Chloe simply because she had gleaned from several sources that a child in the background prompted awkward questions about childcare and being a single parent; this was the road to certain rejection by any company. School and Betsy, the lady who helped her out in the evenings sometimes, meant that there were no problems on the childcare front, and she reckoned, naively, that if she ever got offered a job she would inform her employers at that point and hope that they would take her on the strength of her interview, even once they knew of Chloe’s existence.
Max looked down at her and confusingly wanted to do a number of things at the same time. First, he wanted to clear out, because he had no idea what had possessed him to go there in the first place. Unfortunately, and much to his immense frustration, he also wanted to stay put, because seeing her again had somehow managed to render him even more intrigued than he’d been on their first encounter. He also wanted to brush some of that dirt off her face, if only to see what her reaction would be. In fact, the urge to do just that was so powerful that he clasped his hands behind his back and purposely looked away.
‘Actually, I haven’t just dropped by,’ he said eventually, resenting her for putting him in a position where he was about to embark on an out-and-out lie and resenting himself for his own pathetic weakness that had brought him here to start with.
‘Oh, no?’ she asked warily.
‘It’s to do with your house, as a matter of fact.’
‘What? What’s to do with my house?’
‘Why don’t we go inside and talk about it?’ He didn’t think that he had ever been so bloody underhanded in his life before, and all because he hadn’t been able to get this chit of a girl out of his head. She had fired up his interest, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, and now here he was, behaving like some shady character in a third-rate movie. He had never, but never, done anything remotely like this in his entire life because of a woman, and he could hardly believe that he was doing it now. Conniving like a two-bit criminal.
She didn’t say anything. Instead, she headed towards the house, leaning forward into the wind, which looked as though it might just lift her off her feet and sweep her away if she wasn’t careful. Max followed behind by a few paces, his teeth clenched in exasperation as she told him to wait outside until she’d tidied herself up.
He raised his eyebrows in amusement. ‘Why outside?’
‘Because,’ Vicky said coldly, ‘it’s my house and that’s what I’m telling you to do.’ Upon which she promptly shut the door in his face before he could open his mouth to protest further.
She had never moved with more speed. The house was thankfully clean, and in under three minutes she’d managed to stash away all evidence of her daughter. It took her a further five minutes to sling off the grubby clothes and replace them with a pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved striped jumper that had seen better days. The hair would have to remain in its charming grass-ridden style.
‘So,’ she said, yanking open the door to surprise him leaning against it, ‘what about my house?’
‘Has anyone ever mentioned to you that you are completely eccentric?’
‘No.’ She led the way into the sitting room, which had been the first room in the house to undergo redecoration and was now in restful greens and creams and blessedly free of childish clutter. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was at least another two hours before Chloe was dropped back to the house. More than enough time to get rid of Max Forbes, whose presence was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat.
‘My house,’ she reminded him bluntly, once she had installed him in a chair. ‘I won’t sit,’ she said. ‘I feel filthy. Now, what about my house?’
‘I can’t conduct a conversation like this.’ He shook his head and stood up. ‘Which is a shame because I think you’d be very interested in what I have to say, but if your ill manners override your self-interest, then—’ he shrugged eloquently ‘—at least I tried…’
Vicky looked at him doubtfully. He really shouldn’t be here at all, and she knew that she should just throw h
im out. In fact, she should never have let him in in the first place. Hadn’t this been the same old story with his brother? From the minute she’d set eyes on him, she’d known that he was bad news. He’d been too good-looking, too smooth-talking and too well connected to be interested in a girl like her, but he’d stopped at her desk where she’d been working with her head down and he’d leaned over just enough for her to feel overpowered by him. Everything she’d said, even Please go away, I really must get on with my work had seemed to amuse him, and he had had a way of laughing deep in his throat, a sexy laugh, while his eyes never left her face, that had made her feel uncomfortable and excited at the same time.
So if Shaun had achieved that with her, then how much more dangerous was his brother, who had struck her as being leagues ahead of him? And if her own need to protect herself wasn’t sufficient to keep her away from Max Forbes, then what about her daughter?
Dark-haired, grey-eyed, Chloe had been the spitting image of Shaun from the day of her birth. There was no way under the sun she could have been anything but a Forbes, and time had strengthened rather than lessened the resemblance.
If only theirs had been the tried and tested failed romance. If only Shaun had done the decent thing and walked away from her and his baby so that they could live their lives in peace. But, like all weak men, Shaun had needed his punch bag, and she had been his. He had rarely raised his hand to her, and then only under the influence of drink or drugs, but he hadn’t needed to go down that road to gain her compliance. All he’d had to do was threaten to take Chloe away from her. It had suited him to pretend to the world that he had never fathered a child, but he’d always taken great satisfaction in reminding her in private that if his family ever discovered his progeny then they would move in to claim what they would feel was rightfully theirs. Especially, he’d been fond of saying, if they could see the uncanny resemblance she bore to the Forbes clan.
So, however painful it was to her, she’d lived in the shadow of fear. Sometimes days would pass, weeks even, and there would be no sign of him. Then he would return and demand his sexual privileges—and she had slept with him and wept bitter tears afterwards.
To have Max Forbes under her roof was to have Lucifer with the key to her front door. She’d heard enough about him to know that the existence of Chloe would be of great interest to him. Would he try and spirit her away, or take her through the courts for custody? Ninety-nine point nine per cent of her knew that her child was safe, but that nought point one per cent was enough to terrify.
She’d spent years protecting her daughter from an abusive man. She’d watched in helpless fear as he’d wielded his power over them both, smilingly and ruthlessly intimidating. Vicky had lived on a knife’s edge, waiting in dreaded expectation of the worst. Now, Vicky knew she must keep Chloe’s existence a secret from Max. For all she knew, these brothers might have more in common than mere appearance. Much more. And she had not escaped from one destructive cycle only to find herself hooked into another. She would never give a man that power over her again. Never.
Max was standing by the door, saying something, and Vicky’s attention snapped back to the present. The house. She couldn’t afford to run into problems with the house. She had barely begun to find her feet and Chloe could do without any more changes in her life.
‘Sit down. Please. I might as well hear what you have to say.’ She nodded to the chair which he had just vacated and he appeared to give her request some thought.
‘You seem to act as though I’m doing you a favour. I assure you, Miss Lockhart, you couldn’t be further from the truth.’
‘I’m sorry. I have…things on my mind.’
‘Why don’t you go and change? Clean clothes might improve your temper.’
She frowned and looked very much as though she would have liked to argue that particular point with him, but instead she informed him that she would bring him a cup of tea, or coffee.
That, she thought, should keep him anchored in one place. The last thing she needed was Max Forbes prowling through her house. At least the sitting room—the one place that was kept neat at all times, even if the rest of the cottage was in a state of disarray—contained relatively few personal bits and pieces. She’d stuffed the pictures of Chloe in the weather-beaten pine trunk behind the sofa, and the books that lined the bookshelf on either side of the fireplace were the sort of everyday reading that gave nothing away. The ornaments had mostly belonged to her mother and had been retrieved from the attic where they had been stored while the house had been rented out. It was true what they said about there being safety in anonymity.
When she returned to the sitting room with a mug of tea, it was to find him innocently perusing the newspaper which had been lying on the low, square battered pine table in front of the fireplace. She almost said Good, but managed to resist the temptation.
‘I won’t be a moment,’ she told him stiffly, and, just in case he got any ideas about exploring the place, she firmly shut the sitting room door behind her. Then she looked at her watch, to make sure that time was still on her side.
Showering and changing took a matter of fifteen minutes. Self-beautification, even if the situation demanded it, was something she rarely did. Now, she just changed into a clean pair of jeans, a clean T-shirt and re-braided her hair without going to the bother of combing out all the knots, of which there would be thousands. Later, she would wash and shampoo her hair.
‘Now,’ she said, slipping into the room and seeing, with relief, that he was still absorbed in the newspaper, ‘you were going to tell me about my house.’
‘Have you heard the rumours?’
‘What rumours?’
‘About the supermarket. Perhaps I should say hyper-market, because apparently there’ll be parking for hundreds of cars. If not thousands.’
Vicky, sitting cross-legged on the large comfy chair facing him, looked at him in horror. For a minute, she actually forgot that she was supposed to be on guard. She leaned forward, elbows on thighs, mouth open.
‘You’re joking.’
‘Horrendous, isn’t it? I can’t bear those sprawling supermarkets myself. I much prefer smaller, more personal places to shop. Between Fortnum and Mason’s and Harrods, I’ve never had a problem finding what I want. Tell me, is there an equivalent here, by any chance?’ Now that he had launched into his lie, he couldn’t wait to distance himself from it. He glanced at her face and discovered that he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Her mouth was slightly parted and sitting like that, all folded into the chair in a way he had never seen a woman do before, she looked even more appealingly vulnerable. The T-shirt was small and close fitting and lovingly outlined her small, rounded breasts. He had to remind himself that he was only there because she had posed a mystery and he hated mysteries, and not because he was attracted to her, even though his mind kept churning up some embarrassingly graphic images of her body, unencumbered by clothing.
Frustratingly, she seemed to have no interest in him whatsoever. As a man who was accustomed to women looking at him, uninterest was proving to be a powerful aphrodisiac.
‘Who told you this?’ she asked, after a few seconds of shocked silence.
‘No one and everyone. You know how it is with rumours. No one will admit to being the one who starts it. I mean, it may be entirely without foundation and certainly, in the business I’m in, I’m sure I would have seen something, something rather more substantial than gossip, but—’ he sighed, reluctantly focusing his attention on the bookshelf behind her ‘—I feel better about telling you.’
‘My house won’t be worth a thing if a supermarket goes up opposite!’ Vicky burst out on the verge of tears. ‘Not that I want to sell up, but…’
‘I’m sure it’s all a load of tosh,’ Max said hurriedly, guiltily seeing the sheen in her eyes.
‘What if it’s not?’ She couldn’t help herself. A supermarket! No, a hypermarket, with parking for ten thousand cars! It was the last straw. She blinked and, of
its own accord, a tear trickled down her face. Her reaction appalled and dismayed her, but there seemed nothing she could do to stifle the ridiculous leakage.
She was hardly aware of what was happening until she felt Max perch on the wide upholstered arm of the chair and he dabbed the handkerchief at her face. With a groan of despair, Vicky took it from him and did a better job of mopping herself up, then she leant her head back and closed her eyes with a deep sigh.
‘Look, I should never have said what I did.’ Little did she know, he thought, how sincerely he meant that. He reached out and stroked some hair away from her face, then carried on stroking her damp cheeks. Her skin was like satin and, up close, her freckles made a fascinating pattern across the bridge of her nose. His thumb slid a bit further down and, finding no deterrent, lightly brushed her mouth.
‘No, it’s just as well to be prepared.’ She opened her eyes and looked at him. There was a gentleness in his eyes that was unexpected enough to make the breath catch in her throat.
‘I could find out easily enough whether there’s truth behind the rumour,’ he told her softly, feeling himself harden as he carried on stroking her face. The woman was an enigma. He could hardly remember why he thought that she was hiding something. Right now, she was no more than a vulnerable girl and she was bringing out all sorts of ridiculously protective feelings he’d never known he possessed.
‘Could you?’ she asked urgently, her eyes flicking across his face. ‘Do you think you could? It would mean a great deal to me.’ In the brief silence, she became aware of his fingers on her face and she sprang away, pressing herself back into the chair and looking at him.
The Boss's Proposal Page 3
