Darius Hadley was keeping his distance any thought—it had taken all her concentration not to melt into a puddle at his feet—but the more she’d thought about him, the more she understood how it must hurt to be the Hadley to let the house go. To lose four centuries of his family history.
If there was no cash to go with the property, he would have no choice—death meant taxes—but it was easy to see why he’d been furious with them, with her, for messing up and forcing him to confront the situation head-on. Maybe, though, now he’d had time to calm down, he’d be glad of someone offering to help.
Selling a country estate was an expensive business. Printing, advertising, travel, and she doubted that, in these cash-strapped days, he’d be inundated with estate agents eager to invest in a house that had been publicly declared a money pit.
Hopefully she’d be all he’d got. And he, collywobbles notwithstanding, was almost certainly her only hope.
Fortunately she had all the details of Hadley Chase on her laptop.
What she didn’t have were the contact details for Darius Hadley.
She’d had no success when she’d searched Hadley Chase on Google hoping for some family gossip to get the property page editors salivating. She assumed it would have thrown up anything newsworthy about Darius Hadley, but she typed his name into the search engine anyway.
A whole load of links came up, including images, and she clicked on the only one of him. It had been taken, ironically, from one of those high society functions featured in the Country Chronicle and the caption read: ‘Award-winning sculptor Darius Hadley at the Serpentine Gallery...’
He was a sculptor? Well, that would explain the steel toecaps, the grey smears on his jeans. That earthy scent had been clay...
His tie was loose, his collar open and he’d been caught unawares, laughing at something or someone out of the picture and she was right. A smile was all it took to lift the shadows. He still had the look of the devil, but one who was having a good day, and she reached out and touched the screen, her fingertips against his mouth.
‘Oh...’ she breathed. ‘Collywollydoodah...’
THREE
The narrow cobbled backstreet was a jumble of buildings that had been endlessly converted and added to over the centuries. All Tash had was the street name, but she had been confident that a prize-winning sculptor’s studio would be easy enough to find.
She was wrong.
She’d reached a dead end and found no sign, no indication that art of any kind happened behind any of the doors but as she turned she found herself face-to-face with a woman who was regarding her through narrowed eyes.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘I hope so... I’m looking for Darius Hadley. I was told his studio was in this street,’ she prompted.
The woman gave her a long, thoughtful look, taking in the grey business suit that she kept for meetings with the property managers of billionaires; she had hoped it would cut down on the inexplicable electricity that had sparked between them in Miles’s office. A spark that had sizzled even when he was outside on the pavement looking up at her.
Okay, maybe she should have worn a pair of sensible, low-heeled shoes, added horn-rimmed spectacles to make herself look seriously serious. Hell, she was serious, never more so—this was her career on the line—but there was only so far she could stretch the illusion. As for her favourite red heels, she’d needed them to give her a little extra height, some of the bounce that had been knocked clean out of her. Besides, Darius Hadley wouldn’t be fooled by a pair of faux specs. Not for a minute.
She’d experienced the power of eyes that would see right through any games, any pretence and knew that she would have to be absolutely straight with him.
No problem. Straight was what she did and she had it all worked out. The look, the poise, what she was going to say. She was going to be totally professional, which was all very fine in theory but first she had to find him. She’d called in a big favour to get his address but now she was beginning to wonder if she’d been sold a fake.
The woman, her inspection completed, asked, ‘Is Darius expecting you?’
‘He’ll want to see me,’ she said, fingers mentally crossed. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Sure,’ she said, a slow smile lighting up her face. ‘I know everyone. Even you, Natasha Gordon.’
Tash, still dragging her chin back into place, followed the woman back down the street towards a pair of wide, rusty old garage doors over which a sign suggested someone called Mike would repair your car while you waited. She produced a large bunch of keys and let herself in through the personnel door.
‘Darius?’ she called, leaving the door open. Tash, grabbing her chance, stepped in after her. ‘How are you feeling about the milkmaid today?’
Milkmaid?
There was a discouraging grunt from somewhere above her head. ‘Not now, Patsy.’
She looked up. Darius Hadley was standing on a tall stepladder, thumbing clay onto the leaping figure of a horse.
‘Do you still want to wring her neck?’ Patsy persisted.
‘Nothing has changed since last week,’ he replied, leaning back a little to check what he’d done, ‘but, to put your mind at rest, that damned house has given me enough trouble without adding grievous bodily harm to the list.’
‘So it would be safe to let her in?’
Now she had his attention.
‘Let her...’ He swung around and her heart leapt. He was so high... ‘She’s here?’
‘She doesn’t have a milking stool, or one of those things they wear across the shoulders with a pail at each end, but other than that she fits the description. Abundantly,’ she added with a broad smile. ‘Of course it helped that you’ve been drawing her on any bit of paper that comes to hand for the last few days.’
‘Patsy...’
‘I found her wandering up and down the street looking for your studio. Your name on the door would be a real help,’ she said, apparently not the least bit intimidated by the growl.
‘That would only encourage visitors. People who interrupt me while I’m working,’ he said, looking over Patsy’s head to where she was hovering just inside the doorway.
Maybe it was just the sunlight streaming in through the skylight above him, but today his eyes were molten slate, scorching her skin, melting the starch in her shirt, reducing her knees to fudge frosting.
It wasn’t just his eyes. Everything about him was hot: the faded, clay-smeared jeans hugging his thighs, midnight-black hair curling into his neck, long, ropey muscles in his forearms. And those hands...
She had tried to convince herself that she’d imagined the electricity, the fizz, the crackle... There had been a shock factor when she’d seen him in Miles’s office, but he’d been in her head for days and not just because he was her only chance to get back
