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‘Speak up or I will…’
The threat in his deep voice broke her free of the thrall that had held her motionless. The isolation of the castle and the vulnerability of her situation hit her… What would he do…?
‘Let me go!’ Fear made her voice shrill as she began to struggle frantically against his restraining hands.
‘Dio mio!’ he gritted as she hit out wildly, one of her flailing fists making contact with his jaw. ‘Will you be still, woman?’
Sam was still, but only because the energy had drained abruptly from her body, leaving her shaking and weak-kneed.
‘You’re Italian,’ she stated. His lightly accented voice was deep and vibrant.
‘You’re trespassing.’
‘No, I’m only the cleaner, I just came to change the sheets.’
‘The cleaner…?’ He didn’t sound convinced, but she was relieved to see that, though he still regarded her with suspicion, some of the aggressive hostility had seeped from his manner.
He straightened up to his full and intimidating height and Sam exhaled a shaky breath as his hands fell from her shoulders. Her step backwards brought the back of her legs in contact with the big rustic table in the middle of the room. She leaned into it and pushed her hands in a smoothing motion over her hair. They were still shaking, as was her voice as she retorted sarcastically, ‘No, I’m an international jewel thief and my calling card is washing the dirty dishes…’
She was glad several feet now separated them. Up close and distractingly personal he really was too overwhelming. She no longer imagined she was in any physical danger from this man, but her mental safety was another matter. Whatever it was he projected she was susceptible to it. Every time she looked at him her mind went to mush, and the stuff happening to the rest of her body did not bear close examination.
She was deeply ashamed of her initial reaction to this brooding, bad-tempered Italian with his sinfully sexy mouth and chiselled cheekbones. She lowered her eyes from his face, conscious that she was close to drooling. For God’s sake, woman, show a bit of pride, she chided herself angrily.
‘Of course I’m the cleaner.’ She moved her hand in a sweeping motion from her tousled head down to her sensible shoes. ‘What do I look like?’
He could say she resembled a total wreck and he wouldn’t be wrong, she reflected, thinking how silly and shallow it was to care what he thought of her appearance. Especially as she would not have secured a second glance from him under any other circumstances, even if she had been wearing her most alluring outfit.
But he did not take her invitation to look at her. Instead his unblinking heavy-lidded regard stayed trained on her face as he observed, ‘You do not smell like a cleaner.’
‘What do cleaners smell like?’
A dark brow arched sardonically. ‘You, presumably. I have never held one as close as a lover before.’
The comment made the blush under her skin deepen. ‘You’ve never lived,’ she replied, trying not to think about lovers and this man in the same sentence.
‘A tempting thought,’ he said, not looking tempted.
Which was rude.
‘That wasn’t an invitation.’ As if she would hand out invitations to a man who looked like a dark fallen angel.
He angled a brow and looked even more as though he knew far too much about kissing.
‘So that is not part of the service…?’
‘I don’t charge for kisses, just for mopping, and I only kiss people I like.’
His attention drifted to the window as he appeared to lose interest in the conversation. Without looking at her, he dragged a hand through his dark hair. Sam was used to men not noticing her in a sexual way, but most didn’t act as though she were invisible.
The silence lengthened. When he did speak she jumped. ‘You raise a man’s expectations and then you dash them down. So, Mrs Cleaner, you can take your mop and go home. The estate were informed prior to my arrival that I do not require housekeeping services.’
Sam was tempted to pass the buck and say she was just the hired help, but Clare had more than enough to cope with without complaints from rich guests. Instead she said, ‘They told me the same thing, but you were both wrong.’
A look of total astonishment passed across his lean features. ‘I was wrong?’
A smile fluttered on her lips, then faded as her glance strayed and the fluttering moved to low in her belly.
‘You were,’ she croaked, her eyes still glued to his mouth. ‘You definitely need me.’ Even before he arched an expressive brow the mortified colour had rushed to her cheeks.
‘You sound very confident of your ability to satisfy my needs…’
‘There is no call to be crude and sarcastic,’ she choked. ‘And actually I would prefer not to think about your needs!’ But of course she was. ‘What I meant was you definitely need housekeeping services unless you are planning to eat with your fingers or you’re keen to contract food poisoning. I thought you’d have been grateful.’ Her glance travelled around the room. ‘The place looks a lot better than it did.’
‘And I am meant to thank you? I knew where everything was.’
‘Shall I throw a few empty bottles around the place to make you feel at home?’
‘I could put my hand on anything as and when I needed it.’ He swept his hand in an expressive circular motion and sent the row of freshly washed glasses she had lined up on the dresser flying with a crash. The unexpected noise of breaking glass was so loud that Sam cried out.
Then her mouth fell open as she realised the action had been totally deliberate. Sam stared at him in disbelief. ‘I suppose you expect me to clear that up for you?’ If so he could think again.
Teeth clenched, he glared at her, his face a mask of seething dislike. ‘I do not require your assistance. I am more than capable of…’ To emphasise his capability he brought the flat of his hand down on the dresser top.
‘Oh, yeah, it really looks like it…’ Her voice faded as he lifted his hand. Her stomach flipped as she saw the blood dripping from the jagged cut on his palm. ‘Oh, my God!’ she cried in horror. ‘You stupid man, what have you done?’
His jaw clenched. ‘Nothing.’
‘You idiot—what did you think you were doing? You hit it directly on the glass…anyone would think you were blind.’
‘I am.’
‘Very funny,’ she began, tilting her head up towards his and finding him staring at the wall above her head. The exasperation on her face was replaced by the horror of realization. It wasn’t a sick joke; he was telling the truth.
‘You can’t see—you’re blind!’ Shame and shock in equal parts washed over her like icy water. Her lips quivered and inside her chest something tightened as she lifted a hand to her face and found it wet with inexplicable tears.
‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise.’ Still not quite able to believe those beautiful eyes could not see her, she passed a hand in front of his face. He didn’t blink, but reached out with dizzying speed and caught her wrist in his uninjured hand.
‘Stop that. I’ve had enough empathy to last me a lifetime!’ he snarled. ‘I do not require your sympathy or your pity!’
Sam looked at the blood dripping onto the floor and clenched her teeth. ‘I get it.’
His lip curled contemptuously. ‘You get what?’
‘I get that you’re mad with me because I saw you being vulnerable. Don’t worry, I don’t feel extra special. You’re obviously mad with the world. The fact is you’re blind—’
She stopped as she saw shock move at the back of his eyes. ‘You think I need some Mrs Mop to remind me of this fact?’
Sam gritted her teeth and carried on as though the bitter interruption had not occurred. ‘So you can carry on ignoring it if you wish, but like the dirty dishes it’s not going to go away. So if I might make a suggestion, why don’t you stop acting like a gutless wonder and get on with it? Sure it isn’t fair, but—shock horror—life isn’t!’
She saw the disbelief chase across his face and felt a surge of recklessness.
‘This is none of my business—’
‘No, it isn’t.’
Again she acted as though he had not spoken. ‘Which is probably a good thing, because I don’t really care what you say to me. Unlike the friends and family out there, the people who love you and who are no doubt right now worried sick about you…’
There would be a wife or a lover among them. A man who looked like him, a man who projected a force field of raw sexuality, would not live the life of a monk.
She dragged her eyes from the widening scarlet stain on his sleeve and struggled to maintain the role of impartial stranger as she tilted her face up to his thinking how beautiful the woman in his life must be.
The stupid man probably thought he was being noble and strong by going it alone up here in the castle. His problem was he was too stubborn and proud to admit he needed help.
‘Meanwhile,’ she continued, waving her finger even though he was oblivious. ‘You lick your wounds here like some…some injured animal.’ He’d be a wolf, she thought, studying his lean, handsome face and feeling the inevitable flip of her sensitive stomach. ‘My God, you’re selfish!’ she finished in disgust.
There was a look of stark incredulity stamped on his hard patrician features as he tilted his head to one side, a nerve clenched in his lean cheek as those stunning dark eyes stared straight at her.
It seemed impossible to Sam that he wasn’t seeing her.
‘Selfish!’
There was a flat, eerie calm in the echo that sent a shiver down her spine and made her think of her recent analogy. Wounded animals of any variety were dangerous, especially wolves.
Even when his temper wasn’t frayed to the point of snapping, there was something edgy, unpredictable and almost combustible about this stranger.
If she had any sense she would be heading for the door, not standing here winding him up.
Just why was she making this her business? The fluttering of excitement low in her belly and the light-headed recklessness born of the excess adrenaline circulating in her bloodstream might be a clue… Sam frowned, not liking the conclusions thrown up by her rapid self-analysis, not liking the feelings this man stirred inside her.
Like and this man did not sit comfortably in the same thought. Like was tepid and he was a person who inspired the more extreme ends of the emotional spectrum!
Sam stuck out her chin even though the defiant gesture was wasted on him. ‘It’s nothing to me why you’ve come here, but it doesn’t take a genius to see it wasn’t for the climbing or fishing, and you don’t look like someone looking for spiritual peace.’ If he was he’d taken the wrong turn somewhere, she thought, studying the uncompromising set of his jaw and the clenching nerve throbbing in his hollow cheek.
‘You speak with passion for someone who is so disinterested. You know, in my experience people who feel the need to sort out other people’s lives frequently have no life of their own.’
‘They do say that attack is the best form of defence. And actually I have a perfectly satisfactory life, thank you…not everyone needs a man to feel fulfilled.’
She stopped, annoyance flickering across her face as she realised she had already said too much.
‘My life is not the subject here.’ She injected ice into her reminder.
‘But nonetheless fascinating.’
The sarcastic drawl made her lips tighten. She fought to keep the antipathy—which was growing by the second—from her voice as she retorted bluntly, ‘If you carry on bleeding that way you won’t have a life either.’
She frowned, finding it pretty hard to be objective as she looked at the widening scarlet pool on the floor. ‘Ian keeps a first-aid kit in the Land Rover. I’ll go and get it.’
‘I do not need a ministering angel.’
Sam fixed him with a very un-angelic glare and promised, ‘Take my word for it, you do not bring out the angel in me.’
‘Who is Ian?’
Her hand on the doorknob, Sam, surprised by the question, looked back over her shoulder. ‘He’s the man you rented this place from.’
His darkly delineated brows set at an angle lifted towards his hairline. ‘You are on first-name terms with your boss?’
‘Oh, we’re a really egalitarian lot up here.’ The hauteur in his manner suggested he would not invite such familiarities with his subordinates. Despite his present dishevelled appearance, he acted like a man who was used to barking out orders and having people jump. ‘And you’d get on with Ian—he thinks I have no life either.’ Her blue eyes narrowed as she considered the well-meaning interference of her sibling.
His matchmaking tactics were never very subtle, but what Ian and other concerned parties—she didn’t include this stranger among their number—didn’t seem to appreciate was that she hadn’t thrown herself into work because her boyfriend had run off with another woman.
She threw herself into work because she enjoyed it.
She really was over Will. She wasn’t even mad with him any more. She was mad with herself because she had always known deep down that this gorgeous guy hadn’t really been in love with her. It hadn’t been respect that had stopped him jumping into bed with her before they were married, but a total lack of interest in her sexually.
And when she’d seen what sort of woman Will was interested in sexually she could she why. Gisela, the divinely fair Nordic beauty he had met and married all in the space of two weeks, was almost six feet tall and had a body that any man would lust after.
Still looking over her shoulder, Sam now watched the Italian search and find a tea towel that he proceeded to apply firmly to his wound.
‘It’s nothing to me if you want to hide away like some sort of bearded recluse.’ Sam was rather pleased at her wooden delivery—things had been getting far too heated and personal. Of course, if he had been able to see her flushed face it would have ruined the illusion of objective boredom totally.
But he couldn’t.
Again things hurt inside as she felt an unwelcome wave of empathic pain for his loss. She had already worked out that sympathy would only make him more pigheadedly uncooperative so she kept her tone flat as she admitted, ‘But I’m going to clean and dress that wound whether you like it or not.’
‘Bearded…?’
She almost wanted to smile as he lifted a hand to his face and looked surprised as his fingers slid across the stubble on his hard jawline. It was ironic really—there were numerous men out there who carefully nurtured their designer stubble in an effort to achieve exactly the look of dark, dangerous dissipation this man had without trying.
‘Call me selfish, but it would be bad for business if you went home feet first, and the estate is just about the only employer around here.’
‘So you wish to tend my wounds because it would affect the local economy, not because you are a ministering angel.’
His amused sneer made her see red. ‘If bloody-minded aggression and nastiness is a defence mechanism meant to keep the world at a distance, I have to tell you it works.’
A look of complete astonishment replaced the sneer. Then he threw her totally. The grin that revealed his even white teeth and some gorgeous crinkly lines around his eyes also ironed out the engrained lines of cynicism around his mouth.
The breath snagged in her throat as she stared at the transformation. Mercy, he’s gorgeous!
Then he completed the transformation by throwing back his head and laughing. The uninhibited sound was deep, warm and attractive.
‘You have quite a tongue on you.’
There was no mistaking the reluctant admiration in his voice. Sam found it more disturbing than his hostility. Brows knitted in consternation, she backed out of the door, unaware until she was in the open air that she had been holding her breath.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE first spatters of rain were falling from the already darkening sky as Sam ran towards the Land Rover to get the first-aid kit. She hoped the storm would hold off until she got back to Home Farm. A childhood incident had left her with an irrational fear of thunder, and heavy rain made the road back with its hairpin bends and dramatic drops a nightmare.
