Читать книгу A Thorn In Paradise - Кэтти Уильямс, CATHY WILLIAMS, Cathy Williams - Страница 7

CORINNA had no idea how she managed to get to sleep. By the time her head had hit the pillow, she had been positively shaking with anger. She couldn’t remember ever having been so riled by anyone in her life before. Her wonderful self-control, which she was convinced would stand her in good stead despite having deserted her initially, remained conspicuous by its absence, and she could have screamed in frustration as she lay down under the quilt and tried to court sleep. It was a long time coming, though. Her head was too full of images of Antonio Silver.

The following morning she got up and all those images which had seared her mind the previous night rushed back to her in sickening detail.

It was not a great way to start the day. For the past few months, after she had become accustomed to living in Deanbridge House, she had awakened slowly and contentedly, never failing to be charmed by the mintgreen luxury of the bedroom with its heavy drapes cascading to the floor, the exquisite pieces of furniture, the cool softness of the beige-coloured carpet underfoot.

This morning she found herself not giving a moment’s thought to her surroundings and she made herself slow down. This man, she decided, was not going to get under her skin again. He had managed that the night before because he had caught her unawares, when she was tired and vulnerable and unable to defend herself, but today he would find himself facing an altogether different cup of tea.

She took her time dressing, brushing her long hair carefully and knotting it behind her head in a chignon, by far the most practical hairstyle for her. She never wore a nurse’s uniform, having been informed by Benjamin on day one that he wouldn’t tolerate her clumping around in heavy shoes and a starchy white frock, but she always made sure that she dressed smartly. Never trousers and never shorts, despite the fact that it was quite hot at the moment. She had a good supply of sober, unfussy skirts and blouses and she extracted an oatmeal skirt from the wardrobe and a crisp, beige short-sleeved shirt, then looked at her reflection in the mirror.

Nothing, she acknowledged realistically, to write home about. She supposed she wasn’t bad-looking in an average sort of way, but for the first time since she had started working for Benjamin she realised that her wardrobe didn’t do a great deal for her. With her fair complexion she needed to wear things that were dramatic, that put colour in her cheeks, instead of a selection of background outfits that made her appear drained.

How was it that she was only now noticing this trait? Mousy. That was what he had called her. Had she cultivated this drabness as a subconscious reaction to her mother? It seemed likely, and she felt an unexpected anger that circumstances could mould a person so completely. Her parents’ divorce had been a background tune playing in the back of her mind for as long as she could remember. Too long.

On the spur of the moment she added a touch of blusher to her cheeks and then frowned impatiently at herself.

Would Benjamin have been notified of Antonio’s presence? she wondered, as she walked briskly down the corridor towards his bedroom. She had deliberately taken her time this morning because she didn’t want to appear over-keen to find out, but she was dying of curiosity.

As soon as she entered the bedroom she was aware that he had already heard the bad news. The curtains had not been drawn back, and that was usually the first thing he did in the morning, and the room was in darkness. He was lying on the bed and she approached him tentatively.

‘Good morning, Benjamin,’ she said brightly, moving to pull the curtains, and he said in a woebegone voice,

‘Why bother? I won’t be getting out of bed this morning.’

She ignored that and drew back the curtains, letting in a flood of early morning sunshine.

‘Come along,’ she said with a beaming smile, and he glared at her.

‘And you can stop being chirpy. That—that son of mine has dared to cross the threshold of this house!’ The woebegone expression was beginning to lift and some of his ranting energies were back in place.

‘I know,’ Corinna said quietly, tidying up the room, even though one of the girls would later be coming in to clean.

‘You know!’ he roared. ‘You know and you didn’t even tell me?’

‘He arrived very late last night,’ she said, trying not to let her memory of that disastrous encounter show on her face. ‘Just as I was about to retire for the evening, in fact.’

‘Typical!’ Benjamin roared with some of his usual fire. ‘Typical! Never spares so much as a passing thought to anyone else! Typical!’

‘And how do you find out about his arrival?’ She busied herself stacking his books into a neat pile on the long, low table by the window.

‘Edna. Trooping up here at the crack of dawn to break the happy news! Damned woman thought that I’d be delighted, even though I’ve spent years making it perfectly clear how I felt about him! What a fool! Ruined my day, of course. I couldn’t touch a mouthful of my breakfast, and I’m certainly not coming downstairs. Not until he’s well and truly out of the place!’

He glared at her aggressively and she tried to give him a soothing, professional smile.

‘He doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to leave,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, and he shot her a baleful look.

‘He’ll be in a hurry,’ Benjamin said, flapping his arms about and looking quite comical. ‘Oh, he’ll be in a hurry when I set the dogs—the—Edna—the police on him!’

Personally Corinna didn’t think that the police would feel much inclined to storm the place and capture Antonio Silver by force simply because his father didn’t want him around, but she refrained from saying anything.

‘You can’t stay in bed all day,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘You’ll be bored stiff in under an hour. Besides, I may take you for walks in your wheelchair, but you know that you need to exercise your limbs by walking around the house. You know what the doctor said——’

‘I refuse to budge. I don’t care what you or that quack of a doctor says.’

‘Dr Harman isn’t a quack, in fact, he’s noted——’

‘Noted, boted,’ Benjamin cut in with rising irritation. ‘I’m not budging. Though why I should be a prisoner in my own home I fail to understand. This is my home, dammit! How dare he walk in here and shut me up in my bedroom? You’ll have to get him out!’

‘What, me?’ She stopped what she was doing and then looked wryly at him as he gave her a sly smile.

‘So, I see he’s got to you, has he? What did you think of him, then?’

‘If you must know,’ she said calmly, ‘I thought he was overbearing, arrogant and unpleasant.’

‘But good-looking, eh? He used to be damned fine-looking when I last saw him. What does he look like now?’ He glanced down at his gnarled fingers and then clasped them on his lap, continuing to peer at them with overdone fascination.

‘Passable,’ Corinna said. She extracted some clothes from his wardrobe and laid them out on the bed. Grey flannel trousers, a pale blue long-sleeved shirt because Benjamin had no time for short-sleeved shirts, whatever the weather, a pair of charcoal-grey socks.

She could feel her heart step up a beat as she remembered Antonio Silver’s formidable physical impact. In the cold light of day he was probably nowhere as overwhelming as he had appeared the night before, but she still couldn’t prevent the tell-tale flush of colour on her cheeks.

Benjamin, though, wasn’t looking at her. He was still peering at his hands.

‘Well, I won’t see him,’ he said finally, ‘so you might as well put those clothes right where you found them.’

‘Now don’t be silly,’ she began, and he lay down on his side and pretended that she wasn’t there. She wasn’t at all perturbed by this reaction. Benjamin Silver could be childishly truculent at times. He had a fine, sharp mind that had been blunted by disuse. Too little mental stimulation filled him with an energy which his body did not allow him to exhaust and his way of coping was to try and rule the roost around him. Angus McBride was right, he needed more than the walls of Deanbridge House to fill his days.

‘You’ll have to face him some time,’ she said bluntly. ‘He doesn’t look like the type who’s going to disappear just because you want him to. I know that it’s your house, but honestly, what can you do? You’ll just have to face him.’

‘Did he say why he’d come?’ he asked in a muffled voice, and she stiffened, recalling the conversation with a feeling of remembered unpleasantness.

‘That’s something you’ll have to discuss with him,’ she said, looking down, and he rolled over to face her.

‘My curiosity isn’t that great,’ he informed her loftily and she shrugged. She was beginning to feel like piggy in the middle and it was a feeling for which she had no taste. Why did Antonio Silver have to appear on the scene? Things were going so smoothly in her life. For the first time in ages, she felt truly relaxed, having quit her job and left Michael, two aspects of her life which she only realised in retrospect had been pulling her down. Why had he come along and spoilt everything with his accusations and his sophisticated mockery?

She opened her mouth to inform him that there was no way that she was going to play intermediary, but before she could speak he was waving his hand in a gesture of dismissal.

‘Shoo!’ he said. ‘Have the day off. Just so long as you keep that so-called son of mine out of my hair!’

With a cross sigh of defeat, she left the room, quietly shutting the door behind her and made her way downstairs to the kitchen.

There was a parlour which had been specifically designed to be used as a breakfast-room, but neither she nor Benjamin ever used it in that capacity. The kitchen was a much warmer place. It was Edna’s pride and joy and in the entire house it was the one room to which no concessions to glamour had been made. Only the cooking utensils were the best that money could buy, because Edna prided herself on her cooking. She never allowed any of the girls to help her, cultivated her own personal herb garden, and produced simple but lovely fare. She was a great fan of the roast meal, and detested things with too much cream or alcohol as being travesties of good cooking.

‘Sure road to indigestion,’ she was fond of saying. Benjamin, of course, was wont to inform her that she was clearly behind the times, but he too preferred simple cooking, so the arrangement suited him perfectly.

Corinna walked into the kitchen wearing a frown of concentration and immediately stopped dead in her tracks. She had all but convinced herself that Antonio Silver was only an ordinary human being, a mere mortal with no more than a bit of an acid temperament, but seeing him now, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of black coffee in front of him, casually dressed in a beige shirt which had been rolled to the elbows to expose his strong forearms, she felt a sudden urge to turn tail and flee. He was every bit as commanding as her very worst memories. In the light of day, she could see that every bone in his face was stamped with hard, self-assured assertiveness. He was darker than she had thought, his skin bearing the hallmark of a life in a kinder climate, which made his silver-grey eyes appear more startling because of the contrast.

He watched her as she poured herself a cup of coffee, and, when she had sat down, he finally said politely, ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning,’ Corinna returned awkwardly, shifting her gaze away from his probing stare. ‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked politely, and he raised his eyebrows as if ironically amused by the lack of sincerity in her question. The open hostility was no longer quite as apparent as it had been the night before, but it was still there, of that she had no doubt, simmering away under the surface, temporarily replaced by an equally disconcerting iciness. If only that could distract her from his intense physical appeal, but she was alarmed to find that her body was reacting to his blatant masculinity with edgy awareness.

‘I’ve had better nights,’ he returned, sipping some coffee and looking at her over the brim of the cup. ‘I trust you’ve seen my father and informed him of my presence?’

‘He already knew before I saw him this morning. Edna told him.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’ She fixed him with a blank, innocent stare. She would have preferred not to be sitting here, not to be struggling with her treacherous, racing nerves, but, since she was, she wasn’t about to indulge in open warfare. If this was a cold war, then she would play the rules of that game.

‘And what was his reaction?’

Corinna gave it some thought. Appear calm and collected, she thought, and you’ll feel calm and collected. ‘He wasn’t a hundred per cent impressed,’ she told him calmly. There was fresh bread on the table. She took a slice and buttered it, making sure not to look at him. Passable, she realised, was not an adequate description of Antonio Silver. He had the build of an athlete, his body hard and finely tuned, and a face which would make most women stop dead in their tracks, and no doubt he was very much aware of that. Conceited, she decided at once. The man was probably brimming over with conceit, as well as being thoroughly dislikeable, and conceit was hardly one of the world’s most admirable characteristics, was it?

She could feel those silver-grey eyes on her and she looked up with a polite, detached expression.

‘Not a hundred per cent impressed,’ he drawled lazily, sitting back in the chair to give her the full benefit of his attention. ‘I had forgotten that you British were the masters of understatement.’

‘We British? Aren’t you forgetting that you’re at least half British? Surely not; you made such a point of reminding me of that fact last night.’

There was a brief silence, then he unexpectedly smiled, and that smile filled his face with such devastatingly sexy charm that she felt her cheeks go pink in sudden confusion. She almost found herself preferring the angry insults to this.

‘Where’s Edna?’ she asked quickly, not caring to dwell on the impact he was making on her.

‘Gone to the village. My father may be unimpressed with my arrival, but Edna thinks it’s the return of the prodigal son. She’s gone to stock up on all my favourite foods. God knows how she remembered them. She must have the memory of an elephant.’

So, she thought sourly, the formidable Edna has turned pussycat. He probably had that reaction from every woman he came into contact with.

‘And where’s my father?’ he asked, lowering his eyes in almost precisely the same manner that Benjamin had a short while ago.

‘In his bedroom.’

‘Hiding?’

It was so near the mark that she was taken aback. ‘Trying to get over the shock of realising that you’re here,’ she said tartly. ‘I don’t think he wants to see you, at least not at the moment.’ Maybe you could try again in a few years’ time, she thought, when I’m well and truly out of here.

‘Well, he’s going to see me whether he likes it or not,’ Antonio said coolly, ‘and without you playing the little mediator. No doubt running between the two of us would give you no end of pleasure, but I intend to see him and that’s that.’

‘I can’t think of anything worse than running between the two of you,’ Corinna said tightly, already beginning to feel rattled. ‘He’s your father, you sort your troubles out yourself.’

‘And I won’t have you trying to influence him either.’

She slammed her cup down on the table and looked at him angrily. ‘I have no intention of trying to influence your father!’ she informed him.

‘So you haven’t told him what we discussed last night?’

‘No,’ she said in a more controlled voice, ‘I haven’t told him what you discussed last night. I don’t recall having discussed anything with you.’

‘And you haven’t run to him with any derogatory descriptions of me?’

Corinna opened her mouth and closed it.

‘Trying to find an appropriate lie to that one?’ he asked her, looking at her coldly.

‘He asked me what my impression was of you, and I told him the truth.’

‘Which was…?’

‘That you struck me as being arrogant and objectionable.’

She expected him to hit the roof with that one, but he didn’t, and she shifted uneasily in the chair.

‘I can’t think of too many women who have called me that before,’ he said softly, staring at her, and she thought to herself, No, I don’t suppose you have, I suppose they’ve all been too busy trying to get you to give them one of those lazy, charming smiles of yours. Well, not me, buster.

‘No?’ she asked politely. ‘They must be very short-sighted, then.’

‘Or maybe you’re the one with the misguided judgement. You are, after all, in a minority. Of course, you could be an expert on men. Is that it?’

‘I forgot one more adjective,’ she said, ignoring his question, and he raised his eyebrows in a question. ‘Egotistical.’

‘Now might I be permitted to subject you to the same character assassination as you’ve just subjected me to?’ he asked, and she reddened, not saying anything.

Her coffee had gone cold and she refilled her cup, not liking this turn in the conversation one bit. She didn’t want to get involved in any word games with this man. In fact, she would have liked to be able to ignore his presence completely.

‘Do I have a choice?’ she asked. ‘I gather you’ll force your opinions on me whether I like them or not. You did last night.’

‘Well,’ he said, folding his arms and looking at her from under his thick, black lashes, ‘you’re a relatively plain little creature, but I wouldn’t describe you as background material. No, quite fiery in fact, and with lots of that so-called honesty which some English people think is a virtue when in fact it’s only a mark of rudeness.’

‘A mark of rudeness…!’ she spluttered, furious.

‘That’s right,’ he agreed silkily. ‘Have you cultivated that in an attempt to win my father over? I remember him as being brilliant and temperamental, a man who wouldn’t be able to abide any coy simpering around him. Did you think that the quickest and surest way to win him over was to meet fire with fire?’

‘I don’t have to stay here and listen to this.’ She stood up, trembling, and turned to go.

‘Wait!’

‘Don’t order me about! You might get away with that where you come from and with the sort of women you mix with, but not me!’

They stared at each other and she felt a heated, unwelcome awareness of his masculinity. When he stood up, she had to force herself not to move, to remain where she was when every confused instinct was telling her to run. He walked across to her, not taking his eyes off her face, and she glared at him with resentment. Plain, was she? Scheming, was she? She wished that the ground would open and swallow him up. She would stand and watch him disappearing with a smile.

‘The sort of women I mix with?’

‘You heard me! From what you said they fall at your feet, but don’t expect the same sort of reaction from me!’

He looked at her speculatively, as if digesting that remark, and she wished that she hadn’t said anything. There was no reason why she had to defend herself to this man and it irked her that she was continually being forced into a position of self-defence.

‘No?’ he said, watching her mouth, then flicking his eyes along her body, then back to her face. ‘The financial reward not tempting enough?’ Her face darkened and he laughed with acid amusement. ‘Or maybe the little mouse with the fiery temper prefers to scurry into a corner and observe life from the sidelines?’

He was deliberately antagonising her. It was obvious. But the desire to wipe that cool assessing sneer off his dark face was so strong that she had to clench her fists tightly to overcome it.

‘Is there anything else you want or can I leave?’

‘Which is my father’s bedroom?’

She began telling him but he interrupted her and said, ‘Take me there. I think the time for confrontation has arrived.’

She nodded and spun round, walking briskly into the hall, then up the staircase to the right wing of the house, tensely aware of his presence behind her. Was he nervous? she wondered. He didn’t appear nervous. In fact, he gave the impression of someone who didn’t have a nervous bone in his body, but he could just be a good actor. She tried to imagine him having butterflies in his stomach and failed.

They had reached Benjamin’s bedroom and she knocked on the door, pushing it open and stepping in.

She wasn’t looking at Antonio, so she didn’t see his reaction, but Benjamin’s face mirrored his shock. She had a strange feeling of being superfluous and made to move away, but Benjamin bellowed at her, ‘Where do you think you’re going? I told you that I didn’t want to see him!’

Antonio’s mouth hardened but he didn’t say anything. He walked into the room, round to the side of the bed, and stood there looking down at his father, his face unreadable. It didn’t look as though it had the makings of a touching emotional reunion and Corinna reluctantly entered the room as well, shutting the door behind her.

‘You’re not wanted here,’ Benjamin said breathlessly, beckoning to her to come over, which she did, and then clasping her hand tightly, all of which she could see his son noting, jotting down, no doubt, in that computer mind of his to be recalled and used against her at a later date.

‘My heart,’ Benjamin said, ‘my blood-pressure. I can’t take this. The shock will kill me.’ He lay back looking faint and Antonio shot her a doubtful look.

‘I did write to tell you that I’d be coming,’ he said, reverting his eyes to Benjamin who had his eyes closed and was breathing heavily.

‘Perhaps you’d better leave,’ Corinna interjected worriedly, reaching next to the bed for her bag which contained her instruments. If Benjamin’s blood-pressure was up, then Antonio would have to leave whether he liked it or not.

He ignored her. ‘Didn’t you receive my letter?’

‘I preferred to think that it had been a mistake.’ He opened his blue eyes and peered at his son with defensive hostility on his face. Side by side, she could see the resemblance between them, which had not been so noticeable before. Their features weren’t identical by any means, and Antonio, with his deeply bronzed skin, looked distinctly foreign, but there was a similarity of expression stamped on both their faces, the same strong, stubborn look in their eyes. Two forceful personalities, she thought, destined to clash.

‘I never make mistakes,’ Antonio said, glancing at her, and she returned his look with equanimity.

‘Well, you made a mistake coming over here,’ Benjamin said. ‘You haven’t set foot in this house for years and that’s suited me just fine. As far as I am concerned, I haven’t got a son.’

That brought a dark flush to Antonio’s cheeks, but whether it stemmed from anger or discomfort, Corinna couldn’t say.

‘We both know the reasons that I left here in the first place,’ he answered tautly. ‘Not,’ he continued harshly, ‘that I want to have our dirty linen aired in front of your nurse.’

‘Why not?’ Benjamin threw at him, ‘she’s more a part of my life than you are.’

‘A dangerous situation, wouldn’t you say?’ Antonio said grimly. ‘She’s a nurse, she’s not indispensable.’

‘Will the two of you stop talking as if I weren’t here!’ Corinna burst out. She faced Benjamin and said quietly, ‘Your son’s right, I shouldn’t be here. The two of you should talk your differences out without a third party present.’

‘I have nothing to talk out,’ Benjamin said stubbornly. He looked at his son, one hand clenched. ‘I didn’t invite you here. I don’t know why you’ve come and I don’t want to know. Just seeing you is going to set my blood-pressure soaring.’

‘It’s fine,’ Corinna said. She had taken it unobtrusively a short while ago and was surprised to find that it had been stable.

‘For the moment,’ Benjamin growled, ‘but not if I have to be subjected to this sort of scene for much longer.’

Antonio gave an impatient click of his tongue. ‘Look, I’ve been away a long time,’ he muttered, glancing across to where Corinna was standing. ‘I grant you that all this should have been cleared up a long time ago.’

His face was tight, and she could tell straight away that he was not a man who felt comfortable making concessions of any description.

‘Should have been, but wasn’t,’ Benjamin said, refusing to bend. ‘Now if you don’t mind leaving, I feel very tired. Close the door behind you.’

Antonio shook his head and spun round on his heel, slamming the door behind him.

‘Well?’ Benjamin muttered to Corinna. ‘Don’t just stand there pretending that you have nothing to say. And for God’s sake stop fussing around these damned bedclothes! What are you thinking? You might as well tell me instead of wearing that tight-lipped expression.’

Corinna hesitated, then said, ‘You could have handled that a bit better.’

‘A bit better? A bit better! So he’s got to you, has he? That’s the way the ground lies, is it?’

‘Don’t be foolish. Nobody’s got to me. I just think that you could have accepted his apology.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it might have been the start of some kind of truce between you.’

‘It’s a truce I could do without.’

She shrugged and Benjamin’s eyebrows met in a frown. ‘He’s not wanted and don’t try and be saintly. Didn’t it strike you that he doesn’t approve of you? Dispensable, he called you, I believe.’

She lowered her eyes. ‘It doesn’t bother me.’

‘Well, it bothers me. I don’t want to hear what he’s got to say, and if part of the reason that he’s found his way here is because he’s got to know about you and thinks you might have designs on my bank balance, then he’s wasted his time.’

Corinna looked at him, startled. She had known that Benjamin was shrewd, but his astuteness amazed her.

‘So I’m right, am I?’

‘How did you guess?’

‘I suppose that fool Angus has written to him about you,’ he said, continuing when he saw her bewildered expression. ‘He’s been trying to get us together for years. Keeps in touch with Antonio, you see. Throws me titbits about his life every now and again to whet my appetite, no doubt, as if I’m interested.’ He gave a shout of laughter. ‘Well, I’m not about to forgive and forget as easily as that!’

‘You’re a stubborn old man,’ she said with resigned affection. ‘You know what they say about pride.’

‘And you know what I say about you philosophising,’ he retorted. ‘Now could you go and fuss somewhere else?’

‘You’re not coming down?’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘And what about food?’

‘Get that witch Edna to bring it to me. It’s time she worked for her keep.’ He closed his eyes, his way of dismissing her, and she let herself out of the room quietly.

As she looked up she saw Antonio waiting for her, lounging against the wall at the top of the stairs, and she did her best to walk past him, but he wasn’t about to let her. He reached out and held her and for some reason which she could only put down to dislike, her body began doing strange things. Her skin tingled where his fingers were curled round her forearm and she found that she was breathing quickly, as if she had just run a marathon.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said grimly.

‘Take your hand off me.’

That had the opposite effect of making him grip her tighter.

‘I watched you,’ he said, ‘the way my father responds to you.’

‘How interesting. Now do you mind?’

‘I don’t know how you’ve done it but you’ve managed to become a necessary part of his life. I won’t let you take him for a ride.’

Her eyes flashed angrily as she contemplated that statement. ‘You’re not in a position to put your foot down on anything, Mr Antonio Silver. Not that there’s anything to put your foot down about, anyway! And not that it’s any of my business, but all this sudden rush of concern for your father, how do I know that it’s not because you feel your inheritance being compromised? Is that why you flew over here at a rate of knots the minute you heard about me?’

His mouth thinned. ‘You’re right, it’s none of your business, but I’ll set your little mind at rest anyway. I don’t need my father’s estates. I have enough money of my own to buy my own estates.’

‘Oh.’

‘Satisfied?’ he sneered. ‘Or would you like to see a few of my bank balances?’

‘You can’t blame me for thinking…’ she muttered, and he jerked her towards him.

‘Keep your thoughts to yourself in the future,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘You’re a nurse, have you forgotten? You’re not here to speculate on things that don’t concern you, you’re here for my father’s health, though I’m surprised you haven’t driven him into the grave with that tongue of yours.’

That hurt. ‘That’s unfair,’ she whispered, looking down, and there was silence. ‘Your father and I get along well together.’

‘Too well.’

‘I resent your assumptions. If what you’re aiming at is to force me from this house, then you’re wasting your time. I like it here, I like your father, and that has nothing to do with the size of his bank balance! Your cynicism might help you in that concrete jungle you live in, but it’s out of place here!’

‘Is it?’ He gave that some thought, and she looked at his downturned eyes, the dark sweep of his lashes, a little uneasily.

‘All right. We’ll have it your way. Maybe I misjudged you.’ His voice was soft and smooth. ‘I must admit that when I came over here I didn’t expect to find someone like you.’

The question was too tempting to resist. ‘What did you expect to find?’

‘Someone,’ he drawled lazily, ‘a bit sexier. A bit more—filled out, so to speak. And definitely a brunette. My father has only ever been attracted to dark-haired women, did you know that? That’s a little titbit for your scrap-book, isn’t it?’

There was something dangerously hypnotic about his deep voice and steel-grey eyes.

‘How do you know that?’ she asked calmly, blinking away the desire to be mesmerised.

‘A confidence exchanged a long time ago. A passing remark that’s stuck in my head over the years.’

So, the thought struck her, there must have been warmth there at one point. What had gone wrong? She would never ask either of them and she had a feeling that the information would never be forthcoming.

He was looking at her with intense concentration and she began to feel even more uncomfortable.

‘What are your plans now?’ she asked, trying to get the subject on to more neutral ground.

‘You already know what my plans are. I have work to do here, apart from everything else.’

I hope it keeps you out of the house, she thought, viewing a succession of fraught encounters with something approaching panic.

‘Fine,’ she said, ‘now could you let me go? You seem to enjoy taking the caveman approach with me, but I’d really prefer you to keep your hands to yourself.’

‘If you say so.’ He let go of her, then said before she could walk away, ‘But first——’ he reached behind her and unpinned her hair in one easy movement and it cascaded down to her waist, long, straight and like spun silk ‘—I’ve been intrigued to see whether you’re as icy and untouchable-looking with your hair loose.’

Vivid colour flowed into her face. She could feel her heart beating like a drum inside her chest and for once she couldn’t think of a thing to say. Without a word, she began walking away.

‘Wouldn’t like to know what I think?’ she heard him ask from behind her, and there was amused laughter in his voice.

Damn him! Was his opinion of her so low that he felt he could do and say anything he pleased to her? The back of her neck was still prickling from where his fingers had brushed against it and, whether she admitted it or not, her blood was racing with a terrible, forbidden excitement.