A Trap So Tender. Jennifer Lewis
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for adventure, though. I’m excited about coming to Scotland.”
“You’ll win the reward if you find the cup.”
“If I do, I’ll donate it to charity. I’m not exactly hurting for money after the sale of Smileworks.”
“What are you going to do next?”
That’s for me to know and you to find out after I’ve done it. She shrugged. “Whatever takes my fancy. I’m in no rush.” Maybe she could convince him to sell her the factory for a pittance. She wasn’t sure why he’d bought it in the first place. “What’s your latest project?”
“I’m becoming interested in real estate. Sooner or later this recession will end and people will want everything bigger and better and newer than ever.”
“And you plan to be poised to take advantage of that.”
He sipped his wine. That mouth was wasted on a businessman. He should have been a pouting rock star. “I try to be ready for anything.”
Her father’s factory was centrally located in an old business district that was ripe for redevelopment into a yuppie paradise. The building was from the 1950s and looked like a giant shoebox. Until six weeks ago it had employed eighteen people and provided her father with his only source of income. But James had engaged in some skullduggery with the local government and managed to buy it out from under her dad for a pittance in unpaid taxes. At least that was how she understood it. All the workers had been laid off, and her dad was now facing bankruptcy, so the clock was ticking.
When she was younger, her dad had owned a chain of restaurants, but that had apparently disappeared. They’d had so little contact with him after she moved to the States with her mom that she was surprised to find him so close to the edge, when family legend had pegged him as a high-rolling, self-made tycoon.
She’d always planned to show him just how like him she was when she made her first million. Her anticipated triumph had been utterly destroyed by his sudden ruin. Now it looked as if she’d come to Singapore to crow over the father who abandoned her, when that was the very opposite of her intention.
Her heart squeezed. She’d grown up without her dad and she wasn’t going to lose him now. “I try to be ready for anything, too. And I had no idea I was so ready to go to Scotland with a complete stranger.”
He lifted his glass. “Here’s to the unexpected.”
She smiled and clinked hers against it. If you only knew.
Two
“These berms mark the edge of the estate.” James nodded to the window of the fast-moving Land Rover that had picked them up at Aberdeen airport.
Fiona peered out. Anticipation coursed through her body. Which was ridiculous. She was here on the most underhanded mission, yet she felt excited as if she genuinely hoped to find that damn cup and maybe even have a torrid affair with James while she did it. Deep ditches on the side of the road swooped up into high walls of grass and trees. They drove straight along this avenue for almost twenty minutes. “How big is the estate?”
“Big. But don’t worry. We’ll reach the business end soon.” Eventually, the road swung around and took them through a tall stone gateway. Hills soared around them, making her feel tiny in the dramatic landscape. “My ancestors liked privacy.”
“And you don’t?”
“Not that much.” He smiled. “A wall between me and my neighbors is quite enough. I don’t need a few miles.”
“Then it’s lucky you’ll have me here to bother you.”
“It is.”
Her skin tingled at the affirmation that he was glad of her company. She should feel guilty that she was here only to get her father’s factory back. She didn’t, though. The reports she’d read of James’s business practices had made her toes curl. He was all about the bottom line and clearly didn’t care whom he steamrolled over on the road to more greenbacks. And he hadn’t brought her here just to find some old cup. She wasn’t the worldliest person, but she’d been around the block to know he had some ulterior motive himself, even if it was just a highland fling.
The road was dead straight, carved right through the undulating landscape in what must have been an engineering feat to rival building the pyramids. High hedges loomed ahead, and once they passed those her jaw dropped as a menacing storybook castle rose in front of them.
A complex of buildings, mossy-gray stone in styles that looked medieval, Tudor, Victorian, even Roman, spread in all directions. “It’s huge.”
“It was more or less a town in its heyday. Everyone lived inside the defended area. Some still do—the estate manager and his staff.”
“I can see how a person could get lonely here.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Makes Singapore seem very welcoming by comparison.”
Fiona stared at him for a moment, feeling sudden affection for this man who felt more at home in a bustling, noisy Asian city than in the baronial halls of his ancestors. He seemed more human all the time.
Again, not a good thing.
“You must need a large staff to keep this place alive.”
“Not really. I know the villagers think I should do more with it, but as long as someone keeps the roof solid and the windows sealed, it takes care of itself. Sheep keep the grass down. A stone fortress is very low maintenance compared to a modern house.”
Someone must climb on a scaffold almost weekly to keep those monster hedges at the entrance manicured to perfection. Maybe he had no idea how much work it took to keep the place running. He probably didn’t care. It was all pocket change to him.
The car pulled up in a gravel courtyard the size of a football field. Not a weed in sight. Two men in dark suits carrying walkie-talkies appeared from behind more manicured bushes, but stilled at the sight of the car.
“The hired security. I don’t know what my cousin was thinking when she announced a reward for finding the cup.”
“She knew it would get people interested. Obviously she was right.” James climbed out of the car, and the driver opened her door and helped her out. She was starting to feel like a royal dignitary with all this VIP treatment. It might be hard to go back to ordinary life after this.
An older man emerged from the house and he and the driver carried their bags inside after a brief exchange with James. “Is he your butler?”
James nodded. “We call Angus the household manager. Sounds more modern, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yes.” There was nothing modern about any of this. Which piqued her curiosity to get more of a glimpse into James Drummond’s rarefied life. With no bags to carry, she walked across the vast expanse of gravel feeling rather at a loss. Her cute stiletto heels kept tipping her this way and that, and James’s bold stride almost left her behind by the time they reached a veritable cliff of stone steps.
He turned and extended his arm. She had no choice but to take it. She tried to ignore the trickle of sensation that crept up her arm and across her body. You’d think a full day of travel in close proximity to the man might have killed any spark of sexual attraction. Unfortunately, however, it had stoked it into a steady flame. Good thing she was ruled by her head and not more unpredictable parts of her anatomy.
The doorway into the house looked more suited to a grand cathedral. She almost expected the smell of incense and the murmur of monks; instead, she was greeted by an aroma of bacon and the distant barking of dogs.
“You have dogs?”
“Not me. I travel too much. The hounds for the local hunt are kept on the estate. They gather here to hunt and I join them when I’m around. I won’t do it when you’re here, of course.”
“Why