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MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
‘FOR God’s sake, Darcy, I know you’re always losing things; but my mother!’
Put like that it did sound a little careless. But it wasn’t completely accurate. She hadn’t exactly lost Maud Hunter; misplaced her was a better way of describing what had happened, she thought.
But Reed didn’t look as if he wanted to hear that right now, and Darcy doubted he would find the distinction at all reassuring. After all, she had gone to the airport to meet Maud Hunter, and she had returned without her and now had no idea where she could be!
Reed stood up in a forceful movement. ‘My God, Darcy, you lost my mother!’
She sighed, pulling a face at his incredulity. ‘You already said that.’
Sparks flew in accusing green eyes, his mouth tight. ‘And I’ll say it again, too, as many damned times as I have to to be able to take it in!’ He paced the room with long legs, his movements not made with their usual fluidity but with spasmodic energy. ‘You lost a sixty-year-old woman who’s just endured a long flight and is on her first trip to England in ten years!’ It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact. ‘This is a human being I’m talking about here, Darcy,’ he growled. ‘Not one of those dozen left shoes sitting in the bottom of your closet—and this is not the time for you to point out that closet means something else over here,’ he snarled as she opened her mouth to speak, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes as she quickly closed it again. ‘… Dozen left shoes sitting in the bottom of your closet,’ he repeated hardly, ‘because you have somehow lost the right ones!’
‘It’s the right shoes in the wardrobe and the left ones lost,’ she nervously corrected; Reed hardly ever lost his temper, but she knew that right now he had, his whole body tensed with it. Well she had misplaced his mother between here and Heathrow. Or did she mean Heathrow and here——
‘Darcy!’ he grated between clenched teeth. ‘I don’t give a damn if it’s half a dozen of each——’
‘I thought you were trying to stop swearing?’ She frowned as he used the word twice in as many minutes after days of holding back his usual habit of cursing whenever something didn’t go exactly as he planned it should.
‘Darcy!’ Her name came out as a fierce guttural growl this time. ‘A saint would swear at a time like this,’ he added in exasperation as she looked at him with bewildered confusion.
A saint was something they both knew he wasn’t. As a professional speculator—in just about anything!—he often didn’t have the time to wait around and be pleasant. Admittedly he was dealing mainly in shares at the moment, but even so he was ruthless, was first and foremost a businessman. He was also very successful at what he did. The only way that Darcy could see he might possibly have fallen down on that success was hiring her as his secretary! And she had a feeling he felt the same way at the moment.
He looked at her with sharp green eyes, stopping his pacing. ‘I suppose you did actually meet her at the airport?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Of course I did,’ she protested indignantly.
Reed eyed her suspiciously. ‘Are you sure?’
Her mouth compressed. ‘She’s a short lady, about my height, I suppose,’ she frowned thoughtfully, ‘with curly white hair, and green eyes like yours.’
‘I told you all that before you left for the airport,’ he snapped impatiently.
‘I have her luggage downstairs in the boot of the car!’ Darcy told him exasperatedly. She might have a habit of losing things, but she certainly didn’t invent meeting people. ‘She told me all about how naughty you were as a little boy,’ she remembered, her eyes dancing merrily. ‘How you turned the hose on the——’
‘All right,’ Reed barked irritably, obviously not in the mood to reminisce about his mischievous childhood. ‘I’ll accept that you did meet my mother——’
‘Well thanks!’ she bit out caustically, glaring at him.
‘But what the hell have you done with her now?’
Reed had such a deep timbre of voice that when he raised it you felt like putting a hand on all the breakable objects in the room in case they clattered from their resting place and shattered on the ground. She saw his eyes narrow as she winced, clasping her hands together in front of her to resist the urge.
‘I haven’t done anything with her, Reed,’ she denied wearily. ‘On the drive back she mentioned it was years since she had read an English newspaper, and when she fell asleep——’
‘You calmly parked the car and went off to buy her one,’ he finished disgustedly.
Her eyes blazed deeply blue. ‘I was only gone a couple of minutes!’
‘Long enough for my mother to disappear!’
‘Will you stop saying that as if you think I had something to do with it!’ she protested, frowning heavily as his raised eyebrows seemed to say, ‘Well, didn’t you?’ ‘When I came back out of the shop with the newspaper, she had gone,’ Darcy defended.
‘That was over an hour ago.’ He glared at her. ‘And you had no right going off and leaving her like that.’
‘I didn’t think she could come to any harm just sitting in the car.’ Darcy glared right back.
At least, she tried to glare. She was sure it didn’t come out quite as fierce as it was meant to do, though, as she squinted slightly to bring her myopic vision into focus enough to read Reed’s expression.
Reed seemed to stiffen even more as he saw that squint. ‘Did you forget to put your contacts in again?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘No, I didn’t forget!’ she snapped, the guilty flush that coloured her cheeks giving the instant lie to that statement. ‘I just haven’t had time to put them in yet! I was late getting up, and then as soon as I arrived you told me I had to go and meet your mother, and——’
‘Great,’ he ground out fiercely. ‘This is just great! I can see it all now.’ He raised his head to look at the ceiling, taking deep controlling breaths. ‘It probably wasn’t even my mother you met. The poor woman probably realised that after a while and made her escape at the first opportunity.’
Darcy stood up indignantly, too angered by his scornful tone to want to admit to the vanity of wearing her rarely used glasses to go to the airport to meet his mother, but of having taken them off only seconds ago before she entered the office, not wanting Reed to see her wearing the heavy dark frames. ‘You’re being very unfair, Reed.’
‘Am I?’ he scorned, shaking his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘As it’s obvious you have so little confidence in my ability to do anything right, I don’t know why you ever sent me to meet your mother,’ she accused emotionally.
‘I was unavoidably tied up here; there was no one else but you to send!’
She gave a shaky gasp. ‘Then maybe you should never have employed me!’
‘I wouldn’t have done, but I thought the rest of the business world needed saving from itself!’ he rasped disgustedly.
Tears instantly made her vision more blurred. ‘My qualifications are good——’
‘But anyone who turns up for an interview as a secretary at nine o’clock at night——’
‘That was the time your letter said!’ she protested agitatedly.
Reed gave a disgusted snort. ‘It was because my temporary secretary was so incompetent that I needed another permanent secretary! No woman turns up for an interview for a secretary’s position at nine o’clock at night unless the prospective employer has more than just secretarial duties in mind and she’s decided she’s agreeable to that—or she’s just plain stupid!’ he finished contemptuously.
It was so obvious which one he thought she was! ‘I’d only been in London a couple of months; this was only my fourth interview!’
‘No woman in her right mind turns up for an interview in a deserted office building at nine o’clock at night!’ Reed maintained forcefully. ‘Not even a woman from the provinces! I can still remember the look on the night security man’s face when I came in answer to his call that you were here demanding to see me, saying that you had an appointment!’
Darcy was sure the colour in her cheeks was going to remain a permanent fixture as Reed seemed intent on recalling all the stupid things she had done since the moment they had met so awkwardly. Of course she had thought it strange that Reed Hunter wanted to interview her at nine o’clock at night, but it had been her first time in London after living the last twenty-two and a half years with her parents in a village that was so small even the locals said it could be missed if you blinked as you were approaching it! The only two jobs she had had since leaving school six years earlier had been in the small town three miles away; she had just assumed things were done differently in the capital. How was she supposed to know Reed’s temporary secretary had made a typing error and it should have read a.m. in the letter and not p.m.? Reed must have read the letter through before signing it; he should have spotted the mistake, too. Although once again she didn’t think he would appreciate her pointing that out to him just now!
‘I still got the job, didn’t I?’ she reminded him resentfully.
‘As I said——’
‘You thought the business world needed saving from itself,’ she finished emotionally.
He nodded. ‘And I was intrigued by your name,’ he admitted reluctantly.
Bewildered eyes the colour of cornflowers opened wider than ever. ‘My name?’ she repeated incredulously.
Reed nodded again, impatiently this time. ‘That was why you were the first person scheduled for interview that morning.’ He gave a pointed sigh at his mention of the time of day she should have been here. ‘Your qualifications were also a little better than the other applicants’, but it was your name that intrigued me. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if Darcy Faversham was a man or a woman!’
‘You employed me because of my name?’ Darcy said again, incredulously.
‘It gave you the edge,’ he confirmed irritably. ‘As I said, the other three applicants were almost as well qualified.’
‘I can’t believe this,’ she said dazedly.
‘Oh, believe it,’ he rasped. ‘Once I’d met you I should have known better!’
‘You make a living by gambling on hunches,’ she reminded him dully, stunned by what he had just told her. To think that if her name had been plain Susan Smith she wouldn’t have got the job! ‘And this time it let you down.’ She straightened her shoulders defensively. ‘I’ll leave——’
‘Not until we’ve found my mother you won’t,’ he cut in fiercely. ‘Forget about your damned pride for a moment and try and help me think where she could be!’
Pride. Yes, her pride was hurt. But so was she. She knew she had a habit of losing things, but she only lost them because she forgot what she had done with them. But her work had always been unquestionably competent, and Reed could never accuse her of ever losing anything of his.
Except his mother, she realised with a wince.
But you couldn’t lose people, not really; they had a habit, adults at least, of always turning up again. She felt sure Maud Hunter would be no exception.
She chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. ‘She took her handbag with her——’
‘She did?’ Reed pounced, narrow-eyed.
Darcy nodded. ‘Yes——’
‘Then at least she isn’t wandering about London completely penniless too!’
She wasn’t a violent woman, believing that passivity often achieved the same results, but if Reed continued to act as if she had thrust the equivalent of a new-born chick into a pack of wolves she knew she wasn’t going to be able to stop the urge her hand had to slap him across one lean cheek.
He wasn’t a handsome man by any standards, but that he was attractive couldn’t be doubted, with his hair thick and dark, almost black in some lights, brows the same colour jutting out over eyes of luminous green, a slight bump to the straightness of his nose where it had been broken playing American football during his teens, his mouth often snapping words too cutting for the sensuousness of his bottom lip to be noticed. Although, from the amount of women who telephoned him at the office, it was noticeable enough! He was well over six feet tall, and still had the physique that could have taken him into pro-football if the challenge of speculation hadn’t been the stronger of the two.
He towered at least a foot over Darcy as she faced him, his stance threatening even if she knew he would never physically hurt her. He was a hawk, why should he bother himself with the little mouse? Even if the mouse did occasionally, very occasionally, roar!
‘Reed, she’ll turn up——’
‘Will she?’ he scorned. ‘It’s been almost two hours, and she hasn’t “turned up” yet!’
That guilty blush returned to her cheeks. ‘The police——’
‘Will not look for a woman who’s only been missing two hours!’ he snapped disgustedly.
She chewed on her inner lip, oblivious to the soreness she was inflicting, not knowing what else to say. Because she didn’t think Maud Hunter was missing, was sure the other woman would make her way here or to Reed’s apartment when she was good and ready. But until she did, Reed wasn’t going to calm down.
And in the meantime she had given him her notice. She was regretting that pride-saving impulse already. He was an interesting man to work for, no two days the same, the heavy workload keeping her occupied long outside the nine until five she was supposed to work. And that suited her. But she knew Reed would never forgive her for this, that he obviously adored his mother.
The day had begun so nicely, too; birthday cards from her family and friends pushed through her letter box by the postman, a couple of parcels left on her doorstep. She was twenty-three today, felt as if she were finally putting the past behind her. And now this. It wouldn’t just be the work she would miss.
‘Darcy, are you listening to me!’
She gave a surprised start as Reed shouted at her. Concentrate on one thing at a time, they had told her. And she had. And it had worked. But now, more than two years later, she still had difficulty giving her attention to more than one thing at any given moment. Whatever Reed had been saying to her, she hadn’t heard him. And she could see by the angry glitter in his fierce eyes that he knew that.
‘I said,’ he ground out between clenched teeth, ‘I think the best thing to do is drive back to where you parked your car and look around there for her. Can you remember where that was?’
Her mouth tightened at his obvious scorn. ‘Of course I can. There’s nothing wrong with my memory——’
‘Because you don’t have one!’
‘Reed!’ she gasped her hurt surprise; he had never been deliberately cruel to her before.
He put his hands up in apology. ‘OK, that was uncalled for,’ he acknowledged grimly. ‘I’m upset, and I’m taking it out on you. But I’m damned worried.’ He frowned.
She could see that, had never seen him this agitated before. But she also knew that if she mentioned it he would point out that he had never lost his mother before!
‘Don’t you think one of us should remain here?’ she suggested practically. ‘Just in case she should come here.’
He thought for a moment before nodding. ‘You stay,’ he bit out. ‘I couldn’t stand the inactivity right now.’ He took his jacket off the back of his chair, shrugging in to it. ‘And for goodness’ sake go and put your contacts in so that you’ll at least recognise it is her if she arrives!’
She hurried into the adjoining office, leaving the door open for him to follow, groaning her dismay as the outer door opened and a grinning Marc Kincaid came in. ‘Not now, Marc,’ she said, trying to push him back outside the door before Reed saw him. ‘Reed isn’t in the mood to see you right now,’ she explained frantically as Marc looked down at her in surprise, her efforts to evict him proving ineffectual, Marc being almost as big as Reed.
‘He’s never in the mood to see me,’ Marc dismissed, easily standing his ground. ‘But——’
‘He wants to see you even less than usual today.’ Darcy threw a hunted look over her shoulder; Reed was, thankfully, still in his office. Although her luck couldn’t hold. It hadn’t so far today! ‘Please leave, Marc,’ she begged him desperately.
‘He will want to see me, Darcy,’ he assured her. ‘But how about a kiss first?’ he encouraged huskily, bending his head to claim her mouth with his.
It was far from the first kiss she had shared with this wickedly handsome man; she was still slightly amazed that someone as attractive and popular as he was wanted to date her. He was handsome enough to have any woman he wanted, with his thick blond hair, dancing blue eyes, a seductively smiling mouth, the masculinity of his body undoubted in his tight denims and fitted blue shirt. But for the last six weeks he had asked to see her every night. Not that she had accepted every night, but four out of seven still amounted to a lot of nights.
And Reed was going to be even more furious than he already was if he found him here. She had met Marc because Reed had become his financial partner in the photographic studio he ran on a lower floor of the building, but Reed didn’t approve of their personal relationship spilling over into his office.
‘And just what happens if someone wants to come in the door?’ grated an icy voice.
Marc lifted his head slowly, in no hurry to release Darcy as he looked up to grin at the other man. ‘They either ask us to move or wait until we’re finished,’ he drawled unconcernedly.
‘Marc——’
‘Darcy tells me you’re in a bad mood,’ he continued as if she hadn’t tried to cut in. ‘Something wrong, Reed?’ he held Darcy snugly against his side, his arm about her shoulders.
‘Yes, something is wrong,’ the other man hissed. ‘I’ll leave Darcy to tell you all about it!’
Marc still blocked the doorway. ‘Maybe I can help?’ His eyes gleamed with amusement.
‘I doubt it,’ Reed snapped, shooting Darcy a disparaging look.
‘Sure?’ Marc taunted.
‘Marc, please,’ she groaned, as Reed looked ready to explode if the other man didn’t get out of his way. ‘Reed is in a hurry.’
‘Too much of one for his visitor?’ Marc challenged.
‘Is this important?’ Reed snapped tersely.
Marc grinned. ‘I think so. I think you will, too, if you stop long enough to listen to me.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ Reed sighed impatiently.
‘I doubt it.’ The other man shook his head mysteriously.
‘Marc, unless it’s really important please leave it until later.’ She looked up at him pleadingly. ‘You see, Reed’s mother arrived in London this morning, and I——’
‘I know,’ he nodded.
‘… lost her between here and Heathrow, and— What do you mean, you know?’ Darcy frowned up at him as she realised what he had said; Reed went rigid with tension as he looked at the other man with narrowed eyes.
‘I mean, I know that Maud arrived from America this morning.’ Marc at last released her. ‘You see, I was just on my way out to lunch when I noticed the lady peering up at the notice-board downstairs —and she had a long way to peer, believe me,’ he teased. ‘Anyway, being the helpful soul that I am, I asked her if I could be of any help.’ He raised mocking brows at Reed. ‘She looked too young and beautiful to be your mother, old chap,’ he mocked. ‘But she assures me that’s who she is.’
‘What have you done with her?’ Reed demanded harshly.
‘Nothing, she’s right outside.’ Marc shrugged, as if he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
Reed pushed him aside none too gently, coming to an abrupt halt as the tiny lady causing all the uproar appeared in the doorway.
‘Hello, darling.’ She reached up to kiss her eldest son on the cheek. ‘I was just admiring your lovely nameplate on the wall outside. You——’
‘Mother!’
‘Mrs Hunter!’
She blinked lids over surprised green eyes as Reed and Darcy spoke at the same time. ‘Yes, dears?’ she prompted interestedly, giving Darcy a chiding look as she did so. ‘I’m sure I asked you to call me Maud,’ she scolded, coming further into the room. ‘My, this is a nice office, Reed,’ she said admiringly as she looked around. ‘Do you——’
‘Mother, where the hell have you been?’ he bit out with controlled violence, his hands clenched at his sides.
She blinked again, obviously surprised by his vehemence. ‘Darling, you know I don’t like it when you swear——’
‘Not another one!’ he ground out exasperatedly, momentarily closing his eyes, the glitter even more intense when he raised his lids. ‘Mother, you disappeared from Darcy’s car two hours ago, where have you been?’ he demanded, the flame in his eyes positively primitive as Marc gave a chuckle at his omission of ‘the hell’ the second time around. Marc’s expression instantly became bland.
Darcy gave him a warning look. Ordinarily the two men were quite good friends, although on the surface they had little in common but their intense professionalism and an eye for beautiful women. Marc was completely dedicated to his work, was a perfectionist, and in a different way Reed was the same about his investments. Their approach to women was different, however, Marc being a different man then, light and frivolous, whereas Reed never let anyone too close to him, not even the women he took as his lovers. Maybe they weren’t so different in that respect after all: being light and frivolous didn’t allow for deeper relationships either! But it was obvious Reed didn’t appreciate Marc’s levity now, although from Marc’s wink in her direction he wasn’t too worried about it.
Maud’s expression seemed to say she didn’t know what all the fuss was about either. ‘I had a nice rest in Darcy’s car after the flight; I had the misfortune to be seated next to a man on the plane who just would not stop talking,’ she said disgustedly. ‘He talked all the way over here—when he wasn’t drinking,’ she added with a frown. ‘Do you know that he——’
‘Mother!’
‘I wish you would let me tell this in my own way, Reed,’ his mother admonished sternly. ‘You know how I forget things when I’m constantly interrupted— Did you say something, dear?’ She looked concernedly at Darcy as she made a choking sound.
‘No! Er—no,’ she repeated lamely.
Green eyes twinkled at her from a face still beautiful, not marred by the usual worry lines of a woman her age. And Darcy was beginning to realise why! Why hadn’t she noticed at the airport? Probably because she had been too busy trying to see where she was going to notice just how vague Maud Hunter was!