it. I’m not going to be responsible for leaving you in this house. What if you collapse the minute I leave?’
‘I don’t intend to do any such thing! Put me down!’ This was a nightmare. One minute she was contentedly working away at the kitchen table; the next minute she was being carried upstairs by the local plumber, who apparently thought that she was ill and needed immediate rescue! It was farcical! She continued to demand instant release until he got to the top of the stairs, then she gave up. He was bigger than her, stronger than her, and determined to do his hero bit. Well, let him.
He began heading towards Andy’s room and she feebly told him that he was going in the wrong direction.
‘I thought your bedroom was down there, leaking from the seams,’ he said.
‘No. Mine’s in the other direction, second from the right.’ She could smell him through his shirt, feel the hardness of his chest against her cheek. Everything about him was unashamedly masculine, she thought, from his powerful, well-built body to the way he smelled. She couldn’t wait to get away from the experience.
‘I do apologise,’ he said, without a hint of apology in his voice. ‘I must have misunderstood.’
‘I’m not interested in your misunderstandings, Mr Wilkins.’ Her bedroom door was getting closer and she breathed a sigh of relief. If Caroline were alive now, she would be grinning with merriment at the sight of her shy twin sister being manhandled by just the sort of hulk she had always made a point of avoiding. For the first time she felt a rush of affectionate memories for her sister without any of the accompanying loss and guilt.
He kicked open her bedroom door and Jade peeked to make sure that there was nothing unfortunate lying around. Like her bra. It was spotless, just as she had left it earlier on. The bed carefully made, her clothes tidied away. Andy always laughed at her neatness, but now she couldn’t have been more grateful for it.
‘Just dump me on the bed,’ she instructed. ‘Then you can go. I won’t bother to see you out. Just slam the door behind you.’
He didn’t answer. He deposited her on the bed, stood up, looked around the room with the same practised eye she had seen in evidence earlier, and then returned his gaze to her face.
‘You’re already looking better.’
She knew why. The colour had returned to her cheeks because she was flushed from the feel of his arms around her. The thought was enough to make her even redder.
‘I’ll just have a short rest here and I’ll be as fit as a fiddle.’ She wished he would exit her bedroom, instead of standing there looking at her. Not that she had any feeling of being mentally stripped. Despite her initial worry that she might be dealing with a tedious lecher, he was not sexually interested in her. When he looked at her it was almost as though he was working something out in his head, although that could be just her imagination playing tricks on her.
And, frankly, why should he be interested in her? He was, she reluctantly had to admit, an unusually attractive man, and she was, if she was honest, attractive enough, but hardly a Marilyn Monroe. Her hair was blonde, but straight, her features were small, but unextraordinary, and she was way too slender and flat-chested to ever be termed voluptuous. Her sister’s body had been the one that men had flocked to. More rounded, fuller everywhere, and with the good legs which they had both inherited from their mother. She had flaunted it at every available opportunity. Jade sighed and leant back against the pillows.
‘Do you want a cup of tea or anything?’
Jade gave him a saccharine-sweet smile. ‘I really don’t think so. You wouldn’t have a clue where to find anything, it’s not your house, and anyway cups of sweet tea don’t actually cure anything. It’s all a myth.’
‘You’re probably right,’ he agreed. ‘So this is where you sleep?’
‘Goodbye.’
He continued to survey her room critically. ‘No television. Is that why you were in the other bedroom at that hour of the evening?’
‘You,’ Jade said furiously, ‘are totally out of order. What I do in this house is none of your business. You came here to fix a leak, which you aren’t even competent enough to do, and if you don’t leave immediately I shall…’
‘Throw me out by the scruff of my neck?’
This situation, she thought, was getting out of hand. He was beginning to frighten her a little now.
‘Let’s put it this way; there are other plumbers around. Now, please go!’
‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ He sat on the edge of the bed and Jade squirmed into a sitting position, drawing her legs up and clasping her arms around them. She looked desperately towards the door, wondering whether she could make a dash for it. But if he wanted to he would have no trouble in pinning her down.
‘Get out or else I’m going to call the police.’ Quiet, menacing, utterly serious. He failed to be intimidated.
‘That won’t work either, you know,’ he said conversationally.
‘Want to bet?’
‘I don’t take money off a lady, if that’s what you are.’ He inclined his body forward slightly. ‘Nor do I wrest telephones away from people, if that’s what you’re thinking. No, it won’t make any difference who you call…’
‘And why not?’
‘Because I’m Andy’s brother and I own this house.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘I DON’T believe you.’
She did. Something hadn’t added up from the minute she had laid eyes on him. His clothes, his accent, his general charisma. But she had been expecting a plumber and she had naively assumed that because he had showed up he must be the plumber she had been waiting for. Of course, she should have asked for his card instead of innocently running with her assumptions while he played along, trying to pump information out of her all the way.
Too late now.
‘Of course you believe me,’ he said coldly. ‘But just in case there are any lingering doubts in your mind…’ He extracted a wallet from his trouser pocket, flicked it open to reveal a row of platinum and gold credit cards, and extracted his driver’s licence from one of the compartments.
Jade dutifully took it, confirmed his identity and handed it back to him.
She couldn’t think of a thing to say. She knew why he had come, and Andy was going to be distraught.
‘Cat got your tongue, Miss Summers? I’m disappointed. You were so eloquent up to ten minutes ago.’
Jade glared at him with loathing. ‘Why didn’t you just introduce yourself at the front door and spare us both the ludicrous pretence?’
‘Now, why on earth should I have done that?’ He stuck his wallet away and proceeded to view her without warmth. ‘I didn’t know who the hell you were, but I was willing to stake my fortune on your not being the daily help, and you would have clamped up the minute you knew who I was. No, it was altogether far more productive for me to
