8 Magnificent Millionaires. Cathy Williams
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‘What if I’m in the mood for some conversation?’ he asked idly, his deep, penetrating gaze drifting over her features. Even with that stark white dressing peering out from under her unruly curls, her face was bewitching, Adrian thought hotly. Her pretty mouth had a naturally gorgeous pout to it and her cute retroussé nose was probably the envy of all her friends. But when it came to her eyes, those long-lashed sapphire-blue orbs that excited him with the merest glance…Well, if he were a poet instead of a fiction writer, he’d write poems to her beauty till the day he died. Feeling the fragile bones of her wrist beneath his fingers, he tightened his hold a fraction longer than necessary before letting go, just to remind himself what touching her could do to his already-heightened senses.
‘Did Kate ever join you for dinner?’ Her voice sounded a little breathless and with an undeniable throb of pleasure Adrian knew that his touch had been the cause.
‘No. She was a busy little body who liked to get on with her work so I never asked her.’
‘So you would have…asked her, I mean, if she’d been predisposed?’
‘Suddenly I’m in uncharted waters, Liadan. What exactly are you getting at?’
‘I’m your housekeeper, Adrian, not your dinner guest. It’s best we keep things clear, don’t you think?’
For a moment his expression was as implacable as iron. Then in the next second his facial muscles seemed to visibly relax and he issued her with a brief but slightly weary smile. ‘You’re right, of course. Thank you for the timely reminder.’
Knowing that she had been the cause of his sudden return to formality and realising it was probably too late to rescind, Liadan reluctantly left him alone to go and see to the dinner. But as she returned to the kitchen she was unable to easily dismiss the powerful longing that stirred inside her—even when she crossly told herself it was utterly and irrevocably futile.
Later that evening, long after Liadan had gone to bed, Adrian pulled out a single drawer in his writing desk and extracted the slim black volume that lay there. Flicking through its thickly embossed pages, he frowned down at an address and telephone number that he’d inscribed there long ago. His mind made up on what he was going to do, he picked up the telephone and started to dial.
The sun streaming into her room was too bright, like an upturned can of daffodil-yellow paint exploding onto a cream carpet. It was an assault on the senses—an abomination. Her head throbbing, Liadan groaned, got out of bed on legs that felt like rubber and irritably closed the offending gap between the curtains.
‘Liadan! Are you in there?’
A loud rapping on the door followed Adrian’s harshly raised voice making Liadan freeze where she stood as realisation dawned. What on earth did she think she was doing, going back to bed? It was seven-thirty in the morning, her clock said so, and she should have been up at least two hours earlier to lay the fire in Adrian’s study. Grabbing her robe off the bed, she hastily shoved her arms into it and opened the door.
Adrian glowered. ‘You scared the hell out of me! What’s wrong? Does your head hurt?’
Not wanting to admit that it did, that she was surely suffering from some kind of delayed reaction to her impromptu detour into the ditch, that her whole body felt as though she’d been knocked down by a marauding elephant, Liadan grimaced. ‘I’ll be okay in a minute. I’m sorry I overslept. Just give me a chance to jump in the shower and I’ll—’
‘Get back into bed.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve seen corpses with more colour than you.’
Not mincing his words or caring whether she was offended or not, Adrian strode menacingly into the room as Liadan backed feebly away towards her tumbled bed. One glance at the jumbled up bedclothes told Adrian what he’d already suspected. She’d had a bad night, a terrible one, most likely. Her pale skin looked almost translucent this morning even in the dimmed light of the room, and there were dark, telling circles beneath her drowsy eyes. He could have kicked himself for allowing her downstairs yesterday, never mind allowing her to prepare lunch and dinner for him.
‘Get back into bed and stay there. I’m calling out the doctor to come and check you over. I’d take you straight to the hospital if you didn’t look so damned incapable of putting one foot in front of the other right now!’
‘I probably look worse than I feel.’
Desperately trying to convince him that she wasn’t as feeble as she appeared, Liadan sank back down onto the bed without even realising she’d automatically done so. God, she was tired! Perhaps if she did allow herself to catch up a little with some shut-eye she would feel more like herself later on. Oh, why did this have to happen now, when she was just getting into the swing of her housekeeping role? Now Adrian would have to disrupt his schedule to tend to her and that was the last thing she wanted!
‘You and I aren’t going to stay friends for very long if you insist on lying to me, Liadan.’ Adrian’s dark gaze was ominously threatening and Liadan took a very big gulp. Was she his friend? Or was he just using a figure of speech to lure her into co-operating with his insistence that she stay in bed?
‘I—I didn’t want to let you down. My head’s throbbing a bit but it’s not bad. I think I feel worse because I didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all.’
‘Get beneath the covers. Come on, be quick about it, I want to phone the doctor.’
‘No doctor—please!’ Her blue eyes beseeched him as she threw off her robe and swung the slender legs that were hidden beneath her long white nightgown onto the bed. As she settled herself Adrian tidied the jumbled bedclothes and remade the bed. When he’d plumped up her pillows, he stood back to examine her pale, unhappy face as she stared up at him.
‘You do not move from that bed unless it’s to go to the bathroom; do I make myself clear?’
‘I’m twenty-seven years old, not a child in kindergarten!’ Her retort was mutinous and for some reason Adrian’s heart squeezed unexpectedly.
‘Right now you’re not in a position to make intelligent decisions for yourself so I’m temporarily taking charge. Where did you get that nightgown, by the way? Your great-grandmother’s attic?’
As she saw the unexpected humour in his eyes Liadan’s heart did a pirouette as perfect as any prima ballerina’s inside her chest. But then irritation surfaced, quickly squashing the warmer emotion. She hadn’t bought the long antique nightdress to titillate anyone; it kept her warm and made her feel secure alone at night in her bed in the cottage. And what right did he have to criticise her nightwear anyway?
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You clearly have no idea how much old-fashioned Victorian nightgowns on young, sexy, blue-eyed red-heads turn me on.’ His expression was no longer humorous, but quietly, deadly serious, and Liadan closed her mouth on the follow-up retort she’d been going to make. Suddenly the air in the room seemed thick and heavy and disturbingly she felt as if she were melting into the mattress beneath her. Unconsciously wetting her lips, she raised her big blue eyes to nervously meet Adrian’s penetrating gaze. ‘My hair isn’t red. My mother said the colour was more like strawberry-blonde.’
‘Or red-gold…like autumn leaves.’
‘That’s the writer in you.’
‘No, Liadan.’ His voice husky, Adrian’s smile was dangerously seductive. ‘That’s the man in me.’
It was almost uncanny how right at that instant the pain in her head seemed to disappear. Instead, a new, far more delightful sensation was rippling through her body, making her feel as if she were floating on a warm, sensuous sea, and she was no longer weighed down by tiredness. On the contrary, she was gloriously, vibrantly awake.
‘I’ll try and get some sleep. Just an hour or two, then I should