Читать книгу Bridegrooms Required: One Bridegroom Required / One Wedding Required / One Husband Required - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

AS SOON as Luke got home, he phoned Doug Reasdale, his late uncle’s letting agent—a man he had just about been able to tolerate down the echoed lines of a long-distance phone call from Africa. He suspected that this time around he might have a little difficulty hanging onto his temper.

‘Doug? It’s Luke Goodwin here.’

‘Luke!’ oozed Doug effusively. ‘Well, what do you know? Hi, man—how’s it going? Good to have you back!’

‘After sixteen years away, you mean?’ observed Luke rather drily. He had met Doug once, briefly, when he had flown over for his uncle’s funeral earlier in the year. Luke and the agent were about the same age, which Doug had obviously taken as a sign of true male camaraderie since he had spent the afternoon being relentlessly chummy and drinking whisky like water.

‘It’s actually very good to be back,’ Luke said, realising to his surprise that he meant it.

‘So what can I do you for?’ quizzed Doug. ‘House okay?’

‘The house is fine. Beautiful, in fact.’ He paused. ‘I’m not ringing about the house.’

‘Oh?’

‘Does the name Holly Lovelace ring a bell?’

There was a low whistling noise down the phone.

‘Reddish hair and big green eyes? Legs that go on for ever? Breasts you could spend the rest of your life dreaming about? Just taken over the lease of the vacant shop?’ laughed Doug raucously. ‘Tell me about her!’

Luke’s skin chilled and he was filled with an uncharacteristic urge to do violence. ‘Is it customary to speak about leaseholders in such an over-familiar manner?’ he asked coldly.

Doug clearly did not have the most sensitive antennae in the world. ‘Well, no,’ he admitted breezily. ‘Not usually. But then they don’t usually look like Holly Lovelace.’ His voice deepened. ‘Mind you—not that I think she’s much of a goer—’

‘I’m sorry?’ Luke spoke with all the iced disapproval and disbelief he could muster.

‘Well, she’s got that kind of wild and free look—know what I mean? Wears those floaty kind of dresses—but oddly enough she was as prim as a nun the day I took her to lunch.’

‘You took her out to lunch?’ Luke demanded incredulously.

‘Sure. Can you blame me?’

Luke ignored the question. ‘And do you do that with all prospective leaseholders?’

‘Well, no, actually.’ Doug gave a nervous laugh. ‘But, like I said, she’s not someone you’d forget in a hurry.’

Luke forced himself to concentrate on the matter in hand, and not on how much he was going to enjoy firing his land agent once he had found a suitable replacement. ‘What do you think of the current condition of the property, Doug?’

Another nervous laugh. ‘It’s been empty for ages.’

‘I’m not surprised, and that doesn’t really answer my question—what do you think of the condition?’

‘It’s basic,’ Doug admitted. ‘But that’s why she got it so cheap—’

‘Basic? The place is a slum! The roof in the upstairs flat is leaking,’ he said coldly. ‘Were you aware?’

‘I knew there—’

‘The window-frames are ill-fitting and the furniture looks like it’s been salvaged from the local dump,’ interrupted Luke savagely. ‘I want everything fixed that can be fixed, and replaced if it can’t. And I want it done yesterday!’

‘But that’s going to cost you money!’ objected Doug. ‘A lot of money.’

‘I’d managed to work that out for myself,’ drawled Luke.

‘And it’s going to eat into your profit margins, Luke.’

Luke kept his voice low. ‘I don’t make profit on other people’s misery or discomfort,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want a woman staying in a flat that is cold and damp. If she gets cold or gets sick, then it isn’t going to be on my conscience. Got that?’

‘Er—got it,’ said Doug, and began to chew on a fingernail.

‘How soon can it be done?’

Doug thought of local decorators who owed him; carpenters who would be pleased to work for the new owner of Apson House. Maybe it was time to call in a few favours. And he suspected that his job might be on the line if he didn’t come up with something sharpish. ‘I can have it fixed in under a month!’ he hazarded wildly.

‘Not good enough!’ Luke snapped.

‘But good craftsmen get booked up ages in advance,’ objected Doug.

‘Then pay them enough so that they’ll unbook!’

‘Er—right. Would a fortnight be okay?’

‘Is that a definite?’

‘I’ll make sure it is,’ promised Doug nervously.

‘Just do that!’ And Luke put the phone down roughly in its cradle.

Holly washed out the two mugs she and Luke had used, put them on the drainer to dry, then set about trying to make the place halfway habitable before all the thin afternoon light faded from the sky.

The ‘hot’ water was more tepid than hot, so she boiled up a kettle, added the water to plenty of disinfectant and cleaning solution in a bucket, and began to wipe down all the surfaces in the kitchen. Next she scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom, until her fingers were sore and aching and she thought she’d better stop. Her hands were her livelihood and she had to look after them.

She sat back on her heels on the scruffy linoleum floor and wondered how many kettles of water it would take to fill the bath. Too many! she thought ruefully. She had better start boiling now, and make her bed up while she was waiting.

She gathered together clean sheets and pillowcases and took them into the bedroom, and was just about to make a start when she noticed a dark patch on the mattress and bent over to examine it. Closer inspection revealed that it was nothing more sinister than water from a tiny leak in the ceiling, but she couldn’t possibly sleep on a damp mattress—which left the floor.

She bit her lip, trying not to feel pathetic, but she was close to tears and it was no one’s fault but her own. Not only had she stupidly rented a flat which looked like a slum, but she had brought very little in the way of entertainment with her, and even the light was too poor to sew by. The only book in her possession was some depressing prize-winner she had been given as a present before she left, and a long Sunday evening yawned ahead of her. And now she couldn’t even crash out at the earliest opportunity because the bed was uainhabitable!

So, did she start howling her eyes out and opt for sleeping on the floor? Or did she start acting like a modern, independent woman, and take Luke Goodwin up on his offer of a bed?

Without giving herself time to change her mind, she pulled on a sweater, bundled on a waterproof jacket, and set off to find him.

Luke was sitting at the desk in the first-floor study, working on some of his late uncle’s papers, when a movement caught his attention, and he started with guilty pleasure, his eyes focussing in the gloomy light as he saw Holly walk through the leafy arch towards his house.

He watched her closely. With her long legs striding out in blue denim, she looked the epitome of the modern, determined woman. And so at odds with the fragility of her features, the wild copper confusion of the hair which the winter wind had whipped up in a red storm around her face.

He ran downstairs and pulled the front door open before she’d even had time to knock. He saw that she was white-faced with fatigue, and the dark smudges underneath the eyes matched the dusty marks which were painted on her cheeks like a clown. Again, that unwanted feeling of protectiveness kicked in like a mule. That and desire.

For a split second he felt the strongest urge to just shut the door in her face, telling himself that he was perfectly within his rights to do so. That he owed her nothing. But then her dark lashes shuddered down over the slanting emerald eyes and he found himself stepping back like a footman

‘Changed your mind about staying?’ he asked softly, though he noticed that she carried no overnight bag.

‘I had it changed for me,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘And you’re right—it is a dump! There’s no hot water, there’s a big patch of damp on the mattress and springs sticking through it! And before you point anything else out, I admit I should have checked it out better—insisted it be cleaned out before my arrival, or something. And I came ill prepared. No radio, no television, and the only book I brought with me is buried at the bottom of a suitcase I daren’t unpack because there’s nowhere to put anything! Just don’t make fun of me, Luke, not tonight—because I don’t think I can cope with it.’

He heard the slight quaver in her voice and saw the way her mouth buckled into a purely instinctive little pout. He thought how irresistible she was, with her powerful brand of vulnerability coupled with that lazy-eyed sensuality. ‘Come in,’ he growled quietly, and held the door open for her. ‘I have no intention of making fun of you. I’d much rather you came here than have you suffering in silence.’

‘Would you? Honestly?’

‘Yes,’ he lied, as he felt his pulse drumming heavily against the thin skin around his temple. Irresistibly, he let his eyes drift over her. ‘You look like you could use a hot tub—or maybe you’d prefer a drink first?’

“That’s real fairy-godmother language.’ She smiled at him, thankful that he hadn’t seen fit to deliver another lecture. ‘I’d like the hottest, deepest bath on offer!’

‘A bath it is, then. Come upstairs with me.’ His eyes glinted with humour. ‘God—I do sound like Bluebeard, don’t I?’

‘Who is this Bluebeard?’ she quizzed mischievously, her eyes sparking as she followed him upstairs, automatically running a slow finger along the gleaming bannister. ‘Nice staircase.’

Nice house in general. It soon became obvious that no money had been spared in modernising the place. The paintwork was clean and sparkling and the floorboards had been polished to within an inch of their lives.

He led her to the biggest bathroom Holly had ever seen, with an elegant free-standing bath painted a deep cobalt blue, and enough bottles of scent and bath essence to start a parfumerie. He pulled open the door to an airing cupboard where soft piles of snowy towels lay stacked on shelves.

Holly looked round her with pleasure, feeling like Cinderella ‘Mmm! Sybaritic!’

‘Did you bring anything to change into?’ he asked abruptly.

‘You mean—like pyjamas?’

He found that he couldn’t look her in the eye; the thought of her in pyjamas—or, even worse, not in pyjamas—was distracting to say the least. Bizarrely, he felt the hot hardening of an erection begin to stir, and he forced himself to channel the desire into something less threatening—like irritation. ‘I meant some different clothes—the ones you have on are filthy.’

Holly heard the undisguised disapproval in his voice and stared down at herself, at the dusty jeans and spattered sweater, the dirt beneath her broken fingernails. He was right—she looked like a tramp. She shook her head and damp tendrils snaked exotically around her face. ‘No, I didn’t.’ She gave him a rueful look. ‘It might have looked a little pushy if I’d turned up on your doorstep with a suitcase!’

It certainly wouldn’t have been very beneficial to his blood pressure. ‘I can loan you a dressing gown,’ he told her evenly. ‘And put everything else in the washing machine. It’ll be clean and dry in a couple of hours. Leave it outside the door and I’ll see to it. You can fetch your other clothes in the morning.’

‘You’re very kind,’ said Holly, meaning it.

‘Am I?’ His voice was mocking, but then ‘kind’ wasn’t an adjective he usually associated with himself. Certainly not where women were concerned. He watched as she shrugged out of her oilskin jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. ‘It’s all yours,’ he told her, and decided to absent himself as quickly as possible—his mind was already working overtime as he imagined her wriggling her jeans off and sliding her panties down over those long, long legs. Always presuming she was wearing any... ‘Take as long as you like.’

‘I will,’ she smiled, and shut the door behind him.

It was possibly the best bath of Holly’s life. She squirted jasmine and tuberose into the water and, when the bubbles had nearly reached the top, she climbed in and closed her eyes and tried to relax. She couldn’t do anything about a damp mattress right now—so the most sensible thing would be to put it out of her mind altogether.

She had been in there for the best part of an hour, dreaming up a frothy white bridal petticoat inspired by the fragrant bubble bath, when there was a rapping on the door and she heard Luke’s deep voice outside.

‘You haven’t fallen asleep, have you?’

She stirred in the water. Her flesh had deepened to rose-pink in the warmth, and the buds of her nipples instantly began tightening to the velvet caress of his voice. ‘N-not yet, I haven’t!’ Shakily, she turned the tap on and flicked some cold water onto her burning skin.

‘Then come and have something to drink. I’ve left you a robe outside.’

It was pure heaven to slide the soft white towelling robe on and knot it tightly around her narrow waist. She brushed her hair and left it, still damp and flapping around her shoulders, as she went in search of Luke.

He was sitting on the floor by a roaring fire in the first-floor drawing room, a tray of tea in front of him, half-read newspapers at his side. He watched as she came in, noticing how the pure white of the robe emphasised the firelight-red of her hair, while the soft fluffy material accentuated the carved delicacy of her bone structure. She looked a creature of contrasts, midway between angel and imp.

A pulse flickered at his temple and he felt the blood begin to pound in his head, but he had been the one who had invited her here. Was he crazy, or what? ‘Would you like some tea?’ he said evenly.

‘Please.’

‘How do you like it?’

‘Just milk—no sugar.’ She took the cup he handed her and sat in front of the fire, folding her long legs up beneath her and then carefully tucking the robe closely around her thighs until she saw him watching her, and stopped. She had meant to cover her legs, not draw attention to them.

Luke watched the flicker of amber and copper as the firelight danced across her face and wondered why he felt this random longing for her. Because of the apparent contradiction of her looks? Those sensual movements of the born siren—made all the more potent by that startled look of wide-eyed innocence she must have spent years perfecting?

His voice was a growl. ‘Why don’t you bring your tea through to the kitchen—I’m just about to make something to eat. I’m starving,’ he lied. ‘And you must be, too. Unless you brought provisions with you, which, judging by your general standards of preparation, I doubt.’

Holly felt too flustered by the way he had been looking at her to even bother acknowledging the criticism. Food was the very last thing on her mind, even though it had been hours since breakfast, when she’d eaten a banana on the run. But food would be a distraction, and Holly sorely needed something to distract her from those amazing blue eyes, and from the underlying tension which was crackling through the air like sparks from a newly lit bonfire. And besides, if they didn’t eat, there was one hell of a long evening to get through...

‘Starving,’ she echoed dutifully. ‘But surely there’s no food if you arrived in the middle of the night?’

‘I wasn’t proposing anything fancy,’ he drawled. ‘But the freezer was filled in any case,’ he explained. ‘In time for my arrival.’

‘How luxurious.’

‘Yes,’ he replied shortly.

Caroline again, of course, smooth and efficient. ‘I know a company who will fill it for you,’ she had told him briskly. ‘With enough of the kind of food you like to see you through until I arrive.’ She had playfully tapped the end of his nose with one of her professionally manicured nails. Caroline had smooth and beautiful hands, white and soft and unlined. ‘Because we can’t have you starving, can we, my darling?’

Luke found himself sneaking a glance at Holly’s hands, as if to reassure himself of their unsuitability. Her nails were short, two were broken, two looked bitten and there were calluses on her palms.

The kitchen was downstairs, in the basement, and it looked as if it had been lifted from an illustration in a lifestyle magazine. It had been, as was the trend, ‘sympathetically modernised’. There were light, carved wooden cupboards, and marble surfaces for chopping things, which even Holly—who could barely tell one end of a leek from another—could see were about as upmarket as you could get. At the far end of the room was a fireplace piled with apple-wood logs, which glowed like amber, with two squashy-looking chairs on either side.

She sat down next to the fire and shook her damp hair out, watching while he began to boil up pasta and heat through a sauce.

‘Like a beer?’ he asked.

‘Love one.’

He opened two bottles and handed her one, and she sipped it while he strained the pasta and stirred the sauce and pushed a bowl full of freshly grated Parmesan into the centre of the table.

‘You look like a man who knows his way round a kitchen,’ she observed slowly.

He shrugged. ‘I’m used to fending for myself.’

‘I thought people had lots of help in Africa?’

His smile was arcane. ‘Some people do. I chose not to—just help with the cleaning, same as here. A woman named Margaret starts in the morning—I guess I’d better warn her that I have company.’ He gave the sauce a final stir. ‘I always think that, if you don’t cook for yourself, then you lose touch with reality.’ He looked up to where she sat, looking at him intently, and he thought that reality seemed a long way away at this precise moment.

Soon he had heaped two plates with pasta and sauce and they ate at the table in front of the fire.

Forcing himself to eat, Luke struggled to free himself from his rather obsessive study of the way the firelight warmed her skin tones into soft apricot and cream, casting around for something to say. Something which might make him forget that she was a very beautiful woman. ‘So what were you doing before you came to Woodhampton?’

She shot him a half-amused glance. ‘Just checking that you haven’t given refuge to some gun-toting maniac?’

‘We could always talk about the weather, if you prefer,’ he told her deliberately. ‘But we have a whole evening to get through.’

So they did. Holly took a hasty sip of her beer. It was difficult to concentrate when those amazing blue eyes were fixed on her with such interest. ‘After school I went to art school, where I studied textile and design.’

‘And were you a model student?’ he mocked.

Holly frowned. ‘Actually, I was, now you come to mention it. And I get a little fed up with people thinking that, just because a person is creative, they’re automatically a lazy slob—’

‘I doubt whether a lazy slob would go to the trouble of starting up their own business,’ he put in drily.

‘No, they wouldn’t.’ Feeling slightly mollified, Holly put her beer bottle back down on the table. ‘I got quite a good degree—’

‘And are you being modest now?’

Her eyes threw him a challenge. ‘Mmm! I’m trying—’

‘Very trying,’ he agreed, deadpan.

‘After I left college I went to work for the same fashion house which had employed my mother, but I hated it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I felt exactly like an employee, with little control over the entire design process—not really. I felt like I was working in a factory, and I didn’t want to be. I wanted to feel creatively free. So I entered the competition.’ A dreamy smile came over her face as she remembered. ‘And won.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he said, aware that his voice was unusually indulgent—but that kind of sweet enthusiasm would have melted the hardest heart.

Holly finished a mouthful of tagliatelle and looked into his eyes. Such gorgeous eyes. ‘It was organised by one of the glossy bridal magazines to celebrate twenty-five years in publishing.’ She met his blank stare ‘You know the kind of thing.’

‘Not really,’ he demurred, and gave a sardonic shake of his golden-brown head. ‘Don’t forget I’ve been living in the wilds all these years—and bridal magazines are pretty thin on the ground!’

Holly got a sudden and disturbingly attractive image of Luke Goodwin wearing a morning suit. ‘The idea was to create a wedding dress for the new century—’

‘So, let me guess—you did something wild and untraditional?’

She shook her head slowly. ‘No, I didn’t, actually. Brides usually don’t want to be too wild and wacky. Most conform. In fact, I based the dress on an idea that my mother had.’ She saw his puzzled look. ‘She was a dress designer, too,’ she explained. ‘She created this most wonderful wedding dress when I was little—I’ve seen pictures of it.’

‘But if yours is almost the same as hers, isn’t that called copying—even stealing?’

She shook her head. ‘There’s no such thing as originality in fashion—you must know that. What goes around comes around. My design was very similar to my mother’s but it wasn’t exactly the same. Unfortunately, Mum’s dress was sold, and we never saw it again.’

Luke frowned. ‘Why would you expect to?’

‘Because she designed it for a very famous fashion house, and those types of garments don’t usually disappear without trace. They’re usually worth a lot of money.’

‘But this one did?’

Holly nodded. ‘Someone bought it in a sale. My mother was disappointed it was reduced in price, but not surprised—’ Her face lit up with enthusiasm. ‘It was a very unusual design, and only an exceptionally thin woman could have worn it. And that was that. Funnily enough, an older Irish woman who cleaned in the store where it was sold—she bought it. After that it disappeared into thin air.’

Luke was more interested in the things she didn’t say than in the things she did. ‘And where’s your mother now?’

‘Well, it’s November, so she’s probably in the Caribbean,’ replied Holly flippantly. ‘Either that, or on a cruise ship somewhere.’

The bitterness in her tone didn’t escape him. ‘And why isn’t she here—helping her daughter get settled into her brand-new business venture?’

‘Because her latest disgusting rich old husband probably won’t let her,’ grimaced Holly.

‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ he queried softly.

She threw him a look, a nonchalant expression which had become second nature to her. At school she had quickly learnt that if you learned to mock yourself, then no one else would bother. ‘Doesn’t everyone have a mother who uses a man as a meal ticket?’

‘You must hate it,’ he observed slowly.

Holly shrugged. ‘I’m used to it—she’s used men all her life. But I’m not complaining—not really. Their money paid for my education, saw me through art school.’

‘And wasn’t there a father on the scene?’

‘No, I never knew my father—’ Holly met his curious stare with a proud uptilt to her chin, feeling oddly compelled to answer his questions. Maybe it was something to do with the penetrating clarity of his blue eyes. Or maybe it was just because he actually looked as though he cared.

She ran a finger down the cold beer bottle. ‘And no, I’m afraid that it’s nothing heroic like an early death—I mean it literally. My mother didn’t know him either. According to her, he could have been one of two people and she didn’t care for either of them—so she never bothered to tell either of them that she was pregnant.’

Luke expelled a slow breath of air ‘Hell,’ he said quietly, realising that he didn’t have the monopoly on unconventional childhoods.

‘I suppose I must be grateful that she saw fit to give birth to me.’ Her gaze was unblinking ‘Have I shocked you?’

‘A little,’ he admitted. ‘But that was part of your intention, wasn’t it, Holly—to shock me?’

She looked at up at him, her eyes partially shaded by thick dark lashes. ‘And why would I want to do that?’

‘Because illegitimacy hasn’t always been accepted the way it is now. When you were growing up, it was probably even a stigma—something to be ashamed of. Wasn’t it?’ he probed gently.

The memory of it was like a knife, twisting softly in her belly. Little girls taunting her in the playground. The sense of always being different. ‘Yes.’

Her reply was so quiet that he had to strain his ears to hear it. ‘So maybe you got used to relating the facts as starkly as possible—to pre-empt that kind of reaction. And if you said the worst possible things about not having a father, then that way no one could hurt you. Or judge you.’ He paused, and the piercing blue eyes were as direct as twin swords. ‘Am I right?’

She put her fork down quickly. ‘Yes, you’re right.’ He was very perceptive. Too perceptive. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ she said. ‘Just because you’ve been a Good Samaritan. I don’t normally open up to people I’ve only just met, you know.’

He smiled through the ache that had haunted him since he had first laid eyes on her. ‘Maybe it’s because we’re strangers. And because we’ve been thrown together in bizarre circumstances.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Like people trapped in lifts, or stuck on the side of a mountain—that sense of isolation makes the rest of the world seem unimportant. You break rules.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes you make new ones in their place.’

Holly badly needed to distract herself—wasn’t he aware that when he looked at her that way she just wanted him to kiss her? ‘I may have told you things about me,’ she corrected him. ‘But it hasn’t been very reciprocal. You’ve told me very little about you!’

‘There’s my inheritance,’ he said blandly. ‘You know about that.’

‘Oh, that!“ she scoffed. ’That’s boring! I want to hear about real life.‘ She tried an impersonation of his distinctive drawl. ’Life on the ranch!’

He laughed. It would be so easy to stay here, to bask in the firelight and the soft, green light of her eyes. Easy and dangerous...

‘It’s late and it’ll keep,’ he said, swallowing the last of his beer and wondering why it tasted so sour. ‘And if I tell you about cheetah kills before bedtime—then you might have nightmares, mightn’t you?’

‘I suppose so!’ She laughed nervously.

But then, Holly suspected that she might have trouble sleeping in any case. Because surely the thought of a big, virile man like Luke Goodwin sleeping in the same house would cause any normal woman to be restless.

Especially a woman whose green-eyed and naturally foxy appearance often gave people a totally misleading view of her true nature...