Passionate Playboys: The Demetrios Bridal Bargain / The Magnate's Indecent Proposal / Hot Nights with a Playboy. Элли Блейк

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СКАЧАТЬ when she stared at him.

      Then don’t stare.

      Damned good recommendation, but not one Rose could observe. It would have been nice, she thought wistfully, to find something … one tiny flaw she could criticise.

      But there was none.

      He looked tall and impressive, the discreet tailoring of the dark, beautifully cut jacket emphasising the powerful breadth of his shoulders. It hung open revealing a crisp white shirt made of a fabric fine enough to show a faint shadow of the body hair on his chest, sending her stomach into a lurching dive.

      ‘What are you doing lurking like that?’ Her nerves found release in snapping antagonism.

      He arched one brow sardonically. He loosened his tie and allowed his eyes—actually, it was not something over which he had much control—to wander over her soft feminine curves before explaining. ‘I’m on my way to Edinburgh.’

      There were occasions when being a Demetrios had its advantages, and he had the financial clout that went with the name to arrange a meeting at a few hours’ notice with the bank that was threatening to pull the plug on Jamie and the ailing estate.

      The phone calls had gone pretty much as he had anticipated. The money men had been negative initially. They’d liked his plan, called it innovative and daring, but the bottom line, they had explained, was it was too late in the day.

      ‘Of course, Mr Demetrios, if someone else was willing to invest … share the risk the bank has already taken …?’

      That too had been a response Mathieu had anticipated. He had made only one stipulation. Jamie, he had explained to them, must never know who his new investor was.

      Mathieu looked thoughtfully down at the flushed angry face of his visitor and bent his head. ‘Fiona, I think Jamie was looking for you,’ he said without taking his eyes off Rose.

      With a show of reluctance and several curious looks the young girl left them.

      ‘Can I come in or should I go around to the tradesmen’s entrance?’

      He bowed slightly from the waist and stepped back for her to enter the hallway. ‘I think, yes,’ he said, pushing open one of the heavy doors that led off the vaulted hallway, ‘we can be private in here.’

      ‘Oh, very big on confidentiality all of a sudden, aren’t we?’ she muttered, following him inside the room.

      She vaguely registered the oak-panelled walls, and the obligatory stag’s head on the wall, but her attention was concentrated on the figure who preceded her.

      Nothing she could say was likely to make him feel guilty; wrecking lives was probably one of the highlights of his day.

      She watched as he bent to throw a log from the stack beside the vast stone fireplace on the fire that brightened the gloomy room.

      The log crackled into fiery life. So did her temper when he turned around, set his shoulders to the jutting stone mantle and said politely, ‘Is there something I can help you with, Rose?’

      ‘You could drop dead.’ She clamped her lips to prevent any further childish retorts that gave him the opportunity to look down at her in that superior way from escaping.

      ‘How things change,’ he bemoaned, his eyes glimmering mockery as he casually pulled the tie from around his neck. ‘And I thought you were different, Rose.’

      Rose dragged her eyes from the small vee of brown skin revealed at his throat as he slipped the top button of his shirt and glared up at him with renewed venom.

      ‘Once you liked me a good deal better, but a man learns who his real friends are when he leaves behind the glamour of the racing circuit.’

      ‘I’m sure you still have an entourage of hangers-on and people willing to treat your every stupid pronouncement as wise and wonderful. Men like you always do.’

      ‘Have you known a lot of men like me?’

      ‘No, I’ve been lucky that way, though if I saw any coming I’d cross to the other side of the street.’

      He pursed his lips and loosed a long silent whistle. ‘Someone got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’

      ‘This morning I had a bed.’

      He levered himself off the stone mantle and took a step towards her. ‘And you don’t now?’

      ‘No, I don’t. No bed, no job.’

      ‘You quit?’

      ‘No, I was sacked.’

      ‘Smith sacked you.’ He shook his head, his expression one of mild contempt as he thought of the other man. ‘I didn’t see that one coming.’ That certainly explained her mood, but not her presence.

      The rueful amusement in his expression made her see red. ‘Liar!’

      He froze, the lines of his lean face moulding into a mask of chilling hauteur. ‘What did you call me?’

      Rose lifted her chin to a belligerent angle and placed her hands on her hips. She had no intention of allowing herself to be intimidated, even though he did have the look of a jungle predator about to pounce.

      ‘You heard me.’ She lifted her chin and ignored the sound of hissing outrage that escaped through his clenched white teeth. ‘You’re many things, but you’re not stupid.’

      ‘Thank you,’ he said, his voice dripping with mockery.

      ‘You must have thought of the consequences when you told everyone I’m a drunken nymphomaniac?’

      ‘I did not tell anyone anything of the sort …’ He stopped, an expression of pained comprehension passing across his face as he slapped a hand to his forehead and swore.

      Rose’s head came up with a jerk. ‘Well, it’s the sort of thing that could slip anyone’s mind, I suppose.’

      He bit back a cutting response to her sarcasm and watched, his expression softening, as she rubbed a hand wearily across her eyes with the back of her hand.

      ‘I hope, incidentally, that it makes an amusing after-dinner anecdote.’

      ‘I can’t believe he actually sacked you.’ He regarded her with frowning concern.

      ‘And I can’t believe you actually care,’ she cut back. ‘But I really don’t see why the concept is so hard to get your head around. What did you expect my boss to do when you told him I was a groupie—give me a raise?’ Her lip wobbled and a tear escaped from the corner of her eye. ‘Damn,’ she muttered, brushing it away. ‘Why does this happen when I’m mad?’ Her head dropped as she fought to regain her composure.

      As he studied her bent head and watched her hunched slender shoulders shake Mathieu experienced an alien and compelling urge to take her in his arms. It was followed by an almost equally violent need to throttle her idiot employer.

      ‘I did not relate the story.’ He half expected her to СКАЧАТЬ