Secrets of a Ruthless Tycoon

by Cathy Williams

  She had stupidly made assumptions about a future that had never been on the cards. They had been at university together and, hell, it had been a lot of fun. She was by far the fittest girl there. But a future together...?

  The look of embarrassed, dawning horror on his face had said it all but still, like the young fool she had been, she had clung on and asked for explanations. The more he had been forced to explain, the cooler his voice had become. They were worlds apart; how could she seriously have thought that they would end up married? Wasn’t it enough that she had had an all-expenses-paid farewell holiday? He was expected to marry a certain type of woman...that was just the way it was...she should just stop clinging and move on...

  She’d moved on but still a part of her had remained rooted to that moment in time. Why else had she made no effort to get her love life back on track?

  The stranger’s unexpected arrival on the scene had opened Pandora’s box in her head and, much as she wanted to slam the lid back down, she remained lying in bed for far longer than she should, just thinking.

  It was after eight by the time she made it down to the bar, belatedly remembering the strict times during which her guest could have his breakfast. As landladies went, she would definitely not be in the running for a five-star rating.

  She came to a halt by the kitchen door when she discovered that Leo was already there, appearing to make himself at home. There was a cup of coffee in front of him, and his laptop, which he instantly closed the second he looked up and spied her hovering in the doorway, a bit like a guest on her own premises.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me making myself at home,’ Leo said, pushing his chair back and folding his hands behind his head to look at her. ‘I’m an early riser and staying in bed wasn’t a tempting thought.’ He had been up since six, in fact, and had already accomplished a great deal of work, although less than he had anticipated, because for once he had found his mind wandering to the girl now dithering in front of him. Was it because he was so completely removed from his comfort zone that his brain was not functioning with the rigid discipline to which it was accustomed? Was that why he had fallen asleep thinking of those startling green eyes and had awakened less than five hours later with a painful erection?

  He might be willing to exploit whatever she knew about his mother, if she knew anything at all, but he certainly wasn’t interested in progressing beyond that.

  ‘You’ve been working.’ Brianna smiled hesitantly. His impact on all her senses seemed as powerful in the clear light of day as it had been the night before. She galvanised herself into action and began unloading the dishwasher, stacking all the glasses to be returned to the bar outside; fetching things from the fridge so that she could make him the breakfast which was included in the money he had paid her.

  ‘I have. I find that I work best in the mornings.’

  ‘Have you managed to get anything down? I guess it must be quite an ordeal trying to get your imagination to do what you want it to do. Can I ask you what your book is going to be about? Or would you rather keep that to yourself?’

  ‘People and the way they interact.’ Leo hastened to get away from a topic in which he had no intention of becoming mired. The last time he had written anything that required the sort of imagination she was talking about had been at secondary school. ‘Do you usually get up this early?’

  ‘Earlier.’ She refilled his mug and began cracking eggs, only pausing when he told her to sit down and talk to him for a few minutes rather than rushing into making breakfast.

  Brianna blushed and obeyed. Nerves threatened to overwhelm her. She sneaked a glance at him and all over again was rendered breathless by the sheer force of his good looks and peculiar magnetism. ‘There’s a lot to do when you run a pub.’ She launched into hurried speech to fill the silence. ‘And, like I said, I’m doing it all on my own, so I have no one to share the responsibility with.’

  Leo, never one to indulge his curiosity when it came to women—and knowing very well that, whatever information he was interested in gathering, certainly had nothing to do with her so why waste time hearing her out?—was reluctantly intrigued. ‘A curious life you chose for yourself,’ he murmured.

  ‘I didn’t choose it. It chose me.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Are you really interested?’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t,’ Leo said with a shrug. He had wondered whether she was really as pretty as he had imagined her to be. Subdued lighting in a pub could do flattering things to an average woman. He was discovering that his first impressions had been spot on. In fact, they had failed to do her justice. She had an ethereal, angelic beauty about her that drew the eye and compelled him to keep on staring. His eyes drifted slightly down to her breasts, small buds causing just the tiniest indentations in her unflattering, masculine jumper, which he guessed had belonged at one point to her father.

  ‘My dad died unexpectedly. Well, maybe there were signs before. I didn’t see them. I was at university, not getting back home as often as I knew I should, and Dad was never one to make a fuss when it came to his health.’ She was startled at the ease with which she confessed to the guilt that had haunted her ever since her father had died. She could feel the full brunt of Leo’s attention on her and it was as flattering as it was unnerving, not at all what she was accustomed to.

  ‘He left a lot of debts.’ She cleared her throat and blinked back the urge to cry. ‘I think things must have slipped as he became ill and he never told me. The bank manager was very understanding but I had to keep running the pub so that I could repay the debts. I couldn’t sell it, even though I tried for a while. There’s a good summer trade here. Lots of fantastic scenery. Fishing. Brilliant walks. But the trade is a little seasonal and, well, the economy isn’t great. I guess you’d know. You probably have to keep a firm rein on your finances if you’ve packed your job in...’

  Leo flushed darkly and skirted around that ingenuous observation. ‘So you’ve been here ever since,’ he murmured. ‘And no partner around to share the burden?’

  ‘No.’ Brianna looked down quickly and then stood up. ‘I should get going with my chores. It’s snowing outside and it looks like it’s going to get worse, which usually means that the pub loses business, but just in case any hardy souls show up I can’t have it looking a mess.’

  So, he thought, there had been a man and it had ended badly. He wondered who the guy was. Some losers only stuck by their women when the times were good. The second the winds of change began blowing, they ran for the hills. He felt an unexpected spurt of anger towards this mystery person who had consigned her to a life on her own of drudgery, running a pub to make ends meet and pay off bills. He reined back his unruly mind and reminded himself that his primary purpose wasn’t as counsellor but as information gatherer.

  ‘If you really meant it about helping—and I promise I won’t take advantage of your kind offer— you could try and clear a path through the snow, just in case it stops; at least my customers would be able to get to the door. It doesn’t look promising...’ She moved to one of the windows and frowned at the strengthening blizzard. ‘What do you intend to do if the weather doesn’t let up?’ She turned to face him.

  ‘It’ll let up. I can’t afford to stay here for very long.’

  ‘You could always incorporate a snow storm in your book.’

  ‘It’s a thought.’ He moved to stand next to her and at once he breathed in the fragrant, flowery smell of her hair which was, again, tied back in a pony tail. His fingers itched to release it, just to see how long it was, how thick. He noticed how she edged away slightly from him. ‘I’ll go see what I can do about the snow. You’ll have to show me where the equipment is.’

  ‘The equipment consists of a shovel and some bags of sand for gritting.’ She laughed, putting a little more distance between them, because just for a second there she had felt short of breath with him standing so close to her.

  ‘You do this yourself whenever it s
nows?’ he asked, once the shovel was in his hand and the door to the pub thrown open to the elements. He thought of his last girlfriend, a model who didn’t possess a pair of wellies to her name, and would only have gone near snow if it happened to be falling on a ski slope in Val d’Isere.

  ‘Only if it looks as though it would make a difference. There’ve been times when I’ve wasted two hours trying to clear a path, only to stand back and watch the snow cover it all up in two minutes. You can’t go out in those...er...jeans; you’ll be soaked through. I don’t suppose you brought any, um, waterproof clothing with you?’

  Leo burst out laughing. ‘Believe it or not, I didn’t pack for a snow storm. The jeans will have to do. If they get soaked, they’ll dry in front of that open fire in the lounge area.’

  He worked out. He was strong. And yet he found that battling with the elements was exercise of a completely different sort. This was not the sanitised comfort of his expensive gym, with perfectly oiled machinery that was supposed to test the body to its limits. This was raw nature and, by the time he looked at his handiwork, a meagre path already filling up with fast falling snow, an hour and a half had flown past.

  He had no gloves. His hands were freezing. But hell, it was invigorating. In fact, he had completely forgotten the reason why he was in this Godforsaken village in the first place. His thoughts were purely and utterly focused on trying to outsmart and out-shovel the falling snow.

  The landscape had turned completely white. The pub was set a distance from the main part of the village and was surrounded by open fields. Pausing to stand back, his arm resting heavily on the shovel which he had planted firmly in the ground, he felt that he was looking at infinity. It evoked the strangest sensation of peace and awe, quite different from the irritation he had felt the day before when he had stared moodily out of the window at the tedium of never-ending fields and cursed his decision to get there by car.

  He stayed out another hour, determined not to be beaten, but in the end he admitted defeat and returned to the warmth of the pub, to find the fire blazing and the smell of food wafting from the kitchen.

  ‘I fought the snow...’ God, he felt like a caveman returning from a hard day out hunting. ‘And the snow won. Don’t bank on any customers today. Something smells good.’

  ‘I don’t normally do lunch for guests.’

  ‘You’ll be royally paid for your efforts.’ He stifled a surge of irritation that the one thing most women would have given their eye teeth to do for him was something she clearly had done because she had had no choice. She was stuck with him. She could hardly expect him to starve because lunch wasn’t included in the price of the room. ‘You were going to fill me in on the people who live around here.’ He reminded her coolly of the deal they had struck.

  ‘It’s not very exciting.’ She looked at him and her heartbeat quickened. ‘You’re going to have to change. You’re soaked through. If you give me your damp clothes, I can put them in front of the fire in the snug.’

  ‘The snug?’

  ‘My part of the house.’ She leaned back against the kitchen counter, hands behind her. ‘Self-contained quarters. Only small—two bedrooms, a little snug, a kitchen, bathroom and a study where Dad used to do all the accounts for the pub. It’s where I grew up. I can remember loving it when the place was full and I could roam through the guest quarters bringing them cups of tea and coffee. It used to get a lot busier in the boom days.’

  She certainly looked happy recounting those jolly times but, as far as Leo was concerned, it sounded like just the sort of restricted life that would have driven him crazy.

  And yet, this could have been his fate—living in this tiny place where everyone knew everyone else. In fact, he wouldn’t even have had the relative comforts of a village pub. He would probably have been dragged up in a hovel somewhere by the town junkie, because what other sort of loser gave away their own child? It was a sobering thought.

  ‘I could rustle up some of Dad’s old shirts for you. I kept quite a few for myself. I’ll leave them outside your bedroom door and you can hand me the jeans so that I can launder them.’

  She hadn’t realised how lonely it was living above the pub on her own, making every single decision on her own, until she was rummaging through her wardrobe, picking out shirts and enjoying the thought of having someone to lend them to, someone sharing her space, even if it was only in the guise of a guest who had been temporarily blown off-path by inclement weather.

  She warmed at the thought of him trying and failing to clear the path to the pub of snow. When she gently knocked on his bedroom door ten minutes later, she was carrying a bundle of flannel shirts and thermal long-sleeved vests. She would leave them outside the door, and indeed she was bending down to do just that when the door opened.

  She looked sideways and blinked rapidly at the sight of bare ankles. Bare ankles and strong calves, with dark hair... Her eyes drifted further upwards to bare thighs...lean, muscular bare thighs. Her mouth went dry. She was still clutching the clothes to her chest, as if shielding herself from the visual invasion of his body on her senses. His semi-clad body.

  ‘Are these for me?’

  Brianna snapped out of her trance and stared at him wordlessly.

  ‘The clothes?’ Leo arched an amused eyebrow as he took in her bright-red face and parted lips. ‘They’ll come in very handy. Naturally, you can put them on the tab.’

  He was wearing boxers and nothing else. Brianna’s brain registered that as a belated postscript. Most of her brain was wrapped up with stunned, shocked appreciation of his body. Broad shoulders and powerful arms tapered down to a flat stomach and lean hips. He had had a quick shower, evidently, and one of the cheap, white hand towels was slung around his neck and hung over his shoulders. She felt faint.

  ‘I thought I’d get rid of the shirt as well,’ he said. ‘If you wouldn’t mind laundering the lot, I would be extremely grateful. I failed to make provisions for clearing snow.’

  Brianna blinked, as gauche and confused as a teenager. She saw that he was dangling the laundry bag on one finger while looking at her with amusement.

  Well of course he would be, she thought, bristling. Writer or not, he came from a big city and, yes, was ever so patronising about the smallness of their town. And here she was, playing into his hands, gaping as though she had never seen a naked man in her life before, as though he was the most interesting thing to have landed on her doorstep in a hundred years.

  ‘Well, perhaps you should have,’ she said tartly. ‘Only a fool would travel to this part of the world in the depths of winter and not come prepared for heavy snow.’ She snatched the laundry bag from him and thrust the armful of clothes at his chest in return.

  ‘Come again?’ Had she just called him a fool?

  ‘I haven’t got the time or the energy to launder your clothes every two seconds because you didn’t anticipate bad weather. In February. Here.’ Her eyes skirted nervously away from the aggressive width of his chest. ‘And I suggest,’ she continued tightly, ‘That you cover up. If I don’t have the time to launder your clothes, then I most certainly do not have the time to play nursemaid when you go down with flu!’

  Leo was trying to think of the last time a woman had raised her voice in his presence. Or, come to think of it, said anything that was in any way inflammatory. It just didn’t happen. He didn’t know whether to be irritated, enraged or entertained.

  ‘Message understood loud and clear.’ He grinned and leaned against the doorframe. However serious the implications of this visit to the land that time forgot, he realised that he was enjoying himself. Right now, at this very moment, with this beautiful Irish girl standing in front of him, glaring and uncomfortable. ‘Fortunately, I’m as healthy as a horse. Can’t remember the last time I succumbed to flu. So you won’t have to pull out your nurse’s uniform and tend to me.’ Interesting notion, though... His dark eyes drifted over her lazily. ‘I’ll be down shortly. And my thanks once again for the cloth
es.’

  Brianna was still hot and flustered when, half an hour later, he sauntered down to the kitchen. One of the tables in the bar area had been neatly set for one. ‘I hope you’re not expecting me to have lunch on my own,’ were his opening words, and she spun around from where she had been frowning into the pot of homemade soup.

  Without giving her a chance to answer, he began searching for the crockery, giving a little grunt of satisfaction when he hit upon the right cupboard. ‘Remember we were going to...talk? You were going to tell me all about the people who live here so that I can get some useful fodder for my book.’ It seemed inconceivable that a budding author would simply up sticks and go on a rambling tour of Ireland in the hope of inspiration but, as excuses went, it had served its purpose, which was all that mattered. ‘And then, I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I’m a man of my word.’

  ‘There won’t be much to do,’ Brianna admitted. ‘The snow’s not letting up. I’ve phoned Aidan and told him that the place will be closed until the weather improves.’

  ‘Aidan?’

  ‘One of my friends. He can be relied on to spread the word. Only my absolute regulars would even contemplate trudging out here in this weather.’

  ‘So...is Aidan the old would-be opera singer?’

  ‘Aidan is my age. We used to go to school together.’ She dished him out some soup, added some bread and offered him a glass of wine, which he rejected in favour of water.

  ‘And he’s the guy who broke your heart? No. He wouldn’t be. The guy who broke your heart has long since disappeared, hasn’t he?’

  Brianna stiffened. She reminded herself that she was not having a cosy chat with a friend over lunch. This was a guest in her pub, a stranger who was passing through, no more. Confiding details of her private life was beyond the pale, quite different from chatting about all the amusing things that happened in a village where nearly everyone knew everyone else. Her personal life was not going to be fodder for a short story on life in a quaint Irish village.