by Amy Andrews
Nathaniel chuckled at her offer. He was learning not to underestimate her, but she’d need to be a bloody genius to work this stuff out without some kind of electronic aid or at least a paper and pen. “I’m good.”
“No, really,” she insisted.
He sighed. He didn’t want her help, but he was beginning to recognize that determined jut to her chin. “I’m pretty damn good at math, too, but multiplying and dividing eight figured numbers off the top off my head with any sort of accuracy is not something to mess with.”
Her gaze didn’t waver as she said, “Try me.”
Nathaniel met it for a long moment, then returned his attention to the sums he’d been working on and prattled off four seven-figured numbers that had to be multiplied and then divided by a five five-figured number with two decimal points.
It took her less than ten seconds to shoot him an answer. “Okay,” he said, amused at her deadpan delivery as he wrote the number down. “And how do I know it’s right?”
She didn’t even blink. “It’s right.”
“If you say so.”
“Get your phone and check.”
Nathaniel reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. He scrolled to the calculator application and did the sum, hitting the equals button. The answer blinked back at him and he stared dumbfounded as it matched the one she’d given him.
He looked up and shot her another sum, doing it on the calculator as he dictated it to her. A dozen sums later, he was staring at her, completely gobsmacked.
She was a genius.
Who owned a crystal shop.
And lived on a boat.
Even knowing about her obviously thriving business—yes, he had noticed the busy store, though he hadn’t realized it was a front for a booming organic food business—the two concepts were hard to wrap his head around.
“Addie, Addie, Addie,” he murmured. “When are you going to stop surprising me?”
Addie’s abdominal muscles clenched as his silky words trailed sticky fingers over her belly, and she drew in a ragged breath of air that felt as thick as soup. She suddenly wished she’d chosen to sit at the other end of the limo.
Hell—she was sitting in a luxurious moving machine that oozed debauchery with a man who looked like he’d invented original sin. She should have been sitting up with Carl, the driver!
Her gaze drifted to the exposed hollow of his throat and the defined ridge of his collarbone before returning to his face. She steeled herself to sound normal. “When are you going to stop judging me?”
He regarded her for a moment and Addie felt a trickle of anxiety. “So, you’re some kind of genius, right?”
“Well…” she hesitated.
Nathaniel’s gaze narrowed. “Spill.”
Addie sighed—she’d bought this upon herself. She’d been showing off. “I was a gifted child, particularly with numbers. My learning was accelerated and I was accepted into Oxford at sixteen, where I studied pure math. I left at twenty with a master’s degree and a job with top-secret clearance in the defense department working in encryption.”
Nathaniel blinked. “You’re kind of unconventional for a genius.”
She gave him a grudging smile. Little did he know, she’d been boringly conventional not that many years ago. “Thank you.”
“Your parents must be very proud.”
She shrugged, looking down at her book, rubbing her palm over the cool pages. “Not really. It was no more than was expected. They’re both internationally renowned physicists. I’m even named after a famous physicist called Adelaide Worthington. I think they would have been most disappointed to end up with an average child.”
“So…what happened?”
Addie looked at him. “I got leukemia.”
She heard the air hiss out of his lungs as he leaned in toward her. A frown scrunched his forehead and he looked shocked. “Oh, God.” He sat up in his seat a little higher. “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
Addie smiled at his awkwardness. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Now. It was a horrible time in my life…there were complications. But it made me reassess my priorities, work out what was important.”
He eyed her for a moment and she swore she could see the cogs working in his brain as he said, “St. Agnes’s. That’s where you had your treatment, right?”
Addie nodded. “That garden was my salvation. The only green thing in a world of gray and white. It fed my soul.” He had the good grace to look uneasy and she pressed her advantage. “It will be a devastating loss to see it go.”
He pursed his lips. “Emotional blackmail won’t work.”
“What will?”
“It’s happening, Addie. You need to get used to that.”
The low certainty in his voice made her shiver. She gave him a ghost of a smile. “We’ll see.”
He shook his head and turned to look out the window for a moment, and Addie castigated herself for pushing too hard too soon. He was obviously determined to have his way and if she didn’t want him shutting down every time she tried to discuss it, she needed to tread carefully.
He turned back. “Are you…is everything okay now?”
Addie was pleasantly surprised by his obvious concern, but her approaching anniversary had been something she’d been trying not to dwell on. “I’ve been in remission for nearly five years. I get my final clearance soon.”
“So what happened after you were better?” he asked after a while. “You just… dropped out?”
Addie nodded. “Pretty much. For a couple of years. Penny and I—Penny’s younger sister, Alice, was sick the same time as me, and she died a month before I finished my last treatment—we bought the Kombi and took off for Europe. Traveled around. Worked here and there. Laughed. Cried. Grieved. Loved. Just…lived, really.”
“And the shop?”
“I talked about doing it all the time I was away. Eating top-quality food is vital when your body is being ravaged so viciously, and meditation helped me so much in those dark days. When we got home, I inherited the Ida May, and Penny and I spent some time renovating it. We drove it from Wales and ended up moored at St. Katherine’s and I knew, I just knew, it was the place I was meant to be.”
She smiled absently, thinking about that amazing trek through the canals of Wales and the midlands with her best friend. She also remembered the sense of coming home she’d had when she’d moored the Ida May in the spot it was now.
She looked up and saw him watching her. “I learned to listen to my gut when I was sick, and it was telling me that St. Katherine’s Docks was my destiny.”
Just like it was telling her saving Nathaniel was her destiny.
“You ever had that feeling?” she asked.
He nodded. ”Of course. I’ve built an extremely successful empire on gut feelings. But I don’t believe in destiny. I believe you make your own path in life through hard work and dedication to your goals.”
Addie sighed. Of course he did.
“And I really should be getting back to it,” he said, and turned to his paperwork like the poster boy for workaholic tycoons.
Who knew destiny could be such a bitch?
Two hours later, they’d left the motorway and were gliding through picture-postcard villages. Addie gave up on the pretense of reading and looked out the window instead as thatched roofs and quaint pubs with brightly colored flower boxes and names like The Cock and Bull and The Royal Artilleryman whizzed by.
It took her back to her time on the canals. She had a sudden thirst for a nice cold lager and a desire to be sitting at one of the outdoor tables soaking up the sunshine.
Which probably had more to do with sitting next to Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Silent than anything else. She had a feeling he was the real reason she’d rather be at a beer garden somewhere drinking in the sunshine.
Great.
Two hours in his company and he was already driving her back to drink. Something she’d given up quite happily during her lifestyle revamp and ha
dn’t missed.
Except for right now.
He was just so…distracting. Sans jacket, his broad chest and fascinating forearms were constantly drawing her eye. And he smelled so damned good—like those spice markets again—a primitive part of her wanted to bury her face in his neck and get a little high.
Not that he was even aware of her interest. Since making it perfectly clear that he had work to do, he hadn’t raised his head—not even when he answered his very annoying continually ringing phone—for the rest of the journey.
Addie thought it was fair to say that he was completely oblivious to his impact on her equilibrium.
Which was a good thing.
She doubted she’d survive if those intense blue eyes ever looked at her with any kind of interest.
Nathaniel Montgomery was the big league.
And she was here to show him the joy of eating the hot dogs, not to play ball.
The car slowed at a roundabout and he finally looked up from his laptop. He peered out the window then glanced at his watch. “We should be there in fifteen minutes.”
Addie felt butterflies dance in her stomach, even though she wasn’t entirely sure the comment had been directed at her. But she took the first opportunity at conversation she’d been presented since she’d told him her life story a couple of hours ago.
“What are they like? Your mother and grandmother?”
She was curious to know about the women in Nathaniel’s life. From what she’d heard on the phone at the hospital, his mother sounded very West Country. She’d come across as warm and loving, concerned for her son, a bit indulgent, even.
Certainly not the type of woman she envisioned could have raised a cold-hearted businessman. No Cruella De Vil or Mommy Dearest.
Maybe that had been his father’s influence?
He looked at her. “They live on an alpaca farm. What do you think they’re like?”
Addie blinked at the way he said “alpaca.” As if the matriarchs of his family were rearing unicorns.
“Well, I’m not quite sure what alpaca farmers really look like—sweet little old ladies who spend their days bottle-feeding baby alpacas, I suppose? I’m guessing not quite as insane as the tone of your voice implies. Probably not as quick to judge, either. Probably appreciate rose gardens a lot more than some.”
She shot him a sweet smile and weathered his exasperated look.
“There is nothing remotely sweet or little-old-ladyish about either of them. They’re loud because my grandmother is a bit on the deaf side and refuses to wear her hearing aid, so they have to yell at each other all the time. They’re opinionated. They’re rabid conservationists. My grandmother thinks she’s a white witch and my mother indulges her. Trust me—they’re quite, quite mad.”
Addie grinned because even through his exasperation, she could hear a grudging affection. “Oh goody, I’ve never met a white witch.”
Nathaniel eyeballed her. “Please do not encourage her.”
Addie bit back the urge to laugh at his stern look. “Okay fine. I’m just saying, they sound like my kind of people.” Rose-garden kind of people.
She felt his gaze sweep from the purple sunglasses perched atop her blond hair to her flip-flops. He sighed. “Yes.”
The car slowed down and Addie looked out the window as the limo turned into a long driveway. She noticed the crooked carved wooden sign proclaiming Hill Top and in the distance on a slight rise, a large stone house.
Nathaniel reached for his jacket and put it on. His grim, “Here we go,” turned the butterflies to elephants.
Nathaniel maneuvered his leg and the crutches out of the car. He could still feel the imprint of her palm on his leg from a couple of hours ago and was trying to fathom how such a fleeting touch could have such a lingering effect. Watching her step out of the limo had compounded his confusion further when her butt swaying at eye level had resulted in a very unwanted occurrence.
The last time he’d gotten an instantaneous erection he’d been thirteen and Miss Ryan, his math teacher, had patted his hand when he’d gotten a particularly difficult equation correct. Of course, the fact that she was also blond and pretty and leaning on his desk in such a way he could just see the lacy edge of her bra probably had more to do with it than her touch. But it was as embarrassing now as it had been then.
He wasn’t used to feeling so out of control. He had a reputation as a very cool customer and he ran his company like a military operation. He did not appreciate deviations or distractions.
And Addie was most definitely a distraction.
In three days, she’d had him regressing to his turbulent teens, which were the usual hormonal nightmare with a side of parental divorce and split loyalties.
Not to mention how she’d already pricked his conscience over the garden with her leukemia revelations.
“Do you need a hand?”
She stood there blinking down at him in her frivolous purple sunglasses, and if it weren’t for the bulge in his underpants, he’d have felt completely impotent as he struggled with the crutch.
Nathaniel Montgomery never felt—never was—impotent.
“I’m fine,” he said testily as he dodged her outreached hand and surged to his feet. The last thing he needed was for her to touch him again—not when he was still suffering the effects from her last effort.
Then the front door swung open and he’d never been more pleased to see his grandmother, her arms flung wide. “Darling!”
Her frizzy gray hair bounced as she hefted her sturdy frame across the cobblestone flagging, hobbling slightly with her arthritic hip and no matter how frustrated he was that he was here when he had so much to do, or how exasperated he got over her wild and wacky carryings-on, a part of Nathaniel recognized the warm welcome of his childhood encoded into every cell of his body.
He grinned at her as she neared. “Hello, Grandy. Still not using that cane, I see.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks,” Eunice Smithson said in her loud, crackly voice as she gave him a fierce hug. “Strong as an ox, I am. Don’t need the damned thing.”
Nathaniel laughed at her typical brushoff concerning her limitations. A cloud of rosewater and lavender, as familiar to him as his fingerprints, enveloped him and he kissed her frizzy head. He noticed she was even wearing her hearing aids for once.
When she stepped back from him, she was looking pointedly at Addie. “Well, come on then, my duck. Introduce us to your lady friend.”
Nathaniel tensed as he saw a very familiar gleam in his grandmother’s eye. He opened his mouth to oblige, but Addie jumped in ahead of him.
“Hi,” she said holding out her hand. “I’m Addie.”
“That’s an unusual kind of name,” Eunice said as she shook the proffered hand.
“It’s short for Adelaide,” Nathaniel supplied.
He watched as his grandmother scrutinized Addie with that wily-old-fox face of hers he didn’t quite trust. “Is it now?” she asked.
That look made him nervous. “After the famous physicist, Adelaide Worthington.”
His grandmother looked at him then flicked her gaze back to Addie. He watched as his grandmother’s gaze zeroed in on Addie’s crystal necklace. “You’re not Nate’s usual type,” she said, addressing Addie directly with her characteristic bluntness.
His grandmother was obviously having a hard time reconciling Addie with the other three women he’d been brave enough to bring here. She didn’t appear remotely convinced.
He leaned heavily on his left crutch as he slid his right arm around Addie’s waist and pulled her in close. She fitted a little too perfectly for his liking and the hitch in her breath along with her slightly stilted laugh annoyed him.
“Guilty as charged, I’m afraid,” Addie said.
His grandmother flicked her shrewd gaze back to him. “Where’d you meet?”
“In Addie’s shop. She works and lives at the docks, too.”
Addie nodded. “On a canal boat.”
“A canal boat?” Eunice quirked a steely gray eyebrow at her grandson. “You don’t say.”
Nathaniel would have preferred to have kept that juicy tidbit quiet, but the conversation had gotten away from him. He couldn’t think beneath his grandmother’s scrutiny and with Addie’s breast squashed against his ribs.
He was about to grapple control of the conversation again when his mother appeared in the doorway, smiling at him.
“Nate, dear,” she said coming forward, wiping her hands on her apron, flour on her face. He was relieved for the opportunity to move away from Addie, as was she, if her quick sideways step was any gauge. “I’m so sorry,” she apologized to both of them as she kissed his cheek. “I was at a critical stage with the scones.”
Addie held out her hand again. “I adore scones,” she said.
Nathaniel’s mother, a younger version of his grandmother, beamed. “Call me Delphine. I have some fresh clotted cream to go with them.”
“Addie was named after a physicist,” Eunice said to her daughter as her sharp gaze continued unabated, making Nathaniel uncomfortably hot in the summer sunshine.
His mother took up the staring gig as she, too, looked Addie over. “She’s not his usual type,” she mused.
His grandmother nodded. “She lives on a canal boat.”
Delphine looked at her son speculatively. “Really?”
Nathaniel looked at both of them, utterly exasperated. “I think it was you who taught me it’s rude to stare, Mother?”
She smiled. “Oh, sorry darling, yes.”
Nathaniel didn’t think his mother sounded particularly contrite—his grandmother certainly wasn’t. She was still staring. “You’re reading again?” she asked.
Nathaniel looked down at the book Addie had given him that he’d absently brought out of the car with him. It was clutched in his left hand, braced against the crutch. “Addie bought it for me.”
Women had bought him a lot of things in the past but never a book. Cufflinks, cologne, expensive brandy, cigars. Lingerie.
Now that was a gift he really appreciated. Especially if the woman in question had thought to get into it first and let him take his time unwrapping it.
