Читать книгу Bridegrooms Required - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 13

CHAPTER FOUR

DESPITE her reservations, Holly slept soundly and undisturbed in a beautiful high-ceilinged bedroom painted in palest blues and greys. It overlooked the rain-soaked lawn at the back of the house, which sloped down to a fruit orchard at the far end of the garden.

When she woke up it was almost nine, and she stretched luxuriously in the bed, rubbing her sleepy eyes as she threw back the duvet and padded over to the window.

The garden was like an illustration from a child’s story book, and Holly could almost imagine the trees being able to speak, the fruits full of enchantment.

Her room had its own bathroom, a luxury she decided she would never take for granted! She showered and washed her hair again, put on Luke’s white towelling gown, and was just thinking about going in search of her clothes when there was a rap on the door and she opened it to find him standing there, his eyes all shadowed, as though sleep had been at a premium.

His hair was still damp from the shower and he was dressed casually—still in a pair of faded blue denims with a thick, navy sweater pulled down low onto his hips.

‘Hello, Holly,’ he said softly, and just the sight of her stirred the memories of erotic dreams which had given him one of the worst nights in memory. ‘Sleep well?’

She beamed at him with a sunny smile. ‘Like a log!’

‘Lucky you,’ he commented drily, seeing the way her fingers fumbled to tighten the belt of her robe, or rather his robe, and he quickly held out her clean jeans, shirt and underwear. ‘Thought you might need these. Washed and folded.’

She took the stack of neatly folded clothes from him, and looked down at them in surprise. ‘I’m impressed,’ she murmured.

Luke’s eyes danced at her. ‘Real men don’t fold clothes, right? That’s your stereotype?’

‘I don’t know enough game reserve managers-cumlords of the manor to have formed a stereotype! But if ever times are hard—you could always find work in a laundry!’

She hugged the pile of clothes to her like a hot-water bottle, but the movement caused her black lace panties to dangle from the middle of the pile, and she realised that he must have folded those, too—as well as her jeans!’

‘I’d better get dressed,’ she said indistinctly.

‘I’ll have breakfast ready in ten minutes.’

‘I don’t generally eat breakfast.’

‘I can tell.’ Blue eyes roved over her narrow hips critically. ‘Bad idea. The brain and the body need fuel after fasting overnight. You’ll feel better for it. Trust me, Holly!’

Holly laughed as she shut the door on him. That was the oddest thing. She did! And, after the succession of doubtful escorts which her mother had trailed through her life, she didn’t give her trust easily—certainly not to virtual strangers. Though when you’d shared a house with a man for the night, and he had washed and folded your underwear, then he hardly qualified as a stranger any more, did he?

She quickly put the clothes on, then went downstairs to find him.

He was standing in the kitchen, frying rashers of bacon on the Aga, and the aroma made her mouth water.

‘That smells wonderful!’ she confessed weakly.

He glanced up from flipping a rasher over in the pan.

‘Sit down and have some juice,’ he instructed, thinking that this was the first time he had ever cooked a woman breakfast without having had sex with her. He watched her intently reading the label of a marmalade jar. ‘There’s coffee in the pot—unless you’d rather have tea?’

She shook her head. The coffee smelt good, too. Far too good to refuse—hot and strong and black. ‘Mmm. Bliss,’ she told him, taking a sip.

‘I make the best coffee in the world,’ he said, with a not-so-modest shrug of his shoulders. ‘Or so I’m told.’

‘And there’s your laundry skills. Tell me—is there no end to your talents?’ she teased.

Well, there was something he’d been told he was very good at. There was a brief moment of silence while Luke bit back the temptation to look directly into her eyes and tell her exactly what it was...

‘Have some toast,’ he said abruptly as he put her food down in front of her.

It was the first time for as long as she could remember that Holly had sat down to a proper breakfast. She surveyed the plate piled with egg, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and beans, while Luke slipped in across the table opposite her.

‘And where did all this food come from?’ she wanted to know. ‘Not the freezer?’

‘No. While you were sleeping I went shopping—’

‘You should have woken me,’ she said automatically.

‘What for? You looked like you needed the sleep.’

‘I did.’ Holly glanced around the kitchen as she finished a mouthful of bacon. Last night it had been dark, and she had been unable to properly appreciate the beauty of her surroundings. Through the French doors which opened out onto the garden she could see a winter-flowering blossom tree, its buds beginning to reveal the ice-pink petals which lay beneath.

It was so comfortable here, Holly thought. She leaned back in her chair and looked at him, trying to sound as though she minded the delay. ‘And heaven knows how long it will take to get the shop looking habitable!’

‘Two weeks, I’ve been told,’ he offered drily. ‘And that’s going to be cutting it fine.’

‘But I can’t stay here for two weeks!’

Luke sipped his coffee, the cloud of steam obscuring the expression in his eyes. ‘Have a problem with that, do you, Holly?’

‘I’ll get in your way—’

‘No, you won’t. I won’t let you. I have a lock on my study door,’ he grinned wolfishly.

Holly shrugged, the idea appealing more by the minute. ‘It just seems a long time for me to impose on your hospitality—but if you’re happy—’

‘I don’t know whether happy is the adjective I would have selected,’ he observed drily. ‘I had planned to spend the next couple of weeks sorting out my uncle’s affairs—not entertaining a house guest.’ Especially such a nubile house guest.

‘Oh, but I won’t need any entertaining!’ she assured him. ‘I’ve got masses to do myself. Paperwork and sewing and finding a florist I can work with. I’ll keep out of your way. I promise.’ It was no idle threat, either. Luke was an unsettling man, tempting and disturbing—and Holly needed that kind of distraction like a hole in the head right now.

He hoped she meant it. Lending her that bathrobe had been a bad idea. In fact, even thinking about that bathrobe was a bad idea. ‘I’ve been on the phone to Doug again this morning. Who assured me that the structural repairs can be done inside forty-eight hours.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Someone will be seeing to that roof right now.’

‘Thank God for that!’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed blandly. ‘Which just leaves decor. If you let me know your colour choices, I’ll make sure that it gets done.’

Holly put her fork down and stared at him. ‘But I thought that I’d be expected to decorate?’

Luke was keen not to come over as a completely soft touch. He told himself that he would behave in exactly the same way if the tenant happened to be a man. ‘And so you would, if the condition of the place wasn’t so disgusting—if it was just a question of cosmetics. But, since it needs more than a face-lift, I’ll agree to decorate it to your specifications. How about fresh white paint everywhere? Sound okay?’

There was a pause. Holly pulled a face. ‘Well, no. Now you come to mention it—not really.’

Denim-blue eyes narrowed. ‘Oh?’

She pushed her plate aside, and leaned across the table towards him. ‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, or anything, Luke—but what I envisaged as a colour scheme was something much more dramatic than that. Everyone else is doing white walls and big green plants in pots. But this is going to be the kind of bridal shop that no one will ever forget.’

He didn’t react. ‘Go on.’

‘I wanted a deep, peacock-green wall.’

Luke noted her use of the singular. ‘That’s only one wall,’ he commented.

Sharp of him. She drew in a deep breath, determined that he would be able to visualise the vibrant combinations of colours she had in mind. ‘That’s right—three walls and one window. I’d like another painted in that very rich, intense, almost royal purple—you know the shade.’

‘And the final wall?’ he queried, deadpan. ‘What plans did you have for that—sky—blue pink?’

‘Gold.’ The same glossy gold which touched the tips of his hair.

‘Gold?’

‘Mmm.’ Holly nodded her head enthusiastically. ‘It’s the perfect wedding colour—it symbolises the ring and it suggests pageantry and ceremony. And I want this shop to really stand out!’

He fleetingly wished that she wouldn’t move with such a refreshing lack of inhibition when she got carried away like that. If only she’d wear a bra. Didn’t she realise how ripe and how luscious such sudden movements could make her breasts appear? The hint of their succulent swell against the simple shirt she wore seemed positively indecent.

He swallowed down the erotic fantasies which were beginning to burgeon into life again. ‘Stand out?’ he quizzed mockingly, reflecting that it was a poor choice of phrase, given the circumstances. ‘It will certainly do that!’ He frowned. ‘Though won’t using specialist paints delay your opening—since I imagine that you’ll have to buy the more unusual materials in London?’

Holly shook her head with a smile ‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong! There’s a specialist paint shop right in Winchester—we need look no further than there!’

We.

Her easy use of the word caused Luke a moment of chilly disquiet, until he silently chided himself for his out-and-out arrogance. Was he now worried that Holly was getting possessive, or passionate, about him? When there had been nothing in his behaviour—not a word nor a gesture—which she could have interpreted or misinterpreted as some kind of come-on.

Holly saw the way his shoulders stiffened, and she could sense immediately what he was thinking. Her fingers crept up to cover her mouth apologetically. ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to be presumptuous.’

He shook his head. ‘You weren’t being presumptuous. And we’ll both go into Winchester to choose your paint.’ After all, he was the one who was paying for them’

‘But aren’t you...?’ She found that her words were tripping over themselves, as though they couldn’t quite decide in what order to leave her mouth. ‘Wouldn’t you...?’

He looked into her widened green eyes with something approaching amusement. ‘Wouldn’t I what, Holly?’

‘Wouldn’t you rather be doing something else?’

He most certainly would.

Her words created such a shockingly graphic image in his mind that Luke briefly closed his eyes in despair. It was simply sexual attraction, he told himself over and over again, as if repetition would make it more believable. Nothing more than that—a combustive hormonal reaction which she had provoked in him, and which would fade as inevitably as the sunlight would fade from the afternoon sky. Was she aware of it, too? he wondered. Did it pulse and hum around her, too—the feeling almost palpable?

His mistake had been to take her into his house in the first place. To rush in playing the Good Samaritan, trying to fool himself into minimising the potency of the attraction he felt towards her—as if, by rationalising it, it would go away of its own accord.

Because it wasn’t conveniently disappearing, and he somehow doubted that it would—unless you took sexual attraction through to its natural conclusion, which he had no intention of doing. For how could it disappear, if she continued to haunt him with those emerald eyes and that pale skin, and the careless cascade of coppery curls?

Maybe she was destined to always be one of those ‘if only’ women—if only he’d met her when he’d been in that sowing wild oats stage of his life. Holly Lovelace was enchantingly beautiful with her wild, artistic looks—great for a tempestuous affair, but...

The sooner she was set up in her newly decorated shop and out of his life, the better—and, just in case he was forgetting, he wasn’t in the market for a lover.

‘There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing,’ he lied. ‘And besides, Margaret is coming in to clean the house this morning, so we’ll leave for Winchester just as soon as you’re ready.’

Winchester was crowded.

Luke looked at the throbbing crowds in disbelief. ‘Where’s the execution?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean, why else could all these people be here?’

‘They’re Christmas shoppers,’ explained Holly, craning her neck to gaze up in awe at the cathedral.

‘But it’s only November!’ he scowled.

‘And some people buy their Christmas presents throughout the year. Apparently,’ she added hastily, in case he thought that she was among them!

Luke stared at the looped ropes of fairy lights which twinkled in one shop window, surrounding the puffy cheeks of a beaming cardboard Santa. The same compilation tape of Christmas songs seemed to be blasting out of every shop they passed. He shook his head and thought longingly of the stark beauty of Africa. ‘It’s crazy—crazy—this whole commercial Christmas trip! A celebration of consumption and consumerism!’

Holly shrugged, pleased to hear his views echoing her own. ‘I know. I keep planning to go into hibernation!’

They passed a florist’s, where pots of fragrant winter jasmine were stacked next to the gaudy crimson of the seasonal poinsettias. Luke saw a wreath—glossy green and spiky, and studded with berries the colour of blood. Ignoring the appreciative ogling of a young assistant through the window, he slowed down.

‘I guess it’s your birthday soon?’ he hazarded.

Holly blinked. ‘How did you know that?’ she demanded, and then laughed as she looked down and spotted the holly wreath. ‘Oh!’

‘Well, it’s a Christmas name, isn’t it?’ He looked at her, a question in his eyes. ‘Usually.’

‘Yes, you’re right. I was born on Christmas Eve.’

“‘The night before Christmas?”’ he quoted softly, until something in her eyes made him ask, ‘But you don’t enjoy your birthday?’

Maybe other men had always just asked the wrong questions in the past. Or maybe this man just asked the right ones. Whatever his gift, Holly found that she wanted to tell him things—personal things—in a way which was definitely not her usual style.

‘No, I don’t,’ she told him slowly. ‘Or, rather, I didn’t—not when I was little. It’s a difficult night of the year to get a babysitter—a fact that my mother never failed to remind me of. When I was older, she used to leave me while she went out, and in a way I preferred that. Less pressure—’

‘How old?’ he interrupted savagely.

Holly thought back. ‘Ten. Eleven. But people weren’t so paranoid about leaving children then,’ she added hastily, as some innate loyalty to her mother made her want to defend her.

‘And did you get presents?’

‘Oh, yes. Huge presents sometimes—if the boyfriend was rich enough. Other years they were a little thin on the ground.’

He said something very soft beneath his breath.

Holly dodged a shopper who was steaming down the high street like a Sherman tank and sneaked a glance at Luke’s hard profile. ‘So how did you spend your Christmases in Africa?’

His mouth tightened as he found himself reluctant to think about it—let alone talk about it. Last Christmas he had spent with Caroline. She had flown in from Durban and had managed to create a traditional turkey dinner on his antiquated old stove. She had even brought linen napkins in her suitcase, and her gift to him had been fine crystal glasses, out of which they had drunk champagne, although his throat had been so dry with the heat that he would have preferred beer. She had raised her glass to him and, in that freeze-framed moment, had seemed to personify calm. An oasis in the hurly-burly of what his life had been up until that point. She had talked wistfully of the babies she longed to have, and everything had suddenly seemed to make perfect sense.

He’d remembered fragments of a conversation he had once had with an Indian friend, and these had drifted back to him as he’d stared into Caroline’s serene face. It had been one of those East versus West debates. Dhan had said that it did not surprise him that the Western ideal of basing relationships on romantic love should be doomed to failure. Compatibility and respect were far more important in the long run. And Luke had agreed with him—every word.

Luke watched now as Holly excitedly browsed through paint charts, impatiently scooping great handfuls of fiery curls away from her pale cheeks.

He wanted her, he thought guiltily. Far too much.

He cleared his throat and spoke to the assistant, who had spent the last ten minutes gazing at him mistily. ‘I presume you have professional decorators you recommend?’ he asked.

The assistant nodded and fluttered her lashes at him. ‘Oh, yes, sir!’

He gave her his lazy smile. ‘So how soon could I have a shop decorated?’

The assistant paused. Some people you could fob off. Others you wouldn’t want to. Some people came into this shop with their symbols of wealth ostentatiously displayed. This man wore faded jeans and a sheepskin jacket and a pair of desert boots. There was no expensive watch gleaming discreetly on his wrist, and yet he exuded that certain something which spoke of power.

The assistant gave a smile she reserved solely for the really hunky customers. ‘How soon do you want it decorated, sir?’ she asked him pertly.