Читать книгу Holiday with a Stranger - Christy McKellen - Страница 9

TWO

After making his sharp exit Connor wandered down to the bottom of the farmhouse’s land and along the perimeter. In front of him the sun-washed landscape throbbed with colour, the vibrant greens and yellows of the rapeseed crops standing stark against the sea of lavender in fields that stretched for miles. In the distance chalky white mountains broke against the azure-blue of the sky.

It was his idea of heaven on earth.

He loved this place. It felt as far away from reality as you could get. That appealed to him. That and the simplicity of it.

He leant on the wooden fence and assessed what had just happened.

Josie Marchpane was seriously disturbing, that was for sure. He wasn’t easily impressed, but this woman—oh, man, did she have something. There was something familiar about her too, but he couldn’t put his finger on it and that bothered him.

When he’d found out she was here at Abigail’s invitation his instinct had been to try and get rid of her as quickly as possible. He wasn’t interested in ever seeing his self-serving sister again, and even less willing to entertain one of her friends in his house. But the more he’d talked to Josie, the more he’d come to like her. She didn’t buckle easily and he respected that.

Despite the dark circles under her eyes and the ghostly pallor she was hot. It wasn’t the delicate contours of her heart-shaped face that got to him, or even the endless expanse of leg hiding beneath those expensive-looking jeans. It was her almond-shaped hazel eyes that flashed with fire when she was on the defensive. He wasn’t used to being stood up to, let alone put in his place, and he found he kind of liked it.

He knew he had an effect on her too, no matter how hard she was trying to disguise it. It was visible in the flare of her pupils and the flush of colour on her cheeks; in the way her body turned towards him even when she fought against it. It would be hard to convince her mind to submit to him, but not her body.

He hadn’t needed her to cut his hair—he could have quite easily visited a barber the following day—but he’d wanted to see if he could get her to do it. He’d been in a playful mood and it had amused him—until she’d been right there, touching him, invading his space and warming his skin with her nervous heat. Then he’d realised it had been an excuse to get closer to her. He’d wanted to know whether she smelled as good as she looked and he hadn’t been disappointed.

The fact that she’d risen to his challenge despite her initial reticence intrigued him. She hadn’t been able to resist it.

He recognised an urge on his part to break through her carefully constructed wall of cool just for the satisfaction of melting her. He craved it. Just as he’d craved coming back here, to the one place that felt vaguely like home. It wouldn’t be long until he’d had his fill of sitting still, but at the moment it was necessary—imperative, even.

That was why he couldn’t pick up and stay at a hotel for the few days he had left before his next project started. He’d been aware of an unusual yearning for this place for the past few weeks, as if it had called to him. Something akin to nostalgia, or what he thought that might feel like; he’d never experienced it before. Usually he actively moved away from the past.

Wandering back up to the house, he parked himself on a lounger on the terrace and leant back, willing his overworked muscles to relax. He needed this peace and calm and nothingness for a few days before he rejoined the hurricane of his life.

The bathroom window above him slammed shut, jarring him out of his relaxing state and setting his teeth on edge. She must be about to take a shower. The thought of hot water sluicing over that curvaceous body and those heavy, rounded breasts was enough to give him an erection.

The trouble was, the last thing he needed right now was another woman problem. It had been soul-destroying breaking up with Katherine and persuading her he wasn’t the right guy to make her happy, then spending months avoiding her angry, pleading phone calls and sudden appearances out of the blue. She didn’t understand that the lifestyle he’d chosen wasn’t conducive to settling in one place and playing house. It had been an exhausting time. He was afraid that even a short, sharp affair now could leach the remaining life out of him, and he needed his mojo intact if he was going to keep the momentum of his projects going.

But it didn’t mean he couldn’t have fun playing with Josie. He’d be out of here in a few days, so what harm could it do to spend a bit of time figuring her out? There had to be more to her story than she was letting on. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who could fritter away two weeks in the middle of nowhere. She had a nervous sort of energy about her that gave the impression she had more important things to be doing than just sitting and relaxing.

He wanted to know why.

* * *

She’d been well and truly had and it didn’t feel good.

Josie squeezed shampoo hard into her hand and thumped the bottle down onto the shower shelf in her anger. How could she have allowed him to talk her into embarrassing herself like that? She was clearly off her game because she was tired and stressed about the business. There was no way he would have tricked her like that ordinarily. In retrospect, she wished she’d given him a bald spot and an extra short fringe, just so she’d have something to mollify her.

What was she going to do now? He clearly wasn’t going to budge easily. She’d have to make as much of a nuisance of herself as possible and hope he’d get fed up and decide he’d be better off somewhere else.

She could phone Abi and explain the situation, of course, but she didn’t want it to look as though she couldn’t fight her own battles. And her business partner had enough on her plate as it was.

Shutting off the shower, she stepped carefully out of the tray and towelled herself dry.

The pile of dirty clothes on the floor gave her an idea.

After dressing in a light floral sundress, and drying off her hair so it swung around her shoulders, she gathered up her dirty laundry and dumped it on the bed, ready to take downstairs. Her laptop was sitting on the windowsill, where she’d left it in the hope that the sun would help dry it out, and she went over and tapped the power button again, praying that it would suddenly spring to life.

No dice.

A sharp pain throbbed in her skull and she massaged the sides of her forehead to try and relieve the pressure.

‘Join me for a drink on the terrace?’

She jumped at the sound of Connor’s deep voice, twisting round to see him slouched against the doorjamb of the bedroom. He filled the doorway with his immense physique.

‘I got the impression you wanted me to keep out of your way,’ she answered, nonchalantly flicking her hair over her shoulder. She wasn’t going to show him how nervy she was around him. All she had right now was her self-control, and she was damned if she was going to let that slip away from her too.

‘I changed my mind. I could do with some company and you could do with some sun.’ His gaze rested on her pale shoulders. ‘Do you spend any time outside?’

Truthfully, she didn’t tend to spend much time outdoors. She’d been too busy with work and had often ended up working at weekends to keep up with her heavy workload. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d just sat in the sunshine.

‘The sun’s very damaging to your skin, you know. You’ll be old before your time.’ She pointed towards his tanned forearms in a vain attempt to shut him up.

He smiled. ‘Full of vitamin D, though. Good for your happiness levels.’

Before she had time to reply, he pushed himself away from the doorway and disappeared.

After a few moments of arguing with herself about the wisdom of spending more time in his vicinity she grabbed her dirty clothes and a pen and notebook and went down to the kitchen. She shoved her clothes in the washing machine, set it going, then sauntered outside to find Connor reclining on a lounger, his shirt discarded on the floor next to him.

Great.

Josie stared. She couldn’t help it. His body was...well...divine. That skin—the glorious tanned sleekness of it. The way it undulated over the muscles of his stomach and stretched over the peaks of his collarbones. The broadness of his shoulders made her think of a superhero with their almost obscene size. She’d never seen such a magnificent body in the flesh.

Cue whole body flush.

Tearing her eyes away, she sat on the lounger next to him, barely managing to control her limbs.

He turned to look at her, a crooked smile playing about his lips as if he sensed her discomfort. ‘Help yourself to a drink.’ He gestured towards a jug of iced fruit juice and a couple of tumblers on a small table between them.

She eyed it suspiciously. ‘I’m not thirsty, thanks.’ She didn’t entirely trust him. There was something odd about him suddenly wanting her company, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on why it felt so dangerous to be out here with him. She didn’t for a second think he would hurt her, but it was unnerving all the same.

Dropping her notebook casually onto the table between them, she shuffled about on the lounger to try and get comfy. When she glanced up at him, he seemed to be sizing her up.

She raised a questioning eyebrow at him, fighting the urge to look away from his evaluating stare.

‘You work a lot, right?’

She sat up straighter, warming up for what she was sure was about to be some sort of scrap. ‘My job keeps me pretty busy.’

‘Thought so. You have that computer crouch people get when they work at a desk too much. The only time you set your shoulders back and push that magnificent rack at me is when you’re facing me down over something.’

How was she supposed to respond to that little gem? By playing it cool.

‘I don’t suppose you come across many desks on your jaunts around the world.’

He broke eye contact to pick up the jug of iced juice and pour himself a shot into one of the glasses. ‘You’d be surprised what I come across,’ he said, in that low, seductive voice of his.

The hairs stood up on the back of her neck again and she snort-laughed in response, blood rushing straight to her face in embarrassment at the awful noise she’d made. Picking up the jug from where he’d set it down, she concentrated on pouring herself some juice to hide her humiliation. The ice clinked in her glass as she held it unsteadily in her hand, so she rested it on her knee instead.

Connor lay back, linking his fingers together behind his head, a smile playing about his lips. He knew exactly what he was doing to her and he clearly loved seeing her squirm. Bastard.

A minute went by before he spoke again. ‘What do you do that keeps you shackled to a desk?’

‘Shackled? Interesting choice of word.’ She didn’t dare look him in the face in case he saw how much she was floundering.

‘The imagery pleases me.’

He turned in the lounger to face her and her gaze was magnetically drawn to his toned torso. It was unnerving, being faced with a sight like that whilst trying to maintain a polite line of conversation.

‘You have a vivid imagination,’ she said.

‘It’s a prerequisite. I spend a lot of time alone.’

She really needed to get the conversation back on safe ground. ‘We provide software solutions for marketing and research departments.’

‘That must be fascinating.’

His tone was so dry she felt like dousing him with her ice-cold drink.

‘It took us three years to build the business to this point and we’re proud of what we’ve achieved.’

‘Good for you.’

He totally didn’t mean a word of it.

Ignore him, Josie, the guy’s a loser.

Grabbing her notebook and pen from where she’d dropped them on the table, she turned deliberately away from him and began to make some notes, forcing his presence out of her mind.

‘What are you writing?’

Apparently he didn’t like to be ignored. ‘I’m trying to reconstruct my tender document.’

He frowned. ‘I thought you were supposed to be on holiday?’

Josie shuffled uncomfortably on the lounger. ‘I am, but I’m making a head start for when I get back. I was doing pretty well until my laptop died.’ She gave him a pointed stare.

Connor let out a snort. ‘I can’t believe you brought a laptop on holiday. No wonder you’re so...’ He waved his hand in a loose flapping motion at her.

‘So what?’

‘I don’t know...edgy.’

‘I’m not edgy.’ She flicked her hair over her shoulder and scowled at him. ‘I’m diligent.’

‘Really? So you’re not heading off to the nearest computer repair shop later, so you can get right back to work before your head explodes.’ He mimed the explosion he was obviously picturing in his mind.

‘You’re funny. You know that? You’re a very funny man.’

‘I’m right, though, aren’t I? I bet you can’t stand to be without it for one day.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I can.’ She ignored the stutter in her heartbeat and leant back in the chair, gazing up at the slow-moving clouds above her. Her body was drenched in sweat. Had a heat wave descended?

Connor just grunt-laughed in response.

She chose to ignore him.

‘Can’t somebody else write your document?’

After pausing, she chose her answer carefully. ‘They’re working on it at the moment, but I’m the one who has the most experience in writing these things.’

‘So you don’t trust anyone else to do the job?’

Sighing, she put her fingers together, tip to tip, and waited for the irritation to subside. ‘If I don’t work on it now I’m going to have to do it when I get back—edit what the team’s done, that is—which will only allow minimal time to get it up to scratch before the deadline.’

‘And you’re sure they won’t be able to handle it without you?’

‘Based on experience—no.’

He nodded slowly, looking at her intently as if waiting for something more.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Like what?’ He was all innocence.

‘You don’t believe me?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not saying that. I was just wondering why you hired your staff if you don’t trust them to do their jobs properly.’

She really didn’t want to be talking about this. She was hyper-aware of the underlying panic, humming just below the surface, which she’d been struggling to suppress for weeks.

‘We can’t afford to get anything wrong right now. It’s a tough marketplace.’ She hoped the brusqueness of her tone would stop him asking any more about it.

‘So it’s all work and no play for you, right?’

His expression was neutral. She couldn’t tell whether he was teasing her.

Either way, Josie felt her blood begin to boil. How dare he? He didn’t even know her. He had no right to make judgements on her like that. She’d come across these disparaging attitudes to women in high-powered jobs so frequently that hers was a natural response by now.

She glared at him, her eyes narrowed. ‘Just because I work hard—and prefer not to loaf around the world on someone else’s dime,’ she added pointedly, ‘it doesn’t make me some hard-nosed bore. I happen to be very well respected....’ She petered out as the truth of her situation came flooding back to her.

He looked at her with his eyebrows raised. ‘I’ve heard all this before. The crazy working schedule. The inability to live outside of work. One holiday every three years...’

Josie squirmed at this.

‘...the ever-diminishing social life.’ He broke off to take a sip of his drink. ‘Is it really worth it?’

Was he serious? She still couldn’t tell. ‘Of course it’s worth it,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘Anyway, it’s nothing like that.’ She flapped a hand at him, but the tension in her muscles made the action jerky and over-exaggerated.

Connor looked sceptical. ‘What makes it so worthwhile? Hmm? What are the benefits?’

Josie had no idea how to answer this. She had no desire to talk about what it was that drove her so hard. Not with him. Besides, she’d been doing it for so long it had become part of who she was, who she’d always been and who she always would be.

‘It’s about a sense of achievement. Making something great out of your life. Being respected and...and...’

She realised she was gesturing wildly at him again, like some kind of madwoman, but he’d got her blood up. She was angry at his insinuation that she was somehow making a mistake with her life choices. This was what she’d always wanted. What else could there be?

‘It makes me happy,’ she finished, picking up her drink and taking a long sip to cover her frustration.

‘All right. I was only asking.’ He held up his hands to her in mock surrender, a smile playing about his lips.

‘What makes you such an expert anyway?’ She straightened herself up on her lounger and felt her dress pull downwards, exposing more flesh than she was comfortable with. She adjusted the top hastily, then tugged the skirt back down from where it had ridden up.

Their eyes met and the air crackled between them.

‘Like I say, I’ve seen it all before.’

His voice was low and ragged and sent chills tripping along her spine. Her head spun as she drank in his penetrating gaze.

This time it was Connor who broke eye contact first. He lay back in the recliner and gazed up at the sky, closing the subject and the unnerving connection.

Josie twisted away, lips clamped tight. What had all that been about? Maybe it had just been a fun game for him, to tease and anger her. To see how far he could push her before she snapped. Her sense of frustration increased and she had to consciously release her hands from their rigor mortis clench.

This guy was something else. He knew instinctively how to push her buttons. Well, she wasn’t going to let him do it again, that was for sure.

Dumping her notebook and pen on the table, she forced herself to focus on relaxing into holiday mode to show him she was capable of doing it.

‘You know, you really should put some suntan lotion on. That pale skin of yours is going to fry in this heat. You townies have no idea how to live in the sun.’

He was looking back over at her again. There wasn’t a trace of the intensity that had been there a moment ago. Josie was almost relieved. At least she could deal with him when he was being overtly officious.

‘There’s some in the kitchen cupboard,’ he added, turning away from her.

Again, his suggestion felt more like an order, but she knew he was right.

‘I need to do something inside anyway,’ she said, rising from the lounger and sauntering inside, determined to get her own back.

In the bathroom she took out all the products she’d been storing neatly in her washbag and scattered them around the sink and the edge of the bath, giving her emergency box of tampons pride of place on top of the toilet. After brushing her teeth again, she made sure to leave a good covering of toothpaste scum in the sink. Satisfied with the results, she returned to the kitchen, pulling her now clean clothes out of the washer and draping them all around the room. Her knickers and bra she hung right over the handle of the oven.

That would do for now.

After grabbing the bottle of suntan lotion from the kitchen cupboard she went back outside and returned to the lounger. Taking her time, she smoothed lotion over the exposed parts of her body, then thumped the bottle down onto the table to show Connor he could leave her alone now.

He grinned at her and inclined his head. ‘Want me to do your back?’ he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

‘No, thanks.’ Just the thought of his touch disturbed her. It was too intimate an act to indulge in with him. There was no way she could handle that; she’d be a puddle on the floor. Plus, she wasn’t ready to forgive him for his comments about her career.

She was so sick of people doubting her choices. Her whole life seemed to have been spent proving herself, over and over again, until she felt dizzy with it. But no way was she going to waste her time trying to explain her work ethic to someone who was plainly more than happy to let others do the hard graft while he swanned off round the world having ‘experiences.’

She’d tell him that if he brought up the subject again. No more Miss Nice Girl. The guy had it coming.

She went to pick up her notepad again, then realised she was about to prove his point about not being able to stay away from working. She could do it. Of course she could. Her hands were only shaking because she was so irritated with him.

Right?

She wasn’t planning on sunbathing out here for long, anyway. She would stay long enough to show him he couldn’t intimidate her and then she’d go for a walk or something. Anything to be away from him for a while.

* * *

Connor was aware of Josie fidgeting beside him. He smiled to himself. She was obviously finding it impossible to lie still. Not that he could blame her; he’d gone at her pretty hard—but it was so much fun winding her up.

He’d been comfortably winning the conversation until she’d shifted in her chair, giving him a generous view of the magnificent curves hiding under that dress.

The sight of her long slim legs and the sweeping curve of her breasts had thrown him off balance. A vision of himself running his hands slowly along her shapely calves, up over her knees and between her soft thighs, had hit him like a belt in the face and he’d found himself losing his legendary cool. His hands were still shaking from the effort of keeping them by his sides.

She was clearly trouble—which he should back the hell away from. He had no patience with career women who valued their jobs above everything and everyone else. His mother had been one, and even though he’d resented her in so many ways somehow he’d found himself in relationships with women who turned out to be just like her. But he’d learnt his lesson. Enough was enough. Despite finding himself dangerously attracted to Josie, he wouldn’t allow anything to happen between them.

He watched as she stood up and stretched her arms above her head.

‘Right, I’m off for a walk. See you later.’

She slipped on her flip-flops, pulled on a sunhat and stalked away from the terrace, her sundress swishing around her endless legs. The woman was a bundle of nervous energy.

She could definitely do with having some fun.