Читать книгу No Escaping Love - Шэрон Кендрик, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

MAX RYDER’S next words were, however, brisk and businesslike. ‘I assume that you’ve clothes and stuff to collect?’ He looked down at Shauna’s rather battered suitcase. ‘Or do I take it that’s the sum total of your worldly goods?’ he asked sarcastically.

‘No, you do not!’ she retorted indignantly, pushing away a dark curl which was tickling the corner of her mouth. ‘Don’t forget—I have just come off the boat. As a matter of fact—I’ve got two more suitcases.’

‘So where have you left them?’

‘They’ve been in store at some friends’ flat.’

The green eyes beneath the dark brows were looking at her questioningly. ‘Local?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘In London.’

He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Are you being deliberately obtuse, Miss Wilde?’ He glanced at the pale gold watch. ‘I’m expecting a call from Paris at eight—I can give you a lift to collect your belongings, then when we get back I’ll show you over the flat.’

She shook her head, so that two more curls wiggled out. For some reason, she was reluctant to be driven there by this man. He was her boss, and—she had to admit—dangerously attractive. She didn’t want contact with him spilling over into her private life. ‘That’s very kind of you, but I can manage on my own, honestly.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he exclaimed impatiently. ‘I’m not trying to unlock the secrets of your soul—I’m simply offering you a lift. Why struggle on the Tube when you can do it in comfort? And if you’re worried about some boyfriend—ex or otherwise—rushing out to hit me on the jaw, then don’t. Like the proverbial wise man—I’ll hear, see nor speak evil!’

The very idea was laughable. She simply couldn’t imagine anyone having the temerity to hit this man on the jaw! Quite apart from anything else it looked as though it were fashioned from granite.

‘I happened to share with two lawyers, not cavemen,’ she retorted. ‘And they live in Hampstead.’

To her surprise, the questioning ceased. ‘Hampstead’s miles away,’ he said briefly. ‘It would take you all night to get there. Come on—we’ll take the car.’

She followed him in silence out of the office and into the lift. At the ground floor he introduced her to Charlie, the commissionaire. Then he ushered her through heavy revolving glass doors and outside, where the light was fading rapidly from the sky. The typically October temperature had plummeted rapidly now that the sun had disappeared and Shauna shivered involuntarily, her linen jacket seeming totally inadequate. She hadn’t thought he’d been looking, but he noticed immediately.

‘I hope there’s a thicker coat among your things?’ he commented.

‘Yes, I’ve got an overcoat.’ She didn’t like to say that all her things would probably look to him as if they’d come out of the Ark! Two years was a long time in fashion, and department stores had only recently begun to realise that not all women were of medium height and build. Shauna, being tall and very slim, had always found it notoriously difficult to find clothes to fit her.

Their steps led them to the back of the building, where he unlocked a cunningly concealed car-port to reveal the low, sleek lines of a Mercedes. He was a good driver—confident, but not over-confident. He drove the powerful machine well within the limits of the city’s speed restrictions. She thought it rather a waste to have such a powerful car if he lived in town. They headed north.

‘So tell me,’ he said, ‘how on earth you managed to survive two years working in a foreign country on your own.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she declared indignantly.

He shrugged, the glimmer of a smile playing on his lips. ‘If you thought I was running a massage parlour and escort agency, then your imagination must have been working overtime when you were abroad.’

She flushed. Her daydreaming had got her into trouble on more than one occasion. ‘I’m surprised you gave me the job.’

A brown hand expertly and swiftly changed down into second gear as a taxi shot out of a side-street and into their path. ‘I had a strong gut feeling about you, and I tend to rely on my instincts—where business is concerned, at any rate,’ he finished.

She began to wonder how he might respond where his emotions were concerned. If indeed he had any! She remembered his conceited remark about women displaying the ‘ripe-plum syndrome’—meaning, presumably, that they all fell eagerly into his arms, she thought acidly. But he’d been nothing but disparaging about her fellow job applicants, so he obviously wasn’t desperate for scalps to notch up. She sneaked a surreptitious side-glance at him in the darkness of the car. How old would he be? Early thirties? Involved? Someone as eligible as Max Ryder would be bound to be involved. Except that she couldn’t recall seeing any photographs in that vast office of his. Come to think of it, it had been one of the most impersonal rooms that she had ever been in. Stark and dramatic. Even the bonsai tree on the plain black desk had given nothing away. Stunning, but impersonal. A bit like him, really.

‘So you managed to spend two years on the Continent without getting yourself into any scrapes?’ he probed.

The way he said it made her feel about ten years old. ‘I’d been used to working in Portugal,’ she defended. ‘After two years I knew the job inside out and back to front. I got back to England and suddenly I felt like a stranger in my own country. When I walked into your building I felt totally out of place—it was so outside my experience that I imagined the worst possible scenario.’ She tucked one of the errant curls behind her ear and looked at him slightly nervously. ‘Do you understand what I mean?’

Unexpectedly he said, ‘I believe I do.’

The curl sprang back. ‘Can we forget it, and put it down to travel fatigue? By the way—it’s left here.’

The car swung up the tree-lined road. The trees were beginning to lose their leaves now. It seemed such a long time since she had lived here—a lifetime ago, really. Nick and Harry had been great flat-mates to have—kind and protective, just like the brothers she’d never had.

‘Nice area,’ he commented.

‘Yes, it is. Could you pull up here? It’s the second house, behind the van.’

The powerful car pulled smoothly to a halt. He turned to face her in the semi-darkness. ‘I’ll wait here,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you need a hand with anything.’

‘Thanks.’ She climbed out of the low car, walked to the front door and pressed the bell.

She had to wait several minutes, and was contemplating leaving a note, when the door was opened and a tall, tousled-haired young man stood stock-still, and then a grin split his face in two.

‘Shauna!’ he said in surprise, and then, ‘Shauna!’ again in a tone of delight. ‘You dark horse, you! Why didn’t you say?’

‘Because I didn’t know until recently,’ she laughed. ‘And you know the advert you sent me? I got the job!’

‘You got the job!’ he echoed in delight, and before she could stop him he had caught her up in his arms and whirled her round and round.

‘Put me down, Harry,’ she giggled. ‘You’ll give yourself a hernia!’ But as he carefully lowered her back on to the step she saw over his shoulder that Max Ryder was no longer sitting in his car, but lounging against the bonnet—his expression in the darkness unreadable, but, even in that outwardly relaxed stance, there was no mistaking the coiled tension in the long limbs. Obviously, he must have seen Harry embrace her, and she wondered why she should mind that he had.

Harry looked at her closely. ‘You look fabulous, Shauna,’ he said quietly. ‘But pensive. Come in. Have a drink?’

She shook her head regretfully, eyeing the familiarly shabby hall with affection. ‘I can’t. I’ve got someone waiting. He’s offered me a job and accommodation. I’m here to collect my stuff.’

‘So? Invite him in, too.’

Shauna took in the overflowing books, the half-empty wine bottle, last Sunday’s—and the Sunday’s before that!—newspapers littering the floor. She could just imagine the minimalist, bonsai-loving Max Ryder fitting in here!

‘I don’t think so, Harry,’ she smiled at him fondly. ‘He hasn’t even shown me the flat, yet—and he’s expecting a phone call from Paris. But I’ll come round another night—you can cook me one of your famous Bolognese sauces, and we’ll catch up on all the gossip.’

Harry frowned. ‘If only we hadn’t let your old room out.’

‘I would hardly have expected you to hold on to it for two years!’ exclaimed Shauna. ‘That would be stretching friendship a little too far!’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘It was good of you to keep my stuff for me.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Listen, I’d better not keep—’

‘No, of course not. I’ll get your stuff.’ He retreated into the larger bedroom. ‘Nick will be sorry to have missed you,’ he called out. ‘Did you know he’s in love?’

‘He wrote and told me! What’s she like?’

He reappeared, carrying two large suitcases. ‘Great—when she’s not sitting gazing at him like a lovesick puppy!’

‘You next, then,’ teased Shauna.

‘Is that an offer?’ he smiled.

They heard a loud toot from outside before she had a chance to reply. Shauna knew immediately who it would be.

‘That’ll be my new boss,’ she explained. ‘I’d better go.’

Harry pushed the curtain open a crack. ‘Flash car,’ he observed. ‘What’s he like?’

Shauna peeped out—he was still standing there. ‘The kind of man your mother told you never to go out with—well, most mothers,’ amended Shauna.

‘Lucky devil,’ said Harry gloomily. ‘I have the opposite trouble—instant parental approval—very boring!’

There was a momentary pause. ‘Thanks for my free holiday,’ he smiled. ‘I had a great time.’

He’d travelled out to Portugal in the summer, and her boss had put him up for the fortnight.

She grinned her agreement. ‘Me too. And thanks again for finding me the ad.’

They stood for a moment, hands clasped like the old friends they were—their brief and youthful romance long forgotten. ‘I’ll carry your cases to the car for you,’ he said.

A dark figure loomed up out of the shadows. ‘There’s no need for that,’ contradicted a deep voice, and Shauna started to see Max Ryder standing there, automatically moving away to break the contact, wondering what had caused the faint upward curl of his lip.

She performed the necessary introductions, but she thought that her new boss was decidedly lukewarm in his greeting, and Harry was uncharacteristically taciturn. In fact, for some reason neither man seemed to like the other very much.

Amid promises to call soon, Shauna and Max roared off down the street. There was silence for a moment. Then he spoke.

‘I thought I asked you not to be long,’ he said tetchily as he put his foot down on the accelerator. ‘I hope I’m not going to miss my call.’

‘Sorry,’ she said automatically.

Max gave her a sideways glance. ‘After such a fond reunion, I’m surprised your lover doesn’t want you to stay with him.’

So he had seen them embrace. ‘He is not my lover,’ she said, in an angry voice. Not any more, she thought. An attempt at young love years ago which had fizzled out almost as soon as it had started. Not that she was going to explain that to him. He was her boss, and he had absolutely no right whatsoever to comment on her private life. ‘And even if he were, it’s none of your business.’ Which didn’t come out at all the way she had intended it to.

She saw his hands tighten on the steering-wheel, as if he was not used to being spoken to in such a way, and she might have tried to amend her snapped response, but a glance at the cold, hard profile told her that she would be wise to say nothing, so she stared out into the night as Hyde Park swept by them.

He didn’t speak again until they had arrived back in Mayfair. He was not, Shauna decided, the type of man to engage in meaningless pleasantries.

‘I’ll show you the apartment now.’ He frowned as he glanced again at the pale gold wristwatch. ‘You must be hungry.’

So he was back to being civil. ‘Starving,’ she admitted.

This time, the lift went right past the third floor where he’d interviewed her, and the doors opened straight into an enormous sitting-room. The carpet was white, and littered with Persian rugs. The walls were also white, with several large modern canvases which fitted in perfectly with the simple leather furniture.

Shauna suppressed a gasp. Surely he couldn’t mean that this was her flat? Compared to the dark cubby-hole she’d had in Lisbon, this place was like a palace.

‘The kitchen’s through here,’ he was saying. ‘There’s a bathroom off that passage over there, but of course your room has its own, en suite. This is your room here.’ He pushed open a door to reveal a sumptuously appointed bedroom, decorated in palest eau-de-Nil. ‘You’ll find that—apart from work—we’ll hardly see one another.’

Shauna’s mouth fell open. ‘We? What do you mean “we”?’

He sounded impatient. ‘The flat has three bedrooms, and a great deal of living space. We’ll hardly be on top of one another.’

Suddenly the tall, dark figure of Max Ryder appeared very slightly menacing, and involuntarily she took a step back. ‘But I didn’t know I was going to be sharing with you!’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! We are living in the twentieth century, you know!’ he retorted. ‘Men and women do share flats these days—as you’ve obviously done yourself before. Or perhaps you consider yourself such a little sexpot that you think I won’t be able to keep my hands off you?’

‘No, I don’t!’ she parried, a blush creeping into her cheeks as her mind became alight with vivid images that his words had conjured up.

‘Well, that’s something,’ he said, with a kind of grim satisfaction. ‘Because, believe me, the last type of woman to attract me is some tall, skinny kid who doesn’t look old enough to be out of gym-slips!’

Shauna glared at him. It was one thing to decide that the man before her was the last person she’d ever fall for—it was quite another to discover that he felt exactly the same way—and his disparaging remarks made her bristle with indignation. Share a flat with him? Why, she’d rather share with a gang of escaped convicts!

‘And what about—privacy?’ she asked primly.

He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Privacy? Will you stop acting like the original vestal virgin? Slightly redundant anyway, since we’ve just collected your stuff from your ex-lover.’

He managed to make a young love-affair sound so sordid, she thought, her grey eyes sending out sparks of indignation.

‘You’ll have all the privacy you could possibly want,’ he continued. ‘For a start, I’m away in the country most weekends. Secondly, your room is on the opposite side of a very large flat, and it has its own bathroom. So does mine. So the chances of your coming across me in the raw are pretty remote.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘The good news for both of us is that I’ll shortly be having the flat divided into two completely separate apartments. It would have been done already if I had been here to sort the damned builders out. Unfortunately, I’ve been out of the country.’

That explained the tan, thought Shauna.

His eyes were mocking as they surveyed her. ‘Now, are those arrangements secure enough for your Victorian sensibilities, or would you like me to throw in a chastity belt while I’m at it?’ He gave an unexpected grin as he saw her colour heighten yet again.

‘You know, you really are going to have to do something about that blushing, if you’re going to work for me. And you a woman of the world!’

His teasing immediately defused the atmosphere. ‘I am not a woman of the world, if that means what I think it means.’

He was staring at her curiously. ‘Tell me, you didn’t lie about your age in your letter, did you?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ she flung back at him. ‘Of course I didn’t lie! Do you always think the worst of people, or are you just used to people lying to you?’

‘All the time,’ he mused. ‘Particularly women, and particularly about their age. Except that they usually lop a few years off, whereas in your case …’

There was something distinctly unsettling about the way those green eyes bored into her, she thought, but, refusing to rise to this, she stared steadily at him. ‘Will you be needing me this evening?’ she asked pointedly. ‘Because I’d like to unpack and—’

He shook his head. ‘You’re free until tomorrow morning at ten sharp. Oh, and there’s one more thing—house rules.’

‘I am very tidy,’ she interrupted. ‘And I do not leave dirty dishes in the sink.’

‘There’s a dishwasher, actually—and the maid comes in twice a week. No, I’ve only one rule and that’s no overnight guests. I don’t care who you go to bed with—just don’t do it here. I don’t intend to have my sleep disturbed.’

She went white beneath her tan and glared at him. He was obviously going out of his way to shock her, but he was going to be disappointed—she had absolutely no intention of rising to his challenge, or of offering him any information on the current state of her love-life. The question was whether she could put up with working for a man who could be quite so contentious. She continued to stare at him as she contemplated the only alternative, which would be to walk out of here right now.

She couldn’t. It was a brilliant job—she’d never find another like it. And if the only fly in the ointment was the conceited Max Ryder—well, surely she could put up with that? And at least he had made it perfectly clear that he wouldn’t dream of making a pass at her, so in that sense, at least, she was quite safe with him.

The green eyes had been observing her with the faintest touch of amusement. ‘Changed your mind, have you?’

She pretended to look perplexed. ‘Changed my mind? About what?’

‘Staying.’

Her wide mouth closed in a determined line. Roll on the day when the builders arrived! ‘Certainly not, Mr Ryder. I look on it as a challenge.’

The glimmer of a smile. ‘Call me Max. And there’s plenty of food in the kitchen. Help yourself.’

‘Thank you very much,’ she answered politely, but, as she closed her bedroom door behind her, she reflected that her voracious appetite of earlier had mysteriously disappeared.