Читать книгу Rescued by the Millionaire - Cara Colter - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

FURIOUS WITH HERSELF, Trixie moved her temple away from his fingertip.

How unfair was that? That Daniel Riverton had stumbled upon the very question she had been secretly asking herself while outwardly declaring her contentment in her new life of independence?

But suddenly, the questions all seemed different. It wasn’t just could she manage her own business and look after herself and her apartment and her nieces? It was, could she live without feeling the way his touch on her temple had made her feel?

He was talking about right now, Trixie reminded herself sternly.

Was she all right? The truth was Trixie was not all right. The unexpected twist her life had taken had made her feel rattled right down to her pale pink-painted toenails.

“I’m fine.” This was said as much to herself, and her life plan, as it was to him.

Stubbornly, anxious to get her night and her life back under control, Trixie tried to get up from the chair, but pushed with that right arm. A startled gasp of pain left her lips. She sat back down, feeling horribly like she might faint.

He was on his knees beside her in an instant, his hand on her arm.

She closed her eyes against two kinds of pain. One, the pain swimming in her arm like a snacking shark, the other the pain of being so close to such a devastatingly attractive, nearly naked man in such horrible circumstances.

He prodded and tugged gently. “I think your arm might be broken,” he said. “Or dislocated? Maybe at the shoulder.”

“But my arm can’t be broken! Or dislocated. I’m barely managing the twins now!” she wailed. The admission was out before she could stop it. Fresh tears pooled in her eyes, and he frowned at her, troubled.

“Where’s your phone? Your arm is in bad shape, and you’ve had quite a knock on your head. I’m calling an ambulance.”

“No.”

“No?” His eyebrow shot upward in shocked surprise, as if no one had ever uttered that word to him. Which seemed like a distinct possibility.

“I mean you can’t,” she stammered, and then stronger. “I mean, I can’t.”

“Well, I can, and you are, so live with it. The phone, please?”

It penetrated the fog of her pain and her relief over being rescued that Daniel Riverton was a man just a little too accustomed to getting his own way. And as tempting as it was to have someone taking charge in a situation like this, she couldn’t just give in. She had responsibilities!

“What about my nieces?”

His gaze shifted to Molly and Pauline. The next time she was thinking how attractive he was, she would remember that look. What kind of person looked at innocent children with such undisguised dislike?

Though, much as she hated to admit it, her own view of their innocence was slightly tempered now that they had tied her to a chair with near catastrophic results!

“I can’t go in an ambulance,” Trixie announced firmly. “What would happen to them?”

“Can’t you call somebody to stay with them?” He was frowning at the girls, again, making no effort to hide the fact he found them faintly horrifying. She followed his gaze.

They had a jar of strawberry jam open and were scooping out the sticky red substance with their hands and licking it off. On her sofa. Which, while not new, was one of her nods to her new life, recently reupholstered in a bright, supermodern pattern of large orange and red poppies on a white backdrop, that try as she might, Trixie couldn’t quite get used to.

Could she call somebody to stay with her nieces? It was obvious her arm was going to need medical attention.

Trixie contemplated calling Brianna. Her closest friend lived on the other side of the city, which was strike one. It would be at least forty-five minutes before she could be here. And Brianna would have to be at work in just a few hours, which was strike two. But strike three? Brianna had been nearly as horrified by the twins as Daniel Riverton was.

They are absolute terrors, Trix, she had said, part way through a play date with her own son, Peter. How are you going to survive this?

Apparently without any help from her friend, who had protectively installed Petie in his car seat and driven away well before the scheduled end of the play date.

“I’m afraid I haven’t anyone to call,” she said.

“Mrs. Bulittle?” he suggested helpfully.

She shuddered. “My twin sister, Abigail, would kill me if I left them with a stranger. I think she demands criminal record checks on everyone who is around her children.”

“Amazing,” he muttered, casting her a look that she interpreted as meaning there are two of you, really? But then he cast another glance at the jam-covered twins. “I think they could give the most hardened felon a run for his money.”

She wanted to tell him that wasn’t funny, but she just didn’t have the energy, and it was close to true, anyway. Both she and Daniel watched as one of them—she was almost certain it was Molly—casually wiped a sticky hand on the sofa.

“Girls,” she said, and then, when they didn’t even glance her way, a little louder, “Girls! Could you move to the table with that?”

They both ignored her.

He looked at her. “Are they always like this? I mean they seem a little—”

He hesitated, lost for words.

“Precocious?” she suggested.

“Um—”

“Cheeky?”

“Um—”

“Spirited!”

“Right. Spirited. Like savages. When’s the last time their hair was combed?”

It sounded so judgmental! She was feeling like a failure anyway, she didn’t need him pointing out her inadequacies!

“They won’t let me comb their hair,” she said, hearing the defensiveness in her own voice. “Abby is on a horseback trip through the Canadian Rockies. I haven’t been able to contact her to verify if it’s true.”

“If what’s true?”

She lowered her voice. “They said only their d-a-d-d-y combs their hair.” She spelled it because the mention of the word was enough to send both girls into fits.

“Like the our-mother-lets-us-do-this-all-the-time story, that one also doesn’t exactly have a ring of truth to it.”

“And you would be an expert on when children are telling the truth, because?”

“Because I am a man without illusions,” he said comfortably. “I am a cynic about all things, and a ruthless judge of character as a result. The cute factor of small children has no sway over me. In fact, just the opposite.”

He didn’t like children! A wave of gratitude swept her. He was not, then, the perfect man, no matter how exquisite his finger on her temple had felt! Not even close!

“So,” he continued smoothly, “you know how you can tell those two girls are lying to you, Miss Marsh?”

She glared at him, not giving him the satisfaction of answering.

“Their lips are moving.”

“That seems unnecessarily harsh.” She defended her nieces despite her horrible inner concession that he might well be right. “Besides, if you thought you had noise complaints before, Mr. Riverton, you should have heard Molly when I tried to take a brush to her hair. It sounded as if I was killing my cat.”

It was the first time she had thought of her cat since this debacle started.

“Oh! My cat! The apartment door isn’t open to the hallway, is it?”

He took a step back from her and craned his neck. “I think it is.”

She had a sudden awful thought that Freddy might have slipped out the door in all the ruckus. He’d been unhappy since the arrival of the girls. How unhappy? Would he have taken advantage of the open door to explore a larger world? Find a new home?

“But I don’t think you have to worry about your cat. He hightailed it down the hallway toward the bedrooms when I came in. I suspect he’ll remain there for at least a month.”

At the risk of seeming like an eccentric who was way too concerned about her cat—which, she thought sadly, she probably was—she said, as casually as she could, “I’ll just go check on him.”

But once again, her effort to get up caused her to gasp in pain.

Daniel Riverton, who had known her all of ten minutes, sighed with long suffering. “Don’t move.”

But I don’t want you to see my bedroom! Those lace curtains apparently said run to men. But the words caught in her throat. She did need to know Freddy hadn’t escaped.

She listened as Daniel went and shut the front door, then imagined him entering her bedroom. The whole time she’d been painting and hanging curtains Trixie had loved the safe, cozy feeling she was creating.

Home.

But ever since Miles had cast a jaundiced eye on it—as if her decorating style represented everything that was wrong with her—she hadn’t liked it anymore.

Now she had new plans! The space would be a more accurate reflection of the new her: vibrant, cosmopolitan, the antithesis of dull.

She had even purchased the paint for this vision of the new her, but somehow she just never got around to it.

Understandable, she told herself. Life was beyond busy.

And yet, with Daniel Riverton prowling her premises, she had a sudden fervent wish she had gotten the redecoration of her bedroom done. She didn’t want him to see it, as it was. In the world according to Miles, it said way too much about her.

Boring.

Trixie wished she didn’t care what Daniel thought of her. Too late. She already did!

“The cat is under the bed,” Daniel said, coming back into the room, “And just for the record, he’s nasty, too. And he really looks like he stuck his paw in a socket.”

She scanned his face to see if he had drawn any conclusions about her, and was relieved he seemed to have focused on the cat. So she would, too!

“He’s a Persian.” Trixie stuck her chin up defiantly in the face of the fact her whole life looked like a chaotic mess to Daniel Riverton, a man who radiated a certain aggravating calm, control. “He needs to be groomed. Unfortunately, he hasn’t come out of hiding since the arrival of you know who.”

“I do. I do know who. Speaking of which, where is their...um...hair groomer? D-a-d?”

“Australia. He and my sister are getting a d-i-v-o-r-c-e.” Which, Trixie was fairly certain was at the heart of all the trouble with the twins. The impending divorce of their parents, the disintegration of their world.

It seemed like the wrong time to plan a trip, which had made Trixie slightly suspicious. And although Abby had not said so, Trixie was fairly certain her level of excitement about her return home to Canada and her adventure in the Canadian Rockies might have involved a new beau, met over the internet.

“I feel like they’ve formed a little team, and they are taking on a world they feel quite angry with,” she said. Why had she told him that? It fell solidly in the he-didn’t-need-to-know department, especially since he had already declared himself a cynic who did not have any kind of soft spot for children.

But for some reason, Trixie wanted to convince him of the innate goodness of her nieces.

“A little team? They’re like rampaging Vikings!”

There! That was a good lesson in confiding in him, or trying to coax the compassionate side of him to the surface. He didn’t have one! His attractiveness, which had started as an eleven on a scale of one to ten, should be moving steadily downward.

It wasn’t. Which made Trixie realize she was more superficial than she would have ever believed possible!

“But it is a good cautionary tale,” he decided, cocking his head thoughtfully toward the twins. “Anybody contemplating matrimonial bliss should just have a look at this. People should really think about endings rather than beginnings.”

She found that very cynical, but since it was precisely the attitude she hoped to adopt toward her life, she said firmly, “I agree, totally.”

He regarded her for a minute, and that sinfully sexy half smile lifted a corner of his mouth again. “Somehow, I doubt that,” he said.

She was flabbergasted by his arrogance. How could he possibly think he knew anything about her given both the shortness and the unusual circumstances of their meeting?

“And why would you doubt that?” She made sure her voice was very chilly.

“Because, Miss Marsh, everything from the color of your toenails, to the little—” he squinted at her, “—teddy bears frolicking across your housecoat tells me you are not cynical. Your devotion to your cat, the abundance of eyelet lace and lilac paint in your bedroom and your determination to believe the best of that pair of matched bookend fiends wrecking your sofa, tells me a great deal about you.”

Oh! He had noticed the bedroom. And he hadn’t liked it any better than Miles!

“I’m redoing my bedroom,” she said. “I even have the paint. And a picture on my fridge door.”

She glared at him, hoping he would take the hint and be quiet, but he did not take the hint at all.

“You are,” Daniel Riverton declared with aggravating authority, as if she hadn’t said one word about redoing her bedroom, “a little old-fashioned, somewhat innocent and extremely hopeful about the goodness of the world and your fellow man.”

He shuddered slightly as if those qualities were reprehensible to him.

She knew she would regret him seeing her bedroom!

“You think I’m boring,” she said.

“Boring?” he looked puzzled.

She rushed on. “You make me sound like a complete Pollyanna. I happen to be a totally independent woman.”

“Ah, fiercely independent,” he said, amused rather than convinced. “Let me guess. You’ve had a setback. A man, I would guess. You’re disenchanted. You’ve put all your dreams of babies, a golden retriever, a cozy little house with a wading pool in that backyard, on hold. Temporarily.”

Her mouth worked but not a single sound came out. She was in shock. It was true. That was the world she dreamed of, the world of her childhood, the place she longed to go home to.

Her whole world had just been clinically dissected in so few words. Was he right? And she did still long for those things, though it felt like a weakness to want a life so desperately that clearly others saw as unexciting.

Miles had been right, though he had taken his sweet time arriving at the conclusion Daniel Riverton had reached in seconds.

Irritatingly, Daniel was right about almost all of it. No wonder he was so good at business. He could read people and situations with startling accuracy, if a rather ruthless lack of sensitivity.

But Trixie was determined he be wrong about the most important part of it. The temporarily part of it. At least she hoped he was wrong! No! She knew he was wrong!

“Not that any of that is of any interest to me,” he decided before she could get her protest out. “We need to talk about getting you some medical attention.” He winced as one of the twins used a jam-covered hand to smooth a curl out of her face.

“You know,” Trixie said, wanting to reassert her independence, to make him question his overly confident judgments of her, “don’t worry about it. If I need a trip to the doctor, I’ll manage to get us all down to the car.”

“Look, it’s not if, and I seriously doubt you can drive anywhere.”

He looked hard at her, hesitated, ran a hand through his hair. With the grim reluctance of a soldier volunteering for a tedious mission, he decided, “I’ll drive you.”

She planned to protest it wasn’t necessary. Then she moved her arm a fraction of an inch and the pain was so monstrous, she gasped from it.

He nodded knowingly. “I’m afraid you need my help, like it or not.”

“Not,” she muttered.

“I have to go get a shirt,” he said, looking down at himself as if he had just realized he was without one. “I’ll pull my car around, and call you when I’m downstairs.”

She had a sense of needing to get this situation under control—her control—immediately.

“No.”

Again, Daniel Riverton looked poleaxed, as if he had never heard the word no spoken to him. Or at least, Trixie suspected, not from female lips.

It gave her a certain grim satisfaction that she, who he considered to be utterly readable and utterly predictable, boring, in every way, had managed to surprise him.She enjoyed the sensation so much, that she said it again, even more firmly than the first time.

“No.”