by Lynne Graham
Unwarily she tipped her head back and met the dark, impenetrable eyes fixed on her. Her colour fluctuated wildly as she waited in that pin-dropping silence for him to speak.
‘Nigel isn’t on my conscience, Molly,’ he stated quietly. ‘I feel I should make that point first. I gave him a golden opportunity and he blew it. I knew he was no business whizkid but my bankers did recommend an excellent accountant. Your brother stopped using his services as soon as the garden centre was built, probably because the accountant was already telling him things he didn’t want to hear.’
Molly said nothing. There was nothing she could say. The internal workings of her brother’s business were a closed book to her.
‘And when Nigel started getting into trouble my bankers wrote to him. At that stage he might still have been pulled back from the edge of his financial abyss. But he ignored their letters. When they visited the garden centre, he told his staff to say he was out. When they went to the house, your sister-in-law refused to open the door.’
Molly licked her dry lips. ‘Your bankers were very menacing.’
‘Dio…what would you expect when they were getting the runaround like that?’ Sholto shot at her in complete exasperation.
Not liking the dangerous turn the conversation had taken, not wishing Sholto to dwell too long on her brother’s undeniable deficiencies, Molly conceded awkwardly, ‘Nigel behaved very foolishly.’
‘Nigel’s a total idiot!’ Sholto spread expressive brown hands. ‘And believe me, cara, it goes against the grain to even consider giving him another chance to prove himself.’
‘He’s learnt his lesson. He really has,’ Molly emphasised pleadingly. ‘He would do whatever you wanted him to do to sort things out.’
‘And what about you?’
Molly blinked. ‘But I don’t have anything to do with the garden centre.’
Brilliant dark eyes swept over her frowning face and lingered. ‘I am not talking about the business. You said that no pressure and no price would persuade you to share my bed. I’m calling your bluff,’ Sholto delivered silkily. ‘If you move into my house and live with me, I will settle your brother’s debts, allow him to remain in his home and ensure that he doesn’t get himself into a similar mess a second time.’
For a count of ten paralysed seconds, Molly gaped at him with startled green eyes and parted lips. ‘You’re not serious,’ she framed when she could finally unpeel her tongue from the roof of her mouth.
‘I want you…and you want your brother off the hook. A fair exchange or an abuse of my power?’ Sholto mused with galling cool. ‘I shall leave you to decide which.’
Molly tried and failed to swallow, brows pleating as she squirmed uneasily on her seat. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’
‘Do I look like I’m joking?’
She noted with disbelief that he had a perfectly straight face.
‘But why would you want me to live with you?’ Molly enquired helplessly.
‘All the usual male reasons,’ Sholto supplied with gentle, slightly apologetic emphasis. ‘I wasn’t planning to stash you in a guest room as a hostage to Nigel’s good behaviour in the future. I would expect you to sleep in my bed with me, wear the clothes that I buy, appear at social occasions by my side and be available to travel with me whenever I ask.’
Molly’s heart thudded with preternatural slowness in her eardrums. Every word he said echoed twice over inside her head. He had spelt out his expectations with clarity. But she could no more see herself featuring in such an existence than she could see herself taking flight without wings. ‘I want you’, he had said, in-much the same casual manner as he might have voiced the selection of a meal from a menu.
He couldn’t possibly want her so much that he was prepared to bribe her to get back into bed with him. Unless his sole motivation was the sheer senseless and stubborn perversity of a macho male hopelessly ill equipped to deal with any form of female rejection! After all, she had slapped his face and walked out of the late Freddy’s house and refused to engage in any remotely personal dialogue when he’d come to the office where she worked. Sholto was not accustomed to that kind of treatment.
‘You’re actually suggesting that I become your mistress?’ she murmured, her incredulity unconcealed.
‘That’s a very old-fashioned and emotive label, Molly,’ Sholto responded in a tone of reproof. ‘Live-in relationships are very common these days.’
‘You’re talking about couples who freely choose to live together!’
‘You have a choice too.’
‘And those same couples would naturally have feelings for each other!’ Molly pointed out rawly.
‘Whereas I’m proposing an exclusively physical affair. You see, I was deeply unimpressed by the staying power of your feelings when we married,’ Sholto countered with derisive bite. ‘I was infinitely more impressed by your passionate response in bed two weeks ago…’
A little shudder of repulsion ran through Molly, her mortification rising by the minute. ‘I think you brought me here purely to humiliate me. What gave you the idea that I might be prepared to barter my body like some sort of commodity in exchange for my family’s security?’
‘You gave me the idea yesterday.’
‘I…did?’ she gasped.
‘Would you like me to have some coffee brought in while you mull over the dangerous risk of descending into a life of sleazy decadence after a mere few months in my bed?’
Flashes of hot colour stained Molly’s cheekbones She didn’t appreciate his drawling mockery and, determined to walk out, she flew upright in one swift and angry movement. Simultaneously a wave of dizziness engulfed her and she swayed, darkness flashing across her vision as the room spun and her head pounded. A pair of strong hands immediately steadied her, curving round her shoulders and pressing her firmly back down onto the seat.
‘Are you all right?’
Dizzily she focused on Sholto, crouched down in front of her, dark eyes raking her bemused face with frowning intensity. ‘I thought you were going to faint.’
‘I’ve never fainted in my life.’
Looking surprisingly pale and tense, Sholto very slowly slid upright again. ‘I’ll bring you a glass of water.’
‘I must’ve stood up too fast. I skipped lunch.’ And only had coffee for breakfast, she completed inwardly. No doubt all the stress and tension had reacted badly on her empty stomach and made her light-headed.
A moisture-beaded glass bumped against her fingers. He must have moved with the speed of light. She sipped the water, feeling distinctly foolish at having been deprived of her haughty exit.
‘How are you feeling now?’
‘Perfectly fine,’ Molly said stiffly. ‘You know I was about to leave?’
‘That’s your decision.’ Sholto strolled over to the tall windows, the sunlight gleaming over his arrogant dark head to accentuate his spectacular cheekbones and the ruthless cast of his mouth. He gazed back at her steadily, glittering eyes gilded to gold. ‘But bear in mind that I won’t repeat this offer.’
‘You should never have made it. I don’t know where you got the nerve to even think that I would consider such an arrangement!’ Molly told him with sudden fire.
‘I don’t suffer from nerves, Molly. When I want something I go after it and I’ll do whatever it takes to get it. You were the one who brought the commercial aspect into this—’
‘I was?’ she interrupted incredulously.
‘You’re only here now because of your brother.’ Shoulders and spine rigid, Molly rose to her feet. ‘I’m glad you appreciate that fact.’
‘I do admire your spirit. Obviously you feel more than equal to the task of supporting Nigel and Lena through their coming ordeal,’ Sholto murmured smoothly as she turned on her heel. ‘I would say that both of them are rather weak reeds in the face of adversity. And the apparent menace of my bankers will be as nothing next to the infinitely more aggressive tactics likely to be employed by Nigel’s other cred
itors.’
Involuntarily Molly’s feet faltered on their passage to the door. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘That the instant my people put the garden centre on the market Nigel’s other creditors will take fright and descend like a hoard of locusts. Then the courts and the bailiffs will become involved.’
Molly had a mental image of Fiona’s soft toys being snatched from her by some big, brawny, aggressive man. Her stomach heaved. Bailiffs. The threatening, final response to unsettled debts. She knew nothing about bailiffs but somehow the very mention of them struck cold horror into her bones.
As she slowly turned back to look at Sholto, she watched his slow smile build and wild, bitter anger flooded her. She felt like a puppet having its strings pulled. ‘You can’t possibly want a woman who hates your guts!’
‘Hate me the way you hated me at Freddy’s house and I have this extraordinary feeling that I will thrive,’ Sholto asserted with immense cool.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I DON’T know why I’m still here,’ Molly gritted.
But the trouble was that she knew all too well and that bitter awareness was of no comfort. Sholto had the power to end Nigel and Lena’s nightmare. The power to work a miracle and restore an entire family to happy and secure normality. But he also had the power to make her sit back down again in his wretched fancy office when she didn’t want to and feel trapped. And that acknowledgement was by far the most frightening.
Sholto was on the phone, his bold, bronzed profile aloof, but his beautifully shaped hands moved in eloquent shifts to sketch vivid word pictures as he talked. Molly studied him with compulsive intensity. If she lived to be a hundred she would never understand Sholto. When they’d been engaged, he had treated her as if she had a defensive barrier round her body, yet four years on, when she had least expected such a move, he had pounced without conscience and shattered her with the apparent force of his desire.
But that had just been sex and where Sholto was concerned Molly held the cynical belief that he was very much a male to whom sex was no big deal. Few women were out of his reach and even fewer said no to him. From adolescence, Sholto had been the frequently bored target of female craving, pursuit and encouragement. She had watched him employ that cool detachment of his to freeze out unwelcome advances. So many beautiful, willing women—what could he possibly see in her?
‘Revenge,’ Molly condemned with driven abruptness. ‘Is that what this is all about?’
Sholto set down the phone.
‘Do you get a sick thrill out of forcing me to agree to something that goes against every principle I have?’ she demanded starkly.
‘Will you get one when I rehabilitate your immature, irresponsible and thoroughly unreliable brother? That goes against every principle I have. And if you feel you’re being forced you should leave now,’ Sholto advised. ‘You made this strictly business, Molly. Emotional appeals are way out of line.’
Molly threw her head back in a jerky movement, green eyes feverishly bright. ‘And where does Pandora come into this arrangement?’
Sholto stilled but his stunning dark eyes remained utterly level. ‘She doesn’t. Any other questions?’
Molly looked through him, shutting him out while she worked at keeping her face carefully blank. The question had been irresistible. She had had to ask even though asking had been like twisting a knife inside an open wound. A light knock sounded on the door, granting her a badly needed breathing space in which to recover.
Sholto set a tray down on the low table next to her. Molly gaped at it. The serving of tea and buttered toast struck her as quite hysterically inappropriate in the circumstances.
‘I thought you should eat something.’
‘I feel more like alcohol than tea,’ she confided rather raggedly.
‘I keep nothing like that in the office,’ Sholto asserted.
Briefly, Molly focused on the carved oriental drinks cabinet with a confused frown and then she poured herself a cup of tea because of course she hadn’t been serious about the alcohol. Sholto extended the plate of toast. ‘No, thanks.’
‘Be sensible,’ Sholto told her drily.
Molly took a piece of toast, wondering why he was so ridiculously keen to see her eat, but she was under too much strain to make an issue of it.
Silence fell while she ate.
‘I don’t want you to go home tonight.’
Molly almost choked on her last piece of toast, coughed and then swallowed with difficulty. ‘Are you crazy?’
A winged ebony brow rose. ‘I’ll make arrangements for a temp to take over your job for a month at my expense. That’ll give your employer time to find a replacement—’
‘I couldn’t leave Mr Woods in the lurch like that. I have to work a month’s notice!’ Molly protested in pure panic.
‘Any experienced legal secretary could do your work.’
‘Sholto—’
‘If you move in today, I’ll drive down and see Nigel tomorrow morning. The longer it takes you to move in, the longer he will wait to have his mind set at rest.’ Sholto spelt out that cruel reality without an ounce of discomfiture. ‘We don’t have a deal until you are physically in residence.’
Molly paled, thinking of the desperate state her brother had been in the night before, reluctantly recalling how disturbed she had been that Nigel had left Lena alone all day to worry about his whereabouts. ‘But I—’
‘I’ll have professional packers into your apartment by Monday at the latest.’
Feeling as though he was taking over her whole life, Molly bridled. ‘No…that’s quite unnecessary.’
‘Allow me to decide what’s necessary.’ Sholto drew her up out of her seat and lifted a seemingly idle hand to trace the stiff compression of her lips with a reproving fingertip.
Molly shivered and tossed her head back out of reach, skittish as a racehorse at the starting line. He closed his hands round her narrow wrists and drew her inexorably closer. ‘Let go of me,’ she told him tightly.
Brilliant dark eyes inspected her mutinous face. ‘Unwilling sacrifices don’t attract me, cara.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘I don’t know.’ A self-mocking smile tugged unexpectedly at the corners of his wide, sensual mouth. ‘I have to confess that I didn’t think that far ahead.’
Mere inches separated them and yet nothing short of physical force could have made Molly retreat from the proximity of that lean, powerful body of his. The very scent of him…clean, warm and male…sentenced her to paralysed stillness. As she stared up at him, dry throat convulsing, heart banging like crazy against her ribs, he closed his arms round her. Her eyes flew wide, a soft sound of shock escaping her as the rigid thrust of his arousal pressed against her belly. A surge of liquid heat flared between her thighs and he slid his hands down to her hips, hitching her skirt to lift her up against him and claim her mouth in a shatteringly sexual kiss.
He kissed with the same breathtaking eroticism with which he made love. The world spun violently as he let his tongue delve in a sinuous flick between her lips and tease the sensitive interior within. An anguished moan of response was dredged from low in her throat. Her bones turned to water, her flesh to yielding pliancy as she wrapped her arms round his neck. He slid her down to the carpet again but kept her imprisoned with one powerful hand splayed across her spine and then he lifted his dark head.
His eyes blazed like golden arrows in his lean, hard-boned face. ‘Dio…you looked as wholesome as Joan of Arc about to burn at the stake when you walked in here—’
‘Sholto—’
He gazed down at her with sudden vibrant amusement. ‘All temptingly packaged from throat to mid-calf in shapeless green tweed. Alas my memory is not so short, cara. I shall forever cherish the image of you sliding out of my T-shirt.’
At the same instant as he set her back from him, Molly’s hands came up to push him away. The turbulence of her confused emotions was threatening to rip her apart. He
had swept her up like a toy and kissed her breathless and she hadn’t done a thing to prevent him. In the aftermath, she didn’t even know how it had happened and that terrified her. He had smashed her self-control with effortless ease.
‘Revenge has got nothing to do with this,’ Sholto drawled very quietly. ‘And I did not bring you here with any intent of humiliating you. The past doesn’t come into this either. It’s dead and gone but we’re not. I’ve wanted you ever since that snowy night at Freddy’s house…’
‘And what you want you have to have,’ Molly extended, her throat thickening. ‘No matter what the cost.’
He swept up his mobile phone, scanning her with impenetrable eyes. ‘Let’s just say I don’t mind paying for the privilege of your presence but I would have respected you a whole lot more if you had come of your own accord and without preconditions.’
Molly folded her arms, afraid he might notice that her hands were shaking. He turned her life upside down within the space of an hour and behaved as if that were normal. But then Sholto had no concept of upheaval because he had never experienced it. His wealth protected him from ninety-nine per cent of the inconveniences and crises that dogged other people’s lives. He lifted a phone and for the right price he could have just about anything. And only then did Molly fully appreciate, with a sick sensation in her stomach, that he had lifted the phone and employed exactly the same technique with her…
Sholto straightened with an impatient frown. ‘I’m afraid I’m tied up for the rest of the afternoon and I have a board meeting this evening. My driver will take you back to the house. Stop off at Harrods and buy whatever you need for the night,’ he advised, withdrawing his wallet with a sardonic glance at her burning face. ‘Please don’t be squeamish about spending my money. After all, Nigel is going to cost me a small fortune…disasters are rarely cost-effective, so why quibble about a triviality?’
Her arms unfolded with an outraged jerk and her hands clenched into two admirable fists. For a split second, she wasn’t even sure she could hold onto her temper. ‘I’ll never forgive you for doing this to me!’