Kitabı oku: «A Seductive Revenge», sayfa 2

Lamb to the slaughter, Josh marvelled as she looked up at him oozing trust and lack of suspicion. He ought to be feeling pretty pleased with how things were going, but somehow her trusting disposition was irritating the hell out of him.

‘I wouldn’t want you to risk indecent exposure charges.’

Flora’s eyes widened, a hard laugh was wrenched from her throat. ‘Wouldn’t they have loved that!’

‘Pardon…?’

Flora gathered her wits. Small wonder he was looking at her blankly. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘And none of my business.’

Flora flushed, aware that at the first hint of the conversation growing remotely personal she had automatically reverted to cool disdain. ‘Actually it’s not something I want to talk about.’

‘And I’m a stranger.’

‘But a very kind one,’ she told him warmly. She couldn’t understand why his handsome face hardened.

‘And if I wasn’t—if I was a dangerous, marauding lone male with evil intentions—you could deal with me…right?’

Flora laughed a little uneasily and tried not to notice the way her stomach lurched when she visualised how it might feel if that horrifying scenario were true.

‘But you’re not alone, you’re with Liam…you’re a father.’

‘And being a father places me above suspicion…and temptation?’ He silently reviewed the lists of world-class baddies who’d been doting dads, but resisted the impulse to point out the obvious flaws in her argument. ‘I must admit I’ve never quite looked at it in that way before. I’m overcome by the confidence you place in me.’

Flora didn’t think he sounded overcome, just irked. Perhaps even happily married men preferred to think they could still be considered dangerous.

‘There’s nothing wrong with being domesticated,’ she told him kindly. Actually she didn’t think half a dozen kids could make this particular specimen appear domesticated. She was a sensible, mature woman—mostly—with her feet firmly on the ground, and even her stomach showed a dangerous tendency to go all squidgy when she looked into those hooded silvery eyes.

‘And it’s nothing to do with paternity as such.’ She frowned earnestly. ‘Don’t you ever just get a gut feeling with some people that you can trust them?’ She closed her mouth with an audible snap…where the hell did that come from?

Squirming with humiliation, she gazed at the dark colour that stained the sharp, high angle of his achingly perfect cheekbones. Now I’ve embarrassed him—small wonder! You don’t go around telling total strangers you have gut feelings about them—gut feelings suggest a degree of intimacy! He probably thinks I’m making a pass at him or something. It was true about the gut feeling, though…

Josh broke the awkward silence. ‘Liam’s been cramped in the car all morning; he needs a chance to stretch his legs.’ To her relief he was acting as if she’d said nothing out of the ordinary. ‘If you want to change I’ll keep an eye out for coach parties.’

‘Well, if you’re…thanks…’

Josh kept one eye on his son who was building a tower with the stray rocks he’d gathered and the other on the wing mirror of his four-wheel drive, which kept him up to date with the state of play of Flora’s contortions in the back seat of her small car.

Now wasn’t the time to be worrying about the general scumminess of such behaviour. He couldn’t afford the luxury of scruples if he was going to make Graham pay. He was going to hit him where it hurt and Graham’s Achilles’ heel was his daughter—he adored her. The moment Josh had seen the interview of the two of them together he’d known that this was the way to make him pay. As for the girl, she hadn’t even been willing to admit her father had done anything wrong. As always when he needed reminding of why he was doing this, he brought the picture of Bridie’s sweet, laughing face to mind—or he would have if what was going on in the car hadn’t distracted him.

Any travellers seeking a respite from their journey at that moment wouldn’t have been treated to the sight of Flora’s underwear. She wasn’t wearing any—at least not from the waist up, which was the bit he could see. Her breasts were fairly small, pointed and high. They bounced energetically as she stretched upwards, pulling a thin cashmere polo shirt over her head. With a muffled curse of self-disgust Josh tore his eyes away.

Who was he kidding? This had nothing to do with revenge; it was pure voyeurism. That was bad, but not so bad if all he’d wanted to do was look!

He heard the sound of her feet on the rough ground but didn’t turn around. He watched as Liam carefully selected a stick and knocked down the tower of rocks he’d so lovingly constructed.

‘I worry about his aggressive instincts sometimes.’

‘I wouldn’t, it’s perfectly normal,’ Flora comforted. She smiled as the youngster laughed out loud before he started to rebuild his destroyed creation. ‘I’m sure you did the same.’

‘No, my brother Jake built them and I knocked them down, then he knocked me down. These days people pay him a lot of money to build things and nobody knocks them down.’

‘He’s a builder?’

‘No, an architect.’

‘And what do you do?’ She bit her lip. ‘You don’t have to answer that—once I get into interrogation mode there’s no stopping me,’ she babbled in embarrassment.

‘So what does that make you?’ He responded to Liam’s pouting plea by producing a sweet from his pocket. ‘Only one,’ he warned before handing it over. ‘A police woman…?’ he suggested, straightening up from his crouched pose and brushing his hands against the seat of his well-worn denims.

‘No, a solicitor.’

‘Pity…’

She looked enquiringly at him.

‘I’ve always had a soft spot for a girl in uniform.’

His smile and the way her heart started to beat wildly filled her with panic. ‘Is Liam an only child?’ A swift diplomatic change of subject was urgently required.

Josh didn’t reply straight away; when he did his grey eyes held a shadowy expression that disturbed her. Was she imagining the tenseness in his greyhound-lean body?

‘Yes, he is.’

He was young, maybe thirty; he and his wife could produce a lot more children all as enchanting as Liam. Flora, who had never been aware of any strong maternal instincts, felt a surge of envy and a deepening sense of dissatisfaction with where her life was going.

‘So am I.’

A nerve throbbed in Josh’s lean cheek. ‘That must make you all the more precious to your parents.’ His eyes were curiously intent on her face.

‘Father; my mum died five years ago.’

He touched her hand—hardly even a touch, more a brushing of her skin; the gesture seemed unpremeditated. Flora didn’t move. She continued to stare at the busy, happy child, aware all the time of an invisible web of nerve-endings she hadn’t even known existed surge to zinging life all over her body. Her skin felt so alive it hurt—pleasure bordering on pain. She found herself completely unprepared for this raw, sensual awakening.

The symptoms dissipated but didn’t vanish when his hand fell away. Way out of proportion or what? Her puffily exhaled breath turned white in the chill of the lengthening autumnal afternoon.

‘I better be going,’ she said, swallowing hard and stirring the loose ground with the toe of her casual flat shoe.

Josh noticed the replacement was just as expensive and exclusive as the one she’d worn earlier. Daddy’s indulged little girl…it didn’t work; his rage only responded sluggishly to the prod.

‘Thank you,’ she began with a frank, open smile. ‘For everything.’ If she drew this out much longer he was going to realise she felt reluctant to leave…it was quite absurd.

His mental preparations hadn’t prepared him for this. Making love to Flora Graham wasn’t something he was supposed to want to do. It was supposed to be a means to an end, a ‘close your eyes and think of revenge’ sort of situation! It was easy to exploit someone who obviously didn’t have a heart or feelings. This stupid woman didn’t only have them, she didn’t even keep them decently disguised.

This could be so easy; she’d been shaking like a nervous thoroughbred when he’d touched her. The sexual chemistry was a bonus to be exploited, he told himself. She trusted him, her father had just been publicly disgraced, her fiancé had dumped her, she was vulnerable, seduction would be a walk in the park. Telling her the truth would be a pleasure. All he had to do was go gently…

Nobody had ever accused Josh Prentice of taking the easy option!

He had a mouth which knew exactly what to do to reduce his victim to a state of helpless and humiliating cooperation. The searing onslaught of his clever tongue and lips went beyond the physical.

Flora staggered backwards when the pressure ceased and the big hands that had held her face fell away. She continued to stagger until her spine made contact with a convenient tree; the rough surface abraded her back through the thin, hooded top she now wore over a polo shirt. Breathing shallow and fast, she reached behind her to clutch the comforting solidity of the bark in what had become an almost surreal world.

‘Why,’ she asked in a voice which hovered on the brink of tremulous, ‘did you do that?’ Good, her voice was beginning to get back to normal.

Kissing her didn’t seem to have put him in a mellow frame of mind, although at the time it had seemed to her he’d been enjoying himself! She was humiliatingly aware of the ache in her taut, peaking breasts.

‘I had to see for myself if you were as stupid as you look!’ he snapped cuttingly.

The outrage on his voice made her blink. ‘And am I?’ she enquired in a dazed voice.

‘With bells on, woman!’ he raged. ‘Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation? I could have been anyone and you come out with all that airy-fairy crap about trust. Trust!’ He choked. ‘I could be Jack the bloody Ripper for all you know and all you can do is look at me as if I…’ With a snort of disgust he broke off. ‘Just because you like the way someone looks, it doesn’t make them all the things you want them to be.’ He was warning her, you couldn’t get fairer than that. Or more stupid, a quiet inner voice sighed.

Two spots of dark colour stained the soft contours of her pale cheeks. Was I really that obvious?

‘What makes you think,’ she snapped with cold precision, ‘that I like the way you look?’

He threw back his head and laughed; it was a bitter sound. ‘Like you don’t like the way I kiss?’ One dark, strongly delineated brow shot satirically upwards. ‘I noticed the way you hated that.’

Flora’s face was burning with mortification at his soft, derisive jibe—so what if she might have co-operated for a split second? ‘Most men wouldn’t be complaining,’ she said, glaring up at his hatefully handsome face. She bit her lips as she realised it was too late now to dispute the claim she’d in any way enjoyed being kissed by him. ‘But then you only kissed me out of the goodness of your heart to show me how foolishly trusting I was being…teach me a lesson…’

There was more than a grain of truth in her sarcastic jibe, but it wasn’t the entire story. He ran an exasperated hand through his dark hair. ‘I kissed you,’ he hissed in a driven voice, ‘because I wanted to.’ Abruptly he turned away from his contemplation of the trees; his deep-set eyes burned into her.

The air whooshed out of her lungs. ‘Oh!’ Her eyes searched his face. Given the circumstances, it wasn’t very flattering that he looked as if he were trying to digest something particularly bitter and unappetising.

She smiled distractedly at Liam, who opened his grubby little hand to offer her a smooth black stone. ‘Black,’ he explained patiently.

‘It’s his favourite colour,’ his father elaborated tersely.

‘Lovely, Liam.’ She smiled, pocketing the gift. ‘Thank you.’

She stiffened. Am I slow or what? How could I have forgotten a minor detail like the ring on his finger, especially when the physical proof of the wretched man’s unavailability is playing around my feet? What is wrong with me? I’ve had better kisses than that and not ended up with mush for a brain. It was a mistake to think about the kiss…stop hyperventilating, Flora.

‘Does your wife know you go around doing things because you want to?’ she enquired with icy derision. Her cold pose slipped. ‘I think you’re the most disgusting man I’ve ever met!’ she told him in a quivering voice.

The pain that swept across his face made Flora’s voice fade dramatically away. It occurred to her that she could never despise him half as much as he did himself.

‘My wife’s dead.’ His voice sounded the same way.

Flora didn’t know how to respond and he didn’t appear to expect her to.

‘I haven’t wanted to kiss a woman since…’ The harsh explanation emerged involuntarily.

Flora closed her eyes against a sudden rush of hot, emotional tears and wished he hadn’t told her that. She’d come out here to regain a bit of inner peace, not get mixed up with some moody, brooding type who was way too good-looking. He’d got a kid, and—hell!—even more unresolved angst than she had. He was the one that introduced the subject of self-preservation.

Flora’s heart ached as she watched them go, but she made no move to prevent them. She had troubles enough of her own without courting the extra ones a man like this one represented.

CHAPTER TWO

‘NIA didn’t say you were coming.’ Megan Jones handed her husband, who was sitting with his heavily plastered leg propped up on a footstool, a fresh cup of tea.

‘No.’ Josh helped himself to another slice of his brother’s mother-in-law’s excellent bara brith. ‘It was a spur of the moment thing.’

Megan Jones nodded understandingly. ‘You need a break; Nia says you work far too hard.’

‘Does she…?’ He suspected his sister-in-law said far too much entirely. The next statement from one of her brothers confirmed this suspicion.

The kitchen door swung open. ‘Nia says you need a woman, Josh. Like the haircut,’ he added. ‘Not so girly, makes you look nearly respectable.’

‘Geraint!’ his mother exclaimed, slapping her large, burly son’s hand as he filched a slice of cake and crammed it whole into his mouth. ‘Josh is respectable!’ She flashed Josh a worried look and was relieved to see her guest didn’t look offended by the slur. ‘And look what your boots are doing to my nice clean floor,’ she scolded her big son half-heartedly.

‘I’ll be back from Betws before milking, Mam,’ her grinning son promised unrepentantly. He winked at Josh and ruffled Liam’s hair before he departed just as speedily as he’d arrived.

‘Now there’s someone who is definitely working too hard,’ his mother announced with a worried frown.

‘I’ve told you I’d take on another man if we could afford it.’ Geraint’s father gritted his teeth in frustration. ‘You’d think with five sons there’d be more than one around the place when you need them,’ he complained.

‘Yes, well, I’m sure Josh doesn’t want to hear us grumbling,’ Megan said, pinning a bright smile on her face.

No wonder Megan was looking strained; Josh suspected that energetic Huw Jones was not an easy patient.

‘I don’t suppose there’s ever a good time to break your leg, Huw…?’

‘But some times are worse than others,’ Huw rumbled, ‘you’ve got it right there, boy.’

‘Where are you staying, Josh?’

‘I was hoping you could recommend somewhere nearby.’

‘You couldn’t do much better than The Panton,’ Huw responded. ‘Though it’ll cost you an arm and leg.’

‘The Panton, Huw, really!’ Megan chided indignantly. ‘Josh and Liam will stay with us, of course. Just like they always do. I miss having a child about the place.’ She smiled fondly at Liam.

Since Jake had married Nia, Josh, a keen climber, had joined his brother here at Bryn Goleu for several weekend climbing expeditions in the rugged Snowdonian mountains. Megan Jones’s hospitality was as warm as her smile.

‘I think you’ve got your hands full without extra guests right now, Megan. We wouldn’t dream of imposing.’ Josh saw his hostess looked inclined to press the issue and a workable compromise occurred to him. ‘I will stay, on one condition: you let me work for our board. I don’t know a cow from a sheep,’ he warned them with a grin, ‘but I’m a willing pair of hands.’ He held out his hands to demonstrate their willingness.

‘We wouldn’t dream…’ Megan began politely.

Huw put aside his newspaper. ‘What do you mean, woman? Of course we’d dream. Beside, a bit of honest sweat’ll do the boy a world of good, build up a bit of muscle.’

Josh took the scornful inference he was some sort of seven-stone weakling in his stride.

‘If you let him talk much longer, Josh, he’ll convince you you ought to be paying him for the privilege of letting you break your back!’ Megan threw her husband a withering glance, but Josh could see she felt just as relieved as the reluctant invalid. Their gratitude made him feel guilty because his offer of help wasn’t entirely altruistic. He hadn’t been able to believe his luck when Flora had named the village she was staying in as one a mere mile from the Jones farm—it suited him very well to stay for a while at Bryn Goleu.

Flora’s walking boots had never actually seen a puddle before; the country experience was proving a baptism by fire for her and them both. The boots seemed to be coping better with water than she had with the mouse in the house last night. Fortunately the village store stocked mousetraps, but Flora wasn’t sure which horrified her most: the idea of coming face to face with a live mouse or a dead one.

She consulted the map in her pocket; if she was reading it correctly this footpath would cut her return journey by half. It seemed to go directly through a farmyard. Right on cue a farmyard came into view around the bend. She’d heard tales that suggested all farmers weren’t exactly welcoming to ramblers; she hoped these natives, if she came across any, were friendly. Still, she reasoned, they couldn’t possibly be as bad as tabloid journalists.

She did see one—it was hard to miss him—a large, shirtless specimen wheeling a barrow piled with fencing posts out of one of the stone outbuildings. His back was turned to her; it suggested he would make short work of driving those heavy wooden posts into the ground. She tried not to stare too obviously at the sculpted power of those rippling, tightly packed muscles; she had limited success.

She cleared her throat to let him know she was there. ‘Good morning,’ she called out politely. The figure turned slowly.

‘Bore da, Flora.’ Josh exhausted the limit of his Welsh.

She must have walked into the shop and bought it all up, he decided, giving her a quick once-over from her sunlit hair to her shiny new boots. All the stylish, squeaky new clothes were top-of-the-range mountain gear which showed off her lovely long length of leg and neat, incredibly small waist. A light crop of freckles had emerged across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks were healthily flushed, whether from exertion or from the shock of seeing him he wasn’t quite sure…but he had his suspicions.

‘You!’ Flora, who had forgotten to breathe for several stupefied moments, took a deep noisy gulp to compensate.

‘It’s enough to make a man believe in coincidence,’ he drawled, lifting a hand to shade his eyes from the sun.

She nodded in a dazed sort of way. Looking at her with a clear-eyed sardonic grey gaze, he was displaying none of the awkwardness she, because of the way they’d parted, felt—he didn’t even seem surprised to see her. Willing her eyes not to make any detours over his naked torso, she kept them firmly trained on his face.

‘Or fate.’ Now why, she wondered with a silent groan, did I say that?

‘And do you?’ he enquired, unexpectedly expanding on the theme. ‘Believe in fate?’ He speared a pitchfork into the ground and leaned on it to casually watch her. Flora found the unblinking scrutiny uncomfortable.

Her curiosity reached boiling point and she succumbed to growing temptation and risked a quick, surreptitious peek at his leanly muscled chest and flat belly. Her stomach muscles did uncomfortable and worrying things. The earthy image hadn’t done anything to soothe her jangled nerves or hot cheeks.

It was the little details like the line of hair that disappeared like a directional arrow beneath the waistband of the worn blue jeans he wore that got her especially hot under the collar. She wondered what he’d make of it if she picked up the discarded plaid shirt she’d spotted and begged him to put it on—too much is what he’d make of it, she told herself derisively.

‘Fate!’ she hooted robustly. ‘Of course not.’ Her tone was laced with a shade of indignation. What sort of silly woman did he think she was? ‘You live here, then?’ She recalled he never had got around to telling her what he did for a living. He didn’t look much like her idea of a farmer, but then what did she, the ultimate townie, know?

‘No, just helping out for a few weeks.’

A casual farm labourer! This possibility seemed even more unlikely than the first option. She’d had him pegged as someone who, even if he didn’t give orders, definitely didn’t take them off anyone. To her there seemed something of the maverick about him.

Her own father had always been proud of his humble beginnings as the son of a coalminer and it struck her forcibly that he’d be ashamed if he knew his own daughter nurtured snobbish preconceptions about manual labourers. Just because a man used his muscles to earn a crust didn’t mean he didn’t have a brain, and if she needed proof she only had to look as far as this man. Those extraordinary eyes of his held a biting degree of intelligence.

If her friend’s reports were anything to go by, babies were expensive creatures, and most of those households who were frequently pleading poverty brought in two hefty professional salaries. This man had a child to bring up alone and, it seemed, no professional qualifications. Under the circumstances he couldn’t afford to be picky about work. It must be hard worrying about money and coping with parenthood, she reflected. He faced problems every day she couldn’t begin to understand; her soft heart swelled with empathy. It made her feel guilty when she considered her own comparative embarrassment of worldly riches.

‘Helping! Is that what you call it?’ A large young man with a lilting accent and a head of shocking red hair jeered as he came up behind Josh and thumped him good-naturedly on the back. ‘Slacking more like, man.’ He laughed. He looked with interest at Flora, his bold eyes admiring. ‘Fast worker, aren’t you?’ he added slyly to Josh in a soft voice.

Flora fell back on her frozen routine, but frustratingly neither man appeared to notice. Josh gave a tolerant, unembarrassed smile.

‘Geraint, this is Flora.’ He casually performed the introductions. ‘She’s staying in the village. Flora, this big bull is Geraint Jones.’

‘The heir apparent,’ Geraint told her, swaggering in an inoffensive way. ‘You going to actually do any work today, Josh?’ he added sarcastically, jumping into a tractor and revving up the engine. ‘See you later, cariad,’ he called to Flora. ‘And remember, if you want any real work done I’m your man,’ he boasted. ‘Now, if you want a bit of sissy painting…’ he taunted, driving noisily off.

It was similar to an encounter with a bulldozer. ‘Is he always so…?’

‘Always, but a bit more so when a beautiful woman is around.’

She’d been called beautiful so often it didn’t even register now, so why were her lower limbs suddenly afflicted by a debilitating weakness?

‘You paint? I mean, that’s your real trade?’ An idea, probably not a good one, was occurring to her. It would be foolish to blurt anything out before she’d considered the implications of her inspiration.

‘You could say that,’ Josh confirmed a shade cautiously.

Flora was so excited by the brilliance of her idea that she decided that she’d throw caution to the winds.

‘Well, I don’t know what your schedule’s like at the moment…?’

‘Flexible,’ he responded honestly.

‘Well, I might be able to put some work your way. My friend Claire,’ she explained hurriedly, ‘the one who is letting me use her cottage—she asked me to find someone to redecorate the small bedroom in the cottage while I’m here. It’s really dark and poky and she’s just had a baby…Emily…’ On anyone else Josh would have called that soft, fleeting little smile sentimental. ‘And she wants the room redone before she comes up at Christmas. If you’re interested…’

‘You’re offering me a job?’ He was looking at her oddly.

‘You wouldn’t be working for me,’ she informed him, anxious to make this point quite clear from the outset. ‘I’m only acting as an agent for Claire.’

‘Decorating a bedroom? You want me to decorate a bedroom?’

Flora glared. Was it such a revolutionary notion? Hadn’t he decorated a bedroom before? Anyone would think she’d said something funny. She hadn’t expected or wanted gratitude but he looked as though he was about to fall about laughing.

Maybe it was a male pride thing, she pondered. He might not like people, especially a woman, to know he was strapped for cash. She tried to see it from his point of view and had to concede it was possible she was coming over a bit lady bountiful.

‘If you’re too busy…’

‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll kiss you again?’

She didn’t see the question coming until it hit her dead centre; it completely threw her off balance. Aren’t you more afraid he won’t? the sly inner voice silkily suggested.

Taking a deep breath, she made emergency repairs on her shattered poise. Her slender shoulders lifted casually. ‘I hardly think that’s likely,’ she scoffed laughingly. ‘I’m aware it was just a…’

One dark brow quirked enquiringly as she searched for words. Flora flushed.

‘A momentary impulse,’ she choked resentfully.

‘Aberration, even,’ he agreed soothingly.

She frowned at him with irritation; she knew deliberate provocation when she heard it. She needed to knock this kissing thing on the head once and for all.

‘For your information, I’ve just broken up with my fiancé kissing isn’t on my agenda.’

‘Why did you do that?’

Flora looked at him blankly.

‘Break up with your fiancé, that is.’

Flora glared at him. ‘None of your damned business,’ she declared hotly.

‘Sorry,’ he sympathised with a patently false sincerity that set her teeth on edge. ‘Sensitive subject.’

‘Not at all sensitive!’ she snapped immediately. ‘Paul asked me to make a choice and I didn’t make the one he expected.’ Paul had been astonished when she had failed to see how imperative it was for her to distance herself from her disgraced father. His astonishment had eventually turned to anger at what he perceived as her selfishness. ‘Also,’ she added with feeling, ‘he was a prize prat!’

‘In fact,’ Josh drawled, his eyes on her mutinous, flushed face, ‘it was a normal, mutually amicable parting.’

‘I’m just trying to explain why kissing isn’t high on my agenda just now, so you can rest easy,’ she told him, regretting her outburst.

She couldn’t help recalling that kissing her had not exactly made him happy the first time, so he probably wouldn’t want to again. She remembered the bleak expression in his eyes as he’d made that extraordinary statement. If he really hadn’t kissed anyone for some time that meant he had a whole lot of sexual frustration to get rid of. She didn’t want to be his therapy. Although, she conceded, letting her eyes roam at will for one self-indulgent moment over his sleekly powerful body, there would be fringe benefits! It was almost enough to make a girl sorry she wasn’t into shallow and superficial relationships.

‘Ah, you’re afraid of the rebound thing…?’

Her teeth clenched. Was he jumping to all the wrong conclusions deliberately? She met his eyes—you bet he was, she concluded instantly. There was no mistaking the fact he was enjoying her discomfiture. He’d probably taken delight in depriving flies of their wings when he was a little boy.

‘There’s absolutely no prospect of me rebounding in your direction!’

‘You mean you don’t encourage the hired help to take liberties. This isn’t actually about being off men in general, just a particular category of men, for which read those without the fancy cars, fancy clothes and fancy salaries to match.’ His voice was coldly derisive.

He made her feel so guiltily defensive that she almost began searching her conscience until she realised that, whatever other faults she had, she had never judged people by their bank balances, although she knew plenty of people that did.

‘Are you implying I’m a snob?’

He considered the heated accusation. ‘I don’t know you well enough to imply anything—yet,’ he qualified.

Flora didn’t like that little contemplative smile that accompanied the qualification one little bit. For starters it made her pulse-rate do slightly scary things.

‘Do you want the job?’ she snapped, already regretting her silly altruism. The man had got by before she’d come along; it wasn’t as though he looked malnourished or anything—far from it!

Josh looped his thumbs in the loops of his waistband and looked thoughtful. ‘What’s it pay?’

‘Pay!’ she echoed in a startled voice.

‘You didn’t expect me to do it for free, did you?’

Her lips tightened at the sarcasm; he really did have a knack of making her feel embarrassed and just ever so slightly stupid. If anything, she normally played down her intellect in front of men; for some reason this one made her feel positively inadequate!

‘Of course I didn’t. I just hadn’t thought…’ God, what happened to detached and businesslike? I sound like a real pea brain! She cleared her throat and tried to retrieve the situation. ‘What’s the going rate?’ she enquired briskly.