of stairs as if the devil himself were after her. Seconds later she felt as if he were!
‘Miss Finch!’ Jerome Towers stood at her side as she reached the bottom step.
It took all her courage to turn and face him, to face the disapproval that she knew would be in his face. Why should he be so disapproving? He was the one who had lied and deceived her. She felt an absolute fool now when she thought of the way she had acted with him, the things she had said. And she had let him kiss her! No!—she had let Jeff Robbins kiss her, not this arrogant stranger.
‘Yes, Mr Towers?’ she asked in a stilted voice, looking steadily into those censorious brown eyes.
‘Freda said you took Roddy’s breakfast up fifteen minutes ago,’ he said curtly.
Whatever she had been expecting him to say it hadn’t been this. She frowned her puzzlement. ‘Yes?’
‘If you are to continue deputising for your mother until she is well enough to return I would advise you not to spend too much time in my brother’s bedroom, no matter what your relationship may have been with him before you came here.’
Megan gasped. ‘What has Roddy been saying?’
‘He’s hardly had time to say anything,’ Jerome Towers said dryly. ‘But your own response points to my assumption being a correct one. And the other staff will draw their own conclusions if you take fifteen minutes to deliver his breakfast every morning.’
‘Why, you—–’
‘I’m only telling you this for your own good,’ he interrupted her angry outburst. ‘It’s up to you whether or not you take my advice.’ He walked past her, turning when he reached what she assumed to be his study, or office, door. ‘And, Miss Finch,’ he paused when he had her attention, ‘I think I can take having a date turned down without the girl having to resort to her mother’s illness as an excuse. You had only to say you had something going with Roddy. Unless of course you were trying to decide whether the richer brother might be a better bet.’ He went into the room and closed the door firmly behind him.
Megan didn’t give herself time to think, marching angrily across the marble tiled hallway and bursting into what turned out to be a study. ‘Now you just listen to me, Mr Towers!’ she stormed at the man standing just inside the room. Almost as if he had expected her … ‘I—–’
Her words were cut off in mid-flow as she was pulled against the rigidness of a male body, her mouth captured and parted as Jerome Towers bent his head and kissed her.
‘Oh!’ she gasped as he released her, still held in the firm grip of his hands.
He looked down at her. ‘I knew that would get you in here.’
Her eyes were wide. ‘Is that why you …?’
‘Mm,’ he nodded, his warm gaze on her parted lips.
Megan pushed hard against him, struggling to be free. ‘You obnoxious, overbearing—–’
He let her go, moving to sit in the leather chair behind the desk. ‘I could hardly kiss you out there in the hallway. Anyone could have come along and seen us.’
‘You didn’t have to kiss me at all!’ she snapped, still breathless from the touch of those firm lips on hers.
‘But I did,’ he said calmly. ‘Now, what is your relationship to Roddy?’
‘I’m not telling you!’ her eyes flamed with feeling. ‘And just in case you haven’t heard about it, the Squire no longer gets the first night of love with the local maidens!’
He raised dark eyebrows. ‘Are you a maiden?’
‘Mind your own damned business!’ She slammed out of the room, the sound of his mocking laughter following her.
Freda was busy preparing lunch when Megan entered the kitchen a few minutes later, so she took over the peeling of the potatoes.
‘Are you all right?’ the cook asked. ‘You’re looking a bit flushed,’ she explained her query.
‘I’m fine,’ Megan mumbled.
‘Young Roddy hasn’t been making passes at you, has he?’ Freda tutted. ‘He is a lad!’ She shook her head, a smile on her lips.
‘Is he in the habit of making passes?’ Megan couldn’t help her curiosity.
‘Well, he made a couple of advances towards Patsy when he stayed here last. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that isn’t the reason she’s off sick today—you know how her Donald can be. Roddy wouldn’t leave the poor girl alone, that’s why I wondered if he’d—–’
‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Megan cut in briskly, wondering what Freda would say if she knew she was in more danger from Jerome Towers than from his young brother.
‘That’s all right, then.’ Freda was obviously relieved. ‘Would you get some mint in from the herb garden out the back?’ she asked, the makings of pastry in her mixing bowl. ‘I do like my potatoes to have a bit of mint in them.’
‘But I thought Mr Towers didn’t eat potatoes.’ Megan blushed at Freda’s questioning look. ‘Just someting Mum said,’ she mumbled.
Freda nodded understanding. ‘Mr Towers doesn’t bother with much food at all. I’m always telling him he doesn’t eat enough, but he says he doesn’t see the point of over-indulging.’
Megan wondered if he had the same attitude to all life’s appetites. From the way he had kissed her, twice, she didn’t think he did. His mouth against hers had been frankly sensual, pointing to an experience that hadn’t been gained by abstinence.
But he had no right to kiss her whenever he felt like it, as if it were his due or something. If he ever tried to kiss her again she would—she would—She sighed; she would kiss him right back, she knew she would. Much as she tried to keep up her prejudiced dislike of him, the truth of the matter was that on acquaintance she found him all too disturbing for comfort.
‘Maybe he’s afraid of middle-aged spread,’ she made the same bitchy comment to Freda that she had made to her mother only that morning, although now she knew it to be untrue. Jerome Towers wasn’t thin, not unpleasantly so, his shoulders wide and powerful, tapering down to a slim waist and forceful thighs, his stomach flat and firmly muscled. No, he was a man at the peak of physical fitness, and the closeness of his lithe body against hers had had an arousing effect.
‘At thirty-two?’ Freda scoffed. ‘Go on with you!’
Megan laughingly let herself out into the herb garden, finding the mint with no trouble. She might have lived the first nine years of her life in a town, but she had soon picked up the country ways and knowledge. She and Brian had been much happier here, having room to play, clean air to breathe. It was for the clean air they had come here if they had but known it, their father’s illness being irritated by the town smog.
As she stood up she saw Roddy Meyers looking out at her from one of the upstairs windows, turning angrily away as he dared to grin at her. She would wipe that smile off his face when she met him this afternoon!
Her
