‘How should I know? It gets a good press. I only signed on with them recently.’ It was a blessing she wasn’t Pinocchio or by now her nose would have reached right over the table, probably poking holes in the crisp white shirt that covered those mightily impressive shoulders.
‘I see. How long have you been working as a nanny?’ Finn leant back in his chair, watching the film of colour rise beneath her skin. He didn’t need that, or the way she suddenly buried her nose in her wine glass, to tell him she was hiding something. Telling lies to cover the truth.
Which was? His narrowed eyes lingered on the attenuated line of her throat as she tipped her glass, drinking deeply. That she had no idea he knew who she was and had already guessed she’d turned her hand to nannying to bring in desperately needed extra funds.
She and her partner, the pleasant, capable-seeming middle-aged woman who’d interviewed him initially, wouldn’t want it known that their high-flying agency had taken a nose-dive.
‘Not long.’ She answered his question when her glass was empty and she could no longer find an excuse to keep silent. But at least it was the truth. Less than twenty-four hours, in fact. A sudden urge to giggle had her wondering if swallowing that wine had been one of the best ideas she’d ever had.
So she wasn’t going to come clean. He could wait. Finn refilled her glass from the bottle of Moselle he’d ordered. She barely knew him, after all. She would hardly take him into her confidence so soon, and he was reluctant to force it out of her by telling her he knew she was the other half—the driving half—of the partnership.
He wanted her to trust him enough to share her problems with him, and so allow him to help her get to grips with them. He wanted those problems, and the subterfuge, out of the way. And he knew the perfect way to hasten that happy event. He had already made up his mind. To gain her trust he needed a more intimate atmosphere than an impersonal hotel suite could provide.
‘I’d like you to pack for you and Sophie first thing in the morning.’ Her attention was back on him again, her eyes wide and golden, completely without artifice, mildly questioning. Beautiful. He held them, his voice soft as he told her, ‘We’re moving to the country. A cottage just big enough for the three of us. Secluded, peaceful, a good place to draw breath.’ His eyes were drawn without his say-so to her mouth. A soft mouth, the colour of crushed strawberries and probably just as sweet.
Or sweeter. And open now. The parted, berry-sweet lips held him fascinated as he said in a voice he barely recognised as his own, ‘You’d like that?’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘NOT a lot!’ The words were snapped out before Caro could stop them.
A secluded country cottage, just the three of them—and a fifteen-month-old toddler hardly counted as a chaperon—sounded definitely something to avoid, given his despicable womanising inclinations.
It wasn’t what he had actually said but the way he had said it that had set alarm bells ringing. But to keep the nanny pretence up and running she should have acceded to whatever her employer had suggested with a calm ‘Of course, whatever you say, sir’.
Too late now, though. She presented him with a face as blank as she could possibly make it while she waited to discover what he’d make of this further insubordination and noted that, impossibly, he appeared to be smothering laughter.
‘So you’re a city girl.’ He noticed her taut features. In all probability that was a natural reaction to a childhood spent in rural Hertfordshire, physically isolated by the vastness of the family estate, mentally dominated by that scratchy old matriarch, Elinor Farr. It made sense, and at least she’d been up front about that. It was a start.
‘Come with me.’ He left the table and her eyes raked suspiciously over the lean length of him. He looked great. Nature had given him the perfect male physique, added a few barrowloads of laid-back charm and topped off the recipe with more simmering sex appeal than was good for him or womankind.
Swallowing some sort of obstruction that was annoyingly clogging her throat, Caro reluctantly followed him to the sofa and sank down on the empty space beside him which he was patting invitingly.
Evening sunlight was streaming through the windows, touching his skin with gold, glancing off the coppery highlights in his thick dark hair. Caro swallowed another lump and forced her eyes away, fastening them on the sheaf of estate agents particulars he was extracting from a glossy folder.
She didn’t want to find anything about him appealing; it would be a type of betrayal, both to herself and her darling little sister. She would remind herself of that every time she found herself watching him, inadvertently admiring the way he looked.
‘I’m house-hunting, as you know, and I’ve got the details of three properties in Bedfordshire here, any one of which could fit the bill, but obviously I need to view.’ Long, blunt-ended fingers flicked through the glossy pages. ‘A friend of mine has a weekend cottage in the area as it happens. He offered me the use of it while he and his family are holidaying abroad, and I think we could find ways to make good use of it, don’t you?’
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