If he was relieved or disappointed he didn’t show it. ‘We’re wasting valuable time.’ He turned and strode back to the cottage and took out his phone. ‘Call your mother while I call my father. They might have switched their phones back on.’
Audrey let out a sigh and followed him into the cottage. She’d tried calling her mother’s phone fifty-three times already. Even under normal circumstances, her mother would only pick up if she wanted to talk to Audrey and even then the conversation would be Sibella-centred and not anything that could be loosely called a mutual exchange. She couldn’t remember the time she had last talked to her mother. Really talked. Maybe when she was four years old? Her mother wasn’t the type to listen to others. Sibella was used to people fawning over her and waiting with bated breath for her to talk to them about her acting career and colourful love life.
Audrey should be so lucky to have a love life...even a black and white one would do.
* * *
Lucien left a curt message on his father’s answering service—one of many he’d left in the last twenty-four hours—and put away his phone. He had to get back on the road and away from the temptation of Audrey Merrington. Being anywhere near her was like being on a forty-day fast and suddenly coming across a sumptuous feast. He had damn near kissed her down by her wrecked car. Everything that was male in him ached to haul her into his arms and plunder her soft mouth with his. How easy would it have been to crush his mouth to hers? How easy would it have been to draw those sweet and sexy curves of hers even closer?
Too easy.
Scarily easy.
So easy he had to get a grip because he shouldn’t be having such X-rated thoughts around Audrey. He shouldn’t be looking at her mouth or her curves or any beautiful part of her. He shouldn’t be thinking about making love to her just because she threw herself into his arms over that wretched spider. When she had launched herself at him like that, a rush of desire charged through him like high-voltage electricity. Just as it had at their parents’ last wedding. Her curves-in-all-the-right-places body had thrown his senses into a tailspin like a hormone-driven teenager. He could still smell her sweet pea and spring lilac perfume on the front of his shirt where she’d pressed herself against him. He could still feel the softness of her breasts and the tempting cradle of her pelvis.
He could still feel the rapacious need marching through his body. Damn it.
He would have to stop wanting her. He would have to send his resolve to boot camp so it could withstand more of her cheeky ‘Were you thinking about kissing me?’ comments. He wasn’t just thinking about kissing her. He was dreaming of it, fantasising about it, longing for it. But he had a feeling one kiss of her delectable mouth would be like trying to eat only one French fry. Not possible.
But he could hardly leave her here at the cottage without a car. He would have to take her with him. What else could he do? When he’d first seen her at the cottage he’d decided the best plan was for them to drive in two cars so they could tag-team it until they tracked down their respective parents. He hadn’t planned a cosy little one-on-one road trip with her. That would be asking for the sort of trouble he could do without.
Audrey came back into the sitting room from the kitchen and put her phone on the coffee table in front of the sofa with a defeated-sounding sigh. ‘No answer. Maybe they’re on a flight somewhere.’
He dragged a hand down his face so hard he wondered if his eyebrows and eyelashes would slough off. Could this nightmare get any worse? ‘This seemed the most obvious place they’d come to. They used to sneak down here together a lot during their first marriage. My father raved about it—how quaint and quiet it was.’
She perched on the arm of the sofa, a small frown settling between her brows, the fingers of her right hand plucking at the fabric of her dress as if it was helping her to mull over something. ‘I know, that’s why I came here first. But maybe they wanted us to come here.’
‘You mean, like giving us a false lead or something?’
She gave him an unreadable look and stopped fiddling with her dress and crossed her arms over her middle. ‘Or something.’
‘What ‘‘or something’’?’ A faint prickle crawled over his scalp. ‘You mean, they wanted us both to come here? But why?’
She gave a lip shrug. ‘My mother finds it amusing that you and I hate each other so much.’
Lucien frowned. ‘I don’t hate you.’
She lifted her neat brows like twin question marks. ‘Don’t you?’
‘No.’ He hated the way she made him feel. Hated the way his body had a wicked mind of its own when she was around. Hated how he couldn’t stop thinking about kissing her and touching her and seeing if her body was as delectable as it looked under the conservative clothes she always seemed to wear.
But he wasn’t a man driven by his hormones. That was his father’s way of doing things. Lucien had will power and discipline and he was determined to use them. He would not be reduced to base animal desires just because a pretty, curvy woman got under his skin.
And Audrey Merrington was so far under his skin he could feel his organs shifting inside to make room.
‘Good to know, since we’re going to be related again,’ she said with a deadpan expression.
‘Not if I can help it.’ Lucien was not going to rest until he’d prevented this third disastrous marriage. His father had almost drunk himself into oblivion the last time. There was no way he was going to stand by and watch that happen again. He was sick of picking up the pieces. Sick of trying to put his father back together again like a puzzle with most of the bits damaged or missing.
He picked up his keys. ‘Come on. We’d best get on the road before nightfall. I’ll organise someone to collect your car when we get back to London.’
She stood up from the arm of the sofa so quickly her feet thudded against the floor like punctuation marks. ‘But I don’t want to go with—’
‘Will you damn well just do what you’re told?’ Lucien was having trouble controlling his panic at how much time they were wasting. His father could be halfway through his honeymoon at this rate. Not to mention his bank balance. ‘You don’t have a car, so therefore you come with me. Understood?’
She pursed her lips for a moment as if deciding whether or not to defy him. But then she stalked over to where she had left her overnight bag and her tote, and, picking them up, threw him a mutinous look that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the deck of The Bounty. ‘You can take me back to my flat in London. I’m not going anywhere else with you.’
‘Fine.’ He opened the front door of the cottage so she could walk out ahead of him. ‘Go and sit in the car while I lock up.’
* * *
Audrey went to his car, sat inside and pulled the seat belt into place with a savage click. Why did he have to be so cavemanish about getting her to go with him? She could have had a hire car delivered or got a friend to collect her. Even a taxi would be worth the expense rather than suffering a couple of hours in Lucien’s disturbing and far too tempting company. The last thing she wanted to do was to make a fool of herself again. She wasn’t eighteen now. She wasn’t twenty-one. She was twenty-five and mature enough—she hoped—to put this silly crush to bed once and for all.
Okay, so that wasn’t the best choice of words.
She would nix her crush on Lucien. It was just a physical thing. It wasn’t a cerebral or emotional thing. It was lust. Good old-fashioned lust and it would burn out sooner or later as long as she didn’t feed it. Which meant absolutely no fantasising about his mouth. She wouldn’t even look at it. She wouldn’t daydream about it coming down on hers and his tongue gliding through the seam of her lips and—
Audrey pinched herself on the arm like someone flicking an elastic band around their wrist to stop themselves from smoking. This was like any other addiction and she had to stop it. She had to stop it right now.
She would be strong. She would conquer this.
Besides, according to Rosie and her gossip magazine source, Lucien was in a committed relationship. It was weird how edgy it made her feel to think of him in a long-term relationship. Why should she care if he was practically engaged? Was he in love with Viviana Prestonward? Funny, but Audrey couldn’t imagine him falling in love. He was nowhere near the playboy his father was between marriages, but neither was he a plaster saint. He dated women for a month or two and then moved on.
She sat in the passenger seat of his top model BMW as he got on with the business of locking up the cottage and putting the key under the left-hand plant pot. It seemed strange that he knew the cottage routine so well. She’d always loved the place because it was something she and her mother had shared before all the crazy celebrity stuff happened. But apparently Sibella had shared it with Harlan and now Lucien.
Audrey waited until he got behind the wheel of his car to ask, ‘How many times have you been down here?’
‘To the cottage?’
‘You knew where to put the spare key. I figured you must have been here before or someone’s told you the routine.’
He started the engine and did a neat three-point turn on the driveway. His arm was resting on the back of her seat so close to her neck and shoulders she suppressed a tiny shiver. ‘I came down for a weekend once.’
‘When?’
‘A month or two before their second divorce.’ His tone was casual but his hands on the steering wheel tightened. ‘They asked me down for the weekend. They asked you too, but you had something else on. A date, your mother said.’
Audrey could remember being invited to spend the weekend with her mother and Harlan but neither of them had mentioned inviting Lucien. She’d declined the invitation, as she hadn’t wanted her mother and Harlan to think she sat at home every weekend with nothing better to do than read or watch soppy movies. Which was basically what she did most weekends, but still.
Why had they invited him as well as her? They were well aware of the enmity between her and Lucien. ‘Why did you accept the invitation? I can’t imagine spending a weekend with them would have been high on your list of priorities.’
He drove along the country lane where leaves and small branches from the trees littered the road and along the roadside after the thrashing of the earlier wind. ‘True. But I had nothing better to do that weekend and I wanted to see the cottage for myself. My father had talked about it a few times.’
‘So, no hot date with a supermodel that weekend, huh?’ Audrey said. ‘My heart bleeds.’
He flicked a glance her way. ‘How was your date that weekend? Worth the sacrifice of missing out on a weekend with your mother and my father?’
‘It was great. Fun. Amazing. The best date ever.’ Stop already.
‘Are you dating the same guy now?’
Audrey laughed. Who said she couldn’t act? ‘No. I’ve had dozens since him.’
‘So, no one permanent?’
She chanced a glance at him. ‘What’s with all the questions about my love life?’
He shrugged. ‘Just wondering if you’ve got plans to settle down.’
‘Nope. Not me.’ She turned back to face the front and crossed one leg over the other and folded her arms. ‘I’ve been to enough of my mother’s weddings to last a lifetime. Two lifetimes.’ She waited a beat and added with what she hoped sounded like mild interest, ‘What about you?’
‘What about me?’
Audrey glanced at him again. ‘Do you plan to get married one day?’
He continued to look at the road in front, negotiating fallen branches and puddles and potholes. ‘Maybe one day.’
‘One day soon or one day later?’
Why are you asking that?
‘Why the sudden interest in my private life?’
Audrey couldn’t explain the strange feeling in her stomach—a dragging sensation, a weight that felt as heavy as a tombstone—at the thought of Lucien getting married one day. ‘I could read about it in the gossip pages but I thought I’d ask you directly. Just in case what’s in the papers isn’t true.’
‘What did you read?’
‘I didn’t read it myself but someone who did told me you’re about to get engaged to Viviana Prestonward.’
He made a grunting sound. ‘It’s not true.’
She turned in her seat to look at him but he suddenly frowned and pushed down hard on the brakes. ‘Damn it to hell.’
Audrey turned to look at the road ahead where his gaze was trained. A large tree had fallen across the wooden bridge, bringing down a portion of it and making it impassable. ‘Oh, dear. That doesn’t look good.’
Lucien thumped the heel of his hand on the steering wheel, then turned to look at her, frowning so heavily his eyebrows were knitted. ‘Is there any other way around this stream? Another road? Another bridge?’
Audrey shook her head. ‘Nope. One road in. One road out.’
He swore and let out a harsh-sounding breath. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Welcome to life in the country.’
He got out of the car and strode over to the broken bridge, standing with his hands on his hips and his feet slightly apart. Audrey came over to stand next to him, conscious of the almost palpable tension in his body.
‘Can it be...repaired?’ Her voice came out one part hesitant, two parts hopeful. ‘I mean, maybe we can call someone from the council to fix it. We could tell them it’s an emergency or something.’
He turned away from the bridge with another muttered curse. ‘There are far bigger emergencies than a single-lane bridge on a lane in the countryside that only a handful of people use.’ He strode towards his car, kicking a fallen branch out of the way with his foot. ‘We’ll have to stay at the cottage until I can get a helicopter down here to take us out.’
Audrey stopped dead like she had come up against an invisible wall. But in a way she had. The invisible wall of her fear of flying. Flying in helicopters, to be precise. No way was she going in a helicopter. No flipping way. Give her a spider any day. Give her a roomful of them. She would cuddle a colony of spiders but flying in an overgrown egg-beater was not going to happen.
Lucien glanced back at her when he got to his car. ‘What’s wrong?’
Audrey gave a gulping swallow, her stomach churning so fast she could have made butter. ‘I’m not going in a helicopter.’
‘Don’t worry—I’ll clear out the spiders first.’
‘Very funny.’
He held the passenger door open for her in a pointed manner. ‘Are you coming with me or do you plan to walk back?’
Audrey walked to his car and slipped into the passenger seat, keeping her gaze averted. He closed the door and went around to his side and was soon back behind the wheel and doing one of his masterful three-point turns that, if she were driving, would have taken five or six turns. Possibly more...that was, if she didn’t end up with the car in the ditch in the process. She looked at the brooding sky and suppressed a shudder. She had to think of a way back to London that didn’t involve propellers.
‘I should be able to get a helicopter first thing in the morning,’ Lucien said. ‘I’d try for one now but I’m not sure the weather is all that favourable.’
Argh! Don’t remind me how dangerous it is to fly in one of those things.
‘I’m surprised Britain’s most successful forensic accountant doesn’t have a helicopter or two of his own waiting on stand-by.’
‘Yes, well, I’m too much of a bean-counter to throw money away on unnecessary luxuries. I leave that sort of thing to my father.’
CHAPTER THREE
THE SHORT TRIP back to the cottage was mostly silent, mainly because Audrey was trying to control her fear at the thought of having to leave in a helicopter in the morning. Maybe she should have got her
therapist to work with her on that issue instead of the arachnophobia. But it wasn’t every day she had to face a ride in a helicopter. Surely the road would be cleared in a day or two at the most? It wasn’t like she’d be stuck down here for weeks or months on end.
But if the next morning’s flight was a worry, there was this evening to get through first. Sharing the cottage with Lucien for one night—for one minute—was not going to help her little fantasy problem. It would be like trying to give up chocolate and spending the night in a chocolate factory.
Big mistake.
When Lucien helped her out of the car, the smell of rain-washed earth was as sweet as the perfume of the flowers in the overgrown garden. She could have got out of the car herself but she kind of liked the way he always got there first. No one had ever opened the door for her before. People always rushed to open her mother’s door whenever Audrey had accompanied her to an event but she was always left to fend for herself.
She followed him back to the front door of the cottage, waiting while he got the key from under the pot, doing her best not to feast her eyes on his taut buttocks when he bent down to lift it up. He unlocked the door and swept his arm in front of his body. ‘After you.’
Audrey chewed at the inside of her mouth and tried to ignore the prickling shiver moving over her skin. Had that spider had company? As far as she was concerned, there was no such thing as a single spider—they were all married with large families. What if there were dozens inside? Maybe even hundreds? Didn’t heavy rain drive them indoors? What if a whole colony of them was setting up camp right now? What if they were crawling up and down the walls and over every surface? What if they were in every cupboard? Every drawer? Every corner? What if they were lurking in the shadows just waiting for her to come in? What if one dropped on her head and tiptoed its sticky legs all over her face? What if—? ‘Erm...maybe you should go in first in case the spider has found its way back in.’
If he found her suggestion annoying or silly he didn’t show it. ‘Wait here.’
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