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The man who was now occupying the upstairs office that should, by rights, be hers.
Her colleague with benefits: Toby Denton.
She wouldn’t have thought the six-foot-three blond rugby-playing hunk—who’d never made a secret of the fact that he saw work as a tedious interruption to his life and whose only ambition was to play the sport professionally—had the brains to engineer her downfall with such cunning.
His cluelessness, off the rugby field, had been a major part of his appeal. When there was any rescuing to be done—which was often when it came to work—she was the one tossing him the lifebelt. Like giving him her laptop password so that he could check the office diary for an early-morning appointment when, typically, he’d forgotten where he was supposed to be.
The announcement of his appointment as associate partner had appeared on the company website the day after she’d been walked to the door with her belongings in a cardboard box. Photographs of the champagne celebration had appeared on the blog a day later. It was great PR and she’d have applauded if it hadn’t been her career they were interring.
‘Tash?’ her mother asked anxiously. ‘Are you baking?’
‘Baking? No...’ Then, in sheer desperation, ‘Got to go. Call waiting. Have a lovely time in Cornwall.’
Call waiting... She wished, she thought, glancing along the work surface at the ginger, lemon drizzle and passion cakes lined up alongside a Sacher Torte, waiting for the ganache she was making.
She had been baking. She’d used every bowl she possessed, every cake tin. They were piled up in the sink and on the draining board, along with a heap of eggshells and empty sugar, flour and butter wrappers and a fine haze of icing sugar hung in the air, coating every surface, including her.
It was her displacement activity. Some people played endless computer games, or went for a run, or ironed when they needed to let their brain freewheel. She beat butter and sugar and eggs into creamy peaks.
Unfortunately, her mind was ignoring the no-job, no-career problem. Instead it kept running Darius Hadley on a loop. That moment when he’d turned and looked at her in Miles Morgan’s office, his face all dark shadows, his eyes burning into her. His hands. The glint of gold beneath dark curls. The air stirring as he’d walked past her, leaving the scent of something earthy behind.
That moment when he’d stopped in the street and looked back and she’d known that if he’d lifted a hand to her she would have gone to him. Worse, had wanted him to lift a hand...
Her skin glowed just thinking about that look. Not just her skin.
Madness.
Her skin was sticky, her eyes gritty; she had no job and no one was going to call. Not Miles. Not any of the agencies that had tried to tempt her away from him. Last week she was the negotiator everyone wanted on their team, but now she was damaged goods.
If she was going to rescue her career, this was going to have to be a show rather than tell scenario. She would have to demonstrate to the world that she was still the best there was. Her brain hadn’t been dodging the problem; it had been showing her the answer.
Darius Hadley.
She was going to have to find a buyer for Hadley Chase.
A week ago that had been a challenge, but she’d had the contacts, people who would pick up the phone when she called, listen to her when she told them she had exactly the house they were looking for because she didn’t lie, didn’t waste their time. Matching houses with the right buyers was a passion with her. People trusted her. Or they had.
Now the word on the street was that she’d lost it. She was on her own with nothing to offer except her wits, her knowledge of the market and the kind of motivation that would move mountains if she could persuade Darius Hadley to give her a chance.
She was going to have to face him: this man who’d turned her into a blushing, jelly-boned cliché with no more than a look.
In the normal course of events it wouldn’t have been more than a momentary wobble. It had been made clear to her by the estate’s executor that the vendor wanted nothing to do with the actual sale of his house and if he’d let her just get on with it she would never have seen him again. Apparently her luck had hit the deck on all fronts that morning.
At the time she hadn’t given the reason why Darius Hadley was keeping his distance any thought—it had taken all her concentration not to melt into a puddle at his feet—but the more she’d thought about him, the more she understood how it must hurt to be the Hadley to let the house go. To lose four centuries of his family history.
If there was no cash to go with the property, he would have no choice—death meant taxes—but it was easy to see why he’d been furious with them, with her, for messing up and forcing him to confront the situation head-on. Maybe, though, now he’d had time to calm down, he’d be glad of someone offering to help.
Selling a country estate was an expensive business. Printing, advertising, travel, and she doubted that, in these cash-strapped days, he’d be inundated with estate agents eager to invest in a house that had been publicly declared a money pit.
Hopefully she’d be all he’d got. And he, collywobbles notwithstanding, was almost certainly her only hope.
Fortunately she had all the details of Hadley Chase on her laptop.
What she didn’t have were the contact details for Darius Hadley.
She’d had no success when she’d searched Hadley Chase on Google hoping for some family gossip to get the property page editors salivating. She assumed it would have thrown up anything newsworthy about Darius Hadley, but she typed his name into the search engine anyway.
A whole load of links came up, including images, and she clicked on the only one of him. It had been taken, ironically, from one of those high society functions featured in the Country Chronicle and the caption read: ‘Award-winning sculptor Darius Hadley at the Serpentine Gallery...’
He was a sculptor? Well, that would explain the steel toecaps, the grey smears on his jeans. That earthy scent had been clay...
His tie was loose, his collar open and he’d been caught unawares, laughing at something or someone out of the picture and she was right. A smile was all it took to lift the shadows. He still had the look of the devil, but one who was having a good day, and she reached out and touched the screen, her fingertips against his mouth.
‘Oh...’ she breathed. ‘Collywollydoodah...’
THREE
The narrow cobbled backstreet was a jumble of buildings that had been endlessly converted and added to over the centuries. All Tash had was the street name, but she had been confident that a prize-winning sculptor’s studio would be easy enough to find.
She was wrong.
She’d reached a dead end and found no sign, no indication that art of any kind happened behind any of the doors but as she turned she found herself face-to-face with a woman who was regarding her through narrowed eyes.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘I hope so... I’m looking for Darius Hadley. I was told his studio was in this street,’ she prompted.
The woman gave her a long, thoughtful look, taking in the grey business suit that she kept for meetings with the property managers of billionaires; she had hoped it would cut down on the inexplicable electricity that had sparked between them in Miles’s office. A spark that had sizzled even when he was outside on the pavement looking up at her.
Okay, maybe she should have worn a pair of sensible, low-heeled shoes, added horn-rimmed spectacles to make herself look seriously serious. Hell, she was serious, never more so—this was her career on the line—but there was only so far she could stretch the illusion. As for her favourite red heels, she’d needed them to give her a little extra height, some of the bounce that had been knocked clean out of her. Besides, Darius Hadley wouldn’t be fooled by a pair of faux specs. Not for a minute.
She’d experienced the power of eyes that would see right through any games, any pretence and knew that she would have to be absolutely straight with him.
No problem. Straight was what she did and she had it all worked out. The look, the poise, what she was going to say. She was going to be totally professional, which was all very fine in theory but first she had to find him. She’d called in a big favour to get his address but now she was beginning to wonder if she’d been sold a fake.
The woman, her inspection completed, asked, ‘Is Darius expecting you?’
‘He’ll want to see me,’ she said, fingers mentally crossed. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Sure,’ she said, a slow smile lighting up her face. ‘I know everyone. Even you, Natasha Gordon.’
Tash, still dragging her chin back into place, followed the woman back down the street towards a pair of wide, rusty old garage doors over which a sign suggested someone called Mike would repair your car while you waited. She produced a large bunch of keys and let herself in through the personnel door.
‘Darius?’ she called, leaving the door open. Tash, grabbing her chance, stepped in after her. ‘How are you feeling about the milkmaid today?’
Milkmaid?
There was a discouraging grunt from somewhere above her head. ‘Not now, Patsy.’
She looked up. Darius Hadley was standing on a tall stepladder, thumbing clay onto the leaping figure of a horse.
‘Do you still want to wring her neck?’ Patsy persisted.
‘Nothing has changed since last week,’ he replied, leaning back a little to check what he’d done, ‘but, to put your mind at rest, that damned house has given me enough trouble without adding grievous bodily harm to the list.’
‘So it would be safe to let her in?’
Now she had his attention.
‘Let her...’ He swung around and her heart leapt. He was so high... ‘She’s here?’
‘She doesn’t have a milking stool, or one of those things they wear across the shoulders with a pail at each end, but other than that she fits the description. Abundantly,’ she added with a broad smile. ‘Of course it helped that you’ve been drawing her on any bit of paper that comes to hand for the last few days.’
‘Patsy...’
‘I found her wandering up and down the street looking for your studio. Your name on the door would be a real help,’ she said, apparently not the least bit intimidated by the growl.
‘That would only encourage visitors. People who interrupt me while I’m working,’ he said, looking over Patsy’s head to where she was hovering just inside the doorway.
Maybe it was just the sunlight streaming in through the skylight above him, but today his eyes were molten slate, scorching her skin, melting the starch in her shirt, reducing her knees to fudge frosting.
It wasn’t just his eyes. Everything about him was hot: the faded, clay-smeared jeans hugging his thighs, midnight-black hair curling into his neck, long, ropey muscles in his forearms. And those hands...
She had tried to convince herself that she’d imagined the electricity, the fizz, the crackle... There had been a shock factor when she’d seen him in Miles’s office, but he’d been in her head for days and not just because he was her only chance to get back to work.
She’d been dreaming about those hands. How they’d feel on her body, the drag of hard calluses against tender skin...
‘I know I’m the last person on earth you want to talk to, Mr Hadley,’ she said quickly before he could tell her to get lost, ‘but if you can spare me ten minutes, I’ve got a proposition for you.’
‘Proposition?’
The word hung in the air.
Darius looked down at the shadowy hourglass shape of Natasha Gordon, backlit by sunlight streaming in over the city rooftops.
It was just a word. Morgan couldn’t possibly be using her as a sweetener. But then again, maybe it was her idea...
‘If you could spare me ten minutes?’ From above her he could see straight down the opening of her blouse, the way her luscious breasts were squished together as she raised her hand to shield her eyes from the light pouring in from the skylights. ‘Maybe we could sit down,’ she suggested, lifting her other hand a little to show him a glossy white cakebox, dangling from a ribbon. ‘I’ve brought cake. It’s home-made. I’ll even make the tea.’
He picked up a damp cloth and wiped his hands, giving himself a moment to still his rampaging libido. He should send her packing but how often did a man receive a proposition from a sexy woman bearing cake? And now she was here he’d be able to capture the look that had eluded him, draw her out of his head.
‘I hope you or your mother can cook,’ he said and Patsy nodded, apparently satisfied that it would be safe to leave him alone with her, and left them to it.
‘Would I come bearing anything less than perfection?’ she asked.
Not this woman, he thought. She’d pulled out all the stops... ‘How did you find me?’
‘Does it matter?’ she asked, the wide space between her brows crumpled in a tiny frown that didn’t fool him for a moment. Not many people knew where he worked. She’d had to work hard to locate him.
‘Humour me,’ he suggested, taking a step down the ladder, and she caught her breath, muscles tensed, barely stopping herself from taking a step back. She was nowhere near as cool as she looked. Which made two of them.
‘I did what anyone would do. Ran an Internet search,’ she said quickly, ‘and there you were. Darius Hadley, award-winning sculptor, presently working on a prestigious commission to create a life-size bronze of one of the greatest racehorses of all time.’ Lots of details so he’d forget the question. He was familiar with the technique. His grandfather had been a past master at diverting him whenever he’d asked awkward questions. ‘There was a photograph,’ she added.
‘Of me?’ He took another step down. She swallowed, but this time stood her ground.
‘Of the horse. It was in the Racing Times. Photographs of you are scarce. You don’t even have a website.’ She made it sound like an accusation.
‘I seem to manage.’
‘Yes...’
She turned away, giving them both a break as she looked around at the dozens of photographs taken from every angle of the horse—galloping, jumping, standing—that he’d pinned to the walls. She paused briefly at the anatomical drawings of the skeleton, the muscles, the blood vessels and then looked up at his interpretation of the animal gathered to leap a jump.
‘If I’d known who you were when the house came on the market,’ she said at last, ‘I could have used the information to get some editorial interest. Racehorse owners are among the richest men in the world and Hadley Chase is close to one of the country’s major racehorse training centres.’
‘You managed an excessive number of column inches without any help from me,’ he said, ‘but that’s who, not where,’ he said, refusing to be sidetracked.
A rueful smile made it to a mouth that was a little too big for beauty, tugging it upwards. ‘The where was more difficult. And the address was only half the story. If it hadn’t been for Patsy I’d still be looking for you.’
‘So?’ he insisted.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Hadley. An estate agent never reveals her sources.’
‘A journalist?’ No, the piece in the newspaper had not been kind. Reading between the lines, anyone would be forgiven for assuming her ‘collapse’ had been the result of a coke-fuelled drive for success. Something in her past... Journalists would not be flavour of the month. ‘An art dealer?’ he suggested. Who would be vulnerable to those big blue eyes and a loose top button? No... Who had moved recently? ‘Freddie Glover threw a house-warming party a few months back,’ he said.
She neither confirmed nor denied it and, satisfied, he let it rest.
‘If you’ve come to apologise...’ She seemed bright enough so he left her to fill in the blank.
‘I was sure Miles would have performed the ritual grovel but I could go through the motions if you insist,’ she offered.
A little movement of her hand, underlining the offer, sent a barely discernible shimmer through her body—a shimmer that found an answering echo deep in his groin. Yes...
She waited briefly, but he was too busy catching his own breath to answer.
‘I’m sorry about what happened, obviously, but that’s not the reason I’m here.’
‘Why are you here?’ he demanded. He hated being this out of control around a woman. Could not make himself send her away. ‘For heaven’s sake, come in and close the door if you’re staying. I won’t eat you...’
She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she closed the door, took a breath and then walked towards him with the kind of mesmerisingly slow, hip-swaying walk that had gone out of style fifty years ago. Around the same time as her hourglass figure.
No longer backlit from the street, the light pouring in from the skylights overhead lit her up like a spotlight and he could see that she’d made an attempt to disguise its lushness beneath a neat grey suit. Or maybe not. The skirt clung to her thighs and stopped a hand’s breadth short of serious, leaving a yard of leg on display, always supposing he’d got past the deep vee of her shirt. She really should try a size larger if she was serious.
As for her hair, she’d fastened it in a sleek twist that rested against the nape of her neck; it was a classically provocative style and his fingers, severely provoked, itched to pull the pins and send it tumbling around her face and shoulders.
She’d stopped a teasing arm’s width from the ladder, looking up at him. Near enough for the honeyed scent of warm skin, something lemony, spicy, chocolatey to reach him but, maybe sensing the danger, not quite close enough to touch. Clearly her instincts were better honed than his because every beat of his pulse urged him to reach for her, pull her close enough to feel what she was doing to him...
Forget the cake. Eating her, one luscious mouthful at a time, was the only thing on his mind.
