From Prim to Improper

by Cathy Williams

  Sure, he had got no closer to finding out what had brought her down to Somerset, or even whether the scant information gleaned from her ex-boss was even relevant. Naturally he still cared, because rich men were natural targets for unscrupulous women, but at what point did he just hold his hands up in defeat and let her get on with whatever she had planned—if anything? He would have to put a deadline on his stay in Somerset, despite what he had said about remaining here for the foreseeable future. Strangely, the allure of London, with its cut-throat pace, was failing to weave its magic spell. Give it another month and he’d be chewing on a twig, adopting a West Country burr and still would probably be nowhere near finding out what the hell she was up to.

  He was reluctantly beginning to acknowledge the fact that a man never knew what the hell was going on in a woman’s mind. How could someone be transparent and opaque at the same time? Be practical yet ditzy? Composed under pressure but addled in the most relaxed surroundings—like now? Lazy, predatorial eyes took in everything about her, from the tension that had her sitting upright like a wooden marionette, to the very slight tremble of her fingers and the beating pulse just there at the side of her neck.

  He was sick of waiting for her to slip up and reveal something, anything, that could put his mind at rest, that could reassure him she could be fully trusted.

  There had to be better and more interesting ways to get information—and his whirring, inventive brain was already beginning to come up with one.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ELIZABETH was having a dream. In the dream, a high, terrifying wind was raging outside and the branches of the trees were tapping hard against the window panes like scrawny fingers trying to grab her attention. But her attention was somewhere else. It was on the man in the bed with her. His bronzed, muscular limbs were wrapped around her so that their bodies were a tangle of light and dark. His hands were curled into her hair, which was strewn across the pillow, and she was writhing and moaning as he touched every part of her, from her face down to her toes. Even in the dream there was still a part of her that found it difficult to equate the sensuous, uninhibited creature with the person she knew she was.

  She came to very slowly to the sound of someone rapping on her bedroom door, and when she groggily sat up the little pink alarm-clock at the side of her bed informed her that it was three in the morning.

  It took a few seconds for her to disentangle herself from the debauched eroticism of her dream, and a few more seconds for her to appreciate that rapping on her door at a ridiculous hour could only herald bad news—which could only mean that there was something wrong with James, even though he had been as fit as a fiddle when she had said goodnight to him six hours previously. Having lived with the vagaries of her mother’s health for two years, she was well aware how quickly a downturn could happen.

  She flung on her dressing gown and was fumbling with the sash as she pulled open the door.

  Having mentally braced herself to see James, and having halfway worked out a worst-case scenario and how she would deal with it, she was poleaxed to discover that her late-night caller was Andreas. He was in a bathrobe, which was thick and black; since he hadn’t bothered to do anything as mundane as belt it, it was hanging open, revealing boxer shorts and nothing else.

  Still hot and bothered from the sexy, abandoned, graphic nature of her dream, she was excruciatingly aware of his black eyes boring through her skull, and said a quick prayer of thanks that he actually couldn’t drag her wicked thoughts out of her head by sheer will-power.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve just spent the last twenty minutes foraging for some more tablets downstairs. Where in God’s name do you keep them?’

  ‘You woke me up at three in the morning because you need some paracetomol?’

  ‘I’m ill. Too ill to spend the rest of what remains of my valuable down-time hunting through kitchen drawers.’ Rumpled from sleep, Elizabeth’s eyes were drowsy, and her hair hung down her back in a tangle of copper curls. Gone was the super-efficient secretary; gone was the bumbling, gauche girl who had planted terrified green eyes on him the first time he had seen her. In her place was a small, sexy Elizabeth, one who was definitely all woman. She tightly belted her dressing gown with a fierce little tug and made an indeterminate, disgruntled sound under her breath.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she muttered, sweeping past him and feeling the brush of his skin against hers with red-hot, electric sensitivity. ‘Didn’t you think to take the pack up with you, along with a glass of water?’

  ‘I’m not accustomed to the routines of sick people.’

  ‘It’s not a routine. It’s common sense.’ She could feel his eyes on her as she descended the staircase in darkness, moving slowly while her eyes got used to the lack of light, then switching on the lamp on the table at the bottom of the stairs. She spun round to shoot him an accusing look—a look that said ‘this is definitely not one of my expected secretarial duties’—and discovered that he was so close behind her that their bodies were almost touching.

  Expert as Andreas was in the shades and nuances of female behaviour, he noted the way she shifted back in alarm. She could no longer hide behind her neat, prissy, secretarial uniform, and that would be bothering her. He would bet his enormous fortune on her tightening the strangulating belt around her waist with another decisive tug, and sure enough she did.

  Elizabeth turned away, walking briskly towards the kitchen, and then beyond the kitchen to the larder. She pulled the little step-ladder from the corner, flipped it open and stepped on it so that she could reach the top shelf, where all the medicines were kept in two sealed, plastic containers.

  ‘I don’t suppose you thought to look here?’ she said tartly, turning round to find that she was looking down at him. Only a little bit, but it was a first.

  ‘Would I have woken you if I had?’

  ‘I don’t know. You certainly seem to be making the most out of a passing summer cold.’

  Andreas didn’t answer. Instead he reached forward and Elizabeth felt his big hands wrap around her slender torso. Then she was pulled from the step-ladder, spluttering and red-faced.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  He deposited her on the ground and she leapt back to glare at him. ‘I’m being solicitous. I thought you might have appreciated the gesture.’

  Elizabeth tried to dust herself off, from where her skin literally burnt from being touched, while Andreas looked on with amusement. He didn’t look ill. A bit flushed in the face, maybe, but not as much as she was at the moment after that ridiculous, unnecessary act of so-called chivalry. In the time that she had been working for him, not once had he laid a finger on her!

  Except, she wasn’t wearing her secretarial hat now, was she? She was wearing a dressing gown and not much else underneath. A dressing gown that had loosened when he had hauled her off her step-ladder, where she had been feeling quite comfortable staring down at him instead of the other way around. She made a nervous little movement to straighten herself, and thrust the box of tablets into his hand.

  ‘I take it you know where the water is? And glasses?’

  ‘Either I make you nervous…’ Andreas lazily rolled the box of tablets between his long fingers while he looked at her with slumberous dark eyes ‘…and you become twitchy and flustered, or else I make you nervous and you go for my jugular.’

  ‘You don’t make me nervous!’ For the first time, there was a comforting ring of truth about this. Gone was the time when the mere knowledge that he was occupying the same space as her was enough to turn her insides to water, much like a rabbit stuck in the same room as a python. No, he didn’t make her nervous in that way any more. She had become accustomed to him, and could handle the ferocity of his intelligence and his unpredictability with a lot more composure now. It was a usefu
l thought, and one in which she decided to take immediate comfort. ‘And I’m not going for your jugular.’ She wished he would get out of her way because he was standing in front of the door to the larder, blocking her in, but she quailed at the thought of trying to push past him.

  She folded her arms decisively and gave him a beetling look, which was a mistake, because instead of putting a stop to their silly conversation it brought a slow, curling smile to his sensuous mouth.

  ‘I’m glad I no longer make you nervous,’ Andreas said huskily. ‘It shows that we’re getting to know one another, getting more comfortable in each other’s company. Wouldn’t you agree?’ He leaned against the doorframe in the manner of one settling in for the long haul.

  ‘I’ve become accustomed to your mood swings, I suppose.’

  ‘Mood swings? I don’t consider myself a moody person.’

  ‘There are several people who have been on the receiving end of your conversations who might be inclined to disagree. Anyway, Andreas, it’s late.’ She produced a yawn, which developed into a real one, and ran her fingers through her unrestrained hair. More than anything else, she felt that her over-long hair, which was unruly and uncontrollable and which should have been cut a long time ago, put her at a disadvantage. It made her too aware of her own female sexuality in a way that was unwelcome and discomforting. It was bad enough working alongside the man, having to make sure that she could take refuge behind her strict working-clothes and working persona, without having to face him without her work hat in place.

  ‘If you don’t mind…?’ She looked significantly at the door which he continued to block, and Andreas meekly stood aside with an apologetic expression.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I hope you feel better in the morning but, if you don’t, just let me know. There are a million and one things that need doing in the village, or else I could spend the afternoon working without you if you think I might be taking advantage otherwise.’

  This wasn’t what Andreas wanted. He didn’t feel nearly as rough as he had implied, and he had been enjoying their little tête à tête. In fact, he had been enjoying the confined space of the larder, and the tantalising sight of her wiggling up the little ladder, providing him with a wonderful view of her sexy little derrière, one which he realised he had been covertly looking at ever since he had found himself in close quarters with her in his makeshift office.

  What else had he been looking at without even realising? He certainly had been fantasising about seeing that hair in all its glory, and he wasn’t disappointed. Indeed, his fingers itched to coil into the long strands so that he could exert control over her stubborn mouth, bring it to meet his and kiss it into begging submission.

  He felt his erection stiffen under the bathrobe, kick starting all his natural hunting instincts.

  Since when, he wondered, had she begun getting under his skin like this? The tantalising notion of seducing her as a means to an end…who was he kidding? Sure, he still wanted to get inside her head and find out whatever dark little secret she was hiding—but much more than that he just wanted to get into her knickers and explore one or two other places. He wanted to hear her cry out his name and he wanted those feline green eyes, the colour of rain-washed sea, to look at him in the kind of needy, greedy way he would normally discourage in a woman.

  In fact, the list of things he wanted to do with her was getting longer by the second.

  While she continued to head for the door in the firm manner of a matron bidding a relieved goodnight to a troublesome patient.

  ‘Hey! Just a minute!’

  Elizabeth turned around to watch as he casually stuck a glass under the tap, and then turned the tap on to full force so that the water splashed indiscriminately over every nearby surface. Andreas didn’t seem bothered. He kept his eyes focused on her as he swallowed the tablets and then dumped the glass on the draining board.

  This was just one of the little things she had managed to absorb about him over time. For a bachelor, he was stupendously undomesticated. Mugs were left to form damaging circles on expensive tables; feet were rested on the desk with complete disregard to the fact that, whether or not the shoes on said feet were of exorbitant, hand-made Italian leather, they were still shoes with traces of grime, mud and gravel underneath. On occasion, she had entered the office, punctual to the last minute, to find him absorbed in some item of work with a sandwich in his hand and a riot of crumbs covering most of the exposed surfaces, marking a trail where he had prowled through the room, eating, reading and probably barking out orders to someone on speaker-phone.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to escort the patient back to his bed? Make sure he doesn’t keel over halfway up the stairs?’

  ‘You’re not a patient. I’m not a doctor.’

  ‘No, you’re my secretary.’

  ‘And is that supposed to mean that this is one of my secretarial duties?’

  Andreas’s beautiful face tightened into lines of icy derision, and Elizabeth immediately felt contrite. She had thrown his banter back in his face, and established those boundary lines that had been evading her, but she didn’t feel victorious. She felt mean, petty and mealy-mouthed. Soiled, even, like someone who only did a good deed in the expectation of being rewarded. Like someone with a bone-deep sense-of-humour failure, incapable of being light-hearted, and quick to reject any show of harmless, innocent teasing.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m just tired…’ She cast her eyes miserably downwards.

  ‘I could always pay you extra—for the extra duties,’ Andreas told her with cold reproval. He wasn’t ready to let go of his anger because her recoil at the thought of actually accompanying him up the stairs had carried the sour taste of rejection, and rejection wasn’t a feeling he had ever had much to do with. For the first time, it occurred to him that she had only relaxed in his company over the past few weeks because she had had no choice. She would never have been able to function had she been as tightly stretched as violin wire, and function she had had to do, so she had taken a deep breath and suffered him. Was it possible that the woman genuinely couldn’t stand his guts?

  The notion flashed through his head and disappeared before it could take root, snuffed out by his inborn self-assurance. But, whatever, watching her eyes widen in alarm at the thought of walking up a dozen stairs in his company still enraged him.

  Perversely, his anger did nothing to dissipate the powerful surge of his physical response to her. In fact, the thought of her breathing his name in the throes of passion, begging him to take her, was even more seductive now.

  ‘You’re tired,’ he said brusquely, walking towards her. ‘And I was a fool to have said what I just said. I apologise.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I apologise,’ Andreas told her simply, with a shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘And I apologise for waking you for no better reason than to ask where the painkillers were kept.’

  ‘But you’re not programmed to think about painkillers.’ She allowed herself to smile, glad that that horrible moment of indescribable tension was over. ‘Or the practicalities of where to find them when you need them. As you said, you’re not accustomed to the routines of a sick person.’

  She switched off the kitchen light behind them as they silently headed across the sprawling flag-stoned hallway towards the majestic staircase.

  ‘Do you know,’ Elizabeth said softly, tempted into confidence by her curious lightheadedness because they were okay with one another again, ‘not a day goes by that I don’t appreciate what a glorious house this is?’

  ‘Not to mention a change from a bedsit.’ But he was in no mood to introduce a jarring note to their conversation, so he found himself swerving off into that taboo area labelled ‘personal’ in his head—the door which was usually closed to prying female eyes. �
�But I agree with you.’

  ‘You do? Surely you must have become accustomed to all of this over the years?’ She heard the wistfulness creep into her voice and cleared her throat.

  ‘I grew up in this house,’ Andreas said slowly. ‘These grounds were my own private playground. But my father was just an employee here. I don’t suppose you knew that.’

  Elizabeth shook her head in the darkness and tried to walk as slowly as possible, because Andreas saying anything of a personal nature to her was a moment to be drawn out for as long as humanly possible. She was surprised she was managing to breathe at all.

  ‘No. I didn’t.’

  ‘So I may not have lived in a two-up, two-down, but believe me in my head I was always aware that that should have been my fate.’ Andreas laughed, vaguely disconcerted that he was doing this whole confiding thing, which he had always presumed to be the exclusive realm of women and one in which he had little interest.

  ‘Didn’t—didn’t James’s wife object to—you know?—having you as a surrogate son, so to speak?’ James was never unkind about the woman who had shared his life; as for her mother, the woman who had shared his bed and his heart, she had not once been mentioned. In fact, he seldom mentioned his deceased wife.

  ‘Portia was only interested in herself and in the things James could provide for her materially. She made an excellent hostess, but lord only knows whether the marriage would have lasted beyond the first few years if the money hadn’t kept rolling in. So, no, she never objected to myself or my parents. But she made it known that, whilst her husband might like playing the philanthropist, she still saw us as the hired help.’ His mouth twisted at the remembered slight, delivered when he’d been barely a teenager. ‘“Pet projects”, she once informed me.’ They were at his bedroom door and he realised that he was perspiring slightly—either from his unexpected trip down memory lane, or from the slight fever which was threading through him, despite his valiant efforts to shake it off.