He only knew that it felt as if a part of him was being wrenched out of place. He was a banker, for heaven’s sake. He shouldn’t feel a client’s pain.
But this was Allie’s pain. Allie, a woman he’d known for less than a day. A woman he was holding, with comfort, but something more. He looked down at her and she looked straight back up at him and he knew that now, for this moment, he wasn’t her banker.
In a fraction of a moment, things had changed, and he knew what he had to do. He knew for now, for this moment in time, what was inevitable, and she did, too.
He cupped her face in his hand, he tilted her chin—and he stooped to kiss her.
* * *
One minute she was feeling sick and sorry and bereft. The next she was being kissed by one of the most gorgeous males she’d ever met.
The most gorgeous male she’d ever met. Her banker.
Her ringmaster?
It had been an appalling day. She was emotionally gutted and he was taking advantage.
But, right now, she wasn’t arguing and he actually wasn’t taking advantage. Or if he was, she wanted him to take advantage. If taking advantage felt like this...
It did feel like this. It felt like... It felt like...
It felt like she should stop thinking and just feel. For this moment she could stop being lonely and fearful and bereft and block every single thought out with the feel of this man’s body.
His mouth was strong, warm, possessive. Persuasive. Seductive? Yes! She was being seduced and that was exactly what she wanted. She wanted to let go. She wanted to forget, and melt into this man’s body with a primeval need.
For there was no fear or loneliness or bereavement in this kiss. Instead she could feel a slow burn, starting at her mouth and spreading. There was another burn starting in her toes and spreading upward, and another in her brain, spreading downward.
In her heart and spreading outward?
She’d gone too long between kisses. In a travelling circus, the opportunities for romance were few and far between. How else to explain this reaction?
But did she need to explain? Stop thinking, she told herself frantically. This is here, this is now and there’s no harm. For now simply open your lips and savour.
And she had no choice, for her mouth seemed to be opening all by itself, welding to his, feeling the heat and returning fire with fire.
Her arms were wrapping round his gorgeous coat, tugging him closer, closer still. Sense had deserted her. For now all she needed was him. All she wanted was him.
Mathew.
His big hands held her, tight, hard and wonderful. Her breasts were moulding to his chest.
She could feel the faint rasp of stubble. She could smell the sheer masculine scent of him.
She could feel the beating of his heart.
She wanted... She wanted...
She didn’t know what she wanted, but what she got was a camel, shoving its nose right between them and braying like an offended...camel?
This was a kiss that needed power to break, but there was something about a camel that made even the most wondrous kiss break off mid-stride.
They broke apart. Allie staggered and Mathew gripped her shoulders and held—but Pharaoh was still between them, his great head looped over their arms, moving in, an impermeable barrier between them.
She heard herself laugh—sort of—or maybe it was more of a sob. At the end of a nightmare day, this had been quite a moment. It was a moment that had lifted her out of dreary and desolate into somewhere she hadn’t known existed. It had warmed her from the inside out. It had made her think...
Or not think. Just feel. That was what she’d wanted, she thought almost hysterically. It had been a miracle all by itself. For a moment she hadn’t thought at all.
But what now? Pharaoh had broken Mathew’s hold on her shoulders. She looked past the big camel and saw Mathew’s face and she thought, he’s as confused as I am.
Not possible. She was so confused she was practically a knot inside.
Or maybe she wasn’t confused. Maybe what she wanted—desperately—was to shove this great lump of a camel aside and will this guy to pick her up and carry her to her caravan. Or not her caravan—that was far too pedestrian for what she was feeling now. What about a five-star hotel, with champagne and strawberries on the side?
Um...not? Sense was sweeping back and she could have wept. She didn’t want sense. She wanted the fantasy. James Bond and the trimmings...
Not James Bond. Mathew Bond, banker.
‘Maybe...maybe that was a bit unwise,’ the banker said, in a voice that was none too steady. ‘I don’t make love to clients.’
And with that, any thought of luxury hotels and vast beds and champagne went right out of the window. Client.
‘And I don’t make love to staff,’ she managed.
‘Staff?’
‘With Grandpa in hospital, I’m in charge of the circus and you’re ringmaster. Staff,’ she snapped and saw a glint of laughter deep in those dark eyes.
Pharaoh nudged forward as if he anticipated the need to intervene again, and Allie leaned against the camel and shoved, so both of them backed a little away from Mathew. To a safer distance.
‘But the ringmaster has the whip,’ Mathew said softly and, to her amazement, he was grinning.
She gasped, half astonished, half propelled to laughter. But she was grateful, she conceded. He was making light of it. She needed to keep it light.
‘There’s a new prop edict as of tomorrow,’ she managed. ‘Whips are off the agenda.’
‘I guess they need to be,’ he said a trifle ruefully. ‘Allie, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’
It needed only that. An apology.
‘I don’t normally...react,’ she said, trying to keep her voice in order.
‘To kissing?’
‘To anything. You caught me at a weak moment.’
‘As I said, I’m sorry.’
They were back to being formal. Absurdly formal.
‘You have your contract,’ she told him. ‘You need to get back to Margot.’
‘I do.’
‘Goodnight, then,’ she said and she clung to her camel. A girl had to hold on to something.
‘You don’t need more help?’
‘I don’t need anything.’
‘I suspect you do,’ he said, his voice gentle. ‘You’re so alone. But I also suspect you don’t need me making love to you. You have enough complications on your plate already.’
‘It was a nice kiss,’ she managed. ‘I quite liked it. But if you think it causes complications you’re way out, Banker. One kiss does not complications make. Goodnight.’
He looked at her for a long moment and she looked right back. Firmly. Using every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep that look firm.
She was aware that Pharaoh had swivelled as well, so both of them were staring.
One girl and one camel...the man didn’t have a chance.
‘Goodnight, then, Allie,’ he said gently. ‘And to you, too, Pharaoh. Sleep well, and let any complications rest until tomorrow.’
‘You’re not a complication,’ Allie snapped.
‘I meant bankruptcy,’ he said, even more gently. ‘I mean the disbanding of your circus as well as your way of life. I didn’t mean me at all.’
And he reached out and touched her, a feather touch, a faint tracing of one strong finger down the length of her cheekbone.
‘I need to come early tomorrow to look through your books,’ he said softly, as if hauling himself back to reality. Hauling himself away from...complications? ‘I’m sorry, but you’re right, this is business. We’ll make it as easy as possible, though. No whips at all.’
CHAP
TER FIVE
HE’D COME TO Fort Neptune to say goodbye to his great-aunt. Instead, he was watching her pack away a comprehensive breakfast and listening to her nudge him in the direction of romance.
‘She’s lovely. I’ve thought she was lovely ever since she was a wee girl. Her grandpa used to pop her on the back of the ponies in her pink tulle and she was so cute...’
‘I’m not in the market for a woman in pink tulle,’ he growled and she grimaced.
‘You’d prefer black corporate? Honestly, Mathew, that last woman you brought down here...’
‘Angela was caught up in a meeting and didn’t have time to change before leaving. She changed as soon as she got here.’
‘Into black and white corporate lounge wear. And she refused to go for a walk on the beach. Mathew, just because you lost your parents and sister, it doesn’t mean you can’t fall in love. Properly, I mean.’
‘There’s the pot calling the kettle black,’ he growled. ‘Your Raymond never came back from the war and you dated again how many times? And that guy who calls every morning and you refuse to see him...Duncan. He’s a widower, he’s your age, he has dogs who look exactly the same as Halibut...’
‘They are not the same. They’re stupid.’
‘They look the same.’
‘They come from the same breeder,’ she said stiffly. ‘Those dogs of Allie’s came from him, too. Allie got the smart ones. I got Halibut and he was the best. Duncan got what was left over.’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘You’re changing the subject,’ she retorted. ‘We were talking about your love life.’
He sighed. ‘Okay. We’re two of a kind,’ he said grimly. ‘We both know where love left us, so maybe we should leave it at that. But are you coming to watch today?’ But he thought...they’d never had a conversation like this. About love?
When he’d mentioned Duncan, Margot had looked troubled. Why? Had he touched a nerve?
A love life? Margot?
‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘My knees are still wobbly.’
‘Because you’ve hardly eaten for months.’
‘My decision not to keep on living is sensible,’ she said with dignity, and he grimaced.
‘It’s dumb. There are always surprises round the corner.’
‘Like you’d notice them. Corporate...’
‘I am,’ he said in a goaded voice, ‘spending most of my day today with pink sparkles.’
‘So you are,’ she said, cheering up, and in silent agreement both of them put the moment of uncharacteristic questioning aside. ‘For two weeks. I hope I’ll be fit to come tomorrow and if I can I’ll come every day until the end.’
The end...
The words hung and emotion slammed back into the room again.
The end of the circus?
‘You won’t go back to dying at the end of the circus, will you?’ he demanded.
‘You won’t go back to corporate?’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘It is fair,’ she retorted. ‘What’s the alternative? Look at you, a banker all your life and nothing else, and will you look at an alternative? Why not get serious about some pink sparkles? It could just change your life.’
‘Like you’re changing your life?’
‘That’s not fair, and you know it.’ Then she hesitated. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘Just because I make mistakes, it doesn’t mean you need to join me.’
‘Margot...’
‘Shoo,’ she said. ‘Go. I’ve made my mistakes. You go right ahead and make yours.’
* * *
He needed to go to the circus, get into those books and make sure the structure was ready for handover,
but the conversation with Margot had unsettled him. Instead, he decided on a morning walk and the walk turned into a run. He had energy to burn.
He had emotion to burn.
Margot was matchmaking. It needed only that. He’d spent half the night awake, trying to figure out how he was feeling, he was no closer now, and Margot’s words had driven his questions deeper.
Allie.
Why had he kissed her? There’d been no reason at all for him to take her face between his hands, tilt her lips to his and kiss her—and Mathew Bond didn’t do things without a reason.
Nor did he get involved.
Thirty years ago, aged six, Mathew had been a kid in a nice, standard nuclear family. He had a mum and a dad and a big sister, Elizabeth—Lizzy—who bossed him and played with him and made all right with his world. Sure, his father was a busy banker and his mum was corporate as well, but he and Lizzy felt secure and beloved.
That all changed one horrendous night when a truck driver went to sleep at the wheel. Mathew was somehow thrown out into the darkness. The others...Who knew? No one talked of it.
He’d woken in hospital, with his Great-Aunt Margot holding him.
‘Mum? Dad? Lizzy?’
He remembered Margot’s tweed coat against his cheek and somehow even at six, he hadn’t needed her to tell him.
After that, his grandfather had simply taken him over. Mathew was, after all, the heir to Bond’s. From the warmth, laughter, the rough and tumble of family life, he’d been propelled into his grandfather’s austere existence, and he’d been stranded there for life.
He learned pretty fast to be self-contained. He had two weeks every summer with Margot, but even then he learned to stay detached. He needed to, because when the holidays ended he woke up once again in his great, barren bedroom in his grandfather’s mausoleum of a house. He’d learned some pain was unbearable, and he’d learned the way to avoid it was to hold himself in.
His aunt Margot cried at the end of each summer holiday but he didn’t. He didn’t do emotion.
And now... He’d come down here trying to figure how to keep himself contained while Margot died. Instead, Margot was dithering over whether to die or not, his self-containment was teetering and a girl/woman in pink sequins was messing with his self-containment even more.
So why had he kissed her?
Lunacy.
Margot was right, he conceded, in her criticism of the women he dated. Inevitably they were corporate colleagues who used him as an accessory, the same way he used them. Sometimes it was handy to have a woman on his arm, and sometimes he enjoyed a woman’s company, but not to the point of emotional entanglement.
And not with a woman who wore her heart on her pink spangled sleeve.
It was Margot causing this confusion, he decided. His distress for his great-aunt had clouded his otherwise cool judgement. Well, that distress could be put aside. For the time being Margot had decided to live.
Because of Allie?
Because she had renewed interest, he told himself. So...He simply had to find her more interests that weren’t related to the circus.
The circus meant Allie.
No. The circus was a group of assets on a balance sheet and those assets were about to be dispersed. Allie was right. Carvers, a huge national circus group with Ron Carver at its head, was circling. The bank had put out feelers already and Carvers could well buy the circus outright.
Keeping Allie on?
This was not his business. Allie was nothing to do with him, he told himself savagely. The way she’d felt in his arms, the way she’d melted into him, had been an aberration, a moment of weakness on both their parts.
He didn’t want any woman complicating his life.
He didn’t want...Allie?
He jogged on. Soon he needed to head back to Margot’s, get himself together and go to the circus.
Actually he was already at the circus. He’d been jogging and thinking and suddenly the circus was just over the grassy verge separating fairground from sea.
And he could see Allie.
Allie was standing by the circus gates, talking vehemently to a policeman.
The policeman had a gun.
* * *
Yeah, okay, policemen with guns didn’t normally spell trouble, though they usually kept them well holstered. Maybe this was a cop organising tickets for his kids to see a show. Or not.
The gun, the body language and the look on Allie’s face had Matt’s strides lengthening without him being conscious of it, and by the time he reached them he figured this was trouble.
The cop looked young, almost too young to be operating alone, but then, Fort Neptune wasn’t known for trouble. The towns further along the coast would be teeming with holidaymakers. The bigger towns had nightclubs. The police force would be stretched to the limit, so maybe it made sense to leave one junior cop on duty in this backwater.
What was wrong? He was surveying the circus as he jogged towards them.
The big top looked okay but something was different. He took a second to figure what it was, then realised a section of the cyclone fencing forming the camels’ enclosure was flattened. The truck’s doors were wide open but the truck was empty.
No camels.
He reached them and Allie gripped his arm as if she feared drowning.
‘The camels...’ she gasped. ‘Matt, you need to stop him.’ She sounded as if she’d been running. Instinctively his arm went round her and held, drawing her into him.
‘Stop what? What’s happened to the camels?’ he asked, holding her tight.
‘They’re at large,’ the cop snapped. ‘Wild animals. You’re holding me up, miss. I need to be out looking.’
‘The crew’s out looking,’ she said, distressed. ‘And they’re not wild.’
‘The report I received said three wild animals.’
‘Tell me what’s happening,’ Matt said in the tone he used when meetings were threatening to get out of control. ‘Now.’
There was a moment’s silence. The cop looked as if he was barely contained. He was little more than a kid, Matt thought, and a dangerous one at that. Any minute now he’d be off, sirens blazing, on a camel hunt. Wanted, dead or alive...
‘Someone broke into the enclosure,’ Allie managed. ‘They used bolt cutters to drop the cyclone fencing. But I don’t understand why they’ve run, why they didn’t just back into the truck. They’re tame,’ she said again to the cop. ‘They’re pussy cats. Who told you they’re wild?’
Sparks Fly with the Billionaire Page 7