For His Eyes Only
Liz Fielding
‘It’s your body that I want to draw, not your clothes.’Well, that’s what she’s afraid of!Hard-working estate agent Natasha Gordon finds her reputation in tatters when an ad she created gets bungled. She’ll do anything to restore her good name – even beg seriously sexy artist Darius Hadley to give her another chance to sell his ancestral home. Only he drives a hard bargain: Natasha must pose naked, for his eyes only…!He’s asking Natasha to take him on trust. But she’s learned the hard way not to trust men…particularly those she’s working with. Let alone men she’s taking her clothes off for! Darius’s outrageous answer? ‘I’ll take my clothes off too – if it will make it easier for you…’
He was expected to laugh, but it was taking all his concentration just to breathe because she’d forgotten not to look at him.
And then he could see that it wasn’t just him. They were both struggling with the zing of lightning that arced between them.
‘Since Plan B was a threat to sue me for malicious damage …’
Her voice was thick, her pupils huge against the shot-silk blue. What would she do if he reached out and took her hand and held it against his zip? If he sucked her lower lip into his mouth?
‘… I didn’t think there was much point in hanging around.’
He turned away and crossed to the kettle, picking it up to make sure there was some water in it before switching it on. Any distraction from the thoughts racketing through his head. The same thoughts that had driven him from her office amplified a hundred times.
He had no problem with lust at first sight. With uncomplicated, life’s-too-short sex that gave everyone a good time and didn’t screw with your head. This was complicated with knobs on. He should never have let her stay.
But he could not have sent her away …
Dear Reader
I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to bring you FOR HIS EYES ONLY in the iconic blue covers of the Modern Tempted™ series.
One of the joys of writing is research, and the setting for Hadley Chase was inspired by a visit to historic Ashdown House, where my guide was historical novelist Nicola Cornick. It’s on the Wiltshire/Berkshire borders, set in beautiful downland, and Charles II and Prince Rupert went there to hunt and have a good time. The house at Hadley Chase was a gift after a visit to Great Chalfield Manor, just down the road from my home. Gorgeous scenery, lovely gardens and brilliant fun.
It was enormous fun to stretch myself a little in new directions, too, and I hope you’ll enjoy getting to know Natasha Gordon and Darius Hadley as much as they enjoy getting to know one another! If you’d like to see some of my inspiration for the book, do come and take a look at their ‘board’ at Pinterest.
All love
Liz
For His Eyes Only
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days mostly leaves her pen to do the travelling.
When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors, and spends a lot of time wondering, What if …?
For news of upcoming books—and to sign up for her occasional newsletter—visit Liz’s website: www.lizfielding.com
This and other titles by Liz Fielding are available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk
DEDICATION
With thanks to Kate Hardy and Caroline Anderson for their never-failing belief.
And to Gail McCurry Waldrep for the fudge frosting.
Contents
Chapter One (#u20b264ec-2f18-5dc2-beb3-2524a09e8375)
Chapter Two (#u585d61ba-2df9-5678-ab65-aac0ea2cfcfb)
Chapter Three (#ue163d868-f7ab-5e93-b7b0-cae4daed6916)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE
‘What’s got Miles’s knickers in a twist?’ Natasha Gordon poured herself half a cup of coffee. Her first appointment had been at eight and she’d been on the run ever since. She had to grab any opportunity to top up her caffeine level. ‘I was on my way to a viewing at the St John’s Wood flat when I got a message to drop everything and come straight back here.’
Janine, Morgan and Black’s receptionist and always the first with any rumour, lifted her slender cashmere-clad shoulders in a don’t-ask-me shrug. ‘If that’s what he said, you’d better not keep him waiting,’ she said, but, shrug notwithstanding, the ghost of an I-know-something-you-don’t smile tugged at lips on which the lipstick was always perfectly applied.
Tash abandoned the untouched coffee and headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Miles Morgan, senior partner of Morgan and Black, first port of call for the wealthy flooding into London from all corners of the world to snap up high-end real estate, had been dropping heavy hints for weeks that the vacant ‘associate’ position was hers.
Damn right. She’d worked her socks off for the last three years and had earned that position with hard work and long hours and Janine, who liked everyone to know how ‘in’ she was with the boss, had casually let slip the news on Friday afternoon that he would be spending the weekend in the country with the semi-retired ‘Black’ to discuss the future of the firm.
‘Down, pulse, down,’ she muttered, pausing outside his office to scoop up a wayward handful of hair and anchor it in place with great-grandma’s silver clip.
She always started out the day looking like a career woman on the up, but haring about London all morning had left her more than a little dishevelled and things had begun to unravel. Her hair, her make-up, her shirt.
She tucked in her shirt and was checking the top button when the door opened.
‘Janine! Is she here yet?’ Miles shouted before he realised she was standing in front him. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘I had a viewing at the Chelsea house first thing,’ she said, used to his short fuse. ‘They played it very close to their chests, but the wife’s eyes were lit up like the Blackpool illuminations. I guarantee they’ll make an offer before the end of the day.’
The prospect of a high five-figure commission would normally be enough to change his mood but he merely grunted and the sparkle of anticipation went flat. Whatever Janine had been smiling about, it wasn’t the prospect of the office party Miles would throw to celebrate the appointment of the new associate.
‘It’s been non-stop since then,’ she added, and it wasn’t going to ease up this side of six. ‘Is this urgent, Miles? I’m showing Glencora Jarrett the St John’s Wood apartment in half an hour and the traffic is solid.’
‘You can forget that. I’ve sent Toby.’
‘Toby?’ Her occasionally significant other had been on a rugby tour in Australia and wasn’t due home until the end of the month. She shook her head. It wasn’t important, but Lady Glen... ‘No, she specifically asked—’
‘For you. I know, but a viewing isn’t a social engagement,’ he cut in before she could remind him that Lady Glencora was desperately nervous and would not go into an unoccupied apartment with a male negotiator.
‘But—’
‘Forget Her Ladyship,’ he said, thrusting the latest edition of the Country Chronicle into her hands. ‘Take a look at this.’
The magazine was open at the full-page advertisement for Hadley Chase, a historic country house that had just come on the market.
‘Oh, that came out really well...’ A low mist, caught by the rising sun, had lent the house a golden, soft-focus enchantment that hid its many shortcomings. Well worth the effort of getting up at the crack of dawn and driving into the depths of Berkshire on the one day in the week that she could have had a lie-in. ‘The phone will be ringing off the hook,’ she said, offering it back to him.
‘Read on,’ he said, not taking it.
‘I know what it says, Miles. I wrote it.’ The once grand house was suffering from age and neglect and she’d focused on the beauty and convenience of the location to tempt potential buyers to come and take a look. ‘You approved it,’ she reminded him.
‘I didn’t approve this.’
She frowned. Irritable might be his default mode but, even for Miles, this seemed excessive. Had some ghastly mistake slipped past them both? It happened, but this was an expensive full-page colour ad, and she’d gone over the proof with a fine-tooth comb. Confident that nothing could have gone wrong, she read out her carefully composed copy.
‘“A substantial seventeenth-century manor house in a sought-after location on the Berkshire Downs within easy reach of motorway links to London, the Midlands and the West. That’s the good news. The bad news...”’ She faltered. Bad news? What the...?
‘Don’t stop now.’
The words were spoken with a clear, crisp, don’t-argue-with-me certainty, but not by her boss, and she spun around as the owner of the voice rose from the high-backed leather armchair set in front of Miles Morgan’s desk and turned to face her.
Her first impression was of darkness. Dark hair, dark clothes, dark eyes in a mesmerising face that missed beauty by a hair’s breadth, although a smile might have done the business.
The second was of strength. There was no bulk, but his shoulders were wide beneath a crumpled linen jacket so old that the black had faded to grey, his abdomen slate-flat under a T-shirt that hung loosely over narrow hips.
His hand was resting on the back of the chair, long calloused fingers curled over the leather. They were the kind of fingers that she could imagine doing unspeakable things to her. Was imagining...
She looked up and met eyes that seemed to penetrate every crevice, every pore, and a hot blush, beginning somewhere low in her belly, spread like wildfire in every direction—
‘Natasha!’
Miles’s sharp interjection jolted her back to the page but it was a moment before she could catch her breath, gather her wits and focus on the words dancing in front of her.
...the bad news is the wet rot, woodworm, crumbling plasterwork and leaking roof. The vendor would no doubt have preferred to demolish the house and redevelop the land, but it’s a Grade II listed building in the heart of the Green Belt so he’s stuffed. There is a fine oak Tudor staircase but, bearing in mind the earlier reference to wet rot and woodworm, an early viewing is advised if you want to see the upper floors.
Her heart still pounding with the shock of a sexual attraction so powerful that she was trembling, she had to read it twice before it sank in. And when it did her pulse was still in a sorry state.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. Then, realising how feeble that sounded, ‘How did this happen?’
‘How, indeed?’
Her question had been directed at Miles, but the response came from Mr Tall, Dark and Deadly. Who was he?
‘Hadley,’ he said, apparently reading her mind. Or maybe she’d asked the question out loud. She needed to get a grip. She needed an ice bath...
She cleared her throat. ‘Hadley?’ His name still emerged as if spoken by a surprised frog, but that wasn’t simply because all her blood had apparently drained from her brain to the more excitable parts of her anatomy. The house was unoccupied and the sale was being handled by the estate’s executors and, since no one had mentioned a real-life, flesh-and-blood Hadley, she’d assumed the line had run dry.
‘Darius Hadley,’ he elaborated, clearly picking up on her doubt.
In her career she’d worked with everyone, from young first-time buyers scraping together a deposit, to billionaires investing in London apartments and town houses costing millions. She knew that appearances could be deceptive but Darius Hadley did not have the look of a man whose family had been living in the Chase since the seventeenth century, when a grateful Charles II had given the estate to one James Hadley, a rich merchant who’d funded him in exile.
With the glint of a single gold earring amongst the mass of black curls tumbling over his collar, the crumpled linen jacket faded from black to grey, jeans worn threadbare at the knees, he looked more like a gypsy, or a pirate. Perhaps that was where the Hadley fortune had come from—plundering the Spanish Main with the likes of Drake. Or, with the legacy now in the hands of a man bearing the name of a Persian king, it was possible that his ancestors had chosen to travel east overland, to trade in silk and spices.
This man certainly had the arrogance to go with his name but, unlike his forebears, it seemed that he had no interest in settling down to live the life of a country gentleman. Not that she blamed him for that.
Hadley Chase, with roses growing over its timbered Tudor heart, might look romantic in the misty haze of an early summer sunrise, but it was going to take a lot of time and a very deep purse to bring it up to modern expectations in plumbing, heating and weatherproofing. There was nothing romantic about nineteen-fifties plumbing and, from the neglected state of both house and grounds, it was evident that the fortune needed to maintain it was long gone.
On the bright side, even in these cash-strapped days, there were any number of sheikhs, pop stars and Russian oligarchs looking for the privacy of a country estate no more than a helicopter hop from the centre of London and she was looking forward to adding the Chase to her portfolio of sales in the very near future. She had big plans for the commission.
Miles cleared his throat and she belatedly stuck out her hand.
‘Natasha Gordon. How d’you do, Mr Hadley?’
‘I’ve been stuffed, mounted and hung out to dry,’ he replied. ‘How do you think I feel?’ he demanded, ignoring her hand.
‘Angry.’ He had every right to be angry. Hell, she was furious with whoever had meddled with her carefully worded description and they would feel the wrath of her tongue when she found out who it was, but that would have to wait. Right now she had to get a grip of her hormones, be totally professional and reassure him that this wasn’t the disaster it appeared. ‘I don’t know what happened here, Mr Hadley, but I promise you it’s just a minor setback.’
‘A minor setback?’ Glittering eyes—forget charcoal, they were jet—skewered her to the floor and Tash felt the heat rise up her neck and flood her cheeks. She was blushing. He’d made her blush with just a look. That was outrageous... ‘A minor setback?’ he repeated, with the very slightest emphasis on ‘minor’.
His self-control was impressive.
Okaaay... She unpeeled her tongue from the roof of her mouth, snatched in a little oxygen to get her brain started and said, ‘Serious purchasers understand that there will be problems with this type of property, Mr Hadley.’
‘They expect to be able to view the upper floors without endangering their lives,’ he pointed out. He hadn’t raised his voice; he didn’t have to. He’d made his point with a quiet, razor-edged precision that made Miles’s full-blown irritation look like a toddler tantrum.
‘Natasha!’ Miles prompted, more sharply this time. ‘Have you got something to say to Mr Hadley?’
‘What?’ She dragged her gaze from the seductive curve of Darius Hadley’s lower lip and fixed it somewhere around his prominent Adam’s apple, which only sent her mind off on another, even more disturbing direction involving extremities.
Do not look at his feet!
‘Oh, um, yes...’ She’d tried desperately to get her brain in gear, recall the notes she’d made, as she stared at scuffed work boots, jeans smeared with what looked like dry grey mud and clinging to powerful thighs. He’d obviously dropped whatever he was doing and come straight to the office when he’d seen the ad. Did he work on a building site? ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘there’s more than one set of stairs so it isn’t a problem.’
‘And that’s your professional opinion?’
‘Not that I recall there being anything wrong with the main staircase that a thorough seeing to with a vacuum cleaner wouldn’t fix,’ she added hurriedly when Miles sounded as if he might be choking. Come on, Tash...this is what you do. ‘I did advise the solicitor handling the sale that they should get in a cleaning contractor to give the place a good bottoming.’
A muscle tightened in his jaw. ‘And what was their response to that?’
‘They said they’d get the caretaker to give it a once-over.’
Some property owners did nothing to help themselves, but this probably wasn’t the moment to say so.
‘So it’s just the woodworm, rot and missing lead flashing on the roof that a potential buyer has to worry about?’ Darius Hadley raised his dark brows a fraction of a millimetre and every cell in her body followed as if he’d jerked a string.
Amongst a jangle of mixed messages—her head urging her to take a step back, every other part of her wanting to reach out and touch—she just about managed to stand her ground.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘according to the paperwork, the woodworm was treated years ago.’ Something he would have known if he’d taken the slightest interest in the house he’d apparently inherited. ‘I think you’ll find that it’s the cobwebs that will have women running screaming—’
Behind Hadley’s back, Miles made a sharp mouth-zipped gesture. ‘Mr Hadley isn’t looking for excuses. What he’s waiting for,’ he said, ‘what he’s entitled to, is an explanation and an apology.’
She frowned. Surely Miles had already covered that ground? She assumed she’d been called in to discuss a plan of action.
‘Don’t bother; I’ve heard enough,’ Hadley said before she could get in a word. ‘You’ll be hearing from my lawyer, Morgan.’
‘Lawyer?’ What use was a lawyer going to be? ‘No, really—’
Darius Hadley cut off her protest with a look that froze her in mid-sentence and seemed to go on for an eternity. Lethal eyes, a nose bred for looking down, a mouth made for sin... Finally, satisfied that he’d silenced her, his eyes seemed to shimmer, soften, warm to smoky charcoal and then, as she took half a step towards him, he nodded at Miles and walked out of the office, leaving the room ringing with his presence. Leaving her weak to the bone.
She put out a hand to grasp the back of the chair he’d been sitting in. It was still warm from his touch and the heat seemed to travel up her arm and spread through her limbs, creating little sparks throughout her body, igniting all the erogenous zones she was familiar with and quite a few that were entirely new.
Phew. Double phewy-phew...
‘He’s a bit tense, isn’t he?’ she said shakily. A sleek, dark Dobermann to Toby’s big, soft Labrador puppy—to be approached with caution rather than a hug. But the rewards if you won his trust...
Forget it! A man like that wasn’t a keeper. All you could hope for was to catch his attention for a moment. But what a moment—
‘With good reason,’ Miles said, interrupting a chain of thought that was going nowhere. Dark, brooding types had never been even close to the top of her list of appealing male stereotypes. Far too high-maintenance. Rude dark, brooding types had never figured.
A barrage of hoots from the street below distracted her, but there was no escape there. Apparently oblivious to the traffic, Darius Hadley was crossing the street and several people stopped to watch him stride down the road in the direction of Sloane Square. Most of them were women.
It wasn’t just her, then.
Without warning he stopped, swung round and looked up at the window where she was standing as if he’d known she’d be there. And she forgot to breathe.
‘Natasha!’
She jumped, blinked and when she looked again he’d gone and for a moment she was afraid that he was coming back. Hoped that he was coming back, but a moment later he reappeared further along the street and she turned her back on the window before he felt her eyes boring into the back of his head and turned again to catch her looking.
‘Have you spoken to the Chronicle?’ she asked; anything to distract herself.
‘The first thing I did when Mr Hadley’s solicitor contacted me early this morning was to call the Chronicle’s advertising manager.’ Miles walked across to his desk and removed a sheet of paper from a file and handed it to her. ‘He sent this over from his office. Hadley hasn’t seen it yet but it’s only a matter of time before his lawyer contacts them.’
It was a photocopied proof of the ad for Hadley Chase—exactly as she’d read it out—complete with a tick next to the ‘approved’ box and her signature scrawled across the bottom.
‘No, Miles. This is wrong.’ She looked up. ‘This isn’t what I signed.’
‘But you did write that,’ he insisted.
‘One or two of the phrases sound vaguely familiar,’ she admitted.
She sometimes wrote a mock advertisement describing a property in the worst possible light when she thought it would help the vendor to see the property through the eyes of a potential buyer. The grubby carpet in the hall, the children’s finger marks on the doors, the tired kitchen. Stuff that wouldn’t cost much to fix, but would make all the difference to the prospects of a sale.
‘Oh, come on, Tash. It sounds exactly like one of your specials.’
‘My “specials” have the advantage of being accurate. And helpful.’
‘So you would have mentioned the leaking roof?’
‘Absolutely. Damaged ceilings and pools of water are about as off-putting as it gets,’ she said, hating that she was on the defensive when she hadn’t done anything wrong.
‘What about the stairs?’
‘I’m sure they’d be lovely if you could see them for the dust and dead leaves that blew in through a broken window.’ The house had been empty since the last occupant had been moved to a nursing home when Alzheimer’s had left him a danger to himself a couple of years ago. ‘The caretaker is worse than useless. I had to find some card and fill the gap myself but it’s just a temporary solution. The first serious gust of wind will blow it out. And, frankly, if I were Darius Hadley I’d put a boot up the backside of the estate executor because he’s no help.’ He didn’t reply. ‘Come on, Miles. You know I didn’t send this to the Chronicle.’
‘Are you sure about that? Really? We all know that you’ve been putting in long hours. What time was your first viewing this morning?’
‘Eight, but—’
‘What time did you finish last night?’ He didn’t wait for her to answer but consulted a printout of her diary, no doubt supplied by Janine. No wonder she’d been smiling. This was much more fun than an office party. Gossip city... ‘Your last viewing was at nine-thirty so you were home at what? Eleven? Eleven-thirty?’
It had been after midnight. Buyers couldn’t always fit into a tidy nine-till-five slot. Far from complaining about the extra hours she put in, that they all put in—with the exception of Toby, who never allowed anything to interfere with rugby training, took time off whenever he felt like it and got away with murder because his great-aunt was married to Peter Black—Miles expected it.
‘They flew from the States to view that apartment. I could hardly tell them that I finished at five-thirty,’ she pointed out. They’d come a long way and wanted to see every detail and she wasn’t about to rush them.
‘No one can keep up that pace for long without something suffering,’ he replied, not even bothering to ask if they were likely to make an offer. ‘It seems obvious to me that you attached the wrong document when you emailed your copy to the Chronicle.’
‘No—’
‘I blame myself.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve pushed you too hard. I should have seen it coming.’
Seen what coming?
‘I didn’t attach the wrong anything,’ she declared, fizzing with indignation, her pulse still racing but with anger now rather than anticipation. How dared anyone tamper with her carefully composed ad? ‘And even if I had made a mistake, don’t you think I’d have noticed it when the proof came back?’
‘If you’d actually had time to look at it.’
‘I made time,’ she declared. ‘I checked every word. And what the hell was the Chronicle thinking? Why didn’t someone on the advertising desk query it?’
‘They did.’ He glanced at the ad. ‘They called this office on the twentieth. Unsurprisingly, they made a note for their records.’
‘Okay, so which idiot did they speak to?’
He handed her the page so that she could see for herself. ‘An idiot by the name of Natasha Gordon.’
‘No!’
‘According to the advertising manager, you assured them that it was the latest trend, harking back fifty years to an estate agent famous for the outrageous honesty of his advertisements.’ His tone, all calm reason, raised the small hairs on the back of her neck. Irritable, she could handle. This was just plain scary. ‘Clearly, you were angry with the executors for not taking your advice.’
‘If they didn’t have the cash, they didn’t have the cash, although I imagine their fees are safely in the bank. Believe me, if I’d been aping the legendary Roy Brooks, I’d have made a far better job of it than this,’ she said, working hard to sound calm even while her pulse was going through the roof. ‘There was plenty to work with. No one from the Chronicle talked to me.’ Calm, cool, professional...
‘So what are you saying? That the advertising manager of the Chronicle is lying? Or that someone pretended to be you? Come on, Tash, who would do that?’ he asked. ‘What would anyone have to gain?’
She swallowed. Put like that, it did sound crazy.
‘You are right about one thing, though,’ he continued. ‘The phone has been ringing off the hook—’ her sigh of relief came seconds too soon ‘—but not with people desperate to view Hadley Chase. They are all gossip columnists and the editors of property pages wanting a comment.’
She frowned. ‘Already? The magazine has been on the shelves for less than two hours.’
‘You know what they say about bad news.’ He took the ad from her and tossed it onto his desk. ‘In this instance I imagine it was given a head start by someone working at the Chronicle tipping them off.’
‘I suppose. How did Darius Hadley hear about it?’
‘I imagine the estate executors received the same phone calls.’
She shook her head, letting the problem of how this had happened go for the moment and concentrating instead on how to fix it. ‘The one thing I do know is that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. I meant what I said to Mr Hadley. Handled right...’
‘For heaven’s sake, Tash, you’ve made both the firm and Mr Hadley into a laughing stock. There is no way to handle this “right”! He’s withdrawn the house from the market and, on top of the considerable expenses we’ve already incurred, we’re not only facing a hefty claim for damages from Hadley but irreparable damage to the Morgan and Black name.’
‘All of which will go away if we find a buyer quickly,’ she insisted, ‘and it’s going to be all over the weekend property pages.’
‘I’m glad you realise the extent of the problem.’
‘No...’ She’d run a Google search when Hadley Chase had been placed in their hands for sale. There was nothing like a little gossip, a bit of scandal to garner a few column inches in one of the weekend property supplements. Unfortunately, despite her speculation on the source of their wealth, the Hadleys had either been incredibly discreet or dull beyond imagining. She’d assumed the latter; if James Hadley had been an entertaining companion, his money would have earned him a lot more than a smallish estate in the country. He’d have been given a title and a place at Charles II’s court.
Darius Hadley had blown that theory right out of the water.
Forget his clothes. With his cavalier curls, his earring, the edge of something dangerous that clung to him like a shadow, he would have been right at home there. Her fingers twitched as she imagined what it would be like to run her fingers through those silky black curls, over his flat abs.
She curled them into her palms, shook off the image—this wasn’t about Darius Hadley; it was about his house.
‘Come on, Miles,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t buy this kind of publicity. The house is in a fabulous location and buyers with this kind of money aren’t going to be put off by problems you’ll find in any property of that age.’ Well, not much. ‘I’ll make some calls, talk to a few people.’ Apparently speaking to a brick wall, she threw up her hands. ‘Damn it, I’ll go down to Hadley Chase and take a broom to the place myself!’
‘You’ll do nothing, talk to no one,’ he snapped.
‘But if I can find a buyer quickly—’
‘Stop! Stop right there.’ Having shocked her into silence, he continued. ‘This is what is going to happen. I’ve booked you into the Fairview Clinic—’
‘The Fairview?’ A clinic famous for taking care of celebrities with drug and drink problems?
‘We’ll issue a statement saying that you’re suffering from stress and will be having a week or two of complete rest under medical supervision.’
‘No.’ Sickness, hospitals—she’d had her fill of them as a child and nothing would induce her to spend a minute in one without a very good reason.
‘The firm’s medical plan will cover it,’ he said, no doubt meaning to reassure her.
‘No, Miles.’
‘While you’re recovering,’ he continued, his voice hardening, ‘you can consider your future.’
‘Consider my future?’ Her future was stepping up to an associate’s office, not being hidden away like some soap star with an alcohol problem until the dust cleared. ‘You’ve got to be kidding, Miles. This has to be a practical joke that’s got out of hand. There’s a juvenile element in the front office that needs a firm—’
‘What I need,’ he said, each word given equal weight, ‘is for you to cooperate.’
He wasn’t listening, she realised. Didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Miles wasn’t interested in how this had happened, only in protecting his firm’s reputation. He needed a scapegoat, a fall guy, and it was her signature on the ad.
That was why he’d summoned her back to the office—to show the sacrifice to Darius Hadley. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t been impressed. He didn’t want the head of some apparently witless woman who stammered and blushed when he looked at her. He was going for damages so Miles was instituting Plan B—protecting the firm’s reputation by destroying hers.
She was in trouble.
‘I’ve spoken to Peter Black and he’s discussed the situation with our lawyers. We’re all agreed that this is the best solution,’ Miles continued, as if it was a done deal.
‘Already?’
‘There was no time to waste.’
‘Even so... What kind of lawyer would countenance such a lie?’
‘What lie?’ he enquired blandly. ‘Burnout happens to the best of us.’
Burnout? She was barely simmering, but the lawyers—covering all eventualities—probably had the press statement drafted and ready to go. She would be described as a ‘highly valued member of staff’...blah-de-blah-de-blah...who, due to work-related stress, had suffered a ‘regrettable’ breakdown. All carefully calculated to give the impression that she’d been found gibbering into her keyboard.
It would, of course, end with everyone wishing her a speedy return to health. Miles was clearly waiting for her to do the decent thing and take cover in the Fairview so that he could tell them to issue it. The clinic’s reputation for keeping their patients safe from the lenses of the paparazzi, safe from the intrusion of the press, was legendary.
Suddenly she wasn’t arguing with him over the best way to recover the situation, but clinging to the rim of the basin by her fingernails as her career was being flushed down the toilet.
‘This is wrong,’ she protested, well aware that the decision had already been made, that nothing she said would change that. ‘I didn’t do this.’
‘I’m doing my best to handle a public relations nightmare that you’ve created, Natasha.’ His voice was flat, his face devoid of expression. ‘It’s in your own best interests to cooperate.’
‘It’s in yours,’ she retaliated. ‘I’ll be unemployable. Unless, of course, you’re saying that I’ll be welcomed back with open arms after my rest cure? That my promotion to associate, the one you’ve been dangling in front of me for months, is merely on hold until I’ve recovered?’
‘I have to think of the firm. The rest of the staff,’ he said with a heavy sigh created to signal his disappointment with her. ‘Please don’t be difficult about this.’
‘Or what?’ she asked.
‘Tash... Please. Why won’t you admit that you made a mistake? That you’re fallible...sick; everyone—maybe even Mr Hadley—will sympathise with you, with us.’
He was actually admitting it!
‘I didn’t do this,’ she repeated but, even to her own ears, she was beginning to sound like the little girl who, despite the frosting around her mouth, had refused to own up to eating two of the cupcakes her mother had made for a charity coffee morning.
‘I’m sorry, Natasha, but if you refuse to cooperate we’ll have no choice but to dismiss you without notice for bringing the firm into disrepute.’ He took refuge behind his desk before he added, ‘If you force us to do that we will, of course, have no option but to counter-sue you for malicious damage.’
Deep, deep trouble.
‘I’m not sick,’ she replied, doing her best to keep her voice steady, fighting down the scream of outrage that was beginning to build low in her belly. ‘As for the suit for damages, I doubt either you or Mr Hadley would get very far with a jury. While the advertisement may not have been what he signed up for—’ she was being thrown to the wolves, used as a scapegoat for something she hadn’t done and she had nothing to lose ‘—it’s the plain unvarnished truth.’
‘Apart from the woodworm and the stairs,’ he reminded her stonily.
‘Are you prepared to gamble on that?’ she demanded. ‘Who knows what’s under all that dirt?’
She didn’t wait for a response. Once your boss had offered you a choice between loony and legal action, any meaningful dialogue was at an end.
TWO
How dared he? How bloody dared he even suggest she might be suffering from stress, burnout? Damn it, Miles had to know this was all a crock of manure.
Tash, despite her stand-up defiance, was shaking as she left Miles Morgan’s office and she headed for the cloakroom. There was no way she could go downstairs and face Janine, who’d obviously known exactly what was coming, until she had pulled herself together.
She jabbed pins in her hair, applied a bright don’t-care-won’t-care coating of lipstick and some mental stiffeners to her legs before she attempted the stairs she’d run up with such optimism only a few minutes earlier.
She’d been ten minutes, no more, but Janine was waiting with a cardboard box containing the contents of her desk drawers.
‘Everything’s there,’ she said, not the slightest bit embarrassed. On the contrary, the smirk was very firmly in place. They’d never been friends but, while she’d never given Janine a second thought outside the office, it was possible that Janine—behind the faux sweetness and the professional smile and ignoring the hours she put in, her lack of a social life—had resented her bonuses. ‘It’s mostly rubbish.’
She didn’t bother to answer. She could see for herself that the contents of her desk drawers had been tipped into the box without the slightest care.
Janine was right; it was mostly rubbish, apart from a spare pair of tights, the pencil case that one of her brothers had given her and the mug she used for her pens. She picked it up and headed for the door.
‘Wait! Miles said...’
In her opinion, Miles had said more than enough but, keeping her expression impassive, she turned, waited.
‘He asked me to take your keys.’
Of course he had. He wouldn’t want her coming back when the office was closed to prove what havoc she could really cause, given sufficient provocation. Fortunately for him, her reputation was more important to her than petty revenge.
She put down the box, took out her key ring, removed the key to the back door of the office and handed it over without a word.
‘And your car keys,’ she said.
Until that moment none of this had seemed real, but the BMW convertible had been the reward Miles had dangled in front of his staff for anyone reaching a year-end sales target that he had believed impossible. She’d made it with a week to spare and it was her pride and joy as well as the envy of every other negotiator in the firm. Could someone have done this to her just to get...?
She stopped. That way really did lie madness.
No doubt Miles would use those spectacular sales figures to back up his claim of ‘burnout’, suggesting she’d driven herself to achieve the impossible and prove that she was better than anyone else. So very sad...
He might even manage to squeeze out a tear.
All he’d have to do was think of the damages he’d have to pay Darius Hadley.
Taking pride in the fact that her fingers weren’t shaking—it was just the rest of her, apparently—she removed the silver Tiffany key ring Toby had bought her for Christmas from her car keys and dropped it in her pocket, but she held on to the keys. ‘I’ll clear my stuff out of the back.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Janine said, following her to the door. ‘I need to make sure it’s locked up safely.’
She wasn’t trusted to hand over the keys? Or did the wretched woman think she’d drive off in it? Add car theft to her crimes? Oh, wait. She was supposed to be crazy...
‘Actually, you’ll need to do more than that. I’m parked in a twenty-minute zone and it’ll need moving before— Oh, too late...’
She startled the traffic warden slapping a ticket on the windscreen with a smile before clicking the lock and tossing the keys to Janine as if she didn’t give a fig. She wouldn’t give her the pleasure of telling everyone how she’d crumpled, broken down. It was just a car. She’d have it back in no time. Just as soon as Miles stopped panicking and started thinking straight.
She emptied the glovebox, gathered her wellington boots, the ancient waxed jacket she’d bought in a charity shop and her umbrella and added them to the box, then reached for her laptop bag.
‘I’ll take that.’
‘My laptop?’ She finally turned to look at Janine. ‘Did Miles ask you to take it?’
‘He’s got a lot on his mind,’ she replied with a little toss of her head. In other words, no.
‘True, and when I find out who’s responsible for this mess he won’t be the only one. In the meantime,’ she said, hooking the strap over her shoulder and patting the soft leather case that held her precious MacBook Pro, ‘if he should ask for it, I suggest you remind him that I bought it out of my January bonus.’
Janine, caught out, flushed bright pink but it was a short-lived triumph.
‘There’s a taxi waiting to take you to the Fairview,’ she said, turning on her heel and heading back to the office.
Tash glanced at the black cab, idling at the kerb. Even loaded as she was, the temptation to stalk off in the direction of the nearest Underground station was strong, but there was no one apart from the traffic warden to witness the gesture so she climbed aboard and gave him her address.
The driver looked back. ‘I was booked for the Fairview.’
‘I have to go home first,’ she said, straight-faced. ‘I’m going to need a nightie and toothbrush.’
* * *
Darius strode the length of the King’s Road, fury and the need to put distance between himself and Natasha Gordon driving his feet towards the Underground.
A minor setback? A house that she’d made unsellable, and a seven-figure tax bill on a house he couldn’t live in—what would merit serious bother in her eyes?
Cornflower-blue, with hair that looked as if she’d just tumbled out of bed and a figure that was all curves. Sexy as hell, which was where his thoughts were taking him.
Once on the train, he took out the small sketchbook he carried with him and did what he had always done when he wanted to block out the world. He drew what he saw. Not the interior of the train, the woman sitting opposite him, the baby sleeping on her lap, but what was in his head.
Dark, angry images that had been stirred up by a house he’d never wanted to set foot in again but just refused to let go. But that wasn’t what appeared on the page. His hand, ignoring his head, was drawing Natasha Gordon. Her eyes, startled wide as he’d confronted her. The way her brow had arched like the wing of a kestrel hovering over a hedgerow, waiting for an unsuspecting vole to make a move. The curve of hair drooping from an antique silver clasp, the tiny crease at the corner of her mouth that had appeared when she’d offered him a smile along with her hand. It was as if her image had burned itself into his brain, every detail pinpoint-sharp. The blush heating her cheeks, a fine chain about her neck that disappeared between invitingly generous breasts. Her long legs.
Was he imagining them?
He couldn’t remember looking at her legs and yet he’d drawn her shoes—black suede, dangerously high heels, a sexy little ankle strap...
He did not fight it, but drew obsessively, continuously, as if by putting her on paper he could clear his mind, rid himself of what had happened in that moment when he’d stood up and turned to face her. When he’d looked back, knowing that she’d be there at the window. Wishing he’d taken her with him when he’d left. When he’d hovered for a dangerous moment on the point of turning back...
Wouldn’t Morgan have loved that?
He stopped drawing and just let his mind’s eye see her, imagining how he’d paint her, sculpt her and when, finally, he looked up, he’d gone way past his stop.
* * *
Tash sat back in the cab as the driver pulled away from the kerb, did a U-turn and joined the queue of traffic backed up along the King’s Road.
A little more than twenty minutes—just long enough to get a parking ticket—that was all it had taken to reduce her from top-selling negotiator at one of the most prestigious estate agencies in London, to unemployable.
* * *
‘It’s a beautiful house, Darius.’ Patsy, having dropped off some paperwork and made them both a cup of tea, had discovered the Chronicle in the waste bin when she’d discarded the teabags. ‘Lots of room. You could make a studio in one of the buildings,’ she said with a head jerk that took in the concrete walls and floor still stained with oil from its previous incarnation as a motor repair shop. ‘Why don’t you just move in? Ask me nicely and I might even come and keep house for you.’
‘You and whose army?’ He glanced at the photograph of the sprawling house, its Tudor core having been added to over the centuries by ancestors with varying degrees of taste. At least someone had done their job right, taking time to find the perfect spot to show the Chase at its best. The half-timbering, a mass of roses hiding a multitude of sins. A little to the right of a cedar tree that had been planted to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria.
The perfect spot at the perfect time on the perfect day when a golden mist rising from the river had lent the place an ethereal quality that took him back to school holidays and early-morning fishing trips with his grandfather. Took him back to an enchanted world seen through the innocent eyes of a child.
‘It’s got at least twenty rooms,’ he said, returning to the armature on which he was building his interpretation of a racehorse flying over a fence. ‘That’s not including the kitchen, scullery, pantries and the freezing attics where the poor sods who kept the place running in the old days were housed.’ Plus half a dozen cottages, at present occupied by former employees of the estate whom he could never evict, and a boat house that was well past its best twenty years ago.
She put the magazine on his workbench where he could see it, opened a packet of biscuits and, when he shook his head, helped herself to one. ‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Wring that wretched girl’s neck?’ he offered, and tried not to think about his hand curled around her nape. How her skin would feel against his palm, the scent of vanilla that he couldn’t lose... ‘Subject closed.’
He picked up the Chronicle and tossed it back in the bin.
‘It said in the paper that she’d had some kind of a breakdown,’ Patsy protested.
A widow, she worked as a freelance ‘Girl Friday’ for several local businesses, fitting them in around the needs of her ten-year-old son. She kept his books and his paperwork in order, the fridge stocked with fresh milk, cold beer, and his life organised. The downside was that, like an old time travelling minstrel, she delivered neighbourhood gossip, adding to the story with each stop she made. He had no doubt that Hadley Chase had featured heavily in her story arc this week and her audience were no doubt eagerly awaiting the next instalment.
‘Please tell me you don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,’ he said as, concentration gone, he gave up on the horse and drank the tea he hadn’t asked for.
‘Of course I don’t,’ she declared, ‘but the implication was that she had a history of instability. They wouldn’t lie about something like that.’ She took another biscuit, clearly in no hurry to be anywhere else.
‘No? She was in full control of her faculties when I saw her,’ he said. ‘I suspect the breakdown story is Morgan and Black’s attempt to focus the blame on her and lessen the impact on their business.’ Lessen the damages.
‘That’s shocking. She should sue.’
‘She hasn’t bothered to deny it,’ he said.
‘Maybe her lawyer has advised her not to say anything. What’s she like? You didn’t say you’d met her.’
‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘I’m doing my best to forget.’ Forget his body’s slamming response at the sight of her. The siren call of a sensually pleasing body that had been made to wrap around a man. A mouth made for pleasure. The feeling of control slipping away from him.
Precious little chance of that when his hands itched to capture the liquid blue of eyes that had sucked the breath out of him, sent the blood rushing south, nailing him to the spot. A look that eluded his every attempt to recreate it.
It was just as well she was safely out of reach in the Fairview, playing along with Morgan’s game in the hopes of hanging on to her job. Asking her to sit for him was a distraction he could not afford. And would certainly not endear him to his lawyers.
‘I wonder if it was anorexia?’ she pondered. ‘In the past.’ Patsy, generous in both character and build, took another biscuit.
‘No way.’ He shook his head as he recalled that delicious moment when, as Natasha Gordon had offered him her hand, the top button of her blouse had surrendered to the strain, parting to reveal the kind of cleavage any red-blooded male would willingly dive into. ‘Natasha Gordon has all the abundant charms of a milkmaid.’
‘A milkmaid?’
Patsy’s grandparents had immigrated to Britain in the nineteen-fifties and she’d lived her entire life in the inner city. It was likely that the closest she’d ever come to a cow was in a children’s picture book.
‘Big blue eyes, a mass of fair hair and skin like an old-fashioned rose.’ There was one that scrambled over the rear courtyard at the Chase. He had no idea what it was called, but it had creamy petals blushed with pink that were bursting out of a calyx not designed to contain such bounty. ‘Believe me, this is not a woman who lives on lettuce.’
‘Oh...’ She gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘And did this milkmaid apologise with a pretty curtsy?’ she asked, confirming her familiarity with the genre.
‘She didn’t appear to have read the script.’ No apology, no excuses... ‘She suggested that the advertisement was little more than a minor setback.’
‘Really? You’re quite sure the poor woman is not cracking up?’
‘As sure as I can be without a doctor’s note.’ But there was a distinct possibility that he was.
Milkmaids, roses...
Forget wheeling her in to apologise. If it was possible to be any more cynical, he’d have said they were hoping that she might use her charms, her lack of control over her buttons, to distract him from taking legal action.
He shouldn’t even be thinking about how far she might go to achieve that objective. Or how happy he would be to lie back and let her try.
* * *
‘Dad’s really worried about you, Tash. You’ve been working so hard and all this stress...well...you know...’ Her mother never actually said what she was thinking out loud. ‘He thinks you should come home for a while so that we can look after you.’
Tash sighed. She’d known that whatever she said, they’d half believe the newspaper story, convinced that they had been right all along. That she would be safer at home. No matter how much she told herself that they were wrong, it was hard to resist that kind of worry.
‘Mum, I’m fine.’
‘Tom thinks a break would do you good. We’ve booked the house down in Cornwall for the half-term holiday.’ So far, so what she’d expected. Her dad the worrier, her brother the doctor prescribing a week at the seaside and her mother trying to please everyone. ‘You know how you always loved it there and you haven’t seen the children for ages. You won’t believe how they’ve grown.’
Twenty-five and on holiday with her family. Building sandcastles for her nieces during the day and playing Scrabble or Monopoly in the evening. How appealing was that?
‘I saw them at Easter,’ she said. ‘Send me a postcard.’
‘Darling...’
‘It’s all smoke and mirrors, Mum. I’m fit as a flea.’
‘Are you sure? Are you taking the vitamins I sent you?’
‘I never miss,’ she said, rolling her eyes in exasperation. She understood, really, but anyone would think she was still five years old and fighting for her life instead of a successful career woman. This was just a hiccup.
‘Are you eating properly?’
‘All the food groups.’
When the taxi had delivered her to her door, she’d gone straight to the freezer and dug out a tub of strawberry cheesecake ice cream. While she’d eaten it, she pulled up the file on her laptop so that if, in a worst case scenario, it came to an unfair dismissal tribunal she had a paper trail to demonstrate exactly what she’d done. Except that there it all was, word for word, on the screen. Exactly as printed. Which made no sense.
The proof copy she’d seen, approved and put in her out tray had been the one she’d actually written, not the one that was printed.
Either she really was going mad or someone had gone out of their way to do this to her. Not just changing the original copy, fiddling with the proof and intercepting the phone call from the Chronicle, but getting into her laptop to change what she’d written so that she had no proof that she’d ever written anything else.
Okay, a forensic search would pull up the original, but there would be no way to prove that she hadn’t changed it herself because whoever had done this had logged in using her password.
Which meant there was only one person in the frame.
The man who hadn’t let her know he was back a week early from a six-week rugby tour. The man who hadn’t come rushing round with pizza, Chianti and chocolate the minute he heard the news. Who hadn’t called, texted, emailed even, to ask how she was.
The man who was now occupying the upstairs office that should, by rights, be hers.
Her colleague with benefits: Toby Denton.
She wouldn’t have thought the six-foot-three blond rugby-playing hunk—who’d never made a secret of the fact that he saw work as a tedious interruption to his life and whose only ambition was to play the sport professionally—had the brains to engineer her downfall with such cunning.
His cluelessness, off the rugby field, had been a major part of his appeal. When there was any rescuing to be done—which was often when it came to work—she was the one tossing him the lifebelt. Like giving him her laptop password so that he could check the office diary for an early-morning appointment when, typically, he’d forgotten where he was supposed to be.
The announcement of his appointment as associate partner had appeared on the company website the day after she’d been walked to the door with her belongings in a cardboard box. Photographs of the champagne celebration had appeared on the blog a day later. It was great PR and she’d have applauded if it hadn’t been her career they were interring.
‘Tash?’ her mother asked anxiously. ‘Are you baking?’
‘Baking? No...’ Then, in sheer desperation, ‘Got to go. Call waiting. Have a lovely time in Cornwall.’
Call waiting... She wished, she thought, glancing along the work surface at the ginger, lemon drizzle and passion cakes lined up alongside a Sacher Torte, waiting for the ganache she was making.
She had been baking. She’d used every bowl she possessed, every cake tin. They were piled up in the sink and on the draining board, along with a heap of eggshells and empty sugar, flour and butter wrappers and a fine haze of icing sugar hung in the air, coating every surface, including her.
It was her displacement activity. Some people played endless computer games, or went for a run, or ironed when they needed to let their brain freewheel. She beat butter and sugar and eggs into creamy peaks.
Unfortunately, her mind was ignoring the no-job, no-career problem. Instead it kept running Darius Hadley on a loop. That moment when he’d turned and looked at her in Miles Morgan’s office, his face all dark shadows, his eyes burning into her. His hands. The glint of gold beneath dark curls. The air stirring as he’d walked past her, leaving the scent of something earthy behind.
That moment when he’d stopped in the street and looked back and she’d known that if he’d lifted a hand to her she would have gone to him. Worse, had wanted him to lift a hand...
Her skin glowed just thinking about that look. Not just her skin.
Madness.
Her skin was sticky, her eyes gritty; she had no job and no one was going to call. Not Miles. Not any of the agencies that had tried to tempt her away from him. Last week she was the negotiator everyone wanted on their team, but now she was damaged goods.
If she was going to rescue her career, this was going to have to be a show rather than tell scenario. She would have to demonstrate to the world that she was still the best there was. Her brain hadn’t been dodging the problem; it had been showing her the answer.
Darius Hadley.
She was going to have to find a buyer for Hadley Chase.
A week ago that had been a challenge, but she’d had the contacts, people who would pick up the phone when she called, listen to her when she told them she had exactly the house they were looking for because she didn’t lie, didn’t waste their time. Matching houses with the right buyers was a passion with her. People trusted her. Or they had.
Now the word on the street was that she’d lost it. She was on her own with nothing to offer except her wits, her knowledge of the market and the kind of motivation that would move mountains if she could persuade Darius Hadley to give her a chance.
She was going to have to face him: this man who’d turned her into a blushing, jelly-boned cliché with no more than a look.
In the normal course of events it wouldn’t have been more than a momentary wobble. It had been made clear to her by the estate’s executor that the vendor wanted nothing to do with the actual sale of his house and if he’d let her just get on with it she would never have seen him again. Apparently her luck had hit the deck on all fronts that morning.
At the time she hadn’t given the reason why Darius Hadley was keeping his distance any thought—it had taken all her concentration not to melt into a puddle at his feet—but the more she’d thought about him, the more she understood how it must hurt to be the Hadley to let the house go. To lose four centuries of his family history.
If there was no cash to go with the property, he would have no choice—death meant taxes—but it was easy to see why he’d been furious with them, with her, for messing up and forcing him to confront the situation head-on. Maybe, though, now he’d had time to calm down, he’d be glad of someone offering to help.
Selling a country estate was an expensive business. Printing, advertising, travel, and she doubted that, in these cash-strapped days, he’d be inundated with estate agents eager to invest in a house that had been publicly declared a money pit.
Hopefully she’d be all he’d got. And he, collywobbles notwithstanding, was almost certainly her only hope.
Fortunately she had all the details of Hadley Chase on her laptop.
What she didn’t have were the contact details for Darius Hadley.
She’d had no success when she’d searched Hadley Chase on Google hoping for some family gossip to get the property page editors salivating. She assumed it would have thrown up anything newsworthy about Darius Hadley, but she typed his name into the search engine anyway.
A whole load of links came up, including images, and she clicked on the only one of him. It had been taken, ironically, from one of those high society functions featured in the Country Chronicle and the caption read: ‘Award-winning sculptor Darius Hadley at the Serpentine Gallery...’
He was a sculptor? Well, that would explain the steel toecaps, the grey smears on his jeans. That earthy scent had been clay...
His tie was loose, his collar open and he’d been caught unawares, laughing at something or someone out of the picture and she was right. A smile was all it took to lift the shadows. He still had the look of the devil, but one who was having a good day, and she reached out and touched the screen, her fingertips against his mouth.
‘Oh...’ she breathed. ‘Collywollydoodah...’
THREE
The narrow cobbled backstreet was a jumble of buildings that had been endlessly converted and added to over the centuries. All Tash had was the street name, but she had been confident that a prize-winning sculptor’s studio would be easy enough to find.
She was wrong.
She’d reached a dead end and found no sign, no indication that art of any kind happened behind any of the doors but as she turned she found herself face-to-face with a woman who was regarding her through narrowed eyes.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘I hope so... I’m looking for Darius Hadley. I was told his studio was in this street,’ she prompted.
The woman gave her a long, thoughtful look, taking in the grey business suit that she kept for meetings with the property managers of billionaires; she had hoped it would cut down on the inexplicable electricity that had sparked between them in Miles’s office. A spark that had sizzled even when he was outside on the pavement looking up at her.
Okay, maybe she should have worn a pair of sensible, low-heeled shoes, added horn-rimmed spectacles to make herself look seriously serious. Hell, she was serious, never more so—this was her career on the line—but there was only so far she could stretch the illusion. As for her favourite red heels, she’d needed them to give her a little extra height, some of the bounce that had been knocked clean out of her. Besides, Darius Hadley wouldn’t be fooled by a pair of faux specs. Not for a minute.
She’d experienced the power of eyes that would see right through any games, any pretence and knew that she would have to be absolutely straight with him.
No problem. Straight was what she did and she had it all worked out. The look, the poise, what she was going to say. She was going to be totally professional, which was all very fine in theory but first she had to find him. She’d called in a big favour to get his address but now she was beginning to wonder if she’d been sold a fake.
The woman, her inspection completed, asked, ‘Is Darius expecting you?’
‘He’ll want to see me,’ she said, fingers mentally crossed. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Sure,’ she said, a slow smile lighting up her face. ‘I know everyone. Even you, Natasha Gordon.’
Tash, still dragging her chin back into place, followed the woman back down the street towards a pair of wide, rusty old garage doors over which a sign suggested someone called Mike would repair your car while you waited. She produced a large bunch of keys and let herself in through the personnel door.
‘Darius?’ she called, leaving the door open. Tash, grabbing her chance, stepped in after her. ‘How are you feeling about the milkmaid today?’
Milkmaid?
There was a discouraging grunt from somewhere above her head. ‘Not now, Patsy.’
She looked up. Darius Hadley was standing on a tall stepladder, thumbing clay onto the leaping figure of a horse.
‘Do you still want to wring her neck?’ Patsy persisted.
‘Nothing has changed since last week,’ he replied, leaning back a little to check what he’d done, ‘but, to put your mind at rest, that damned house has given me enough trouble without adding grievous bodily harm to the list.’
‘So it would be safe to let her in?’
Now she had his attention.
‘Let her...’ He swung around and her heart leapt. He was so high... ‘She’s here?’
‘She doesn’t have a milking stool, or one of those things they wear across the shoulders with a pail at each end, but other than that she fits the description. Abundantly,’ she added with a broad smile. ‘Of course it helped that you’ve been drawing her on any bit of paper that comes to hand for the last few days.’
‘Patsy...’
‘I found her wandering up and down the street looking for your studio. Your name on the door would be a real help,’ she said, apparently not the least bit intimidated by the growl.
‘That would only encourage visitors. People who interrupt me while I’m working,’ he said, looking over Patsy’s head to where she was hovering just inside the doorway.
Maybe it was just the sunlight streaming in through the skylight above him, but today his eyes were molten slate, scorching her skin, melting the starch in her shirt, reducing her knees to fudge frosting.
It wasn’t just his eyes. Everything about him was hot: the faded, clay-smeared jeans hugging his thighs, midnight-black hair curling into his neck, long, ropey muscles in his forearms. And those hands...
She had tried to convince herself that she’d imagined the electricity, the fizz, the crackle... There had been a shock factor when she’d seen him in Miles’s office, but he’d been in her head for days and not just because he was her only chance to get back to work.
She’d been dreaming about those hands. How they’d feel on her body, the drag of hard calluses against tender skin...
‘I know I’m the last person on earth you want to talk to, Mr Hadley,’ she said quickly before he could tell her to get lost, ‘but if you can spare me ten minutes, I’ve got a proposition for you.’
‘Proposition?’
The word hung in the air.
Darius looked down at the shadowy hourglass shape of Natasha Gordon, backlit by sunlight streaming in over the city rooftops.
It was just a word. Morgan couldn’t possibly be using her as a sweetener. But then again, maybe it was her idea...
‘If you could spare me ten minutes?’ From above her he could see straight down the opening of her blouse, the way her luscious breasts were squished together as she raised her hand to shield her eyes from the light pouring in from the skylights. ‘Maybe we could sit down,’ she suggested, lifting her other hand a little to show him a glossy white cakebox, dangling from a ribbon. ‘I’ve brought cake. It’s home-made. I’ll even make the tea.’
He picked up a damp cloth and wiped his hands, giving himself a moment to still his rampaging libido. He should send her packing but how often did a man receive a proposition from a sexy woman bearing cake? And now she was here he’d be able to capture the look that had eluded him, draw her out of his head.
‘I hope you or your mother can cook,’ he said and Patsy nodded, apparently satisfied that it would be safe to leave him alone with her, and left them to it.
‘Would I come bearing anything less than perfection?’ she asked.
Not this woman, he thought. She’d pulled out all the stops... ‘How did you find me?’
‘Does it matter?’ she asked, the wide space between her brows crumpled in a tiny frown that didn’t fool him for a moment. Not many people knew where he worked. She’d had to work hard to locate him.
‘Humour me,’ he suggested, taking a step down the ladder, and she caught her breath, muscles tensed, barely stopping herself from taking a step back. She was nowhere near as cool as she looked. Which made two of them.
‘I did what anyone would do. Ran an Internet search,’ she said quickly, ‘and there you were. Darius Hadley, award-winning sculptor, presently working on a prestigious commission to create a life-size bronze of one of the greatest racehorses of all time.’ Lots of details so he’d forget the question. He was familiar with the technique. His grandfather had been a past master at diverting him whenever he’d asked awkward questions. ‘There was a photograph,’ she added.
‘Of me?’ He took another step down. She swallowed, but this time stood her ground.
‘Of the horse. It was in the Racing Times. Photographs of you are scarce. You don’t even have a website.’ She made it sound like an accusation.
‘I seem to manage.’
‘Yes...’
She turned away, giving them both a break as she looked around at the dozens of photographs taken from every angle of the horse—galloping, jumping, standing—that he’d pinned to the walls. She paused briefly at the anatomical drawings of the skeleton, the muscles, the blood vessels and then looked up at his interpretation of the animal gathered to leap a jump.
‘If I’d known who you were when the house came on the market,’ she said at last, ‘I could have used the information to get some editorial interest. Racehorse owners are among the richest men in the world and Hadley Chase is close to one of the country’s major racehorse training centres.’
‘You managed an excessive number of column inches without any help from me,’ he said, ‘but that’s who, not where,’ he said, refusing to be sidetracked.
A rueful smile made it to a mouth that was a little too big for beauty, tugging it upwards. ‘The where was more difficult. And the address was only half the story. If it hadn’t been for Patsy I’d still be looking for you.’
‘So?’ he insisted.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Hadley. An estate agent never reveals her sources.’
‘A journalist?’ No, the piece in the newspaper had not been kind. Reading between the lines, anyone would be forgiven for assuming her ‘collapse’ had been the result of a coke-fuelled drive for success. Something in her past... Journalists would not be flavour of the month. ‘An art dealer?’ he suggested. Who would be vulnerable to those big blue eyes and a loose top button? No... Who had moved recently? ‘Freddie Glover threw a house-warming party a few months back,’ he said.
She neither confirmed nor denied it and, satisfied, he let it rest.
‘If you’ve come to apologise...’ She seemed bright enough so he left her to fill in the blank.
‘I was sure Miles would have performed the ritual grovel but I could go through the motions if you insist,’ she offered.
A little movement of her hand, underlining the offer, sent a barely discernible shimmer through her body—a shimmer that found an answering echo deep in his groin. Yes...
She waited briefly, but he was too busy catching his own breath to answer.
‘I’m sorry about what happened, obviously, but that’s not the reason I’m here.’
‘Why are you here?’ he demanded. He hated being this out of control around a woman. Could not make himself send her away. ‘For heaven’s sake, come in and close the door if you’re staying. I won’t eat you...’
She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she closed the door, took a breath and then walked towards him with the kind of mesmerisingly slow, hip-swaying walk that had gone out of style fifty years ago. Around the same time as her hourglass figure.
No longer backlit from the street, the light pouring in from the skylights overhead lit her up like a spotlight and he could see that she’d made an attempt to disguise its lushness beneath a neat grey suit. Or maybe not. The skirt clung to her thighs and stopped a hand’s breadth short of serious, leaving a yard of leg on display, always supposing he’d got past the deep vee of her shirt. She really should try a size larger if she was serious.
As for her hair, she’d fastened it in a sleek twist that rested against the nape of her neck; it was a classically provocative style and his fingers, severely provoked, itched to pull the pins and send it tumbling around her face and shoulders.
She’d stopped a teasing arm’s width from the ladder, looking up at him. Near enough for the honeyed scent of warm skin, something lemony, spicy, chocolatey to reach him but, maybe sensing the danger, not quite close enough to touch. Clearly her instincts were better honed than his because every beat of his pulse urged him to reach for her, pull her close enough to feel what she was doing to him...
Forget the cake. Eating her, one luscious mouthful at a time, was the only thing on his mind.
‘Well?’ he snapped. Angry with her for disturbing him. No one was allowed to disturb him while he was working. Angry with himself for wanting to be disturbed. For the triumphant Yes! racketing through him at her unexpected appearance, despite the certainty that this was some devious scheme of Morgan’s—sending in the sex bomb to persuade him to drop his claim for damages.
Tash ran her tongue over her teeth in an attempt to get some spit so that she could answer him. Lay out her offer like the professional she was.
She was used to meeting powerful men and women but she was having a tough job remembering why she was in Darius Hadley’s studio. The concrete floor and walls made the space cold after the sun outside, but a trickle of sweat was running down between her breasts and an age-old instinct was telling her to shrug off her jacket, let her hair down, reach out and run her fingers up his denim-clad thigh, perched, tantalisingly, at eye level.
‘What do you want, Natasha Gordon?’
She looked up and saw her feelings echoed in Darius Hadley’s shadowed features and for a moment it could have gone either way.
She was saved by the crash of a pigeon landing on the skylight, startling them both out of the danger zone.
‘I don’t want anything from you, Mr Hadley,’ she said quickly. Could this be any more difficult? Bad enough that he thought she’d sabotaged the sale of his house without acting like a sex-starved nymphomaniac. ‘On the contrary. I’m going to do you a favour. I’m going to sell your house for you.’
‘Miss Gordon...’
‘I know.’ She held up her hand in a gesture of surrender. ‘Why would you trust me? After the debacle with your ad,’ she added, and then wished she hadn’t. Having found him, got through the door a darn sight more easily than she’d expected and survived that first intense encounter, reminding him why he should throw her out was not her brightest move.
‘Is there any hope that you’re not going to tell me?’ he asked.
Phew... ‘Not a chance.’ She slipped the strap of her laptop bag from her shoulder and let it drop at her feet, anchoring herself in his space. Then she placed the glossy white cakebox on his workbench alongside his neatly laid-out tools—most of which appeared to be lethal weapons. Most, but not all. She picked up a long curved rib bone.
‘That belonged to the last person who annoyed me,’ he said, finally stepping off the ladder.
‘Really?’ Apparently there was a sense of humour lurking beneath that scowl. Promising...
‘What did he do?’ she asked, looking up at the sculpture rearing above her, heart swelling within its ribcage as the horse leapt some unseen obstacle. From what she’d seen of his work on the Net, it appeared that visceral was something of a theme. ‘Did he throw you? Is this you getting your own back?’
‘Anyone can make a pretty image.’ He took the bone from her, replaced it on the bench. ‘I want to show what’s behind the power, the movement. Bones, sinews, heart.’
‘The engine rather than the chassis.’ Eager to avoid close eye contact, she walked around the beast, examining it from every angle, before looking across at Darius Hadley from the safety of the far side. ‘That’s what you do, isn’t it? Show us the inside of things.’
‘That’s what’s real, what’s important.’
‘I saw your installation outside Tate Modern. The house.’ That had been stripped back to the bones, too.
‘You’ve done your homework,’ he said.
‘I was just walking past. I didn’t realise it was yours until I looked you up online. I thought it was...bleak.’
‘Everyone’s a critic.’
‘No... It was beautiful. It’s just...well, there were no people and without them a house is simply a frame.’
‘Perhaps that was the point,’ he suggested.
‘Was it?’ He didn’t answer and she looked back up at the horse. ‘This is...big.’
‘I’ll cast a smaller version for a limited edition.’
‘Just the thing for the mantelpiece,’ she said flippantly. Then wished she hadn’t. His work was more important than that. ‘I’m sorry; that was a stupid thing to say. I’m a bit nervous.’
‘I’m not surprised. Does Miles Morgan really think he can buy me off with a glimpse of your cleavage and a slice of cake?’
‘What?’ She checked her top button but it was still in place. Just. She’d worn her roomiest shirt but working ten, fourteen hours a day didn’t leave much time for exercise, or a carefully thought-out diet. And she’d moved less and eaten more in the last week than was good for anyone; it was definitely time to get out of the kitchen and back to work. ‘Miles didn’t send me. As for the cleavage...’ She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug that she hoped would give the impression that she was utterly relaxed. She was good at that. The most important thing she’d learned about selling houses was to create an image. Set the stage, create an initial impact that would grab the viewer’s attention then hold it. This time she was selling herself... ‘I’ve been on a baking binge and eating too much of my own cooking.’
‘And now you want to share.’
‘I thought something sweet might help to break the ice.’
Ice?
There was no ice as she bent forward to tug on the gauzy bow that exactly matched the shade of her lipstick, her nails; only heat zinging through his veins, making the blood pump thickly in his ears.
He’d been drawing her obsessively for a week, trying to get her out of his head, but while the two-dimensional image had been recognisable it lacked the warmth, the sparkle of the original.
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