Читать книгу The Millionaire's Contract Bride - Кэрол Мортимер, Carole Mortimer - Страница 4

‘WHAT on earth are you doing here?’ Casey gasped. She had arrived home exhausted at almost eleven o’clock after working that evening, only to come to a shocked halt in the doorway to her sitting room and stare at the man sitting there so unconcernedly.

The single source of light in the room came from a small table lamp, casting the man’s face in shadow as he sat in the armchair across the room. But even though she had only met him twice—briefly—in her life before, it was still possible for Casey to recognise the dark overlong hair, the wide shoulders and the tall, leanly powerful frame as belonging to Xander Fraser—a man whose brooding good-looks often graced the more prestigious gossip magazines as he attended the premieres of the numerous films released by his production company.

A man she hadn’t realised even knew where she lived.

Yes, they both lived in Surrey, but at completely different ends of the housing scale. The Fraser mansion was set in several wooded acres of grounds near the river, while her own home was on an estate and much, much smaller.

If she hadn’t been so shocked at finding him here, she might even have found a certain pleasure in having this ruggedly handsome man in her home. After all, he was the first eligible, gorgeous man she had been this close to since her marriage had ended a year ago.

Or perhaps not, she acknowledged with an inward grimace; she was hardly looking her best at the moment. Her hair probably smelt of the food cooked at the restaurant this evening, she was wearing some of her oldest clothes—for the same reason—and wore absolutely no make-up whatsoever to add colour to her naturally pale complexion.

Besides which, it was hardly a good idea for her to be attracted to the ex-husband of the woman who had stolen her own husband!

Xander Fraser shrugged those broad shoulders, shifting slightly so that his face was no longer in shadow, revealing an aquiline nose between high cheekbones, and an arrogant slash of a mouth above a strongly squared chin. He regarded her with hooded blue eyes. ‘I was waiting for you to get home, obviously,’ he drawled.

‘Yes, I realise that,’ she answered impatiently; it was why he was here that was important! ‘But—where’s Hannah?’ she asked, her voice sharpening with alarm.

Now that her first shock on seeing Xander was receding, Casey realised the girl she employed to look after her son on the evenings she worked at the restaurant was noticeably absent.

‘Is that the name of the babysitter?’ Xander Fraser quirked dark brows. ‘I told her she might as well take advantage of my being here and go home early.’

‘And she just went?’ Casey exclaimed. ‘But she doesn’t even know you! You could have been anybody!’

‘Such as?’ Those dark brows rose a second time. ‘A mass-murderer? Or a kidnapper, perhaps?’ He gave a humourless smile.

‘Well…actually, yes,’ Casey said with a frown, feeling she had every right to be annoyed with Hannah’s irresponsible behaviour.

Although Xander Fraser hardly looked the part of either, she acknowledged privately to herself, dressed in those designer label denims and navy blue silk shirt, and possessed of the kind of confidence that only the very rich or very good-looking seemed to acquire.

Xander Fraser scowled. ‘Believe me, the complications that go along with the one child I have are more than enough for me to cope with right now!’

His daughter Lauren was six years old—the same age as Casey’s son Josh. But there the similarities ended. Lauren Fraser was the daughter of multimillionaire film producer Xander Fraser, whereas Josh was the son of a single mother juggling two jobs to try and keep a roof over their heads.

She sighed as she put her handbag down on the coffee table, too tired to be able to make much sense out of this man’s unexpected presence here, let alone his enigmatic conversation.

It had been a long day for her. She’d got up at seven-thirty, to get her young son ready and at school for nine o’clock, then hurried off to the café she worked in until after the lunchtime rush. Once that was over, she’d collected Josh and spent a couple of hours at home with him, before leaving for her evening job at the restaurant of the local hotel.

Yes, it had been a very long and very tiring day, and she was in no mood to play verbal fencing games with Xander Fraser, of all people. Whether he was sinfully handsome or not!

As he was sitting in the only chair in her sparsely furnished sitting room, Casey remained standing, still very unhappy with Hannah—but that, she promised herself, was something she would take up with the girl tomorrow.

‘So, what can I do for you, Mr Fraser?’ she challenged tersely.

With her painfully thin frame clothed in a figure-hugging black tee shirt and faded blue denims, and at only a couple of inches over five feet tall, Casey Bridges had all the appearance of a bantam hen aligning itself against a hawk, Xander decided ruefully. Her soft blonde hair was styled wispily about her temples and nape, and her beautiful heart-shaped face was dominated by dark green eyes that did absolutely nothing to dispel that illusion of fragility.

And she looked exhausted… Even as he thought it, she swayed slightly on her feet.

Abruptly, Xander stood up. ‘Sit down,’ he commanded, ‘before you collapse.’

She obviously bridled at the order, but then did as he’d said. Perhaps she realised he was fully capable of picking her up and sitting her in the chair himself, if she refused…

The chair, the coffee table and the lamp were the only furniture in the room. He had noted that with a frown when he’d arrived earlier. There was no television in the room, either, and when he had taken a quick look around the rest of the house he had found that to be no better. Casey Bridges seemed to have taken the ‘minimalist’ effect to a barren degree.

Or else—as his daughter Lauren had already hinted—there was another explanation altogether for such austerity…

Xander’s eyes narrowed as he registered just how fragilely thin the woman before him was. He noted the shadows beneath those dark green eyes, the hollows beneath her cheekbones, and the skin on her hands and wrists that was almost translucent.

‘Exactly what’s been going on here, Casey?’ he asked, his blue gaze uncomfortably penetrating now. ‘Where were you this evening?’ He had thought she must be out with friends—possibly even a boyfriend, as her husband had left her a year ago—but she hardly had the look of a woman returning from a pleasant evening out.

She gave a firm shake of her head as she seemed to regain some of her composure. ‘That really isn’t any of your business, Mr Fraser.’ She stood up. ‘I should go up and check on Josh. I still can’t believe—Has he woken up? Is he aware that Hannah has left?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Josh is fine,’ Xander assured her. ‘He did wake up once, but when I told him I was Lauren’s daddy he wasn’t concerned. He and Lauren have become friends—did you know that?’

Yes, she did know that. Ironically, Josh and Lauren had become friends during the eight months when Sam and Chloe had lived together, their visits to their individual parents often coinciding. Casey also knew that Josh had missed seeing the little girl since Chloe and Sam’s deaths four months ago.

‘Yes, I believe they have—did,’ she corrected. ‘If you would just like to wait here while I go and check on Josh, we can—continue this conversation when I come back down.’ Her gaze didn’t quite meet his before she turned and left the room, to run up the stairs to Josh’s small bedroom above with a vague feeling of relief.

She had to admit to finding Xander Fraser’s powerful presence and fiercely intelligent blue eyes slightly overwhelming in the small confines of the three-bedroomed house that she had lived in first with her parents, then with Sam and Josh, and now just with Josh. The house she was determined to hold on to if humanly possible.

Quite what sort of conversation she and Xander Fraser were going to have she had no idea, but he obviously considered it important enough for him to have gone to the trouble of finding out where she lived.

She very much doubted Xander’s ex-wife would have told him. Casey and Xander’s previous two meetings had been when they’d happened to call at the same time to collect Josh and Lauren after one of their weekend visits to the house Sam and Chloe had so briefly shared. The dazzlingly beautiful Chloe had had no choice but to introduce the two of them, but her hypnotic blue eyes had been narrowed on them watchfully as she’d done so.

Casey hadn’t liked the sophisticated but brittle Chloe Fraser; she knew she wouldn’t have liked her even if she hadn’t been ‘the other woman’ in Casey’s marriage break-up. The two of them had absolutely nothing in common—except Sam, of course.

Only Chloe Fraser’s beauty had been such that her more negative traits obviously hadn’t repulsed the golden and handsome Sam, or the darkly brooding and immensely rich Xander Fraser.

But the fact that Chloe and Sam were now both dead—killed four months ago when the private jet they’d been travelling in had crashed—meant that Josh and Lauren’s visits to them had obviously stopped, too. And it should have meant that Casey would never have reason to see Xander Fraser again, either.

So why on earth was he downstairs in her sitting room, obviously waiting to talk to her?