‘Get them to ring down to the gate about Rachel’s friend, Tom.’
‘Will do.’ He nodded, before turning his attention briefly back to his sister. ‘If I can’t excel as a Latin lover—’ he struck a mock-heroic pose and then slumped his shoulders pathetically ‘—I’ll just have to earn my keep being useful round the house. Incidentally, Nat, maybe you should wait until you’ve got the ironwear off the teeth before you start working your way through the continental studs. A moment of passion and their crowns could be dust.’
‘Shut up, you; I don’t know how Ruth puts up with you!’ his sister yelled after him. ‘I shall have beautiful teeth,’ she observed, tapping the metal framework around her front teeth.
‘You will, my dear,’ her mother confirmed. ‘Ah,’ she said, inclining her head to one side in an attentive attitude. ‘I recognise that slam. I do believe Benedict is back.’
‘Oh, excellent.’ Sabrina got to her feet slowly and regarded her reflection in an ornate mirror on the wall opposite with a smug smile.
Rachel got to her feet, too, like a puppet whose strings had just been jerked particularly viciously, but she wasn’t smiling. She was still wondering if she could make it safely through the French windows before he entered the room when the door was pushed open.
‘Darling.’
‘Sabrina, what are you doing here?’ Benedict’s response would have dampened more sensitive spirits than Sabrina, who smiled seductively and glided across the room. ‘Good God, Rachel!’ He literally froze.
Someone released the tension on those invisible strings and her knees started to quiver. ‘I’m just going, Mr Arden.’ Her voice showed a tendency to quiver too. She heard it and Benedict did too; she watched his lips curve into a cruel smile. He looked to be in one hell of a temper.
‘Mr Arden?’ he echoed mockingly. ‘Miss French, no, you’re not leaving!’
‘Really, Ben, darling, it is the weekend; I’m sure the girl has better things to do than—do whatever secretaries do.’
Sabrina, Rachel thought despairingly, was probably the only person in the room that hadn’t read, and personally translated, the undercurrents. Lurid reading those versions probably made, too.
‘I’m not his secretary!’
‘She’s not my secretary!’
The two hot denials emerged simultaneously and seething grey eyes clashed with smouldering brown ones.
‘What is she, then? And why is she here?’ asked the blonde, with a disgruntled expression. She didn’t like conversations that didn’t include herself.
The crinkly lines Rachel loved around Benedict’s eyes deepened as he regarded her with narrow-eyed interest. ‘Good question. What are you, and why are you here, Rachel?’
He was gloating, enjoying her discomfiture. Later, when she was rehashing the day’s events, she might be able to come up with the perfect cutting rejoinder that would wipe that smug grin off his face, but right now she had to rely on the transparent subterfuge which had got her in here.
‘I brought some papers for your father to sign.’
‘What papers? Where are they?’ He looked around the room, apparently confident he wouldn’t discover any.
‘I expect they’re on your father’s desk, Benedict. You look terrible.’ Rachel thought he looked sinfully gorgeous but she could see what his mother meant. His eyes were definitely bloodshot and he hadn’t shaved; in fact he looked more like Charlie’s guardian angel than the sleek legal eagle. ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’
Rachel shot a grateful glance in Emily Arden’s direction. She needed all the support she could get.
‘I’ve spent the best part of two hours camped out on Rachel’s doorstep.’
‘You can hardly hold me responsible,’ Rachel said indignantly in response to his smouldering glare. ‘If you choose to waste your time that’s your affair.’
‘Talking of affairs…’ he drawled.
He wouldn’t! The dark eyes shone mockingly back at her. He would! Her stomach churned in misery and embarrassment. ‘What am I supposed to do—wait in on the off chance you might want me?’
‘I don’t think there’s any might about it.’ His wry tone left no room for misinterpretation. She knew what he was thinking as his eyes made the journey from her toes to the top of her head with dramatic pauses to enjoy certain aspects of her figure, and so did everyone else in the room! She’d never felt so humiliated in her life—or as angry!
The slow, contemplative smile on his face broadened as the hot colour flared in two angry bands of red across her cheekbones.