Millionaire Under The Mistletoe. Janice Maynard

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ