by Jessica Hart
‘And in return?’ she said with a fair assumption of casualness.
‘In return you get board and lodging. You said you’d work for free, so that’s the deal. Take it or leave it. Frankly, short of carrying you bodily back to the hotel, I can’t think of another way to get rid of you!’ Nobody had ever spoken to Lotty the way Corran did. And no one was ever that unreasonable either. There was no way she could get this cottage ready for painting in three days. That was why he had set it as a challenge, one he knew she would fail.
She was just going to have to show him how wrong he was.
‘I’ll take the deal,’ she said.
‘You’ll regret it,’ Corran warned.
Lotty lifted her chin and met his pale eyes. ‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’
‘We will,’ he agreed. ‘I’m betting you won’t make it to the end of the day, let alone the end of the week.’
‘And I’ll take that bet as well,’ said Lotty defiantly.
Perhaps it wasn’t fair. The man wasn’t to know that he was betting against a descendant of Léopold Longsword, after all. Fairness had been dinned into Lotty almost as thoroughly as pride and duty but, right then, she didn’t care. ‘I say I’ll still be here at the end of the month!’
Corran’s mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. ‘You’re really prepared to bet on that?’
‘I am.’ The grey eyes were bright with challenge. ‘How much?’
‘Well, as we know you don’t have any money, that’s not much of an issue, is it? What have you got to wager?’
Lotty thought of her wealth, safely squirrelled away, of her expensive car and designer wardrobe, of the antiques and valuable paintings that filled her palace apartment, of the priceless jewellery she had inherited as Princess of Montluce.
‘My pride,’ she said. He wasn’t to know just how important self-respect was to her right then.
Corran held her gaze for a moment. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘If you’re prepared to risk it, that’s up to you.’
‘And what will I get when I win?’ she asked him.
‘It’s academic, but what would you like?’
Lotty searched her mind desperately. ‘When I’ve been here a month you have to…to…to take me out to dinner,’ she improvised.
Corran didn’t exactly smile, but there was a glimmer of amusement in the pale blue eyes. ‘It looks like we’ve got ourselves a deal, then,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got yourself a job—for as long as you can stand it.’
You’d have thought he’d offered her a diamond necklace instead of three days of unrelenting, dirty work for no pay.
‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ she said, her face lighting with a smile. ‘Thank you!’
Corran’s chest tightened foolishly as he looked into her eyes, and for one ridiculous moment he forgot how to breathe properly. It was only a second before he got his lungs firmly back under control but, even so, it was an alarming feeling. She had only smiled, for God’s sake!
Yanking his gaze from hers, he took out his confusion on the dog, who was worrying at a hole in the skirting board. ‘Pookie! Get out of there!’ he snarled, and the dog frisked over to him, its silky coat filthy now with dust and cobwebs.
Lotty looked at Corran. ‘Pookie?’
He set his teeth. ‘He’s my mother’s dog.’ He eyed Pookie’s not-so-white fluffiness with disgust. ‘If you can call that a dog.’
Lotty had crouched down and was encouraging Pookie, who was now in a frenzy of excitement at all the attention, his little tail circling frantically as she ruffled his soft coat. ‘He’s sweet,’ she said.
‘He’s not sweet,’ snorted Corran. ‘He’s a nuisance. He’s never been disciplined, and he’s always filthy. I mean, who in their right mind has a white dog? I tried telling my mother this wasn’t a suitable place for him, but she wouldn’t listen. No, I have to put up with him for four months while she goes off on some world cruise! It’s her fourth honeymoon, or possibly her fifth. I’ve lost count.’
‘Well, he seems happy enough.’ She studied the roughly shorn coat. ‘I’m guessing he normally has a long coat?’
‘And a ribbon to hold the hair out of his eyes,’ said Corran sourly. ‘I haven’t got time to deal with any of that nonsense. I cut his coat as soon as my mother had gone. She’ll have a fit when she comes back, but that’s too bad. This is a working estate, and it’s humiliating for Meg to be seen with a ball of fluff with a ribbon in its hair.’
Lotty laughed as she straightened. ‘I can see Pookie doesn’t do much for your image!’ She looked around the filthy cottage. ‘Well, I’d better get started if I’m going to get this ready for painting,’ she said. ‘Can I borrow the broom from the other cottage?’
‘You might want to change your clothes first,’ he said, frowning. ‘It’s going to be dirty work.’
‘I don’t have anything else with me. I just brought what I could carry in my rucksack.’
‘I could probably find you an old shirt,’ said Corran gruffly.
‘Well…thank you,’ said Lotty, with the smile that was famous throughout Montluce. ‘If you’re sure. I don’t want to be any trouble.’
‘It’s a bit late for that,’ he grumbled. ‘You’d better come up to the house. I don’t suppose you’ve had any breakfast either?’
‘No,’ she admitted and he blew out an exasperated breath.
‘How were you expecting to work if you hadn’t had anything to eat? You’re no good to me if you’re fainting with hunger.’
He stomped back to the house, Lotty following meekly in his wake, while Meg trotted beside him and Pookie scampered around in circles, yapping with excitement.
At the back door he kicked the mud and dust off his boots and snapped his fingers to the dogs. ‘I’ll feed these two, and maybe that will shut Pookie up. If you want to make yourself useful, you can make some tea. The kitchen’s through there.’
He disappeared down a corridor hung with battered waxed jackets and mud-splattered boots, the dogs at his heels. There was something so incongruous about the big man with the fluffy little dog that Lotty couldn’t help smiling as she watched them go. Corran might look tough, but he was also a man who couldn’t say no to his mother. That made her feel better.
The kitchen was a square, solid room with fine proportions and a ceiling festooned with old-fashioned drying racks, but to Lotty it seemed bare and cheerless.
Not that she knew much about kitchens. All her meals were sent up from the palace kitchens, and if she wanted a cup of tea, she rang a bell and one of the maids made it in the servants’ galley.
There was no bell to ring now, and no useful maid. Lotty looked around dubiously. She had never made tea or coffee before, but how difficult could it be?
Well, there was the kettle, at least. She carried it over to the sink, filled it and set it back on the base, resisting the urge to brush her hands together in self-satisfaction. Eat your heart out, Raoul the Wolf, she thought. He wasn’t the only Montvivennes who could rise to a challenge.
Now, where was the tea? Aha! Lotty pounced on a pack, and was feeling pretty confident until she realised that the kettle wasn’t getting hot. She put her hand on it, and had just bent her head to see if she could hear anything when Corran walked in and raised his brows at the sight of her with her ear pressed against the kettle.
‘I don’t think it’s working,’ she said as she straightened.
Corran looked at the kettle and then at her. Without a word, he reached round and clicked on a switch at the back of the kettle. Immediately, a light came on and there was a rushing noise.
Lotty bit her lip. ‘I haven’t used a kettle like this before.’
‘Have you put a tea bag in a mug and poured over boiling water?’ Corran asked sarcastically.
She hoped she didn’t look too grateful for the tip. Bag, boiling water. She could do that. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any coffee?’
‘There’s instant.’ He tossed her a jar, which she caught
more by luck than science. ‘Sorry, I’m fresh out of luxuries,’ he said, correctly interpreting Lotty’s look of dismay. She would have sold her soul for a cup of freshly ground coffee right then.
‘I’ll have tea,’ he told her, opening a cupboard. ‘The mugs are in here.’
‘Have you just arrived?’ Lotty took out two, leaving a single mug marooned in a vast cupboard. ‘You don’t have much stuff.’
‘I moved in a couple of months ago.’ Corran tossed a couple slices of bread in the toaster and slammed it down. ‘I’ve never been a big one for stuff,’ he told her. ‘You don’t acquire much in the Army, and my ex wife kept the house and all its contents when we got divorced.’
So he was divorced. Lotty filed that little bit of information away. She would have liked to have known more, but didn’t want to sound too interested. It was hard to imagine Corran McKenna unbending enough to ask anyone to marry him.
Not her business, of course, but Lotty couldn’t help wondering what his ex-wife was like as she put a tea bag in a mug and hoped she looked as if she knew what she was doing. What sort of woman would crack that grim façade? What would it take to bring a man like Corran McKenna to his knees? To make that hard mouth soften and the icy eyes warm with desire?
Lotty stole a glance at him as he opened the fridge and fished out butter and jam and a pint of milk, which he sniffed at suspiciously before putting it on the table. She wasn’t at all surprised to hear that he had been in the Army. He had that tough competence she had seen in all her close protection officers, most of whom also came from a service background. They were all lean, hard men like Corran, men with absolute focus and eyes that were never still.
But she had never noticed their mouths before, or speculated about their love lives. Just looking at Corran’s mouth made Lotty’s stomach jittery. Why had she started to think about him kissing? Now warmth was pooling disturbingly inside her.
Lotty made herself look away and concentrated on unscrewing the jar of coffee granules instead.
‘It’s a shame this room is so bare,’ she said to break the silence. Her voice sounded thin, as if all the air had been squeezed out of it. ‘It could be a lovely kitchen.’
Corran grunted. ‘The kitchen is the least of my worries at the moment. The rest of the house is just as bare. I’m more concerned about getting the estate up and running again. I can live without furniture until then.’
‘You don’t have any furniture?’
‘Just the basics. This table. A couple of beds.’ He nodded his head at the armchair by the range. ‘That old chair my father’s dog used to sleep on.’
‘Then this was your father’s house?’
‘Yes,’ said Corran, a curt edge to his voice. ‘I inherited the house and the estate from him.’
‘Isn’t it usual to inherit the furniture as well as the house?’
He shrugged. ‘My stepmother took everything when she moved to Edinburgh.’
‘Why did she do that?’
‘You’d have to ask her that,’ he said distantly.
Lotty sniffed cautiously at the jar of coffee, unable to suppress an involuntary moue of distaste. She was trying to remember what the barmaid had told her at the Mhoraigh Hotel. ‘I heard there was some kind of family feud,’ she told Corran.
‘It takes two to feud,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘I’m not feuding.’
Lotty had been spooning coffee granules into a mug, but stopped when she saw Corran’s expression. ‘What?’
‘You like your coffee strong.’
Uh-oh. Clearly she had overdone it. ‘Er, yes…yes, I do.’ Surreptitiously, she spilled the last spoonful back into the jar. ‘They say the estate should have gone to your brother,’ she said to distract him.
‘My half-brother,’ he corrected her sharply. ‘Who told you that? Oh, you’ll have got it from the hotel in Mhoraigh, of course,’ he answered his own question. ‘That well-known centre of unbiased information!’
‘Is it true?’
‘No, it’s not true.’ Corran scowled as he threw a couple of plates on the table and rummaged in a drawer for knives. Why should he care what Lotty thought? She had pushed her way in here, and if she didn’t like it, she could leave. It didn’t matter if she believed that he wasn’t entitled to the estate, but still he found himself saying, ‘I’m my father’s eldest son.’ The words sounded as if they were pushed out of his mouth. ‘I was born here.’
She had found a warm spot in front of the range and was leaning against it, her arms spread along the rail. ‘You don’t sound Scottish,’ she commented.
‘My parents divorced when I was six. My mother took me to London after that.’
‘So Loch Mhoraigh isn’t really home to you?’
‘Yes, it is!’ As always, the suggestion caught Corran on the raw. Mhoraigh was the only home he had ever had. ‘I spent part of every summer here when I visited my father.’
Lotty was frowning. ‘Then why is there a question mark over you having the estate? Doesn’t the eldest son usually inherit?’
‘It’s normal, yes, but Andrew—my half-brother—is very popular around here. Especially at the hotel, where he seemed to spend most of his time as far as I can gather,’ Corran added evenly. ‘Everyone would much rather he had inherited the estate.’
‘Why not you?’
He sighed. ‘Are you always this nosy?’
For a moment she looked taken aback. ‘I suppose I’m used to asking a lot of questions,’ she said.
‘As part of your job?’
Something uncertain flickered in her eyes. Good, thought Corran. Let her see what it was like being on the receiving end of an interrogation for a change!
‘Yes,’ she said after a tiny hesitation. She cleared her throat. ‘I suppose you could say I’m in public relations.’
‘Does that mean you’d be happy discussing your family with a stranger?’
That strange expression flitted across her face again. ‘No, perhaps not. But we’re not going to stay strangers, are we? We’re going to be working together for a whole month so I can win that bet,’ she reminded him. ‘We might as well get to know something about each other. And I’d rather know the truth than rely on gossip.’
‘The Mhoraigh estate is mine,’ said Corran. ‘That’s all the truth you need.’
‘I don’t understand why they don’t like you in the village.’
‘Not everyone falls for my charm,’ he snarled at her, and then wished he hadn’t when she chuckled. She looked startlingly pretty when laughter warmed the patrician looks.
‘Oh, I can see they might be able to resist your sunny disposition,’ she said, ‘but most people like things to be fair and, if you’re the eldest son, it’s fair that you inherited, surely?’
Corran blew out an exasperated sigh. He might as well tell her or she would never shut up about it.
‘My father always intended to change the entail on the estate,’ he said, making sure his voice was empty of all bitterness. He didn’t want Lotty concluding that he was screwed up about all this, no matter how pretty she looked when she smiled.
‘Andrew was his favourite. Everyone knew that. He had the huge advantage of not reminding him of my mother. My father never forgave her for leaving him, and every time he looked at me, he saw her. It made my visits…difficult.’
Lotty’s lovely grey eyes darkened with sympathy. ‘That must have been hard on you.’
‘Please spare me the violins,’ said Corran curtly. He couldn’t bear people feeling sorry for him. He especially didn’t want Lotty feeling sorry for him.
‘I was perfectly happy as long as I could be here at Mhoraigh.’ He had told himself that so often, he even believed it. ‘I knew how my father felt and that the estate would go to Andrew eventually, and I’d accepted that. That’s why I joined the Army. If I couldn’t live here, I had no roots, and the military life suited me fine for a while. When my commission ended, though, I wanted to come back to the Highlands. I was thinkin
g about buying a place of my own, and then my father sent for me.’
He stopped, remembering the last time he had seen his father. The churning bitterness and regret he had denied for so long. Why was he telling Lotty all this? What did it matter? He had come to terms with his father’s rejection long ago.
Hadn’t he?
‘He told me that he wasn’t going to change the entail after all. I still don’t know why. Perhaps he thought the estate would be too much of a liability for Andrew. Mhoraigh would be mine, he said, but he was leaving everything else to my stepmother and Andrew. The trouble was that there was no money left after the way they’d all been living these past few years. I daresay Moira thought all the furniture was the least she deserved. Hence the empty house,’ said Corran.
Lotty was a good listener, he realised. She kept her eyes fixed on his face and her head was tilted slightly to one side as she concentrated on what he was saying.
‘It must have been a difficult situation for everyone,’ she said.
‘It wasn’t difficult for me,’ said Corran, rescuing the toast, which had started to burn. He flicked both slices onto a plate and offered them to Lotty, who pushed herself away from the range and came to sit at the table.
‘I didn’t care if they stayed or not, as long as I didn’t have to actually live with them. I offered Moira Loch End House, which is a perfectly decent house, and said she could take any pieces of furniture she wanted, but she chose to go to Edinburgh instead, telling everyone that I’d thrown her out of her home.’
Lotty frowned. ‘Why don’t you tell everyone that’s not the true story?’
‘Because I don’t care,’ Corran said in a flat voice. He put more bread in the toaster and came back to sit at the table opposite Lotty. ‘I understand why Moira is bitter. She always resented the fact that I existed when in her mind Andrew should have been the eldest. I was supposed to go away and not come back, but Mhoraigh was in my blood too.’
He didn’t want to think about his annual visits to see his father, which he had longed for so much and hated at the same time. Andrew was seven years younger than him and the two boys had nothing in common. As a child, he had been bitterly aware that neither his father nor his stepmother wanted him there. Only the hills had welcomed him.
