The Reluctant Duke. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ the subject. ‘I don’t suppose you feel like going back to Gloucestershire for a few days…?’

      ‘I don’t suppose I do,’ his brother came back firmly.

      Exactly what Lucan had thought Gideon might say… Lexie was fully aware of Lucan St Claire’s presence as he came through from the adjoining office fifteen minutes later, to stand looking down at her broodingly from the other side of her desk. She was so aware of him that she deliberately ignored him as she kept typing into her laptop, until she had finished writing an email to Brenda, in the office at Premier Personnel, after the other woman had emailed Lexie to tell her she had successfully managed to reassure Lucan St Claire that Lexie Hamilton was indeed a temp sent from their agency.

      Lexie had panicked slightly when Lucan St Claire had told her he intended telephoning Premier Personnel himself. She’d hurried back into the adjoining office to quickly put a call through to Brenda, her assistant in her parents’ absence, to explain, and also arrange to meet Brenda for coffee after work this evening, so that she could explain the situation more fully.

      Although Lexie wasn’t one hundred per cent certain she could completely explain this situation to herself, let alone a third party.

      It had been pure impulse—along with a lot of curiosity!—that had prompted her into coming here in the first place. An impulse and a curiosity she already regretted.

      She hadn’t expected to like the powerful Lucan St Claire, and she didn’t. She had already decided after their brief conversation earlier that his reputation for being cold and arrogant was well justified. But there was no denying that he was strikingly handsome, too.

      His colouring—that dark hair and those piercing jetblack eyes, his sculptured features—reminded Lexie so much of his father, Alexander.

      She looked up at him blandly. ‘Is there a problem with the intercom, Mr St Claire…?’

      Lucan’s mouth thinned at her obvious sarcasm. ‘I accept that we got off to something of a bad start earlier, Miss Hamilton, but let’s get one thing clear, shall we?’ He looked down at her coldly. ‘Namely, for the moment, I am the employer and you are the employee!’

      Dark brows rose over those deep, and perhaps deliberately innocent, blue eyes. ‘I am?’

      ‘For the moment, yes,’ he repeated harshly—warningly.

      Lexie shrugged. ‘Can I take it from that remark that Premier Personnel have confirmed that my replacement will arrive in three days’ time?’

      ‘You can,’ Lucan confirmed tightly. ‘It would appear that we are stuck with each other until then.’

      She smiled slightly. ‘My sentiments exactly.’

      Lucan scowled darkly. ‘Tell me, Lexie, is this tendency you have to be less than respectful to your employers also the reason that you find it easier to work for an agency rather than attempting to find a permanent position?’

      Two bright spots of angry colour had appeared in the delicate cream of her cheeks. ‘I don’t believe my reasons to be any of your concern, Mr St Claire!’

      He shrugged broad and muscled shoulders beneath his tailored jacket. ‘I was curious. Nothing more,’ he dismissed coolly.

      As Lexie had long been curious about all of the St Claire family…

      ‘I assure you, Mr St Claire, there is nothing about my personal life that would be of the least interest to you.’ She looked up at him challengingly.

      He raised dark brows. ‘You sound very certain of that.’

      ‘I am,’ she came back evenly.

      What would this man do or say, Lexie wondered, if he were to learn that her grandmother was none other than Sian Thomas—the widow that his own father, Alexander St Claire, had fallen in love with over twenty-five years ago? The same woman all the St Claire family had treated with such contempt for those same many years… If he were to realise that Lexie’s own full name, Alexandra, had been chosen in honour of ‘Grandpa Alex’, as she had called this man’s father for the first sixteen of her twenty-four years…!

      CHAPTER TWO

      LEXIE had been in complete ignorance for most of her childhood as to exactly who her Grandpa Alex was—apart from being her step-grandfather, of course—but once she’d reached her teens her mother had quietly and calmly sat her down and explained the situation to her.

      It was then that Lexie had learned that Alexander St Claire was actually the Duke of Stourbridge, and had been virtually disowned by his three sons after his divorce from their mother, Molly St Claire.

      Lexie had instantly decided that all three of the St Claire brothers had treated their father abominably—simply because he had fallen in love with her gentle and beautiful grandmother. A woman none of the brothers had even attempted to meet, let alone get to know. If they had then they might have realised how far removed Sian was from being the femme fatale they so obviously believed her to be. They would also have seen how much she had loved their father. How much their father had loved her in return.

      As it was, despite the fact that their father was now her Grandpa Alex, Lexie hadn’t so much as set eyes on any of the three St Claire brothers until Alexander had died eight years ago, when they had dutifully arranged and attended their father’s funeral at the village church in Stourbridge.

      Lexie had attended the funeral, too, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, after it had been made clear that her grandmother’s presence would not be welcomed there by the St Claire family.

      Out of sheer stubbornness she had decided to represent her own family that day, standing at the back of the church to mourn her Grandpa Alex. Unacknowledged and thankfully unnoticed by any of the St Claire family.

      The coldly remote Lucan St Claire had been easily recognisable from the photographs Lexie had deliberately looked out for over the last few years in the business pages of newspapers and magazines. She had also known the youngest St Claire brother, the rakishly handsome actor Jordan Sinclair, which had to make the austerely attractive blond-haired man standing beside him his twin brother Gideon.

      But Lexie’s grandmother—the woman Alexander St Claire had loved and shared the last seventeen years of his life with—had been absent from his funeral.

      For that alone Lexie would never forgive any of the St Claire family. The head of that family, especially. Lucan St Claire. The man who, upon his father’s death, had become the fifteenth Duke of Stourbridge.

      Not that Lucan St Claire ever used the title. No doubt as some further insult to the father he had all but disowned twenty-five years ago.

      Lexie’s eyes snapped her resentment now, as she looked up at Lucan St Claire. ‘Can I help you with something else, Mr St Claire…?’

      Lucan didn’t believe himself to be a vain man. He recognized that he was cold, occasionally ruthless and that other than with his close family he was almost always chillingly remote. He was also aware that it was as much his considerable wealth and power that attracted all those models and actresses to him as any personal attraction he might or might not have.

      That aside, Lexie Hamilton’s initial attitude of dismissal, СКАЧАТЬ