Legacy Of His Revenge. Cathy Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ her usual garb of jeans and a tee shirt to travel there and, instead, was in an uncomfortable grey skirt and a white blouse with a short linen jacket. At a little after ten in the morning, with the sun climbing in the sky, the outfit was already making her perspire.

      She hung onto the hopeful thought that she would probably find herself stuck in the kitchen for the entire time. With any luck, she wouldn’t glimpse Matias or any of his guests and she knew that, if that were the case, then she would be all right because she was an excellent chef and more than capable of producing the menu that had been emailed to her.

      She wouldn’t even have to bother about sourcing the ingredients, because all of that would already have been taken care of.

      Her high hopes lasted for as long as the very smooth car journey took. Then nerves kicked in with a vengeance as the car turned between imposing wrought-iron gates to glide soundlessly up a tree-lined avenue on either side of which perfectly manicured lawns stretched towards distant horizons of open fields, shaded with copses. It was a lush landscape and very secluded.

      The house that eventually climbed into view was perched atop a hill. She had expected something traditional, perhaps a Victorian manor house with faded red brick and chimneys.

      She gasped at the modern marvel that greeted her. The architect had designed the house to be an organic extension of the hill and it appeared to be embedded into the side so that glass and lead projected as naturally from rock and foliage as a tree might grow upwards from the ground.

      The drive curved around the back, skirting a small lake, and then they were approaching the house from the side where a sprawling courtyard was large enough to house all those important guests she had been expecting to find. Except the courtyard was empty aside from three high-performance cars parked haphazardly.

      All at once, a quiver of nervous tension rippled through her. She could have become lost in a crowd of people. In an empty mansion, and it certainly looked empty, getting lost wasn’t going to be that easy.

      And for reasons she couldn’t quite understand, reasons that extended well beyond the uncomfortable circumstances that surrounded her presence here, Matias made her feel...awkward. Too aware of herself, uncomfortable in her own skin and on edge in a way she had never felt before.

      Her bag was whipped away from her before she had time to offer to take it herself and then she was being led through a most marvellous building towards the kitchen by a soft-spoken middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Debbie.

      It was a cavernous space of pale marble and pale walls on which were hung vast abstract canvasses. She could have been walking through the centre of a fabulous ice castle and she actually shivered because never had she felt so removed from her comfort zone.

      It had been hot outside but in here it was cool and quite silent. When she finally turned her attention away from her impressive surroundings, it was to find that Debbie had disappeared and instead Matias was lounging in the doorway of the kitchen.

      ‘You’re here,’ he commented, taking in the prissy outfit and the flat black pumps and the neat handbag, which had apparently replaced the Santa’s sack she had been carrying the last time he had seen her. He straightened and headed straight back in the direction of the kitchen, expecting her to follow him, which she did.

      Sophie was tempted to retort where else would she be when she’d had no choice, but instead, she said politely to his back, ‘I expected it to have been a bit busier.’

      ‘The first of the guests don’t arrive until tomorrow.’ Matias didn’t bother to turn around. ‘I thought you might find it helpful to acquaint yourself with the kitchen, get to know where everything is.’

      They had ended up in a kitchen that was the size of a football field and equipped to the highest possible standard. Sophie felt her fingers itch as she stared around her, dumbstruck.

      ‘Wow.’ She turned a full circle, eyes as wide as saucers, then when she was once again looking at him, she asked, ‘So are you going to show me where everything is?’

      Matias looked blankly around him and Sophie’s eyebrows shot up.

      ‘You don’t know your way around this kitchen at all, do you?’

      ‘I’m not a cook so it’s true to say that I’ve never had much time for kitchens. I’m seldom in one place for very long and I tend to eat out a great deal. I’m a great believer in the theory that if someone else can do something better than you, then it would be cruel to deny them the opportunity.’

      Sophie laughed and was surprised that he had managed to make her laugh at all. Her cheeks warmed and she looked away from those piercing dark eyes. Her heart was beating fast and she was confused because once again she could feel the pull of an attraction that went totally against the grain.

      For starters, he had proven himself to have all the characteristics she despised in a man. He was arrogant, he was ruthless and he had the sort of self-assurance that came from knowing that he could do what he wanted and no one would object. He had power, he had money and he had looks and those added up to a killer combination that might have been a turn-on for other women but was a complete turn-off for her.

      She knew that because he was just an extreme version of the type of men her mother had always been attracted to. Like a moth to an open flame, Angela Watts had been drawn to rich, good-looking men who had always been very, very bad for her. She had had the misfortune to have collided with the pinnacle of unsuitable men in James Carney, but even when that relationship had died a death she had still continued to be pointlessly drawn to self-serving, vain and inappropriate guys who had been happy to take her for a ride and then ditch her when she started to bore them.

      Sophie had loved her mother but she had recognised her failings long before she had hit her formative teens. She had sworn to herself that, when it came to men, she would make informed choices and not be guided into falling for the wrong type. She would not be like her mother.

      It helped that, as far as Sophie was concerned, she lacked her mother’s dramatic bleached-blonde sex appeal.

      And if she had made a mistake with Alan, then it hadn’t been because she had chosen someone out of her league. It had just been...one of those things, a learning curve.

      So why was she finding it so hard to tear her eyes away from Matias? Why was she so aware of him here in the kitchen with her, lean, indolent and darkly, dangerously sexy?

      ‘Why don’t you look around?’ he encouraged, sitting at the kitchen table, content to watch her while he worked out how he was going to engineer the conversation into waters he wanted to explore.

      She was very watchable. Even in clothes that were better suited to a shop assistant in a cheap retail outlet.

      He was struck again by how little sense that made considering who her father was, but he would find out in due course and in the meanwhile...

      He looked at her with lazy male appreciation. She had curves in all the right places. The hazy picture he had seen on Art’s phone had not done justice to her at all. His eyes drifted a little south of her face to her breasts pushing against the buttons of the prissy, short-sleeved shirt. At least the jacket had come off. She was reaching up to one of the cupboards, checking the supply of dishes, he presumed, and the shirt ruched up to reveal a sliver of pale, smooth skin at her waist, and a dormant libido that should have had better things to do than start wanting to play with a woman who was firmly off the cards kicked into gear.

      ‘Everything СКАЧАТЬ