Читать книгу Back In The Boss's Bed - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 13

WITH icy politeness, Kiloran showed Adam out, watching as his powerful car shot off down the long, winding drive, spraying gravel in its wake. Like a bat out of hell, she thought as the car became a pinprick in the distance, and then she went to look for her grandfather.

She found him in the library, and he looked up from his book as she burst in.

‘Kiloran.’ He smiled, but his eyes were wary.

‘Grandfather, how could you?’

‘How could I what, my dear?’

‘Ask that…that…high-handed megalomaniac for help!’

‘He might be high-handed,’ he conceded, ‘but he’s no megalomaniac. Men like Adam Black don’t have delusions of grandeur—they don’t need to. His success speaks for itself. We’re very lucky to have him.’

Lucky? It didn’t feel lucky—it felt like…Kiloran couldn’t define exactly how it did feel, but all she knew was that he had stirred her up into a state where she would have liked to have smashed something. She remembered his cool, dark good looks. His censorious face as he had taken her to task about her mismanagement!

Can’t you face the simple truth, Kiloran? a voice mocked her. Or is it that you simply can’t bear the fact that you had to hear it from him?

‘Well, if he’s so wonderful—then why is he here? There must be a million other places he could be giving the benefit of his superior knowledge to!’

‘He’s doing me a favour,’ said Vaughn slowly.

‘Why?’

Her grandfather looked at her. ‘That’s the way it goes in business sometimes.’

Something in his voice was warning her off, and for the first time in her life Kiloran felt excluded, as if she were trying to dip her toe into a man’s world, which she had no right to enter. And something in her grandfather’s eyes told her not to bother trying.

‘Relax, Kiloran,’ said the old man gently. ‘We couldn’t be in better hands.’

How that phrase mocked her—and not just mocked her, but filled her with a strange kind of excitement as her mind was dazzled with disturbingly sensual images of being in Adam’s hands. Of his experienced fingers playing sensual havoc all over her. And that was all part of the problem, she realised.

He wasn’t the kind of man you could look upon with any kind of indifference. He dominated the space around him with such intensity that he seemed to leave a great, gaping hole in the atmosphere when he was gone. And how on earth was she going to co-operate with him and give of her best if all she could think about was how infuriatingly gorgeous he was?

Just stop it, she told herself fiercely.

Stop it.

Was that one of the reasons behind his success? That formidable presence? She remembered the way his face had become shuttered when she had asked if he still had family living close by. What really did she know about Adam Black, besides his successful professional reputation?

Nothing, that was what, and her grandfather obviously wasn’t going to tell her anything either.

The party she was going to that night suddenly lost some of its allure. A fact borne out by the evening itself, when a perfectly acceptable man—who might normally have made a pleasant companion for the evening—left her feeling something she hadn’t felt for a long time.

Restless.

Too restless to sleep. As if something had been woken in her that she could not put a name to, something which taunted her from the edge of her dreams, only to disappear when she opened her eyes. She tossed and turned into the small hours, drifting off only to wake up and find that it was still dark. And when she went down to breakfast, it was with an almighty headache.

She pushed the food around her plate like someone convalescing from an illness. She had known that things were bad, but somehow Adam Black’s terse and critical assessment had made them seem a million times worse. Maybe rural living had blunted the edges of her judgement. Maybe her grandfather should never have appointed her in the first place.

Racked with self-doubt, she stared out at the summer garden—at the splashed colour spectrum of the roses and the bright blue spears of delphinium. What else could match a view like that? Certainly nothing that London could offer.

She had come back to live in the country for everything that view represented—a pace of life which was so much more relaxed than the hurly-burly of the city. Here, values seemed more grounded and there was time to do the things she enjoyed. Simple pleasures, far removed from the smoke-filled clatter of City bars. She rode her horse, played tennis and mixed with a set of people with similar tastes and passions.

No, maybe passion was the wrong word. Passion meant strong and uncontrollable emotion and Kiloran could certainly never have been accused of that.

Hers had been an uncertain childhood and her mother’s moods capricious as she had sought happiness in the arms of a series of men until she had finally hit the jackpot and married her millionaire. Kiloran, in contrast, had strived for nothing more ambitious than balance, vowing never to go the way of her mother and look for happiness in someone else. She would find it within herself. She wanted nothing more than safety and security. Of knowing that she could survive on her own.

But a life which had seemed safe and predictable now looked anything but, and not just because the business was threatened. No, Adam Black had stormed into her life like a rampaging hurricane and, just like land left in the wake of a hurricane, she now felt distinctly flattened.

And distinctly disorientated.

In his London apartment, Adam stood beneath the jets of the shower and rubbed soap into his long, tanned legs, feeling the water beating warm and strong against him as it cascaded over his hair-roughened skin. He had been trying to wash away the memory of Kiloran Lacey and her pink and white beauty, telling himself that an unwilling sexual attraction was no basis for a close working relationship with the woman. But what choice did he have? He hadn’t been expecting to be bowled over by that cool, insouciant air—it had just hit him out of the blue.

It hadn’t happened like that for a long time—actually, never quite like that before—and never with anyone he worked with. She was off limits, he told himself. Strictly off limits.

He rubbed soap into firm, hard muscles but the physical contact only awakened feelings he would prefer to be subdued and, abruptly, he terminated the shower and roughly towelled himself dry. He slung on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and flicked the message button on his answering machine, where the message light flashed the number eight onto the small screen.

Eight messages. He frowned. Had he really given his number out to that many people or had word just got around? He had only been back in England a month and yet already it seemed that he was in demand as the ‘must-have’ guest at every party. Single men were as rare as virgins, he thought wryly.

But he was tempted by none of the invitations on offer as the machine beeped and whirred its way through the tape. He didn’t want to be teamed up with a gorgeous accessory of a woman who would look at him and his lifestyle and wonder why he wasn’t married and immediately set about righting that.

Nor have to fend off the attentions of the hostess who was invariably feeling jaded with marriage and on the lookout for a quick fix of sexual excitement.

And it seemed that dissatisfaction went hand in hand with affluence. Once, affluence had seemed like the answer to everything, but maybe that was because when you didn’t have something you strove and strove until you did. Or, at least, he did. And then when you got it—what then?

Another challenge, he guessed. Something like Lacey’s. A little, old-fashioned ship, bobbing around on the pirate-infested sea of big business.

He gave a slow smile, enjoying the analogy, even if Kiloran Lacey somehow and distractingly got into the picture, tied to some mast with the waves plastering her clothes to her body.

He groaned as he felt the unwelcome throb of desire and, annoyed with himself, picked up the phone on the first ring instead of letting it go directly to the answering machine.

‘Adam?’ came a breathless, eager voice. ‘It’s Carolyn.’

It took a moment to fit the face to the voice and when he did, he nodded. She was beautiful and amusing enough to take to the theatre with him, surely? ‘Carolyn,’ he murmured. ‘Good to hear you.’

While the Lacey factory lay on the outskirts of the small, nearby town, the administration block had been built by Kiloran’s great-grandfather within the grounds of the mansion itself. He had been a man ahead of his time in more ways than one and he had wanted to see as much of his children growing up as possible.

Kiloran had always enjoyed the easy access between work and home, but when she walked into her office on Monday morning to find a horribly familiar figure sitting at her desk she felt as though she were being invaded on all fronts.

Long legs were stretched out in front of him, the soft fabric of his suit stretching over the hard muscle of his thighs, and she found herself thinking how broad his shoulders were when viewed from this angle.

The jet-dark head was lifted and the face which was raised to greet the sound of her entering could by no stretch of the imagination be described as welcoming, but that didn’t stop her heart missing a beat.

Kiloran swallowed. ‘Good morning, Adam,’ she said carefully. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What does it look like?’ he questioned coolly. ‘Working.’ He gave a pointed look at the expensive gold timepiece which gleamed discreetly above an immaculate white cuff. ‘What’s this?’ he questioned sardonically. ‘Your half-day?’

She felt so unsettled at seeing him, particularly seeing him sitting looking so arrogantly territorial, that she immediately went on the defensive. ‘It’s nine o’clock,’ she answered. ‘The time when most normal people start working.’

He put down his pen with a clatter. ‘These are not normal times, Kiloran,’ he returned. ‘I thought you realised that! And, besides, I’m always at my desk by seven-thirty.’

Well, bully for you, she thought. ‘How did you get here?’

‘I flew.’

‘Seriously?’

He gave a click of irritation. ‘Of course I didn’t—the nearest airfield is miles away. That was what was known as irony, Kiloran.’ Though he doubted whether she would know irony if it got up and performed a little dance for her. ‘I drove.’

‘This morning?’

‘Very early this morning.’

It must have been virtually daybreak when he had started out—because even when the roads were empty, the journey still took two hours from London. That would probably account for the smudges of faint blue shadows beneath those magnificent eyes. Or had he spent his weekend engaged in pursuits which would guarantee a lack of sleep? Probably, if the newspapers were to be believed.

She felt at a loss. ‘Would you like coffee?’ she asked.

Silently, Adam counted to ten. ‘No, Kiloran,’ he said steadily. ‘I would not like coffee. What I would like is for you to take the weight off those pretty feet and grab yourself a chair—’

‘You’re sitting in it,’ she said stonily, bristling at the ‘pretty feet’ bit. ‘This is my office, remember? My desk. And my chair.’

‘And have you sorted a room out for me?’

‘Not yet, no.’

He shook his head, as a teacher would to a child who had not presented their work on time. ‘You knew I was coming—you’ve had two days to organise something.’ He leaned back and studied her. ‘So why haven’t you?’

She couldn’t ever remember being spoken to in such a way—not even in her very first job, when she had been the most junior of juniors. ‘I’ll do it straight away!’

‘Not straight away, no. Here—’ He gestured towards the swivel chair beside him. ‘Come over here and sit down.’

She felt like Little Red Riding Hood being enticed by the big, bad wolf, but there was something so authoritative in his tone that she found herself doing exactly what he said.

‘There,’ he murmured, a glimmer of amusement sparking in the depths of the stormy eyes as she perched on the seat next to his, noting the awkward set of her shoulders and her frozen posture. She really didn’t like him one bit, did she? he observed wryly. ‘How’s that?’

It was awful. Or rather, it wasn’t. It was the opposite of awful. She could never remember being so aware of a man in her life. This close, she could catch traces of some subtle musky aftershave, which only drew her attention to the faint shadowing at his jaw. He must have shaved so early, she found herself thinking inconsequentially—and yet already the new growth was visible. The breath caught in her throat; she knew that it would be rude to look away from the grey eyes, and feared that if she did he would sense her discomfiture.

And realise the cause of it.

‘Perfect,’ she said lightly. ‘But only as a very temporary measure.’

Yeah. He wasn’t going to argue with her about that. This was more than a little too close for comfort, that was for sure. He tried to rationalise her appeal, just as he had been trying to rationalise it since the moment he had seen her again—telling himself that the woman he had spent Saturday evening with had been just as beautiful.

So what was it about Kiloran Lacey? What was so special about those green cat’s eyes and the shiny blonde hair? Was her appeal strengthened simply because she was off limits?

He let his eyes drift over her. The simple summer dress she wore dropped in a floaty little hem to her knees. Sweet knees, he found himself thinking reluctantly. Her bare arms were strong and toned and lightly tanned and he found himself wondering if she was an exercise fanatic. Probably, he decided. It wouldn’t surprise him if she had had her own high-tech gym installed somewhere in the bowels of this enormous house. An extravagance incurred at the expense of the company, no doubt, and his mouth flattened into a thin line of disapproval.

‘Right.’ With an effort he brought himself back to the subject in hand, drawing out a sheet of cream-coloured writing paper from the sheath of documents in front of him. ‘Let’s see what we have here.’

Kiloran took one brief glance at the distinctive, spidery handwriting and her heart sank.

‘Recognise this?’ he asked shortly.

She nodded. ‘It’s from my aunt Jacqueline.’

‘It certainly is. But she’s more than just your aunt, isn’t she, Kiloran?’ He saw her shift a little in her chair. ‘She just happens to be the second biggest shareholder of Lacey’s soaps and—’

‘And let me guess—she’s angry?’

‘Angry?’ Adam’s dark lashes shielded his eyes as he lowered his glance to scan over the letter. ‘To say that she is angry would be something of an understatement. And I have to say that I have some sympathy with her.’

Well, he would—wouldn’t he? ‘May I read it?’

‘You won’t like it.’

‘Oh, I’m tough enough to take Aunt Jacqueline’s…’ But her voice tailed off as she began to read. Angry wasn’t the word for it. The words seemed to sizzle off the page.

The letter didn’t pull any punches. And there was a particularly wounding paragraph.

I have no wish to apportion blame, Vaughn.

Of course you don’t, thought Kiloran wryly.

But nonetheless, someone must take responsibility for the theft. If Kiloran had had the courage to admit that she was out of her depth, then none of this might have happened and as a consequence, my financial security and that of my daughter might not now be threatened.

Kiloran read on.

I have been comforted by your news that Adam Black has been brought in and I must congratulate you on having hired a man of such formidable reputation.

Kiloran wondered fleetingly how Adam Black felt about having been described as ‘hired’.

In fact, I should take some comfort in a meeting with him at the earliest possible opportunity, and I would be pleased if you could arrange this for me.

She put the letter down. ‘Perhaps it would make everyone feel better if they just lined me up in the stocks and threw things at me—that’s what they used to do in days gone by, isn’t it?’