At the Cattleman's Command

CHAPTER TWO

CHAS gasped, twisted and reared up. To her mortification, the sounds she uttered, which were meant to be serious screams, came out instead as a series of squeaks.

‘Whoa!’ She was determinedly wrestled back to the bed. ‘Look here, sweetheart, you came into my bed, not the other way around, so your objections are a bit bogus, surely?’

‘Stop!’ Chas hissed.

‘Why? Do I know you?’

‘No! There’s been a terrible mistake.’

To her fury, he moved his hands on her again, from her breasts down to her waist, and left them there. ‘Mistake?’ he mused as his hands almost spanned her waist. ‘I would have thought you were rather divinely put together, Aphrodite. Definitely an ornament to any man’s bed.’

‘Will you stop doing that!’ Chas commanded as she wriggled beneath the feel of his hands on her body. Not that he was hurting her. It was the opposite if anything…

‘I can explain. I must have lost—’ she stopped as the bedside lamp flickered on ‘—my way,’ she finished as her eyes widened.

She was in another vast bed but this one had a magnificent carved headboard. The pillows were plump and exotic, the colours ranging from pomegranate to slate-blue, and there were at least six of them. The sheets were slate and the quilt, now pushed aside, was patterned in pomegranate on a slate background.

Two bedside tables carved to match the bedhead bore lamps with silver foil shades. The walls were mushroom-pink, the ceiling was café au lait and a vast expanse of pale-toffee carpet fled into the shadows.

It was a stunning bedroom but not only that. Talk about Aphrodite—she was in the hands of a stranger who could have been Adonis.

The silence stretched as they stared at each other.

He had longish brown hair and a broad forehead tapering to a determined chin. He had smoky grey eyes, highly quizzical but all the same quite magnetic, beneath darker brows. He was naked, to the waist at least, and just about male perfection personified.

The skin of his broad shoulders was smooth and golden. His chest was sleekly muscled and sprinkled with dark hair, his throat was strong and his hands, now removed from her body, were tapered but powerful.

If she was taken aback, so was he, for a moment, as his grey gaze roamed over her.

He inspected her mass of shiny dark hair, the oval of her face, the naked pink of her lips and the velvet blue of her eyes.

She wore a slip of a cranberry silk nightgown with shoestring straps. It had a V-neckline that plunged quite low and the creamy swell of her breasts was visible. The narrowness of her waist was hinted at and the lovely curve of her hips was more than hinted at where the cranberry silk clung. Her legs were long and slender and her skin was satiny.

He took it all in then returned his gaze to hers, and as their eyes locked, for one crazy moment, Chas felt as if she’d all along been destined for this bed and this man; it just seemed—fitting somehow.

Her lips parted in amazement as the kind of frisson she hadn’t experienced for a while touched her deliciously in all her secret places down her smooth body.

He read the amazement in her eyes and the ghost of a smile touched his mouth, then he looked down her body again.

The nightgown ended just below her hips and was rucked up anyway.

She followed his gaze down to her thighs and, with a gasp of horror, pulled the sheet up to her throat.

He smiled lazily this time and said softly, ‘Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, Aphrodite? You really are a mass of contradictions.’

Chas sat bolt upright, still clutching the sheet with some hazy idea of wrapping herself in it while she beat a hasty retreat, but he anchored his side of it firmly to the bed. He also circled his other hand round one of her wrists.

‘What are you doing?’ Her eyes widened.

‘Taking out some insurance,’ he drawled. ‘Just in case you decide to rush from the room screaming rape.’

‘I had no intention of doing that!’

He shrugged. ‘Ah, seduction then. Tell you what, I’ll make up my mind about that in a moment. So,’ he said, ‘you lost your way?’

Chas felt a tremor of fear run through her—what had she got herself into? She set her teeth. ‘Yes. There was a power failure. I—I went to the bathroom and got…disorientated.’

‘Really?’

There was so much sardonic disbelief in this single word that Chas blushed vividly, but she soldiered on. ‘If you don’t believe me, how do you explain your lamp coming on of its own accord?’

He thought for a moment. ‘I decided to read for a while.’ He reached around and pulled a book from under a pillow. ‘I must have fallen asleep with the lamp on, and we do get power failures. That would explain—some things,’ he said and sat up suddenly, although he didn’t release her wrist. ‘Who are you?’ he asked grimly.

‘I—I’m here to organise a wedding,’ she said disjointedly, ‘but I’m having some trouble convincing myself this isn’t a madhouse.’

His eyebrows disappeared into his hair. ‘Chas Bartlett in drag?’ he queried incredulously, his gaze resting on her breasts again. ‘Or, no. Would you be his assistant, perhaps? Sent to secure the deal in the time-honoured way?’

She stared at him with her mouth open.

‘Don’t play the innocent with me,’ he advised softly. ‘It happens. So what exactly does The Perfect Day wedding consultancy supply? Your services in my bed as well?’

Chas drew a deep breath into her lungs and swung her free hand so that it connected with his cheek, hard.

He didn’t even flinch, but jerked her into his arms. ‘If that’s how you like it, rough, two can play that game,’ he said barely audibly.

His arms felt like iron bars around her. The look in his eyes, of serious contempt, frightened the life out of her but what was even more frightening was the real-isation that, contemptuous or not, he intended to kiss her…

‘Don’t, don’t—don’t!’ she warned.

‘Don’t kiss you? Why not? You may have an avaricious little soul but your body is another matter.’ He loosened his arms slightly and looked downwards. ‘Another matter entirely.’

Chas twisted like an eel and managed to free herself, but only momentarily. She was just about to slip off the bed when he caught her wrist again. ‘Oh, no, you don’t, sweetheart,’ he drawled. ‘We haven’t finished what you started yet.’

She was breathing tumultuously. ‘L-look—I mean, l-listen to me,’ she stammered. ‘I am Chas Bartlett. It’s short for Charity. There’s only me in the wedding consultancy—you’ve got it all wrong. And I did lose my way! What’s more, if you lay another finger on me I will scream rape and blue murder.’

A little silence developed as they faced each other. He was still holding her wrist but he pushed himself up on his elbow and studied her. Her hair was gloriously disarrayed, she was flushed and still breathing heavily, but her blue eyes were deadly serious.

He rubbed his knuckles along his jaw and pulled the sheet up.

‘So you were a woman all along?’ He frowned. ‘Why did Birdie think you were a man?’

‘People assume Chas is short for Charles.’

‘What’s wrong with Charity?’ he queried.

‘Nothing, unless your grandmother is Faith and your mother Hope. I think I was about nine when I decided that Charity was a bit much.’ She stopped and eyed him with extreme frustration. ‘What’s that got to do with anything? I’m quite sure this is a madhouse now. And who the hell are you?’

‘I just happen to live here.’ He smiled fleetingly. ‘What makes you think this is a madhouse? I mean…’ he shrugged those magnificent shoulders ‘…I’m tempted to agree with you at times, but how would you know?’

Chas sent him a smouldering look. ‘I’ll tell you. I was hired by someone called Thomas Hocking, who brought me all this way specifically so he could meet me, then didn’t even have the decency to turn up tonight, apparently because according to his own family he’s too busy womanising. And now I’m told that he, the man paying for the wedding, would much rather have a registry-office do!’ This time her eyes flashed scornfully. ‘That’s not the kind of wedding I put together, and it makes me wonder why I’m here and if he can afford me. It just doesn’t make sense.’

‘Oh, he could.’

Chas blinked a couple of times as she tried to put this in context. ‘He could what?’

‘Afford you.’

The way he said it caused Chas to stir uneasily. ‘I meant afford my services, naturally,’ she said.

‘That too.’ His grey gaze rested on her mouth.

‘What—? Are we talking about the same thing?’

His lips twisted. ‘I don’t think so. I happen to know Thomas Hocking is—how to put it—between mistresses at the moment, and I’ve got the distinct feeling he’d be very happy to afford you in that capacity.’

‘Let me go!’ Chas said furiously and struggled to free herself.

All she achieved was to lose control of her side of the sheet as he swept it aside, although his action did at least reveal that he was wearing a pair of sleep shorts. At the same time it left her completely exposed to him again, and he made the best of it.

‘Mmm…’ he murmured, studying her from head to toe and all the curves, the expanse of pale, skimpily-draped-with-cranberry-silk skin, in between. ‘Love the legs. Definitely mistress material.’

‘Who…who are you?’ she stammered as she tugged her nightgown down as far as she could.

‘Tom Hocking, ma’am. No one calls me Thomas, except Birdie.’

Chas gasped as all sorts of things fell into place. One of them being her sheer stupidity. Who else but the man controlling the purse strings would have what definitely looked like the master bedroom? Why hadn’t she thought of that? Because she’d had a mental vision of an elderly profligate uncle or something! Which was not to say that this Thomas Hocking wasn’t profligate. His intentions only minutes earlier would have certainly fallen into that category.

‘Of all the…’ she said with deep outrage. ‘How could you do this?’

‘Do what? Fall asleep peacefully in my own bed, on my own, until you climbed into it? That’s all I recall.’

Her breasts heaved. ‘No it’s not! You misrepresented yourself, you won’t believe me and you’re keeping me here against my will!’

He opened his mouth then appeared to change his mind. ‘If you got to the bathroom safely, how come you ended up here?’

Chas winced. ‘It is a strange house, and with no lights it’s not so surprising. Anyway, I don’t have a great sense of direction and I didn’t have my watch on.’

He stared at her. ‘Would that have helped? What is it? A luminous compass as well as a watch? A miniature GPS?’

‘Very funny,’ Chas said stiffly. ‘No, but it does help me tell my right hand from my left.’

‘You got to your—mid-twenties,’ he hazarded, ‘without being able to tell your right from your left? That certainly explains it.’

Chas set her teeth at the irony in his eyes. ‘It can happen, believe me.’

He looked as if he wanted to say you learn something every day!, and ruffled his hair. ‘Well, where do we go from here, Aphrodite?’

‘So no one calls you Thomas?’

‘I can’t remember the last time anyone did, apart from Birdie. Why?’

Chas wrenched her wrist free and tumbled off the bed. ‘Where do we go? Back to Brisbane first thing, for me at least. I don’t appreciate being made a fool of like this!’ She grabbed her robe and sponge bag and ran from the room.

Breakfast was a help-yourself affair.

Juice and coffee were set on a buffet table as well as cereals, yoghurt, fruit and a frosted jug of milk. Several silver-lidded warming dishes were lined up and there was a basket of rolls and bread.

The only person in the dining room when Chas entered was Rupert. There was one word that summed up Rupert Leeton, Lord Weaver, and that was diffident. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, he was of medium height, he could most easily disappear in a crowd but, despite his obvious reticence, he was nice.

A good match for Vanessa Hocking? Chas had wondered. Perhaps only time would tell.

She’d calmed down somewhat since her encounter with Tom Hocking but she wasn’t feeling particularly charitable towards any of the Cresswell Lodge inhabitants, so she murmured a cool greeting.

Rupert, however, rose courteously to pull out a chair for her and offered to fetch her a glass of juice.

‘Thank you.’

‘As a matter of fact I feel like saying that to you!’ Rupert placed a glass of orange juice in front of her. ‘Vanessa’s like a new person since your session last night. They were getting all bogged down and it was definitely getting on Tom’s nerves,’ he confided. ‘But your ideas have breathed new life into the old girl!’

‘Ah, Tom,’ Chas murmured, and flicked the bridegroom a reproachful glance.

‘Of course!’ He tapped his forehead. ‘You have no idea who Tom is, do you?’

‘She does now.’

Chas froze as Tom Hocking strolled into the room and poured himself a cup of coffee at the buffet. He sat down opposite Chas with it. ‘Don’t you, Ms Bartlett?’ he added.

Chas swallowed. ‘Yes.’

Tom Hocking smiled and turned to Rupert. ‘What’s this you’ve been telling her about me being a womaniser, as well as all sorts of weird things?’

Rupert grimaced and attempted several garbled explanations. ‘It was the Thomas that did it,’ he finished. ‘It sort of took us by surprise, and then—the girls were just feeling a bit highly strung, I suppose.’

‘Is that so?’ Tom murmured.

Chas studied him. In contrast to Rupert, who was clean and crisp, Tom Hocking had dark shadows on his jaw. He was in his socks, he wore faded jeans and a stained khaki work shirt but—this surprised her—he was not unimpressive.

‘Lord Weaver,’ she said coolly, rather than dwelling on the physical properties that made Tom Hocking stand out even in his work clothes, ‘didn’t start it. He defended you if anything.’

‘Thank you, Rupe,’ Tom said with obvious irony. He rose, picked up his cup and said to her, ‘I’d like to see you in my study when you’ve finished your breakfast, Ms Bartlett. It might be a good idea to get someone to show you right to the door.’

He strolled out.

Rupert clicked his tongue. ‘Sorry about that. It obviously led to a misunderstanding.’

Chas started to say something about a monumental understatement but confined herself to murmuring, ‘You could say so. I get the feeling he’s not an easy person to handle at the best of times, however.’

Rupert considered and shrugged. ‘He does have the final say around here. He is very successful.’

‘Perhaps he needs more than a cup of coffee for breakfast?’ she suggested with a tinge of frivolity she was far from feeling.

‘Oh, he would have been up and about hours ago. He always breakfasts first then goes out to the horses.’

‘I see. One of those?’

Rupert smiled. ‘In a word.’

Chas finished her breakfast but not with great enjoyment. Then she made a point of cleaning her teeth before asking her way to Tom Hocking’s study.

He was on the phone to, it emerged, Birdie Tait. He waved her to a chair and continued his conversation, giving Chas ample time to look around. Like the dining room the study was panelled and, like the rest of the house, was beautifully furnished with antiques—a marvellous old oak desk, two winged chairs with linen covers and a lovely array of art on the walls.

So impressed by the art was she, she got up to have a closer look and didn’t realise he’d finished his phone call until he said her name.

‘Oh!’ She moved back to the chair and sank into it.

They stared at each other across the desk for a long moment.

He was now showered and shaved and wore khaki trousers and a blue sweater with military-style patches on the elbows and shoulders. Unfortunately, Chas discovered, these clothes did not prevent her from seeing him in her mind’s eye wearing nothing but a pair of sleep shorts.

To her further confusion, from the light of pure devilry in his grey eyes, she had no doubt that his mind’s eye had swept away her blue jeans and apricot jumper and he was seeing her in only a flimsy slip of a nightgown.

She prayed that she wouldn’t blush but she did, and it got worse than that. Her nipples tingled, causing her to move abruptly.

There was no way he could have known this had happened to her, not beneath a bra and jumper, but she got the feeling, as his eyes narrowed, that he did. Her awkward movement must have given her away.

‘Yes, well,’ he drawled, ‘you remind me of a long-legged, skittish filly, but what have you to say for yourself this morning, Ms Bartlett?’

Chas drew on all the composure she possessed and remembered her determination to eschew all mention of the events in his bed. ‘I don’t think this is a very good idea, Mr Hocking,’ she said briskly. ‘I don’t believe we could work together, so—’

‘It’s my sister and my mother you’d be working with,’ he interrupted. ‘Incidentally, Birdie has cleared up a lot of the confusion. Apparently she left all sorts of messages for me regarding your metamorphosis into a woman that I never got.’

‘Never got?’ Chas frowned.

‘You will find, should you accept this commission, that it helps to be a horse around here.’ This time he studied her hair caught back at the nape of her neck.

Chas blinked.

‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘all the best treatment is reserved for the horses. Other things, like answering machines, mobile-phone messages and the like get short shrift. Someone borrowed my mobile phone; someone accidentally deleted the message tape on the answering machine. I must admit, I just forgot to check my emails. Birdie is at her wits’ end with us.’

Chas shrugged. ‘I’m not surprised. But that actually makes me more sure that this would be an impossible wedding to organise, Mr Hocking, and—’

‘Why? You appear to have slayed my mother and my sister with your ideas.’

Chas hesitated. ‘That’s the other thing. They did lead me to believe you—uh—might not appreciate the costs involved.’

He smiled somewhat grimly and named a figure.

Chas’s eyes widened and her lips parted.

‘That obviously surprises you, Ms Bartlett. Not enough?’

‘Plenty,’ Chas said, then bit her lip.

He lay back in his chair. ‘I may run a tight ship, which they like to interpret, occasionally, as me being cheap, but I wouldn’t expect Vanessa to marry Lord Weaver without all the trimmings.’

Chas was lost for words.

‘Look…’ He sat forward. ‘I apologise for everything that led up to you feeling you’d been made a fool of last night. But it was me they were taking the mickey out of, not you.’

‘And you didn’t feel you were making fun of me when—?’ She stopped exasperatedly on the thought that she hadn’t planned to mention that.

‘When I was…? Talking about mistress material?’ he suggested. ‘Actually—’ his eyes glinted ‘—I was serious, and that was a compliment.’

‘Well, that depends entirely, Mr Hocking,’ Chas said, ‘on your reputation with women. Was your family maligning you there, do you feel?’

‘I don’t know what they said.’ He still looked amused.

‘That you’d sloped off last night, with a woman, no doubt,’ she elucidated.

His amusement changed to injury. ‘I did not! Well, I guess there was a female involved, actually. Two, as it happens.’

Pure blue scorn beamed his way.

‘I was called out, Ms Bartlett,’ he continued, ‘to help with a difficult foaling. Both the dam and a filly foal survived and are doing well now.’

For a moment Chas wished she could fall through the floor. ‘So…so why did they say that?’

He shrugged. ‘I may have forgotten to mention it to anyone.’ He waited for a moment then said softly, ‘Don’t you have a sense of humour, Chas?’

‘I have a very well-developed sense of humour normally,’ she said slowly. ‘Climbing into a strange man’s bed seems to have dampened it somewhat.’

‘Why don’t we start again?’

She swallowed.

‘You may have carte blanche within the limits of your budget. I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this but Rupert’s parents, the Earl and Countess of Wickham, will be attending. So will several other lords and ladies. I’m quite sure this wedding will find its way into some English magazines and papers, not to mention Australian ones.’

Chas clicked her tongue. ‘That’s blackmail.’

He said nothing.

‘But I do run a business,’ she added a little helplessly.

He nodded in serious agreement.

‘Oh, all right!’ Chas was goaded into flinging at him.

He sat back and made a steeple of his fingers. ‘I thought it might be.’

‘Look here, if you’re as successful as they say you are, why take exception to my commercial instincts?’ Chas challenged.

‘I’m not. It’s your other instincts I’m wondering about.’

‘Such as?’

‘How much…’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘How much of your decision was based on curiosity? A mutual curiosity, I do admit, but one stemming from your inability to tell your left hand from your right last night?’

Chas rose. ‘None whatsoever! I happen to be the ultimate career girl.’

‘Who said anything about interfering—’ his gaze drifted down her figure ‘—with your career?’

‘I’m saying it now. I never mix business with pleasure, Mr Hocking—not that I would classify you as pleasure—and I have no intention of joining a long line of peachy blondes!’

He looked askance at her. ‘Peachy blondes?’

‘That was the other detail your family imparted last night. Peachy blondes, such as the riding-school owner who has supposedly taken to haunting this place.’

He opened his mouth to reply but she turned on her heel and walked out.

He said, just before she reached the door, ‘If you’d left your hair loose you could have tossed your head just like an exasperated filly.’

She stayed on for the morning but declined lunch.

She also managed to detach Vanessa from her mother and aunt. And she had the felicity, when she said to Vanessa that above all it was her wedding and the important choices should all be hers, of being spontaneously and gratefully hugged.

They chose the invitations, decided on the bridesmaids’ dresses—there were to be two plus a flower-girl and a page-boy—and what the men of the wedding party would wear. Vanessa selected a colour scheme for the decorations and flowers. They discussed menus and looked through a selection of wedding cakes, and Vanessa promised to send Chas a guest list so the invitations could go out.

At the end of the session, Vanessa looked Chas over curiously. ‘I could never have sorted this all out on my own. I could never have made up my mind! How do you do it?’

Chas grinned. ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s because I love weddings and I love seeing them being the happy, joyful occasions they should be.’

‘Ever had one of your own?’

Chas hesitated. ‘Funnily enough, almost. Then he—We decided to call it off.’

‘Wouldn’t that turn you off weddings for life?’ Vanessa queried.

‘Oh, I was already in the business but—no,’ Chas said slowly and with a faint frown, ‘it didn’t.’

‘Did it turn you off men?’

‘Ah!’ Chas looked humorous. ‘That’s another matter. Dashing, very good-looking men who get away with murder, perhaps. And I’m certainly not into serious relationships now.’

She gathered together all her papers and returned to business. ‘Vanessa, we only have three months, which isn’t a great deal of time for a wedding this size, but if you want to change anything, do let me know. By the way, who is giving you away?’

‘Tom.’ Vanessa grimaced. ‘With unconcealed relief, no doubt—no, that’s not fair.’ She got up and looked out of the window over the garden. ‘We may joke about it and get mad with him sometimes, but without Tom we’d be lost.’ She turned back to Chas abruptly. ‘Do you know how much I love this place?’