the night before, Harvey had finally remembered his obligations at a time when her hair looked like a bird’s nest and her face hadn’t woken up. Of course it wouldn’t have mattered if it had just been Harvey finding her but he’d had to go and bring Travis Black too! Talk about adding insult to injury.
Beth nerved herself to glance at Travis. He was wearing jeans and an open-necked cream shirt. He was freshly shaved and the black hair was still damp from the shower. Narrow-waisted and lean-hipped with shoulders broad enough for even the most picky female, his aura of maleness was overwhelming. She felt at such a disadvantage that speech seemed to have deserted her. She swallowed hard, wishing she was a natural wit.
Travis didn’t seem to have noticed. Or maybe he thought she was always this gormless. Beth tried to think of something to say and failed miserably.
‘I wasn’t sure if you took tea or coffee first thing.’ Travis nodded to the contents of the tray. There was a mug of both along with sugar, milk and a small plate of plain biscuits. ‘Breakfast will be ready in half an hour, OK?’
‘Oh, please, don’t go to any trouble. I’ll just phone the agent guy if you give me his number and get out of your hair. I’ve imposed on you enough.’ Aware she was babbling, Beth came to an abrupt halt. From not getting started, now she couldn’t stop. He must be wondering what he’d taken on.
Deep grey eyes surveyed her unblinkingly. ‘I’ve already talked to John and he’s meeting us at the cottage at eleven. Hash browns or sauté potatoes with your cooked breakfast?’
‘What?’ He was close enough for her to scent his male warmth and the faintest tang of delicious aftershave. It was doing crazy things to her hormones. ‘Oh, hash browns, please,’ she managed weakly. Control. This was all about control.
He nodded, placing the tray on the bedside cabinet before walking to the door. Harvey trotted along with him. Clearly the big dog had decided that as she was alive and well he’d rather get back to his canine companions while the going was good.
Once the door had closed behind the pair of them, Beth leapt out of bed and inspected her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She groaned. The man was forever destined to see her looking as though she had been pulled through a hedge backwards.
Not that it mattered, she told herself firmly in the next moment. Of course it didn’t. Travis Black was nothing to her and after today she would probably only catch a glimpse of his car, if anything, as it passed in the lane outside Herb Cottage. It was just that in spite of her life being a shambles she still had her self-respect and pride in her appearance.
She grimaced at the face in the mirror and turned away, walking back into the bedroom and drinking her coffee at the bedroom window. The room was situated at the back of the house and the view outside was tremendous. The grounds belonging to Travis were extensive and well cared for, smooth green lawns and mature trees and shrubs competing with large flowerbeds which were a riot of colour in the bright sunlight. But beyond the dry stone wall which bordered the property there was a rolling vista of trees, fields and hedges which stretched for miles, hills and valleys losing their separate identity as they stretched into infinity.
‘Gorgeous.’ Beth breathed out the word, her eyes focusing on a little flock of long-tailed tits flitting delicately in the branches of one of the beech trees close to the house. There was all the peace and tranquillity you could ever wish for. Which made it all the more surprising somehow that Travis lived here, albeit only part-time. He gave the impression of being a man who would always want to keep his finger on the pulse and be where the action was.
And then she frowned to herself. She didn’t usually make assumptions about people and yet she couldn’t seem to stop where Travis was concerned. Mentally shaking the unsettling feeling away, she finished the coffee and went into the bathroom for a shower. She’d feel better when she looked human again.
Twenty minutes later she made her way downstairs, her hair a shining curtain either side of her face and smelling of apple blossom from the shampoo she’d found in the bathroom cabinet. Without any perfume or even so much as a lip gloss in the way of make-up, it was the best she could do, she thought ruefully. In fact she felt remarkably bohemian with bare feet and a bare face, not to mention her lack of under-clothes under the jogging bottoms and T-shirt. She always dressed very smartly for work, even when she was going on site—donning wellington boots and the big shapeless cagoule she kept in the car, she made sure the clothes beneath were immaculate.
Power dressing, Keith had used to call it. Not exactly in a nasty way but with some amusement. She had countered this by insisting that in the male dominated world of her profession the image she projected was all important. Her blonde hair, blue eyes and feminine curves were enough to cause some men to doubt her brain power—she wasn’t going to dress girly-girly to give them more ammunition. Not that they ever made the same mistake twice, she thought grimly. Not by the time she’d finished with them.
In a repeat of the night before, Travis was standing at the stove as she entered the kitchen, the three dogs spread out at his feet. Beth forced her voice into bright and breezy mode. ‘That smells lovely.’
He smiled. Beth wondered why it was that when some men smiled they just smiled, and with others it was like pow. Travis’s smile was a definite pow plus.
‘I thought we’d eat in here again, if that’s OK?’ he said easily. ‘I do actually have a dining room, believe it or not, but this is more…relaxed.’
Was that another way of saying this was in no way, shape or form anything remotely resembling a date and she mustn’t get the wrong idea about his hospitality? Beth sat down at the kitchen table. If so, that suited her just fine. ‘With a kitchen as nice as this one I should think you eat in here all the time,’ she said carefully. ‘I would.’
‘Quite a bit,’ he said, forking bacon into a dish.
There was already a coffee-pot, orange juice, toast and preserves on the table. Now Travis deftly placed dishes containing scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, fried tomatoes, hash browns and various other items of food alongside them. Beth thought there was enough to feed an army. She gazed at it in alarm.
‘Help yourself.’ He joined her at the table and immediately her senses tingled at his nearness. Which was annoying, really annoying. Especially as he was totally laid-back.
‘Thanks.’ For the last few months she hadn’t had anything of an appetite and had had to force herself to eat, often as not. It was with some surprise that she suddenly found she was quite hungry. She piled up her plate and began eating.
The food tasted as good as it looked. The sausages and bacon were crisp where they should be crisp but juicy where they needed to be. The rest of the breakfast was also perfect.
Beth had just popped the last morsel of egg in her mouth and leant back in her chair, feeling utterly replete, when she became aware that Travis was staring at her with unconcealed fascination. But not the ‘I fancy you like mad’ kind as his words informed her when he said, ‘For such a tiny little thing you can certainly pack it away when you want to, can’t you?’
She wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or an insult. Warily she said, ‘It must be the country air; I don’t usually eat much, actually. Little and often suits me best.’
‘It wasn’t a criticism.’
His smoky voice held amusement and she felt herself flush. ‘I didn’t think it was.’ She met the grey gaze head-on.
‘No?’ His brows rose mockingly.
