The Most Scandalous Ravensdale (The Ravensdale Scandals)

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  Cricket gave a loud yap, as if in agreement. Flynn smiled wryly as he scratched the dog’s belly with the rubber end of his crutch. ‘Not every kid gets that level of commitment, do they, Cricket?’

  Kat chewed at her lip for a moment. ‘You said the other day there was no point looking for your birth parents. What did you mean by that?’

  He stopped scratching the dog and started hopping towards the kitchen. ‘Cricket needs feeding. I usually take him out for half an hour morning and evening, after his breakfast and dinner.’

  She followed him into the kitchen. ‘Flynn, why won’t you talk about your birth parents? You shut up like a clam with lockjaw every time I mention them.’

  He pointed to the pantry with one of his crutches as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘His dry food’s in there and his meat’s in the fridge. There’s more in the freezer.’

  The drawbridge was up. She could see the tight muscles on his face. The set mouth. She had come too close and he was telling her not to come any closer. But the more he pushed her away the more she wanted to draw close. He was so much more than the arrogant my-way-or-the-highway man she had thought him on first appearances. He was deep. Deep and mysterious. Intriguing to the part of her that couldn’t help feeling compassion for a fellow sufferer of the club of Not Belonging. ‘Is your foot hurting you?’ she said.

  He rubbed his hand over his face loud enough for her to hear the rasp of his stubble. ‘I had a couple of painkillers at the hospital. I might go and have a lie down. I’m feeling like a bit of a space cadet.’

  ‘I’ll sort out Cricket and then bring you up something to eat,’ Kat said. ‘Do you have a spare key so I can let myself back in?’

  ‘There’s one in the bowl on the hallstand. It’s on a blue key ring.’

  * * *

  Kat let herself back in forty minutes later with Cricket panting at her feet. He had been a little darling, trotting by her side as if he had got first-class honours from obedience school. However, it had been a completely different story at the dog exercise area in the park. Cricket hadn’t cared for the other dogs, especially the big ones. He’d strained at the leash and barked and snarled as if he’d been ready to rip them apart. It hadn’t won him any friends. The other owners had quickly called their dogs back and given Kat looks, as if to say, ‘Why don’t you get control of your dog?’

  It had been humiliating.

  But for all that she couldn’t help thinking it was a bit of a windfall having this one-on-one time with Cricket. The play she was auditioning for was A. R. Gurney’s Sylvia, which was a play about a middle-aged married man who brought home a dog he found at the park, much to his wife’s displeasure, because she wanted to enjoy their empty nest. Kat was auditioning for the role of Sylvia the dog, a wonderful part that was energetic and challenging on every level. A Canadian actor was playing the lead of Greg, the husband’s role, but no one knew who was playing Kate, the wife, as it was apparently the director’s secret. It would be announced once the auditions were over. An understudy would take the role until formal rehearsals started.

  Kat wanted that role. It was a chance-in-a-lifetime role. A star-making role. Audiences loved Sylvia. It was the actor who played the dog that made or broke the performance. If she got that part it would be her chance to prove her mettle as an actor.

  * * *

  Kat tossed a salad and set it beside the fluffy cheese omelette she had made. Cricket followed at her heels as she carried it upstairs. She had no idea where Flynn’s bedroom was but the layout was much the same as next door so she took a gamble. She found him fast asleep on the bed with one hand folded across his flat stomach and the other in a right angle flung back on the pillow at his head. His bandaged foot was propped on another pillow; the other one was still wearing a shoe—a black Italian leather zippered ankle boot. His handsome features were relaxed in sleep, giving him a vulnerable look that was at odds with his reputation as an intimidating courtroom king.

  She approached the bed with caution, not wanting to wake him, but unable to stop herself from going closer. She leaned down to put the tray on the bedside table and then straightened to see if he had registered her presence. His eyelids flickered as if he was in the middle of a dream and his lips were slightly parted, enough for her to hear the soft, even rhythm of his breathing.

  On an impulse she could neither explain nor control, Kat reached out and gently brushed her fingers down the stubble-shadowed landscape of his jaw. The slight catch of her softer skin on his raspy one made something slip sideways in her stomach, like a stockinged foot on a shiny floor.

  He opened his eyes and reached for her hand at the same time, his fingers wrapping around the slim bones of her wrist like a steel bracelet. He gave her a slow smile. ‘Changed your mind about that kiss?’

  Kat tried to pull out of his hold but his fingers tightened just a fraction—a delicious fraction that set her nerves tingling. ‘I—I was checking to see if you had a temperature. You can never be too careful with fractures. There can be internal bleeding and infection and you might—’

  ‘Am I hot?’

  Way, way too hot. Way too hot for her to handle. ‘I brought you some dinner. Just leave the tray—I’ll clear it away in the morning.’

  He released her hand and patted the bed near his thigh. ‘Sit. Stay and talk to me.’

  Don’t do it.

  Why not? He only wants to talk.

  Yeah, right.

  He needs some company. He’s injured.

  Not his mouth, or his hands, or his you-know-what. They’re in perfect working order.

  Kat felt the usual tug of war inside her mind, not to mention inside her body. She knew she should leave but another part of her wanted to stay. He drew her interest in a way no other man had done before. There was something about him that made her flesh sing just by being in the same room as him—from breathing the same air as him. He had a potent effect on her senses. He made her aware of her femininity, of her needs—the needs that were proving rather difficult to ignore, especially when she was this close to him. Close enough to touch his face again, to trace the sensual contour of his tempting mouth. To lean down and press her lips to his and see what fireworks would happen—for they would surely happen. She knew it in her bones. ‘Just for a minute, then...’ She sat on the edge of the bed.

  He surveyed her features for a moment. ‘It was kind of you to stay and make me dinner. I wasn’t sure you would.’

  Kat gave a shrug. ‘There’s nothing to making an omelette.’

  His thumb found her pulse and stroked over its frantic beat as his eyes held hers in a mesmerising lock. ‘It’s a pity we met the way we did. Perhaps if we’d met under different circumstances you wouldn’t be sitting there but lying in here beside me.’

  Kat felt a ripple of lust between her legs but disguised it by casting him a resentful glare. ‘You cost me my job in that café.’

  He gave a little grimace of remorse. ‘I know. But I was lucky I didn’t get burnt when you poured that coffee in my lap.’

  She chewed at her lip when she recalled that day. Having Flynn show up at the café the day after her mother’s funeral with that cheque from Richard Ravensdale had been like coarse salt rubbed into a festering wound. The thought of being paid to keep silent about something that should never have been a secret in the first place was an insult. So too was the fact that her father had sent his lawyer instead of coming to see her in person.

  That hurt.

  It shouldn’t but it did. If her father wanted to have a relationship with her—a proper relationship—then why send someone else to set it up for him?

  But, no, Richard had paid someone to pay her to keep her mouth shut about his dirty little affair with a hotel housemaid. Now Richard wanted to be a father to her. Why? To boost his popularity? To keep his fans happy? It certainly wasn’t bec
ause he cared about her.

  But Flynn had a point. If she and Flynn had met some other way she might well have considered getting involved with him. He was the most interesting man she had ever met. His looks made her go weak at the knees, but he was so much more than a good-looking man. She found his razor-sharp intelligence the biggest turn on. He was funny and charming, and yet there were layers to him, depths he kept hidden. Enigmatic depths that made her want to get as close as she possibly dared.

  ‘I’m sorry about the coffee but it was all too much,’ Kat said. ‘I’d only just got back from Glasgow from the funeral. I didn’t even know how anyone had found out about his affair with my mother. It was a shock to find it splashed all over the papers.’

  ‘Apparently one of your mother’s former workmates let something slip to a journalist,’ Flynn said. ‘The rest, as they say, is history.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish I hadn’t agreed to that paternity test. But I wanted to know for sure.’

  ‘At least you know who your father is. Lots of people never find out.’

  Kat looked at him again. There was a slight frown pulling at his brow, as if he was thinking about something that pained him. Twice now she had tried to draw him out about his birth parents but he had shut off the conversation. Why was he being so stubborn about it? Lots of relinquished children managed to conduct loving relationships with their biological parents once contact was made. ‘If your biological parents ever came looking for you would you want to meet them?’

  His eyes didn’t meet hers. ‘I can’t see it happening now. Not after thirty-four years.’

  ‘It’s never too late to give up hope.’

  He gave her a movement of his lips that was almost a smile. ‘That’s exactly what your father keeps saying.’

  Kat didn’t want to think about the father she didn’t want, and Flynn’s father, whom he might never meet. In her mind the two situations were completely different. ‘Is your foot troubling you?’

  ‘Not much.’

  She rose from the bed. ‘I should let you have your food and go back to sleep.’

  He captured her hand again, giving it a light squeeze that was perfectly timed with his on-off smile. ‘Thanks.’

  Kat bit her lip again as she looked at their joined hands. His skin was deeply tanned, as if he had been somewhere warm recently. She could see the paler band where his watch usually rested. His fingers were almost twice the thickness of hers, making her feel more feminine than she had in years. If she could just grow her nails instead of biting them back to the elbow she would feel even more feminine. ‘I’m really sorry about your foot.’

  But, when she looked back at him to see why he hadn’t said anything, she saw he was soundly asleep.

  * * *

  Flynn swore as he came out of the shower the next morning. Not only had he overslept, which was going to make him late for his first client, the plastic bag he had wrapped around his foot hadn’t done the job of keeping his bandage dry. And his foot was hurting. Badly. He limped out of the en suite to his bedroom with a towel around his hips to find Kat at his bedside collecting his tray from the night before.

  She swung around and then quickly averted her gaze. ‘Sorry. I thought you were still in the shower. I knocked but—’

  ‘It’s fine.’ He reached for a pair of boxers and a shirt. ‘I’m going to be late for work. Has Cricket been out yet?’

  She kept her back turned to him as she straightened his bed, smoothing down the covers with meticulous precision, as if she did it for a living. ‘Yes, I took him out first thing.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware being an alarm clock was on my list of duties,’ she said in a crisp tone.

  ‘I got my bandage wet.’

  She turned to look at him, her eyes giving a little flash. ‘Poor baby.’

  He clipped on his watch, snapping the catch in place. ‘I haven’t got time for breakfast. I have to brief a client before court. Can you hand me those trousers?’

  ‘These?’

  ‘No, the grey ones.’

  ‘Here you go.’

  Flynn winked at her. ‘You’d make a great wife.’

  She gave him an artic look. ‘I have other ambitions.’

  He slipped his belt through the lugs on his trousers whilst balancing on one crutch. ‘You don’t want to get married and have kids some day?’

  ‘I want to establish my career first,’ she said. ‘Husbands have a way of getting in the way of career aspirations; kids even more so.’

  Flynn wondered if she was being completely truthful. He had only met a handful of women who didn’t want the whole package. He had wanted it himself until having it snatched away had made him reassess. But after he had come back to London on Christmas night after the usual palaver with his family—having rescued Cricket from being ignominiously dumped at the nearest dog shelter for almost certain euthanasia—the Carstairs family had invited him in for supper.

  The difference in households had been nothing short of stunning. There was none of the stiffness and formality of his family, pretending to be comfortable with him when clearly they weren’t. The Carstairses’ kids, Josh and Bella, had run up to him and hugged him around his legs, grinning from ear to ear, excited beyond bounds he had come to join them. To see such unabated joy on their little faces had sent a rush of unexpected emotion to his throat, making him feel like he was choking on a pineapple. He had watched in silent envy as Neil and Anna had exchanged loving glances over the tops of the heads of their children who were miniature replicas of them.

  It was fine now, being single and free to do what he liked, but what about in a few years’ time? Would he still feel the same? Or would he feel a deep cavern of emptiness inside him where the love of a wife and family should have been? He was already tired of the dating scene. The thought of coming home to someone who wanted to be with him because they loved him, not because he was rich or well-connected, was something he couldn’t stop thinking about lately.

  It was like a door inside his mind he had thought he had closed and bolted had been prised open. A crack of light was shining through, illuminating the possibilities. Possibilities like kids to go with the dog he already had. He loved coming home to Cricket. Seeing that funny little face beaming with excitement at seeing him had shifted something inside him. It made him see what an alternative life could be like. A life where not just a scruffy little dog would bolt up the hallway to greet him but a couple of grubby-faced kids like Josh and Bella. Kids who looked like him. Who carried the same DNA. Family was something he had seen as something other people had, not him. He was alone. Unattached. Without a blood bond.

  But what if he made one?

  He dismissed the thought, pushing it back behind the door in his mind, leaning his resolve against it to make sure it was closed.

  ‘Can you choose me a tie?’ Flynn said.

  Kat went back to his wardrobe and selected a tie. ‘Will this one do?’

  ‘Perfect. Can you put it on for me?’

  Her lips pursed. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re making the most of this situation?’

  He smiled as her hands looped the tie around his neck. This close he could smell her winter flowers fragrance as it danced and flirted with his senses. The temptation to press his mouth to hers was like a tug of war inside his body; every organ strained at the effort of keeping his willpower under control. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’d like to strangle me?’

  Her gaze went to his mouth. Her fingers worked on his tie but he could feel them tremble as they inadvertently touched the skin of his neck. His blood leapt at the contact, pulsing through his veins like rocket fuel. She took her bottom lip between her teeth in concentration—or was it because she was fighting an urge, the same urge he could feel barrelling through his body? She
completed his tie and gave his chest a quick pat. ‘There.’ She gave him the briefest flash of a smile. ‘All done.’

  His gaze locked on hers, watching as the dark ink of her pupils in that sea of bewitching green widened. Watching too as the tip of her tongue came out and darted over the surface of her lips, the top first and then the bottom, leaving them moist, shining and tempting. His blood headed south, his groin swelling and tingling with the promise of contact. Any contact. He couldn’t think of a time when he had wanted a woman more than her. But he wanted her to make the first move. She was oscillating; he could tell. The same battle he was fighting in his body was being played out over her features. Her gaze slipped again to his mouth. Her tongue did another circuit of her lips. Her breathing hitched just loud enough for him to hear it. He saw the rise and fall of her slender throat. He ached to press his lips to the thrumming pulse he could see hammering there. ‘What have you got riding on this celibacy pact?’ he asked.

  She swallowed again. Audibly. ‘Wh-why do you want to know?’

  ‘Just wondering what’s keeping your self-control in check.’

  Her chin came up, her mouth pulled tight again. ‘You think you’re so damn irresistible, don’t you?’

  Flynn smiled at her. ‘You want me so bad.’

  Her eyes fired a round of ire at him. ‘I. Do. Not. Want. You.’

  ‘How many times do you reckon you’ll have to say that to believe it?’

  Her breath came out like a small explosion. ‘You’re unbelievable. You think just because every other woman you’ve ever smiled at fell at your feet that I will too. Well, guess what? I won’t.’

  ‘That’s what the silly little celibacy pact is all about, isn’t it?’ Flynn said. ‘You knew from the moment we met that we would end up in bed together so you thought of a plan to prevent it from happening. Cute plan, but it’s doomed to fail.’