spoke.
“If this is another of your attempts to obstruct execution of Stuart’s will—” the hostility in her eyes and her voice confirmed that’s exactly what she thought “—please take it to my lawyer, the same as you’ve done with every other new development the past two years. Nothing has changed in that regard. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
Oh, no. No way would he be dismissed. Not with that snooty voice, not with that imperious lift of her perfect little chin.
Tristan didn’t stop to consider propriety or good manners. To prevent her closing the door on him, he stepped forward. To halt her leaving, he reached out and caught her by the arm.
The bare arm, he realized as the shock of her warm and female softness shot through his system.
Vaguely, beneath that purr of awareness, he felt her stillness and heard the hitch of her breath. Shock, no doubt, that he’d dare lay a hand on her.
“You don’t want to close that door on me.” His voice sounded rough, a deep growl in the tense silence. And he realized that the shrill ringing of the telephone had stopped, whether because someone had picked up or the caller had quit, he didn’t know and couldn’t care. “You don’t want me taking this public.”
“No?”
“If you’re smart—” And she was. They might have dealt with each other largely through lawyers, but he’d never underestimated the smarts behind her platinum blond looks “—you’ll keep this between you and me.”
Their eyes clashed with raw antagonism and something else. The same something that still buzzed through his system and tightened his gut. The same something that made him release his grip on her arm without breaking eye contact, even when he heard the rubbery squelch of rapidly approaching sneakers on the foyer’s marble floor.
“Take the call if you need,” he said. “I can wait.”
The owner of the sneakers stopped and cleared her throat and Tristan’s attention switched to a trim middle-aged woman, even shorter than Vanessa. Despite her casual jeans and T-shirt attire, he pegged her as the housekeeper. Perhaps because of the old-fashioned feather duster poking out from under one arm.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Even though she addressed her boss, the woman’s gaze flicked over Tristan, not curious, not nervous, but sizing him up. The dislike in her expression suggested she recognized him. “Andy needs to speak to you.”
“Thank you, Gloria. I’ll take it in the library.”
“And your … guest?”
The pause was deliberate. He got the distinct impression that, like her employer, she would relish tossing the guest out on his backside. And then turning the dogs on him.
“Show him to the sitting room.”
“No need.” Tristan’s gaze shifted to Vanessa. “I lived here for twelve years. I can find my own way.”
That registered like a slap of shock in her rain-on-water eyes but she didn’t comment. Instead she inclined her head and played the gracious hostess. “Can Gloria bring you tea? Or a cold drink?”
“Would that be safe?”
The housekeeper made a sound that fell midway between a snort and a laugh. Her boss, however, didn’t appear to appreciate his gibe. Her lips compressed into a tight line. “I won’t keep you long.”
“Don’t hurry on my account.”
She paused, just long enough to cast him a long, frosty look over one shoulder. “Believe me. I never do anything on your account, Tristan.”
Uttered with the perfect mix of scorn and indifference, it was a killer closing line—one he would have paid with a salute of laughter at another time, in another place. With another adversary. But this was Vanessa Thorpe and she was already halfway across the foyer, her head bent in earnest conversation with her employee.
He couldn’t distinguish words, but the low lilt of her voice packed the same impact as her million-watt smile.
It created the same sting of heat as when he’d gripped her arm … and that heat still prickled in the palm of his hand. Flexing his fingers helped. Allowing his gaze to drop below her shoulders didn’t.
She wore a little dress—a sundress, he supposed, although the milk-pale skin it revealed hadn’t seen much sun. Very little skin lay bare; this was not a provocative dress. The silky material didn’t cling as much as flow with the subtle curves of her body. It was classy, expensive and feminine. The kind of dress that whispered woman to every red-blooded male cell he owned.
At the door to the library, she gave final instructions to the housekeeper who hurried off. To fix his tea, with a side of lemon, milk and arsenic, he presumed.
For a long moment the only sound was the retreating squeak of rubber soles and then, as if she felt the touch of his gaze or the cynical whisper of his thoughts, Vanessa pivoted on the heel of one of her delicate sandals. The skirt flared out from her legs, revealing a hint of bare thigh.
Making his skin prickle with renewed heat.
Their eyes met, clashed, held, and he saw a flash of something in her face, quicksilver fast. Then it and she were gone, from the room but not from his blood.
Damn it to blazes, he could not be attracted to her. He would not allow it.
With a growl of aggravation, he shut his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. Twenty-six hours he’d been traveling. Longer from when he left his Northern Beaches’ home for the airport in Sydney’s south end.
He was tired and he was wired, running on adrenaline and fixation on his goal.
How could he believe anything he felt right now? How could he trust anything in the turmoil of emotions elicited by his return to Eastwick, Connecticut? To this, the home where he’d grown up, where he’d felt cherished and secure, only to have that comfort blanket yanked from under his adolescent feet without any warning.
Guess what, darling? We’re going to live in Australia. You and your sisters and your mother. Won’t that be exciting?
Twenty years later he was back and his heightened responses—the heat, the bitterness—weren’t all about Vanessa Thorpe.
He expelled a long breath and forced himself to move farther inside.
She’d changed things, of course. The colors, the furnishings, the mood. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous foyer, soaring to the two-story ceiling and bouncing off walls painted in a medley of pale blues. Where he remembered the warmth of a childhood home, now he felt nothing but an outsider’s detachment.
Ignoring the tight sensation in his gut, he executed a slow three-sixty and took in the matched mahogany hall stand and side table, the pair of watercolor seascapes, the vase of long-stemmed blooms. The place was as perfectly put together as Vanessa Thorpe, as carefully executed as had been her plan to snare a multimillionaire three times her age.
For two years Tristan had fought the will that gave her everything bar a token bequest to him, Stuart Thorpe’s only child, a deliberate act
