Читать книгу Passionate Playboys: The Demetrios Bridal Bargain / The Magnate's Indecent Proposal / Hot Nights with a Playboy - Элли Блейк, Ким Лоренс - Страница 8

IGNORING him as best she could, Rose pulled the heavy dry sweater over her head. It reached her knees and acted as a screen as, still shaking feverishly, she peeled away her jeans.

Before she had managed to wriggle them down to her ankles he had opened the door and returned to the front seat without a word. He started the engine with a curt instruction for her to belt up.

Belt up … he probably, she decided, meant it in both senses of the word, which was no problem for her. The last thing she felt like was making conversation. They’d been driving for a couple of minutes before she realised he couldn’t know where she lived.

‘I’m staying at Dornie House, that’s the last turning after—’

His impatient voice cut across her. ‘I’m not taking you there.’ His eyes met hers in the rear-view mirror. ‘You need to get checked over; there’s a cottage hospital in Muir.’

‘I don’t need to see a doctor.’

‘Need or not, you’re going to,’ came the autocratic retort.

Short of jumping out a moving vehicle, she didn’t have much choice but to go along with his plan. The man was obviously a total control freak.

‘There’s a blanket on the back seat if you don’t mind a few dog hairs. It should only take five minutes or so.’

She lasted three. She was wasting her breath, she knew that, but how could she let him go away thinking that she was someone she wasn’t? She really wanted to hear him admit he was wrong.

‘I’ve never slept with you, you know.’ Or anyone else, though Rebecca’s theory on this sad state of affairs was wrong—it wasn’t because she was a hopeless romantic who couldn’t deal with real emotions. That was the problem. She wanted emotions; she didn’t want soulless sex.

It was just her luck that the one man she had met whom she could imagine sex not being a cold, mechanical exercise with had already been taken. Her brow wrinkled as she recalled Rebecca’s suggestion that it wasn’t accidental she had fallen in love with someone who was inaccessible. Then she found herself recalling that one time when Steven had kissed her.it hadn’t been what she had expected. She hadn’t been carried away by passion; in fact, she had felt oddly removed from the event.

‘Only because I threw you out.’

His scornful observation cut like a blade through Rose’s rambling reflections.

‘Why? What was wrong with me?’ Rose closed her eyes and bit her lip. Could I have sounded more like a rejected lover if I tried?

‘I do not sleep with drunk groupies,’ he announced with disdainful hauteur.

The blood that had returned to her tingling extremities now rushed to her head. ‘Now hang on, I know you probably saved my life, but—’

He cut across her with a sardonic, ‘Probably?’

‘All right, then,’ she conceded crossly. ‘You saved my life, but that doesn’t give you the right to invent stories and virtually call me a tramp.’

‘It was not a term I used, but what would you call a woman who targets famous men with the purpose of adding another scalp to her belt? An icon of modern female empowerment?’

‘Famous?’ she echoed, getting seriously angry. ‘Am I supposed to know who you are?’

Dark brows elevated to an incredulous angle, he shot her a look of sardonic amusement in the rear-view mirror. ‘You are trying to tell me you don’t?’

‘I have never laid eyes on you before today,’ she snapped angrily.

‘Fine.’ He sighed, sounding like someone who was bored but prepared to go through the motions for a quiet life. ‘I am Mathieu Gauthier …’

Of course she knew the name even though she didn’t follow formula one. Well, it explained the arrogance—the adulation those drivers got was ludicrous. He had probably started believing his press releases.

‘Is that meant to mean something?’

It was obvious from the brief look he slung her over his shoulder that he didn’t swallow her pretended ignorance for a second, but to her relief he didn’t challenge her lie, but sounded lazily amused as he said, ‘If you are a fan of formula one it might.’

‘I thought you were Greek. Gauthier doesn’t sound very Greek to me.’

The lazy smile faded from his face. ‘Half Greek. I used my mother’s name professionally.’

‘So you are actually …?’

‘Mathieu Demetrios. Look, you don’t need to do this. I’m not going to tell anyone if that’s what is worrying you. Maybe your life has moved on and you’re ashamed of your past … though in my opinion you’d do better to come clean with whoever is in your life now.’ He didn’t doubt for a moment there would be somebody; for women who looked as she did there was always somebody.

‘Thank you for the advice,’ she gritted, thinking it was so not asked for. ‘But I’m not ashamed. I have nothing in my past to be ashamed of.’ Which makes me one of the most sad twenty-six-year-olds on the planet. ‘I don’t even know where or when I’m supposed to have tried to … to … seduce you.’

‘Monaco.’

‘Well, I’ve never been to Mon—’ She stopped. She hadn’t, but Rebecca had. She had the postcard to prove it.

Rose closed her eyes, a silent sigh leaving her lips. The woman he was talking about, sneering at, the woman who had tried to seduce him, was none other than her twin.

Rebecca who had been dumped literally at the altar and gone a little crazy. It all fitted, the timing, everything. They were talking about Rebecca’s ‘summer to forget’ when she had by her own admission done a lot of things she would like to forget. It looked as if jumping into the bed of a formula-one champion driver had been one of them.

It was like seeing the last piece of a jigsaw slot horribly into place—she had always hated jigsaws.

Oh, God, Rebecca, how could you? Rose felt guilty for the selfish question the moment it popped into her head. If anyone had had a reason to go slightly off the rails that summer it had been her sister.

Simon with the floppy hair and the sweet smile had been the boy next door quite literally. He and Rebecca had been childhood sweethearts, dating since they were sixteen and engaged at nineteen.

Rose had been one of six bridesmaids—the wedding had not been a low-key affair—in a dress that had made her look almost slim. The sun had shone, the babies had refrained from crying, Rebecca had looked stunning like a dream bride.

The only thing missing had been the groom.

In response to a desperate phone call Rose had jumped in the vicar’s Mini and gone to Simon’s house. She had found the best man looking stunned in the driveway.

‘Is it nerves?’ she asked him.

He just looked at her, shook his head and asked for a cigarette. Rose reminded him he didn’t smoke and went indoors. When she’d dragged the reason for his no show from the groom she briefly contemplated starting smoking herself.

‘You have to tell her, Rose, I can’t do it. Tell her I’m sorry and I love her, just not that way.’

‘Oh, sure, that will make her feel much better. Shall I tell her before or after that her fiancé has waited until his wedding day to admit he’s gay?’ Rose wasn’t in the mood to feel much empathy for anyone else but her twin that day.

Rose fully anticipated that Rebecca would collapse or lose it totally when she told her about Simon, but her sister was calm, almost surreally so considering the circumstances.

It was Rebecca who had taken control, which was good because their father was almost catatonic and their mother was stressing about the protocol of returning the gifts.

She insisted on telling the guests personally. Rose would never forget the image of her standing there like a serene goddess in her frothy white wedding dress explaining in a few dignified sentences that the wedding would not be going ahead.

Watching her, knowing how much she had to be hurting, broke Rose’s heart; she knew that if the roles had been reversed she could never have been as brave.

It was about four days later that it actually hit Rebecca, then there were the tears, the anger … and a few weeks later she announced she had swung a refund on the honeymoon and some of the reception and planned to travel for a few months with the money.

It looked pretty much as if her travels had at some point taken her to Mathieu Gauthier’s bedroom.

‘It’s gone quiet back there. Could it be your amnesia has been cured? Is it all coming back?’ he suggested in a silky sneery voice that made Rose fantasise about wiping the superior smirk off his face.

‘For your information …’ She stopped the words playing in her mind—the tramp in your bed wasn’t me, it was my twin sister.

It didn’t matter how much she wanted to squeeze an apology out of the awful man. Her loyalty to her twin was more important. It was the very least that Rebecca deserved.

It wasn’t as if it mattered one way or the other what Mathieu Demetrios or whatever he called himself these days thought of her.

She drew herself upright and, glaring at the back of his neck, shook her head, closing her mouth firmly on the retort. ‘I’ve never been to Monaco.’

‘Then you have a twin out there somewhere.’

Yes, I do, and I could give you her address, though I doubt her husband would be too happy about it. ‘If you say so,’ she agreed, shivering as she turned her head to look out of the window. ‘I don’t think the cottage hospital even has a casualty department.’

‘It’s a hospital. There will be a doctor.’ If there wasn’t it would have to be Inverness.

‘I’m fine and I’m late …’ She grabbed the door handle to steady herself as he took a corner clearly under the impression that he was still at the wheel of a formula-one car, not a battered Land Rover.

‘We’ll let the man who trained for six years decide if you’re fine, shall we?’

Rose pursed her lips and didn’t say another word. What was the point? He was clearly going to do what he wanted no matter what she said.

It turned out he was right, there was a doctor at the small community hospital—one of the local GPs who said they had done exactly the right thing when she related her story, apologising repeatedly for wasting his time.

When she returned to the waiting area a few minutes later she thought at first that her racing-driver rescuer had left … then just as some of the tension was leaving her spine he peeled himself away from a wall.

‘Oh, I didn’t see you in the shadow.’ The tension was back with a vengeance. She had never met anyone who aroused such feelings of antipathy by doing nothing more than drawing himself up to his full and admittedly impressive height. It was lucky really—if she’d liked him she’d have felt that in some irrational way she was being disloyal to her twin.

‘I said I’d wait.’ His brows drew together in a straight line when she shivered.

‘And I said it was not necessary. I’m quite capable of making my own way back.’

He arched a brow. ‘Dressed like that.’

He had a point, she conceded, glancing down. The sweater covered as much as a dress, but it was a bit short and quite drafty. As for the man-sized woollen walking socks he’d dug out of the boot when she’d refused point-blank to allow him to carry her over the gravelled forecourt—well, they weren’t exactly ideal footwear for public transport.

There was also the slight problem of her having no money.

She hated to be even more in his debt, but what choice did she have? ‘I’m sorry to put you out. I’m sure you have more important things you should be doing.’

‘Yes.’

Rose bit her lip. Clearly he was not into making people feel comfortable.

‘Sorry,’ she said again.

His lips quivered. The word was ‘sorry’ but the sentiment behind it was clearly ‘go to hell’. His eyes slid to her feet encased in an old pair of Jamie’s walking socks. To get there he had to move past her legs—they were very fine legs. They were the sort of legs a man could not look at without imagining himself between the soft, smooth thighs.

You passed, the voice in his head reminded him. It sounded disgusted and he could see why.

‘What did the doctor say?’ He found her more attractive in this weird get-up than he had that night in his hotel room. Did that, he wondered, make him twisted?

‘He said what I said all along, I’m fine. He also said I was lucky.’ She took a deep breath; not liking the man was no excuse for bad manners and he had risked his life to save her. ‘And I am, thanks to you.’

He looked at the hand she had extended to him for a moment, then, just when she thought he was going to ignore it, he reached out and clasped it in his.

Rose’s eyes flew wide and a small startled gasp escaped her parted lips before she could prevent it. She grunted something guarded and snatched her hand away. It was difficult to stay in denial about being wildly attracted to someone when you had a reaction like that to a simple handshake. She swallowed as she wondered about the electrical thrill that had shot through her body.

Did he feel it too?

She pushed aside the thought, ran her tongue over her dry lips and, still not looking at him, directed her words to the wall over his left shoulder. ‘I really need to get back,’ she said, her voice cracking with nerves.

He bowed his dark head slightly in acknowledgement of her request. ‘Dornie House, you said …?’ His eyes narrowed in concentration as he sketched a mental map of the area. If it was the place he thought he could stop by the estate and reassure Jamie that he hadn’t dropped off the face of the earth.

‘That’s right.’

‘The place off the Inverness road?’

‘I think so.’ She lifted a hand to her head.

As Mathieu watched the intensely weary gesture he was startled to feel his protective instincts stirring. He reminded himself who and what this woman was, but found it hard to reconcile the predatory man-eater of his memory with this exhausted and white-faced figure who had just narrowly escaped death … and there hadn’t been a single tear.

You had to admire that. Whatever she was, she had guts.

‘You walked a long way this morning. Come on.’ She had to be tired because she didn’t object when he placed a light guiding hand on her arm.