Alison Fraser - The Mother And The Millionaire

Esme continued to stare at him. “I can’t think what else there is to know,” she responded at length. “You’re Jack Doyle, Internet entrepreneur and new owner of Highfield. I’m Esme Hamilton, single mother of one and ex-cleaner of your mansion. Do you think we have any common ground?”

“Is it Highfield?” he asked bluntly. “Is that the problem? You can’t bear for me, the cook’s son, to have it?”

Esme’s eyes widened at the slant he’d put on things. The animosity she felt was unconnected to house deeds and family origins.

“A little tip for the future, though. If you really don’t like a man, it’s best not to make those little moaning sounds when he’s kissing you. Might give him the whole wrong idea.”

She’s his in the bedroom,

but he can’t buy her love…

The ultimate fantasy becomes a reality

in

Harlequin Presents ®

Live the dream with more

Mistress to a Millionaire titles

by your favorite authors

The Unexpected Mistress

by passionate, intense author Sara Wood!

Harlequin Presents (#2263)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

IT WAS one of those life-changing moments. For Esme, anyway. She opened the door and there he was. Not so different. Older, of course. Better-dressed, too, in dark suit and silk tie. But essentially the same.

‘Midge?’ He half smiled, uncertain whether it was her.

She didn’t smile back. She was sick with shock. It was as if he’d just risen from the dead.

‘Jack Doyle.’ He identified himself.

Quite unnecessary. A towering six feet two, dark-haired and grey-eyed, with razor-sharp cheekbones and a wicked smile, he wasn’t easy to forget.

She struggled to collect her thoughts, only to find herself stammering. ‘I—I—I…’

All her hard-won composure out of the window. A decade’s worth. Back to the gawky teenager, cursed with puppy fat and the awful nickname Midge.

Speech proved impossible. Just as well or she might have said, Go away. I have a life now.

And he wouldn’t have understood.

He took advantage of her silence to do an inventory. Heavy-lidded grey eyes travelled from her coiled blonde hair and fine-boned face to her slim figure in an A-line dress, and back again.

‘Who would have thought it—little Midge all grown up?’ His voice was teasing rather than mocking.

Midge knew that—no, Esme; that was her name—knew that, but it didn’t help. Still, it rescued her from incoherence.

‘No one calls me that now.’ She finally spoke and, looking down her nose, added, ‘May I help you?’

Polite veneer barely masking condescension.

He got it, of course. She’d expected him to. Doyle had always been quick on the uptake. Brilliantly so apart from when it concerned her sister, Arabella.

‘Scary,’ he commented.

‘What?’ she demanded, unable to help herself.

He shook his head but a smile played on his mouth. He was laughing at something.

She remembered that of old, too. Jack Doyle watching her family as if they were interesting curiosities, unable to comment because of their respective positions, but commenting all the same with the curve of his lips or the lift of a brow.

‘You haven’t changed!’ she accused.

‘You have,’ he accused in return. ‘Very lady of the manor.’

Esme glowered but was unable to argue, considering she had just borrowed her mother’s airs and graces to try and put him down. Unsuccessfully.

‘Better than being mannerless,’ she threw back at length.

He looked surprised, as well he might. He might have been the cook’s son, educated at the local county school, but Jack Doyle had always known how to behave.

His eyes narrowed slightly before he responded, ‘Well, you’ll know how that feels soon. Being manorless yourselves, I mean.’

So he’d heard. The manor was to be sold.

‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’

‘No.’

She hadn’t thought so. More a cruel remark. That surprised her. She didn’t remember that side of him.

‘Is your mother about?’ he added. ‘Her ladyship, should I say?’

‘No, actually you shouldn’t,’ she corrected. ‘My mother remarried.’

‘Of course,’ he concluded, ‘and presumably lost the title. Poor old Rosie. That must have been traumatic for her.’

It had been. In fact, her mother, Rosalind—who had never allowed anyone to call her Rosie in her life—had been very slow to take a second walk up the aisle. Only an ultimatum from her new husband had forced the issue.

‘Is she around?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Arabella?’ he added casually.

But Esme wasn’t fooled. Jack Doyle had never been casual where Arabella was concerned.

‘No, she’s in New York,’ Esme relayed, then, after a pause, ‘With her husband.’

She watched for a reaction but there was none. Jack had always kept his emotions under wraps. Well, almost always.

‘She lives there?’ was all he said.

‘At the moment,’ she confirmed.

It wasn’t a lie. Arabella would be there for some time yet. Just as being with her husband wasn’t a lie. No need to tell this man that the two were sitting on opposite sides of a divorce court.

‘Well, I’d really love to chat—’ she curled her hand round the doorknob ‘—but I’m expecting someone.’

‘Yes, I know.’ The amused look was back on his face.

It was a moment or so before Esme caught on. ‘You’re it—the man from Jadenet?’

He gave a nod. ‘I’m it—or he, to be more precise.’

Jack watched her changing expression, but found he couldn’t interpret it. Initially he’d been pleased when Esme had been the one to appear at the door. He had always liked her. The best of the Scott-Hamiltons. Now she was so much prettier—beautiful, even—but had also grown disappointingly similar to her mother.

‘Phone the estate agent,’ he suggested, ‘check my credentials if you like.’

He proffered her his mobile phone.

Esme ignored it, her uncertain look turning into a positive scowl. She believed him but his whole attitude riled her.

‘You have no idea, have you?’ she accused.

Doyle frowned. He imagined he’d been trying to help her. ‘Obviously not.’

‘Do you know how many years there’s been Scott-Hamiltons in this house?’ she demanded with atypical arrogance.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he drawled back, ‘since the Magna Carta?’

Having never been a great history student, Esme hadn’t the first idea when that was, but it was scarcely relevant, as he was laughing at her.

He always had, only in the past there had been a degree of fondness in it.

‘What’s the point?’ she dismissed at length. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Being of simple peasant stock, you mean?’ he concluded, an edge behind the banter now.

Esme was left wishing she hadn’t started this. She was coming over as the snob of the century, and that wasn’t really her at all. Jack Doyle had just thrown her off balance.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t have to. I know what your family thought of me. I heard it from the horse’s mouth, remember?’

Esme coloured. She remembered. She was unlikely to forget, having her own memento from that day.

‘I always thought you were different, though, Midge.’ Dark grey eyes studied her once more.

Esme wanted to say, I was different. I am different. But it seemed so much safer to hide behind the class barrier.

‘Don’t call me Midge,’ was all she eventually muttered. ‘I’m not ten any more.’

‘No.’ Jack underlined the word as he noted once again the new Esme. Slim and long-legged but shapely where it counted, at breasts and hips. ‘I can see that.’

His eyes stopped just short of undressing her. One of life’s ironies. Ten years ago she had longed for him to look at her this way. Now it was anathema to her.

‘Papers,’ she almost barked at him, ‘I assume you have some.’

‘Papers?’

‘To prove you have a viewing appointment.’

Jack’s mouth tightened as he wondered who Miss High and Mighty Scott-Hamilton thought she was—or who he was, for that matter.

He reached a hand into the inside pocket of his suit and took out his wallet. From it he withdrew a business card.

It was extended with a thin-lipped smile and Esme didn’t need clairvoyance to know she’d annoyed him. She took the card but, without her reading glasses, the small print danced in front of her. Perhaps it would have with her glasses on, thrown back as she had been to her past.

She screwed up her eyes and the print started to come into focus, but not before he suggested, ‘I’ll read it for you if you like.’

This time his tone was milder, less sarcastic, but it still sliced through her. Midge wasn’t the only nickname bestowed on her by her big sister Arabella when they were children, only she’d confined the use of Dumbo to outside parental range.

‘I’m not that thick, you know!’ she snapped back.

He looked surprised, as if such a thought had never crossed his mind. ‘Have I ever suggested you were, Mi—Esme?’

In fairness, no. He was the one who’d suggested otherwise.

‘I just remember you wearing reading glasses,’ he added.

She cringed a little. Was she forever printed on his mind as a plump, bespectacled teen? At the time she’d longed for him to look her way, to notice. It seemed he had. She just hadn’t measured up.

She stared back down at the card until the bold lettering came into focus:

Jack Doyle

Managing Director

J.D. Net

She didn’t bother scrutinising the telephone number. She was too busy absorbing the rest. He was MD and it wasn’t Jadenet as she’d heard her mother say—but J.D. Net. As in, Jack Doyle Net?

What else had her mother said about their prospective buyer? Some American internet entrepreneur worth mega-bucks. Had her mother been in the dark or was she too proud to admit the truth?

‘Does my mother know J.D. Net is you?’ she asked bluntly.

He shrugged. ‘Possibly not. I didn’t arrange this viewing in person.’

No, he would have lackeys to do that. Go buy my childhood home, he’d probably said. Only technically it wasn’t. The cottage in the grounds where he’d lived was the one thing held back in the sale. She assumed he knew that.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said finally, and left him to follow her into the hall.

It was stark and bare. What furniture her mother hadn’t wanted had been auctioned off. She had tried to auction the house, too, but it hadn’t made its reserve price and now they were struggling to find a buyer.

The chequered marble on the floor was worn but still magnificent. Jack Doyle looked up towards the sweeping staircase and the galleried landing above.

Esme watched him assessing, measuring, perhaps trying to picture it with his own taste of decor and furniture.

Eventually he walked towards the drawing room, his footsteps echoing in the hall, and opened the double doors to glance inside. He seemed to be taking brief mental snapshots, repeating the process for each of the main rooms until he reached what had been the dining room.