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www.millsandboon.co.uk
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
COMING NEXT MONTH
CHAPTER ONE
IF HE HAD to deal with inheriting a mansion he’d hated on sight, he’d rather do it alone.
If he had to go through all the boxes in one room of that mansion, searching for clues to a mother about whom—to put it mildly—he felt ambivalent, he’d much rather do it alone. But it would take forever, and Luke Griffin didn’t have forever. He had a financial empire to maintain.
He needed help.
Not his usual way of operating. He’d been doing things on his own since he was too little to remember.
He thumbed through the Yellow Pages again until he found the company that had looked like a helpful lead. Organize Your Home. With a name like that, surely someone should be able to help him go through the boxes? The other choice was to haul them to the dump.
They were his only chance to find out anything about his past. Luke punched the numbers and waited for the ring.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice. A rich contralto voice, with an undertone of huskiness that managed to turn two ordinary syllables into something very close to an invitation. He said briskly, “Is this Organize Your Home?”
“You have the right number,” the woman said. “But the business is no longer in operation…sorry.”
She didn’t sound sorry. She sounded jubilant, like sunlight through the amber depths of brandy. “My name’s Luke Griffin,” he said. “I’m staying temporarily at Griffin’s Keep, and I have at least three days’ work for you.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Griffin—as I said, I’ve disbanded the company. Last week.”
He said implacably, “What do you usually charge per hour?”
“That’s not—”
“Just answer the question. And perhaps you could tell me your name?”
Her voice warmed with temper. “Kelsey North. Forty dollars an hour. It’s not on.”
“I’ll pay two hundred and fifty an hour. Multiply that by three days—I’m sure you can do the math.”
There was a taut silence. Then she said crisply, “What sort of work?”
“My grandmother—Sylvia Griffin—left me some papers that are of personal interest. Unfortunately they’re scattered throughout her financial records. Boxes and boxes of them, and each one has to be gone through page by page. I’m a busy man and I have to get back to Manhattan. I can’t take the time to do this on my own.”
“I see,” Kelsey North said. “Give me your number. I’ll call you back later this evening.”
He rhymed off the numbers on the phone. “I look forward to hearing from you,” he said smoothly. “Goodbye, Ms North.”
The woman at the other end banged the receiver down with a force that was not remotely professional. If she was one of his employees, she’d be taking a course on customer relations, Luke thought, idly wondering why she’d closed her business. Although with a voice like that she was wasted organizing other people’s closets.
If, when she called back, she said no, he was in deep trouble.
He’d up the rate to five hundred an hour. That’d get her, he thought cynically, and went to see if he could rustle up a cup of coffee in the archaic kitchen of Griffin’s Keep.
KELSEY GLARED AT the receiver as if Luke Griffin was standing on top of it. The nerve of the man. The arrogance. As if she was supposed to levitate six feet in the air the moment he said jump.
Organize Your Home no longer existed. Finished. Kaput. She was free, free, free!
She did an impromptu twirl around the living room, then sat down again at the table where she’d been working on her list when the phone had rung. It was a list, in bright red marker, of all the things she wanted to do now that her life was her own.
Go to art school. Travel. Paint a masterpiece. Paint her toenails purple. Have torrid sex.
Her brow knitted. She crossed out torrid. Any kind of sex would do, wouldn’t it? Still frowning, she erased Have sex and substituted Have an affair. It sounded more romantic. Classier. Especially if she had it with someone tall, dark and handsome, who’d treat her like a piece of breakable china and give her roses and breakfast in bed.
None of her dates in the last few years had been tall, dark and handsome; there wasn’t much choice in Hadley, the village where she lived. Kelsey heaved a sigh, then added Holiday to her list.
But until she sold the house, how could she afford a holiday? Nearly all her savings had gone to the art school in Manhattan as the deposit with her application.
Two hundred and fifty dollars an hour for three days. Six thousand dollars.
Yes, she could do the math.
He was bribing her, she thought with a spurt of rage. The famous—or rather, infamous—Luke Griffin thought she could be bought.
Well, she could. Couldn’t she?
Why did everything always have to come down to money?
If she had six thousand dollars she could pay for her first two semesters and have a bit left for a trip. Somewhere south, where it was warm.
It wasn’t as though Luke Griffin couldn’t afford it. He could. He’d graduated from millions to billions several years ago, or so Alice at the post office said.
Organizing a dead woman’s papers wasn’t anywhere on her list.
So what? She’d go to Griffin’s Keep, work her butt off for three days, take the money and run. And in the meantime she’d check the internet for inexpensive package tours to a tropical island with palm trees, white sand and drinks with little colored umbrellas in them. Quickly, before she could change her mind, Kelsey picked up the phone and dialed the number for Griffin’s Keep.
Luke brushed a layer of dust off the receiver and held it to his ear. “Luke Griffin.”
“This is Kelsey North. What time do you want me to start?”
Her brandy-smooth voice was overlaid with irritation. “Tomorrow morning at eight-thirty,” he said. “I can’t find anything but mouse droppings in the pantry, so if you need caffeine to get yourself moving in the morning, you’d better bring your own.” He smiled into the phone. “Wear old clothes, the place hasn’t been cleaned in months. I look forward to meeting you, Ms North.” Gently he put the phone down.
One more woman who could be bought, he thought, and wondered if her appearance would in any way measure up to the beauty of her voice.
KELSEY DRESSED WITH care the next morning. Then she picked up a can of Colombian blend and a carton of coffee cream, and left the house. Her car started like a dream, and the ten-minute drive to Griffin’s Keep gave her time to think.
Since Sylvia Griffin’s death a few days ago, gossip had run rife in Hadley. Sylvia’s grandson, whose name was Luke, hadn’t gotten a cent in her will; he’d inherited the whole packet; he was bringing his stretch limo to her funeral; he was in Hong Kong and would arrive by helicopter; he was worth one billion dollars, ten billion, a hundred billion…
There was consensus on only one subject: women fell like flies at his approach, and his mistresses were legendary for their beauty, wealth and elegance.
In the end, he hadn’t bothered attending his grandmother’s funeral at all, Kelsey mused, driving down a side road where last week’s snow still lingered in the ditches. He’d arrived late yesterday, the day after the funeral. As far as she knew, he’d never taken the time to visit Sylvia while she was alive, and certainly not in her last brief illness. Too busy amassing his fortune and bedding every beauty in sight, she thought unkindly, and pulled into the driveway of Griffin’s Keep.
Her heart beating a little faster than usual, Kelsey rang the doorbell. The brass around it was pitted and tarnished.
Through the narrow windows on either side of the door she heard the thud of footsteps on the stairs, then the door was yanked open. Her jaw dropped.
Luke Griffin was wearing jeans with the button undone, and a thin white T-shirt that molded every muscle in his chest. There was an awful lot of muscle, she thought, swallowing, and forced her gaze upward. A long way up. Tall. Yep, he was tall, all right. His hair, ruffled and untidy, was dark as night; dark stubble shadowed his cheeks and jawline.
So was he handsome? His eyes, deepset, were of a startling blue under brows as dark as his hair; his lashes were like dabs of soot. Add a decided nose, jutting cheekbones and a strongly carved mouth that made her feel weak just to look at it, and she was left with a face infused with character, none of it gentle. Forceful, decisive, ruthless: the words tumbled through her brain. Handsome, she thought faintly, had been left way behind.
“Luke Griffin,” he said, running long, lean fingers through his disordered hair and stifling a yawn. “Sorry, I only just woke up. Jet-lagged the wrong way—this feels like three in the morning.”
“You told me to arrive at eight-thirty,” she said edgily.
“Yeah.” His smile shot through her like a sunburst. “Just goes to show what lousy decisions I make when I cross the dateline. Come on in, and I’ll show you what I want done.” His eyes fell to the package she was carrying. “Don’t tell me that’s coffee? Real coffee?”
“Colombian.”
“You’re a jewel among women,” he said fervently, and pulled her into the house, shutting the door behind her.
Because his fingers were gripping her elbow, she was entirely too close to that tautly muscled chest. He smelled warm and indescribably male: a man who’d just climbed out of bed.
Bed, Kelsey thought faintly. Torrid sex.
“Is something wrong?” he said.
“No! Of course not.” Maybe he slept naked.
He gave her another of those brain-sizzling smiles. “I know you’re here to sort papers. But if you could produce a decent mug of coffee in that horror of a kitchen, I’d be everlastingly grateful.”
Charm. Hadn’t gossip—indirectly—warned her he could charm the birds out of the trees? Or, to be more accurate, charm a woman who’d been determined to dislike him? “I’ll try,” she said.
“I’ll go have a shower. I promise I’ll be fully awake when I come downstairs, Ms North.”
“Kelsey. I prefer to be called Kelsey.”
“Luke, then.” He nodded to his left. “The boxes are in the third room down the hall.”
“Okay.”
Okay? Was that all she could come up with? Her mouth dry, she watched him take the stairs—a curving sweep of mahogany—two by two. His bare feet left tracks in the thick dust.
The kitchen. Coffee. Focus, Kelsey.
How would she last three days without jumping him? She, who’d never jumped a man in her life.
Blindly she marched down the hall until she located the kitchen, with its outmoded appliances and stale-smelling grease over counters and floor. For a moment Kelsey forgot about Luke Griffin, stabbed with pity that someone who’d been a very rich woman could have lived in such squalor.
If Luke had taken the time to visit he could have hired a housekeeper, Kelsey thought, finding a battered percolator in a cupboard and scrubbing it in the filthy sink. How could he have ignored his grandmother so woefully while she was alive, yet be so intent on going through her papers now that she was dead?
It was unforgivable.
Holding tight to her anger, Kelsey put the coffee on, then located the room with the boxes.
Piles of boxes, shutting out the light from the narrow window, leaning drunkenly against the wallpaper. It would take hours and hours to go through them. Was Luke Griffin out of his mind?
Biting her lip, Kelsey headed back to the kitchen and washed two mugs.
LUKE FASTENED HIS jeans and pulled a dark blue sweater over his head. Socks. He needed socks. He rummaged through his suitcase, wishing he could adjust to eastern time and feel even minimally awake.
Kelsey North didn’t in any way match her sexy voice.
Homely as a board fence.
Seizing a pair of black socks, he sat down on the bed to pull them on. Her tweed suit, too large and in a depressing shade of mud-brown, had a boxy jacket and a loose-cut long skirt; her shirt was man-tailored, no-nonsense white cotton, buttoned high to her throat, and she was wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Her shoes were clunky brown lace-ups.
It was a mystery to him why a woman like her—a young woman, with a very sexy voice—would choose to make the worst of herself. Those awful glasses. That suit. She must have searched high and low to find something so ill-fitting. So hideous.
Even her lipstick was an unflattering shade of pale pink.
He dragged a comb through his hair. While her hair wasn’t a bad color, sort of a reddish-brown, how could a man appreciate it when it was skewered to her scalp? Her ankles weren’t bad, though.
He’d noticed every detail, he thought wryly. But hadn’t he been hoping, subconsciously, that the rest of her would interest him as much as her voice? That she might relieve the tedium of three days stuck in a place he didn’t want to be?
Not a hope.
Luke pulled on a pair of shoes, ran downstairs, then followed his nose to the kitchen. “Coffee,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
Kelsey blinked. “You’d better taste it first.”
“I don’t need to. Name the date.”
She said, with complete truth, “Marriage isn’t on my list, Mr. Griffin.”
“List? Ah, of course. Organize Your Home—you’d have to be a maker of lists. Are they arranged alphabetically?” He poured himself a mug of coffee, added a liberal dollop of cream and raised it to his lips. “You can file this under H for heaven.”
“I’d file you under C for charm,” she said, more tartly than she’d intended.
“Why do I think that’s not a compliment?”
“Because it isn’t. Charm’s not to be trusted.” She poured her own coffee. “I’ve opened a couple of the boxes. What exactly are you hoping to find?”
Taking his time, Luke looked her up and down, from the sagging hem of her skirt to the pencil stuck in her hair. “B for business…I get the message.”
“At two hundred and fifty dollars an hour, that might be advisable.”
“Your tongue doesn’t match your outfit,” he said. “You’re clearly intelligent—so why do you dress like that?”
She flushed, and for the first time he noticed the delicate rise of her cheekbones under the thick rims of her glasses. She said tightly, “The way I dress is nothing to do with you.”
“I don’t require all the women in my life to be beautiful, or even pretty,” he said thoughtfully. “But I do require character—the confidence, the flair to dress like a beautiful woman.”
“All the women?” Kelsey repeated ironically. “I’m sure they mob you.”
“Money’s a powerful aphrodisiac.”
“Money is why I’m here,” she said crisply. “Would you please tell me what we’re looking for in all those boxes?”
Luke wished he knew the answer to that question. It was a very obvious question, and one he should have anticipated. He took another big gulp of coffee, feeling it course down his throat. “My mother was Sylvia Griffin’s daughter,” he said curtly. “We’re looking for anything at all relating to Rosemary Griffin. You’re to put any papers bearing her name aside without reading them.”
Kelsey’s flush deepened. “There’s no need to be insulting.”
“I’m just stating the parameters of the job.”
She should quit. Right now. But for six thousand dollars, surely she could swallow an insult or two? “Very well,” she said, with rather overdone politeness. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get started.”
As Luke watched her march out of the kitchen, he couldn’t even tell if her hips were swinging under that extraordinarily unsexy skirt. Her ankles, however, were indeed very shapely.
With an impatient sigh he drained his mug, then refilled it. He should have thought this whole venture through. By calling Kelsey in to help, he’d invited a virtual stranger to look for papers relating to his mother. How was she going to earmark them without at least partially reading them?
He was known worldwide for his strong sense of privacy; it drove the media crazy. Yet he’d just directed a lippy woman to go through files whose contents could be highly personal.
Well done, Luke. Grimacing, he poured cream in his coffee and left the kitchen. Kelsey was already set up on a table by the window, the first box open, papers neatly piled on the table. Luke brought another table in from the parlor, and followed suit. For the space of three hours, they worked in silence.
Kelsey was the first to stop. She stood up, stretching the tension from her neck. Tension which had more to do with sitting ten feet from Luke Griffin all morning than her futile search. His focus had been formidable, his face grim, nothing in his demeanor encouraging conversation.
“I haven’t found anything,” she said. “What about you?”
“Inventories of furniture, stock certificates and a grocery list.”
She looked over at the pile of boxes. “It’s a huge job.”
Luke wasn’t enjoying searching through the details of Sylvia Griffin’s life. Standing up, he said brusquely, “I’ll double your pay.”
Kelsey’s chin jerked up. “You will not.”
“When I make an offer like that, most people say Thank you very much, Mr. Griffin.”
“I’m not most people.”
“I’ll damn well pay you what I want.”
“Fine. I’ll donate the excess to a home for stray dogs. Or to a fund for elderly women who live alone and whose grandsons don’t even bother to visit them.”
He stepped closer, noticing with part of his brain how she stood her ground, even though panic was flaring in her eyes. “Until I got the message in Hong Kong three days ago that she’d died, I didn’t even know I had a grandmother,” he said, clipping off every word. “So don’t lay guilt trips on me, Kelsey North—I won’t wear ’em.”
“You didn’t know?” she repeated stupidly.
“Right.”
For reasons she couldn’t have articulated, Kelsey believed him instantly. “So that’s why you never visited her…and you got the message too late to attend her funeral.”
“On the day she was buried I was in the wilds of Cambodia.”
“Why didn’t your mother tell you about her?”
He winced; unerringly, Kelsey had asked the question that had been tormenting him for the last few days. He said evasively, “I can only assume my mother left this house before I was born. Don’t tell me gossip hasn’t been rampant in the village since Sylvia died—I’m sure you can fill in the details.”
Kelsey said quietly, “All I’ve ever heard is that your mother left home when she was seventeen.”
“Was she pregnant?” he flashed, the words out before he could censor them.
“People speculated that she was. But it was only speculation.”
“Let’s break for lunch,” he grated. “Be back here in an hour.”
His eyes were ice-blue, his mouth a tight line. Kelsey didn’t dare ask if his mother was still alive; he looked like he’d take her head off if she as much as opened her mouth. She brushed past him, her brain whirling. Earlier, she’d cast him as the villain, but she’d been wrong. He’d been totally ignorant of his grandmother’s existence.
Wouldn’t Alice at the post office love to hear that juicy little morsel?
Too bad. She wasn’t going to hear it from Kelsey.
Tomorrow she’d bring sandwiches, Kelsey decided, and work through lunch. And tonight she’d take a couple of boxes home with her and go through them there. The sooner this job was done the better. Luke Griffin didn’t just spell H for handsome or S for sex. He spelled D for danger.
CHAPTER TWO
THE FOLLOWING DAY, as dusk fell, Luke and Kelsey carried a couple of boxes out to her car. Luke drew a deep breath of the chill, damp air. January at its worst, he thought, crunching through a patch of unmelted snow, catching a glimpse of a pale moon through wind-torn clouds. Carefully balancing the box on the rear bumper, he opened the trunk, waited for Kelsey to dump her box in, then added his own. He slammed the trunk shut and opened her car door.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly, and climbed in.
As she banged snow from her shoes, her skirt inadvertently rode up her legs. Admirable legs, he thought with sudden sharp interest, watching as she hastily hitched the thick tweed back in place. Her wrist, under the cuff of her jacket, was slender, the skin smooth. And it wasn’t the first time he’d seen a flush mount her cheekbones, which were also admirable.
He toyed with the very strong temptation to yank the glasses off her nose. Keeping his hands firmly at his sides, he said, “See you tomorrow.”
She mumbled something under her breath, thrust the key in the lock, clashed the gears and drove away. It was time he headed back to the city if he was having sexual fantasies about the frumpy Ms North, Luke thought caustically
Maybe he should ship the boxes to his penthouse and go through them at his leisure. If he was in Manhattan he could be having dinner at Cisco’s, with someone like Clarisse or Lindsay.
Neither of them had a temper. Unlike Kelsey. No, Clarisse and Lindsay wouldn’t risk ruffling his billion-dollar feathers.
He walked slowly up the front steps. A headache was banding his forehead. So far, Kelsey had found Rosemary Griffin’s birth certificate, and he’d found the bill from the exclusive clinic where his mother had been born. And that was it.
He’d learned one other thing. Kelsey might top America’s Worst-Dressed List, but she sure knew how to work. Thorough, uncomplaining and dedicated: if he’d been writing a reference for her, he’d have used all three words.
He could have added unforthcoming. The only fact he knew about her was that she’d lived all her life in Hadley. He’d found that out by asking.
He himself was in no mood for idle conversation. Why, then, did it irritate the hell out of him that she’d discouraged anything resembling personal chitchat?
Luke walked slowly up the front steps and forced himself to go through one more box. The wind was moaning in the gutters and rattling a loose shingle; suddenly he couldn’t stand being alone for one more minute in his grandmother’s house, a house as withholding of its secrets as its dead owner.
He ran upstairs, changed into a clean sweater and jeans, and picked up his car keys.
THREE-QUARTERS OF an hour later, Luke got out of his car, carrying a thick brown paper bag. Kelsey’s little house was set in a grove of old lilac bushes and tall yews; lights blazed in nearly every room. He climbed her front steps and rang the bell.
Janis Joplin was emoting at the top of her lungs. Luke rang the bell again, then turned the handle and found the door unlocked. The song came to an end as he pushed on the door and walked in. The hinges squealed like an animal in pain.
A woman came running down the stairs. When she saw him, she stopped dead on the fourth step down. Her hair was a tumbled mass of chestnut curls, framing eyes of a rich, velvety brown. She was slender-waisted, slim-hipped, with legs that seemed to go on forever.
Her low-necked orange shirt clung to her breasts; her jeans were skintight. Her toenails, he noticed blankly, were painted purple.
Her mouth…He gaped at it. Her lips, too, were orange, a glossy lipstick smoothed over their soft, voluptuous curves.
Lust coursed through his veins. He said awkwardly, “Oh…I was looking for Kelsey North. But I must have got the wrong address. Sorry to have bothered you…”