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His Mistress For A Week
MELANIE MILBURNE


What happens in Monte Carlo…Ten years ago bookshop assistant Clementine Scott clashed spectacularly with architect Alistair Hawthorne. After the humiliation of that night she swore she’d never have anything to do with any man every again, especially the arrogant Alistair!But when Clem’s brother disappears with Alistair’s step-sister, she isn’t given a choice…she will be going with Alistair to Monte Carlo to retrieve them! Forced together for one week, they quickly realise that their enmity masks simmering, sizzling lust. They strike a deal – for one week only, all bets – and clothes – are off!







‘It’s not going to work, Clementine. Save your seduction routines for someone else. I’m not interested.’

Clem let out an incredulous snort. ‘You think I’m trying to seduce you? You? Don’t make me laugh.’

Alistair opened the hotel suite door, impatience, frustration, irritation etched in every muscle of his face. ‘We’re wasting valuable time. Out.’

She hitched up her chin. ‘You can’t order me about like I’m some sort of serf. I’ll walk out that door when I’m good and ready.’

His eyes hardened to chips of grey-blue ice.

‘If you don’t walk out this door on the count of three then—’

‘Then what?’ Clem leaned up close, placing her hands on the steely frame of his chest, where she could feel his heart pounding. Boom. Pitty. Boom. Pitty. Boom.

His eyes darkened until they were more pupils than irises. His hands encircled her wrists, the fingers digging into her flesh in searing hot fingerprints that made her blood race. It made his blood race too, for she could feel the tension in his lower body where it was touching hers thigh to thigh.

‘Then this,’ he said, and crushed his mouth to hers.


An avid romance reader, MELANIE MILBURNE loves writing the kind of books that gave her so much joy as she was busy getting married to her own hero and raising a family. Now a USA TODAY bestselling author, she has won several awards—including the Australian Romance Readers Association’s most popular category/series romance in 2008 and the prestigious Romance Writers of Australia Ruby Award in 2011. She loves to hear from readers via her website, melaniemilburne.com.au (http://www.melaniemilburne.com.au), or on Facebook (Facebook.com/melanie.milburne (https://www.Facebook.com/melanie.milburne)) and Twitter: @melaniemilburn1 (https://twitter.com/melaniemilburn1).




His Mistress for a Week

Melanie Milburne







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To Amelia Catherine Limbert.

I hope you enjoy this book specially dedicated to you!

Thank you for being such a loyal fan.


Contents

COVER (#ue9178422-d796-5070-a437-d22e14f3e1ae)

INTRODUCTION (#u2511999e-47b2-5f2b-8d53-8053a49b98f9)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#u879c4dae-a627-50cc-b93b-c191c278f74a)

TITLE PAGE (#u03842db4-f5fe-507c-ad8a-61195999fc5b)

DEDICATION (#u055117ff-cde3-5d34-883d-b4bfeee2298d)

CHAPTER ONE (#u4010d421-dd60-58a3-9b3a-df4087c1b3e8)

CHAPTER TWO (#u667b24c1-8feb-55b7-ac67-5fc41d8b680f)

CHAPTER THREE (#udffd5b83-a008-5d87-bfa9-4f27efce8715)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EXTRACT (#litres_trial_promo)

COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)


CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_f8d37853-e3b9-5716-a0f3-afa62b127837)

CLEMENTINE WAS ON her hands and knees and covered in dust motes and mouse droppings when he came into the shop. She knew it was a ‘he’ because years of listening to her mother’s dodgy boyfriends coming and going at night had turned her into an expert on footfalls. There was a lot you could tell about a person by the way they walked. Whether they were confident or shy, furtive or open. Friend or foe.

This man had a firm, purposeful tread. A don’t-get-in-my-way-I-mean-business tread that made the hairs on the back of Clem’s neck stand up on tiptoe and shiver. She had heard that tread before. Ten years before.

He won’t recognise you. You’ve changed so much. The self-talk didn’t help because Clem knew that, even though she had shed the weight, got control of her skin, and tamed and highlighted her hair, inside she was still that mousy-haired, clumsy, awkward and pimply sixteen-year-old blimp.

The one with the home-wrecking, trailer trash mother.

Clem got to her feet and dusted her hands on her black trousers. ‘How may I help you?’ She had got rid of the northern accent as well. But not the attitude. Or the chip on her shoulder. Well, maybe not so much a chip. More like a tree. A forest.

Alistair Hawthorne looked down at her. But that was nothing new. He had always looked down at her, both literally and figuratively. He was six-foot-four to her five-foot-six so looking down was his only option unless she wore vertiginous heels. Or stilts. Not exactly the sort of thing Clem wanted to wear while going up and down a bookshelf ladder in search of a rare edition of Dickens or Hardy or Austen.

Come to think of it, stilts could work...

‘Where’s your brother?’

As opening gambits went, it wasn’t flash. Or friendly. Not that Clem had been expecting friendly. Not after the Bedroom Incident. Looking back, it had been a dumb move to hide there after coming back from that humiliating party date. But the room Alistair had used as a child had been the only quiet space in the house and it had its own bathroom no one else used. The perfect place to lick wounds still raw with shame. A place to curl up in the foetal position and self-flagellate for being so gullible as to fall for a teenage boy’s puerile dare to ‘sleep with the fat chick’.

Grrr. Not that she had explained any of that to Alistair. He hadn’t given her a chance. When he’d found her curled up on his bed, after her punishing shower that had failed to make her feel clean, he had assumed she was the one making a play for him. ‘Just like your sluttish mother.’ The words still rankled. No one had ever spoken to her like that, not even some of her mother’s creepy boyfriends. Those words had burned a brand of bitterness into her soul. Those words had ground shame into her bones until they’d ached with it.

‘Why do you want to know where Jamie is?’ Clem asked, trying not to be distracted by how he looked. How he smelt. He was standing half a metre away and yet she could pick up an intriguing trace of citrus. Sharp citrus with a note of something else. Something dark and mysterious. Unknowable.

His jaw shifted as if he was biting down on his molars hard enough to crack a brazil nut. Or a bolt. ‘Don’t play the innocent with me. I know you two have colluded for weeks over this.’

Clem arched one of her brows. She was quite proud of how posh it made her look—a combination of stern librarian and haughty aristocrat. The glasses she wore for reading made it even more authentic. ‘“This”?’ Even her voice had just the right amount of ‘are you for real?’ inflection.

His grey-blue eyes flashed with a warning, a don’t-mess-with-me warning that for some reason made the backs of her knees tingle. ‘My stepsister, Harriet, has run away with your brother.’

Clem’s mouth dropped open wide enough to take in the complete works of Shakespeare. How could that be? How had Jamie come into contact with anyone even remotely connected to Alistair? It was impossible. It was unthinkable. It was a disaster. ‘What?’

Alistair’s eyelids gave a disdainful flicker. ‘Nice show of surprise but you don’t fool me. I’m not leaving here until you tell me where they are.’

Clem looked at his stiffly crossed arms and firmly planted legs. Shouldn’t have looked at his legs. Even though they were covered in Tom Ford she could see the strength and power in the thighs. She had to stop herself imagining those muscle-packed thighs wrapped around hers. Naked and sweaty. Sexily tangled.

Which was kind of weird, because she rarely thought of sex. It wasn’t even on her radar. Growing up with a mother who’d had orgies like other mothers had Tupperware parties had put a damper on Clem’s sexual development. Not to mention the shame-inducing encounter when she’d been sixteen that had made her body image issues even further entrenched. But looking at Alistair’s thighs made a traitorous beat thrum between her legs like a plucked cello string. Hum. Hum. Hum.

She looked at his mouth instead. Eek! Even bigger mistake. It was set in a line so flat you couldn’t have slipped a piece of the finest paper between those marble-hard lips.

Eyes?

Oh, dear God, his eyes. Eyes that were blue one second and grey the next. Eyes that were frost and ice, swirling smoke and shifting shadows. Eyes that could slice you like a scimitar or scorch you with the blistering blaze of belittlement.

‘Well?’

His curt tone cut through the silence, making her jump as if he had poked her with a skewer. Which made her hate him all the more. She had fought long and hard to stop being intimidated by people, particularly men. Powerful men who thought they could treat her like crap and get away with it. Men who only had sex with you because you were fat and then laughed about it with their friends afterwards. Clem inched up her chin, doing her best to ignore the little buzzing sensation deep and low in her belly when his gaze clashed with hers. ‘You’re in for a long stay as I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’

His lips pressed together again, so hard they became bloodless. Clem realised, with a strange little jolt, she had never seen him smile. Not once. Not that he’d had a lot to smile about ten years ago, with his mother terminally ill and his father running off with another woman during his wife’s chemo treatment. Clem’s mother. Cringe. Clem couldn’t think about her mother without her whole body going into a convulsing spasm of shame.

‘He lives with you, doesn’t he?’ Alistair said.

Clem didn’t think it would reflect well on her to admit she hadn’t seen Jamie for the best part of a week. He hadn’t responded to any of her texts or returned her numerous calls. That could be because he’d run out of credit. Again. But it also meant he didn’t want her to interfere with his life. She was trying to keep an eye on him while their mother was MIA but since he’d turned eighteen a couple of months ago he had not taken kindly to her rules. Any rules. ‘You seem to know rather a lot about my living arrangements,’ she said. ‘Are you keeping tabs on all your father’s cast-offs’ kids?’

His jaw did that clamping thing again. ‘Tell me where he is.’ He said each word as if spitting out bullet points. Tell. Me. Where. He. Is.

Clem curved her mouth in an I’m-enjoying-rattling-your-chain smile. ‘You seem a little uptight, Alistair. Not getting our needs met, are we? What’s wrong with the young women of London, hey? I hear uptight, nerdy workaholics are all the rage just now.’

Something flashed at the back of his eyes like a miniature bomb exploding. The muscles around his mouth tightened even further as if trying to contain the flying debris. ‘You’re still the snarky little wildcat you always were, even if you’ve managed to scrub up to look halfway presentable.’

Halfway? What did he mean, ‘halfway’? It cost Clem a flipping fortune to look this good. Sure, she could have done even better with some nicer clothes, but she had to save her money. For bed and board and her brother’s bail. Not that she’d needed money for bail yet, but she suspected it wouldn’t be long. Jamie was an apple that had fallen so close from his father’s tree he was hugging it. But there was no way Clem was letting her half-brother go down the same criminal path as his pond-scum father. Not that her father was anything to crow about. She told everyone he was dead so she didn’t have to explain why he was pacing the exercise yard in one of Britain’s maximum security prisons.

Clem decided a subject change was her best line of defence. If she let Alistair know he had upset her it would put him at an advantage. She was giving no points away for free. Not to him. ‘I didn’t know you had a stepsister.’

He gave an almost imperceptible wince, as if the reminder of having a stepsister was still something completely foreign to him. Uncomfortable, even, like wearing an ill-fitting shirt. ‘Harriet is a new addition. Her mother left her with my father when she took off with another man.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Sixteen.’

The same age Clem had been when her mother had taken up with Alistair’s father in a lust-driven whirlwind affair that had blown his parents’ once-stable marriage to smithereens. Clem remembered all too well the feeling of being shunted aside. The feeling of being in the way. The oversized baggage no one wanted. She hadn’t made it easy on anyone because of it. She had been a seething, snipping, snarling, surly heap of horrible hormones.

Double cringe.

‘So why isn’t your father out looking for her instead of you?’

A muscle near the corner of his mouth tapped like a hammer. Tippity-tap. Tippity-tap. ‘My father left her with me because he has better things to do. Apparently.’

Clem shifted her lips from side to side as the silence echoed with his bitterness. Freakishly weird to find she was in exactly the same position with her brother. ‘Well, I hate to be a dead end, but I know nothing about your stepsister’s whereabouts.’ Or my brother’s.

His dark brows were so close they formed a bridge over his piercing eyes. ‘Are you seriously telling me you knew nothing about their involvement? Nothing at all?’

Clem slowly shook her head. ‘Nothing. Zilch. Nada.’

His eyes travelled back and forth between each of hers like a searchlight looks for something hiding in the dark. The searing heat of his gaze made her body tingle all over, as if every one of her nerves was standing to attention and quaking in its boots. No one ever looked at her like that. Really looked at her. Not for so long and so intensely, as if they wanted to peel back the carefully constructed layers of her take-no-prisoners façade to the insecure wallflower beneath. But then he let out a whistling breath of scorn. ‘I don’t buy that for a picosecond.’

She pulled her shoulders back, eyeballing him like a boxer did an opponent. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

One side of his mouth curled up. Nowhere near a smile, more like a the-gloves-are-up-and-waiting smirk. ‘You wouldn’t know the truth if it came up behind you and said boo.’

Clem was not a violent person in spite of the role models she’d had. But right then she wanted nothing more than to raise her hand and give that lean and stubble-coated jaw a good wallop. Punch. Sock. Kapow. And not just with one hand. Two. Bunched into fists. With knuckle-dusters as big as baubles. And then she would kick him in the shins. Whilst wearing steel-toed boots. And spurs, those big, spiky-starfish ones. She would scrape her nails down his cheeks. She would grow them especially, until they were like talons. She would make his nose bleed. Copiously. Gouge his eyes out. Stomp on them until they were a pulpy mess on the floor.

How dared he question her integrity? Telling the truth was her biggest failing. She was brutally honest. It had got her into more trouble than she cared to think about. She narrowed her eyes to hairpin-thin slits. ‘If you don’t leave within the next five seconds, I’m going to call the police.’

His eyes went three shades darker as if the notion of going head to head with her privately turned him on. ‘Go right ahead. It will save me the effort of calling them about my stolen car. The car your brother is currently driving somewhere in Europe.’

Clem’s heart banged against her breastbone like someone had shoved it from behind. With a wrecking ball. Could it be true? How could Jamie do this to her? How could he run off with Alistair Hawthorne’s stepsister, of all people? Surely Jamie knew what would happen? Alistair wouldn’t let this go. A terrier with a bone had nothing on him. He would hold on to the whole rotting carcass and shake and rattle it until the DNA fell out. There would be consequences. Huge consequences. He was rich. Powerful. Ruthless. He would not stop until he had achieved his mission.

Revenge was his mission.

Retribution.

Jamie would end up in court. Clem couldn’t afford to get him a decent lawyer. Her brother would end up in prison in amongst horrible men like his father. Or worse...like her father.

She allowed herself one quick sweep of her tongue over tombstone-dry lips. ‘How do you know Jamie...erm...took your car?’

Alistair’s gaze bored down into hers. ‘He didn’t take my car. He stole it.’

‘Your stepsister might’ve given him permission. She might’ve given him the keys. She might’ve told him you’d given the okay. She might’ve encouraged him to—’

He made a scoffing noise. ‘Listen to yourself. You’re trying to put lipstick on a pig. Your brother is a thief. He stole my car and a large sum of money.’

Clem swallowed a golf ball of panic. Make that a beach ball. With barnacles. ‘How large?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

You’re right. I don’t. ‘Anyway, what sort of crazy fool would leave large sums of money lying around? Isn’t that what banks are for?’ Clem said in an attempt to gain some much-needed ground. Her head was spinning. Her thoughts were running like hamsters on crack. She had to find Jamie before Alistair did. Hadtohadtohadto.

Alistair’s nostrils flared. ‘I want that money back. Every last penny of it. And if my car’s damaged then that will have to be paid for as well.’

‘I find it interesting, but not surprising, that you’re far more concerned about your money and your property than your stepsister’s welfare,’ Clem said.

A glint appeared in his gaze as it imprisoned hers. ‘Ah, but that’s where you come in.’

Something dropped in Clem’s belly like a book falling off a shelf. Three books. ‘H-how so?’

‘You’re coming with me to help track her down.’

Clem’s heart climbed up her throat with fishhooks. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’

A line of implacability rimmed his mouth like steel. He took out his phone, holding it pointedly. ‘One phone call to the police and your brother will be behind bars quicker than you can blink.’

Clem swallowed. This was bad. Capital B Bad. Capital B and italics Bad. ‘You’re blackmailing me?’ She injected every bit of disgust she could into the word.

That annoying lip-curl appeared again. So too the mocking I’ve–got-you-where-I-want-you gleam in his eyes. ‘I prefer to call it enticing you into my company.’

‘I’d rather spend a week chained to a tiger shark.’

‘How long will it take you to close up shop?’

Clem put her hands on her hips. ‘Did you hear me? I said, I’m not coming with you.’

His gaze leisurely took in the floor-to-ceiling shelves, the rows and rows of books with their ancient spines and the boxes on the floor beside her from the latest shipment from a deceased’s estate. ‘How long have you been working here?’ he asked.

‘Two years.’

‘Where did you work before that?’

‘In a municipal library. In Kent.’

His eyes did a slow appraisal of her face before moving south. Clem knew she wasn’t classically beautiful. She wasn’t anything beautiful. She was plain. Her mother was the one with the looks. Clem had been handed the intelligence, the wild hair and the bad eyesight instead. But that didn’t make her wish she had the sort of looks that would make a man’s eyes flare with interest. She was used to being passed over. Ignored. Disregarded as a piece of generic furniture. But something about Alistair’s gaze made her feel as if she was standing there stark naked. Her flesh prickled. The hairs—the ones she hadn’t paid a fortune to wax off her body—stood up. Her breasts shifted against the lace cups of her bra, as if to say, look at me!

‘Is this your own shop?’

Clem resented the question; he was only asking it because he knew for a fact it wasn’t her shop. The Dougal McCrae Rare Books sign above the door was a dead giveaway. He was turning the screws on her self-esteem. Reminding her she was never going to be anything more than an employee who could be sacked without notice. Her dreams of owning her own shop were exactly that—dreams. Silly little fantasies that would never come true, not while she had the responsibility of her half-brother to contend with. ‘My boss owns it,’ she said. ‘Dougal McCrae.’

‘Can you clear some leave with him?’

‘No.’

His finger hovered over the phone. ‘You sure about that?’

Clem ground her teeth. Just as well she liked yoghurt and fruit smoothies because at this rate she would be living on them for the rest of her life. ‘I don’t have any time owed to me.’ Not quite true. She wasn’t the going on holiday type. There didn’t seem much point paying heaps of money to go away by herself to read. She could do that at home.

‘If money is a problem—’

‘It isn’t.’ Clem would rather die than admit she was sailing a little close to the wind this month. So close to the wind she was practically living on air.

He put his phone into his trouser pocket. ‘I’ll give you twenty-four hours to get your affairs in order. I’ll be here this time tomorrow to collect you. Bring what you need for the next two or three days. A week at the max.’

A week? In Alistair Hawthorne’s brooding company? Not going to happen. ‘But where are you going? If you don’t know where your stepsister is then where will you start looking for her?’

‘I have reason to believe she’s travelling through the French Riviera.’

‘As you do when you’re sixteen and have money to burn,’ Clem muttered.

‘She is currently burning her way through my money, with able assistance from your brother, which I intend to bring to a stop as soon as possible.’ He gave her a brisk nod. ‘See you tomorrow.’

Clem strode to the door after his tall figure. ‘Did you hear what I said? I’m not going with you. Not for one minute, let alone a week.’

He turned before she had stopped walking, which meant she cannoned right into the hard wall of his body. Oomph. The shock of his hands on her arms as he steadied her was like being shot through with an electric current. The sensation of his touch travelled from her forearms to her toes and back again. Fizz-whizz-sizzle. She had never touched him before. It felt strange...excitingly strange...to have her hands pressed flat against that rock-hard chest, his smoothly ironed business shirt the only barrier between her flesh and his.

Clem brought her gaze up to his to find him looking at her with a frown. ‘You can let go of me now.’ She was annoyed her voice sounded so husky. As if she was unnerved by his closeness or something. Well, maybe she was. A little bit. He was so...so arrantly masculine. Not in a brutish, knuckle-dragging way, but in a cultured man-about-town way that was disturbingly attractive. The clean-shaven skin, the casually styled hair with those finger-mark grooves in amongst the dark brown strands, the alluring cologne with the enigmatic base notes and the freshly laundered clothes were a potent package of metropolitan, made-it-big-time manhood.

His fingers tightened on her forearms for a moment and then fell away. He stepped back as if she had suddenly emitted a skin-melting radiant heat. ‘I won’t take no for an answer, Clementine. I want you with me tomorrow otherwise the police get involved. Understood?’

Clem had a thing about her full name. She hated it. Loathed it. Resented having been labelled with it for the past twenty-six years. She had suffered years of people singing Oh My Darling Clementine within her hearing until she’d wanted to stomp and scream with frustration and embarrassment. But, whenever she made a fuss, invariably people insisted on calling her by it. She had thought about switching to her middle name but that was even worse. She told no one that. No one. Which was another reason she didn’t travel abroad. No immigration official could resist commenting on the name on her passport.

She fixed Alistair with a look. ‘Call me Clem or Ms Scott.’

His brows lifted ever so slightly. ‘Very well then, Ms Scott.’ He gave her a mocking salute. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Ciao.’

* * *

Alistair pulled down the seatbelt on his hire car, clicking it into place. While he resented the time off work, there was something eminently appealing about taking Clementine Scott with him on this wild goose chase. She had changed. A lot. He almost hadn’t recognised her...apart from those flashing brown eyes and pertly set mouth. At sixteen she had shown a faint promise of future beauty—a beauty that had stirred him back then much more than he wanted to admit. But he had been unprepared for just how beautiful she had become. Not the sort of beauty that was in your face, but a quiet, understated beauty. A beauty that snuck up on you and completely stole your breath.

Gone was the awkward, overweight teenager with the bad skin and bad temper. She still had the temper but her body more than made up for that. Lush curves her dark, conservative clothing couldn’t hide. Skin that glowed, wavy, honey-brown hair that was styled and artfully highlighted. She hadn’t worn much in the way of make-up but for some reason it made her all the more fascinating to look at. Those tawny-brown eyes with their frame of thick lashes and prominent brows reminded him of pools of honey dusted with tiny iron filings.

But it was her mouth that had kept drawing his gaze. Her lips were rosy and full, the Cupid’s bow arch of her top lip and the soft pillow of her bottom lip making every male hormone in his body heat and hum and honk with lust.

Getting involved with Clementine Scott was not on his agenda. Not in this lifetime or the next. Why would he get involved with the daughter of the woman who had destroyed and desecrated his mother’s last months of life? Brandi whatever-her-last-name-was-now had hooked up with his father ten years ago while Alistair’s mother had been in a palliative-care hospital. Brandi had brazenly moved in with her two children and sponged off his father during a vulnerable time. Not that he didn’t hold his father largely responsible for his behaviour, but Brandi and her badly behaved brats had caused Alistair enough grief without inviting them to dish out more.

Do. Not. Go. There.

Even if Clementine was far more attractive than he’d been expecting. Even if she’d made his body light up like a furnace when she’d looked at him with that scornful arch of her brow and those flashing eyes. Even if he had to call on every bit of willpower he possessed and then some.

He was going to get his stepsister back and packed away to boarding school where she belonged. Harriet was not his responsibility. She wasn’t—strictly speaking—his father’s either. But, until her mother came back to claim her, Alistair was left holding the baby, so to speak.

Not a choice.

A duty.

And of course there was the little matter of his car. He’d only had it a couple of months. There was no way he was letting Clementine’s wayward younger brother destroy anything of his. He could have called the police straight up. He wasn’t the hand-out-a-second-chance type. But he had to concede Jamie Scott hadn’t had the best upbringing in the world. There was no way Alistair was going to let his stepsister be corrupted by a prison stat waiting to happen.

Not on his watch.

He had considered going alone to collect Harriet but he figured he might achieve more by taking Clementine. She could take charge of Jamie while he sorted out Harriet.

It was a win-win.

Besides, he had an old score to settle with Clementine.

He gritted his teeth in determination and pulled out into the traffic. If these next few days achieved nothing else but to teach that young lady a lesson in manners and decorum, then he would be happy.


CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_f7c2a373-637e-5316-a51f-fe96d8df36f3)

‘BUT OF COURSE you must take time off, my dear,’ Dougal McCrae, Clem’s boss, said when he came into the shop an hour later. ‘When do you want to leave?’

‘Now.’ Clem straightened the pens on her desk, each one exactly a centimetre apart. ‘It’s...kind of an emergency.’

His bushy brows came together in a concerned frown. ‘Not your mother again?’

‘Yes and no.’ Clem mentally crossed her fingers at her little white lie. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

He patted her on the shoulder like he was patting a pet of which he had grown terribly fond. ‘You’re a good girl, Clem. Always doing the right thing by your mother when as far as I can see she’s never done the right thing by you.’

Clem hadn’t told Dougal much about her background but her mother had come into the shop a number of times. Needless to say, he’d figured everything else out for himself. He was an excellent judge of character and each time her mother left he would look at Clem with an empathetic grimace and hand her the packet of chocolate digestives without saying a single word.

‘I’ll only be a week at the most,’ Clem said, slinging her bag over her shoulder and snatching up her coat off the back of her chair. ‘If there’s any change, I’ll let you know.’

‘Take all the time you need,’ Dougal said. ‘You deserve a holiday.’

Some holiday this was going to be.

* * *

It took Clem way too long to pack. That was another reason she rarely went away. She could never decide what to take and ended up taking too much. It came from years of having to pack at short notice when her mother would get sick of her latest lover and announce they were leaving. Now. Clem had flown in a heart-flapping panic every single time. She’d always packed Jamie’s things first because that was what big sisters did, especially when you had a mother who couldn’t spell, let alone understand, the concept of organisation. But it had often meant she hadn’t got to pack her own things in time for their mother’s theatrical flounce out the door.

But these days Clem was too organised. She didn’t have a crooked knife or fork in her drawer. The cups and mugs were all perfectly aligned, the handles turned to the right. The plates and bowls were in neat stacks in neat rows. The glasses were lined up like soldiers ready for an inspection parade. The clothes in her wardrobe were positioned according to colour—not that she had a lot of it in her wardrobe. That was the problem with having been fat as a teenager; she had got used to wearing dark clothing to disguise her shape and had never really thrown the habit.

Deciding what clothes to take and what to leave behind was a problem. What if it was hot? What if it rained? The French Riviera had a much warmer climate than London in July but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t throw up some inclement weather now and again.

Then there was the issue of shoes. She had different pairs for each day of the week. Some people didn’t step on cracks in the footpath. Clem didn’t wear the same pair of shoes two days running.

Then there was her favourite mug, Jamie’s first ever present to her when he was eight years old. She had her first cup of tea in it every morning. Without fail. It was part of the structure of her day. She needed it to feel secure. If she didn’t have tea in her special mug, then who knew what might happen?

It wasn’t worth the risk.

There was still no word from Jamie in spite of Clem leaving further messages, including one she left on his voicemail that bordered on her begging pitifully. Not something she was prone to do under normal circumstances, but nothing about this situation was even remotely normal. Ever since Alistair had told her he had information the teenagers were in the French Riviera, her mind kept going back to a memory of a brief holiday she and Jamie had been on when they were young.

One of their mother’s boyfriends had come from a village half an hour out from Nice. His parents had owned a holiday cottage in the hills and Clem remembered being insanely jealous that someone had not one home but two when she hadn’t known whose home she would be sleeping in from one day to the next. Even more enviable to her twelve-year-old mind had been the fact her mother’s boyfriend’s parents only used the cottage a couple of times a year. Two times a year! A caretaker living up the road checked on things in between times.

The muggy July air was like a hot breath against her face when Clem walked to where her car was parked further down her street. Her tiny flat didn’t have its own parking space but one of her elderly neighbours who no longer drove had offered Clem her space. Clem did Mavis’s shopping for her and took her to doctor’s appointments in exchange for the space. It was worth it...sort of. Eighty-four-year-old Mavis could talk. Really talk. If there were any iron pots with legs still on them in this neighbourhood, then Clem would like to see them. Clem was little more than human punctuation whenever Mavis got going. All that was required from her was: ‘Oh?’ ‘Mmm...’ ‘Aha.’ ‘I know.’ ‘Really?’ interjected at select intervals.

Clem kept her back to Mavis’s house as she stuffed her bulging suitcase on the back seat of her car, as the boot was too small. But it was like trying to push a hippo through a letterbox. She shoved and shoved. Swore under her breath. Shoved some more. Swore out loud.

The sound of Mavis’s front door opening made Clem’s heart sink. Shoot me now.

‘Off on holiday are you, dear?’ Mavis called out.

Clem turned and clenched her teeth behind her tight smile. ‘Just a short break. I was going to call in and tell you but I’m in a tearing hurry and—’

‘Where are you off to? Somewhere exciting?’

‘Erm... I’m kind of winging it.’

‘Are you going on your own?’

That’s the plan. ‘Yes.’

Mavis gave a beaming smile. ‘I bet you meet someone. I feel it in my bones. A summer holiday romance would be marvellous for you. I had one of those—did I tell you about it? It was on a cruise to the Mediterranean. I was—’

‘I’ll send you a postcard, shall I?’ Clem said, giving her bag a shove with her bottom. Might as well put it to some use since it did her no other favours.

‘Mind you, you have to be careful these days,’ Mavis said. ‘You don’t want your identity stolen. A friend of mine had that happen to her. Did I tell you about it?’

I wish someone would steal my neighbour. Clem kept her rictus smile in place. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be super-careful.’

‘Oh, look,’ Mavis said. ‘Here comes a nice man to help you with your bag.’

What nice man? There weren’t any nice men living in this street. None that she had met, anyway. It was full of little old ladies and cats. Clem looked to her right to see Alistair Hawthorne walking towards her as casually as you pleased. Her heart began to hammer. This could not be happening.

‘Going somewhere?’

Clem knew even her bottom had no hope of hiding her bag. ‘Just...erm...taking my washing to the laundromat.’

‘That looks like a lot of dirty linen to have out in public.’

You have no idea. ‘Why are you here?’ Clem said. ‘I thought the arrangement was for you to pick me up at the shop tomorrow.’

A knowing light shone in his eyes. ‘I thought we should get an early start.’

Her stomach dropped like a mallet on a block of wood. Clunk. She’d hoped to get off by herself. To conduct her own search without the disturbing company of a man she would do anything to avoid. ‘But I told you I wasn’t going with you.’

‘Which is why I’m here now to make sure you do.’

Clem threw him a gimlet glare. ‘You can’t kidnap me. It’s against the law.’

Something in his expression made the floor of her belly shiver like sand being trickled. ‘So is car and money theft.’

She swallowed a double knot of panic. Think. Think. Think. ‘How do you know you’re searching in the right place? You could travel all that way for nothing.’

‘My stepsister sent a text to a friend from a casino in Monte Carlo a couple of hours ago.’

Clem frowned. ‘Geez. How much money did she have on her? Monte Carlo isn’t exactly a backpacker’s destination.’

‘It’s not her money she’s spending.’

‘Your problem, not mine.’

His eyes never wavered from hers. ‘Our problem.’

Don’t remind me. Clem turned back to her bag, which was half in and half out of her car. She blew away the wisps of hair that had fallen around her face and gave the bag another hard shove.

‘Here. Let me.’

His body came up behind her, one of his hands reaching past her to take the handle of her bag. It was the most intimate contact she’d had with a man since...well, for a long time.

Clem tried to duck out of the way but somehow got tangled in his limbs. One of his arms blocked her escape on one side while the other held her bag on the other. She tried to step past his long legs but ended up doing a weird little dance with him. God knew what this looked like from Mavis’s window.

‘Is he your new man?’ Mavis called out loud enough for the neighbours to hear. In the next street. In the next borough. Possibly in America.

Clem stepped over Alistair’s long leg and tried to get her lungs to inflate. ‘No. He’s just a...someone I used to know.’

‘You can’t fool me,’ Mavis said with a teasing smile. ‘Look at you, blushing like a schoolgirl on her first date. It’s about time you got a nice man in your life. How long’s it been? Two, three years?’

Four. Clem wasn’t game enough to look in Alistair’s direction but she had a feeling he was smiling. Or smirking, more like. ‘It’s not what you think, Mavis. He’s like a brother to me. Our parents used to be in a relationship.’ She went for the knockout punch to wipe that smile off his face and added, ‘We were kind of like The Brady Bunch.’

Alistair’s body brushed Clem from behind. ‘Fess up, darling.’ He put his hands on the tops of her shoulders and gave them a light squeeze. ‘You’ve always been a little bit in love with me.’

So not true. Well, maybe she’d had a moment when she’d first met him, when she’d blushed to the roots of her hair and gone all starry-eyed. But it had only been a moment. Two seconds max. Trust him to remind her of it.

Clem put her heel on his toe and pressed down. Hard. She wished she were wearing stilettoes. Ballet flats didn’t quite cut it. He didn’t flinch at all. It was as if she had tried to flatten a flea with a feather. She was acutely aware of the wall of his firm body touching her, from her shoulder blades to her hips. Her bottom was way too close to his groin. It stirred all sorts of wicked imaginings inside her brain. And her body. Oh, dear God, what was happening to her body? It was leaning back against him like it had a mind of its own. Searching for the evidence of his arousal. Yikes! Finding it. ‘I. Am. Going. To. Kill. You,’ she said in an undertone, punctuating each word with another push down of her foot.

He leaned down and began to nuzzle the side of her neck, the sexy scrape of his late-in-the-day stubble sending a frisson down her spine. His warm breath smelt of mint and coffee. Not the cheap instant stuff she had in her flat but the good stuff. ‘I’m going to kill you right back. Slowly.’ His voice was a low, deep burr that reverberated deep in her core like a tuning fork struck and left to hum.

Mavis clasped her hands like a fairy godmother enormously satisfied with her day’s work. ‘Have a wonderful time, you gorgeous lovebirds. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

Clem pulled out of Alistair’s hold and turned and threw him a look that would have blistered paint. ‘You think you’ve won this, don’t you?’

His eyes had a determined glint that made every knob of her spine shudder. ‘Get in the car.’

Every cell in her body wanted to defy him. Every pore tightened with anger. Fury. Rage. She could barely stand still with the force of it thundering through her. But making a scene in front of her nosy neighbour was not something she was prepared to do. There were other ways to skin a cat, and Alistair Hawthorne’s pelt was one she wanted to take her time removing while inflicting as much excruciating pain as possible.

Clem slipped into the passenger seat, keeping her fake smile in place for the sake of Mavis until they were out of sight. ‘If you think I’m going to speak another word to you then you can think again,’ she said. ‘You’re the most obnoxious, control-freaky man I’ve ever met. As if I’d ever imagine myself in love with you. What a joke. You’re the last man I’d ever be interested in. I hated you ten years ago and I hate you now. You’re a stuck-up snob who thinks you can order people about like puppets. Well, listen up, because my strings are not going to be pulled by you. No freaking way.’

The silence continued for three blocks.

Clem cast him a sideways glance. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

He flicked her an ironic look. ‘I thought you weren’t going to speak to me?’

Clem pinched her lips together and turned back to face the front. She waited another four blocks before speaking. ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘The airport. I have a flight booked.’

She swung her gaze back to him. ‘You were that certain you’d get me to come?’ Ack. Probably not the best choice of words.

Even though he was still facing the traffic, she could see from his expression her unintentional innuendo had amused him. ‘But of course.’

Clem didn’t care for his confident tone. Sexually confident men annoyed her. They were so smug about their prowess but they didn’t factor in that every woman was different. It wasn’t ‘one size fits all’, or at least not in her experience. It made her wonder whom he was currently seeing. She’d seen a photo in a gossip magazine a few months ago of him at some architectural awards ceremony with a gorgeous blonde with an eye-popping figure. The sort of figure Clem would never get even if she never ate a morsel of food again. ‘What does your girlfriend think about you flying off to France with me?’

‘I’m not in a relationship at the moment.’

‘When was your last one?’

He slanted her a glance. ‘Why do you want to know? Are you thinking of replacing her?’

Clem coughed out a disparaging laugh. ‘As if.’

Another silence ticked past. A silence that seemed to make a mockery of her denial. She couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to have sex with him. Not selfish sex, like the men she’d been with. But satisfying sex. Sensual sex. Sex that made her whole body sing with delight. Not that hers had done any singing lately. There were occasional solo performances but nothing that would make the chandeliers—if she had any—rattle.

‘What about you?’ Alistair said. ‘Should I be on the watch out for a jealous lover coming at me with a baseball bat?’

Clem considered inventing a boyfriend. Someone decent and respectable. Someone who would stand up for her and do all the things she dreamed a man in love with her would do. Someone who would make her feel special, treasured, adored. It seemed pathetic to admit she was single when everyone her age was out having a good time; lately her idea of a good time was a family-sized block of chocolate and a good book. ‘I’m enjoying my independence. Not having to fit in with someone else’s timetable. No waiting for the phone to ring. No boring weekends watching football or fighting over the remote. Bliss.’

The corner of his mouth lifted. ‘Bliss indeed.’

‘Have you ever lived with anyone?’ Why the heck are you asking that?

‘No. I too like my independence.’

‘So where does Harriet live just now?’

The tension was back around his mouth. ‘With me, but I’ve booked her into boarding school starting next term.’

Clem wondered if that was what had triggered the runaway caper. Had Harriet felt shunted aside? How could she not with her mother haring off to chase after some new lover? Being dumped with your mother’s ex’s adult son during the summer holidays was hardly something to be happy about. The poor girl was probably desperate to find a place where she was wanted. It was a pity she had chosen Clem’s brother, however. Jamie wasn’t exactly mature enough to take care of himself, let alone a partner. ‘How did she feel about going to boarding school?’

‘She’s a child. I didn’t give her a choice. It’s the best thing for her.’ Bang. Bang. Bang. The words came out like a drill sergeant’s command. No wonder the poor kid had flown the coop. The head honcho wasn’t exactly Mr Let’s Negotiate.

‘Maybe you should’ve discussed her options with her,’ Clem said. ‘You know, had a family discussion.’

The look he gave her would have shrivelled even the hardiest of Yucca plants. ‘She’s not my family. She’s nothing to do with me. But I couldn’t put her out on the street, for God’s sake.’

‘Why didn’t you leave her with your father?’

The question hung in the air between them for a second or two too long. Long enough for Clem to join some dots. Some ugly dots.

‘That wasn’t an option.’ Alistair’s tone was curt. Do-not-even-go-there curt.

Clem had never liked his father. How could she warm to a man who had abandoned his terminally ill wife to hook up with another woman? Lionel Hawthorne was a self-serving charmer, a fact she’d seen on their very first meeting. No amount of money or presents splashed around had changed her opinion of him. But did Alistair’s tone suggest his father was even worse than she had suspected?

‘Are there no other relatives?’ Clem asked. ‘Doesn’t she have a father? Or aunts or uncles or grandparents?’

‘There’s no one. Apart from her mother, but you can forget about her.’ His cynical tone suggested he had already tried that avenue and failed.

‘Where is her mother?’

His hands were gripping the steering wheel as if he wanted to strangle it or the subject of their conversation. ‘Sunning herself on some beach in Mexico with a drug lord, probably.’

Clem chewed at her lower lip. This was sounding all too familiar, like her experience of growing up with a mother who’d changed partners faster than other people changed their mind. Some of the men were nice—like the one whose parents owned the cottage outside of Nice. But others were the very opposite of nice. They were nasty. Nasty men who exploited her naïve and trusting mother, encouraging her addictive tendencies without measuring the consequences for her children. Partying, drinking and child-rearing did not mix. Which was why Clem was so determined to keep Jamie from going down that path. ‘What about the authorities? Like Social Services and so on? Have you contacted them to take care of her?’

‘Harriet’s been in foster care in the past,’ he said. ‘It didn’t go well. She’s been through several caseworkers as the system is overloaded and underfunded. I thought I’d do the right thing by her and get her into a good school to improve her chances of a future. But did I get any thanks for offering to foot the bill? No.’

‘You have to talk to teenagers,’ Clem said. ‘You can’t just issue them with ultimatums or plans set in stone. It’s all about negotiation.’

He gave her another withering look. ‘Like you’re doing so brilliantly with your brother?’

Clem felt a blush steal over her cheeks. So? She was a crap stand-in parent. She knew that. Didn’t need to be reminded of it. ‘Teenage boys are hard work. They need a good male role-model. I’m doing my best but I’m well aware it’s not enough. Nowhere near enough.’

‘Where’s his father?’

Clem knew if she didn’t tell him he would make it his business to find out—if he hadn’t already. ‘In jail.’

‘For?’

‘Armed robbery.’

‘Nice.’

‘Yep.’ She blew out a jaded breath. ‘Real Father of the Year material.’

A small silence passed.

‘Where’s yours?’ Alistair said.

‘Dead.’

She felt his gaze swing her way but she kept staring straight ahead. ‘How long ago did he die?’ he asked.

‘Fifteen years.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Clem gave a grating laugh. ‘Don’t be.’ I just hope he stays ‘dead.’

‘Did he have much to do with you while you were growing up?’

‘No, he was the epitome of the absent father. Even when he was with us he wasn’t with us, if you get my drift.’

He turned the car for the parking area at Heathrow. ‘Unfortunately, I do.’

* * *

Alistair handed over his keys to the valet-parking attendant and then took Clem’s bag. ‘What have you got in here? It weighs more than the damn hire car.’

Defiance sparked and swirled in her brown eyes. ‘I’m not a toothbrush and a clean pair of knickers type. I need...stuff.’

He began to roll the bag but one of the wheels was wonky. He crouched down and fiddled with it but it came off in his hand. He swore under his breath and straightened. ‘We need to get you a new bag.’

Something flashed in her gaze. Pride...or was it panic? ‘What for? It’ll do. I’m not going to unpack my luggage in the middle of the airport. Anyway, I can’t afford a new bag.’

‘My treat.’

Her cheeks went a deep shade of pink. ‘I’m not a charity case. No pun intended.’

She was kind of cute when she was worked up about something. Like a cornered kitten hissing and spitting at a potential threat. Something about her sense of pride impressed him. She thought she could outsmart him but he had her covered. More than covered. ‘I promise not to spend too much. Come on. The luggage shop is through here.’

Once they were inside the shop, Alistair waited for her to choose a bag but she stood there with a mutinous scowl on her face. ‘If you don’t choose then I’ll have to do it for you,’ he said. ‘Do you have a preference for colour?’

‘I told you, I don’t want a new bag.’

He pointed to the Louis Vuitton display. ‘What about this one?’

‘No. That’s ridiculously expensive. I couldn’t possibly—’

‘We’ll take this one,’ he said to the hovering attendant.

Alistair carried the bag to a space outside where Clem could repack. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Do you need any help?’

‘No. Thank. You.’ Her response was as stiff as her body when she crouched down to see to the task. She tugged at the zip but because the bag was bulging so much the zip wouldn’t budge.

‘You sure you don’t need a hand?’

‘I’ve. Got. It.’

She’d got it all right. The zip suddenly gave way and an explosion of clothes tumbled out of the bag. She began to scoop them up like someone trying to gather up a load of spilled oranges. There were tops, and scarves and bras and knickers and shoes. How many pairs of shoes did one woman need?

‘I think you might’ve left some space in that back corner.’ Alistair fought back a smile. ‘For an earring.’

She gave him a look that would have soured milk. ‘Ha. Ha. Ha.’

But then she started scrabbling through her clothes as if she was searching for something. Her forehead puckered in a frown, her teeth worrying her lower lip. She dug deeper into the pile of clothes, tossing things this way and that, her air of desperation apparent in the way her movements got more and more jerky and her top lip began to bead with perspiration.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Nothing.’ The word came out on a shaky breath, and she scrabbled about some more, but the clothes were in such a mess by now it was hard to see what was there and what wasn’t.

Alistair could feel the panic building in her. It was a palpable energy pulsating in the air. He bent down beside her and picked up a blue-and-white-striped mug that was covered by a black T-shirt. ‘I’ve heard of people packing everything but the kitchen sink, but this I’ve never seen before.’ He gave her a teasing glance. ‘They do have crockery and cutlery in France, you know.’

Her mouth was buttoned down so tightly her lips were outlined in white. ‘It’s my favourite mug.’ She snatched it out of his hand and clutched it close to her heaving chest. ‘I don’t go anywhere without it.’

Alistair watched as she put her things in the new bag. Gone was the disordered panic. In its place was meticulous care and precision. He had never seen a bag packed so well. It was like a work of art, colour and fabric coordinated. Amazing. Finally she wrapped the mug in a sweater and carefully placed it in the middle of the bag as if she was tucking in a baby. It wasn’t as if the mug was priceless porcelain. It was a common chain-store one so old it was losing some of its stripes.

What significance did it have for her? Had someone she loved given it to her? Her mother? It seemed a pretty cheap present to give your only daughter, but that didn’t surprise him, knowing what he knew of her mother. Her father? She hadn’t sounded all that fond of her father. Her brother? ‘Who gave you the mug?’

‘No one.’ She closed the bag like she was closing the subject. ‘I just like it, that’s all.’

Alistair studied her flushed features. Defiance or embarrassment? What did she have to be embarrassed about? It was a little quirky but there were worse things than quirky. Way worse. ‘If you’re so fond of it then shouldn’t you put it in your hand luggage?’

‘I don’t want to risk someone taking it off me at the security checkpoint. Those guys can get pretty touchy about stuff.’

‘True, but have you ever seen the baggage handlers loading and unloading? Some of them drop pianos on anything marked “fragile.”’

‘Another reason I don’t fly that often.’

Alistair gave her a searching look. ‘Are you nervous about flying?’

A spark of defensiveness shone in her gaze. ‘What on earth gives you that idea?’

‘You keep picking at the stitching on your tote-bag strap.’

Her fingers stopped fidgeting as if they had been snapped frozen. ‘Anything else you’d like to criticise?’

‘I’m not criticising, I’m observing.’

She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

Alistair hoped to hell not, otherwise she would never get on that plane with him. ‘What am I thinking?’ Apart from how much I want to kiss that pert little mouth.

Bitterness was hard and bright in her gaze. ‘You think I’m a nut job.’

‘Because you brought a mug with you?’

She chin came up. ‘Go on. Say it. Say I’m an obsessive freak.’

‘We all have our quirks. No doubt you’ll find out some of mine over the next few days.’

Her eyes went wide in mock surprise. ‘What? Mr Perfect has a quirk or two? That I would like to see.’

What he would like to see was what she looked like in some of that lacy underwear he’d seen in her bag. And what she looked like out of it. Which was damned inconvenient because, of all the women in the world, this one was the last one he wanted to complicate his life with. Clementine Scott was trouble in big flashing neon letters.

And he’d better not forget it.


CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_029a7d8e-57dc-5103-b546-8a5f652d6963)

CLEM SLID HER passport towards the official and waited for it. It happened every time she travelled abroad. It didn’t matter if the official was male or female or young or old or middle-aged, their response was always the same: the raising of eyebrows as they read the names printed there, then the slant of the mouth, then their mocking gaze flicking up to meet hers. This time was no different. Oh, joy.

‘Moonbeam?’ the male official said. ‘Is that really your name?’

‘My middle name,’ Clem said through a clenched-teeth grimace.

The official stamped her passport with a chuckle. ‘Lucky you.’

Lucky me, indeed. Especially as Alistair was standing right beside her to witness every humiliating second. He looked down at her when they were waved through. ‘I take it you weren’t named after a grandparent or maiden aunt?’

‘I wish.’

‘You could have it changed by deed poll.’

‘I’ve considered it but my mother would never speak to me again if I did,’ Clem said. Which could be a good thing, come to think of it.

‘I thought I was unlucky with Enoch.’

Clem glanced at him. ‘Your middle name is Enoch?’

He gave her a rueful look. ‘There are hundreds if not thousands of Biblical names I would’ve preferred. But it was my mother’s grandfather’s name.’ His lips moved in the form of a shrug. ‘Family tradition and all that.’

‘Mmm, well, my mother wasn’t following any family tradition other than to get pregnant at fifteen, like her mother did,’ Clem said. ‘She conceived me under the light of the moon, apparently. She wanted a permanent reminder of that night. Apart from me, of course.’

She waited for him to laugh. To rub her embarrassment in, but he continued walking along the concourse to the departure gate with that same deadpan expression.

‘What’s your brother’s middle name?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Here’s the thing.’ Clem rolled her eyes. ‘He doesn’t have one because his father didn’t believe in them.’

His gaze flicked to hers. ‘A lucky escape, then?’

‘Unbelievably.’

* * *

Clem sat down in business class as if she did it every day of her life. No point showing Alistair how gauche and out of place she felt. This was one fish that could step out of her fishbowl...well, for a little while at least. She could do sophisticated. She could drink the champagne and eat the gorgeous little canapés like the best of them. She could lie back with her feet up and flick idly through the endless supply of glossy magazines as if she didn’t have a care in the world...or a wayward brother who was currently running amok on the French Riviera with her mortal enemy’s stepsister.

Three champagnes into the flight and Clem was feeling relaxed. Not sleepy relaxed, chatty relaxed. I’ve-forgotten-all-about-the-embarrassing-luggage-incident relaxed. It was one of the reasons she rarely drank—apart from the expense. She never knew how it was going to affect her. Sometimes it made her sleepy. Sometimes it made her talk too much. But this time it was having an effect she had never experienced before. Her body wanted...contact. Sensual contact. Male-to-female contact. She turned to look at Alistair, who was frowning over a document he was reading. ‘Where did you last go on holiday?’

He turned over a page without looking at her. ‘New York, but it was more work than leisure.’

The plane they were on was one of the smaller commercial ones so the seats were closer together than they would have been in a larger airbus. Her hand crept to where his arm was resting on the armrest, as if it was controlled by something other than her rational brain. She watched it in a state of mild fascination. What the heck was in that champagne? Could she really be reaching out to touch the dark hairs of his forearm showing from below the rolled-up cuffs of his shirt? Could she really be pressing close enough to feel the hard muscles of his arm against the soft swell of her breasts? Close enough to breathe in the scent of his body—that mix of cologne and clean, classy man that so bewitched her senses?

He glanced at her with an unreadable expression. ‘If you wanted the aisle seat instead of the window then why didn’t you say something earlier?’

Clem’s gaze went to his mouth as if pulled by a force outside of her control. The contours of his lips fascinated her. The top lip was thinner than the lower one, and the dark forest of stubble surrounding it made her want to trail her fingertips down that lean and tanned jaw to feel his roughness catch on her softness. She couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel to have those lips on hers. She could barely remember the last time she had been kissed. She had a feeling if Alistair’s determined mouth came down on hers she would never forget it. Ever. Ever. Ever. ‘Do you ever smile?’ she asked.

‘Occasionally.’

‘When was the last time?’

His gaze issued a warning. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

Clem blinked like a child feigning innocence while its hand was still stuck in the cookie jar. ‘You think I was going to kiss you?’

‘Either that or crawl inside my skin.’

‘I don’t even like you.’

His hooded gaze went to her mouth. ‘A bit of dislike never got in the way of good sex.’

Don’t think about him having sex. Just don’t. And certainly not with you. ‘And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? Good sex, I mean.’

A hint of a smile ghosted his mouth. ‘How much champagne did you drink?’

Clearly too much. ‘That’s the thing, see?’ Clem sat back in her seat and picked up a popular women’s magazine, quickly flicking over the How to Have Multiple Orgasms article. She would be happy with one. ‘I would have to be really drunk to get it on with you.’ I have to be drunk to get it on with anyone.

‘It’s not going to happen.’

Why? All her self-doubts showed up like ants at a honey spill. Because I’m not skinny enough? Because you once saw me with pimples and puppy fat and can’t see me any other way? Of course he wouldn’t be interested in someone like her. Not with her background. Not with her couldn’t-take-her-anywhere-without-cringing mother looming large in her life. He would only choose a woman who would fit in with his high-class lifestyle. Clem didn’t have a snowflake’s chance in a heatwave. Not in hell. Not ever.

Not that she wanted it.

She could find her own man.

Eventually.

‘Good to know,’ she said and buried her nose in the magazine.

* * *

Alistair could have done with a stretch of his legs but Clem had fallen asleep with her head resting on his shoulder. His nostrils were tingling with the scent of her perfume, an alluring mix of summer flowers with a grace note of something that was unique to her. The magazine she had been reading had slipped to the floor, her hands now resting on her lap, the fingers long and slim but the nails bitten almost to the quick. What made her indulge in such a childish habit? Was she insecure? Worried? Anxious? But then, who wouldn’t be, with the kind of family she had?

Not that he could talk. If he thought too much about his father’s behaviour, he’d be chewing his nails back to his shoulders.

Clem gave a murmur and shifted in her seat, turning her head so her hair tickled his chin. He had the inexplicable desire to stroke her silky head. Her body was soft and feminine with curves in all the right places. Beautiful curves. Tempting curves. Curves he wanted to put his hands on and—

Keep your hands off her.

The alarm bell of his conscience was a timely reminder to keep his boundaries secure. He hadn’t had a relationship for a while; that was the problem. Not that he was a sex addict or anything. He had a very practical approach to his physical needs. If he had time in his busy schedule for a relationship, he invested in one. Lately his work as chief architect on a multi-national project had been a priority, so too dealing with his father’s screw-ups. Or screw-downs, which seemed more accurate.

His father’s taste in women appalled Alistair. After twenty-five years of marriage to his poised, elegant and articulate mother, Helene, his father had taken up with the very opposite type of woman. Brash and loud, in-your-face gold-diggers. Women who cared more about their sexual desires than their children.

Alistair wasn’t against marriage and commitment. Far from it. He planned to settle down one day with a woman who shared similar interests and values. Build a life together, have a family and do all the things his parents had done with him before his mother had become ill. He wouldn’t be the sort of husband his father had been. He had no problem with commitment and faithfulness. He believed in it...at the right time and with the right person. But he wasn’t going to make that commitment until he was sure it was the right person. He couldn’t stomach the thought of doing what his father had done—was still doing—working his way through a host of unsuitable partners in a pathetic attempt to avoid spending even half a day alone.

Everything had changed once his mother had got that devastating diagnosis. His father hadn’t had the decency to wait until his wife had died of liver cancer before he’d taken up with another woman. It was as if the prospect of losing Helene had triggered something in him. The loss of Alistair’s baby brother, Oliver, at two years of age had been the first stumble. Not that Alistair had known his father had strayed during that tragic time; his mother had forgiven the affair and done her best to rebuild their relationship. But once she’d got sick that same panic button had been pressed and this time there had been no way of turning it off. No amount of lecturing or pleading from Alistair had worked. His father had been like a runaway train. Unstoppable.

Alistair had desperately tried to keep his mother in the dark about his father’s affair with Clem’s mother. But Brandi had taken it upon herself to turn up at the hospice and introduce herself as Lionel’s new partner. Her reasoning had been she wanted to assure Helene her husband would be in ‘good hands.’

But the anger Alistair felt about his father’s affair had gone up five-hundred-and-fifty-thousand notches when he’d gone to his parents’ home to collect some fresh clothing for his mother because his father had been ‘too busy.’ He’d found Clem in his childhood bedroom lying in wait for him on his bed, fresh from a shower. Seeing her young, lushly curved body curled up there in a towel had made something in him snap. He’d been furious with her but even more furious with himself for feeling a flicker of lust at her gauche attempt to seduce him.

He barely remembered what he’d said to her. All he recalled was it had been long and heated, a blistering tirade that had vented all of his rage on her sixteen-year-old shoulders. If he had upset her she’d showed no sign of it. Not then. She had stood there with the towel wrapped around her body, a sullen look on her face, and a defiant I-don’t-care-what-you-say-to-me glare in her eyes. But, when he’d come back the following day to pack up the rest of his mother’s things, he had found a long scratch mark on his car from tailgate to front fender as if someone had taken a key or a screwdriver and driven it deep into the paintwork.

That was what he had to remember when dealing with Clem. He couldn’t afford to take any chances. She wasn’t to be trusted. She was one enemy he was going to have to keep close.

Too close for comfort.

* * *

Clem woke just as they were coming in to land. She blinked and straightened from where she had been resting on Alistair’s shoulder. Dead embarrassing. Just as well she hadn’t drooled. Or snored. Yikes. Maybe she had. ‘Sorry I creased your shirt,’ she said. ‘You should’ve pushed me away.’

‘I was grateful for the peace and quiet.’

She glanced at him but his expression was inscrutable. So, maybe she hadn’t snored. ‘So what’s the plan?’

His eyes met hers. ‘The plan?’

Clem kept her gaze trained on his while trying to ignore the magnetic pull of his mouth. It was like a force inside her body with its own chanting mantra. Look at his mouth. Look at his mouth. Look at his mouth. ‘Yeah, after we land. Where do we start?’

‘We start by picking up the hire car. Then we’ll find a hotel.’

Clem’s heart jumped like it had been zapped with defibrillator paddles. She hadn’t got as far as thinking about accommodation. Of course they would have to find a hotel. Not that she could afford anywhere flash. She could barely afford a trailer park. ‘Two rooms, right?’

‘No.’

This time her heart skipped so fast it would have won a jump-rope competition. ‘What do you mean, no?’

His eyes had an unmistakable glint in them. A determined I’m-not-letting-you-out-of-my-sight glint. ‘It will be cheaper to share a suite.’

Clem’s stomach swerved like a novice skater. Share? ‘But you can afford to stay anywhere you like.’

‘True, but you can’t.’

‘You’re expecting me to...to pay my own way?’

‘Would that be a problem?’




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