top back on the turps. ‘Well, since you’ve arrived, I’ll get out of your way now.’
‘No, you won’t! You’ll tell me what you’re planning first,’ he said aggressively.
Mariann bit back her annoyance. ‘You’ll be dead surprised!’ she promised wryly.
‘You may be right, you may be wrong,’ he said in an ice-splintered voice, and pushed his hands deep into the pockets of the sharply tailored jacket. ‘Why don’t you show me what you have in mind?’
Later! she thought, hugging her secret to herself. ‘All right. Come and see.’ Serenely content to be deceiving the dreaded monster, she knelt on the dustsheet beside the stack of paint tins.
‘Here?’ he asked lazily. ‘How original.’
‘You’ve got a dirty mind,’ she reproved and grabbed a screwdriver, ignoring Vigadó’s mock-exclamation of lecherous surprise and levering open a tin. She’d cheerfully directed the decorators to some interesting shades, just for fun, pretending that ‘Viggy’ would ‘adore’ her choice. And she’d enjoyed picking out the colours, majestically arranging for the bill to be sent to the Dieter Ringel office. ‘Cantaloupe,’ she pronounced proudly, showing him and revving up her cheery Cockney impersonation to full throttle. ‘Bright, innit? Once it’s slapped on the walls, you’ll be real chipper! What do you think?’
‘Can’t say it’s been one of my life’s ambitions to work inside a melon,’ he grunted, crouching beside her on the dustsheet. His hand stretched out to her discarded boiler suit beside him and fingered the emblem on the pocket reflectively. ‘Kastély Huszár,’ he mused, flicking a quick glance at Mariann’s widening eyes. ‘The hotel…How did you get hold of this?’ he demanded sharply.
‘Monogrammed, is it? That’s posh for you!’ she exclaimed.
And inwardly she groaned. Oh, help! He might know the countess! She made a mental note to ring István’s mother and beg her not to reveal the family connection between them. Vigadó had to continue to believe that she was a simple, uncomplicated girl with nothing but empty space between her ears. If he got wind of the fact that she worked for a publisher—
‘Are you having trouble formulating an answer?’ he asked with sinister softness.
She blanched at the barbaric growl and sharpened her defences. Travel-weary he might be, but he was still more alert than most guys on their fifth cup of coffee.
‘I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she said, much on her dignity. ‘The hotel supplied me with it,’ she told him truthfully, rather pleased with her evasion. ‘It’s had a revamp,’ she explained. ‘Decorators everywhere.’
His head angled on one side. ‘Everyone knows that. István Huszár and that English manager of his have made the hotel world-famous. You’ve worked there?’ he probed, his glacial eyes boring into her soul.
Her heart began to thump. Lying didn’t come easy to her, not after being brought up as a vicar’s daughter! ‘Did a few jobs,’ she answered with a vigorous nod.
She smiled ruefully, thinking of when she’d helped her younger sister Sue to soothe a few hundred guests when their brother’s wedding at the castle was dramatically cancelled. Or when she’d packed up the wedding presents. What a terrible day that had been! She could have wept—would have done—if Tanya hadn’t been relying on her support. But the apparent disaster had brought Tanya and István together after years apart. Crises were often turning points.
Vigadó had stood up smoothly and was running incredulous eyes over her rather skimpily clad body. ‘You’re telling me you really are a decorator?’ he asked in mild disbelief.
Mariann nodded blithely. After doing out their Devon home and her London friends’ flats, she reckoned she could call herself that. ‘That’s right,’ she said, thinking she was almost home and dry. A little more proof and he’d be convinced. Perhaps some colourful Cockney would help! ‘Okey dokey, swivel your peepers this way—’
‘Do you think,’ he interrupted with a heavy sigh, ‘that you could speak normal, undecorated English? I don’t think my jet-lagged brain can cope with riddles.’
‘I meant’ she said, cheerfully in command of the situation, ‘for you to see what else we were doing.’ Hoping to convince him by sheer self-assurance, she opened tins enthusiastically. ‘Sultana skirting boards, flapjack ceiling and cane-sugar door panels with a cream surround. What do you think? Come on, be honest.’ Mariann leapt up eagerly and her big smile broadened with delight at his shattered expression.
‘Sounds like a greengrocer’s shop in the West Indies,’ he said caustically.
‘Too right!’ she sympathised. ‘But there’s colour charts for you,’ she added, disclaiming all responsibility for the manufacturer’s wild fantasies.
‘This building is part of Budapest’s historic Castle district,’ he said wearily. ‘You’re working in what was once an eighteenth-century salon—’
‘But the colours would look stunning!’ she cooed.
‘If this is a joke…’ he began in stiff anger.
And she couldn’t resist teasing him. ‘Too unconventional? I thought it might be.’ She sighed. ‘Colours are supposed to reveal your inner character.’ She eyed his suit with a professional air and let her gaze linger for a fraction too long on the lines of the beautiful body beneath. Wasted on a man like that…
‘Enlighten me as to my character,’ he said in clipped tones.
With pleasure! she thought. ‘A guy who believes in straight-down-the-line commitment with no sideturnings, who’s organised, ruthless to a fault, with no grey areas and no maybe,’ she replied, sounding annoyingly husky. Conventional or not, he looked devastating. But then his earthy, raw sensuality would fight its way through anything he chose to wear. Stopping herself from wool-gathering, she waved an expressive hand towards her kaleidoscopic pile of clothes. ‘What do mine say?’
He scanned the heap of reds, oranges and shocking pinks. ‘They don’t “say”, they shout,’ he grated in disapproval. ‘They scream in raucous tones that you’re as fast and as brash and as exciting as a fairground ride. A chameleon landing on those clothes would have a nervous breakdown.’
‘You’re funny!’ she said in surprise. She was grinning good-naturedly at his assessment, not in the least bit bothered by it because she was proud of brightening a grey world, one hand jammed into her tiny waist above the womanly swell of her hip, her long legs and bare feet planted assertively apart.
‘Hilarious. Stick your tongue out,’ he commanded abruptly.
She almost obeyed. ‘What?’ She gaped in astonishment.
Suddenly he was as close as a tango dancer, looming over her, his snazzy-suited body authoritative and slightly menacing. A faint quiver of nerves rippled from her head to her toes. When his hand enclosed her bare arm like an iron manacle again, she wondered seriously whether she could actually get away with deceiving him. Those eyes of his could penetrate flaws inside iron girders.
‘Stick your tongue out,’ he repeated softly, and Mariann found herself swaying towards him, helplessly mesmerised by his smoulderingly
