could feel his whole body reacting to the sight of her lush curves and he hurriedly turned away, because a pair of boxers was no protection against an erection.
He was staring. Becky stood stock-still, conscious of herself and her body in ways she had never been before. Why was he staring at her like that? Was he even aware that he was doing it?
She couldn’t believe that he was staring at her because she was the most glamorous woman he had ever set eyes on. She wasn’t born yesterday and she knew that when it came to looks, well, a career could not be made out of hers. Alice had got the looks and she, Becky, had got the brains and it had always seemed like a fair enough deal to her.
He’d turned away now, thankfully putting on some ancient track pants her father had left behind and an even more ancient jumper, and by the time he turned back around to face her she wondered whether she had imagined those cool, grey eyes on her, skirting over her body.
Yes, she thought a little shakily. Of course she had. She had stared at him because he looked like a Greek god. She on the other hand was as average as they came.
Should she feel threatened? She was alone in this house...
She didn’t feel threatened. She felt...excited. Something wicked and daring stirred inside her and she promptly knocked it back.
‘The clothes.’ She found her voice, one hand outstretched, watching as he gathered items of clothing and strolled towards her. ‘I’ll make sure they’re washed and ready for you tomorrow morning.’
‘First thing...before I’m sent on my way,’ Theo murmured, still startled at the fierce grip of his libido that had struck from nowhere.
She couldn’t wait to escape, he thought with a certain amount of disbelief.
Something had passed between them just then. Had she even been aware of it? A charge of electricity had shaken him and she hadn’t been unaffected. He’d seen the reaction in the widening of her eyes as she had looked at him, and the stillness of her body language, as though one false move might have led her to do something...rash.
Did rash happen out here? he wondered. Or was she out here because she was escaping from something rash? Was the awkward, blushing, argumentative vet plagued by guilt over a misspent past? Had she thrown herself into a one-way relationship to nowhere with a con man? A married man? A rampant womaniser who had used her and tossed her aside? The possibilities were endless.
She certainly wasn’t out here for the money. That bucket on the landing said it all. She might be living rent free at the place but she certainly wasn’t earning enough to keep it maintained. Old houses consumed money with the greed of a gold-digger on the make.
‘What if it’s still snowing in the morning?’
She was clutching the bundle of clothes like a talisman and staring up at him with those amazing bright blue eyes. Her lips were parted. When she circled a nervous tongue over them, Theo had to fight down an urge to reach out and pull her against him.
‘It won’t be.’
‘If you weren’t prepared to risk my life by sending me on my way, then will you be prepared to risk someone else’s life by asking them to come and collect me and take me away?’
‘I could drive you myself. I have a four-wheel drive. It’s okay in conditions like this.’
‘When I knocked on your door...’ Theo leant against the door frame ‘... I never expected someone like you to open it’
‘What do you mean someone like me?’ Becky stiffened, primed for some kind of thinly veiled insult.
Theo didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds. Instead, he watched her, head tilted to one side, until she looked away, blushing. Very gently, he tilted her face back to his.
‘You’re on the defensive. Why?’
‘Why do you think? I... I don’t know you.’ The feel of his cool finger resting lightly on her chin was as scorching-hot as the imprint from a branding iron.
‘What do you think I’m going to do? When I said someone like you, I meant someone young. I expected someone much older to be living this far out in the countryside.’
‘I told you, the house belongs to my parents. I’m just here... Look, I’m going to head downstairs, wash these things...’ Her feet and brain were not communicating because, instead of spinning around and backing out of the room, she remained where she was, glued to the spot.
She wanted him to remove his hand...she wanted him to do more with it, wanted him to curve it over her face and then slide it across her shoulders, wanted him to find the bare flesh of her stomach and then the swell of her breasts... She didn’t want to hear anything he had to say, yet he was making her think, and how could that be a bad thing?
She barely recognised her voice and she certainly didn’t know what was going on with her body.
‘Okay.’ He stepped back, hand dropping to his side.
For a few seconds, Becky hovered, then she cleared her throat and stepped out of the room backwards.
By the time he joined her in the kitchen, the clothes were in the washing machine and she had regained her composure.
Theo looked at her for a few seconds from the doorway. She had her back to him and was busy chopping vegetables, while as background noise the television was giving an in-depth report of the various areas besieged by snow when spring should have sprung. He felt that her house would shortly be featured because there was no sign of the snow letting up.
Before he had come down, he had done his homework, nosed into a few of the rooms and seen for himself what he had suspected from the bucket on the landing catching water from the leaking roof.
The house was on its last legs. Did he think that he was doing anything underhand in checking out the property before he made an offer? No. He’d come here to conduct a business deal and, if things had been slightly thrown off course, nothing had fundamentally changed. The key thing remained the business deal.
And was the woman peeling the vegetables an unexpected part of acquiring what he wanted? Was she now part of the business deal that had to be secured?
In a way, yes.
And he was not in the slightest ashamed of taking this pragmatic view. Why should he be? This was the man he was and it was how he had succeeded beyond even his own wildest expectations.
If you allowed your emotions to guide you, you ended up a victim of whatever circumstances came along to blow you off course.
He had no intention of ever being one of life’s victims. His mother had so much to give, but she had allowed her damaged heart to take control of her entire future, so that, in the end, whatever she’d had to give to anyone else had dried up. Wasn’t that one reason why she was so consumed with the thought of having grandchildren? Of seeing him married off?
Because her ability to give had to go somewhere and he was the only recipient.
That was what emotions did to a person. They stripped you of your ability to think. That was why he had never done commitment and never would. Commitment led to relationships and relationships were almost
