Did he read the longing in her eyes? Was that why he suddenly pulled away with a hard smile, as if he’d known exactly what was going through her head? Maybe he was able to make women desire him, even if they didn’t want to, just by giving them that intense and rather smouldering look. Instinctively, she hugged the coat closer, the leather feeling unbearably soft against her erect and sensitised nipples.
‘Do up your seat belt,’ he ordered, turning up the car’s heater full blast and glancing in his rear mirror before pulling away. ‘And talk me through the reason why you decided to walk from the station. It’s miles.’
‘Why do you think? Because there was no taxi and the man at the ticket office said it wasn’t far.’
‘You should have rung me.’
‘Make your mind up, Conall. You can’t criticise me for not behaving like a normal person and then moan at me when I do. I thought it would be good for me to make my way to the house independently. I thought you might even award me a special gold star for good behaviour.’ She glanced at him, a smile playing around her lips. ‘And to be honest, I didn’t know you were already there.’
Conall said nothing as the car made its way through the downpour, the rhythmical swishing of the wiper blades the only sound he could hear above his suddenly erratic breathing. Of course she hadn’t known he’d be at the house—he hadn’t known himself. He’d planned to arrive later when everything was in place but something had compelled him to get here earlier, and that something was making him uncomfortable because it was all to do with her.
He’d tried telling himself that he needed to oversee the massive security detail which the Prince of Mardovia’s bodyguards had demanded prior to the royal visit. That he needed to check on the painting he was hoping to sell and to ensure it was properly lit. But although both those reasons were valid, they weren’t the real reason why he was desperately trying to avert his gaze from the damp denim which outlined the slenderness of her thighs.
Admit it, he thought grimly. You want her. Despite everything you know about her, you haven’t been able to get her out of your head since you saw her lying on a white leather sofa wearing that baggy T-shirt. Only now the image searing into his brain was the way her wet silk shirt had been clinging to her peaking breasts before he’d hastily covered them up with his jacket. Was it shocking to admit that he wanted to rip the delicate fabric aside and lick her on each hard nub until she squirmed with pleasure? To slide the damp denim from her thighs and put his heated hands all over her chilled flesh?
Of course it was shocking. He had been entrusted to look after her, not seduce her. If it was sex he wanted then Eleanor was only a phone call away. Their grown-up and civilised ‘friends with benefits’ relationship suited them both—even if the physical stimulation it gave him wasn’t matched by a mental one.
But for once the thought of Eleanor’s blonde beauty paled in the face of the fiery, green-eyed temptress on the seat next to him and he was relieved when the sudden shower began to lessen. The sun broke through the clouds as the car made its way up the long drive, just in time to illuminate his house in a radiant display which emphasised its stately proportions. Golden light washed over the tall chimneys and glinted off the mullioned windows. The emerald lawns surrounding the building looked vivid in the bright sunshine and, on a tranquil pond, several ducks quacked happily. Beside him he felt Amber stiffen.
‘But this is...this is beautiful,’ she breathed as the car drew up outside.
He heard the note of wonder in her voice and his mouth hardened. He wondered if she would have been quite so gushing if she’d known the truth about his background. About the hardship and pain and the sense of being an outsider which had never quite left him.
‘Isn’t it?’ he agreed evenly as he stared at the house. With its acres of parkland and sense of history, places like this didn’t come on the market very often and Conall still couldn’t quite believe it was his. Coming hot on the heels of his London deal, it had been a heady time in terms of recent property acquisitions. Had he ever imagined being a major landowner, when he was eighteen and mad with rage and injustice? When the walls of the detention centre had threatened to close in on him and he had been looking down the barrel of an extended jail sentence?
He turned off the ignition, his glance straying to Amber’s large handbag, and it wasn’t the sight of the printout about Prince Luciano which caught his eye—although he was pleased to see she’d been doing her homework—but the intricate doodles on the edge of one of the pages which stirred a faint but enduring memory.
He frowned. ‘I remember seeing some drawings like this in your apartment that first day.’
She stiffened. ‘What, you mean you were snooping around?’
‘They were half hidden behind a sofa. Were they yours?’
‘Of course they were mine—why?’
Ignoring the defensive note in her voice, he narrowed his eyes. ‘I thought some of them showed real promise and a few were really very good.’
‘You don’t have to say that. Anyway, I know they’re rubbish.’
‘I don’t say things I don’t mean, Amber. And why are they rubbish?’
She shrugged, but the words seemed to take a long time coming. ‘I used to paint a lot when we were in Europe and my mother was otherwise occupied. But when I went to live with my father, he made it very clear he thought they were no good—that a kid of six could throw some paint at the canvas and get the same effect, and that I was wasting my time.’ She flashed a brittle kind of smile. ‘So I stopped trying to be an artist and became the society girl that everyone expected. Those paintings you saw were years old. I just...just couldn’t bear to throw them away.’
Conall experienced a moment of real, silent rage as he read the brief flash of hurt and helplessness in her eyes. Were adults deliberately cruel to troubled teenagers, or was it simply that they didn’t know how to handle them?
But maybe she’d always been difficult to handle—in so many ways. Right now she looked like every teenage boy’s fantasy in her wet shirt, with his bulky jacket draped around her slender shoulders, making far too many lustful thoughts crowd his mind. ‘I’ll show you around the house so you have plenty of time to acclimatise yourself before the party, but the guided tour can wait until later. First you need to get out of those wet clothes.’
As soon as the words had left his lips he wanted to take them back, because they sounded like the words a man would say to a woman just before he began touching her. Silently chastising himself for his own foolishness, he got out of the car and opened the door for her.
Still hugging his jacket to her, Amber followed him inside the house into a huge oak-panelled hallway from which curved a majestic staircase. Enormous bucketfuls of white flowers stood on the floor, obviously waiting to be transplanted into vases, and she could hear the sound of female voices coming from a room somewhere and a radio playing in the distance.
‘Last-minute party prep,’ he said, in reply to a question she hadn’t asked. ‘You’ll meet the team later. Now come with me and I’ll show you to your room.’
Her clothes were still clinging damply to her body and Amber guessed she should have been cold—but cold was the last thing she felt right now. Her blood felt heavy and warm as she followed Conall upstairs and her heart was beating painfully against her ribcage. She barely noticed the beautifully restored woodwork or the walls covered with paintings, so fixated was she on the hard thrust of his buttocks against the black denim of his jeans. She could feel her throat growing dry as she stared at the back of his neck, unable to tear her gaze away. With his black hair curling over the collar of his cashmere sweater and his muscular physique rippling with health and strength, he looked in total command of the situation, which she guessed he was. But the weird thing was that she didn’t do this. She didn’t drool over men who treated her as if she were a naughty schoolgirl. Truth was, she didn’t drool over anyone. She bit her lip as she remembered the accusations which had been levelled at her in the past. Cold. Frigid. Ice queen. Valid accusations, every one of them. Yet when Conall looked at her, he made her want to melt, not freeze.
Pushing open the door of a second-floor bedroom overlooking the parkland at the back of the house, he put her case down. ‘You should be comfortable enough in here,’ he said abruptly.
Amber glanced around, suddenly shy to find herself alone in a bedroom with him. Comfortable was an understatement for such a lavish room and she was grateful he’d given her somewhere