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‘I don’t think this is the time to start making chit chat.’ Becky blinked and made a concerted effort to gather her wits because he was just another hapless tourist in need of her services. It was getting colder and colder in the little hallway and the snow was becoming thicker and thicker. ‘I’ll come with you but you’ll have to drive me back.’ She swerved past him, out into the little gravelled circular courtyard, and gaped at the racing-red Ferrari parked at a jaunty angle, as though he had swung recklessly into her drive and screeched to a racing driver’s halt. ‘Don’t tell me that you came here in that!’
Theo swung round. She had zipped past him like a pocket rocket and now she was glaring, hands on her hips, woolly hat almost covering her eyes.
And he had no idea what the hell was going on. He felt like he needed to rewind the conversation and start again in a more normal fashion, because he’d obviously missed a few crucial links in the chain.
‘Come again?’ was all he could find to say, the man who was never lost for words, the man who could speak volumes with a single glance, a man who could close impossible deals with the right vocabulary.
‘Are you completely mad?’ Becky breathed an inward sigh of relief because she felt safer being the angry, disapproving vet, concerned for her safety in nasty weather conditions, and impatient with some expensive, arrogant guy who was clueless about the Cotswolds. ‘There’s no way I’m getting into that thing with you! And I can’t believe you actually thought that driving all the way out here to get me was a good idea! Don’t you people know anything at all? Not that you have to be a genius to work out that these un-gritted roads are lethal for silly little cars like that!’
‘Silly little car?’
‘I’d find the roads difficult and I drive a sensible car!’
‘That silly little car happens to be a top-end Ferrari that cost more than you probably earn in a year!’ Theo raked fingers frustratedly through his hair. ‘And I have no bloody idea why we’re standing out here in a blizzard having a chat about cars!’
‘Well, how the heck are we supposed to get to your animal if we don’t drive there? Unless you’ve got a helicopter stashed away somewhere? Have you?’
‘Animal? What animal?’
‘Your cat!’
‘I don’t have a cat! Why would I have a cat? Why would I have any sort of animal, and what would lead you to think that I had?’
‘You mean you haven’t come to get me out to tend to an animal?’
‘You’re a vet.’ The weathered bag, the layers of warm, outdoor clothing, the wellies for tramping through mud. All made sense now.
Theo had come to the cottage to have a look, to stake his claim and to ascertain how much he would pay for the place. As little as possible, had been his way of thinking. It had been bought at a bargain-basement price from his mother, who had been so desperate to flee that she had taken the first offer on the place. He had intended to do the same, to assess the state of disrepair and put in the lowest possible offer, at least to start with.
‘That’s right—and if you don’t have an animal, and don’t need my services, then why the heck are you here?’
‘This is ridiculous. It’s freezing out here. I refuse to have a conversation in sub-zero temperatures.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t feel comfortable letting you into my house.’ Becky squinted up at him. She was a mere five-foot-four and he absolutely towered over her. He was a tall, powerfully built stranger who had arrived in a frivolous boy-racer car out of the blue and she was on her own out here. No one would hear her scream for help. Should she need help.
Theo was outraged. No one, but no one, had ever had the temerity to say anything like that to him in his life before, least of all a woman. ‘Exactly what are you suggesting?’ he asked with withering cool, and Becky reddened but stoutly stood her ground.
‘I don’t know you.’ She tilted her chin at a mutinous angle, challenging him to disagree with her. Every pore and fibre of her being was alert to him. It was as though, for the first time in her life, she was aware of her body, aware of her femininity, aware of her breasts—heavy and pushing against her bra—aware of her stiff and sensitive nipples, aware of her nakedness beneath her thick layer of clothes. Her discomfort was intense and bewildering.
‘You could be anyone. I thought you were here because you needed my help with an animal, but you don’t, so who the heck are you and why do you think I would let you into my house?’
‘Your house?’ Cool grey eyes skirted the rambling building and its surrounding fields. ‘You’re a little young to be the proud owner of a house this size, aren’t you?’
‘I’m older than you think.’ Becky rushed into self-defence mode. ‘And, not that it’s any of your business, but yes, this house is mine. Or at least, I’m in charge while my parents are abroad and, that being the case, I won’t be letting you inside. I don’t even know your name.’
‘Theo Rushing.’ Some of the jigsaw immediately fell into place. He had expected to descend on the owners of the property. He hadn’t known what, precisely, he would find but he had not been predisposed to be charitable to anyone who could have taken advantage of a distraught young woman, as his mother had been at the time.
At any rate, he had come with his cheque book, but without the actual owners at hand his cheque book was as useful as a three-pound note, because the belligerent little ball in front of him would not be able to make any decisions about anything.
Furthermore, she struck him as just the sort who would bite off the hand clutching the bank notes, or at least try and persuade her parents to...
He was accustomed to women wanting to please him. Faced with narrowed, suspicious eyes and the body language of a guard dog about to attack, he was forced to concede that announcing the purpose for his visit might not be such a good idea.
‘I’m here to buy this cottage so you’ll find yourself without a roof over your head in roughly a month and a half’ wasn’t going to win him brownie points.
He wanted the cottage and he was going to get it but he would have to be a little creative in how he handled the situation now.
He felt an unusual rush of adrenaline.
Theo had attained such meteoric heights over the years that the thrill of the challenge had been lost. When you could have anything you wanted, you increasingly lost interest in the things that should excite. Nothing was exciting if you didn’t have to work to get it and that, he thought suddenly, included women.
Getting this cottage would be a challenge and he liked the thought of that.
‘And I’m here...’ He looked around him at the thick black sky. He had planned to arrive early afternoon but the extraordinary delays had dumped him here as darkness was beginning to fall. It had fallen completely now and there were no street lights to alleviate the unlit sky or to illuminate the fast falling snow.
His eyes returned to the woman in front of him. She was so heavily bundled up that he reckoned they could spend the next five hours out here and she would be immune to the freezing cold. He, on the other hand, having not expected to leave London and end up in a tundra, could not have been less well-prepared for the silent but deadly onslaught of the weather. Cashmere coats were all well and good in London but out here...
Waiting for an answer before she dispatched him without further ado, Becky could not help but stare. He was so beautiful that it almost hurt to tear her eyes away. In those crazy, faraway days, when she had been consumed by Freddy, she had enjoyed looking at him, had liked his regular, kind features, the gentleness of his expression and the warmth of his brown, puppy-dog eyes.
But she had never felt like this. There was something fascinating, mesmerising, about the play of shadow and darkness on his angular, powerful face. He was the last word in everything that wasn’t gentle or kind and yet the pull she felt was overwhelming.
‘Yes?’ She clenched her gloved fists in the capacious pockets of her waterproof, knee-length, fleece-lined anorak. ‘You’re here because...?’
‘Lost.’ Theo spread his arm wide to encompass the lonely wilderness around him. ‘Lost, and you’re right—in a car that’s not very clever when it comes to ice and snow. I’m not...accustomed to country roads and my satnav has had a field day trying to navigate its way to where I was planning on ending up.’
Lost. It made sense. Once you left the main roads behind—and that was remarkably easy to do—you could easily find yourself in a honeycomb of winding, unlit country lanes that would puzzle the best cartographer.
But that didn’t change the fact that she was out here on her own in this house and he was still a stranger.
He read her mind. ‘Look, I understand that you might feel vulnerable out here if you’re on your own...’ And she was, because there was no rush to jump in and warn him of an avenging boyfriend or husband wending his weary way back. ‘But you will be perfectly safe if you let me in. The only reason I’m asking to be let in at all is because the weather’s getting worse, and if I get into that car and try and make my way back to the bright lights I have no idea where I’ll end up.’
Becky glanced at the racy, impractical sports car turning white as the snow gathered on it. In a ditch, was written all over its impractical bonnet.
Would her conscience allow her to send him off into the night, knowing that he would probably end up having an accident? What if the skittish car skidded off the road into one of the many trees and there was a fatality?
What if he ended up trapped in wreckage somewhere on an isolated country lane? If nothing else, he would perish from hypothermia, because his choice of clothing was as impractical for the weather as his choice of car.
‘One night,’ she said. ‘And then I get someone to come and fetch you, first thing in the morning. I don’t care if you have to leave the car here or not.’
‘One night,’ Theo murmured in agreement.
Becky felt the race of something dangerous slither through her.
She would give him shelter for one night and one night only...
What harm could come from that?
CHAPTER TWO
THE HOUSE SEEMED to shrink in size the minute he walked in. He’d fetched his computer from his car but that was all and Becky looked at him with a frown.
‘Is that all you brought with you?’
‘You still haven’t told me your name.’ The house was clearly on its last legs. Theo was no surveyor but that much was obvious. He now looked directly at her as he slowly removed his coat.
‘Rebecca. Becky.’ She watched as he carelessly slung his coat over one of the hooks by the front door. She could really appreciate his lean muscularity, now he was down to the jumper and trousers, and her mouth went dry.
This was as far out of her comfort zone as it was possible to get. Ever since Freddy, she had retreated into herself, content to go out as part of a group, to mingle with old friends—some of whom, like her, had returned to the beautiful Cotswolds, but to raise families. She hadn’t actively chosen to discourage men but, as it happened, they had been few and far between. Twice she had been asked out on dates and twice she had decided that friendship was more valuable than the possibility of romance.
Truthfully, when she tried to think about relationships, she drew a blank. She wanted someone thoughtful and caring and those sorts of guys were already snapped up. The guys who had asked her out had known her since for ever, and she knew for a fact that one of them was still recovering from a broken heart and had only asked her out on the rebound.
The other, the son of one of the farmers whom she had visited on call-out on several occasions, was nice enough, but nice enough just wasn’t sufficient.
Or maybe she was being too fussy. That thought had occurred to her. When you were on your own for long enough, you grew careful, wary of letting anyone into your world, protective of your space. Was that what was happening to her?
At any rate, her comfort zone was on the verge of disappearing permanently unless she chose to stay where she was and travel long distances to another job.
She decided that inviting Theo in was good practice for what lay in store for her. She had opened her door to a complete stranger and she knew, with some weird gut instinct, that he was no physical threat to her.
In fact, seeing him in the unforgiving light in the hall did nothing to lessen the impact of his intense, sexual vitality. It was laughable to think that he would have any interest in her as anything other than someone offering refuge from the gathering snow storm.
‘I can show you to one of the spare rooms.’ Becky flushed because she could feel herself staring again. ‘I don’t keep them heated, but I’ll turn the radiator on, and it shouldn’t take too long to warm up. You might want to...freshen up.’
‘I would love nothing more,’ Theo drawled. ‘Unfortunately, no change of clothing. Would you happen to have anything I could borrow? Husband’s old gardening clothes? Boyfriend’s...?’ He wondered whether she intended to spend the rest of the evening in the shapeless anorak and mud-stained boots. She had to be the least fashion-conscious woman he had ever met in his entire life, yet for the life of him he was still captivated by something about her.
The eyes, the unruly hair still stuffed under the woolly hat, the lack of war paint...what was it?
He had no idea but he hadn’t felt this alive in a woman’s presence for a while.
Then again, it had been a while since he had been in the presence of any woman who wasn’t desperate to attract his attention. There was a lot to be said for novelty.
‘I can let you borrow something.’ Becky shifted from foot to foot. She was boiling in the coat but somehow she didn’t like the thought of stripping down to her jeans and top in front of him. Those sharp, lazy eyes of his made her feel all hot and bothered. ‘My dad left some of his stuff in the wardrobe in the room you’ll be in. You can have a look and see what might be able to work for you. And if you leave your stuff outside the bedroom door, then I guess I can stick it in the washing machine.’
‘You needn’t do that.’
‘You’re soaked,’ Becky said flatly. ‘Your clothes will smell if you leave them to dry without washing them first.’
‘In that case, I won’t refuse your charming offer,’ Theo said drily and Becky flushed.
Very conscious of his eyes on her, she preceded him up the stairs, pointedly ignoring the bucket gathering water on the ground from the leaking roof, and flung open the door to one of the spare bedrooms. Had she actually thought things through when she had fled back to the family home, she would have realised that the ‘cottage’ was a cottage in name only. In reality, it was reasonably large, with five bedrooms and outbuildings in the acres outside. It was far too big for her and she wondered, suddenly, whether her parents had felt sorry for her and offered to allow her to stay there through pity. They hadn’t known about Freddy and her broken heart but what must they have felt when she had dug her heels in and insisted on returning to the family home while Alice, already far flown from the nest, was busily making marriage plans so that the next phase of her life could begin?
Becky cringed.
Her parents would never, ever have denied her the cottage but they weren’t rich. They had bought somewhere tiny in France when her grandmother had died, and they had both continued working part-time, teaching in the local school.
Becky had always thought it a brilliant way of integrating into life in the French town, but what if they’d only done that because they needed the money?
While she stayed here, paying a peppercorn rent and watching the place gradually fall apart at the seams...
She was struck by her own selfishness and it was something that had never occurred to her until now.
She would phone, she decided. Feel out the ground. After all, whether she liked it or not, her lifestyle was going to change dramatically once she was out of a job.
Theo looked at her and wondered what was going through her mind. He hadn’t failed to notice the way she had neatly stepped past a bucket in the corridor which was quarter-full from the leaking roof.
It was startling enough that a woman of her age would choose to live out in the sticks, however rewarding her job might be, but it was even more startling that, having chosen to live out in the sticks, she continued to live in a house that was clearly on the verge of giving up the fight.
When he bought this cottage, he would be doing her a favour by forcing her out into the real world.
Where life happened.
Rather than her staying here...hiding away...which surely was what she was doing...?
Hiding from what? he wondered. He was a little amused at how involved he temporarily was in mentally providing an answer to that ridiculous question.
But if he had to get her onside, manoeuvre her into a position where she might see the sense of not standing in his way when it came to buying the cottage, then wouldn’t it help to get to know her a little?
Of course, there was no absolute necessity to get anyone onside. He could simply bypass her and head directly to the parents. Make them an offer they couldn’t refuse. But for once he wasn’t quite ruthless enough to go down that road. There was something strangely alluring underneath the guard-dog belligerence. And he was not forgetting that there were times when money didn’t open the door you wanted opening. If he bypassed her and leant on the parents, there was a real risk of them uniting with their daughter to shut him out permanently, whatever sums of money he chose to throw at them. Family loyalty could be a powerful wild card, and he should know... Wasn’t family loyalty the very thing that had brought him to this semi-derelict cottage?
She was switching on the ancient heating, opening the wardrobe so that she could show him where the clothes were kept, fetching a towel from the corridor, dumping it on the bed and then informing him that the bathroom was just down the corridor, but that he would have to make sure that the toilet wasn’t flushed before he turned on the shower or else he might end up with third-degree burns.
Theo walked slowly towards her and then stopped a few inches away.
When Becky breathed, she could breathe him in, masculinity mixed with the cold winter air, a heady, heady mix. Leaning against the doorframe, she blinked, suddenly unsteady on her feet.
He had amazing lashes, long, dark and thick. She wanted to ask him where he was from, because there was an exotic strain running through him that was quite...captivating.
He had shoved up the sleeves of his jumper and, even though she wasn’t actually looking, she was very much aware of his forearms, the fine, dark hair on them, the flex of muscle and sinew...
Her breathing was so sluggish that it crossed her mind...was it actually physically possible to forget how to breathe?
‘I don’t get why you live here.’ Theo was genuinely curious.
‘Wh-what do you mean?’ Becky stammered.
‘The house needs a lot of work doing to it. I could understand if your parents wanted you in situ while work was being done but...can I call you Becky?...there’s a bucket out in the corridor. And how long do you intend emptying it before you face the unpalatable fact that the roof probably needs replacing?’
Hard on the heels of the uncomfortable thoughts that had been preying on her mind, Theo’s remarks struck home with deadly accuracy.
‘I don’t see that the state of this house is any of your business!’ Bright patches of colour stained her cheeks. ‘You’re here for a night, one night, and only because I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I had sent you on your way in this weather. But that doesn’t give you the right to...to...’
‘Talk?’
‘You’re not talking, you’re—’
‘I’m probably saying things that have previously occurred to you, things you may have chosen to ignore.’ He shrugged, unwillingly intrigued by the way she was so patently uninterested in trying to impress him. ‘If you’d rather I didn’t, then that’s fine. I have some work to do when I get downstairs and then we can pretend to have an invigorating conversation about the weather.’
‘I’ll be downstairs.’ This for want of anything more coherent to say when she was so...angry...that he had had the nerve to shoot his mouth off! He was rude beyond words!
But he wasn’t wrong.
And this impertinent stranger had provided the impetus she needed to make that call to her parents. As soon as she was in the kitchen, with the door firmly shut, because the man was as stealthy as a panther and obviously didn’t wait for invitations to speak his mind. There was some beating around the bush but, yes, it would be rather lovely if the house was sold, not that they would ever dream of asking her to leave.
But...but...but...but.
Lots of buts, so that by the time Becky hung up fifteen minutes later she was in no doubt that not only was she heading for unemployment but the leaking roof over her head would not be hers for longer than it took for the local estate agent to come along and offer a valuation.
Mind still whirring busily away, she headed back up the stairs. She wished she could think more clearly and see a way forward but the path ahead was murky. What if she couldn’t get a job? It should be easy but, then again, she was in a highly specialised field. What if she did manage to find a posting but it was in an even more remote spot than this? Did she really want the years ahead to be spent in a practice in the wilds of Scotland? But weren’t the more desirable posts in London, Manchester or Birmingham going to be the first to be filled?
And underneath all those questions was the dissatisfaction that had swamped her after she had spoken to her sister.
Her life had been put into harsh perspective. The time she had spent here now seemed to have been wasted. Instead of moving forward, she had stayed in the same place, pedalling furiously and getting nowhere.
She surfaced from her disquieting thoughts to find that, annoyingly, the clothes she had asked to be placed outside the bedroom door were not there.
Did the man think that he was staying in a hotel?
Did he imagine that it was okay for her to hang around like a chambermaid until he decided that he could be bothered to hand over his dirty laundry for her to do? She didn’t even have to wash his clothes! She could have sent him on his way in musty, semi-damp trousers and a jumper that smelled of pond water.
He obviously thought that he was so important that he could do as he pleased. Speak to her as he pleased. Accept her hospitality whilst antagonising her because he found it entertaining.
She had no idea how important or unimportant he was but, quite aside from the snazzy little racing-red number and the designer clothing, there was something about him that screamed wealth.
Or maybe it was power.
Well, none of that impressed her. She’d never had time for anyone who thought that money was the be all and end all. It just wasn’t the way she had been brought up.
It was what was inside that counted. It was why, although Freddy had not been the one for her, there was a guy out there who was, a guy who had the sterling qualities of kindness, quiet intelligence and self-deprecating humour.
And, having ducked the dating scene for years, she would get back out there...because if she didn’t then this was the person she would be in the years to come, entrenched in her singledom, godmother to all and sundry and maid of honour to her friends as they tied the knot and moved on with their fulfilling lives.
Swamped by sudden self-pity, she absently shoved open the door to the spare room, which was ajar, and...stopped. Her legs stopped moving, her hand froze on the door knob and her brain went into instant shutdown.