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MILLS & BOON
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
RAFAEL VIVES wasn’t sure whether to be amused, irritated, bored or downright enraged at the situation in which he now found himself. For a man whose raison d’être was his work, the mistress without rival, to be trapped in paradise for ten days on a babysitting mission was enough to make his teeth snap together in frustration. Even his twenty-four-hour accessory, his faithful laptop computer without which he would have been truly lost, could not make him forget that his stay at his mother’s house in the Hamptons had not been of his choosing.
Fortunately, at the time, he had been on his New York stint, so the physical inconvenience had been lessened considerably, but, close though his office was, he had been asked, rather told, by his mother that he was to ‘stay put and keep an eye on his brother’. He suspected that she knew him well enough to know that the minute he set foot into his office, that massive glass monster in Lower Manhattan, his mission to ‘keep an eye on James, you know what he can be like’ would be completely forgotten.
Her original plan had been for him to join in James’s house party, a commendable reward to select employees in London and New York by way of celebrating one year’s worth of substantial profit for the company.
Rafael didn’t know if he or James had been more averse to the idea.
From James’s point of view, one which he shared with candid horror, the idea of Rafael, as he put it, ‘glowering in the corners and frightening the employees’ made his blood run cold.
And, as far as Rafael was concerned, the thought of mingling with a truckload of people all day and all night, without any remission for good behaviour, was beyond the pale. In the running of the conglomerate, James was the blond-haired, blue-eyed face of advertising campaigns, and he, Rafael, the brains and horsepower that drove the company.
The symbiotic relationship worked and Eva, their mother, was forced to concede to their reluctantly agreed concession.
James would host the party at the house, a sprawling beach mansion poised on three acres of land and overlooking the spectacular beauty of prime Hamptons beach.
Rafael, from the peace and seclusion of a guest cottage in the grounds, would oversee things, ensuring that neither the music nor the fun and frolics got out of hand.
The last time James had hosted a party at the house, neighbours had complained and that was quite something considering how far away the nearest neighbour lived.
Of course, as Rafael had pointed out to his mother in an attempt to divert her from her insistence on his presence at the event, that had been two years ago and the party had been laid on for James’s personal friends, all in their early to mid twenties, rather than employees of the company, but his objections had been in vain. Eva Lee still shuddered at the memory of the fiasco and the inevitable all round apologies to her friends at the East Hampton Improvement Society.
So here he was now, one day into his Big Brother role and already itching to get back to the cut and thrust of what he knew and loved.
But at least, he conceded, the scenery was magnificent, forced as he was to contemplate it. It briefly, though only briefly, occurred to him that he didn’t visit the place often enough. The idyllic days of youth spent at the then family home had gradually tapered off to the occasional visits in between his university studies and thirst for foreign travel. And then his working life had begun in earnest, first operating independently at one of the biggest broking houses in the world and thereafter at the helm of the family company, following the untimely death of his stepfather, and James’s dad.
From there on in, time and the years had galloped away, leaving him now to ruminate as he stared at the stunningly beautiful and dipping sunset at the possibility that he would wake up one day only to find himself a middle-aged man married to a company.
Rafael frowned grimly and sipped the whisky and soda he had prepared for himself. Introspection was not a pastime he indulged. He had always been goal-oriented and had seldom questioned the unutterable direction of his plans.
He wasn’t about to start now.
On the drift of the breeze, he could hear the faraway sounds of forty-odd people having a good time.
It wasn’t too hard to picture the scene. James, naturally, would be in the thick of it. Pre-dinner drinks would be on the go and, of course, with an army of staff requisitioned to ease the strain of actually having to do very much of a practical nature, there would be no headaches over what to cook for everyone to eat or even when to top up the empty glass. The finest wine would be accompanied by the finest food and everything would be served by the most reliable and efficient of staff that money could buy.
Spirits would be merry, indiscretions would doubtless abound, especially considering that employees on either side of the Atlantic would be meeting for the first time, without the annoying presence of spouses or partners to cramp the merriment. In the morning hangovers would probably be rampant, but at least for the while some very thorough guilt-free drinking would be done. Of that Rafael was utterly sure. And never mind the jet lag.
He downed his drink and breathed a hearty sigh of relief that he was to be spared the fun and games.
He really didn’t know any of the people who had been invited to the bash. James had told him that the accountants and the managers and the marketing crew, who always basked in the limelight when it came to credit and applause for company profits, would be given a bonus, but the ‘forgotten crew’ would glory in their once-in-a-lifetime experience of the East End of New York’s Long Island. Rafael’s mind had boggled at the speculation of what his brother meant by the ‘forgotten crew’, although he had to admit that the sentiment was in the right place. Rewards should not be confined to the obvious but should filter down the line into the pockets of those whose profiles were less highly visible.
As he stood on the small wooden porch, staring out to the ocean, Rafael mused on how vastly different he was to his half-brother. They might well have been strangers, so great was the chasm between them as far as their personal tastes in friends, women and lifestyles were concerned.
He was idly speculating on how two people who shared at least some of the same DNA code could be so wildly different when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. Something or someone. A faint rustling amongst the lush, perfectly landscaped vegetation that signified a presence.
And a presence could only mean one thing. A party-goer, in the heat of the moment and with the wine flowing like a fountain, had failed to realise that he had strayed out of bounds.
Rafael carefully put his glass down and turned towards the direction of the rustling. The light might be fading, but he wasn’t blind and the bimbo trying to tiptoe away from the scene of the crime must have had all of one brain cell to imagine that he couldn’t see her. And he could. Blonde hair, of course. Faded cut-off jeans worn very tight. Naturally. Cropped top with obligatory slither of stomach exposed. In other words, just the sort of woman Rafael found deeply unappealing.
‘Hey, you!’
Lord, his voice ricocheted around Amy and she gave a little startled yelp as she turned tail to flee. One glance at the man, all shadow and substance at the same time, was enough to warn her that, whoever the hell he was, he wasn’t the sort to chuckle over the fact that she was probably trespassing on his property.
Not that it was easy to tell where James Lee’s property began and ended.
The place was just so big! Even with a severe case of jet lag kicking in, it was still impossible to miss the fact that ‘the family house’ stopped only a few polite centimetres short of being a hotel. And the grounds! Succulently tempting. Even with her body clock warning her that it might be time to head for her bedroom, the verdant lawns with their masterfully landscaped grounds had egged her on, tempting her to explore just for a little while.
Hence the fact that she was now trying to dodge a giant of a man who seemed to be rapidly closing ground between them.
She was barely aware of his stealthy movement towards her and was, in fact, breathing a sigh of relief that she had escaped, when a hand closed over her shoulder, yanking her to a sudden, painful halt, before swinging her around so that she was forced to look up…and up…until she was staring into the most forbidding face she had ever seen in her life. Black eyes glared down at her from a face that was all disturbing angles and shadows. His mouth was a thinly drawn line of suppressed anger. Amy’s breath caught in her throat as she stared up at him, her eyes widening as her brain rapidly went through the various possibilities for danger that were confronting her.
Fortunately for Amy, danger, the unknown and certainly threatening oversized strangers were not things that could keep her exuberant nature suppressed for too long.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’
They spoke at the same time, glaring at each other with equal ferocity, until Amy slapped his hand off her shoulders and stepped back, her blue eyes spitting fire.
‘I asked you first!’ Amy decided to go on the immediate attack because, for once, her vocabulary was threatening to let her down when she needed it most. She rubbed her shoulder meaningfully, every inch of her five-foot-three frame emanating anger.
Rafael took a deep breath and summoned up the formidable self control that had made him such a powerful contender in the world of high finance. He turned his back and began walking away, towards the house, leaving the wretched blonde to stew in her own pathetic discomfort, even though every fibre in his being wanted to prolong the confrontation so that he could put her soundly in her place.
‘Hey! Where do you think you’re going, mister?’
Rafael turned around and stared at the diminutive figure that hadn’t budged from where he had left her. This time, her hands were planted firmly on her hips. The breeze, he could see, was wreaking havoc with the curly fair hair, blowing it this way and that. The cropped top had ridden up a little higher and there was slightly more of that slither of stomach visible.
In every way, shape and form, this woman conformed to his brother’s idea of the perfect woman, from the obvious clothing to the flyaway blonde hair. The only variation on the theme seemed to be that this particular model didn’t have the requisite big breasts.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Rafael said with icy politeness, hardly believing his ears.
‘You heard me!’ Amy took a couple of steps forward. ‘Who the heck are you and what do you think you’re doing on James Lee’s property?’
‘Oh, good God. A madwoman. I suppose you’re a member of his guest list up at the big house and you’re a little worse for wear.’ Rafael checked his watch. ‘Pretty good going considering you really haven’t been here that long.’ He gave a short, sarcastic little laugh that made the blood rush to Amy’s head.
‘How dare you?’
She had taken a few steps closer to him. Now, with the light from the porch spilling onto her, Rafael could see that the cute little figure, minus the large breasts, was accompanied by a face that might have passed for just another pretty one were it not for the lively expression on it. He had an idea that this woman was not backward when it came to self-expression. Loud mouthed and brash, he assumed, with distaste.
As if to cement the unfortunate impression, Amy glared at him. ‘Does James know that you’re here? Ha! I’ll bet he doesn’t! I know for a fact that he doesn’t use this place very often so I’m sure he’d be overjoyed to know that there’s a squatter on the grounds!’
‘Squatter?’ Rafael gave a roar of laughter.
‘You heard me. A squatter!’ Well, he didn’t exactly look like one, but, then again, he certainly didn’t look like one of the people James would normally mix with. Of which she was not exactly one, but she sure as heck knew what they were like because she saw them often enough in the director’s restaurant, where she worked behind the lines, providing high-quality food for the high-quality executives, and, sometimes after hours, for James’s personal entourage, glamorous women and playboy men who occasionally had a bite to eat in the boardroom before heading out to some trendy London night spot.
Of course, none of the directors knew that James was the unofficial recipient of Amy’s catering skills. For the past year and a half that had been their little secret and one that was so James with his winning, risqué ways, his charming disregard for convention except when it suited him.
Wasn’t that why she had taken to daydreaming shamelessly about him over time? Oh, he was so much more than just a good-looking face and a moneyed background!
Amy surfaced from her distracting thoughts to find the man, now recovered from his laughing fit, eyeing her coldly.
‘I am not a squatter. In fact, I’ve never heard such a ridiculous suggestion in my life.’
‘Then who are you?’
‘Someone who isn’t about to stand around here and have a pointless discussion with some woman who’s the worse for wear.’
‘I am not the worse for wear!’
‘Well, you’re certainly behaving like you are.’ Rafael’s voice dripped contempt. Some men liked shrieking women, but he wasn’t one of them. He liked them refined, elegant, composed. His expression hardened. ‘And I have no desire to conduct a conversation with a fishwife.’
Amy gasped. His lack of common courtesy was somehow shocking, especially, she thought belatedly, considering he was talking to a guest of the man on whose grounds he had apparently set up camp. Legally or illegally, she had yet to find out.
Yet again he had turned his back on her and was striding towards the house. He couldn’t possibly be oblivious to her presence because she was hardly trying to be silent, but he certainly wasn’t spinning round to continue the sparring match.
In fact, she hopped onto the covered wooden porch at roughly the same time as he swung through the front door and without a backward glance slammed it firmly in her face.
As expected, it wasn’t long before Rafael heard the woman banging on the door. At this rate, between her uncontrolled shrieking and the unholy racket she was now making, the neighbours would be reporting him!
He went very close to the door, close enough so that he didn’t actually have to raise his voice very much to be heard. ‘Go away. You’re making a fool of yourself. I don’t much give a damn whether you’re drunk or not but I don’t have time for women who think they can get their own way by screaming and yelling. So run along to where the fun is, stock up on a bit more booze and then collapse, like everyone else, into bed.’
‘If you don’t tell me who you are I’m going to have to report you to James.’ Amy lowered her voice to match his, although she wasn’t quite sure whether she sounded as cold and forbidding as he did. She just hoped that she didn’t sound like a petulant child who would resort to telling because the temper tantrum hadn’t worked.
‘I’m sober enough to know that you might not have permission to be on these grounds.’ In fact, she hadn’t drunk anything at all, despite the abundance of alcohol on offer. All manner of sightseeing tours had been laid on for them to enjoy and she wasn’t about to miss a single one of them because of a hangover. Nor was she about to squander any precious moments she could spend in James’s company by having unnecessary lie-ins.
It worked. To her astonishment. The man opened the door, glared at her and informed her that she could come inside.
For the first time, with the lights in the room switched on, she saw him properly. He was tall and she had been right about the raven-black hair. In fact the only thing she had missed and that was becoming patently clear was that he was incredibly, undeniably sexy. Not sexy in a magazine centrefold kind of way, but sexy in a powerful, brooding, rough-edged kind of way. It almost took her breath away, then she stared around her, curiosity temporarily silencing her.
The house might have been small but it was far from shabby. The rich patina of wooden flooring glistened, invited the eye to linger over the comfortable sitting area, which was dominated by a large, modern-style fireplace, coaxed it into straying just a bit further to glimpse a high-tech kitchen, then up a few short stairs to where, presumably, the bedrooms were.
‘Not bad for a squatter,’ she said, adding, ‘ha, ha,’ when he frowned at her. ‘Look, I’m sorry if you’re suffering a severe case of wounded pride because I called you a squatter, but I was a little shocked to find somebody out here, holed up miles away from the house.’
Rafael stared at her, fascinated against his will. Not only did she appear to have no braking mechanism controlling what came out of her mouth, but she was now wandering through the house as if she really were a guest, rather than an intruder who had managed to wrangle her way in by dint of threat.
The fact of the matter was that Rafael did not want his presence on the grounds to be an open secret. He genuinely didn’t want to be a dampener on proceedings, nor did he want to feel obliged to join in the fun. He had his own idea of fun. Dinner with friends, intimate jazz clubs with like-minded women. Certainly not drinking till dawn around a pool at the family mansion in the Hamptons with a random selection of people he didn’t know from Adam but was pretty sure he wouldn’t particularly like. Just as he didn’t particularly care for the woman standing in front of him, making no pretence at covering up her nosiness.
‘So if you’re not a squatter, then who are you?’
I just own the company you work for, Rafael was tempted to inform her. It didn’t surprise him that the woman had failed to recognise him. As she was a member of the ‘forgotten crew’, he suspected that whatever job she did would be fairly low profile and definitely out of sight. It had to be said that he was also rarely in London, choosing to oversee things from New York, and judging from her accent she was definitely one hundred per cent Londoner.
‘I’m the…gardener,’ Rafael improvised.
‘And you live here?’
‘Where else would you expect me to live?’
‘In a small, average house on a small, average estate somewhere fairly close by…like any other normal gardener…’
‘In case it missed you, this isn’t exactly a small, normal garden. It’s a full-time job, hence my residence on the grounds.’
‘And your staff come in every day to mow the lawns…’ That made a bit more sense because she couldn’t really picture him pushing a mower himself. He didn’t look the type, although if his body was anything to go by he had no end of muscular brawn at his disposal. No, he definitely looked more the sort to give orders and, furthermore, to enjoy giving orders. She felt immediate sympathy for his absent staff.
‘Mow the lawns…keep the gardens in check…do whatever needs doing…’
‘And you control the whip.’ It was said in a light-hearted tone of voice, but of course he refused to crack a smile, prompting her to enquire whether a lack of a sense of humour was part of his job description.
Amy liked people with a sense of fun. She came from a sprawling family of six children and, like most children from large families, she had never had much experience with the concept of privacy. She enjoyed sharing. She laughed easily. She liked to have a good time. It was one of the many things about James that she found so attractive. His wicked sense of fun.
This man on the other hand was the epitome of grim-faced seriousness.
‘Are you always so…serious?’ she asked, looking at him, but not for too long because he really was very sexy indeed, if you went for the brooding kind of man. Which she didn’t.
Rafael, unaccustomed as he was to being spoken to like this, was temporarily lost for words and in the brief silence Amy carried on blithely.
‘I mean…what have you got to be grim about? You live in a fantastic place, paid for by your employer. And I bet you also have lots of other perks that go with the house.’
‘Perks?’
‘Sure.’ She tabulated them on her fingers, one at a time. ‘Car. Hiding in a garage somewhere, I expect, and probably not any old banger. Pension plan. End-of-year bonuses. Am I right?’ The tiredness that had seen her stepping out of the house for a breath of fresh air, then wandering much further than she had intended, seemed to have disappeared.
‘I can tell from your silence that I’m right!’ she said triumphantly. ‘Lucky old you.’
Rafael did not intend to be drawn into any conversation with a dippy blonde who had managed to stray out of her depth. He opened his mouth to tell her politely, but firmly, that it was time for her to leave.
‘Why do you say that?’ he heard himself ask and she shot him a wide, infectious grin.
‘Because I do a similar sort of thing and I certainly don’t have the great perks that you do.’
‘You’re a…gardener?’
‘Caterer.’
‘And catering is similar to gardening?’
‘Well, we both work with our hands and are creative with it…so, yes…pretty much, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I can’t say that there’s anything creative about gardening.’
Amy looked at him in surprise. Again, she was struck by the force of his physical presence, which, she told herself with a little inner laugh, was just silly. ‘Then why do you do it?’
Rafael gave an impatient shrug and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Look. I’ve humoured you by letting you in and you now know why I’m here. So time for you to go and I’d appreciate it if you could keep my presence here to yourself.’
‘Because…?’
‘Because I don’t want to be overrun by James’s house guests when I’m trying to do my job.’
‘You’re on first names with your boss? Hmm.’ She thought about it for a few seconds, then her face softened. ‘Not surprising really.’
‘What’s not surprising?’ Rafael frowned. ‘No. Forget I said that. Have a good time here. I’m sure you will. It’s a beautiful place. Lots to do and explore if you choose to leave the house and pool.’
He began walking towards the door, not giving her time to continue with her relentless chatter.
‘Do you realise we haven’t even exchanged names?’ Amy said, sticking out her hand. ‘I’m Amy.’
‘Why should we have exchanged names?’ He pulled open the door and stood back, sticking one hand in the pocket of his cream Bermuda shorts.
Even at night, the temperatures meant that shorts and tee shirts could be comfortably worn. For Rafael, who lived most of his life in his tailored, handmade suits, a pair of shorts and a faded tee shirt constituted the highest form of luxury.