as if you didn’t know.’
Jo cast her blanket aside and sat up. ‘Oh, this is ridiculous! Why would anyone, but particularly me, want to kidnap you?’
‘For my sins,’ her captor said, ‘I happen to be Gavin Hastings the Fourth.’
CHAPTER TWO
JO WAS struck speechless for several minutes, but her mind was jumping as she recalled her several conversations with Mrs Adele Hastings, his—if he was who he said he was—mother!
She could only describe Adele Hastings as talkative. A child called Rosie had featured frequently in her conversations, but Jo had never been able to work out whose child she was.
Her son Gavin had also featured prominently, so that Jo was in the possession, quite ancillary to the business of doing the lady’s portrait, of a store of knowledge about Gavin Hastings.
He was an excellent son, a bit high-handed at times, mind you, a bit prone to getting his own way, but extremely capable, he could turn his hand to just about anything, which he needed to be able to do to run the vast Hastings empire inherited from his father…and so Mrs Hastings had gone on, although admittedly in very well-bred tones.
Jo had done a bit of research on the family and discovered that it was quite a dynasty. The first Gavin Hastings had been a pioneer. His grandson, Gavin’s father, had not only extended the family holdings, he’d diversified into cattle. He’d also married Adele Delaney, daughter of a press baron. Jo hadn’t researched any further since it was Adele’s portrait she was doing.
How come, though, she wondered, Adele hadn’t told her excellent, high-handed—that bit was quite believable!—son about the portrait? And how come Mrs Hastings wasn’t on Kin Can? On the other hand, if he was who he said he was, it explained the fine clothes, the watch, the cultured accent, although it still seemed incomprehensible he didn’t know about the portrait.
She looked down at her captor to pose this question to him, but Gavin Hastings the Fourth was fast asleep.
Jo sank back to her pillow thoughtfully. The light from the stove was stronger now and she didn’t have to peer through the gloom to make out his features. In repose, he looked younger, but she guessed he was around thirty-four.
Sleep, however, didn’t diminish his good looks, although it did present him as much less arrogant. Above the bristles his skin was lightly tanned, his dark eyebrows less satanic, and his mouth that could be so hard or smile so sardonically, insolently, ironically—she had a whole range of less-than-pleasant expressions to recall even after such a short acquaintance—was relaxed and well cut.
One couldn’t doubt, she decided, that, all spruced up, Gavin Hastings would be dynamically attractive.
He could also be extremely unpleasant, she reminded herself. He could be cutting and unforgivably personal even if he was being pursued by a gang of kidnappers—and she still had to prove to him she was no ‘gangster’s moll’.
Perhaps if she drew his portrait he’d believe her? Not now, of course, but at the first opportunity. As for being in a kidnap situation with him…
Her tired brain gave up at that point, and she fell asleep.
She had no idea how much later it was when she was wrenched awake by a drumming sound. She sat up with her hand to her throat and a dry mouth, only to feel someone’s arm slide around her and hear a voice say, ‘It’s rain. Good news, really.’
‘Who…what…?’ It all came tumbling back to her. ‘Rain! It sounds like a machine gun!’
‘Old tin roof, no insulation, that’s all.’
Jo shivered. There was no sign of light coming from the stove and it was very cold. ‘Why good news?’ she asked.
‘Should make it harder for them to find us, assuming they’re still looking—I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing.’
‘You could always build up the fire,’ she suggested.
She heard a low chuckle. ‘Got a better idea. Lie back, Miss Lucas—I presume it is Miss?’
Jo ignored the question and asked one of her own. ‘Why?’
‘So we can cuddle up and put both blankets over us.’
‘That is not on my agenda!’
‘Well, it is on mine.’ And Jo found herself being propelled backwards into his arms.
‘I always suspected it would come to this,’ she said bitterly.
‘What?’
She swallowed.
‘You have a bad mind, Josie,’ he said into her hair. ‘Are you off men for some reason? Is that why there’s this intense suspicion?’
‘Sharing a bed with a stranger—being forced to,’ she amended, ‘is enough to make any woman suspicious, surely? Not to mention all the rest of it. After all, you were the one who brought up seduction in the first place.’
‘For my sins again,’ he murmured. ‘But you have to admit it’s warmer like this.’
It was. It also felt—she couldn’t quite work out why—safer. Because she knew who he was now? And knew she was on the side of the ‘goodies’? Still very much suspect, of course, she reminded herself, but talk about a series of incredible coincidences!
One thing she was certain of, though, she had not missed Kin Can’s main gate, so what had happened to it?
She opened her mouth, not only to bring that up, but so much more. Did he have any idea who his potential kidnappers were? How had he escaped them? But his deep, slow breathing and the relaxation of his arm about her waist told her he was asleep again.
She smiled unexpectedly. So much for seduction. But if you could believe what he himself had alluded to, a body of evidence—a whole lot of women who found him attractive, in other words—suggested he was a much safer bet asleep.
What kind of women appealed to him? she wondered suddenly. Gorgeous? Definitely. Sexy? Had to be. Joanne Lucas?
She moved abruptly and removed herself from beneath his arm and slid cautiously onto the other bed, still trying to share both blankets. He didn’t move at all.
It was barely dawn when Gavin Hastings stirred and lay still again. Then he sniffed and frowned. His cheek was resting against someone’s hair, hair that felt silky soft and gave up the faint fragrance of—what?
For some reason, a bottle of shampoo swam into his mental vision, a clear plastic bottle decorated with apples and pears and filled with green liquid—of course! Amongst Joanne Lucas’s toiletries had been just such a bottle of shampoo; it was her hair and it smelled very faintly of pears.
Something else from her toiletries swam into his mind; a pink lady’s razor with which, no doubt, she shaved those long, lovely legs. He rubbed his jaw wistfully. Even a pink razor would be extremely welcome to someone who hadn’t shaved for two days.
Then
