Кэтти Уильямс – Deal With The Devil: Secrets of a Ruthless Tycoon / The Most Expensive Lie of All / The Magnate's Manifesto (страница 12)
‘Before you start putting me on a pedestal and getting out the feather brush to dust my halo, I should tell you that you know very little about me.’
‘I know enough.’
‘You have little to compare me with. I’m a pretty ruthless bastard, if you want the truth.’
Brianna laughed, a clear, tinkling sound of pure amusement. She sifted her fingers through his dark hair and curled up closer to him which kick-started a whole lot of very pleasurable sensations that had him hardening in record time.
He edged her back from him and looked at her, unsmiling. ‘You’ve been hurt once. You’ve spent years buried here, working beyond the call of duty to keep the wolves from the door. You’ve had no boyfriends, no distractions to occupy your time. Hell, you haven’t even been able to wring out an hour or two to do your painting. And then along I come. I’m not your knight in shining armour.’
‘I never said that you were!’ Brianna pulled back, hurt and confused at a sudden glimpse of ruthlessness she wouldn’t have imagined possible.
‘It’s been my experience that what women say is often at variance to what they think. I won’t be hanging around—and even if I lived next door to you, Brianna, I don’t do long-term relationships.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t do long-term relationships?’
‘Just what I say, so be warned. Don’t make the mistake of investing anything in me. What we have is sexual attraction, pure and simple.’ He softened and gentled his voice. ‘We have something that works at this precise moment in time.’
But it was more than that. What about the conversations they had had; the moments of sharing generated by close proximity? Some sixth sense stopped her from pointing that out. She was finding it difficult to recognise the cool, dark eyes of this stranger looking at her.
‘And stop treating me as though I’m a stupid kid,’ she bit out tightly, disentangling herself from him. ‘I was one of those once.’ Her voice was equally cool. ‘I don’t intend to repeat the same mistake twice. And, if you think that I would ever let myself get emotionally wrapped up with someone who doesn’t want to spend his life in one place, then you’re crazy. I value security. When I fall for someone, it will be someone who wants to settle down and isn’t scared of commitment. I’m thankful that you’ve been honest enough to tell me as it is, but you have nothing to fear. Your precious independence isn’t at risk.’
‘If that’s the case, why are you pulling away from me?’
‘I don’t like your tone of voice.’
‘Just so long as it’s not what I say but how I’m saying it,’ he murmured softly. He tugged her back towards him and Brianna placed her hand on his shoulder but it was a pathetically weak attempt to stave off the fierce urgings of her body.
As his hand swept erotically along her thigh, she shimmied back towards him, the coolness in his eyes forgotten, the jarring hardness of his voice consigned to oblivion.
They made love slowly, touching each other everywhere, absorbing each other’s pleasurable groans. She tasted him with as much hunger as he tasted her. She just couldn’t get enough of him—at her breasts, between her thighs, urging her to tell him what she wanted him to do and telling her in explicit detail what he wanted her to do to him.
Eventually, just as she was falling into a light, utterly contented doze, she heard the insistent buzz of her mobile phone next to the bed where she had left it charging. She was almost too sleepy to pick up but, when she did, she instantly sat up, drawing the covers around her.
Leo watched her, his keen antennae picking up her sudden tension, although from this end of the phone he could only hear monosyllabic replies to whatever was being said.
‘Remember I told you about my friend? Bridget McGuire?’ Brianna ended the call thoughtfully but remained holding the mobile, caressing it absently.
Leo was immediately on red-hot alert, although he kept his expression mildly interested and utterly expressionless. ‘The name rings a bell...’
‘They need to release her from hospital. There’s been an accident on the motorway and they need all the beds they can get. So she’s leaving tomorrow. The snow is predicted to stop. She’s coming here...’
‘WHEN?’ HE SLID out of the bed, strolled towards the window and stared down to a snowy, grey landscape. The sun had barely risen but, yes, the snow appeared to be lessening.
This was the reason he was here, pretending to be someone he wasn’t. When he had first arrived, he had wondered how a meeting with his mother could possibly be engineered in a town where everyone seemed to know everyone else. Several lies down and his quarry would be delivered right to his doorstep. Didn’t fate work in mysterious ways?
Brianna, sitting up, wondered what was going through his head.
‘For the moment, they’re going to transfer her to another ward and then, provided the snow doesn’t get worse, they’re going to bring her here tomorrow. You’re making me nervous, standing by the window like that. What are you thinking? I have room here at the pub. It won’t make any difference to you. You won’t have to vacate your room—in fact, you probably won’t even notice that she’s here. I shall have her in the spare room next to my bedroom so that I can keep a constant eye on her, and of course I doubt she’ll be able to climb up and down stairs.’
Leo smiled and pushed himself away from the window ledge. When he tried to analyse what he felt about his birth mother, the most he could come up with was a scathing contempt which he realised he would have to attempt to conceal for what remained of his time here. Brianna might have painted a different picture, but years of preconceived notions were impossible to put to bed.
‘So...’ He slipped back under the covers and pulled her towards him. ‘If we’re going to have an unexpected visitor, then maybe you should start telling me the sort of person I can look forward to meeting and throw me a few more details...’
* * *
Brianna began plating their breakfast. Was it her imagination or was he abnormally interested in finding out about Bridget? He had returned to the bed earlier and she had thrown him a few sketchy details about her friend yet, off and on, he seemed to return to the subject. His questions were in no way pressing; in fact, he barely seemed to care about the answer.
A sudden thought occurred to her.
Was he really worried that their wonderful one-on-one time might be interrupted? He had made it perfectly clear that he was just passing through, and had given her a stern warning that she was not to make the mistake of investing in him, yet was he becoming possessive of her company without even realising it himself?
For reasons best known to himself, he was a commitment-phobe, but did he respond out of habit? Had he warned her off because distancing himself was an automatic response?
He might not want to admit it, but over the past few days they had got to know one another in a way she would never have thought possible. He worked while she busied herself with the accounts and the bookkeeping but, for a lot of the time, they had communicated. He had even looked at her ledgers, leading her to think that he might have been an accountant in a previous life. He had suggested ways to improve her finances. He had persuaded her to show him all the paintings she had ever done, which she kept in portfolios under the bed, and had urged her to design a website to showcase them. She had caught herself telling him so much more than she had ever told anyone in her life before, even her close friends. He made a very good listener.
His own life, he had confided, had been as uneventful as it came: middle class, middle of the road. Both of them were single children, both without parents. They laughed at the same things; they bickered over the remote control for the television in the little private lounge which was set aside for the guests, on those rare occasions she had some. With the pub closed, they had had lots of quality time during which to get to know one another.
So was he scared that the arrival of Bridget would signal the end of what they had?
With a sigh, she acknowledged that if the ambulance could make it up the lane to the pub to deliver their patient then her loyal customers could certainly make it as well. The pub would once again reopen and their time together would certainly be curtailed.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said slowly, handing him a plate of bacon, eggs and toast and sitting down. ‘I might just keep the pub closed for a couple of weeks. Until the snow is well and truly over and the path outside the pub is completely safe.’
She told herself that this was something that made perfect sense. And why shouldn’t she have a little break? The last break she had had was over summer when she had grabbed a long weekend to go to Dublin with her friends. At other times, while they’d been off having lovely warm holidays in sunny Spain or Portugal, she had always been holed up at the pub, unable to take the time off because she couldn’t afford to lose the revenue.