A Trap So Tender

by Jennifer Lewis

  “You’re too cautious to get married, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. “Or maybe it’s just the family curse.”

  She laughed aloud, a pretty ringing sound, like the bells they used to play in the church back on the estate when he was a kid.

  Where did that thought come from?

  “I think you need to find the last part of that chalice and put it back together. Think of it as a hunt.” She leaned forward, rested her elbows on the table and her neat chin on her interlocked fingers. “It’ll be a great story to tell.”

  A crazy idea flashed into his brain. “Come look for it.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened.

  “Come to Scotland. I have to take a trip back myself right now to deal with some estate matters. You said you’d like to visit. Take a break from the rat race and breathe some highland air.”

  She was silent, and he could almost hear the cogs turning in her brain. Her eyes sparkled and he could see the idea intrigued her. “But I don’t even know you.”

  “I’m pretty well-known around town. Ask people about me.”

  “What will they tell me?” She looked deadly serious.

  “That I play by my own rules, but always stand by my word.” He hesitated, knowing what else she would hear. “That I’m happiest when sinking my teeth into a new business.” He deliberately avoided the part about his alleged Casanova ways.

  Her eyes had narrowed slightly, and she appeared to be considering his proposal. His pulse ratcheted and he realized how much he wanted her to accept. Even the usually unwelcome prospect of returning to the grim and vast baronial castle and the manager’s endless to-do list seemed less daunting with the prospect of the lovely Fiona in residence.

  “Okay.” She spoke quietly, but without hesitation.

  “You’ll come?” He couldn’t believe it.

  “I will.” She sat back in her chair, expression still serious. “I’ve always wanted to go to Scotland, I love the idea of looking for an ancient relic, and I have nothing better to do right now. Why not?”

  “Why not, indeed?” They discussed dates for a minute or two and he sent a text to his pilot while the waiter served their food. For the first time in as long as he could remember, his nerves crackled with excitement over something other than an intriguing business deal. “Done. We leave tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “Great.” Fiona’s voice faltered slightly. This was moving so much faster than she expected. “Who knew I’d be eating sea urchin and going to Scotland all in the space of one week?”

  What would her dad think about her leaving so soon after she’d arrived? The main purpose of her stay here was to build their relationship. After ten days they’d barely managed to relax enough to hold a conversation, and now she was taking off around the world with his sworn enemy?

  She’d have to explain her plan. He’d understand and know she was only doing it for him. He’d be so happy when she figured out how to wrest his factory back from James Drummond’s octopuslike embrace. This man needed to be stopped, and she wasn’t afraid to do it.

  “Will you stay there with me?” This thought occurred to her for the first time almost as she said it. He’d asked her to come to his house and look for the cup. While snooping around his ancestral home might be fun, she couldn’t achieve her main goal unless he was there.

  “Of course. I wouldn’t invite a guest and then take off.” He frowned. “Then again, I probably have done that, but I promise I won’t this time. I need to put in some face time there. The natives get restless if the lord of the manor goes AWOL for too long.”

  “Is it really like that?”

  He nodded. “I don’t understand why they care what I do, but they seem to feel I should be there judging flower displays at the village fete and hosting banquets on obscure saints’ days.”

  “Very medieval.” There was something sexy about that. Which just proved how loopy she could be. He obviously hated it and ran off to Singapore all the time to avoid his feudal responsibilities. “Do you get to have people executed if they cross you?”

  “I’ve never tried.” A tiny smile tugged at his broad, seductive mouth. “I don’t think anyone’s ever ticked me off that badly.”

  I might. She let her own secret smile slip across her lips. “Are they putting pressure on you to find a lady of the manor?”

  He laughed. “They wouldn’t dare.” Then his eyes darkened. “Though I’m sure they would if they didn’t think it would make me run for the hills.”

  They certainly wouldn’t be too enthused about her, a snarky American with her roots in Singapore. No doubt they’d prefer a delicate Scottish rose with red-gold hair and pink cheeks, who thought arranging flowers on the church altar was the ideal way to spend a weekend.

  Not that James was bringing her there to romance her. In fact, she had no idea why he did want her to come. She frowned and looked at him. His eyes smiled slightly when she met them, sending a frisson of…what? Excitement, terror and hot lust coursing right through her.

  Did he really want her to find the cup? Surely someone closer to home would be a better choice. Did he want to bed her?

  Yes. The subtle gleam in his eye made no secret of that. Maybe he was a lothario. And maybe he’d be disappointed in his efforts to add her to his list of conquests.

  She took a bite of her sea urchin, sitting almost forgotten on her plate, and was surprised to find it tender and delicious. James was very distracting. She’d better make sure she kept her mind on her task—getting her father’s factory back. “This is good.”

  “I told you it would be. Now you know you can trust me.”

  She laughed, partly because he said it so innocently, as if he really believed it. If she didn’t know of his reputation as a heartless corporate shark, she’d have taken him for a genuinely nice guy. He certainly seemed generous and enthusiastic. Luckily for her, his reputation preceded him. “I don’t trust that easily. I do apparently have a taste for adventure, though. I’m excited about coming to Scotland.”

  “You’ll win the reward if you find the cup.”

  “If I do, I’ll donate it to charity. I’m not exactly hurting for money after the sale of Smileworks.”

  “What are you going to do next?”

  That’s for me to know and you to find out after I’ve done it. She shrugged. “Whatever takes my fancy. I’m in no rush.” Maybe she could convince him to sell her the factory for a pittance. She wasn’t sure why he’d bought it in the first place. “What’s your latest project?”

  “I’m becoming interested in real estate. Sooner or later this recession will end and people will want everything bigger and better and newer than ever.”

  “And you plan to be poised to take advantage of that.”

  He sipped his wine. That mouth was wasted on a businessman. He should have been a pouting rock star. “I try to be ready for anything.”

  Her father’s factory was centrally located in an old business district that was ripe for redevelopment into a yuppie paradise. The building was from the 1950s and looked like a giant shoebox. Until six weeks ago it had employed eighteen people and provided her father with his only source of income. But James had engaged in some skullduggery with the local government and managed to buy it out from under her dad for a pittance in unpaid taxes. At least that was how she understood it. All the workers had been laid off, and her dad was now facing bankruptcy, so the clock was ticking.

  When she was younger, her dad had owned a chain of restaurants, but that had apparently disappeared. They’d had so little contact with him after she moved to the States with her mom that she was surprised to find him so close to the edge, when family legend had pegged him as a high-rolling, self-made tycoon.

  She’d always planned to show him just how like him she was when she made her first million. Her anticipated triumph had been utterly destroyed by his sudden ruin. Now it looked as if she’d come to Singapore to crow over the father who abandoned her, when that
was the very opposite of her intention.

  Her heart squeezed. She’d grown up without her dad and she wasn’t going to lose him now. “I try to be ready for anything, too. And I had no idea I was so ready to go to Scotland with a complete stranger.”

  He lifted his glass. “Here’s to the unexpected.”

  She smiled and clinked hers against it. If you only knew.

  Two

  “These berms mark the edge of the estate.” James nodded to the window of the fast-moving Land Rover that had picked them up at Aberdeen airport.

  Fiona peered out. Anticipation coursed through her body. Which was ridiculous. She was here on the most underhanded mission, yet she felt excited as if she genuinely hoped to find that damn cup and maybe even have a torrid affair with James while she did it. Deep ditches on the side of the road swooped up into high walls of grass and trees. They drove straight along this avenue for almost twenty minutes. “How big is the estate?”

  “Big. But don’t worry. We’ll reach the business end soon.” Eventually, the road swung around and took them through a tall stone gateway. Hills soared around them, making her feel tiny in the dramatic landscape. “My ancestors liked privacy.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Not that much.” He smiled. “A wall between me and my neighbors is quite enough. I don’t need a few miles.”

  “Then it’s lucky you’ll have me here to bother you.”

  “It is.”

  Her skin tingled at the affirmation that he was glad of her company. She should feel guilty that she was here only to get her father’s factory back. She didn’t, though. The reports she’d read of James’s business practices had made her toes curl. He was all about the bottom line and clearly didn’t care whom he steamrolled over on the road to more greenbacks. And he hadn’t brought her here just to find some old cup. She wasn’t the worldliest person, but she’d been around the block to know he had some ulterior motive himself, even if it was just a highland fling.

  The road was dead straight, carved right through the undulating landscape in what must have been an engineering feat to rival building the pyramids. High hedges loomed ahead, and once they passed those her jaw dropped as a menacing storybook castle rose in front of them.

  A complex of buildings, mossy-gray stone in styles that looked medieval, Tudor, Victorian, even Roman, spread in all directions. “It’s huge.”

  “It was more or less a town in its heyday. Everyone lived inside the defended area. Some still do—the estate manager and his staff.”

  “I can see how a person could get lonely here.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Makes Singapore seem very welcoming by comparison.”

  Fiona stared at him for a moment, feeling sudden affection for this man who felt more at home in a bustling, noisy Asian city than in the baronial halls of his ancestors. He seemed more human all the time.

  Again, not a good thing.

  “You must need a large staff to keep this place alive.”

  “Not really. I know the villagers think I should do more with it, but as long as someone keeps the roof solid and the windows sealed, it takes care of itself. Sheep keep the grass down. A stone fortress is very low maintenance compared to a modern house.”

  Someone must climb on a scaffold almost weekly to keep those monster hedges at the entrance manicured to perfection. Maybe he had no idea how much work it took to keep the place running. He probably didn’t care. It was all pocket change to him.

  The car pulled up in a gravel courtyard the size of a football field. Not a weed in sight. Two men in dark suits carrying walkie-talkies appeared from behind more manicured bushes, but stilled at the sight of the car.

  “The hired security. I don’t know what my cousin was thinking when she announced a reward for finding the cup.”

  “She knew it would get people interested. Obviously she was right.” James climbed out of the car, and the driver opened her door and helped her out. She was starting to feel like a royal dignitary with all this VIP treatment. It might be hard to go back to ordinary life after this.

  An older man emerged from the house and he and the driver carried their bags inside after a brief exchange with James. “Is he your butler?”

  James nodded. “We call Angus the household manager. Sounds more modern, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yes.” There was nothing modern about any of this. Which piqued her curiosity to get more of a glimpse into James Drummond’s rarefied life. With no bags to carry, she walked across the vast expanse of gravel feeling rather at a loss. Her cute stiletto heels kept tipping her this way and that, and James’s bold stride almost left her behind by the time they reached a veritable cliff of stone steps.

  He turned and extended his arm. She had no choice but to take it. She tried to ignore the trickle of sensation that crept up her arm and across her body. You’d think a full day of travel in close proximity to the man might have killed any spark of sexual attraction. Unfortunately, however, it had stoked it into a steady flame. Good thing she was ruled by her head and not more unpredictable parts of her anatomy.

  The doorway into the house looked more suited to a grand cathedral. She almost expected the smell of incense and the murmur of monks; instead, she was greeted by an aroma of bacon and the distant barking of dogs.

  “You have dogs?”

  “Not me. I travel too much. The hounds for the local hunt are kept on the estate. They gather here to hunt and I join them when I’m around. I won’t do it when you’re here, of course.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be rude of me to leave you.”

  “Maybe I could come, too?” She lifted a brow.

  He frowned. “Hunting is done on horseback.”

  She laughed, a loud, ringing sound that bounced off the stone walls. “I may be American but I’m not an idiot.”

  “You ride?”

  “Of course.” She decided to stride ahead, as if this news were nothing special. Inside she was glowing with triumph. James Drummond obviously had no idea what he had on his hands with her. “Where will I sleep?”

  “Upstairs.” He followed her. “I’ll show you myself.”

  Her bedroom looked fit for a queen. Perhaps one about to be executed in the Bloody Tower. A high, four-poster bed stood in the center of the room, curtains pulled back halfway to reveal rich brocade bedding. Tiny leaded windows filled the room with a gloomy half light. The large Oriental rug was worn and faded, possibly by hundreds of years of use. What appeared to be a priceless Ming vase stood high on the stone mantel. “Your family doesn’t go in for redecorating, do they?”

  He chuckled. “Not since about 1760. You could say we’re a bit set in our ways.”

  “At least you don’t waste money on passing fads.”

  “Not often. These newfangled glass windows were controversial when they first came out, but we like them.”

  She smiled. “And you can still open them to pour boiling oil on marauders.”

  “Absolutely. The designers thought of everything.”

  “Is there a bathroom, or have those not established themselves in fashion for long enough?”

  He gestured to a low wood door. She pulled the handle with some trepidation, and was surprised when it opened into a large, heavily marbled room with an appropriately antique-looking tub and sink and toilet in sparkling condition. At least she wouldn’t have to wash herself from a jug.

  “There’s no shower, I’m afraid. We’re still not convinced those are here to stay, but water does come out of the taps, so you won’t have to call for Angus to bring it.”

  “That is a relief. I’m not sure I want Angus seeing me in a towel.” She wanted to laugh, but somehow managed not to. “I am beginning to worry about finding this cup.”

  “Why?” He frowned, which annoyingly made him look even more handsome.

  “The place makes big look small.”

  “It’s sprawling, but quite simple to navigate, and there’s li
ttle clutter to deal with. The Drummonds always seem to have gone in for a sparse, minimalist style.”

  “How forward thinking.”

  “Are you tired?”

  “No. I was thinking about that bacon and what lucky person might get to eat it.”

  He laughed. “Let’s go.”

  Breakfast was served in a grand hall. They sat at a long wooden table, its surface polished to a high sheen. The blue-and-white porcelain plates had probably been imported from China in the 1700s. After they ate their fill from a collection of covered dishes, James offered to give her a whirlwind tour of the castle.

  “You might be the first non-Drummond to see inside the east wing this century,” he murmured, as he pulled open a wood door studded with dark iron. He ducked through the low entranceway.

  “Are you sure you won’t have to kill me because I’ve seen too much?” Her skin prickled with excitement, partly from gaining entry to the Drummonds’ inner sanctum, but mostly from continued proximity to James.

  “Time will tell.” He shot her a dark gray glance that made her freeze for a second, until she saw the humor sparkling behind his steely visage.

  She swallowed. Time would tell all, but she’d make sure to put plenty of distance between them before that happened.

  He gestured for her to enter. The hallway was narrow and she brushed against his arm as she passed. Even through his expensive shirt, his touch still sent a hot flash of awareness coursing through her. What did his body look like under his elegant armor? Was he muscled and athletic, or was that just her fevered imagination at work?

  Her heart pumped faster as she entered the low hallway with its coffered ceiling. Her cute shoes clacked annoyingly on the flagstone floor. James could probably lock her up in one of these rooms and it would be months—years—before anyone found her. “Where are you taking me?”

  “The oldest part of the house. It’s where Drummonds piled their junk once they cleared it out of the more inhabited rooms. It’s the first place I’d suggest looking for the cup piece.”

  “What kind of shape is it?” Online research into the story had told her it was the base of the cup they were looking for, but no need for him to know she’d done some digging on her own.