Reckless Rakes - Hayden Islington

by Bronwyn Scott

  Chapter Two

  The lovely Miss Priess did blush at that but her tone remained firm. “A business proposition.” Her blue eyes flicked briefly in Logan’s direction, making a discreet request for privacy. He would take that as a good sign and if she wanted to refer to her proposition as ‘business’, that was fine with him too. The outcome would be the same and that was all that mattered in the end.

  Ever the master of nuance, Logan took the hint, making excuses about returning to the gentlemen next door. “Refreshments are available, if you desire anything.” Logan nodded towards the side table set against the wall. It was his way of indicating Hayden was free to pursue whatever course of action he wanted. There would be no interruptions from the inn staff delivering food.

  “Ah, mulled wine. Shall I pour you a mug?” Hayden offered to ease the transition of Logan’s departure. It was just the two of them now. Perhaps a little courtesy would thaw her frosty tone, the wine wouldn’t hurt either. Heaven forbid she actually be here to discuss real business. She had the wrong man for that. That was Logan’s specialty.

  “No, thank you. This won’t take long.”

  Hayden raised an eyebrow and helped himself to the wine. “I’m in no hurry. I have all afternoon.” Clearly, she didn’t know him very well. He liked speed, but not in bed where it was all about slow and steady winning the race. “Please, have a seat, Jenna.” He took a chair near the fire and gestured for her to do the same. Lord, she was a beauty. He watched her arrange her skirts. There were long legs beneath them, he’d wager. He was a breast man himself, but long legs never hurt.

  Hayden settled back in the chair, stretching his legs out until his boots rested on the fender of the fire place. It was time to get comfortable. “What is it that you’ve come to, ah, ‘discuss’? The race? Did you see it? There was quite the situation out there on the turn. That can be dangerous when a horse goes down, it puts all the riders in jeopardy.”

  Her features settled into a frown of impatient tolerance. “No, Mr. Islington, I’m not here to talk over the race. I’ve come to discuss something else entirely.” “Well, that’s alright by me. We don’t have to discuss anything at all, if you’d prefer not to.” Maybe what she meant was that she was eager to get down to business and not waste time on small talk. Hayden yanked on his cravat and pulled it free. Now they were getting somewhere. “Perhaps you might give me a hand with my boots?” He could already imagine that derriere of hers bent in his direction as she tugged at his boots.

  Unfortunately, Miss Jenna Priess didn’t share his enthusiasm for the activity. “Mr. Islington, let me be blunt. I am not one of your swooning ladies who are dying to get into bed with you. I’m not even here about racing. I’m here because you were once an investigator and I have need of one.”

  Hayden froze. The past had finally reared its ugly head, here in this remote industrial town. He’d not been expecting it, not here, not now, not from this woman he didn’t know. She might as well have said she needed an escort to the moon. Hayden took a swallow of wine to hide his surprise, to marshal his thoughts.

  “I’m an ice racer now, Miss Priess.” His investigation days were long behind him. His celebrity on ice had long since eclipsed any public recollection of what he used to be and for the better, if you asked him. That she even knew he’d been an investigator was nearly as big of a surprise as the initial request. It provoked a host of questions, not the least being how did she know? Perhaps it had been mentioned in passing in an article promoting the race. He’d have to tell Logan to watch the releases more carefully. The other question was how to play this? He had two choices, give in to the curiosity and shock of her request and ask his questions or brush it off with flirtation and innuendo. Perhaps if he flirted hard enough, she would forego her intentions and forget all about wanting an investigator.

  Always err on the side of discretion. It had been his motto during his investigatory days and it had kept him alive more than once. If he’d always heeded that advice, things might have turned out differently. Hayden let slip the slightest of wicked grins and decided to play a little in the hopes of drawing her out. “So you do need me?”

  He got the reaction he wanted. He’d rather expected he would. Even if she wasn’t indifferent to him, she’d come for real business. She had her pride and she would choke on it before she admitted to the possibility of anything more sensual between them. Miss Priess rose abruptly and pulled on her gloves with short, forceful motions, jamming her fingers into them. “Not in the way you are insinuating, Mr. Islington.”

  “I’m not insinuating, I’m clarifying. Do you need me or not?” He rose too, putting himself in close proximity to her, too close to be decent. But he wasn’t a decent man and it was time she knew it.

  “I need an investigator.” Her green eyes flared but to her credit she did not back away. “While we’re clarifying, I understand your naughty innuendo perfectly well, and to that I say, not in a million years.”

  She might have made a striking exit at that point but she’d forgotten where she’d placed her cloak. Hayden spied it first. His grin widened. Her eyes narrowed as she divined his intent and she moved fast to pre-empt it but his legs were longer and he moved faster. Hayden picked up the cloak and held it out for her, knowing full well it would gall her to take even this small gentlemanly gesture from him.

  His hands lingered at her shoulders deliberately as he bent his mouth to her ear, breathing in the welcoming scent of her. “Never is a long time. You might want to keep your options open, Miss Priess.” Lord, she smelled wonderful, like cinnamon and spice, all the good things of a winter kitchen, like a home; nothing at all like the smells he was used to — the sour smell of taprooms, of stale, spilt ale.

  Her neck curved forward as she focused her attention on the fastenings of her cloak — too much attention for a task she’d performed a thousand times before and could likely do blindfolded. Hayden smiled. She wasn’t unaffected by him. He could change her mind about leaving. All he had to do was drop a kiss on the nape of her exposed neck, run his hands down the length of her arms. He shouldn’t. It would not be in his best interest in the long run. There was only trouble and ghosts down that path. It didn’t matter what she wanted him to investigate. He simply wasn’t in that line of work any longer. She would be the persistent sort if he let her stay. What he needed, what he wanted was for her to leave and take her notions of investigating elsewhere.

  “I need an investigator, Mr. Islington.” She turned to face him, effectively removing his hands from her shoulders and taking away his chance for kissing in any case, her words affirming his perception. He’d guessed right about the persistence. He took her hand, encased inside smooth, expensive leather. The woman had good taste and the money to indulge it from the fur at her neck to the gloves on her hands.

  He kissed her knuckles one more time. “I regret to inform you, an investigator is something I haven’t been for a very long time, Miss Priess. It’s a wonder you even knew to ask. How did you know?”

  “A little bird told me.” She pulled at her hand but this time he didn’t let it go. He needed to know. He pressed on with a sly rejoinder.

  “Really? Haven’t they all flown south for the winter?” This was a sharper flirtation than earlier. They were fencing now. She’d encroached on private territory and he was forced to defend it.

  “I haven’t time for your games, sir. I have several mill workers who have gone missing and a father who may be wrongly accused of crimes he has no knowledge of if I can’t find the workers. I came here looking for honest help.” She gave him a derisive look. “And what I found was you.”

  That stung. She had definitely prodded a sleeping bear with her sharp tongue. Hayden folded his arms across his chest, common sense warring with his pride. He was an ice racer now. His investigatory days were over and for good reason. He couldn’t help her, he shouldn’t help her. Yet, that fatal twinge of chivalry, that desire to help others which had driven him into investigatio
n work in the first place was starting to stir. It didn’t help that the woman standing before him was beautiful, proud and desperate.

  Oh she was desperate alright, a classic casebook study of desperation in fact. He’d learned to see the signs. The prouder someone was, the more they tried to hide how desperate they really were. She’d hidden it in her frosty tones, in the fine impeccable quality of her clothes, all of it designed to suggest she was a woman who didn’t need anyone when in reality she needed someone badly. Quite badly if she’d resorted to looking for him.

  “I have obligations while I’m here. My time isn’t necessarily my own.” Hayden iterated his excuses — very valid excuses, he thought. He, Carrick and Logan were slated to be here for the latter part of winter, however long that lasted. Hopefully until the first of March if the ice held. They had the race today, a few races later and then they were using Kendal as a base for other visits nearby.

  “It may not take that long and I can pay you handsomely. Two hundred pounds.” she pushed, her stubborn pride perhaps sensing an opening in what others would have taken as a polite refusal. He’d meant to use his commitments as an excuse. But she saw the hope in it for her. Commitments bound him to the area. He would be here for the duration. She swallowed hard. “Please.”

  Hayden could feel himself starting to prevaricate. There were so many reasons he shouldn’t do this. It went against the grain of common sense. It was a side of his life he’d left behind. And not the least of those reasons — Logan would be furious. Yet, looking at her, seeing her desperation, he didn’t not want to do it. Nor did he like the insinuation that he had somehow fallen short of her expectations.

  So be it. He would leave it up to her. Hayden issued a dare-wrapped dismissal. He let go of her hand and swept her a bow. “My regrets, Miss Priess. What you see is what you get. As you said, you came looking for an investigator and you found me. If you think you can settle for that, come back tonight.”

  Come back tonight? Did he think her utterly naïve? Or did he still believe she was another desperate doxy eager to get into his bed? Neither of the options were flattering depictions of her character. Jenna was still fuming over his challenge when she arrived home. Hayden Islington was a cad. A heart-stoppingly gorgeous cad, but a cad nonetheless.

  She’d come to him with an honest inquiry and he’d answered her with flirtation and innuendo, which to her shame, she’d not been unaffected by as much as she would have liked. If he’d meant his playful overtures to act as distractions, they’d worked to some degree. Hayden Islington was an undeniably handsome devil of a man with sharp blue eyes that weren’t afraid to laugh, a tousled, tawny mess of thick hair the color of wild honey and that mouth of his was quite possibly the wickedest mouth she’d ever seen on a man — not that she should have been noticing given the nature of her business. But she had noticed. With the merest of smiles, that mouth invited her to envision kissing those lips, or being kissed by them. Her imagination had taken that invitation.

  If her business with him had not been so dire, she might have been derailed from her purpose altogether. He flirted quite nicely, quite expertly and what red-blooded woman with an ounce of fire to her didn’t appreciate that sort of attention once in a while. Once in a long while. That sort of attention could get a girl into trouble and well she knew it. She’d been too innocent for her own good once. Just once, but that had been all it took for her to learn her lesson when it came to handsome devils.

  She’d naïvely not anticipated Hayden Islington would fall into that category when she’d sought him out. The fact that he did had taken her entirely unaware. She’d blindly focused on the stereotype that investigators were gruff, stocky, older men that were balding and smelled of odd, cheap places. But Hayden Islington had upended those notions the moment he’d stepped into the room, potent and masculine in all the best ways.

  Even so, she should have been immune to those good looks and easy manners simply because she knew better. She neither wanted nor needed any part of what he offered with his flirtatious eyes and provocative innuendos.

  Jenna pulled off her gloves and set them on the polished console in the hall, frustrated at herself for her reaction and with him for knowingly encouraging it. She’d just begun undoing her cloak when her brother Daniel stepped out of the sitting room, relief on his face at the sight of her.

  “You have a visitor.” He mouthed the next words, “It’s Davenport.”

  Jenna froze. Her foreman was here. That was dangerous. She didn’t want him to see her at her most vulnerable, in her own home with no one but a sick father and young brother. She far preferred to meet with him at the factory where there was no chance of her father catching wind of their situation and where there were reminders everywhere of who was in charge; her office, her desk. The idea that Davenport even thought he could call on her at home suggested he was starting to question her authority or worse, that he imagined he could take certain liberties, could aspire to a relationship with her that transcended employer and employee.

  Jenna smoothed her skirts and kept her voice calm. “Thank you, Daniel. Why don’t you go upstairs while I talk with our guest?” Daniel would know what that meant. He was to go look after father, to make sure news of Davenport’s visit didn’t reach him, didn’t worry him.

  She entered the sitting room and pasted on a polite smile with her greeting. “Davenport, what a surprise. I thought we weren’t scheduled to meet until tomorrow at the mill.” It was where she preferred to meet with him. At the mill she was surrounded by the trappings of her authority — an office, a desk. At the mill, her weaknesses weren’t exposed or perhaps the mill was public ground of a sort. Her home was private and he was an intruder here.

  Davenport rose, belatedly remembering to play the gentleman. He might have been an officer in his previous career but he wore the manners of a gentleman like an ill-fitting suit of clothes. “My dear, you have been out. The cold has put some color in your cheeks.”

  Not an intruder, an invader, Jenna amended. He dared too much with the appellation. “I am not your dear, Davenport. You overstep yourself.” She remained standing. This was a subtle battle for authority, fought with careful words and postures. To sit would invite conversation as would ringing for tea. She did neither. She wanted Davenport here as little as possible. Davenport was a tenacious man best left unencouraged. Tea or a chair would be all the opening he’d need to feel emboldened in his pursuit.

  Where another man would have been put off by her rejection, Davenport merely ignored it and forged ahead with his conversation. “I came to see if there was any news of young Paulie.”

  “I will send word if there is any news.” Jenna said coolly. It was an answer and a dismissal. Davenport knew it too. Something akin to anger flashed through Davenport’s eyes but was gone almost instantly, his face softening its hard features. He stepped towards her and she was careful to stand her ground.

  “You don’t need to be strong for me.” His voice was low, private. It was a tone reserved for close friends or more. It was entirely inappropriate. “These are troubling times for you. I don’t pretend to know the depths of your struggles. You won’t share them. But I am here for you.” Another woman, a less discerning woman, might have found Davenport attractive. The features were there — the thick brown hair, the brown eyes that could be chocolate soft or agate hard, the strong line of his jaw, the brackets at his mouth that defined him as a man of experiences, who had seen something of the world.

  However, Jenna did not find him appealing. He lacked a certain nuance, a polish to mark him as a man of distinction.

  Oh, he aspired to distinction, but he did not achieve it. There was something indefinably coarse about him. He lacked a nobility of character. But he’d been an officer — even if a low ranking one — and he’d been available when her father had needed him.

  “Let me help you.” He renewed his request.

  Jenna offered a frosty smile. “You are my foreman, Davenport. It is n
ot your place to help me.”

  His features hardened. He did not like being put down by a woman although he tried to hide it. “I am your father’s foreman. What I am to you could be refined if you so wished. I am a patient man, Miss Priess. My offer stands.” He gave her a curt nod of his head and gathered up his coat to depart.

  It was not the first time, he’d found her behavior displeasing. Neither was the first time he’d pushed his personal agenda despite it. Jenna waited until he was gone before she sat. Davenport’s ambitions were becoming problematic. He found her displeasing and yet he dared to put himself forward as a suitor. His efforts were not even subtle. He wanted the factory and he was willing to marry for it. If she gave him an inch, he’d take matrimony.

  The door had barely closed when eager footsteps sounded on the staircase. Her brother clattered down the steps, his voice excited and loud in the quiet of their home as the questions began. “Did you see him? What was he like? How was the race?” Daniel was fourteen and he’d been furious that morning because she hadn’t taken him with her to see the notorious ice racer. “Were there any crashes?”

  Jenna laughed at his exuberance. “There was one crash. A horse went down and Islington jumped it rather than give up the lead.” Her reaction to that event had been much like her reaction to the man; mixed. At the time, she’d wanted to be enraged over the foolishness of taking such a chance and at the same time, she’d not been able to look away. Daniel would have loved every moment of the drama. She wished she could have taken him, he had little enough excitement in his life but her business wasn’t suitable for a child and she didn’t want him to worry.

  “Cor! He jumped over a horse? On ice?” Daniel gave a wistful sigh full of disbelief. “I can’t believe I missed it!” He gave her a reproachful stare. He squared his shoulders, suddenly looking more mature than he had a moment ago. “But it’s a good thing I was here. Father was asking for you. He wanted to know where you’d gone.”