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MILLS & BOON
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To Evelyn, John and Stephen with all my love
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
IT HAD been a long, seemingly endless journey—the most ambitious drive Georgia had undertaken in ages. Her saving grace was that she adored driving and prided herself at being quite good at it. With her Labrador Hamish in the back behind her she had the best companion she could wish for, next to her brother Noah. Now, well into the summer evening, she drove silently, with the radio off, her gaze lapping up the extraordinarily beautiful landscape of the Scottish Glens, tiredness banished by what had to be one of the most heavenly sights on earth.
Everywhere she looked she was treated to the most incredible beauty—sunlit lochs, mountain peaks and shimmering green fields. Even Hamish seemed to perk up as he looked out of the window, as if silently contemplating the large open spaces in which to romp and run free with eager relish. It was a far cry from the overcrowded London suburb where Georgia lived.
Already she sensed the accumulated knots and kinks of tension in her back start to unravel a little.
They had made quite a few stops during the long journey, for food and drink, but they had still made very good time. Now, Georgia knew, by the map opened on the seat beside her, as well as her new boss’s very precise e-mail directions, that there was not too much further to go before they reached Glenteign—the large country estate of which he was Laird.
‘No wonder Noah loved working here!’ she declared out loud, and Hamish wagged his tail enthusiastically as if to agree.
Her brother had assured her that she would grow to love Glenteign too. He’d recently spent six months there, in his capacity as a freelance garden designer hired to help work on the formal gardens. It was a place where a person could really breathe, he’d told her, his passion for nature and beauty spilling over into his voice. And in his opinion Georgia wouldn’t regret leaving London behind for a while, with its continual gridlocked traffic and polluted air. Working as the Laird’s temporary secretary, while his permanent secretary recovered from a bad fall, she would have some breathing space from the grinding commute into the City every day. She would find out what a different way of life it was up here—a much more relaxed, ‘sane’ way of life.
She had accepted the job because she wanted so much to believe him, but Georgia still had some reservations about her decision. What would it be like working for a man who had probably never had to worry about where the next meal was coming from in his life? A man who, because of his status, epitomised the old feudal system of ‘Lord of the Manor’ while those around him were mere serfs?
She didn’t exactly have a problem with the concept of inherited wealth—she begrudged nobody their comfortable circumstances—it was just that she was so weary sometimes of her own struggle to keep the wolf from the door, and the idea that somebody could just be born into such good fortune and not have to do anything to earn it was apt to rub salt into the wound. Still, no doubt the wealthy Laird of Glenteign had his own problems…they just didn’t come in the same shape as Georgia’s. But—problems or no—surely he couldn’t fail to take solace in so much wonderful scenery?
When her reliable but old Renault finally drew into the grounds of Glenteign, Georgia switched off the engine, leaned her elbow on the window’s ledge and considered her surroundings with a flare of wonderment in the pit of her stomach.
The house immediately proclaimed its historic past—its impressive edifice of Pictish stone, with its turrets reaching towards the presently cloudless azure sky, reminding Georgia of an ancient impenetrable fortress that had survived every onslaught both nature and man could throw at it and still there it stood, proud and inviolable, with an almost defiant grace. Turning her head, Georgia viewed the lushness of emerald lawns rolling out into the distance like an expansive glittering carpet, and over to the right a high stone wall that perhaps led to the formal gardens that her brother had been working on for the past half-year.
She couldn’t deny she was eager to see them—not just because of the work Noah had done there, but because he’d told her they were incredibly beautiful. Moving her gaze further afield, a grove of tall firs captured her attention, stretching endlessly beyond the exquisite perfection of the immaculate lawns. There was just so much land! It didn’t seem feasible that one person could own all of this. She began to realise what a prestigious opportunity this was for Noah, coming to work here. And now, because of the success he had achieved, he was working at another large estate in the Highlands—a commission he had secured on the Laird’s recommendation because he had been so impressed with what he’d done at Glenteign.
She felt a flicker of love and pride. Every sacrifice she’d made to help Noah get his business off the ground had been worth it…
‘You found us, then?’
Abruptly lured away from her reverie, Georgia found her glance commanded by a pair of eyes that were so faultlessly, intensely blue that for a moment no speech was possible on her part. The rest of the features in the masculine face before here were not exactly difficult to look at either. It was as if they might have been sculpted—the planes and angles so strongly delineated that they were surely the loving work of an artist’s reverent hand? But Georgia wasn’t the only one who was transfixed…The man’s unflinching perusal of her own face came as a shock.
She wasn’t used to being regarded with such uncommon directness and everything inside her clenched hard in sudden self-consciousness. But before she could find her voice, he was opening the driver’s door and standing aside for her to step out onto the gravel.
‘Yes…hello.’ She held out her hand, then awkwardly withdrew it almost as soon as her skin came into contact with his. Such an acceptably polite gesture shouldn’t feel as if it was bordering on intimacy but somehow it did. As he considered her further, his gaze no less direct, Georgia silently bemoaned her travel-worn appearance. After several hours’ travelling her clothes must resemble unironed laundry, she was sure. The cream linen shift dress she wore, with its scooped neckline, had been cool and fresh when she’d donned it early this morning, but it definitely didn’t look like that now.
‘Did you have a good journey?’
Beneath the polite questioning Georgia thought she detected a slight strain—as though he neither welcomed nor enjoyed this kind of inconsequential chit-chat. Her heart sank a little.
‘Yes, I did. The directions you gave me were spot-on.’
‘Good.’
‘I presume you must be the Laird?’
‘Yes, I am…And you are Georgia…Noah’s sister.’
It was a statement of fact, not requiring a reply.
‘How do I address you?’ she asked, her voice determinedly bright.
‘The correct title is “Chief,” but I would be quite happy for you to call me Keir—the same as I told your brother. Talking of which…I have to say I can hardly see a resemblance between the two of you.’
‘People usually say that.’
‘Then I’m sorry to be so predictable.’
He was still a little perturbed by the handshake they’d shared—although the contact had been less than brief, Keir had been genuinely taken aback by the warm electrical ‘buzz’ that had flowed straight through him. It had been a very arresting wake-up call, and now he sensed his attention magnetised by Georgia Cameron’s lovely face. He was surprised that she was so different in colouring from her tall, blond, blue-eyed brother, and perhaps more pleased than he should be by the contrast. Anybody with a penchant for beauty would admire such dazzling green-gold eyes, but in a face as animated and compelling as hers, with its high, elegant cheekbones and wide, generous mouth, it was hard not to elevate them as perhaps the most beautiful he’d ever seen…
But Keir could hardly attest to welcoming such distracting assets. It was her professional skills he was interested in, not her looks. He had employed her because her brother had assured him that if he was looking for a first-class secretary, he should look no further than his very capable sister. He’d said she was temping with an agency in the City, and her current job would be coming to an end soon, so she could start at Glenteign practically straight away.
Way behind with the administration of running such a large estate, after reluctantly inheriting the mantle of Laird from his brother Robert, who’d been killed in an accident abroad, Keir was in urgent need of some first class secretarial and organisational skills. Doubly so since his own secretary Valerie had unfortunately tumbled down the stairs and broken her leg. Only the next few days would tell if Noah Cameron had exaggerated his sister’s capabilities or not…
‘I expect you’d like to go straight to your room and freshen up?’
‘There’s something that I really need to do first if you don’t mind?’
‘What’s that?’
‘I need to take Hamish for a bit of a walk. The poor creature’s been cooped up for too long in my small car, and to tell you the truth I feel the same. We won’t be ages…is that all right?’
‘That’s fine. I should have thought of it myself.’
Keir moved to the passenger door behind the driver’s seat of Georgia’s dusty little car, pulled it open and invited Hamish to jump out. The Labrador was ridiculously grateful, leaping up at him excitedly and wagging his tail at a rate of knots.
‘Oh, my gosh—he’s taken to you straight away! He doesn’t do that with everybody…he must sense that you’re friendly.’
Georgia’s smile was genuinely delighted.
Being the unexpected recipient of such a fulsome expression of joy, Keir stared—caught between wanting to arouse more of the same rather beguiling delight and needing to assert some formality between them pretty quickly. The truth was he suddenly found himself having serious reservations about the wisdom of employing this rather disarming woman to work for him…even though the post was only temporary.
He decided to try and keep her gestures of friendliness at bay as much as possible. Theirs was a strictly business relationship, and if she didn’t come up to scratch then Keir would have no compunction in telling her she was no longer needed. And he wouldn’t cut her any slack just because her brother had impressed him either. James Strachan certainly wouldn’t have. A less compassionate and sentimental man would have been hard to find anywhere! And, even though his father had shown evidence of relenting his rather austere manner towards the end of his life, the die had been cast. His efforts to try and forge with his younger son an emotional bond that had never existed before had come too late, Keir acknowledged with some bitterness. It had certainly come too late for his brother Robbie…
‘I wouldn’t read too much into it,’ Keir said, deliberately pushing his hands into the pockets of his light coloured chinos, as if signalling that he wouldn’t be paying the animal any undue attention while he was there. He had agreed to her request to bring the dog with her, and that should be enough. ‘He’s just grateful to be let out. You can walk anywhere, but I’d be glad if you kept the dog away from the flowerbeds. Is your stuff in the boot? All the staff in the house are busy, so I’ll take it upstairs to your room. It’s on the second floor. I’ll leave the door open so that you know which one it is. Dinner is at eight, and I like people to be prompt. Enjoy your walk.’
Her smile gone, Georgia frowned and murmured, ‘Thanks.’ And if the withdrawal of that smile made Keir feel as if he’d deliberately deprived himself of something extraordinary, then he told himself he deserved it. Watching her collect Hamish’s lead from her handbag beside the driver’s seat and walk away, he opened the car boot and lifted out her luggage to carry it into the house.
Freshly showered after her walk round the grounds with Hamish, Georgia sat on the bed in her room and examined the employment contract Keir had left for her to sign. He didn’t waste much time, did he? What did he think she was going to do? Run away after driving since the early hours of the morning to get here?
Even though she might have briefly entertained the thought, after the distinctly frosty way he’d shut down on her following her remark about Hamish liking him, Georgia was not about to give him the satisfaction. She would show Keir Strachan, Laird of Glenteign, that she was a reliable, efficient and skilled worker—and most of all that she kept her word when a promise was made.
Signing her name with a deliberate flourish, she laid the paperwork aside, then shook her damp hair free from the towel she’d wrapped it in. Pushing her fingers through the dark slippery strands, she let her gaze wander over her new surroundings. The room was the height of elegance, with plenty of loving feminine touches everywhere—from the rose-pink velvet curtains, with their matching gathered tiebacks and deep swags, to the rather grand mahogany dressing table with its gleaming surfaces, ornate lace doilies and sparkling oval-shaped mirror. The drowsy scent of late summer pervaded the air, and there was a breathtaking bouquet of white roses in a pink vase arranged on top of a polished satinwood chiffonier that made Georgia’s heart skip with pleasure.
She wondered who had been responsible for such a delightful touch. Noah had told her that Keir wasn’t married, so it must be some other female…Georgia felt vaguely annoyed that she was even speculating about it at all. She should be concentrating on getting ready to present herself to her new boss; that was what she should be doing!
Jumping up, she went to fetch her hairdryer from her almost empty suitcase. Realising that it was almost ten to eight, an unwelcome twist of anxiety knotted her stomach at the recollection that her new employer expected people to be ‘prompt’ for dinner. Trying to quell the feeling of rebellion that the thought surprisingly inspired, she turned her mind instead to the prospect of meeting the other staff who worked in the house.
Noah had told her how fond he’d grown of Keir’s housekeeper, Moira Guthrie, while he’d worked there, and if the woman was as friendly as he had described then perhaps she needn’t be as daunted as she was feeling at present at the idea of living in such a grand, impressive residence. Not to mention acting as secretary to a man who appeared to welcome gestures of friendliness with about as much enthusiasm as finding a viper in his bed!
Unlike her bedroom, the dining room had plenty of masculine touches in evidence—from the array of shining swords placed strategically round the walls to the several portraits of presumably past lairds who overlooked the proceedings with a definitely superior air. Breathtakingly impressive, the room was decorated in true baronial splendour. In fact, as she’d followed the very amiable Moira Guthrie inside, Georgia had half expected a fanfare to sound.
She bit down on her lip to suppress a smile. Under its high-raftered ceilings and candle sconces on the walls, and seated at the long refectory table with its burnished silverware and elegant cream dinner service, it was easy to imagine herself transported to a much more elegant and mannered era. All this finery was a far cry from Georgia and Noah’s ridiculously small dining room at home, with its well-used pine table bought at a local second-hand store, and the four matching chairs that were in urgent need of refurbishment…
Glancing briefly down at her simple pink cotton dress, worn with the heart-shaped rose quartz pendant that her mother had left her, Georgia couldn’t help musing that her employer might expect much more elegant attire in her dressing for dinner in his imposing house. Oh, well…Noah hadn’t seemed to worry about such things, and nor should she. Neither of them had ever been able to afford elegant clothes even if they’d desired them. Most of the time they had been too busy just trying to survive.
Bereft of both parents since Noah was fourteen, Georgia, just five years his senior, had taken over her brother’s care from that too young age, and worrying about finances had dominated her life for more years than she cared to remember. Even to the point of sacrificing any opportunity for a loving relationship, according to her concerned friends. But there was no real sacrifice in Georgia’s mind. She would do it all again tomorrow if she had to. Still, she couldn’t deny that the valuable commission to help work on the gardens at Glenteign had literally arrived in the nick of time.
Georgia had sunk every spare penny she’d had after paying the bills and running their home into Noah’s fledgling gardening business. With her blessing, he was intending to reinvest as much of the cash he’d received from that commission into making the business even more viable…In a couple of years’ time maybe they would both be able to relax a little where money was concerned, instead of working practically every hour God sent.
‘Don’t worry, my dear…we won’t be so formal every night,’ Moira assured Georgia, having seen the doubt flicker across her face. ‘We do like to do things properly at the weekends, but during the week we’re very informal. There’s a smaller dining room, just down the hall from the kitchen, and we usually eat in there. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a second, I’m just off to see where Chief Strachan is. I expect he’s busy finishing off some work and has forgotten the time. God knows the poor man’s been up to his eyes in it since he came back here! And what with poor Valerie breaking her leg, you haven’t arrived a moment too soon, lassie, and that’s a fact!’
Georgia breathed a sigh of relief when the other woman exited the room. She couldn’t deny she welcomed a few moments by herself, to reflect on where she’d landed. Considering the job in hand, there was no doubt in her mind about her secretarial abilities passing muster—but, having finally met her new boss, she did have some concerns as to whether they would get along. Lord knew, it could be frankly exhausting working for someone without a sense of humour, and quite honestly Georgia had been hoping for a breakthrough in that department. People in London these days seemed so uptight, with most of them consumed by long working hours and making career goals their God, that it made working as a temporary secretary for such driven individuals sometimes frankly hellish.
Sighing, she got up from her chair to examine the paintings that bedecked the walls. Turning up her nose at the stern male portraits to rest her gaze instead on the more genial scenes of pastoral serenity that were so invitingly displayed alongside them, she felt a little of the anxiety she was holding in her body ease from her shoulders.
‘My apologies for keeping you waiting.’
She turned at the sound of that richly attractive and commanding voice, her gaze diverted by the sight of Keir walking straight to the head of the table in a brisk manner, straightening the cuffs on his open-necked white shirt, as though about to head up a board meeting instead of sitting down to dinner. Surprisingly, he was wearing denim jeans, and the faint aura of some classic male cologne lingered in the air as he moved.
Catching the briefly intense flare of the searching azure glance that immediately came her way, Georgia felt her stomach react as if she’d just plummeted several thousand feet without a parachute. Noah should have warned her that the Laird was so…so compelling! But perhaps it was understandable that younger brothers left out such important details when describing another man to their sisters!
Feeling ridiculously annoyed that she should be so thrown off-centre by her employer’s good-looks, when she wasn’t remotely an easily impressed girl at all, Georgia lightly shrugged her shoulders.
‘Not at all. I was just enjoying looking at your beautiful paintings. The portraits are a little too severe for my taste, if you don’t mind my saying…but the country scenes are lovely.’
‘You like art?’
‘Of course.’
The surprise on her face held the unspoken question. Doesn’t everybody? and Keir found himself inordinately pleased by her vehemence.
‘There are many paintings in the house—some by some very famous Scottish artists indeed. Perhaps when we’re not so busy there might be an opportunity for me to show them to you? Now, please…sit down. There’s only the three of us this evening as some of the staff are off duty, so there’s no need to stand on ceremony. Moira, why don’t you tell Lucy that she can serve the soup?’
As the older woman turned hurriedly away again, Georgia felt her cheeks burn with indignation beneath Keir’s disconcerting scrutiny. She arranged herself in her chair. Didn’t he know it was rude to stare? She swallowed hard, irritated with herself that she should let herself be so affected by the way he looked at her. She’d worked for attractive bosses in the past…of course she had. But none had bothered her sufficiently that she couldn’t think a single straight thought without feeling flustered!
Reaching for her perfectly folded napkin, Georgia shook it out and laid it in her lap. ‘This is such an incredible house, and the grounds—from what I’ve seen so far—are quite breathtaking! You must love living in such a beautiful place,’ she commented conversationally.
Her blood ran cold as ice water at the look in his eyes. ‘That is your assumption, is it?’
‘I only meant that—’
‘Don’t be so quick to make careless judgements, Miss Cameron,’ he advised broodingly. ‘Have you not heard the adage “never judge a book by its cover”?’
CHAPTER TWO
‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN?’
She found herself trapped by his glance for an almost excruciatingly long moment, and Georgia wondered what she’d said that was so wrong. There wasn’t just irritation in his chastising glare. She was sensitive enough to detect some deep unhappiness there too, and for some reason her stomach turned hollow. There was such strength of will and vitality in Keir’s strong, handsome face, and the idea that such an indomitable visage might be hiding some profound hurt behind it disturbed her more than she considered natural for somebody she’d only just met, and she didn’t know why…
‘It doesn’t matter. Have you heard from Noah recently? No doubt you know he’s coming for a visit next weekend?’
The swift change of subject caused her smooth brows to draw momentarily together. ‘Yes, I know. He rang me yesterday. We speak on the phone every couple of days.’
‘And has he told you how he’s getting along?’
Even as he asked the question Keir knew it wasn’t Noah’s welfare that was uppermost in his mind. He admired the younger man, of course—his professionalism, ability to work hard and deliver on a promise were commendable. But right then Keir was actually dwelling on the obviously close relationship he enjoyed with his disarming sister. To speak on the phone so often when they were away from each other was hardly something he could have imagined doing with his own brother.