The Rich Man's Mistress

‘I—I’m a trained interior designer, if you want to know.’ Except, she did precious little of that, she thought with a stab of guilt. Her father had funded her course and had even provided her with her first clients, but her enthusiasm had gradually waned; she realised that she had not done anything to further her career for years now. Socialising had left little time for the more serious business of working and, without the need to earn a living, she had found it easy to be diverted.

‘That must keep you busy. Does it?’

‘Have I asked you what you do?’ Miranda retorted hotly feeling defensive at the realisation that, if he knew the truth about her idle lifestyle, he wouldn’t be very impressed.

‘So it doesn’t keep you busy, I take it,’ he replied calmly.

‘I never said that!’

‘Oh, but your lack of answer tells me that you don’t spend your days earning a crust as an interior designer. Which leads me to conclude that you really do nothing with your life except…what…party? Have fun holidays wherever the in crowd happens to be? I know your type.’

‘It’s important to enjoy life,’ Miranda said for the sake of argument, even though she knew that she was on losing ground.

‘You’d better go and get changed.’ He stood next to her and then grasped her arm with his fingers, help that she reluctantly accepted. ‘You can borrow some of my clothes, even though they’re probably not quite up to your standard, and then I’ll cook us something to eat.’

‘Thank you,’ she muttered, out of good manners—though she was looking forward to putting on dry clothes. Whenever she tried to stand, even slightly, on her hurt foot, she could feel her whole body flinch in discomfort. The bandage had made it feel better, or at least had given her the illusion of thinking that it did, but who cared whether she could hop, skip and jump in the morning? She would still be stuck here in ferocious bad weather with this unbearable man who moved from hostility to contempt with the ease of a magician. Through the little panes of the window she could see the snow whipping around outside and she could hear it as well. The low howl of wind and the soft spitting of the snowdrops. It was a nightmare.

‘Don’t be too proud to ask for help,’ he threw in casually, as she clung to the banister and tried to heave herself up, and Miranda looked at him sourly. Blue eyes, a deeper more piercing shade than her own aquamarine-blue and infinitely more opaque, met hers. His eyebrows were dark, the same raven darkness of his hair. But, close to him like this, she noticed his eyelashes, which were thick and long and unexpectedly attractive.

‘If you wouldn’t mind…’ she said, looking away, and he obligingly swept her off her feet and carried her upstairs as though she weighed less than a feather. A huge wave of exhaustion swept over her and she had to fight to keep her eyes open.

It felt so comfortable being carried like this. She could feel the strength of his body against her, like steel. The hands supporting her were large and powerful, like the rest of him; and, unlike most of the men she socialised with, he smelt not of expensive aftershave but of something more masculine and tangy. Very rough and ready, she thought. He would be if he lived here and spent his life chopping logs and skiing.

‘There’s just the one bathroom,’ he said, pushing open the door with his foot and then settling her on the chair by the bath. ‘So make sure you leave it just as you found it. I don’t intend to have to clean up after you.’

Without bothering to give her a second glance, he began running the bath, testing the water with his hand, squatting by the side of the bath so that his shirt lifted slightly to reveal a slither of hard brown skin.

‘I’d better get you undressed.’ He turned towards her and she was propelled out of her lazy observation of him.

‘No, thank you!’

‘You mean you can do it all yourself? With that ankle of yours?’

‘I’m very grateful to have been rescued by you,’ Miranda said stiffly, ‘but if you lay a finger on me, I swear I’ll scream this place down.’

‘Oh, will you?’ He leaned over her, caging her in with his hands and making sure that there was no place for her to look but at his face. His features were blunt and overpoweringly masculine and she cringed back into the chair like a startled victim of a bird of prey. ‘And who do you think will hear you? But…’ as quickly as he had leaned over her, he stood back, straightening to his massive height, and looked at her with an insolent lack of respect ‘…far be it from me to invade your maidenly privacy. Just make sure you clean up after yourself. I don’t want to find any of this…’ without warning he lifted some strands of her hair between his fingers so that the long fine white-blonde hair trailed over his wrists ‘…clogging up my plug hole.’

It took one full hour for her to complete her bath. Struggling out of her layers of ski gear was a feat along the lines of running five marathons in a row. And then, when she finally decided that her body would shrivel from overexposure to bath water, she got out and was confronted with the further indignity of yelling for him from the top of the stairs with a towel wrapped around her and her hair hanging limply wet down her back.

‘I wonder if I might borrow those clothes you mentioned?’ she told him when he finally surfaced at the bottom of the stairs with a saucepan in his hand.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I asked whether I might borrow those clothes you mentioned?’ Miranda repeated tersely. The towel barely covered her body. He must have known how awkward she felt standing here like this but either he didn’t give a damn or else he frankly enjoyed her discomfort. Or both.

‘I heard that bit. I’m waiting for you to finish your request.’

‘Please.’

‘That’s much better.’ He deposited the pan on the small wooden table at the bottom of the stairs and then headed up towards her. ‘You can use the spare bedroom,’ he said, pushing open a door to reveal a small, cosy room with its own open fireplace. There was just enough space for the single bed, a dressing table with a mirror and a chest of drawers. Miranda propped herself up against the door frame and looked around it. She was used to sleeping in a double bed. Even when she stayed in hotels, she always insisted on a double bed, however much extra the room might cost. She liked having a lot of space when she went to sleep. Single beds reminded her of hospitals and hospitals reminded her of her mother who had died in one when she had been barely knee-high to a grasshopper.

‘Not good enough for m’lady?’ For a big man, he moved with disconcerting stealth, she thought, swinging around to face him and finding a bundle of clothes shoved into her hands.

‘It’s fine. Thank you.’

‘Good. Because the only king-sized bed is in my room and my excessive hospitality does have its limits. Now, shall I help m’lady inside?’ Without giving her time to answer, he placed his hand squarely around her waist, leaving her no option but to clutch the loosening towel with one hand and place the other around his neck.

‘Now…’ He stood back and looked down at her with his arms folded ‘…you can get changed, and I’ll be up in fifteen minutes with something for you to eat. M’lady.’ He gave a mock salute.

‘Could you please stop calling me that?’

‘M’lady?’ His dangerous blue eyes widened with an expression of ridiculously inept innocence. ‘But why?’

‘Because it’s not my name.’

He didn’t bother to answer that. Instead he moved across to the dead fireplace. ‘Cold in here, isn’t it? But then, I wasn’t expecting company or else I would have lit this fire and had the room warm and ready. You’d better get dressed. You’re trembling. I’ll put your clothes to dry in front of the fire downstairs.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And I’ll bring some logs up later and get this fire going.’

‘I would appreciate that.’ Miranda could feel goose pimples on her arms from the abrupt change in temperature after the warm bathroom. ‘You needn’t worry, Mr Decroix…’

‘Luke, please. Why stand on formality when we’ll be living together?’ He inclined his head to look at her over his shoulder, and she realised, with a little start, that it wasn’t simply his face that was attractive, but the whole package. In a primitive, masculine sort of way. He had the kind of unchiselled, powerful good looks that drew stares, and she immediately looked away just in case he thought that she was staring.

‘My father will more than compensate you for any trouble.’

This time, he turned slowly to look at her and an expression of contemptuous amusement gathered itself in the corners of his mouth and glittered in the blue, brooding eyes. ‘How reassuring. And you think that I might need the compensation, do you?’

Miranda edged her way inelegantly to the bed and slipped under the covers with her towel still in place and the bundle of clothes still in one hand; then she drew the duvet all the way up to her chin. If he insisted on ignoring her chattering teeth and continuing the conversation, then she might as well be warm.

‘It’s only fair after putting you to all this trouble. But most people wouldn’t say no to a bit of financial help,’ she finally said, awkwardly.

His blue eyes narrowed coldly on her face. ‘Oh, dear. Would you have reached that conclusion by any chance because of my ragged clothing?’

‘I hadn’t noticed the state of your clothing,’ Miranda plunged on. ‘I have no idea about your financial circumstances…I don’t know what you do for a living. But, well…’ His shuttered look was hardly encouraging but now that she’d started, she felt compelled to reach some sort of conclusion to her speculations. ‘…there can’t be that many well-paid jobs that you could do from this remote location…can there…?’ Her voice trailed off into silence while Luke continued to observe her with embarrassing intensity.

He shook his head with a low laugh, ‘I don’t live here all the time, Miranda.’ He paused for a moment, looking as if he was pondering something very deeply. ‘In fact, I’m just looking after this place actually—for the time being.’

‘Oh, I see!’ That would explain a lot. His English accent, for a start. He was probably one of these nomadic types who made their way round the world doing manual chores for people. Earning a crust.

He didn’t say anything. After a few minutes his expression lightened and he shrugged. ‘I’ll bring you up something to eat. Your foot will feel much better in the morning.’

He didn’t call her m’lady again, although he more than made up for the thoughtful omission by bowing grandly at the door before he left; but Miranda no longer had the energy to feel annoyed. She was too sleepy. She would just close her eyes for a few minutes before she changed and he returned with her food.

CHAPTER TWO

THE room was warm. That was the first thing Miranda noticed when she next surfaced. A warm room and she was changed. Her eyes flickered open and for a few seconds she experienced the disorientation that sometimes attacks when the surroundings are new and unfamiliar. Then her memory returned with a crash and the image of Luke’s dark, striking and unpleasantly cynical face filled her head.

It was as though the thought had been enough to summon him, because just at that moment her bedroom door was pushed open and she saw the object of her wandering mind filling out the doorway, with a tray in his hands. Sleep had not managed to diminish his suffocating masculinity. In fact, she literally drew her breath in as he dwarfed the small room, primitively forceful despite the tea towel slung over his shoulder.

‘So you’re up at last.’ He moved across to the curtains and yanked them open, exposing a watery grey light and the sight of fast-falling snow. ‘Breakfast.’ He deposited the tray on the bed and Miranda struggled up into a sitting position.

‘How long was I asleep?’ She stretched and the sleeves of the oversized grey tee shirt rode down to expose her slender, pale forearms.

‘Over ten hours.’

‘Over ten hours!’

‘I dutifully came with your supper only to find you sound asleep and snoring…’

‘I do not snore!’

‘How do you know that?’ he asked snidely, pulling up a chair so that he could sit and watch her. ‘It’s not the sort of thing a lover might bring to your attention. Anyway, I lit the fire to get the icicles off the ceiling and left you.’ He linked his fingers together and looked as she bit into the toast and then hungrily began demolishing what was on the plate: A fried egg, bacon, baked beans, just the sort of breakfast she had always avoided.

‘After I’d changed you, of course.’

Miranda paused with the last bit of toast en route to her mouth and started at him. ‘You change me?’

‘Shocking, isn’t it?’ He clasped his hands behind his head and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. ‘Do you think that Daddy might refuse me my much needed financial compensation if he knew?’

‘You’re not funny!’ She had somehow assumed that she had changed herself, even though she had no recollection of doing any such thing, but she could tell from the gleam in his eyes that the man wasn’t lying. He had unwrapped the towel from her and had pulled on a tee shirt, and somewhere along the line those big hands of his had touched her shoulders, her stomach, her breasts. ‘You had no right!’

‘I do beg Your Highness’s pardon, but going to sleep with a wet towel around you in a damp room would just have compounded the sprained ankle with a healthy dose of pneumonia.’

‘You still had no right! You should have awakened me!’

‘I’ll try and remember the next time, if you try and remember to stick to the nursery slopes so that there won’t be a next time. You haven’t eaten all your egg up.’

‘I’ve lost my appetite.’ She closed her knife and fork and reclined back on the pillow.

‘In which case, you’d better try and find it. You’re building your strength up and step one is eating all that breakfast, meticulously prepared by my own fair hands.’ He leaned forward. ‘Maybe you’d like me to feed the rest to you…’

Miranda gave a little yelp of denial and hurriedly ate what was left on her plate, then she wiped her mouth with the paper napkin and folded her arms.

‘Now,’ he said implacably, standing up to remove the tray and then whipping the duvet off her so that she yelped even louder, this time in enraged discomfort, ‘the next thing I advise you to do is test that foot of yours.’

‘And would you like to hear what I advise you to do?’

‘Not really. Here, hold my hand and stand up.’

‘Or else what…?’

‘You don’t want to find out,’ he said silkily. ‘Now, stand up and try that foot of yours.’

When she remained on the bed, he leaned over her and said in a low, razor-sharp voice, ‘Shall I just remind you that you’re an unwanted and unwelcome intrusion into my house…’

‘Your house?’

‘While I’m looking after it, it’s my house. And if you think you’re going to play the grand princess and laze around for the next few days, or weeks if this weather doesn’t sort itself out, then you’re in for a shock. I’m not a man who puts up with the wiles and tantrums of a spoiled little rich girl!’

‘How dare you speak to me like that?’ Her imperious voice, which reflected more than anything else her bemusement at finding herself in the situation she was in and dealing with the man in front of her, failed to strike a chord. Or rather it did. Luke burst out laughing.

‘Oh, dear,’ he said, sobering up but not sufficiently to stop the occasional cynical chuckle from slipping through. ‘Oh, dear, dear, dear. And you wonder why I call you m’lady? Now, up!’

Miranda reluctantly swung her legs over the side of the bed, noting with relief that the tee shirt modestly reached down to just above her knees, and grasped his proffered hand.

‘Try and put a little weight on it.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Just try, and stop acting like a baby.’

Which did it. She tentatively touched the ground with her foot and discovered as she applied a bit more pressure that the immediate searing pain she had felt the previous day had become more of a persistent, dull discomfort.

‘I’ll remove the bandage before you get dressed and soak your foot in some cold water and then I’ll truss you up again.’

‘There’s no need. I can do that myself.’

‘Should I allow you to do that, I would live for ever in fear of Daddy’s avenging wrath.’

Miranda stopped her halting walk and stared up at him. ‘I hate that. Why are you so…horrible and scathing about me? You don’t even know who I am or what sort of person I am! Yet you feel it’s all right to make nasty, derogatory comments about me and my father. Daddy always said that the worst snobs are the inverted snobs. He always said that they’re the worst because they never give you a chance to prove yourself one way or another. They just assume that because someone has money, then they can’t be worthwhile.’ She found herself breathing shallowly as she stared up into his blue eyes.

‘Is that what you think I am?’ he finally asked curiously. ‘An inverted snob?’

‘Why else would you be so awful? Just because you don’t have any money doesn’t make it my fault!’

‘No, I guess you’re right,’ he said in an odd voice, ‘it doesn’t, does it?’

Instead of feeling pleased at this unexpected victory, Miranda felt suddenly nervous. Nervous because she had become quickly accustomed to his hostility and the lack of it was confusing.

‘My foot feels a lot better,’ she said, to change the subject, supporting herself on his arm as they headed slowly towards the bathroom, where a further unwanted reminder of his ministrations confronted her in the shape of the blue bath towel she had used the night before, neatly hanging over the towel rail.

She sat on the closed toilet seat and watched as he filled a plastic basin with cold water.

‘It’s freezing,’ she gasped as he soaked her foot.

He said, without looking up, ‘It’ll reduce most of the rest of the swelling. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to the temperature. There.’ He held up her foot and examined it like a butcher sizing up a joint of meat. ‘Not very pretty, but it’ll do.’ Then he carefully rebandaged it, taking his time. ‘Now, there’s a change of clothes behind you on the ledge and you might want to do something with that hair of yours. Tie it up, perhaps. Not very practical having that mane swinging around, I shouldn’t think.’

‘Actually,’ Miranda informed him coolly, ‘a woman’s mane is her crowning glory.’

‘Oh, is that so? And I always thought of her crowning glory was her mind. How much I’m learning from you.’ He shot her a brief, patronising grin and then left.

Miranda gingerly stood up and for the first time took a long look at her reflection in the mirror. Her waist-length blonde hair had been damp when she had fallen asleep, but even so it had dried and now fell in its usual silky curtain around her face. Her wide blue eyes absorbed the stunning prettiness of her features then, as she stripped off the oversized tee shirt, idly scanned the exquisite, slender proportions of her body. These looks, she thought dispassionately, had turned heads and had opened countless doors to the world of beautiful people in which she moved. If she had been dowdy and unattractive, would she have been as popular? Would men have beaten a path to her door, however much money her father had? Probably not. For the first time, she realised that her looks carried a downside. The had attracted men like Freddie, but looks were disposable. None of the men in her brittle world ever seemed to take time out to search for what lay beneath the sparkling veneer.

She very quickly washed her face and changed into yet another tee shirt and a pair of jogging bottoms that had to be tied with the tan leather belt thoughtfully left along with the bundle of clothes. Then she made her way down the stairs, refusing to yell for assistance.

Luke was in the kitchen clearing up and, for a few minutes, Miranda hovered uncertainly by the door, wondering what to do next.

‘Make yourself at home,’ he said drily. ‘I don’t bite.’

She edged to the pine kitchen table and sat down.

‘How long does this caretaker job last?’ she asked, for the sake of asking something, and he turned to look at her with a momentary expression of bewilderment. Then his face cleared.

‘Oh, this caretaker job?’ he said carelessly. ‘Oh, not very long.’

‘And then you…’

‘Move on.’

‘Move on to what?’ He made a good caretaker, she thought. The kitchen was tidy, with a stack of logs neatly chopped and piled in the corner.

‘Other things,’ he said vaguely. ‘Now, normally I tend to spend the days outside, but this blizzard has put paid to that, so we might as well work out some kind of routine here so that you don’t get in my way.’

Miranda immediately began to bristle. ‘I won’t get in your way. I’m more than happy to spend my time reading.’

‘Good.’ He paused to sit down, spinning the chair back so that he sat on it with his hands loosely hanging over the back. ‘Because I have some business to attend to on my laptop and I don’t want to feel that you’re lurking around waiting to be entertained.’

‘I don’t expect to be entertained.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I’m quite happy in my own company.’ Miranda paused to digest this and realised that she was very seldom in her own company. Even at night, when she flopped into bed, sometimes in the early hours of the morning, she was always too tried to really spend any time on her own. ‘What work do you have to do?’ she asked curiously. ‘On a computer? I wouldn’t have thought…’

‘That I was clever enough to use a computer? Or maybe you thought that I’d never even heard of one?’ He grinned wickedly at her blushing discomfort. ‘News of technological breakthroughs do sometimes drift even to we yokels, you know. In fact, I’ll take a small bet with you that you’re the one who doesn’t have a clue how to operate a computer.’

Miranda’s face went a shade deeper in colour.

‘Mmm,’ Luke said pensively. ‘Not much point having a computer on the ski slopes, is there? Or at the races? Or in Mustique for a few weeks over summer?’

‘I—I—’

‘You—you—what?’

‘I learned everything about computers when I was doing my design course,’ she said, holding her chin up to counteract the level of defensiveness in her voice.

‘Oh, yes, that interior design course of yours.’ He was virtually smirking, and Miranda glowered impotently at him. ‘Well, wait right here.’ He stood up and she watched suspiciously while he disappeared out of the kitchen, only to return minutes later with a sleek black laptop in his hand.

‘There, now.’ He flicked it open, pressed a few buttons and the screen unfolded into life. ‘Why don’t you amuse yourself with this for a little while just while I fetch some more logs from the outside shed and do a bit of chopping.’ He moved swiftly around the table so that he was bending over her, one hand resting on the table top, the other pressing various icons until an architectural drawing of a house appeared on the screen.

‘What’s this?’

‘This, my dear interior designer, is a house.’

‘Whose house?’

‘Oh, just a little dwelling my boss has in mind to renovate. He knows I like playing on the computer now and again, so he lent me this file to have a look at.’

Miranda looked at him narrowly. ‘Now, why would your boss do something like that?’

Luke’s answer was so swift that she almost wondered whether it had been prepared. ‘We go back a ways. If you move this little gadget here, called a mouse, hey presto, you can zoom all over the place.’

Miranda gritted her teeth and allowed him to have his fun. He would be laughing on the other side of his arrogant, handsome face when she presented him with her ideas, even if the whole lot was erased never to be seen again. The last job she had done of any magnitude had been years previously, but she could feel a stirring of interest in her veins as she glanced at the outlines of a house in front of her.