скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Why don’t we go inside and talk about it?’ He didn’t think that he had ever been so bloody underhanded in his life before, and all because he hadn’t been able to get this chit of a girl out of his head. She had fired up his interest, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, and now here he was, behaving like some shady character in a third-rate movie. He had never, but never, done anything remotely like this in his entire life because of a woman, and he could hardly believe that he was doing it now. Conniving like a two-bit criminal.
She didn’t say anything. Instead, she headed towards the house, leaning forward into the wind, which looked as though it might just lift her off her feet and sweep her away if she wasn’t careful. Max followed behind by a few paces, his teeth clenched in exasperation as she told him to wait outside until she’d tidied herself up.
He raised his eyebrows in amusement. ‘Why outside?’
‘Because,’ Vicky said coldly, ‘it’s my house and that’s what I’m telling you to do.’ Upon which she promptly shut the door in his face before he could open his mouth to protest further.
She had never moved with more speed. The house was thankfully clean, and in under three minutes she’d managed to stash away all evidence of her daughter. It took her a further five minutes to sling off the grubby clothes and replace them with a pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved striped jumper that had seen better days. The hair would have to remain in its charming grass-ridden style.
‘So,’ she said, yanking open the door to surprise him leaning against it, ‘what about my house?’
‘Has anyone ever mentioned to you that you are completely eccentric?’
‘No.’ She led the way into the sitting room, which had been the first room in the house to undergo redecoration and was now in restful greens and creams and blessedly free of childish clutter. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was at least another two hours before Chloe was dropped back to the house. More than enough time to get rid of Max Forbes, whose presence was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat.
‘My house,’ she reminded him bluntly, once she had installed him in a chair. ‘I won’t sit,’ she said. ‘I feel filthy. Now, what about my house?’
‘I can’t conduct a conversation like this.’ He shook his head and stood up. ‘Which is a shame because I think you’d be very interested in what I have to say, but if your ill manners override your self-interest, then—’ he shrugged eloquently ‘—at least I tried…’
Vicky looked at him doubtfully. He really shouldn’t be here at all, and she knew that she should just throw him out. In fact, she should never have let him in in the first place. Hadn’t this been the same old story with his brother? From the minute she’d set eyes on him, she’d known that he was bad news. He’d been too good-looking, too smooth-talking and too well connected to be interested in a girl like her, but he’d stopped at her desk where she’d been working with her head down and he’d leaned over just enough for her to feel overpowered by him. Everything she’d said, even Please go away, I really must get on with my work had seemed to amuse him, and he had had a way of laughing deep in his throat, a sexy laugh, while his eyes never left her face, that had made her feel uncomfortable and excited at the same time.
So if Shaun had achieved that with her, then how much more dangerous was his brother, who had struck her as being leagues ahead of him? And if her own need to protect herself wasn’t sufficient to keep her away from Max Forbes, then what about her daughter?
Dark-haired, grey-eyed, Chloe had been the spitting image of Shaun from the day of her birth. There was no way under the sun she could have been anything but a Forbes, and time had strengthened rather than lessened the resemblance.
If only theirs had been the tried and tested failed romance. If only Shaun had done the decent thing and walked away from her and his baby so that they could live their lives in peace. But, like all weak men, Shaun had needed his punch bag, and she had been his. He had rarely raised his hand to her, and then only under the influence of drink or drugs, but he hadn’t needed to go down that road to gain her compliance. All he’d had to do was threaten to take Chloe away from her. It had suited him to pretend to the world that he had never fathered a child, but he’d always taken great satisfaction in reminding her in private that if his family ever discovered his progeny then they would move in to claim what they would feel was rightfully theirs. Especially, he’d been fond of saying, if they could see the uncanny resemblance she bore to the Forbes clan.
So, however painful it was to her, she’d lived in the shadow of fear. Sometimes days would pass, weeks even, and there would be no sign of him. Then he would return and demand his sexual privileges—and she had slept with him and wept bitter tears afterwards.
To have Max Forbes under her roof was to have Lucifer with the key to her front door. She’d heard enough about him to know that the existence of Chloe would be of great interest to him. Would he try and spirit her away, or take her through the courts for custody? Ninety-nine point nine per cent of her knew that her child was safe, but that nought point one per cent was enough to terrify.
She’d spent years protecting her daughter from an abusive man. She’d watched in helpless fear as he’d wielded his power over them both, smilingly and ruthlessly intimidating. Vicky had lived on a knife’s edge, waiting in dreaded expectation of the worst. Now, Vicky knew she must keep Chloe’s existence a secret from Max. For all she knew, these brothers might have more in common than mere appearance. Much more. And she had not escaped from one destructive cycle only to find herself hooked into another. She would never give a man that power over her again. Never.
Max was standing by the door, saying something, and Vicky’s attention snapped back to the present. The house. She couldn’t afford to run into problems with the house. She had barely begun to find her feet and Chloe could do without any more changes in her life.
‘Sit down. Please. I might as well hear what you have to say.’ She nodded to the chair which he had just vacated and he appeared to give her request some thought.
‘You seem to act as though I’m doing you a favour. I assure you, Miss Lockhart, you couldn’t be further from the truth.’
‘I’m sorry. I have…things on my mind.’
‘Why don’t you go and change? Clean clothes might improve your temper.’
She frowned and looked very much as though she would have liked to argue that particular point with him, but instead she informed him that she would bring him a cup of tea, or coffee.
That, she thought, should keep him anchored in one place. The last thing she needed was Max Forbes prowling through her house. At least the sitting room—the one place that was kept neat at all times, even if the rest of the cottage was in a state of disarray—contained relatively few personal bits and pieces. She’d stuffed the pictures of Chloe in the weather-beaten pine trunk behind the sofa, and the books that lined the bookshelf on either side of the fireplace were the sort of everyday reading that gave nothing away. The ornaments had mostly belonged to her mother and had been retrieved from the attic where they had been stored while the house had been rented out. It was true what they said about there being safety in anonymity.
When she returned to the sitting room with a mug of tea, it was to find him innocently perusing the newspaper which had been lying on the low, square battered pine table in front of the fireplace. She almost said Good, but managed to resist the temptation.
‘I won’t be a moment,’ she told him stiffly, and, just in case he got any ideas about exploring the place, she firmly shut the sitting room door behind her. Then she looked at her watch, to make sure that time was still on her side.
Showering and changing took a matter of fifteen minutes. Self-beautification, even if the situation demanded it, was something she rarely did. Now, she just changed into a clean pair of jeans, a clean T-shirt and re-braided her hair without going to the bother of combing out all the knots, of which there would be thousands. Later, she would wash and shampoo her hair.
‘Now,’ she said, slipping into the room and seeing, with relief, that he was still absorbed in the newspaper, ‘you were going to tell me about my house.’
‘Have you heard the rumours?’
‘What rumours?’
‘About the supermarket. Perhaps I should say hyper-market, because apparently there’ll be parking for hundreds of cars. If not thousands.’
Vicky, sitting cross-legged on the large comfy chair facing him, looked at him in horror. For a minute, she actually forgot that she was supposed to be on guard. She leaned forward, elbows on thighs, mouth open.
‘You’re joking.’
‘Horrendous, isn’t it? I can’t bear those sprawling supermarkets myself. I much prefer smaller, more personal places to shop. Between Fortnum and Mason’s and Harrods, I’ve never had a problem finding what I want. Tell me, is there an equivalent here, by any chance?’ Now that he had launched into his lie, he couldn’t wait to distance himself from it. He glanced at her face and discovered that he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Her mouth was slightly parted and sitting like that, all folded into the chair in a way he had never seen a woman do before, she looked even more appealingly vulnerable. The T-shirt was small and close fitting and lovingly outlined her small, rounded breasts. He had to remind himself that he was only there because she had posed a mystery and he hated mysteries, and not because he was attracted to her, even though his mind kept churning up some embarrassingly graphic images of her body, unencumbered by clothing.
Frustratingly, she seemed to have no interest in him whatsoever. As a man who was accustomed to women looking at him, uninterest was proving to be a powerful aphrodisiac.
‘Who told you this?’ she asked, after a few seconds of shocked silence.
‘No one and everyone. You know how it is with rumours. No one will admit to being the one who starts it. I mean, it may be entirely without foundation and certainly, in the business I’m in, I’m sure I would have seen something, something rather more substantial than gossip, but—’ he sighed, reluctantly focusing his attention on the bookshelf behind her ‘—I feel better about telling you.’
‘My house won’t be worth a thing if a supermarket goes up opposite!’ Vicky burst out on the verge of tears. ‘Not that I want to sell up, but…’
‘I’m sure it’s all a load of tosh,’ Max said hurriedly, guiltily seeing the sheen in her eyes.
‘What if it’s not?’ She couldn’t help herself. A supermarket! No, a hypermarket, with parking for ten thousand cars! It was the last straw. She blinked and, of its own accord, a tear trickled down her face. Her reaction appalled and dismayed her, but there seemed nothing she could do to stifle the ridiculous leakage.
She was hardly aware of what was happening until she felt Max perch on the wide upholstered arm of the chair and he dabbed the handkerchief at her face. With a groan of despair, Vicky took it from him and did a better job of mopping herself up, then she leant her head back and closed her eyes with a deep sigh.
‘Look, I should never have said what I did.’ Little did she know, he thought, how sincerely he meant that. He reached out and stroked some hair away from her face, then carried on stroking her damp cheeks. Her skin was like satin and, up close, her freckles made a fascinating pattern across the bridge of her nose. His thumb slid a bit further down and, finding no deterrent, lightly brushed her mouth.
‘No, it’s just as well to be prepared.’ She opened her eyes and looked at him. There was a gentleness in his eyes that was unexpected enough to make the breath catch in her throat.
‘I could find out easily enough whether there’s truth behind the rumour,’ he told her softly, feeling himself harden as he carried on stroking her face. The woman was an enigma. He could hardly remember why he thought that she was hiding something. Right now, she was no more than a vulnerable girl and she was bringing out all sorts of ridiculously protective feelings he’d never known he possessed.
‘Could you?’ she asked urgently, her eyes flicking across his face. ‘Do you think you could? It would mean a great deal to me.’ In the brief silence, she became aware of his fingers on her face and she sprang away, pressing herself back into the chair and looking at him.
‘I could,’ he said. He strolled back to his chair and crossed his legs, then he slowly looked around him, as though taking in his surroundings for the first time. ‘You know, I can’t remember whether I mentioned this at the interview, but I could arrange to have building work done on this cottage at a nominal cost. The roof looks as though it could do with an overhaul and your fireplace is going.’
‘But I don’t work for you.’ She paused and looked at him, while her hand idly rubbed her ankle tucked up on the chair. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so keen to hire me.’ There was genuine curiosity behind the question. She knew why she couldn’t accept his offer of a job, but she had no idea why he’d continued to try and persuade her, even when it was patently obvious that she wasn’t interested.
Max sighed a long, resigned sigh and watched her from under his lashes. He could still feel the softness of her skin under his. ‘I’m desperate. That’s the bottom line. I’ve been here for seven months during which time I’ve had a series of temps, none of whom seemed capable of thinking on their feet, and none of the applicants for the job on a permanent basis were suitable.’
‘None of them?’
‘That’s right,’ he said a little irritably, because there was an element of incredulous accusation in her voice that implied some kind of fault on his part.
‘What was wrong with all of them?’
‘Pretty much a combination of everything, actually.’
‘Perhaps you’re a bit too demanding,’ Vicky volunteered helpfully, and her suggestion was met with a frown of instant and instinctive denial.
‘I’m the least demanding boss I know. All I ask is a certain amount of initiative and common sense, along with the ability to do the usual things.’
‘And how do you know I would have possessed the right qualities?’ For the very briefest of moments, she put aside her fears of the man sitting opposite her and she could feel his personality working on her. In a minute, she told herself, she would put her defences back in place, but right now a rush of simple gratitude towards him had mellowed her. She found herself watching him intently, noticing, as she did so, how huge the differences were between him and Shaun, even though, at first glance, she’d been bowled over by their similarities. His face, she realised, was stronger, and stamped with lines of humour that had been missing from his brother’s. His mouth was fuller, or perhaps that was just an optical illusion born of the fact that he just seemed more in command and more quietly self-assured than his brother. He lacked the ready smile that spoke of self-obsession and the carefully groomed look of someone to whom appearances were everything. In fact, the harder she stared at him, the less he seemed to resemble Shaun.
‘Because you worked successfully for a man I have long respected,’ he said simply. ‘Aside from that, my first impression was favourable and I’m rarely wrong when it comes to first impressions.’
‘Well, you should be,’ Vicky heard herself say, her voice laced with creeping bitterness. She looked away and began toying with the end of her braid, flicking it back and forth, aware that two spots of burning colour had appeared on her cheeks.
Now, he thought, was not the time to probe deeper into that enigmatic little remark. She wasn’t looking at him, in itself significant, but he could tell by the sudden flare of colour into her pale face that her reply had been instinctive and spontaneous, and that it had been prompted by something, some past and probably dark experience. He felt another spurt of intense curiosity, all the more destabilising because it was unaccustomed, and he had to resist the urge to barge in and whittle an explanation out of her. Women had always been an open book for him. To suddenly find himself stumped by one whose pages appeared to be firmly glued together was more than a novelty. He was discovering, to his amazement, the power of a challenge.
‘Perhaps I should be,’ he agreed. ‘Maybe I’m more na?ve than I think.’
The thought of the man sitting opposite her ever being na?ve was almost enough to make her burst out laughing.
‘Look,’ he said quickly, ‘I’ll lay all my cards on the table. I have a gut feeling that you and I could work well together. I’ve suffered everything over the past few months, from misfiling to complete incomprehension when it comes to transcribing the gist of some of my more technical letters…’ Something of an exaggeration, he thought to himself, but what the heck? ‘Not to mention girls who can hardly think straight when they’re around me…’ He watched her surreptitiously to see what the impact of that comment would be, whether he might read some tacit agreement in her expression, and huffily saw that if anything her eyebrows had flickered upwards in contempt and incredulity.
‘I don’t think I could bear working for a man who considered himself God’s gift to the female sex,’ Vicky informed him coldly.
‘I don’t believe that’s quite what I—’
‘Someone who assumes that every woman in the room is eager and panting to climb into bed with him, someone who can’t exist without a comb in his jacket pocket and a sporty car to prop up his self-image—’
‘You seem to have totally misunders—’
‘Swanning around, giving orders in between gazing at himself in the nearest mirror and then when all’s said and done assuming that it’s his right to do as he likes with whomever he wants, because he happened to be born with a passably good-looking face—’
‘Hold on!’
Just at that very instant the telephone rang, and Vicky leapt up out of her chair and hurried into the hall to answer it. She was still trembling from her tirade because his passing remark had brought back a flood of memories, memories of Shaun and his serial infidelity, his addiction to proving his power over women, his swaggering, arrogant assumption that it was his right to break any female’s heart if he so wanted. Her brain was still whirring around in angry circles when she heard Pat Down’s voice down the line and it took her a few seconds to register that Chloe would be dropped back earlier than planned.
‘I’m ever so sorry, Vicky, but my mum’s been rushed to hospital with a heart attack so I shall drop her off in about ten minutes, if that’s all right with you.’ The voice down the line was just managing to bear up.
‘Ten minutes…’ Vicky repeated on a sharply indrawn breath.
‘Sorry.’
‘No, no, that’s absolutely fine. Do you need me to hang on to Jess for you?’ But no, she would take Jess with her to see her mother and she’d be by in a little under ten minutes.
Vicky hung up and flew into the sitting room like a whirlwind.
‘It’s time for you to go!’ she ordered him frantically. ‘I…I…I’ve suddenly remembered a very important appointment. In fact, that was the person in charge…calling to see whether I was still interested…in the job…’
‘On a Saturday?’ Max asked, not moving.
With a groan of desperation, Vicky grabbed his arm and began pulling him to his feet. Bad move. It appeared to make him even less inclined to vacate the sofa.
‘Get up!’ she finally shouted. ‘Can’t you see I’m in a rush?’
‘And I’m trying to figure out why. No respectable company drags interviewees in on a weekend. Have you applied for something shady, perhaps? Some seedy stripping job in a nightclub somewhere?’
‘Do I look like the sort of girl who’s willing to strip in a nightclub?’ she virtually screeched, hustling him to the sitting room door and attempting to shoo him out in the style of a chicken trying to get rid of a wolf from its parlour.
‘Give me a minute to think about that one,’ he said slowly, stopping in his tracks to her intense frustration. She glared at him and he grinned back at her.
It was the first time he had really smiled and the effect was breathtaking. Literally, it made her gasp. It changed the hard contours of his face and gave him a boyish, sexy look that was as far removed from the plastic smiles of his brother as chalk was from cheese.
‘Not funny,’ she said sharply.
‘Take the job?’
In under five minutes there would be the sound of a car stopping outside the house, the ring of the doorbell and her daughter would come bouncing through the front door, bringing her infectious smile, her rosy cheeks and a seething nest of potential catastrophes.
She had to get rid of him.
‘All right! Now will you please leave my house so that I can get on with…with…with my life?’
He straightened up and looked at her with a shadow of surprise. ‘Starting Monday?’
‘Starting Monday,’ she agreed, hopping in frustration from one leg to another.
She managed to propel him to the front door, which she swiftly pulled open, breathing a sigh of relief that a small blue car wasn’t hurtling down the lane in the direction of her cottage.
‘Report to Personnel,’ he told her, ‘then come to my office and we’ll take it from there.’
‘Goodbye!’
‘And perhaps you could do something about your eccentric line in conversation?’
‘I shall see you on Monday!’ She urged him out of the door and watched as he headed down the short path to the road, making sure that his car was safely out of sight before she closed it back. When it was, she slammed shut the door and leaned heavily against it, wondering what the hell she had just done.
It had been imperative that he left the premises before Chloe returned, she argued silently to herself, and what better method of shifting him than to agree to his proposals? Even though the logical, rational side of her brain freely accepted this as a worthwhile argument, the rest of her was appalled at the hole she had dug and into which she had recklessly jumped.
She told herself that she would turn up on Monday and work for a few weeks, then apologetically make her excuses and leave. She mentally listed some of the plus points that could be gained from her manoeuvre. This required more thought, but in the end she decided that, aside from the financial windfall to be had, she would also be able to keep an eye on him and allay his suspicious interest in her which she had sensed from the very beginning. Wasn’t it a good idea for her to be in place so that she could make sure that he didn’t start telephoning Australia and asking his friend about her? For starters he would learn about the pregnancy. Her connection with his brother might take longer, because she had been adamant about keeping her work life distinct from her private life and had discouraged Shaun from ever showing up at her workplace once they had started dating. But he could find out if he persevered. At least she would be on the spot to laughingly fend off any questions and deter him from snooping. She’d seen the curiosity her odd behaviour had aroused in him and she suspected that he was the sort of man to whom any intrigue was simply something to be unravelled. He could probably do The Times crossword in a matter of seconds.
Less palatable was the unpleasant suspicion that something about him had got under her skin. She’d learned so many lessons from Shaun, enough to put her off men for a lifetime. She would rather shoot herself than admit any kind of attraction to his brother.
In the end, though, she now had a problematic situation which she would have to deal with in whatever manner was at her disposal.
CHAPTER THREE
VICKY spent the remainder of the weekend repenting for her reckless agreement to work for Max Forbes. The reason why she had rushed into her hasty decision was rapidly forgotten under the onslaught of serious drawbacks. By the time Monday morning rolled around, she found herself slipping on her customary secretarial garb with a leaden heart which was only partially alleviated when, once at the office, she was informed by the personnel officer that Max only worked part-time at this particular office. When the young girl mentioned his name, her eyelids fluttered and her cheeks turned bright red. Vicky wondered sceptically whether all the female employees of the company responded in the same way to the mere mention of their boss. If that was the case, then she would have more to contend with than the dangerous fragility of her situation—namely overriding nausea at being surrounded by mesmerised females from nine in the morning to five-thirty at night.
No wonder he rated himself as such a potent sex symbol. She almost clicked her tongue in annoyance.
