by Kim Lawrence
Paul always had had a thing for redheads—some had even been natural—but he had married a blonde and despite this woman’s attempts to wreck that marriage he still was.
Cesare continued to study the face of the woman who had almost cost his friend his marriage and felt desire as indiscriminate as it was strong twist in his belly.
He could recognise his response, see it for what it was: a primal male reaction to a beautiful woman. Paul hadn’t, but then his friend always had been a hopeless romantic, frequently making the classic mistake of confusing sex with love.
The night in question Paul had followed him out of the restaurant, catching him up as he was about to get in his car. ‘It isn’t what you think.’
Cesare had not responded to his friend’s breathless opening statement. It was not his place to give the approval Paul clearly sought, though why a grown man would need it mystified Cesare.
‘You won’t say anything to Clare? All right, sorry, sorry, I know you wouldn’t.’
Slamming the door of his car, Cesare had turned back to his friend... How could an intelligent man be so stupid? ‘Someone will tell her, though—you must see that. You were hardly being discreet.’
‘I know, I know, but it’s Rosie’s birthday and I wanted to take her somewhere nice. She’s incredible and so beautiful...’
It appeared not to have occurred to Paul that it would suit his mistress if his wife found out and Paul was pushed to make a choice. She must be very confident, Cesare realised.
Backed up against his car, Cesare had adopted a folded-arm stance. It cut down on the temptation to grab his friend by the throat and demand to know what the hell he thought he was playing at, while Paul had given in to the need to unburden himself.
The less Cesare had said, the more Paul had confided in way too much detail. Reading between the lines a picture did emerge and it was a pattern Cesare recognised only too well.
The woman didn’t just know what she was doing in the bedroom—again too much detail—she knew how to manipulate a man by recognising his weaknesses. She had flattered Paul, appealed to his vanity and managed to cleverly awaken his protective instincts.
Cesare was sure that this was a technique she would refine over the years, perhaps becoming as skilled as his own mother, who he had watched work her way across Europe leaving a trail of broken-hearted men in her wake.
‘What would you do if you were me?’
The appeal had irritated Cesare, who could not by any stretch of the imagination imagine himself in a similar situation. For starters he had no plans to marry—ever—but he could see that marriage suited some men and Paul was one of them.
‘I am not you. I thought you and Clare were happy.’
‘We are.’
‘And you love her?’
‘I love them both, of course I do, but Rosie is so...She needs me. If I finished with her it would kill her. She loves me!’
Cesare, who had no taste for drama, had taken this statement with a pinch of salt. His indifference to the feelings or threats of a woman who had embarked on an affair with a married man remained, but, recalling that he had only just resisted the impulse to tell his friend to grow a pair, Cesare felt a stab of guilt.
It was easy to be contemptuous when you hadn’t been close enough to feel the sensuality this woman projected. Her mouth was nothing short of sinful. The full pink curves promising passion to those lucky enough to taste them. As his sympathy for his friend grew so did his distaste for this woman who used her sensuality as a weapon.
‘I will not keep you long, Miss Henderson. Would you like to take a seat?’
As no was not an option Anna did so, very aware of the critical, unfriendly eyes that followed her every move.
‘Miss Henderson travelled up last night on the sleeper train. She must be tired,’ the fatherly local councillor remarked before retaking his seat.
‘You are seeing us at our best. The winter is a long one.’
The inference being presumably that she’d burst into tears at the sight of a snowflake. This from someone who looked as if he’d seen a hell of a lot more sun than she had. And an incomer to boot!
‘Have you lived here long, Mr Urquart?’
Anna was aware of amused glances passing between the other members of the panel. What had she said that was so funny?
‘All my life.’
It was the woman on the panel who explained the joke. ‘The Urquarts of Killaran have historically been generous benefactors to the community and Cesare makes time in his crowded schedule to act as a school governor.’
Anna watched under the shield of her lashes as he sketched a quick smile; he was hard not to watch. His voice too was memorable, deep and velvety with a hint of gravel but no sign of a Highland lilt despite all this Urquart of Killaran stuff. Did that make him a laird or something? It would explain his warm reception, though such a thing as a laird, especially one who looked more like her private image of a pirate, seemed wildly anachronistic to Anna.
What would he look like in a kilt? She managed to swallow the inappropriate giggle produced by the equally inappropriate thought and lowered her lashes.
Always assuming her instincts were right and she had the job, did that mean she’d be working closely with him?
The thought made her heart beat even faster. With luck he kept his involvement to cheque book.
She struggled not to flinch as his attention swivelled back to her. The recognition she had thought she’d glimpsed initially was gone, replaced by a flat look that she could not read. Even so, she felt her anxiety levels climb—as it turned out with good reason!
‘So tell me how long have you been teaching?’
‘Five, no four...’
His intense gaze brought a rush of colour to her cheeks, one of the curses of her red-haired complexion. She managed to retain a semblance of what she hoped came across as headmistress-style gravity as she tipped her head. ‘Five and a half years.’
Cesare Urquart, his elbows on the table, leaned forward across the table towards her. The undercurrent swirling behind his smooth smile made Anna feel a lot like Little Red Riding Hood. The man made your average wolf seem benevolent.
‘Let me give you a hypothetical situation, Miss Henderson.’
Anna smiled back and nodded. Bring it on.
CHAPTER TWO
PRIDE ALONE KEPT Anna’s shoulders straight and her head high as she left the room, pausing to nod and murmur a thank you to the panel members. Pride, and a grim teeth-clenching determination not to give Cesare Urquart the pleasure of seeing her crumble.
He didn’t avoid her eyes or attempt to hide the smug smile with the hint of chilling cruelty that pulled the corners of his sensually sculpted mouth upwards. His complacent expression said job well done. The other panel members remained silent, none met her eyes, which was probably just as well as a word of kindness and she would have fallen apart.
‘I’ll call you a taxi.’
This offer definitely wasn’t a kindness so Anna was able to hold it together as she met the stare of her tormentor. Hold it together but not conceal the bewildered hurt in her blue eyes.
He was the first to lower his gaze, his dark, preposterously long spiky lashes casting a shadow along the razor-sharp edge of his chiselled cheekbones as he picked up his pen, twirling it between long brown fingers before he scribbled something on the sheet of paper that lay on the table, drawing a line figuratively and literally through her name, she speculated bitterly.
Why had he done it?
Just because he could?
Why had she let him?
In the corridor her courage deserted her and Anna slumped like a puppet whose strings had been cut, clutching her head. She had the beginning of a first-class migraine. She leaned heavily against the wall f
eeling the cold of the ugly green tiles through her thin jacket.
Her coat lay folded across the chair in the room she had just left, but pneumonia was an infinitely more attractive option than going back for it.
The loud tick of the clock on the wall opposite brought her dazed glance to the large clock. Her eyes widened. It had only been five minutes since she had stood there on the brink of being offered her dream job. It had taken Cesare Urquart less than five minutes to make her appear an incompetent idiot.
Five minutes to reduce her to a stuttering level of incompetence, and she had let him! With a grimace of self-disgust, she straightened up and began to walk down the corridor, her heels beating out an angry tattoo.
The taxi was waiting for her outside. As she slid inside she could think of any number of responses to his seemingly innocent questions. He’d led her to the edge of a hole but she’d jumped in. And he’d enjoyed it!
A person who stubbornly clung to the belief that people were basically good, Anna didn’t want to believe that he’d taken pleasure from her distress. But it was true, and probably the worst part of it was the knowledge that behind the bland and beautiful mask he had enjoyed watching her stutter and stumble. It had been clinical and cruel.
She looked at her hands. They were shaking. She made a decision. They’d arrived at her hotel.
‘Do you mind waiting?’ There was no way she was safe to drive her hire car the forty miles back to Inverness. She didn’t actually care what the taxi there cost her: it would be worth it not to stay another second.
Having reassured the car-hire firm she would be happy to pay the supplementary charge for them to pick up the car, Anna packed her bag in about thirty seconds. She was booked into the hotel overlooking the picturesque working harbour for two nights, but the view had lost its charm, as had the Highlands.
The thought of all things familiar and safe made her chest ache with longing. Everyone had been right. Moving up here had been a stupid idea, not because, as Rosie had suggested, there were no men—that was fine by Anna—but because there was one man. A man she could not even think about without wanting to break things. His head would be a good start.
She climbed back into the taxi. She fastened her seat belt and closed the door with a restrained bang. ‘Inverness station, please.’
Anna was actually in her seat on the train when all passengers were asked to disembark. No trains were running on the line between Inverness and Glasgow due to flooding and stormy weather further down the line.
‘Hail the size of golf balls, they say.’
Those passengers who requested details of bus times were told that bus drivers too were not risking the journey.
Anna normally maintained a philosophical frame of mind when events were out of her control, but if ever there was a day to respond with anger and frustration this was it.
Could this day get any worse?
Of course it could. This was the day that just kept giving and the man who just kept appearing. Twice was not a lot but it felt like more.
The gleaming car Cesare Urquart stood beside did not suggest he came under the category of traditional impoverished laird. It did not come as a surprise to Anna that having money would be the way he got away with being so totally obnoxious.
Human nature being what it was, people were prepared to put up with a lot from people who held the purse strings and the power. And what Cesare had done to her was a classic case of an abuse of power. It was inexplicable to Anna, who hated to see anyone unhappy, that a person could take such malicious pleasure out of causing someone pain, presumably just because he could.
Yet it had felt personal, very personal. That continued to bemuse her; if the man hadn’t been a total stranger she’d have felt the interview had been payback of some sort. Perhaps, she brooded bitterly, he took offence to redheads, who in her opinion got a bad press. Her temper was no fierier than anyone else’s. She pressed her fingers to her drumming temples. She actually considered herself to have quite a placid personality.
As was appropriate, Cesare had paused to congratulate the successful candidate after the interviews finished. The choice had not seemed difficult to him yet some of the panel had agonised over it and in the end the final decision had not been unanimous, even after a few probing questions where the redhead had become almost incoherent.
An image of those big, hurt, cobalt-blue eyes formed in his head and he firmly pushed it away. He was sure that the formula had been working all of her life. One look at those expressive eyes...a suggestion of tears bravely blinked away while she channelled inner integrity...had made his jaw tighten. The panel members, who had still stood by their original choice, would have been less disgruntled if they knew what he knew about Miss Henderson.
‘So you think it’s a good idea to build an office block on the lawn after we’ve bulldozed the—’
Cesare turned his attention to his sister. ‘Fine...fine...’
Her musical laughter drew several stares but then his model sister generally did draw stares.
‘What?’ he asked irritably.
‘You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said.’
He flashed her an impatient glance and opened the passenger door. ‘Just get in, will you?’
Her delicate brows lifted. ‘You’re in a foul mood, I get that, but don’t take it out on me, big brother,’ she advised.
Cesare scowled at the suggestion and bit back. ‘I am not in a foul mood.’ His conscience was clear when the welfare of impressionable children was at stake. You didn’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt and there was no doubt.
This time his sister’s laughter was drowned out by another loudspeaker announcement explaining once more that, due to flooding on the line, the Edinburgh trains were cancelled. Not good news for the stranded passengers who had began to troop with varying degrees of resignation from the station.
‘Lucky I decided to catch the early train,’ Angel observed.
* * *
In her thin jacket Anna shivered, her throat tightened until she could hardly breathe. The booming noise in her head got louder and louder as she continued to stare at him, standing there as if he owned the place, not getting out of the way because he expected other people to...and they did. He was getting in the way and they were apologising for bumping into him.
And she’d done the same, though in her case it was not just walk around him—she’d let him walk all over her! She had just sat there and taken what he’d dished out during that interview. It was not her finest hour.
If she’d told him what she thought of him she knew she wouldn’t be feeling this awful, instead she felt...
‘Pathetic!’ she exclaimed to the world in general.
‘Are you all right, dear?’
Responding with a forced smile and an embarrassed laugh for the benefit of the concerned elderly couple who had approached her, Anna nodded and lied. ‘Yes, fine, I’m...’
Her voice trailed away and her smile vanished as a tall, hateful figure placed a hand on his beautiful companion’s elbow.
She inhaled and squeezed her eyes closed. Now was her chance to tell him what she really thought of him. She nodded to the couple, lifted her stuffed overnight bag and propelled herself through the crowds.
‘I expected you to bring Jas. Is she all right?’
As his sister looked around as though expecting her daughter to materialise, Cesare opened the passenger door. ‘She’s fine,’ he soothed. ‘I came straight from the school interviews for the new head.’
‘Many candidates?’ Angel glanced down at the file that lay open on the passenger seat and paused, glancing down at the name on the front page. ‘More than one, I hope.’
‘More than one,’ her brother agreed. Snatching the CV from her fingers, he flung it onto the back seat, consigning it a
nd the person who had supplied it to a dark corner.
His sister made no attempt to get in the car. She was studying his face. ‘You look strange. Are you sure Jas is all right—nothing’s happened?’
‘A man could be excused for thinking you don’t think he’s capable of looking after a five-year-old.’ Despite his comment Cesare didn’t take her anxiety personally. He knew how hard it was for his sister to delegate any responsibility where her daughter was concerned, and he also knew he was a poor substitute for her absentee nanny who had broken her leg. Fortunately the injury would not put her out of action for as long as his niece had been with the painful hip complaint, Perthes, that had confined her to bed rest for weeks.
‘I know Jas is a full-time job and she can twist you around her little finger. How did the physio go this week? Did she play up? I hope you remembered—’
His sister’s voice faded as among the stream of frustrated travellers streaming out of the station, one caught his eye.
The amazing copper-coloured hair made her stand out like a flash of colour in a monochrome picture. Her blue eyes fixed on his face and she was heading his way like some sort of petite avenging angel. All the image lacked was a blazing sword, which was just as well because she looked as if she’d happily have skewered him if she’d had anything sharp to hand.
Conscious of a buzz of anticipation, he waited. He had not sought this encounter but he was not going to avoid it. As she got closer he felt the faint nagging guilt that he had been unwilling to acknowledge dissolve. The woman approaching was not the defeated, dejected figure who more resembled a mistreated kitten than a seasoned seductress. This was a sexy, smouldering redhead who moved with supple feline grace. The woman who would have caused havoc in the small community.
The muscles along his jaw tightened as she turned to heave the bag she was half dragging onto her shoulder, giving him an excellent, if fleeting, view of her taut, rounded behind. If he had needed proof of the walking danger she represented to men it was provided by the scorching flash of heat that sizzled through his own body to settle in his groin. If running true to form she would have worked her way through the married men in the area in a couple of months!
