by Sarah Morgan
She started up the engine, not looking at him.
‘I think that would be when I left the handbrake off,’ she responded, and without another word reversed fast in a cloud of dust.
* * *
Douleur bonne, what did she think she was doing?
Lorelei held on tight to the wheel as she tore up the drive, her heart pounding out of her chest. She just had to get away before the handsome stranger wrecked everything.
Alors, she could have just offered up a standard apology and volunteered to pay for all repairs. A more prudent woman would have done just that. But prudence wasn’t her forte lately...
She just wanted today to be a nice day.
One more day.
Was it too much to ask?
She licked her dry lips, dragged her bag over as she drove, fumbled for her lipstick.
Don’t think about it, she told herself, swiping her lower lip with the crimson colour, making a mess of it.
She braked, dropped the lipstick, fished it from her lap and hooked off her sunglasses impatiently to restore her face with a tissue in the rear-vision mirror.
For a moment all she saw were her eyes, huge and dilated and vulnerable.
Taking a deep breath, she put herself back in order and forged onto the highway, determined to put this behind her. Oui, she’d had a bad start to the day, but that didn’t mean anything, and it wasn’t that bad. Despite the trembling of her hands on the wheel she’d had a little fun, hadn’t she? She was sorry about the car, but it hadn’t been intentional and it was only a little scratched. She was a good person, she’d never hurt anyone on purpose in her life, she wasn’t careless with other people’s property; she wasn’t a criminal...
Her heart had started pounding again.
Best not to think about it.
She depressed the accelerator, the wind tugging at her hair. Perhaps if she drove a little harder it would help.
She was living harder, too. She’d really pushed the boat out last night. In fact thinking about it made her feel a little sick.
She had positively, absolutely drunk too much. She’d flirted with the wrong men and her attention had definitely not been on her borrowed adornment for the twenties-themed party. When someone had pointed out a couple of the younger partygoers, climbing all over it, she had moved it herself, parking the vehicle in the private courtyard. Clearly she hadn’t put the handbrake on.
Why hadn’t she remembered to put the handbrake on?
For that matter, why had she behaved so poorly this morning? Why hadn’t she apologised and done her best to smooth things over? Perhaps the better question was, what was she trying to prove? Was she that desperate for attention? For somebody to realise she needed help?
Brought up short by the thought, Lorelei let her foot retreat from the accelerator.
Did she need help?
The notion buzzed just out of focus. Certainly she wouldn’t be asking any of her friends, none of whom had offered even a word of sensible advice since this whole nightmare began. Could she even call any of those people at her home last night friends? Probably not.
It didn’t matter. At the end of the day a party merely meant she wasn’t alone. She hated being alone. You couldn’t hide when you were alone...
In the rear vision mirror she caught a flash of red. Instinctively she depressed the accelerator. The car did nothing. She tried again and realised she was pumping her foot. Panicking slightly, although this had happened before, she gently stood on the brakes, bringing the car to a slow standstill on the roadside. She saw the sports car flash past in a blur of red and ignored the pinch in her chest because he hadn’t even slowed down. Not that she could blame him.
Had she really expected him to stop?
There was nothing for it but to turn off the engine for five minutes before taking it easy going down into town. The Sunbeam Alpine had been playing up for weeks. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last.
Laying her elbow on the door and pressing her head against her hand, she closed her eyes, allowing the sun on her face to soothe the surging anxiety that threatened to sweep everything before it.
* * *
Nash watched the Sunbeam drop speed, weave a little. The brake lights stayed on as it ground to a standstill in a cloud of dust at the roadside.
He sped past.
He didn’t have time for this. For any of it. The banged-up car, the performance in the courtyard...the unreasonable desire to pull over, pluck those shades off her eyes and rattle around for that conscience of hers she’d assured him she had.
He only got a few hundred metres down the road before he was doing a screeching circle and slowly heading back.
She hadn’t got out of the car She seemed to be just sitting there.
Nash already wanted to shake her.
He pulled the Veyron in behind and killed the engine. Shoving his aviators back through his thick brown hair, he advanced on her car. Still she hadn’t shifted.
What did she expect? A valet service?
She was sitting with her head thrown back, as if the sun on her face was a sensual experience, her expression virtually obscured by those ridiculously large sunglasses. He noticed for the first time that she had a dappling of freckles over her bare shoulders. They seemed oddly girlish on such a sophisticated woman. He liked them.
His tread crunched on the gravel but she didn’t shift an inch.
‘Car trouble?’
She slowly lowered the glasses and angled up her face.
‘What do you think?’
Those amber-brown eyes of hers locked on his.
‘What I think is you need a few lessons in driving and personal responsibility.’
A smile, soft and subtle, drifted around the corners of her mouth. ‘Really? And are you the man to give them to me?’
Nash almost returned the smile. She really was playing this out to the last gasp.
‘How about getting out of the car?’
She gave him a speculative look and then slowly began unhooking her seatbelt. Her movements were slow, deliberate. She unlatched the door, hesitated only for a moment and then swung her long legs out. She shut the door with a click behind her and leaned back against it.
‘How can I help you, Officer?’
The scent of her hit him, swarmed through his senses like a hive of pretty bees, all honey and flowers and female.
Expensive, a steadying voice intervened. She smells and looks expensive.
Like any other rich girl on this coast. A dime a dozen if you’d got a spare billion in the bank.
He folded his arms. ‘Going to tell me what’s going on?’
He actually saw the moment the flirtatious persona fell away.
She gave a little shrug. ‘There seems to be a problem with the engine. I accelerate but I lose speed.’
He nodded and headed for the front of her car.
Lorelei found herself following him, hands on her hips. He got the bonnet up with no trouble—something she never could. He leaned in.
‘It’s the original,’ he told her in that deep, male voice.
‘Are you a mechanic?’
‘Near enough.’
Lorelei looked down the road as a couple of cars swished past, then back at the man leaning into the business end of her car.
Her eyes dwelt on the tail of an intricate dragon tattoo running down his flexed left arm, on his muscled shoulders, shifting under the fit of his close-weave black T-shirt, broad and imposing as he bent low, drawing attention to the strong, lean length of his torso and tapering to a hall-of-fame behind—all muscle. Prime male.
She snagged her bottom lip contemplatively, stroking him up and down with her eyes. She couldn’t get over how thick an
d silky his dark brown hair looked, the wavy ends caressing his broad neck. She wondered how they would feel tangled between her fingers. She wondered what he would say if she apologised, if she told him she wasn’t always this out of control...
‘Whoever looks after it deserves a medal.’
Lorelei wondered a little hopelessly if he was ever going to look up—look at her. She gave a little inner sigh. Probably not. She’d burnt her bridges with this man.
‘What was it?’ he prompted. ‘A gift?’ When she didn’t reply he straightened up and gave her a speculative look. ‘I’d say from a guy who knows his engines.’
Lorelei cleared her throat, aware she’d been staring at him and that he was probably aware of it. ‘I bought it myself. At auction.’
He looked so sceptical her hands twitched all over again on her hips.
‘You need a specialist to run some tests on the engine.’ He was looking at her steadily, as if he expected her to be writing this down. ‘It’s in good nick, so I assume you’ve got a specialist mechanic.’
She found herself recalled to her usual good sense. ‘Oui. I’ll call him.’
‘Everything else looks to be in order.’
As he spoke he set the bonnet down carefully, checked it was locked in place. His movements were assured and methodical and, oddly, Lorelei felt soothed by them. He treated her car with respect. Which was more than she had done with his employer’s Bugatti, a little voice of conscience niggled.
‘What will happen with the Bugatti?’ she found herself asking.
‘I expect the man who owns her will have some questions for you.’
Lorelei shoulders subsided.
‘Do you want me to follow you back?’
No, most definitely not. Because she wasn’t going back. She’d been running the Sunbeam like this for weeks, but she got the impression her handsome stranger would not be best pleased. He might not think much of her, but he was clearly in love with her car.
‘Mais non. You stopped.’ She pushed back a rogue curl dangling over the left side of her face. ‘It’s more than most people would have done. Merci beaucoup.’
Nash hesitated. He hadn’t seen her like this before—calm, almost subdued—and it suited her. She wasn’t quite as young as he’d first assumed—maybe thirty—and there was a maturity about her that he’d missed in all the glamour-girl theatrics.
‘Right. Take care of her. She’s a beauty.’
He ran his hand lightly over the paintwork and for the life of him couldn’t work out why getting back into his car was so hard. Except she was just standing there, looking a little uncertain.
He sat in the Veyron, waiting, watching as she climbed into the sapphire-blue roadster, waiting for her to start the engine, waiting for her to pull out, all the while waiting to feel relief that she was off his hands. She gave him a simple wave and drove slowly back down the road.
Telling himself he was satisfied, he pulled out and took off.
Lorelei watched until she couldn’t see him any more in her mirror, then ignored the pinch in her chest because she wasn’t going to see him again, before turning the big car around and heading back the way he was going. Into town.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘LORELEI, good morning.’ The girl behind the desk beamed. ‘You’re early!’
‘No, I have a client at midday, so I’m running late, chère. Can you be an angel and put a call through to the arena to let them know I’m on my way?’
As she reached her locker Lorelei finished keying her successful morning’s tally into her cell: Smashed up a Bugatti. Met a man. Then she hesitated, because ‘met a man’ implied she would be meeting him again. Monaco was a postage stamp of geography, but person per square foot it was the most densely populated postage stamp in the world, making it highly unlikely...
She sighed, pressed Send to her best friend’s number and dropped the cell into her bag, placing that in her locker. Her love life was fairly, well, non-existent these days. Getting close to a man in her current situation just meant another person to hide things from.
She stripped, pulled on jodhpurs and a white shirt, and crouched down to yank on her riding boots. It was only when she stood up to don the regulation jacket and caught sight of her reflection that she paused to enjoy the little moment when she stepped into this world.
It was almost a moment of relief. She understood this world. There were rules and regulations and they were satisfying. It was what she had always loved about dressage and showjumping. She had had so little structure growing up, and the sport had provided for the lack. Ironically it was fulfilling the same function now.
She smiled wanly as she buttoned herself up. The jacket hung a little on her, but so did everything. She’d lost weight during her father’s trial and somehow never regained it.
Gathering up her clipboard, Lorelei made her way out into the stands to wait for her student.
Once this had been her dream, until a bad fall had put paid to her ambitions. Nowadays she trained up-and-coming equestrians on a freelance basis. It didn’t pay spectacularly well, but it was work for her soul. After the accident she hadn’t thought she would ever saddle up again. Two years of rehabilitation had taught her both patience and determination, and she brought them to her work. It made her a good trainer.
In a couple of years, when she was financially back on her feet again, she hoped to set up her own stables on a property she had her eye on outside Nice. For now, she trained and kept two horses at the nearby Allard Stables, where she also volunteered.
She brought her focus to bear as a glorious bay gelding entered the arena, carrying a long-legged teenager. Lorelei had been working with her for a month. She watched as horse and rider trotted round the perimeter and then came out of the circle, performing a shoulder-in. Her practised gaze narrowed. The rider was using the inside rein to create the bend, rather than her leg, and was pulling the horse off-track.
Too much neck-bend, no angle, she noted on the clipboard propped up on one knee.
Some of the best equine flesh in the world was on view here most days, ridden by the best of the best, but on Fridays the arena belonged to students such as young Gina, who was making a hash of the most fundamental lesson in advanced dressage. She would improve—Lorelei was confident on her behalf. These were skills that could be learnt. The rest was about your relationship with the horse, and Gina was a natural.
For the next half hour she took notes, then joined Gina and the bay gelding’s regular handler in the arena. She was working with Gina on top of her usual student load as a favour to another trainer, but she didn’t mind taking on the extra work. It was good to take her head out of her financial troubles and focus on something she could control, and fulfilling to see the progress Gina had made in little over a month.
She worked with both girl and horse for the rest of their session, then joined Gina and her mother to talk about her progress. It was important, so although she was running late for her appointment at the Hotel de Paris she made the time. It was on half one when she leapt into the Sunbeam, starting her engine as she checked her cell.
It was never a pleasant experience. So many messages—so few people she actually wanted to talk to. There were several from her solicitor, a raft from legal firms she’d never heard of and one from the agent through whom she was leasing the villa out to strangers. She had a vague hope that the income could be channelled back into the upkeep of the house and grounds. But she wouldn’t think about that right now. She wasn’t ready.
Maybe tomorrow.
Unexpectedly the stranger’s comment that she expected the world to run on her timetable flashed to mind. But before she had time to dwell unhappily on the truth of that, and aware that her damn hands were shaking again, she keyed in her best friend Simone’s number and attached ear buds to enable her to drive
and talk.
‘You had a car accident? Mon Dieu, Lorelei, are you all right?’
‘No, not an accident.’ She hesitated, knowing how lame it was going to sound. ‘I borrowed it for a theme party and parked it and left the handbrake off.’
There was a pause before Simone said with a suspicion of laughter in her voice, ‘You know I love you, Lorelei, but I would never let you drive my car.’
‘Then perhaps you should talk to the guy I dealt with—this big Australian. He seemed to think I was a disaster waiting to happen.’
‘Poor bébé. I’m sure you charmed him in the end.’
‘He was a little steamed about the car.’
‘I bet.’
‘I don’t think he liked me very much.’
Simone snorted. ‘Men always like you, Lorelei. You wouldn’t be so good at milking them of euros for that charity of yours if they didn’t.’
Lorelei acknowledged the truth of this with a little shrug. ‘I guess this one was the exception. He was different—I don’t know...capable. Manly. He looked over my car.’
‘And—?’
‘I think I liked him.’
Simone was silent. Testimony to the state of Lorelei’s romantic life.
‘I know. I must be crazy, right?’
‘Is he employed?’
‘Oh, honestly.’
‘The last one I heard about didn’t have a sou to his name.’
‘Rupert was an installation artist.’
‘Is that what he called it? I know you’re touchy about this, but for the life of me I can’t work out why you don’t date those guys you schmooze for your grandmother’s charity.’
Lorelei’s heart sank a little. The nature of her charity work meant she was often seen in social situations with powerful men, but she never dated them. Being the daughter of one of the most infamous gigolos on the Riviera had left her wary of men who could pay her bills. She gravitated towards a type: struggling artist—whether it be painter or musician or poet—often in need of propping up, usually with her money. And that was where everything came unstuck.