Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  ‘Let me go?’

  ‘I no longer think we can work together.’

  ‘You’re giving me the sack?’ She was too astonished to be angry … that presumably would come later—and it had. ‘But I don’t understand. The job is only half done. Have you some complaint about my work? Is this because I spent the rest of the day in bed yesterday, because I would have worked if—’

  ‘Your work has been adequate,’ Robert Smith conceded stiffly. ‘However, certain other matters have been brought to my attention.’

  ‘What matters?’

  He started moving objects around his desk, not quite meeting her eyes. ‘I have given the matter some thought since yesterday.’ He gave a sigh and lifted his head. ‘And unfortunately I have concluded it would be quite unsuitable for a woman of your.’ He stopped, clearing his throat.

  ‘A woman of my what?’

  Lips pursed, his eyes cold behind the horn-rimmed glasses as they slid from hers, he said, ‘This is a small community; there are no secrets. Your exploits, Rose, will soon be common knowledge.’

  ‘Exploits?’ Rose echoed, still in the dark.

  ‘The people here are old-fashioned and as an incomer I have to respect their values. I did have some concern initially about having such a young woman living here,’ he admitted, and Rose thought, God, does every man I meet think I’m out to ravish him? ‘But as you are well qualified I put my concerns to one side. Now, of course, that is out of the question given your dubious history…’

  Rose laughed. She couldn’t help herself, the idea was so ludicrous. Then it hit her in a blinding flash. Her eyes narrowing, she asked in a dangerously calm voice, ‘Have you been talking to Mathieu Demetrios?’ So much for ‘your secret is safe with me’—he hadn’t been able to wait five minutes to spread his vile lies.

  The worm! Not content with humiliating her personally, he had set out with what had to be deliberate malice to ruin her reputation, or, as it happened, Rebecca’s. What a sly, vindictive bastard. If she had ever needed confirmation on her decision not to reveal the case of mistaken identity, she had it.

  All she stood to lose was her job and she had.

  ‘Of course, I will pay you until the end of the month.’

  She would have been the first to advise anyone who found themselves in a similar situation to maintain a dignified silence, take the money that she was due and put the entire episode down to experience.

  It was excellent advice, but Rose had found herself unable to refrain from telling her erstwhile employer that she wouldn’t touch his money with a bargepole, and he wasn’t likely to repeat the offer—not after she had been pretty frank when she had offered her opinion of him.

  Rose asked the driver to wait, which was probably reckless considering her financial situation, but when she made her big exit she didn’t want to have it fall flat because she had to beg a lift to the station.

  It was not a uniformed flunky who opened the vast oak-studded door, but Jamie MacGregor’s sister home for the school holiday. Her look of shock when she saw Rose morphed into a wary smile.

  ‘Oh, hi. I saw you yesterday. You might not have seen me,’ she added awkwardly.

  Rose was too preoccupied to wonder at the teenager’s odd manner. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘You work for Mr Smith.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Do you want Jamie?’

  ‘I want Mathieu.’

  The young girl registered Rose’s gritted teeth, angry eyes and flushed teeth and gave a nervous giggle.

  ‘I’m afraid … the thing is I don’t think that…’

  Rose cut across her. ‘I don’t give a damn if he’s busy or unavailable or anything else because I intend to see him whether he wants to see me or not.’

  ‘I, really, they’re—’

  ‘I want Mathieu.’

  ‘I am quite naturally flattered.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be,’ Rose snapped, tilting her head up to a combative angle to glare at the tall figure that had materialised at the girl’s shoulder.

  She blinked as her gaze travelled up from his gleaming handmade leather shoes to his glossy head. This was the first time she had seen him dressed in anything so formal as a suit and tie. And not just any suit. She was no expert, but it was obvious even to Rose that the dark grey single-breasted number was no more off the peg than the body it covered, and she had to admit Mathieu looked nothing short of breathtakingly spectacular in it.

  Some men relied on power suits to give them presence. Mathieu didn’t need to; he had more presence than any man ought to be allowed.

  Enough presence to make her slightly dizzy 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 resist when he put a hand in the narrow of her back and steered her towards the nearest chair, but she didn’t. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’ Impatience masked the concern he didn’t want to be feeling.

  Why should he feel responsible? It was not his fault that she had worked for someone who was parochial and intolerant. Neither, despite what she thought, had he been telling tales.

  ‘I did not relay the story at all. I suppose it’s possible he simply overheard something that Jamie said.’ Mathieu looked doubtful.

  ‘Jamie …?’ Brushing her hair from her face with her forearm, Rose tilted her head and looked up at him, rolling her eyes in disbelief. ‘My God, is there anyone you didn’t tell?’

  ‘Jamie was in the hotel that night. He heard me complaining about the hotel security and he wormed the story out of me. When he saw you he guessed…’

  ‘Guessed,’ she echoed. ‘You must have dropped some pretty heavy clues.’

  ‘I didn’t need to. Jamie doesn’t miss much. If it’s any comfort, as a consequence of seeing you my standing in his eyes has plummeted.’

  With a dry laugh she lifted her head. ‘That I doubt.’

  ‘It was me, I think.’

  Both turned in unison as the door swung inwards to reveal Fiona standing there. Jamie’s sister looked the picture of guilt.

  Mathieu’s brows twitched into a straight line of disapproval. ‘Fiona, have you been eavesdropping?’

  ‘Yes … no, that is, it wasn’t deliberate the other time.’

  Mathieu’s brows lifted. ‘Other time?’

  Fiona’s eyes slid from his as she shuffled her feet miserably and mumbled, ‘I heard you and Jamie talking about Monaco and the hotel and…’ her eyes lifted to Rose ‘…you. Grace said—’

  ‘Grace?’ Mathieu ran a hand along his jaw, looking impatient. ‘Who is Grace?’

  ‘Who is Grace?’ Fiona echoed, sounding indignant. ‘You know who she is. She’s been my best friend for ever, or since we were four anyway … her dad runs the climbing centre. I texted her and, well, she might have texted Ellie and Ellie probably sent an email to a few other people.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Rose breathed shakily. ‘I think the mystery of how Mr Smith knows the story is solved,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘The only mystery is how there’s anybody left this side of Inverness who doesn’t know.’ Hearing the note of hysteria in her voice, she bit her lip.

  Presumably Mathieu heard it too, because he looked at her oddly before he jerked his head at the teenager and snapped, ‘Out.’ A tearful Fiona fled and he walked across to a bureau, out of which he produced a bottle and a glass. ‘Jamie’s best malt,’ he said, filling the glass.

  ‘If that’s for me,’ Rose said, shaking her head as he walked towards her, ‘I don’t like whisky.’

  ‘It’s medicinal,’ he said, handing it to her.

  With a sigh of irritation she took the glass. ‘I’ve lost my job. I’m angry, not ill.’

  ‘It’s true, you know. Take a sip, it’ll steady your nerves.’

  Not while you’re standing this close, she thought, lifting the liquid to her lips. ‘What’s true?’ she asked, giving a shudder at the taste the sip of peaty malt left in her mouth.

  ‘It’s true Jamie thinks that any man who threw you out of his bed needs therapy.’ Maybe he was right, Mathieu thought as his eyes were drawn once more to the soft lush outline of her pink lips.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she mused, staring into the bottom of the glass, ‘if I had actually done anything … no, actually, I would mind,’ she burst out, levelling a burning resentful glare at Mathieu. ‘So long as I did my job well, my personal life is none of his business, the narrow-minded, pompous little bigot. He said people might get the wrong idea about our relationship. Can you imagine?’ she asked, her voice rising in an incredulous note, before she added with a bitter laugh, ‘Sleep with that cold fish. God,’ she muttered, ‘I’d rather sleep with you!’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  Rose put down the glass very carefully. This interview was not going as planned; by now she ought to be making a grand sweeping exit. The alcohol and fire, she decided, were having an undesirable mellowing effect.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she advised. ‘If there’s one thing I despise more than a sanctimonious prig, it’s a man who can’t resist boasting about his conquests to the boys.’

  ‘Conquest?’ His dark brows rose. ‘Your memory of the occasion is no doubt hazy, but we didn’t actually—’

  ‘No, because I wasn’t good enough for you!’ Almost before the words were out of her mouth Rose was struck by the incongruity of her reaction to his jibe.

  While she felt indignant about the rejection on her twin’s behalf, she also felt relieved. Relieved that Mathieu had resisted Rebecca’s advances, because if he hadn’t … Her though
ts skittered to a halt as a look of stupefied shock spread across her face.

  I’d have been jealous!

  She skimmed a look up at the man responsible for this foreign emotion. She had never been jealous of her twin even though there had been ample cause. Rebecca was always the talented one, the slim one, the passionate one. The one that men were drawn to.

  But Mathieu hadn’t been.

  ‘You were drunk.’ Mathieu dragged his eyes from the heaving contours of her bosom at that moment outlined in heather-blue angora.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ she snarled through gritted teeth. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? My God, but you are so judgemental. Haven’t you ever done anything you regret?’

  ‘I suppose it is something that you can regret it.’

  ‘Did it ever occur to you that there might be a reason for her behaviour? A reason that had nothing to do with you being totally irresistible for what she did that night? Did it ever occur to you that she might have been going through a really traumatic time in her life? That she might have found out the man she was engaged to, the man who dumped her at the altar, was gay?’

  Mathieu watched as she stopped to catch her breath. Presumably her use of the third person was part of the denial thing she had going on.

  ‘You were engaged to be married?’ There was an inflection in his deep voice that she couldn’t quite pin down, but Rose immediately knew that she had made a tactical error.

  Her instinctive desire to offer an explanation for Rebecca’s uncharacteristic behaviour had only resulted in him believing she was trying to excuse herself.

  Eyes shut tight, she groaned in sheer frustration as she bellowed, ‘Not me; we are not talking about me.’

  Mathieu, it seemed, was.

  ‘Of course not.’

  This was said with such obvious insincerity that she wanted to scream.

  Mathieu looked down at his hands and saw they were bunched into fists at his sides. It was irrational to feel the sort of violent antagonism he was experiencing for a total stranger. He took a deep breath and forced his tensed muscles to relax.

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Look, I really don’t want to discuss my personal life with you.’