Pride After Her Fall

by Lucy Ellis

  He shoved the aviators into the back pocket of his jeans and settled his arms by his sides—stance widened, pure masculine intimidation.

  ‘Anything to say for yourself?’

  He was pumping out lots of frustrated testosterone, which was making her a little nervous, but she couldn’t really blame him. He wanted another man to punch on the nose and he’d got her.

  He clearly didn’t know what to do about that.

  She lifted a trembling hand and smoothed down her hair.

  ‘Are you high, lady?’

  Lorelei was so busy staying her ground that his questions hadn’t quite penetrated, but now that he was turning away the last one landed on her with a thump.

  ‘Pardon?’

  But the guy was already focussing his entire attention back on the car, his hands on those lean, muscled hips of his as he eyed the Bugatti nose-deep in the rose bushes.

  Giorgio was muttering in Italian, and the guy said something to him in his own language. Before her eyes the men appeared to be bonding over their shared outrage about the car. Freed from that penetrating stare, Lorelei frowned.

  Well, really.

  This wasn’t how the man-meets-Lorelei scenario was supposed to play out. Her Italian was minimal, at best, and she didn’t like the feeling of being forcibly held at bay by her inability to understand what was being said.

  She was also a little piqued at being ignored.

  And she most definitely didn’t like being intimidated.

  She cocked a hip, one slender hand resting just below her waist.

  ‘So, do you think you can extract it before it does any more damage to my flowers?’

  Giorgio muttered something like, ‘Madonna!’

  Good—now she’d get a little action.

  The man’s broad shoulders grew taut, and as he turned around she felt her bravado flicker uneasily. His movements were alarmingly deliberate—as if this was his estate, Giorgio his employee and she was trespassing on his land. A stone-cold stare slammed into her. He suddenly seemed awfully big, and Lorelei knew in that instant he wasn’t amused, he wasn’t charmed and he wasn’t going to be easy.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, lady,’ he said, his expression giving no ground, ‘you’re screwed.’

  Her reaction was fierce and immediate. She hated this feeling. She’d been dealing with it for too long. It felt as if all she’d done lately was shoulder the blame. So this time it was her fault, but for some reason his anger felt disproportionate and just plain unfair. It was too much, coming on top of everything else.

  Who cared about a silly car when her life was coming apart at the seams?

  So she did what she always did when a man challenged her, called her to account or tried to make himself king of her mountain. She brought out the big guns. The ones she’d learned from her beloved, irresponsible father.

  Wit and sex appeal.

  Lorelei dipped her glasses and gave him full wattage.

  ‘I can hardly wait,’ she purred.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FROM her rumpled appearance she had clearly just rolled out of bed, and for one out-of-bounds moment Nash had a strong urge to roll her back into it.

  Hardly surprising. She was a striking-looking woman who exuded a sultry, knowing sensuality that could have been a combination of her looks and the way she moved her body and displayed it, but he sensed came from the essence of who she was.

  In another era she would have embodied the romantic idea of a courtesan. A woman who required a great deal of money to keep the shine on her silky curls, the glow in her honeyed skin and her eyes from straying to the next main chance.

  Yeah—another time and another place this could go down a lot differently.

  A man like him…a woman like her…

  But not today.

  Not now.

  And it didn’t have a lot to do with the car.

  With a media circus about to start up around him again, this smouldering blonde had a little bit too much attitude to burn. He might as well slap a big no-go sticker on that shapely ass of hers. She fairly neon-glowed with sex of a crazy, messy kind, and tempted as he was he couldn’t afford to be indiscriminate—not this close to race-start. He’d do well to remember that.

  Although his first impression of this woman had been of something quite different. When she’d first emerged for a timeless instant he’d seen only a tall, delicately built girl as graceful and hesitant as a mountain deer. She’d given him pause. For a moment there he hadn’t wanted to shift a muscle in case he scared her off.

  Then she’d looked right at him and headed for the Bugatti.

  And right now her hands were on her hips and the glamour-girl in her was in full flow. Which was when he noticed something rather more down to earth. She wasn’t wearing much. Or rather what she was wearing was advertising the lack of anything else.

  Trying to be a gentleman, he dragged his attention upwards. But he needn’t have bothered. She was clearly unfazed, and his cynicism about who she was and the price she put on herself lodged into place—because, despite his initial impression of something better, blondie was pure South of France glamour. If he upended her she probably had “Made on the Riviera” stamped on the soles of her pretty bare feet.

  For a moment she’d looked a little thrown. He didn’t know if she was embarrassed to be caught out or simply defensive because she didn’t like being in the wrong. Frankly, he didn’t care.

  He cared about the car.

  He whipped out his cell, punched in a number.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, lady, you’ve committed a felony. That car is a work of art and a treasure, and you’ve trashed it.’

  She dragged off the huge sunglasses and a pair of pale-lashed doe eyes regarded him with a fair degree of astonishment. As if he were massively overreacting.

  Nash knew he was staring back, but after the clothes and the attitude he just hadn’t expected amber-brown, slightly tip-tilted, lovely… The eyes of a gentle fawn.

  ‘I haven’t trashed anything,’ she countered in that low, sexy voice of hers.

  Nash folded his arms, still shaking off the effect of those eyes. Somehow she was going to try and take the moral high ground. This should be good.

  ‘It might be a little scratched—that’s all,’ she conceded. ‘I suppose there are only a couple of thousand in the world—’

  ‘Eight,’ he said grimly. ‘There are eight left in the world.’

  For a moment he fancied he saw her take a deep swallow, but she continued on blithely, like a pretty blonde lemming running over a cliff.

  ‘Seven more than this one—not such a catastrophe, non?’

  He stared at her.

  ‘Besides, it’s man-made.’ She smoothed her hands over the gentle swell of her hips, drawing attention to the obvious fact that she wasn’t.

  ‘Nice move, doll,’ he drawled, following the movement of her hands. ‘You’re very pretty, and I’m sure you’ve got men lining up down the drive, but conscienceless women do nothing for me.’

  Her hands stilled on her hips. She looked slightly shocked, and for a moment he wondered if it was another ploy, then she lifted her chin and said coolly, ‘Perhaps you can get the parts and fix it?’

  He could fix it?

  Despite his irritation Nash almost laughed. Was she serious?

  ‘Yeah, that easy,’ he drawled, losing his battle not to pay too much attention to her silk nightgown, or something resembling one, and its faithful adherence to the lines of her body.

  In particular when she moved—as she was doing now—it became highly revealing. The silk clung to the long, slender length of her legs, the jut of streamlined hips and the delicate curve of her clearly braless breasts. His body shifted up to speed. She rivalled the Bugatti in terms of fine lines.

  He’d lied. She did do something for him.

  ‘Looking for something?’ Her voice was suddenly sharp, and it had lost its sleepy sexiness.

  Nash drag
ged his gaze from the view to find those amber eyes observing him rather shrewdly. She’d clearly ditched the princess-without-a-clue act.

  ‘Yeah,’ he responded dryly. ‘A conscience.’

  She folded her arms, as if discovering some long-lost modesty.

  ‘Oh, it’s there,’ she drawled, ‘you just have to rattle around for it a bit.’

  It was one hell of a line.

  Against Nash’s will a smile ghosted across his mouth. Not such a dumb blonde after all.

  ‘I’ll take a pass.’

  ‘Shame.’ This was said with a little toss of those curls as she walked towards the scene of her crime: the rear end of the Bugatti. ‘But I’m sure it can be fixed. It’s only tipped into some roses bushes after all—a little scratched paint at most.’ She looked at him over her shoulder. ‘Nothing to get all worked up about.’

  Was it his heated imagination or in that moment did she drop her gaze infinitesimally below his belt?

  He could hear one of his people speaking on the other end of the phone. He lifted it momentarily and said, ‘Give us a minute, mate.’

  ‘Have you changed your mind?’ She paused deliberately—it could only be deliberate with this woman. ‘About the car?’

  ‘Nothing’s changed, sweetheart, except your fine day.’

  He watched the confidence dip slightly out of her body, and oddly it didn’t give him the satisfaction he would have anticipated.

  ‘Expect a bill.’

  She notched up her chin. ‘Can I expect anything else?’

  ‘Yeah—a lecture from your old man about why messing around with another guy’s wheels can get you into all sorts of trouble.’

  For a moment she looked at him as if she was going to say something about that, and for some reason he found he was hanging on her answer.

  Instead she pushed back her tousled hair, gave him a distracted smile, as if she knew something he didn’t, and headed back the way she’d come.

  He wouldn’t have been a red-blooded man if his gaze hadn’t moved inexorably to what he had noticed before: a very shapely behind. It was like a perfect peach, all high and perky under the clinging silk of whatever it was she was wearing—or not wearing.

  Vaguely he became aware that the old Italian bloke was glaring at him, and he dragged his eyes off the view.

  ‘The car is not so damaged you need to frighten her,’ grumbled the older man, ‘and you can keep your eyes to yourself. Miss St James is a nice woman. She does not ask for all this trouble.’

  Nash could hear the disembodied voice coming from his cell, but he was slightly bemused by the lecture being delivered to him in hot, angry Italian. Who was this guy? Her father?

  ‘I know your type, with the flashy car. You want to find some loose woman, you go into town.’

  Loose woman? What was this? 1955?

  ‘No, mate, I just want the car. Fixed.’

  He was tempted to gun the Veyron and leave the Bugatti to its fate. But it went against the few principles he had left. The old girl was a treasure, and she deserved to be treated like the lady she was.

  He settled the pick-up details and was strolling over to the Veyron when he was distracted by the very distinctive sound of high heels hitting flagstones.

  ‘Miss St James’ had re-emerged in silky white pants, which were swishing around her long legs, some sort of floaty, shimmery silky green top, which barely skimmed the tops of her arms and left her shoulders bare, and she’d applied bright crimson lipstick to that smart mouth of hers. Although her eyes were impenetrable behind those ridiculously large sunglasses she had a faint smile on her lips as she headed over to a boat of a convertible parked by the garden wall. He watched her climb in.

  He was done here. He still wanted the car, and he wanted it fixed. But first he’d deal with the thorny question of why the Bugatti was nose-down in a bunch of roses.

  ‘Hold it, sweetheart.’

  She paused from rummaging in her bag, pointed chin angled over her shoulder, shades lowered, eyes assessing. ‘Is there something else?’ she enquired civilly.

  Yeah, too civil.

  He knew how to get his point across—how to use leashed aggression as a weapon in the male-dominated industry in which he’d shouldered his way up to the top.

  He was somewhat stymied by the fact that as he approached the car she smiled, and her whole face softened, became sensuously lovely, almost expectant.

  ‘Before you rip out of here,’ he drawled, leaning in, ‘just a word of advice.’

  ‘Advice?’

  ‘Lawyer up.’

  Her smile flickered and faded. But before he could read her expression she pushed the shades abruptly up her face.

  ‘As much as I like being tumbled out of bed by a handsome man and lectured to,’ she shot out rapidly, her words scrambling over one another, ‘I do have an appointment and this is all getting rather complicated.’ She gave him a haughty look. ‘If there is any damage to the car, add it to the bill, why don’t you?’ She zipped up her bag and muttered something about it being just one more thing to add to the list.

  She wasn’t stupid, Nash thought, looking down at all those bright pretty curls, but her sense of self-preservation was clearly running on zero. Didn’t she realise if she was a man he would have hauled her out of that car and done what was necessary?

  Maybe she did. Maybe she was relying on her woman status to keep her out of harm’s way.

  He reached in and palmed her keys.

  ‘Hey!’

  He levelled her with a look and had the satisfaction of seeing her back up in her seat.

  ‘Yeah, about that. The world doesn’t run on your timetable, princess.’

  Her expression was hidden behind those shades, but the pulse at the base of her slender throat was pounding and the old bloke’s accusation about her being a nice woman and him frightening her returned full strength.

  He dropped the keys into her lap.

  ‘Just as a matter of interest—mine, not yours, doll—how did the car end up in the garden?’

  She fumbled to start her engine and he frowned. He wanted her to understand the consequences of her carelessness, but he didn’t bully women.

  She started up the engine, not looking at him.

  ‘I think that would be when I left the handbrake off,’ she responded, and without another word reversed fast in a cloud of dust.

  *

  Douleur bonne, what did she think she was doing?

  Lorelei held on tight to the wheel as she tore up the drive, her heart pounding out of her chest. She just had to get away before the handsome stranger wrecked everything.

  Alors, she could have just offered up a standard apology and volunteered to pay for all repairs. A more prudent woman would have done just that. But prudence wasn’t her forte lately…

  She just wanted today to be a nice day.

  One more day.

  Was it too much to ask?

  She licked her dry lips, dragged her bag over as she drove, fumbled for her lipstick.

  Don’t think about it, she told herself, swiping her lower lip with the crimson colour, making a mess of it.

  She braked, dropped the lipstick, fished it from her lap and hooked off her sunglasses impatiently to restore her face with a tissue in the rear-vision mirror.

  For a moment all she saw were her eyes, huge and dilated and vulnerable.

  Taking a deep breath, she put herself back in order and forged onto the highway, determined to put this behind her. Oui, she’d had a bad start to the day, but that didn’t mean anything, and it wasn’t that bad. Despite the trembling of her hands on the wheel she’d had a little fun, hadn’t she? She was sorry about the car, but it hadn’t been intentional and it was only a little scratched. She was a good person, she’d never hurt anyone on purpose in her life, she wasn’t careless with other people’s property; she wasn’t a criminal…

  Her heart had started pounding again.

  Best not to think about it.
r />   She depressed the accelerator, the wind tugging at her hair. Perhaps if she drove a little harder it would help.

  She was living harder, too. She’d really pushed the boat out last night. In fact thinking about it made her feel a little sick.

  She had positively, absolutely drunk too much. She’d flirted with the wrong men and her attention had definitely not been on her borrowed adornment for the twenties-themed party. When someone had pointed out a couple of the younger partygoers, climbing all over it, she had moved it herself, parking the vehicle in the private courtyard. Clearly she hadn’t put the handbrake on.

  Why hadn’t she remembered to put the handbrake on?

  For that matter, why had she behaved so poorly this morning? Why hadn’t she apologised and done her best to smooth things over? Perhaps the better question was, what was she trying to prove? Was she that desperate for attention? For somebody to realise she needed help?

  Brought up short by the thought, Lorelei let her foot retreat from the accelerator.

  Did she need help?

  The notion buzzed just out of focus. Certainly she wouldn’t be asking any of her friends, none of whom had offered even a word of sensible advice since this whole nightmare began. Could she even call any of those people at her home last night friends? Probably not.

  It didn’t matter. At the end of the day a party merely meant she wasn’t alone. She hated being alone. You couldn’t hide when you were alone…

  In the rear vision mirror she caught a flash of red. Instinctively she depressed the accelerator. The car did nothing. She tried again and realised she was pumping her foot. Panicking slightly, although this had happened before, she gently stood on the brakes, bringing the car to a slow standstill on the roadside. She saw the sports car flash past in a blur of red and ignored the pinch in her chest because he hadn’t even slowed down. Not that she could blame him.

  Had she really expected him to stop?

  There was nothing for it but to turn off the engine for five minutes before taking it easy going down into town. The Sunbeam Alpine had been playing up for weeks. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  Laying her elbow on the door and pressing her head against her hand, she closed her eyes, allowing the sun on her face to soothe the surging anxiety that threatened to sweep everything before it.