by Jane Linfoot
He let out one disgusted snort, and raised his hand to add a knock, but before his knuckle made contact, the door flew open.
Bang. Hot sweet woman. His head reeled as her scent hit him full on.
‘Absolutely ready Brando! Or I will be in two minutes … ’
So he was right. Of course she wasn’t ready!
He leaned on the doorframe, and drummed his fingers idly, as she spun back into the room. Took in a shapely little black dress. No sleeves. A brave choice at Edgerton, in late October. High, high heels. And black lace stockings that made the backs of her calves look delectable as she walked away from him, then propelled his libido into the stratosphere as she knelt down in front of the fireplace. Yanking his lust firmly into line, he noticed that whatever the fire in his groin was doing, the fire in the grate wasn’t blazing.
‘I’d better help with that. Much as you need to learn about the rigors of life in a stately home, I’d hate you to be cold tonight.’ As he strode over, he caught the chestnut glint in her swept-up hair, then the exposed nape of her neck, as she bent over the hearth.
White and vulnerable. His gut gave a twist of guilt at the thought of using and dispatching her. Except she’d walked into this, dammit, and hell, he knew better than to be taken in by downy napes of necks. This woman was here to play for high stakes. A swift dispatch was nothing less than she deserved, and if a tumble in the manorial bed was what was needed to achieve that, he was more than willing to go down that road, but the more he saw of those curves, the hotter that end game was shaping up to be.
As he knelt down next to her by the fire, he let his thigh bump lightly against hers. She jerked away from him, and the poker she was holding clattered onto the hearth.
Jumpy or what?
Picking up the poker, he riddled the embers back to life energetically. He knew Mrs McCaul always checked the fires, but what the heck? It was worth it, for the tease – and the insanely sexy blast of lace stretched taut across Shea’s knees. Perhaps his judgement hadn’t been so clouded after all. The promise of what was to come was looking sweeter by the second.
‘Thanks for helping with that! I’m not used to coal fires. I’ll just get my phone.’ She stood up, and the grateful smile she flashed down at him as she unfolded those glorious legs sent his stomach into a crazy freefall for the second time that day. He regularly threw his body through corkscrew twists and flips, but hauling Shea Summers into the house earlier that day had sent his insides spinning like never before. And now it had happened again, dammit.
‘Forget your phone. There’s no signal at all here. Another of the wonders of Edgerton! Are you coming then?’ he snapped, before he jumped up, marched through the doorway, and strode off down the landing.
No way was he looking back. The floorboards, creaking under her uneven high-heeled lurches, told him she was following closely behind, and he only slowed as he reached the dining room door. As he threw it open, stepping back to let her pass, a freezing gale slammed him in the face. Ha! Just as he’d expected. Despite the roaring fire, the lofty room was bitterly cold and inhospitable. Miss Shea made-in-a-day Summers was about to experience the full glory of the west dining room.
‘Come on in! I see you lost the glasses then!’
He’d noticed in her bedroom, but the full effect floored him now, as he saw her head-on. High cheekbones, gently turned-up nose, and the fullest lips. Disarmingly pretty. Very different without the big frames. He’d had her down as pushing thirty, but now, despite the confident jut of her chin, he doubted she was even twenty five.
She skimmed past him into the room, and he heard her gasp as the cold hit her, saw pale goosebumps springing out on her arms as he moved to pull out a heavy mahogany chair for her. Across the white damask tablecloth the candle flames stuttered in the draught, and suddenly, showing her the uncomfortable reality of life in a stately pile was starting to feel like poor judgement. Arriving opposite her, he got the full effect of her ample chest complete with erect nipples, sticking prominently through the thin fabric of her dress, no doubt whipped to attention by the chill.
Double jeopardy.
Definitely a bad call. He felt his blood surge south. Damn. He was in for an uncomfortable evening all round.
‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go and get something warmer … ’ She’d gone before he had time to reply, and when she returned she had added a sharp tailored jacket. Marks out of ten for passion killers? He’d give an eleven. At least that sorted the immediate too-exciting nipple problem.
‘Desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that!’ She flashed violet eyes at him, and something in their mocking glint told Brando she was ahead of his game. ‘Sorry about the style clash, but I haven’t brought my arctic gear with me. I’d have taken the time to put jeans on, but we wouldn’t want dinner to get cold, would we?’
Back in the room, and looking like someone from a head office boardroom, complete with an identity name-tag hanging from her lapel.
‘You really haven’t brought anything warmer with you?’ He watched in disbelief as she shook her head. What kind of numbskull would rock up to a draughty hole like Edgerton without so much as a sweater?
‘Nope. Sorry. I’m a central heating girl, and I wasn’t expecting glacial, so you’re stuck with me in my O 4 Organise work gear.’
‘I’ll go and find you something more … ’ He left the room before bothering to finish.
Suitable, hot, sexy? Warm maybe?
Any of the above – he wasn’t fussy. Sure, he didn’t want her here, and yes, he did suspect her motives, but hell, he wasn’t completely heartless. He’d meant for her to understand that country houses weren’t always luxurious, not for her to catch pneumonia. As for what the whole O-4 thing was all about, he was still praying she wasn’t some high powered dominatrix when he came back moments later, and dropped two cashmere sweaters in her lap.
‘There you go, Madame Chairman, they’re mine, but they’re warmer than anything else you’ve got here. Put them on, and tell me what the heck O 4 Organise is.’ He watched intently as she peeled away her jacket, and pulled on his own jumpers. How could she look so sexy wearing two men’s sweaters?
‘Thanks, that’s much better.’ She was rolling the sleeves back now, pushing dislodged pins back into her hair. ‘O 4 Organise is the exclusive personal organising company I work for. I run the Manchester end. I thought I was going to be able to put my expertise to good use here, but to be honest it all looks a lot less chaotic than the shots I saw on the programme.’
He had a vague memory of the TV crew deliberately trashing the annexe to get the shots they needed, when views of endless rooms under dust sheets had failed to excite them.
‘Never believe what you see on TV.’ He spat the words out with a rueful shake of his head.
‘But Bryony said … ’
He jumped in and cut her short. ‘Rule One when dealing with Bryony: Never believe what she says.’ Then he kicked himself for not waiting to hear exactly what Bryony had said. No doubt it would make for interesting listening, and he may well have asked, but just then, Mrs McCaul arrived with dinner.
Brando dug into the steaming beef stew and dumplings with gusto, hoping to mask his unease. He usually ate on the hoof, snatching a sandwich in the office, or grabbing a takeaway in front of the TV. Formal meals didn’t figure on his agenda, and he never ate with women. Strawberries and liquid chocolate consumed from a platter of bare flesh aside, if he was with a woman it was for sex, not food. So the double assault on his system, of Mrs McCaul’s substantial supper and a hot woman eating opposite him, was throwing him off. Between forkfuls he tried to decide if Shea was mentally undressing him with those scathing looks of hers, or simply trying to peer into his soul.
It was some time, and a lot of stew later, when she finally struck up meaningful conversation. ‘So where in Scotland are we exactly?’
Brando gave her a hard stare. ‘Who told you Edgerton was in Scotland?’
>
‘I’m not sure, didn’t it say that on the programme?’ She hesitated, her fork halfway to that delectable mouth of hers.
‘There you go, what did I say about not believing everything you hear on TV?’ He gave a snort of laughter. ‘To be fair, they did keep the location a secret, but I’m damned sure no-one said anything about Scotland. The only Scottish thing about here is Mrs McCaul and her full-on Edinburgh accent!’
‘Okay … ’ He watched Shea’s eyes widen, then her brows furrowed as she processed this nugget. ‘So where are we then?’
‘Classified information here, I hope you can be trusted. Edgerton is in the Cotswolds.’ He bit back his smile as he tried to contain his laughter.
‘Sorry. Not helpful.’ She shook her head and looked blank. ‘You’ll have to be more specific. Cotswolds doesn’t mean anything to me. Where’s it near?’
This he found hard to believe. Had to be a wind-up, but he’d play along. ‘Cirencester, Cheltenham, Gloucester?’ She still looked blank. He’d try something easier. ‘Oxford?’
She thought hard, scrunched her lip, shook her head. ‘Still not helpful. Maybe if I saw it on a map?’
Brando stopped chewing, put down his knife and fork. This he found hard to believe.
‘What?’ Shea’s shriek was high and defensive. ‘So! I don’t have the geography gene! I can’t help it! I don’t know where anywhere is, unless I’ve been there, if I don’t see it on a map. We can’t all be perfect and know everything. I don’t have the history gene either come to that, but there are a lot of things I can do, and do very well, so back off!’
So Shea-what-do-you-say might have a great ass, but she didn’t have the first clue where she was, and what’s more she wasn’t trying to hide the fact, nor did she feel the need to apologise. Interesting combination. And boy did she look feisty when she did angry!
She lowered her eyes for a second, and when she looked up at him again it was with a half smile that spread to a wide grin. ‘When you warned me about getting lost in the house earlier, you were closer to the mark than you thought!’
Zap!
That smile caught him off guard, and smacked him square in the stomach.
‘I think we’ve done enough dining room penance for one day. I’ll get Mrs McCaul to serve pudding by the fire in my sitting room, and I’ll show you a map. We’ll be much cosier there.’
Jeez, had he really just said that!
He asked himself a) where that had come from and b) why the heck he’d used the word cosy. He never said cosy! It was like someone else was operating his mouth. Jeez again! He needed to stop panicking, remember this was his infallible instinct, working to push the situation to a quick conclusion. Hell, a frosty dining room was hardly conducive to the moves he had in mind, and he was aiming to get this whole thing over at break-neck speed. And there was something else he’d noticed. Sure this Shea was sexy enough, with her curves and lively nipples and splashy smiles, but he’d seen the way she flinched when he came anywhere near her, and he’d sensed a curious pent-up tension. Uptight didn’t begin to cover it. A quick tumble in the sack with a man with his taste for wild and wicked was just what was needed to send this woman running for the hills. See her off for good. Job done.
A sudden crush in his groin suggested his libido was in definite agreement.
* * *
Peach cobbler, egg custard, coffee and liqueurs. All in the comfort of the boss’s private sitting room. Cosy was his way of describing it. Too damned intimate was hers.
Shea wondered how she’d let it happen, which part of her active mind hadn’t been functioning. She could only blame the cold for her brain freeze.
Pudding in the snug would have been beyond the limit of her professional boundaries at the best of times. But peering over maps in flickering firelight, with a hunk who set her heart banging horribly every time his arm stretched across and grazed hers? That was in the way-out-of line category. Just the memory of it was enough to make her cringe with guilt. Thank goodness she’d had the sense to make a quick exit.
Back in the safe haven of her room, she stripped off her dress, dragged some shorts over her tights, and slipped one of the borrowed sweaters over her bra, definitely not because it smelled of raw man she assured herself, but because after an hour of wearing it, she was completely addicted to the softness and the warmth. As she pulled the pins out of her hair and dragged her curls into submission, she noticed her useless mobile on the coffee table. A phone call with her mum wasn’t going to happen tonight. No bad thing. She needed time to work out what the heck was going on here.
It wasn’t so much what she’d been doing, but how she was reacting. It should have been completely possible to have got through this evening in a detached, professional manner. Her work constantly put her into intimate environments with men. She regularly marched in, pulled some guy’s bedroom to pieces, put it all together again, and marched right on out. She’d always assumed her ability to freeze advances before they’d even happened was because of her past hanging around her like an invisible force field. That coupled with her ‘no-nonsense’ attitude. She’d worked alongside a whole bunch of clients with less than perfect reputations and had always sailed through unscathed.
Until now.
Which was why she knew the fault here was completely her own.
She’d never been remotely attracted to anyone she’d worked for before, and she’d worked for some very attractive men. But there was a world of difference between recognising that someone was hot, and the full-blown force of attraction itself. And right here it was full-blown force. And she needed to get a grip. Quickly.
Brando Marshall might be good looking, but in every other aspect he was a total nightmare – bad tempered, rude, arrogant, treating his long-term employees with very little respect, and he obviously despised her … Quite a list. Any attraction to him was wrong, wrong, wrong, not to mention crazy. Lucky she’d got a handle on it from the start. Now all she had to do was stamp it out. Starting now.
A sudden rap on her door jolted her to her feet, and set her heart pounding.
‘Shea, your mother’s on the landline for you!’ Brando’s voice rose gruffly over his knock, and sent her stomach into a cartwheel. ‘Take it in my sitting room, or my office if you prefer.’
Damn.
She hadn’t thought her mum would ring tonight, or that she’d be back in the lion’s den so soon, putting her new resolve to the test.
‘Mothers, who’d have them? Sorry about this!’ She shot him an apologetic grimace.
If she went at break-neck pace, if she didn’t look at him, didn’t stop, there wouldn’t be time for anything misplaced or wrong. She threw open the door, whipped past an open-mouthed Brando, and bolted into his sitting room. ‘My mum must be worried that she can’t get through on my mobile and … ’
Damn. She’d got ahead of him here. Now where should she go?
‘Straight on … ’ He arrived behind her, close enough to engulf her with that dangerously delicious scent she so shouldn’t be noticing, and waved an arm towards an open door on the other side of the room, beyond the sofas. She shot through it, and screeched to a halt.
Pink shrimps! She was in his bedroom!
Her heart did a double flip. She’d seen some imposing beds in her time but this one took the biscuit. She tried to ignore how inviting it looked.
His voice came from behind her now ‘ … straight on to the office – the phone’s on the desk.’
Could have been worse. She slammed up to the desk, and grasped the receiver. At least he wasn’t in the bed.
* * *
Brando stood in the sitting room, raking his hands through his hair, watching the minutes tick by on his Rolex. How could a phone conversation with a mother could take so long? Hell, he’d have sat down if he’d realised. He tried to remember the last time he’d spoken to his own mother, and failed. All he needed to say had been said years ago, and none of it good. No need to revisit that one. He hauled
himself back to the present again, as the creaking floor suggested Shea was finally about to emerge from the bedroom.
‘Welcome back to the land of the living! Your mother must be a riveting conversationalist – remind me to say ‘Hi’ to her sometime when I’ve got a free day or two!’
She was hurtling towards him with a scared-rabbit look on her face and her legs a blur.
He hadn’t noticed the detail as she’d flashed past him earlier, but he’d caught enough lace and thigh to make his pulse pound, and he moved to catch a full-frontal view.
Oh man!
How the hell had he missed that? He was going to miss it again if he didn’t move, given that she was hurling herself at the door.
‘Not so fast.’ One swift sidestep, and he’d cut off her escape. Her sweet scent wafted around him as she pulled to a halt, narrowly avoiding landing on his toes. He felt his lips stretch into a broad, unscheduled smile, as he took in the long, curvy lace-covered legs rising to a scant inch of shorts showing below his pale grey sweater. And his lips weren’t the only thing stretching here. With an almighty effort he screwed his smile from ecstatic to sardonic, and watched her push a tangle of hair out of her eyes, grab the v-neck that was sliding way beyond an already exposed shoulder, and turn on him with a wonderfully defiant pout.
This girl was good. Brazen even. Out for what she could get, and not scared to grab it. On principle, he despised her for the grasping audacity that had brought her here, but right now, there was something in her blatant ambition he had to admire. What he had to do next would be so much more enjoyable if he was dealing with an opponent who could hold her own. He liked to play hard-ball, and this girl looked like she’d be whacking them back. Shea Summers had put herself in his firing line and he was going to take her down, fighting and resisting. All the more fun.
