being wildly attracted to someone when you had a reaction like that to a simple handshake. She swallowed as she wondered about the electrical thrill that had shot through her body.
Did he feel it too?
She pushed aside the thought, ran her tongue over her dry lips and, still not looking at him, directed her words to the wall over his left shoulder. ‘I really need to get back,’ she said, her voice cracking with nerves.
He bowed his dark head slightly in acknowledgement of her request. ‘Dornie House, you said …?’ His eyes narrowed in concentration as he sketched a mental map of the area. If it was the place he thought he could stop by the estate and reassure Jamie that he hadn’t dropped off the face of the earth.
‘That’s right.’
‘The place off the Inverness road?’
‘I think so.’ She lifted a hand to her head.
As Mathieu watched the intensely weary gesture he was startled to feel his protective instincts stirring. He reminded himself who and what this woman was, but found it hard to reconcile the predatory man-eater of his memory with this exhausted and white-faced figure who had just narrowly escaped death … and there hadn’t been a single tear.
You had to admire that. Whatever she was, she had guts.
‘You walked a long way this morning. Come on.’ She had to be tired because she didn’t object when he placed a light guiding hand on her arm.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘YOUR adrenaline levels are dropping,’ Mathieu said, studying Rose’s pale face with an expert eye. ‘The delayed shock is kicking in,’ he explained as he waited for her to swing her legs into the Land Rover before closing the passenger door. ‘Are you sure the doctor said you were OK to leave?’ he added when he slid into the driver’s seat beside her.
You had to wonder about the competence of someone who sent a woman who looked ready to collapse home.
Rose nodded, but did not mention that the medic had only released her on the understanding she had someone to take care of her once she got home.
Home.it was ironic, after she had had such a fight to leave, that she had been suffering dreadfully from homesickness ever since she had arrived.
She knew it would pass, but at that moment she was feeling it particularly acutely. So acutely that she had to clamp her teeth into her lower lip to stop it trembling. The idea of showing that sort of weakness before this man horrified her.
‘Have you moved here or are you visiting?’
With anyone else she would have suspected they were making conversation to give her time to compose herself. She lifted a hand to blot the moisture at the corner of one eye and sniffed. ‘I’m working. I’m cataloguing Mr Smith’s book collection.’
‘You’re cataloguing books?’ He doubted she could have given a reply that would have surprised him more.
‘Yes, when I’m not seducing men in their hotel rooms I’m a trained librarian.’
‘Librarian?’ He gave a sudden bark of laughter that brought a militant light to her amber eyes.
‘What’s so funny?’
He slid her a quick sideways glance. ‘Well, you must admit it’s not … well, a person doesn’t look at you and think …’ He turned his head again, the sweep of his eyes this time slow and sensual. Facing the road again, he grinned and shook his head. ‘Well, he doesn’t think librarian, ma petite.’
Why did French sound sexy even when a person was being sarcastic? And he must have been because nobody would call her his little one and be serious. ‘You appear to have a very stereotypical image of a librarian, Mr Demetrios.’ Did he make love in that language too?
Well, you’re not going to find out, Rose, she told herself sternly. He threw Rebecca out of his bed and she’s the size eight sexy one.
Was Rebecca right when she claimed being sexy was a state of mind? If she had meant thinking about sex, then that might well make me the sexiest person on the planet just now, Rose thought, embarrassed by her sudden preoccupation with the subject.
Meeting this man was going to put her in therapy.
‘I won’t ask what you think I look like.’ Knowing what he thought she was was more than enough information.
‘I try as a rule not to judge a book by its cover, but then you know all about books, don’t you? You don’t mind if I just swing by the estate to let Jamie know what’s happened?’ Without waiting for her response he took a sharp left. The entrance gates they passed through were grand but the tree-lined driveway beyond was potholed.
Rose had been here long enough to know that the estate, or Castle Clachan given its correct title, was occupied by the laird, a pretty important person hereabouts. She supposed it figured that someone like Mathieu would be on first-name terms with the man.
‘You’re staying here?’
He nodded and negotiated a particularly deep pothole. ‘Jamie raced for a season.’
‘Was he injured?’
‘No, he just … you need … Jamie was a brilliant driver, but he lacked the … he wasn’t, I suppose, ruthless enough. Jamie,’ he explained, ‘is much nicer than me.’
‘An unnecessary explanation, I promise you.’
This drew a laugh from him. Rose couldn’t help but notice what an attractive laugh he had.
They drew up on the gravelled area in front of the house. Well, actually there wasn’t much gravel left, but there were a lot of weeds, though the house itself, a large sprawling Victorian pile in dressed stone, was impressive.
Mathieu seemed to read her thoughts. ‘The original one dated to the fifteenth century; it burnt down, I believe. You wait here. I’ll just let Jamie know … oh, there he is.’
Rose turned her head in time to see two men walk around the side of the house. One was tall, sandy-haired and, she assumed, the laird; the other was her employer. She began to struggle with the door handle. Now she knew why the car they had pulled up beside looked familiar.
Mathieu leaned across and caught her arm. ‘What are you doing?’
‘That’s Mr Smith,’ she said, drawing back into her seat as far as she could. ‘I’m cataloguing his books.’ Do not hyperventilate, Rose.
Mathieu turned his head. His mental image of Rose’s employer had made him a good twenty years older than the one talking to Jamie.
‘You live in?’
Rose nodded, puzzled by the odd inflection in his voice, but relieved she was no longer pressed into her seat by his arm. It didn’t even cross her mind that Mathieu might be wondering about the sleeping arrangements and if she had guessed she would have laughed. Robert Smith, despite the fact he was youngish and quite good-looking, was peculiarly sexless and a humourless cold fish to boot.
‘You
