eyes flare with interest. She was used to being passed over. Ignored. Disregarded as a piece of generic furniture. But something about Alistair’s gaze made her feel as if she was standing there stark naked. Her flesh prickled. The hairs—the ones she hadn’t paid a fortune to wax off her body—stood up. Her breasts shifted against the lace cups of her bra, as if to say, look at me!
‘Is this your own shop?’
Clem resented the question; he was only asking it because he knew for a fact it wasn’t her shop. The Dougal McCrae Rare Books sign above the door was a dead giveaway. He was turning the screws on her self-esteem. Reminding her she was never going to be anything more than an employee who could be sacked without notice. Her dreams of owning her own shop were exactly that—dreams. Silly little fantasies that would never come true, not while she had the responsibility of her half-brother to contend with. ‘My boss owns it,’ she said. ‘Dougal McCrae.’
‘Can you clear some leave with him?’
‘No.’
His finger hovered over the phone. ‘You sure about that?’
Clem ground her teeth. Just as well she liked yoghurt and fruit smoothies because at this rate she would be living on them for the rest of her life. ‘I don’t have any time owed to me.’ Not quite true. She wasn’t the going on holiday type. There didn’t seem much point paying heaps of money to go away by herself to read. She could do that at home.
‘If money is a problem—’
‘It isn’t.’ Clem would rather die than admit she was sailing a little close to the wind this month. So close to the wind she was practically living on air.
He put his phone into his trouser pocket. ‘I’ll give you twenty-four hours to get your affairs in order. I’ll be here this time tomorrow to collect you. Bring what you need for the next two or three days. A week at the max.’
A week? In Alistair Hawthorne’s brooding company? Not going to happen. ‘But where are you going? If you don’t know where your stepsister is then where will you start looking for her?’
‘I have reason to believe she’s travelling through the French Riviera.’
‘As you do when you’re sixteen and have money to burn,’ Clem muttered.
‘She is currently burning her way through my money, with able assistance from your brother, which I intend to bring to a stop as soon as possible.’ He gave her a brisk nod. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Clem strode to the door after his tall figure. ‘Did you hear what I said? I’m not going with you. Not for one minute, let alone a week.’
He turned before she had stopped walking, which meant she cannoned right into the hard wall of his body. Oomph. The shock of his hands on her arms as he steadied her was like being shot through with an electric current. The sensation of his touch travelled from her forearms to her toes and back again. Fizz-whizz-sizzle. She had never touched him before. It felt strange...excitingly strange...to have her hands pressed flat against that rock-hard chest, his smoothly ironed business shirt the only barrier between her flesh and his.
Clem brought her gaze up to his to find him looking at her with a frown. ‘You can let go of me now.’ She was annoyed her voice sounded so husky. As if she was unnerved by his closeness or something. Well, maybe she was. A little bit. He was so...so arrantly masculine. Not in a brutish, knuckle-dragging way, but in a cultured man-about-town way that was disturbingly attractive. The clean-shaven skin, the casually styled hair with those finger-mark grooves in amongst the dark brown strands, the alluring cologne with the enigmatic base notes and the freshly laundered clothes were a potent package of metropolitan, made-it-big-time manhood.
His fingers tightened on her forearms for a moment and then fell away. He stepped back as if she had suddenly emitted a skin-melting radiant heat. ‘I won’t take no for an answer, Clementine. I want you with me tomorrow otherwise the police get involved. Understood?’
Clem had a thing about her full name. She hated it. Loathed it. Resented having been labelled with it for the past twenty-six years. She had suffered years of people singing Oh My Darling Clementine within her hearing until she’d wanted to stomp and scream with frustration and embarrassment. But, whenever she made a fuss, invariably people insisted on calling her by it. She had thought about switching to her middle name but that was even worse. She told no one that. No one. Which was another reason she didn’t travel abroad. No immigration official could resist commenting on the name on her passport.
She fixed Alistair with a look. ‘Call me Clem or Ms Scott.’
His brows lifted ever so slightly. ‘Very well then, Ms Scott.’ He gave her a mocking salute. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Ciao.’
* * *
Alistair pulled down the seatbelt on his hire car, clicking it into place. While he resented the time off work, there was something eminently appealing about taking Clementine Scott with him on this wild goose chase. She had changed. A lot. He almost hadn’t recognised her...apart from those flashing brown eyes and pertly set mouth. At sixteen she had shown a faint promise of future beauty—a beauty that had stirred him back then much more than he wanted to admit. But he had been unprepared for just how beautiful she had become. Not the sort of beauty that was in your face, but a quiet, understated beauty. A beauty that snuck up on you and completely stole your breath.
Gone was the awkward, overweight teenager with the bad skin and bad temper. She still had the temper but her body more than made up for that. Lush curves her dark, conservative clothing couldn’t hide. Skin that glowed, wavy, honey-brown hair that was styled and artfully highlighted. She hadn’t worn much in the way of make-up but for some reason it made her all the more fascinating to look at. Those tawny-brown eyes with their frame of thick lashes and prominent brows reminded him of pools of honey dusted with tiny iron filings.
But it was her mouth that had kept drawing his gaze. Her lips were rosy and full, the Cupid’s bow arch of her top lip and the soft pillow of her bottom lip making every male hormone in his body heat and hum and honk with lust.
Getting involved with Clementine Scott was not on his agenda. Not in this lifetime or the next. Why would he get involved with the daughter of the woman who had destroyed and desecrated his mother’s last months of life? Brandi whatever-her-last-name-was-now had hooked up with his father ten years ago while Alistair’s mother had been in a palliative-care hospital. Brandi had brazenly moved in with her two children and sponged off his father during a vulnerable time. Not that he didn’t hold his father largely responsible for his behaviour, but Brandi and her badly behaved brats had caused Alistair enough grief without inviting them to dish out more.
Do. Not. Go. There.
Even if Clementine was far more attractive than he’d been expecting. Even if she’d made his body light up like a furnace when she’d looked at him with that scornful arch of her brow and those flashing eyes. Even if he had to call on every bit of willpower he possessed and then some.
He was going to get his stepsister back and packed away to boarding school where she belonged. Harriet was not his responsibility. She wasn’t—strictly speaking—his father’s either. But, until her mother came back to claim her, Alistair was left holding the baby, so to speak.
Not a choice.
A duty.
And of course there was the little matter of his car. He’d only
