price for Lidcombe Peace.’
She regarded him broodingly. ‘I had a feeling this wasn’t a good idea.’
‘Having lunch with me?’ he queried with his mouth quirking.
‘Precisely,’ she agreed.
‘May I offer you a piece of advice?’ He was still looking amused. ‘Don’t regret what’s done and can’t be changed—that’s good personal advice as well as for business, by the way. And Lidcombe Peace was in a price bracket that could have seen you wait for years to get your price.’
Domenica pushed her plate away, and shrugged eventually. ‘I suppose so. And I didn’t have much choice. Oh, well, Mr Keir,’ she added in her mother’s tone of voice, ‘thank you so much for lunch but I really need to—’
‘Domenica, don’t go all upper crust and la-di-da on me,’ he interrupted wryly.
She stared at him. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I’m sure you do and, anyway, I’ve ordered coffee.’
She closed her mouth, then opened it to say, ‘If you’re implying that I’m—’
‘Trying to put me firmly in my place? Taking refuge behind a plummy accent and a certain turn of phrase designed to keep the peasants in their place; retreat to your coterie of privilege, et cetera,’ he drawled, ‘yes. You may not realize it, but it’s not only that. You look down your nose and those beautiful blue eyes contrive to look through me as if I don’t exist.’
She gasped.
‘Moreover,’ he continued leisurely, ‘I know exactly what kind of a tangle your mother’s financial affairs are in, and that the sale of Lidcombe Peace, while removing the immediate threat of bankruptcy, will not solve all her problems.’
She stared at him, struck dumb.
‘I know, for example, that there’s a mortgage on your mother’s principal place of residence that was raised to cover some disastrous investments your father made, so that the profit from the sale of Lidcombe Peace will mostly be swallowed up in repaying that mortgage and all the outstanding interest.’
‘How…how…?’ Domenica stopped in the act of saying, How dare you? and rephrased stiffly. ‘I don’t know how you know all this but if you think it makes me like you any better, you’re mistaken! I—’ She stopped exasperatedly as their plates were removed by the waitress and a plunger pot of aromatic coffee was put down.
‘It may not matter a whole lot whether we like each other,’ he said and poured two cups of coffee.
Domenica’s fingers hovered over a little dish of finely dusted pale pastel Turkish Delight that had come with the coffee. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He didn’t answer. But his smoky-grey gaze travelled from her glorious dark hair to the smooth pale skin of her throat and the outline of her figure to her waist beneath the camellia voile. She had very fine, narrow hands, he observed, and on the little finger of the hand still poised above the dish of Turkish Delight she wore a rather unusual plaited gold ring. Then his gaze drifted back to her mouth and he contemplated it silently.
Domenica dropped her hand to her lap sweetless and suppressed a tremor that was composed of both outrage and awareness. Because she knew exactly what Angus Keir meant and, while she’d contrived to ignore it until now, one all-encompassing glance from him had spelt it out. ‘Liking’ one another was not what it was about between them.
Liking one another had nothing to do with wondering about a man on a physical level, which, heaven help her, had plagued her again while she’d watched him discard his jacket to hook her car up to a towline he’d produced from his vehicle. It hadn’t been a great physical exertion for him, but enough to make her conscious of the long lines of his back and the sleek, powerful muscles beneath the midnight-blue cotton of his shirt.
And at the garage she’d stood silent and feeling oddly helpless as he’d made arrangements with the local mechanic with the kind of authority, not only of a man as opposed to a woman who knew nothing about starter motors anyway, but the kind of man who almost had the mechanic bowing and scraping.
Then, for some reason, his wrists and hands had specifically plagued her during their lunch. He’d taken off his jacket again and, beneath the cuffs of his shirt, his wrists were powerful and sprinkled with black hairs, but his hands were long and well-shaped and he wore a plain watch on a brown leather band. Strong, but nice hands, she’d caught herself thinking a couple of times.
But she now had to put it all into context, she realized, and find a way to make him believe that ‘liking’ a man was important, for her anyway.
She compressed her lips and decided to opt for honesty and forthrightness and didn’t give a damn how she sounded. ‘I don’t go in for that kind of thing, Mr Keir.’
‘Mutual attraction and admiration?’ he suggested lazily.
She paused, then shot him a telling little look. ‘Not with people I do business with, no. And not with people I don’t happen to like. But most of all, not with people—’
‘Men—shouldn’t we be specific?’ he put in blandly.
She shrugged. ‘All right, men, then, who I don’t know from a bar of soap!’
‘That’s commendable,’ he remarked. ‘I even applaud you, Miss Harris. But I’m not suggesting we leap into bed, only that we get to know each other.’
Domenica felt the surge of colour rising up her throat but she ignored it to say coolly, ‘Thank you, but no, and, while you may not be suggesting we leap into bed, it is how you’ve been looking at me. And I find that—unacceptable.’
He laughed, but with genuine amusement that caused his eyes to dance in a way that was rather breathtaking. ‘I’d be surprised if most men don’t look at you that way, Domenica.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘On the contrary, Mr Keir, most men are a bit more…mannered.’
His lips twisted. ‘Oh, well, if nothing else, at least you know where you stand with me, Domenica. Incidentally, I believe your mother owns another property, a warehouse in Blacktown?’
‘Yes.’ Domenica blinked as she tried to make the adjustment. ‘It’s leased to a catering and party hire company. So?’
‘Sell it,’ he said.
She did a double take. ‘Why? At least the rent provides some steady income!’
‘You may not realize it,’ he broke in, ‘but you’re sitting on a small gold-mine there. A new road proposal resuming land nearby has given several companies around you the headache of having to put their expansion plans on hold, or move entirely to another industrial estate, a costly exercise. But don’t sell it for a penny under this figure.’ He drew a black pen from his shirt pocket and wrote a figure on the back of the bill that had come with the coffee.
Domenica stared at the figure, swallowed, and, raising wide eyes to his, said huskily, ‘You’re joking! I know the valuation—’
He stopped her by gesturing a little impatiently.
