Her heels stumped across the wooden floor. “When I find him, I’ll get him into Titania’s arms. He’s a lost cause without us.”
Kitty put a restraining hand on Rosco’s arm. Sitting still was now a noticeable challenge.
“Come along, Kathleen. We’ll get our own tea.”
The door closed behind them, and Rosco huffed out an exasperated breath.
Kitty buried her face in her knees, unable to stop her shoulders shaking.
“Stop laughing.”
“You, past the point of no return. You stuck in your ways.” She gasped, hiding her laughter behind her curtain of hair. “Not blessed with self-awareness, your Aunt Ethel, is she?”
Kitty twisted her head to look at him and stopped smiling. His face was livid, hard, and she so wanted to soothe the anger in his clenched jaw.
“Interfering old trout,” he said, visibly releasing some anger with the words.
“Thanks very much. That’s a long way from my aforementioned baby-faced, mushy-food-eating shortcomings.”
He gave the weakest of smiles. She considered it a success and sighed, worried at the hurt in his face.
“My mother wasn’t a lucky girl, not at all.” His voice was flat, his eyes chipped ice.
Kitty’s heart twisted. His mother had been hurt in this happy-looking family. Appearances, she thought. So often not what they seemed. She’d learned that long ago; it was mother’s milk stuff to her. But each new disillusionment still upset her.
She waited, giving him time to deal with whatever was on his mind. He might be an exasperating controller—type A, if ever there was one—but the humor and affection for his family were also real.
He snatched the cushion under his right knee, thumped it on the floor beside him, plumped it viciously with both hands, and rammed it back under his knee.
“Life and soul of the party…” He fisted his hands on his knees. “My father’s alcoholism wasn’t pretty. When the party’s over, alcohol isn’t so lively.”
Kitty knew that only too well. He was talking to her. Letting the professional mask slip, and she felt his pain. She placed her hand over his fist, the hard warmth of it increasing her awareness of his body next to hers. A sexy tug of attraction shot between them, and her breath caught as her own memories mixed with his.
“I was sixteen when my mother died,” she said.
Rosco opened his hand beneath hers. “I was fourteen when my father died.”
Kitty interlaced her fingers with his, curled them together in unspoken support. His touch, firm and strong, gave her goose bumps and continued to arouse desires she didn’t dare explore.
…
Rosco absorbed the calming comfort of Kitty’s soft touch. Gratitude for her laughter and understanding mingled with pain and respect for the sixteen-year-old girl who had lost her mother. He would have hated that pain for his sisters at such a young age.
He looked at her, seeing the hurt, lonely child in the depths of her warm brown eyes. The brave girl now so grownup and sexy as she smothered her laughter in this absurd little hiding place.
Her shimmer and sparkle continued to pull him in. Away from memories. Away from business caution. Into temptation.
For once he wanted to give in to that temptation. For pleasure to win. He’d never again have the total privacy of Kitty’s tablecloth hideaway.
Her body was tantilizingly close, beautiful and soft, warm and fragrant with her flowery perfume. He drank her in, and she didn’t flinch from him as he moved his mouth closer to hers.
Refusing to analyze further, he hooked his finger gently under her chin and touched his nose to hers, asking silent permission to kiss.
He couldn’t resist her unique blend of attraction. Fragile when she thought he wasn’t watching, strong when rising to a challenge. Always sexy.
Kitty briefly held his gaze, and he could see she was grappling with her own blend of caution and attraction. Then she closed her eyes, tipped up her head, accepting his touch.
Desire pulled his lips to hers, his first kiss a gossamer graze, caressing, still questioning, as he felt her mouth tremble beneath him.
He moved with infinite care to tease the pout of her bottom lip with his own, to taste, to explore.
Then her mouth melted with his, and nothing existed but her. He deepened the kiss, pulled back to graze, then deepened it again, ever so slowly, stoking the flames licking between his body and hers.
She returned the heat, and his gut twisted as she gripped the lapels of his jacket. He reveled in her touch, the softness, the tender responsiveness that went on and on.
Finally, when his control threatened to desert him, he broke the kiss. Pulling apart was a wrench, a full-body warning to cool it. The small part of his brain still thinking clearly recognized Kitty as a unique threat to his usual restraint.
He had to shut that down. She was an employee and still a mystery to him. He may have drawn her into her decoy role, but it wasn’t viable in reality.
He caressed Kitty’s cheek to lessen any rejection and kept his gaze on her mouth. She kissed as well as she talked, and he needed her to fill the sudden silence between them. To talk him down.
…
Kitty licked her lips, Rosco’s kiss still trembling through her as they sat not touching. Not speaking.
Her cheek tingled from his last tender touch, and the pressure to kiss again built, threatening, as she fought to dredge up some humor.
“No one ever consoled me like that in grief sessions, Mr. Redmond.” She bumped his shoulder with hers and felt him relax a little.
“I should hope not. Completely unethical.” His gaze met hers, and he laughed with a hint of shy warmth that confirmed he had enjoyed the kiss as much as she had.
“This makes us blood brothers, Redmond. What happens under the tablecloth, stays under the tablecloth.” Her turn to laugh. “Oath?”
“Oath.” He raised his right hand to his heart. “But no actual blood. This suit is new.”
“Spoilsport.”
He shrugged in pretend regret. “My aunts would be very suspicious.”
“Ethel would take to you with a lecture and a washcloth.”
“Aye. She would,” he agreed with a grin, as Kitty’s resolve to outwit Ethel doused the last of her heated hormones.
“I’ve seen the way you care for your family, and I admire it. But Ethel has no business judging you. Interfering in your life.”
She bristled with indignation at the injustice. Ready to do battle on his behalf.
“Down, Gerbera Girl,” he said. “I can keep my cool with Ethel for all-around family well-being.” He grimaced in the dusky light. “I’m not saying it’s always easy. But family business wasn’t an obligation I expected of you when we signed our contract.”
“I don’t know how to be part of a family. So yours is quite safe from me.”
“Let’s not get hung up on the ‘family’ word again. You have a family, your sisters.”
“Not like any you know.”
“They phoned you. They care.”
“Yes. We care. But we’re making it up as we go along.” She sighed and shifted against her cushions.
Might as well keep talking. They needed to fill in more Titania-avoiding time, and Rosco was right—she did know a lot about his family.
It was reasonable to share a little more after his huge leap of trust in revealing his father’s alcoholism. She wouldn’t betray that trust. But she wished it hadn’t made him even more attractive. Too attractive to resist kissing.
But he’d have her checked out anyway, if he actually considered working with her on future projects.
“Two of my older sisters have always known each other. They went to the same boarding school. Their mothers were the only ones our father married, and they knew about each other but there was no rivalry. They were united in their eventual scorn for their shared husband.”
“He paid for his daughters’ education?”
“He did
. And those two sisters have some memories of him occasionally arriving at boarding school, like Father Christmas, and taking them out to Sunday lunch, High Tea at the Ritz, or Harrods Food Hall.”
“And what memories do you have?”
“None.” She remembered asking her mother repeatedly about her father. “My mother said she was too young to settle down when I was born. She said she had insisted on an education fund for me. ‘I didn’t conceive you by myself,’ she told me. I had to look the word conceive up in the dictionary. I thought babies were imagined for a while.”
Rosco chuckled, and she liked the camaraderie with a hint of sensual appreciation now simmering between them. If she kept on talking, maybe this new non-business Rosco would stay around a bit longer. And see he could trust her.
“My other two sisters have the same story. An education fund but no father.”
“So how did you all get together?”
“He had a stroke two years ago. Sent private detectives around the world to find us.”
“Belated fatherly love?”
“Perhaps, a little.” She shrugged. “He had businesses and property. I don’t think he wanted it broken up and given to his nephews.”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know if he loves people. The most I can say is he values education.”
“And where in the world did he find you all?”
“London, Spain, and Paris times two.”
“That’s only four. Where were you, Kitty?”
“I was the hardest for him to find.” She couldn’t keep a certain pride from her voice. “And the hardest to get to dance to his tune.” She remembered her anger at the intrusion into her life.
“A friend finally talked me into leaving Jordan. I’m used to living out of a rucksack, living simply in the history I’m recording. I had other plans after Jordan, and they weren’t for London.”
“So how long have you been here?”
“Eighteen months. I missed the first six months of the Sisterhood. I regret that now.”
“And what has kept you here?”
She moved away from him, as far as she could. He, and the wine, were pulling her too far into herself now. Into feelings best left in the past.
She hugged her legs again, the best position in their cramped cave. “I always wanted a sister, and now”—she sighed happily—“I have four.” Keep it in the present. Keep it light. Stick to the facts.
“Two’s enough for me,” he said. But they both knew he didn’t mean it. “Five of you in one place,” he teased. “How do the logistics of that all work out?”
“Ralph, our father,”—the word still felt alien to her—“has signed his property over to us. We all live and work together.”
“Your father lives with you?”
“He lives in Spain, says he needs to follow the sun for his aching bones. It works.” She wouldn’t be around if he was living with them, that’s for sure.
Rosco frowned at her, clearly confused. “You all live and work together in London?”
“Yes.” She was enjoying this. In control of a conversation with Rosco for once.
“In the house you grew up in? Too small surely.” He looked at her with sudden suspicion. “Are you in financial trouble, trying to support a new lifestyle with your sisters?”
She shook her head. “We live in a warehouse restoration on the wrong side of London,” she said, comparing it to the prime real estate his family owned, in London and in Wheatbridge Village. “We’re tucked into an industrial corner of the Thames. Part of a renewal community—a little urban village growing in the shadow of the city.”
“Sounds expensive,” he said, suddenly cool. “If you’re trying to suck me into overpaying an advance on a new assignment, you won’t be successful. If I contract you for any projects requiring an investment from my publishing house, you’ll be vetted thoroughly.” He leaned into her, assertive and in control.
“My business proposal is solid.” He was still so skeptical of her, not that she could blame him. The way the media had flocked to his home, eager to tear him down, proved he was vulnerable to being exploited.
But it hurt that he still distrusted her after all her support with the paps and his aunts. “I’ll be ready for you,” she said, remembering their sizzling kiss. “My father is Ralph Kingston.”
Rosco narrowed his eyes, processing the name, and Kitty saw the moment he realized her identity.
“You’re a Brick Square heiress.”
“I am. And believe me, I know all about working hard to protect a legacy.”
He was silent. And she needed to get moving before his implied distrust of her ate away at her energy.
“Let’s go,” she said, annoyed that she had allowed him to goad her into talking about her father. It was a first for her to reveal his identity, especially as some sort of proof of self worth. She’d never dreamed of having to use her father’s name to prove herself to anyone.
“Time to work on our pretend romance to protect your bachelor stud status and my working future with LJ Redmond Publishing. I’m holding you to that presentation promise.” They still had an hour or so to go before this contract was completed, and she wasn’t finished cementing her position yet. There needed to be a big reward for talking about her father.
She leaned toward Rosco. Straightened his already straight tie. As if it would dare look askew, even squashed under a table.
“I know all about being asset rich and the worry of being too cash poor to protect it, to develop it. About having a father whose reputation shadows you.”
He nodded, a calculating glint in his eye.
“That’s why I understand the Titania thing.”
He nodded again, and she hated that she wanted—needed—him to believe she was on his side. That was what happened when she started talking about herself. She started to care. And she’d allowed him to kiss her. Enough. She was through with this cloistered hideaway.
“Just a little fake romancing to get the aunts off your back and we’ll be done. Are you still up for it?” The answering glint in his eye now held just enough smolder to stir her desire.
“I am.” He looked ruefully at the table above them and then back down to hold her gaze with his. “Your secrets are safe with me. My oath still stands. What happens under the tablecloth stays under the tablecloth, Kitty.”
His Irish burr caressed her name as the air between them heated and stilled again with the power of temptation.
But she clicked her fingers, defusing the moment. She wasn’t messing up her plan with more contract-endangering kissing.
“Come on, let’s dance,” she said. “I’ve got a stop-Ethel-in-her-tracks plan.”
“I don’t dance.”
“Of course you do. I’ve seen you.”
Chapter Eight
Rosco gave in. Impossible not to.
“What suffering do you have in store for us?”
“You’ll see,” she said. “It’s time to say good-bye to the tablecloth.”
“Thank goodness.” He pulled a face and stretched his legs. “There’s no room for Ethel in here, too.”
Laughing in spite of himself, he rolled out of their hiding place and watched Kitty’s long booted legs follow him as she shuffled to the edge, pushed her bag and folded wedding suit out ahead of her, and wriggled out to join him.
She shimmied her hips at him. “Ethel needs to be convinced of your studly prowess if you want her to leave you alone.”
The fun Kitty radiated melted some of his carefully controlled caution as, still tempted beyond his usual common sense, he watched her smooth her lacy dress over her hips.
She then fluffed her hair around her face and pulled the oversized orange zip at her neck down a little to reveal more cleavage than his already heated body considered comfortable.
Kissing her had been a mistake. He was way too aware of her body now, and she was an even more complicated mystery to him. Why would a Brick Square heiress be working for him as
a low-ranking photographer and be playing pretend games with his family?
“What are you doing?”
“I’m dressing up for dancing, for romance. We need to be convincing.” She grinned at him, eyes sparkling again.
“More like dressing down.” His eyes were automatically drawn to her bra, hot orange against the creamy swell of her breasts. He couldn’t turn away. Didn’t want to, as the heat of that kiss remained undiscussed between them.
The kiss and unanswered questions about her identity were potential risks he’d deal with later. Right now, he just needed this farce with his family to be over.
“You know I’m serious when I take time to preen,” Kitty joked. “Ethel should be shaking in her shoes.”
A shared vision of Ethel’s stout shoes peeping under their tablecloth had them grinning together like children with a naughty secret.
Kitty’s sexy humor warmed him, and he suppressed another wave of desire.
“Sometimes less is more,” he whispered. Reaching for her, careful not to touch her skin with his, he slowly raised the orange zip of her dress. Wrapping away temptation. “Let’s not give poor old Aunt Ethel a heart attack.”
He felt Kitty suck in a quick breath as she placed her hand to her chest where his had adjusted the zipper. “Very good, Mr. Redmond. No relatives will be harmed.”
She moved her hands to grip his lapels, her smile twisting his gut every bit as seductively as her breasts. “But. You will be required to put some effort in. To actually dance.”
“I’m not hot stuff on the dance floor.” He clutched his right leg in mock pain. “Nothing too complicated. No salsa for me.”
“Just slow dancing,” Kitty said, moving close to him. “Swaying and flexing. No pressure.”
“Easy for you to say,” he murmured as she put her hands on his shoulders.
She swayed, and he moved with her, until the need to control the dance spurred him on.
He pulled her toward him, body to body. “Is this what you had in mind?” He was only human. And this round of flirting was decoy business. Never to be repeated.
“Mmmm,” she said, considering. “I think you need a little technical supervision.”
Tangling with the London Tycoon Page 8