by Liz Fielding
‘Who knows? Toby’s bright enough, but he’s never allowed work to interfere with his weekends on the rugby field. He’s always put that first. To be honest, I never thought he was that interested in property sales and management. I had the impression that his family had pushed him into the day job.’
Toby. He logged the name to look up later. ‘I’m surprised he got the job at all if that’s his attitude.’
‘His great-aunt is married to Peter Black.’
‘Oh.’
‘He’s just turned twenty-three,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe he’s realised he’s not going to get a professional contract.’
‘He lost his dream so stole yours? It demonstrates a ruthless streak. That’s vital in business, or so I’m told.’
‘It’s a trait he kept well hidden. I still find it hard to believe…’ She shrugged, letting whatever it was she found hard to believe go. ‘Lazy and ruthless is a bad combination, Darius. Would you want him at your back in a crisis? More to the point, would you want to work for a man who’d thrown you to the wolves without a proper hearing? Without any kind of investigation? Forget Toby Denton. He might have my promotion, but it’ll always be second best as far as he’s concerned. It’s Miles I can’t forgive. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I work for him again.’
‘Never say never,’ he reminded her and got a reprise of the smile for his pains.
‘Maybe if he offered me a full partnership,’ she said, ‘which is undoubtedly his version of a cold day in hell at the moment.’
‘Okay, I get it. It’s not going to happen, but if you don’t want revenge,’ he asked, ‘and you don’t want your job back, what do you want?’
Natasha’s shoulders dropped a fraction. Darius knew that he’d asked the right question, but didn’t know whether to kick himself or cheer as her lips softened into the smile he’d asked for. The one that reached her eyes.
His body was divided on the issue; his brain was definitely up for the kicking while the rest of him was responding like a Labrador puppy offered a biscuit.
While he distracted himself by capturing her mouth on paper, Natasha cupped her hands around her warm mug, leaned her hip against the arm of the sofa, making herself at home.
‘A week ago I could have walked into any real estate agency in London and been offered a job,’ she said. ‘Since I’ve become available, my phone has remained ominously silent.’
‘Are you surprised?’
‘No, and I haven’t embarrassed anyone by reminding them of their generous offers.’
‘I’m sure they’re all extremely grateful for your tact,’ he said, unable to resist a smile of his own. Forget the allure of a body made for sin, he was beginning to like Natasha Gordon. She’d just had the feet knocked out from under her but she’d come up fighting.
‘I don’t imagine they’ve given me a second thought. I’m history, Darius. I’ll have to restore my hard-earned reputation before anyone will give me the time of day.’ She paused, evidently hoping he’d chip in at this point. He drew the line of her jaw. Firm, determined… ‘The only way I can do that is by selling Hadley Chase,’ she said, offering him the opportunity to help her out.
‘Then you really are in trouble.’
‘That makes two of us,’ she said, taking a sip of her tea. ‘I admit that it will require a certain amount of ingenuity and imagination to pull it off, but who has a bigger incentive?’ She looked sideways at him, blinking as she caught him staring at her, but this time she didn’t look away. ‘Who would work harder to find you a buyer?’ she asked. ‘And for nothing?’ she added as a final incentive.
‘For nothing? You’ll be drummed out of the estate agents guild,’ he warned.
Her lips twitched into another of those little smiles. Parts of him twitched involuntarily in response. His head didn’t have a chance.
‘Believe me, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer. What have you got to lose?’ Energy, excitement at the challenge poured off her in an almost physical wave. ‘We’re a match made in heaven.’
He shook his head, afraid that he’d already lost it. He shouldn’t even be having the conversation. The lawyers would have a fit.
‘An estate agent no one will employ and a house no one can sell? That sounds more like hell to me,’ he said, but he was unable to stop himself from laughing. She was bright, intelligent and, under other circumstances—the uncomplicated, no strings, hot sex circumstances—would no doubt be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, this was getting more complicated by the moment.
‘I’m not promising heaven,’ she protested, ‘but it won’t be hell. Honestly.’
That he could believe… ‘I bet you say that to all the poor saps trying to sell a house in a recession.’
‘I do my best to give it to them straight,’ she replied. ‘And I do everything I can to help them to make the best of the property they’re selling. That’s my job.’
‘Paint it magnolia and hide the clutter in the cupboards?’ he suggested.
‘Getting rid of the clutter so that you can open the cupboards is better. Storage space is a big selling point.’ She looked at him over the mug. ‘Giving the place a good clean helps. Brushing out the dead leaves. Fixing broken windows.’
He frowned. ‘Are you telling me that there’s a broken window at the Chase?’
‘You didn’t know? I did point it out to your caretaker. He said he’d mention it to the executors.’
And they hadn’t bothered to mention it to him. Well, he’d made his position clear enough. Not interested…
‘Look, I’m not pretending that it’s going to be easy,’ she said. ‘You’re not selling a well-kept four-bed detached house in an area with good schools.’
‘I wouldn’t need you if I was.’
It was an admission that he did need her and they both knew it.
‘What I’m promising, Darius, is that you won’t have to be personally involved in any way.’ She reached out a sympathetic hand, but curled her fingers back before it touched his arm. Even so, his skin tightened at the imperceptible movement of air and the shiver of it went right through him. ‘I do understand how difficult this must be for you.’
‘I doubt it.’ Nobody could ever begin to understand how he felt about the Chase. The complex mix of memories, emotions it evoked.
‘No, of course not, but Hadley Chase has been in your family for centuries. I can see how it must hurt to be the one who has to let it go.’
‘Is that what you think?’ he asked, looking up from those curled-up fingers, challenging her. ‘That I’m ashamed because I’ve failed to hold on to it?’
‘No! Of course not.’ The blush flooded back to her cheeks. ‘Why should you be? This is the fault of preceding generations.’ The possibility that by criticising his recent ancestors she might be digging an even bigger hole for herself must have crossed her mind and she moved swiftly on. ‘I’ll do everything possible to make this as painless as possible,’ she promised. ‘All you have to do is let the caretaker and your lawyer know that I’ll be handling things on your behalf, then you needn’t give it another thought.’
This time his laugh was forced, painful. ‘If you could guarantee that you’d have a deal.’
‘I can guarantee that I won’t disturb you again without a very good reason,’ she assured him.
Too late. Natasha Gordon was the most disturbing woman he’d ever met, but the Chase was a millstone around his neck, a darkness at the heart of his family, his grandfather’s last-ditch attempt to regain control of a world he’d once dominated, ruled. To control the future. To control him. The sooner he was rid of it, the burden lifted, the better.
‘Suppose I agree to let you loose on it,’ he said, as if it wasn’t already a done deal, ‘do you have a plan?’
‘A plan?’
‘You don’t have an advertising budget,’ he pointed out, ‘or a shop window for passers-by to browse in, or even a listing in the Yellow Pages.’
‘No, but I do have the
Internet, social media.’
Oh, shit…
‘Did you say something?’
Not out loud, he was almost certain, but his reaction had been so strong that she had undoubtedly read his mind. ‘You can’t use my name,’ he warned, gesturing around the studio, ‘or any of this to generate publicity.’ This was his world. He had created it. No one else. He wouldn’t have it touched by his family or the Chase.
‘It’ll be a low-key approach,’ she assured him, far too easily. ‘Nothing flashy, nothing to embarrass you. You have my word.’
‘Your word, in this instance, is worthless. Once it’s on the Net you’ll lose control.’
‘Only if I get it right.’
‘Is that supposed to reassure me?’
She frowned, obviously confused by his attitude. ‘It’s just a house, Darius.’
She was wrong, but he couldn’t expect her to understand his love/hate relationship with the place. With his family. ‘You’ve got all the answers,’ he said dismissively.
She shook her head. ‘If I had all the answers, I wouldn’t be here,’ she said, ‘I’d be at Morgan and Black, lining up viewings with the property managers of the kind of men and women who can afford to buy and maintain an English country house to use for two or three weeks in the year. During the shooting season,’ she added, in case he didn’t get the point, ‘or maybe for Christmas and the New Year, before they move on to Gstaad or Aspen for the skiing.’
‘That’s…’
‘Yes?’
‘Nothing.’
He shouldn’t care who bought it, or how little they used it… He didn’t. And he had no reason to trust her, or to believe that she’d lost her job for anything other than sheer incompetence. Only the fact that Miles Morgan had lied about a breakdown, publicly humiliating her in a way that even if she had been grossly negligent would still have been unforgivable. And that he’d disliked the man on sight.
What Natasha Gordon had done to him on sight was something else. The fact that he wasn’t thinking with his brain was reason enough to stay well clear of any hare-brained idea she came up with, but the Revenue would not wait forever for the inheritance tax he would have to pay on the estate. The truth of the matter was that he couldn’t afford to wait until the fuss died down.
‘Okay.’
Tash was used to being looked at. She had no illusions about being any kind of a beauty, but—cosseted and nurtured on all that was good and nourishing by a mother who’d nearly lost her—she’d developed from a skin-and-bones kid into an unfashionably curved lushness that men seemed to find irresistible.
She’d quickly learned to keep both flirtatious vendors and buyers at a distance, but Darius Hadley had not flirted with her. The connection was something else, something visceral, and now he was looking at her with an intensity that heated her to the bone.
With each stroke of his pencil on the paper she became increasingly conscious of her body. Every line he drew felt like a fingertip stroked across her skin. It was as if she was coming undone; not just her top button, but every part of her was unravelling as she became exposed to him.
Far from keeping her distance, she’d barely stopped herself from reaching out, laying her hand on the solid muscle of his arm, sliding a finger along the dark hair gathered in a line along his forearm. But one touch would never be enough; it would be lighting the blue touchpaper, setting off a chain reaction that nothing could stop. And the problem with that was…?
‘Did you hear me? I said okay.’
‘Okay?’ The breath hitched in her throat as she repeated the word. He’d agreed? ‘Is that okay as in yes?’ she asked. ‘You’ll give me a chance?’
There was a seemingly endless pause and for a moment he seemed to be somewhere else. Possibly thinking of all the reasons why it was a bad idea. What his lawyer would say. It would undoubtedly compromise his case against Morgan and Black…
‘A conditional yes.’
Uh-oh…
‘I’ll give you a chance to sell Hadley Chase on one condition.’
‘Anything,’ she said.
‘You’re that desperate?’ he asked, with a look that warned her she should have asked what condition.
‘Anything that’s legal, decent and honest,’ she said, scarcely daring to breathe. Make that legal and honest. She was prepared to negotiate on decent…
‘Desperate, but not stupid.’
Probably… ‘What is it?’
‘I want you to sit for me.’
‘Sit?’ For a moment she couldn’t think what he meant but, as he continued to look at her, hold her fixed to the spot with no more than the power of his gaze, she knew exactly what he meant.
Her mouth dried and her hand fluttered from her shoulder to somewhere around her thigh in a gesture that took in all the important bits in between.
‘As in sit?’ she asked. ‘Pose? Model for you?’
‘If you’re asking whether I’d want you naked, the answer is yes,’ he said bluntly. ‘It’s your body that I want to draw, not your clothes.’
‘Oh…’ She blinked as a rush of blood heated her skin, her lips, and something deep within her liquefied. Appalled by how much she wanted to do it, she curled her fingers into her palms to stop herself from reaching for her buttons right then and there.
Misunderstanding her silence, he said, ‘You’re asking me to take you on trust, Natasha. That’s a two-way deal.’
‘Trust is important,’ she agreed, ‘but the thing is, I’m not asking you to take your clothes off.’
‘I will if it will make it easier for you,’ he said.
‘Yes… No!’ What on earth was she thinking? It was outrageous. She should be outraged, not tingling with excitement at the thought of exposing her ample curves to his molten gaze. So much for keeping this professional…‘Would you have asked if I was a man?’
He shrugged. ‘Possibly. The right man, one with more than good muscle definition to commend him, and, like you, Natasha, he would have assumed I wanted more than a model.’
‘I’m assuming nothing,’ she declared, despite the betraying heat lighting up her cheeks that an artist, a man who saw more than most, would pick up in an instant, ‘but I’ve just been handed a very painful lesson about mixing business with pleasure.’ He said nothing so she continued. ‘My fault. I broke the work/life balance golden rule.’
‘With Morgan?’ he asked.
‘Miles? Good grief, no!’
‘Then it has to be Toby Denton, the guy who’s occupying your desk, driving your car. Did he get a hat-trick?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Did he break your heart, too?’
‘Oh… No…’ She shook her head. ‘We didn’t have that kind of a relationship.’
‘What was it like?’
‘A bit like a starter home,’ she said. ‘Something you know you’re going to grow out of sooner rather than later. I was too busy for anything serious and, while he might look like perfect boyfriend material, there aren’t many women who will play second fiddle to a rugby ball. The occasional night out, plus one do, sleepover suited us both.’
‘Colleagues with benefits? It was still a betrayal.’
‘Yes.’ Worse, she would never know whether it had been a spur-of-the-moment thing or planned from the start and she had been duped, taken for a fool.
‘Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,’ he said after a moment, ‘but sitting isn’t a pleasure. It’s uncomfortable, tedious, muscle-aching work. And you’re right. Business and pleasure is a bad combination. Good models are hard to find, which is why I don’t complicate the relationship with sex.’
‘Does that mean…’ She stopped. Of course it did. He’d just said so. Which was good. Really good. ‘Can I see?’ she asked, holding out her hand for the sketch pad, no longer so knicker-wettingly eager to get her kit off. ‘What you’ve drawn?’
He handed it over without a word and she studied the small details he’d put down with little more than the st
roke of a pencil.
Her mouth, fuller, sexier than she’d ever seen in the mirror when she’d grabbed a second to slide lipstick over it. The curve of her neck emerging from her collar, the line of her leg, her skirt stretched across her backside as she’d bent to search the fridge for milk—it was definitely time to get on the treadmill. Her eyes, giving away the feelings that vibrated through her whenever she looked at him.
‘I understand why some primitive people thought the camera stole away their soul,’ she said, shaken by what he’d seen in those few moments, fixed on paper with so few lines. How much more would he see if he was being serious? She would be utterly exposed—and not just because she’d be stripped to her skin. ‘It’s not what I was expecting.’
Darius leaned back against the stepladder, folding his arms. ‘Did you imagine I was drawing your internal organs?’
She swallowed, managed a wry smile. ‘Well, that is more your style. This is just me.’
‘What’s on the surface. The image you show the world. I’ll go deeper.’
‘You won’t find much muscle definition,’ she warned him.
‘You have a lot of everything, Natasha.’
‘I was sick as a kid,’ she said. ‘My mother spent my childhood trying to fatten me up. I ran away from home to escape the egg custard.’ She glanced up at the skeletal horse, then at the sketch pad, flipping back through the pages to see what else was there—anything to avoid looking at him, betray her eagerness for him to draw her, sculpt her—and discovered that every page was filled with drawings of her. Far more than he could have done in a few minutes. ‘I don’t understand. You couldn’t have done all this today.’
‘No.’ His face was expressionless.
‘But the other day… You only saw me for a minute or two and this is—’
‘I’ve only scratched the surface.’
The room seemed to darken as their gazes locked, acknowledging the raw, subliminal connection in that moment when they’d faced one another across Morgan’s office.
A shiver ran through her and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the sun was pouring in through the skylights and Darius was still waiting for her answer. He knew it would be yes…