Falling for Alexander (Corkscrew Bay #2)

by Claire Robyns

  A pang of hot desire rammed her low in the belly, shattering all her rock-solid reasons for despising this man.

  With a grumble of disgust at herself, she snapped her eyes straight ahead, staring out the windshield as she mentally grabbed the shattered reasons and glued them together.

  Even if he hadn’t fired Mrs. Pinnings.

  Even if he wasn’t an aloof billionaire who didn’t care that Darrock Castle was part of the town’s identity. Didn’t care that one couldn’t fully function without the other.

  Even if they weren’t engaged in a battle of lies, a fickle foundation for a house cards of that would come tumbling down before the end of the day.

  There was that look he’d given her. The not even if you were the last female on earth look.

  And the fact that he thought he had her. He thought all he had to do was delay long enough until her nerves cracked. That she’d suddenly remember an urgent engagement requiring her to return to Corkscrew Bay immediately and she’d never dare broach the subject of his housekeeper again.

  Huh.

  Maybe she should call his bluff. Admit she wasn’t Mrs. Pinnings’ niece and pull a U-turn on this charade. Contrary to whatever he thought, she had no interest in blackening his name all over the front pages for the sheer fun of it. The Corkscrew Weekly wasn’t that kind of rag.

  All she wanted was the truth as and how it affected the town and its people. And okay, on a really honest day, she admitted it was highly unlikely there was anything illegal going on at Castle Darrock. But seriously, the way some people lived their lives just invited snooping!

  “What do you do for a living?” she asked him, suddenly desperate for some validation that she wasn’t completely mad. That she hadn’t gone along with this ridiculous scheme when the line of direct questioning she usually applied would have worked.

  He didn’t answer, didn’t even glance at her.

  “You know what I do,” she said with a tart bite in her tone. “It’s not like I’m trying to pry a state secret from you.”

  As soon as she’d said it, of course, she wondered. It was those helicopters. The cloak he wrapped his life behind. Could it be?

  “You’re not like a—a—” She clamped her lips. Seriously? She was not about to ask if he was a spy, or a secret agent. What was she? Ten years old?

  His head inclined in her direction. “I’m a composer and songwriter.”

  “Alexander Gerardo?” Her brows shot up in disbelief. “I’ve never heard of you.”

  “I don’t perform,” he said, adding, “How many songwriters have you heard of?”

  “Not many,” she admitted, searching her mind.

  Make that none.

  But a songwriter? Was that even credible? Her gaze shifted to where his hand rested on the steering wheel, fingers tapping to the rhythm of the tune on the radio. Long, nimble fingers she could easily imagine flying over a keyboard. Or strumming a guitar.

  “Would I know any of your songs?” she asked, tipping over into belief.

  He flashed a grin at her. A grin that kicked up on one side of his mouth and stirred butterflies at her pulse.

  “Ruins of Love,” he said without a scrap of shame.

  Idiot. That’s exactly what she got for her naivety.

  “So,” she drew out sarcastically, “you wrote the song that’s been number one on the charts for the last three weeks? The song we just happen to have heard on the radio?”

  The grin stayed. “Too much of a coincidence?”

  He was messing with her, but it didn’t feel like a joke. Not with their track record, which, as far as she was concerned, went back three years.

  “Forget it,” she mumbled. “Silly me, for thinking we could attempt a civil conversation.”

  “We’re not doing too badly.”

  “I just thought we could get to know each other a bit. You know, like normal people do when they’re cooped together for any extended time.” The glare she sent him softened almost instantly.

  There it was again, the butter-melting brain sensation that wanted to delve beneath his surface. She’d never use this stuff for the paper. There was no justification for wanting to know.

  She didn’t care what he was so afraid of. She didn’t care why he hid behind his walls. All she cared about was that he did and that Corkscrew Bay suffered the ramifications. Traditions severed. Tourist trade reduced in a tough economic period.

  So why couldn’t she stop herself from asking? “Don’t you ever open up, Alexander? Show a piece of who you are without cloaks, walls and lies?”

  “The scope and magnitude of a person’s lies reveals more than any truth.” He gave that just enough time to sink in before clubbing her over the head with a sweetly innocuous, “Don’t you think?”

  Judged and damned. The whole of her defined by one little lie he’d caught her out on.

  She bristled from head to toe. She felt as if her teeth had grown hair, and that bristled, too. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  She wasn’t a saint. She hadn’t reached the grand age of twenty-five without her share of white-lies, well-meaning fibs and, yes, maybe this one was a giant whopper. And maybe it wouldn’t have stung quite so badly if she hadn’t gone off record, hadn’t reached out to him as one human to another. If he’d picked another time, picked any other of her faults—God, she certainly had enough for him to choose from—to slam her down and shut her up.

  “An oversight I look forward to remedying,” he said. “Let’s start with you and your aunt. Are you close? Is she from your mother’s side or father’s?”

  Kate shoved her hostility aside and took the opening. “If you want to really know and understand me, we’ll have to go back further than my aunt.”

  “We have a few hours.”

  “Wonderful!” She’d never needed much encouragement to share her love for Corkscrew Bay and its history. That she might shake loose his stubborn resistance to the Easter egg hunt was simply an added advantage. “Let’s start at 1741.”

  “Let’s not,” he muttered.

  Kate smiled, her mood remarkably improved. “Margaret Ashley, married at some ungodly age to the second Earl of Ashley, a miserable guy by all accounts and what we’d consider nowadays a veritable psychopath.”

  “An ancestor of yours?”

  She rolled her eyes. “She was barely twenty when her husband locked her and their five-year-old son in the North Tower and set it on fire.”

  That got his attention. “Why would he do that?”

  “Well, there’s the psychopath thing,” she said. “And he was a mean drunk. But according to the story, he got it into his head that his wife was a witch and the boy the devil’s spawn.”

  “They were burnt alive?”

  Kate shook her head. “Margaret strapped her son to her back and managed to escape, using the ivy vines to climb down. The villagers hid them while her family was summoned down from Oxfordshire to take charge of the situation. Not too long after, a second mysterious fire razed the north tower to the ground and claimed the bastard’s life. Margaret’s son became the third Earl of Ashley. Not surprisingly, the north tower was never rebuilt.”

  Alexander chuckled.

  The echo of that rich tenor rumbled down her spine to toast her toes. The cost of amusing him. The moment the antagonism between them lowered, she started appreciating how utterly gorgeous the man was.

  She pressed her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Moving swiftly on to 1783.”

  “There’s more?” he said with what might or might not have been a mock groan.

  She could go on all day…all year if required. Stories handed down from one generation to the next. Stories that wove threads through Castle Darrock and Corkscrew Bay, back and forth, give and take, marrying the two in a seamless history. Stories like the one where the seventh Earl and his lady created the ghostly legend of The Purple Lady with phosphorous smoke to distract excise officers on the nights when a new shipment of c
ontraband sailed in on the opposite side of the bay.

  Stories to warm the cockles of a man’s heart or, in the case of Alexander Gerardo, maybe just defrost the edges.

  After the first half-hour, his attempts to derail her toward more recent history, her own with regards to her aunt in particular, floundered. During the course of the next hour, his flippant remarks dried up and she got a few more of those rumbling chuckles out of him. At this rate, they might even get their Easter egg hunt.

  Her conservative optimism didn’t last ten minutes past stepping out of the car. They’d stopped at a tourist strip along the coast, one of the many seaside resorts that boasted a string of restaurants, ice-cream parlours, curio kiosks and not much else.

  Kate climbed the wooden slats to the promenade one step ahead of him, her fingers trailing the banister, her gaze on the stunning panoramic horizon where pale blue sky met the darker blue-green of the ocean. Long, warm fingers brushed hers, there and gone in a flash. Her breath hitched and didn’t release until the lingering tingle faded.

  An accident?

  No apology was forthcoming. She moved that hand from the banister to the strap of her backpack that was currently doubling as her purse, but the damage was done. She was suddenly, acutely aware of the man behind her.

  Had he fallen back a step? Was his gaze on the view or on her backside? Oh, God, she could feel his eyes exactly there, a caress almost as tangible as that fleeting brush of skin. Heat flushed her throat and the tingling sensation returned, spreading down her spine. Didn’t matter that he saw nothing tempting, that she was a challenge he had no trouble resisting.

  She picked up her pace, bounding onto the promenade and into a stiff march.

  “Kate…” he called. “Wait.”

  “What!” She stopped dead, took a second to breathe, then spun about.

  That second had given him the time to catch up. He was right there, catching her at the shoulders just before she spun straight into his chest.

  “Whoa…”

  Her head jerked up.

  His gaze hit hers, his face angled as he leant in slightly, their lips inches from smacking.

  She blinked, her throat dry, her gaze level with that firm, wide mouth. His scent, that blend of tamed nature and wild man, filtered through her irritation. Would he taste as good as he smelled? Her pulse fluttered at the thought.

  She stepped back to shrug out of his grasp. He came with, pressing her up against the promenade railing. No, not pressing. There was a decent foot between them, and yet it felt as if she were squashed up to the wall of his chest. She couldn’t think. Could barely breathe. Resistance was a hard, hard battle she didn’t have the strength to fight.

  Alexander Gerardo was bad news, but right now, in this very moment where the air was thick and heavy and her heart pounded erratically, he was her bad news. She wanted that kiss. She wanted his touch with a feverish need. She didn’t care about right and wrong. About the lies and consequences.

  She was even beyond caring if his grey eyes were laughing at her from behind those shades.

  But she didn’t think they were. His fingers curled over her shoulders, tight with the same tension pulling at his jaw. His breathing not quite regular. She recognised the signs. He was fighting his own battle and, dear God, she didn’t want him to win it.

  Lose with me.

  Sink to the bottom.

  She reached out, putting a hand to his chest. A ribbed wall of granite and hot beneath her palm. An ache of longing pulsed low in her abdomen.

  “Alex?” She hadn’t descended into total crazy. Her hand on his chest could be begging, or pushing. His choice. His will.

  He lowered his head, the closeness another wave crashing over her, melting the marrow from her bones.

  Her lips parted on a sigh, her eyes closing beneath the sudden heaviness of her lids.

  “Given how light you’re travelling…” His roughened jaw scraped tender, his breath warm against her cheek as he spoke. “I assume you didn’t pack a gift for your aunt.”

  What?

  Her eyes snapped open. Her body was still tingling, aching, wanting. Her lips trembling for that kiss.

  His grip on her shoulders tightened fractionally, then released as his arms dropped to his sides. He stepped back, shoving a hand through his hair and holding it there.

  And just like that, the big fat lie was between them again. The marrow whooshed straight back into her bones. The hand on his chest pushed. Hard. He didn’t resist, moving another step back.

  “It would be rude to arrive empty-handed,” he pointed out.

  “Um, yeah, well… ” Kate swallowed past the lump of dismay clogging her throat. Damn those sunglasses. Had he not felt any of that? Had he been playing her?

  “This trip came at me out of the blue,” she said. So had that ridiculous rush of desire. The plunge off the cliff. She’d jumped willingly, apparently without even the suggestion of a nudge.

  “Which is why I thought this might be of interest to you,” he said, moving his gaze from her to the shop fronts behind.

  She followed the line of his sight. Crickets. The battered metal sign hung above the shop’s doorway. Woven baskets either side the doorway overflowed with the type of junk people loved to buy but never used.

  “How sweet of you.” She twisted some version of a smile from her lips. “You think of everything, don’t you?”

  “I do try,” he said, holding out his arm. “Shall we?”

  Ignoring the offer, she strode around him to swat a path through the tunnel of wind chimes at the shop’s entrance. The musical cacophony followed her as she stumbled out the other side. The cramped interior was a disarray of display units, tables piled with trinkets and yet more woven baskets taking up most of the floor space, some partially tipped, all overflowing.

  Another ripple of tinkling chimes from behind pushed Kate forward. A pair of teenage girls fussed around a table of stuffed lizards in the corner. She gave the lizards some serious consideration.

  A woman with cropped ash-silver hair peered up from where she was bent over a half unpacked crate. “Anything I can help you with, love?”

  Yes, please. Where do you keep your imaginary gifts for fake aunts? Kate smiled tersely, shaking her head. “Just looking, thanks.”

  Ambling deeper into the shop, she paused at an open shelf of crushed-shell jewellery boxes. Reasonably appropriate, she decided, picking up one for further examination.

  “An interesting choice,” murmured Alexander over her shoulder, his breath tickling her ear.

  Hot ice trickled down her spine and spread beneath her skin. Kate stilled, then slowly exhaled. She turned the box over in her hands, refusing to reveal the effect he had on her by skittering away. “It’s very pretty.”

  “A perfect gift,” he said, that gravel voice washing over her with an illicit thrill.

  There were so many things wrong with this scene, she could take her pick.

  She couldn’t have him.

  She shouldn’t want him.

  This delicious distraction was a carefully targeted, calculated move on his part. She knew that with as much certainty as she knew the heat stinging the back of her neck had nothing to do with the unusually warm late March weather.

  That didn’t stop her knees from turning to marshmallow while the rest of her registered his closeness, so very close, closer than that almost kiss outside. Alexander was the ice-cream advertisement on a melting summer afternoon. The one designed by suit-people around a boardroom table with only their company bottom line in mind. Didn’t stop anyone from lusting after that scoop of creamy double-thick dark chocolate, did it?

  She caught herself licking her lips and bit down hard. This was bordering on pathetic. “Yes, my aunt will love this.”

  “Except,” he said, still breathing near her ear, “she doesn’t wear jewellery.”

  Who doesn’t wear jewellery? Kate conjured up a vision of the woman, put a pair of bob-earrings on her; took them off
. Any rings? A Bracelet? She drew an absolute blank. Suddenly she couldn’t even remember if Mrs. Pinnings favoured pink or red shades of lipstick. If she even wore lipstick.

  Kate swung around, and instantly swallowed the barbed retort that came with her frown. He’d pushed his shades up, his eyes all dark and stormy. His nostrils flared. She’d caught him off-guard, in that second before a mask of bemusement blanked the signals of arousal.

  “Mrs. Pinnings suffers from eczema,” he said into her dumbfounded silence. “Her skin is hypersensitive and she’s allergic to most metal alloys. She stopped wearing any form of jewellery decades ago.”

  Kate’s mouth went slack. “How the hell would you know that?”

  He leant in, and then a little more. A half grin pressed a dimple in one cheek, softening the harsh angles. His eyes were on her lips.

  He really was going to kiss her this time and she’d have to slap that grin from his scheming face. Yeah, she thought through the haze steaming up inside her, she’d probably definitely have to do that. Maybe.

  His eyes snapped up to hers. “How the hell do you not know that?”

  On the outside, Kate gave an almost imperceptible wince. Inside, she kicked herself hard enough to leave a mental bruise. She didn’t mind the laying of the trap…that was par for the course. What she did mind was the disparity of him marking points with ruthless clarity while she bumbled around in a stew of simmering hormones.

  “Of course I know that.” She backed away into her own space. “How couldn’t I?”

  He cocked a brow at the jewellery box she was still clutching.

  “There are—this has other uses,” she informed him curtly.

  That brow cocked higher.

  “Like… Like holding keys,” she said. “My aunt is forever losing her keys.”

  “In that case,” he said, edging around the table, “you should take a look at these.”

  Kate shoved the box back on the shelf and followed him to a wall hung with painted driftwood key-racks. Because, honestly, she just wanted to get this gift bought and be done with it.