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‘You look awfully pale, Darcy.’
Thanks, bro, she thought as Nick’s contribution to the conversation brought her a lot of highly undesirable attention.
‘Yes, she does, doesn’t she?’ her stepfather agreed. ‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘Absolutely fine.’
‘It’s probably sleep deprivation,’ Nick continued smoothly. ‘She’s not been sleeping too well.’ He wasn’t looking at his sister as he spoke but at the tall figure who stood beside her. The two men exchanged a long look.
‘Is that right? You didn’t say so, Darcy.’
‘Lot on my mind, Dad…’ she muttered. ‘Holidays are always the same—it takes me the first week to wind down.’
‘Darcy is a computer analyst,’ her proud stepfather explained to Reece. ‘She has a very responsible job.’
Darcy cringed. ‘Give the man a break, Dad,’ she laughed uncomfortably. ‘I’m sure Mr Erskine doesn’t want to know about my work.’
Nick, of course, couldn’t resist stirring the pot. ‘You mean, he doesn’t already?’
‘If you’ve got nothing better to do, Nick, you could take a look at the Christmas lights for me.’ She felt a surge of satisfaction as her brother looked suitably horrified at the prospect. ‘They don’t seem to be working.’
‘I think,’ Nick announced hopefully, ‘that it’s time we bought some new ones.’
‘You can’t do that, Nick!’ Charlie protested. ‘We’ve had them for ever…’
‘My point exactly,’ Nick muttered. ‘It’s the same every year—they never work.’
‘I remember the time the cat—that one that had no tail—’ Harry began.
‘Oscar,’ his twin supplied.
Nick decided to inject a little reality into this trip down memory lane. ‘I remember the time they fused the electrics while Mum was cooking Christmas dinner…’
There was a collective subdued gasp of dismay and all eyes turned to Jack.
‘Far be it from me to break with tradition,’ Nick put in quickly. ‘I’ll fix the damned things.’
‘You all seem pretty protective of your father,’ Reece observed as he trailed Darcy outside.
‘Stepfather, actually, but yes, I suppose we are.’
‘Stepfather; that makes the twins your…?’
Darcy gave a resigned sigh. ‘Jack adopted Nick and me when he married Mum—I was five. Not that it’s any of your business.’ She stood beside the Land Rover, jingling the keys. ‘You can’t want to come…’ Please…please, let him say he doesn’t. She always had been a hopeless optimist!
CHAPTER FIVE (#ud852a80d-a343-5eee-9512-0f0e7d751d2d)
‘DID you have to bring this thing?’ Reece scowled as the big dog, his paws planted on the back of the passenger seat, licked his face ecstatically.
‘I wanted him to come,’ Darcy, tight-lipped, pointedly replied. ‘Sit down, Wally!’ Reluctantly the big animal curled up on the back seat of her stepfather’s Land Rover, his eyes reproachful.
Reece wiped the excess canine saliva off his neck with a pained grimace. ‘A man could get to feel unwanted.’
‘Not by Wally.’ The dog’s ears pricked up at the sound of his name. ‘Or my family,’ she reflected with a frustrated little snort. ‘You’ve certainly weaseled your way into their affections,’ she hissed nastily. ‘It was a master stroke to appeal to the twins’ stomachs.’
Reece, who wasn’t really interested in the direct route to the twins’ hearts, responded with a slightly distracted smile.
‘I take it the way to your elder brother’s heart is not through his stomach…’
‘You noticed that, did you?’ Darcy had not yet forgiven Nick. How dared he lecture her on morality, she fumed—the man who had had, much to his parents’ dismay and her awe, an affair with a thirty-year-old divorcee when he was just seventeen?
‘Let’s just say I didn’t feel warm and welcome when he looked at me,’ Reece responded drily. His eyes narrowed. ‘Is he giving you a hard time?’ he wondered suspiciously.
‘I don’t give a damn what Nick thinks!’
‘Yeah, I heard that bit.’
A deep tide of colour washed over her fair skin as she worked out what he must have heard. ‘Don’t go reading anything into that. I was establishing a principle. Sex isn’t a high priority for me.’
Darcy knew she was wasting her breath; the man obviously had her down as some sort of sex junkie—I could always refer him to Michael, she thought. He would set the record straight. Not that Michael had ever come right out and complained about her sex drive, or lack of it, but that was probably because the man had still had a wife at home to keep happy. From his point of view, the fact she hadn’t made excessive demands had probably been a godsend!
‘You got many other prospects lined up?’
‘Has anyone ever told you you’ve got a very crude mouth, and a one-track mind?’ He wasn’t the only one, she thought, struggling hard to banish the image of his big, sexy body shifting beneath her…his skin glistening…the ripple of muscle… The heat travelled like a flash-flood up her neck and bathed her face. The empty feeling in the pit of her belly got emptier and achier.
Despite her determination to think of anything else but the man beside her, Darcy couldn’t have stopped her eyes from furtively fluttering to the mouth she’d criticised if her life had depended on it. Perfection didn’t seem too extravagant an adjective for that wide, mobile curve which intriguingly managed to combine both sensuality and control.
‘Actually,’ she mused, her voice husky, ‘the new vicar did ask me to the Christmas dance.’ She’d almost forgotten this unexpected event, which had occurred only this morning, but then she had other things on her mind. How her little sister would laugh if she ever discovered what a man-magnet the sister she despaired of had become.
‘New vicar…’ Reece didn’t look as though he was taking the opposition seriously. ‘I’m seeing tweed jackets, maybe a goatee—looks aren’t everything, of course…’
‘Actually, Adam played rugby for Oxford,’ she was pleased to announce.
‘In the Sixties…?’
‘I’d say he’s thirty…’
‘Broken nose…?’ Reece suggested hopefully.
Darcy’s lips twitched. ‘No, he was a back-row man. It was a toss-up between male modelling and the church,’ she lied outrageously. Her expression sobered. ‘Reece, are you?’ she began.
‘Am I what?’
‘Nick said…’ she began.
‘Nick said what?’ Reece thought he could guess.
‘He said you were rich—super-rich, actually. Is that true?’
Reece didn’t prevaricate. ‘Yes.’
Deep down she’d always known he didn’t live in the same world as she did. Darcy tried not to let her disappointment show; she’d been secretly hoping that Nick might have got it wrong. Now there was no point even dreaming this thing might be anything other than a one-night stand.
‘I suppose you’re famous too?’ she accused bitterly.
She made it sound as though he’d been concealing the fact he was wanted by Interpol. Reece had never met a female who had reacted in quite this way to his social position and wealth before.
‘Obviously not,’ he drawled, amusement in his voice.
‘Don’t be offended,’ she soothed absently. ‘I don’t read the financial pages.’
‘But Nick does?’
‘Hardly; he’s a sports journalist.’
Reece laughed. ‘I think you’re being a bit severe; I knew a sports writer once who had read a book.’
Darcy couldn’t summon the necessary smile to respond to his raillery. ‘Are you involved in property development? Is that why you came to the Hall?’
‘My company is involved in property development,’ Reece agreed, not mentioning that this property development didn’t include small country houses being renovated on a shoestring.
It did involve a string of brand-new hotels in various capitals of the world which the leisure arm of his empire now ran. A good many office complexes and several sports stadiums which had popped up all over Europe had also begun their existence on a drawing board in the Erskine Building—he didn’t mention this either.
‘Then you’re some sort of property developer…?’ she prodded.
‘That was one of the areas we’ve diversified into during the last few years.’
‘We?’
‘Well, it’s not a one-man show; my sister Kate is heavily involved in the running of the hotel chain, and my cousin Declan has just joined us. My kid brother has just finished his stint at Harvard, so hopefully he’ll—’
‘You told me you didn’t have a family!’ Darcy twitched her rear-view mirror and saw an almost comical grimace of dismay register on his drop-dead gorgeous features.
‘I did…?’ he echoed evasively.
‘Yes, you did.’
‘They’re a lovely bunch but a bit…overwhelming en masse—like at Christmas time. Don’t you ever wish you were an only child…?’
The encounter with Nick still fresh in her mind, Darcy found herself nodding. ‘When I’m around Nick, yes, I do.’
‘The guy’s only trying to protect you.’ Reece had a sister of his own, and a real headache she was too.
Darcy could hardly believe her ears—Reece, defending Nick of all people! ‘This male bonding is all very sweet but have you forgotten it’s you he wants to protect me from?’ she reminded him.
‘I’d not forgotten. I have this nasty feeling when he gets me alone he’s going to ask me what my intentions are.’
Did he really expect her to appreciate the humour of this remark? ‘He already knows. That’s the problem.’
She sensed his looking at her, and couldn’t stop herself taking her eyes off the road for a split-second…he was pushing an unruly hank of glossy almost black hair from his eyes. Did he always have to look so damned pleased with himself? she wondered, resenting the way just looking at him sent her temperature rocketing.
Reece would have been astonished if he’d been privy to her thoughts. He had rarely felt less complacent in his life; things were happening to him that he didn’t want or need—his eyes were drawn to the shell-like shape of her ear—cancel ‘didn’t need’. Every time he looked at this woman he needed with a capital N.
‘Perhaps he could tell me,’ he muttered under his breath.
‘Pardon?’
She wanted to know; well, he’d tell her! ‘I can’t look at your ear without wanting to whisper in it. I can’t look at your mouth—’
‘Stop!’ Darcy yelled, her stressed heart pumping out adrenalin like a pneumatic drill. ‘If you say things like that I’m likely to crash the car.’
‘In that case, wouldn’t it be far safer if you parked somewhere? Somewhere quiet and secluded would be good.’ From what he’d seen, that shouldn’t be too difficult—they’d barely passed another car.
Darcy broke out in a cold sweat. ‘You can’t say things like that to me!’ She could hardly hear herself speak above the frantic clamour of her heart.
Reece sighed. ‘I can’t not say things like that to you. Do you think it’s possible they’ve put something in the water…?’
‘I think it’s possible you’ve got nothing better to do than harass me,’ she responded weakly in a strangulated version of her own deep, husky voice.
‘Actually, I brought a heap of paperwork with me.’
‘I’m flattered no end.’
‘Do your boyfriends always have to work so hard?’
She could have said What boyfriends? but she didn’t want to reveal the disgraceful lack of sexual encounters in her work-orientated life. ‘You’re not a boy or my friend.’
‘I’m your lover.’
This man was the master of the one-liners; there was no doubt about it. Darcy dabbed the beads of sweat from the full outline of her upper lip with the tip of her tongue and tried to coax her respirations into a more manageable rate.
‘You’re my one-night stand,’ she bit back coldly. He would never know that this admission hurt her more than it did him. ‘Listen, I can see why you might think I’m up for…that I might want you to…’ Darcy’s voice dropped to an agonised whisper. ‘You know what I mean.’ Still he didn’t respond. ‘Last night wasn’t me…’
Even though her eyes remained rigidly fixed on the road, she could feel his eyes travelling over her body, her skin prickling in response to the unseen scrutiny.
‘I have to dispute that.’
The low rasp of his voice was like a caress, and she could picture his slow, sensual smile in her head. She ground her teeth in frustration.
‘I don’t normally act like that,’ she insisted.
‘Then last night was special…?’
‘Last night was mad, a mistake!’ she yelled. ‘I’m not passing judgement on people that do act like that, but it’s just not me.’
‘I think it is you.’
‘Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve said?’ she asked shrilly.
