Lucy Ellis - Pride After Her Fall

This year the feature was a one-day vintage car rally, and a famous racing driver would be giving kids struggling with cancer the pleasure of a spin around the track in a high-powered vehicle. Their usual publicist was ill, and the foundation’s president had personally asked her to do the meet-and-greet with their guest celebrity.

She squeezed her temples. She hadn’t even done any research. What if he expected her to know his stats? She could barely balance her own chequebook …

Last year they had lined up a Hollywood actor who famously had a home here in Monaco. Now, that one would have been easy—watch a few films, gush … Everyone knew actors had egos like mountains. Frowning, she contemplated racing-car drivers. Weren’t they kind of like cowboys? She pictured swagger and ego in equal dimensions. Blah.

Reaching for the eau de nil silk evening gown crumpled at the foot of her bed, Lorelei tugged it over her head. Really, she was happy to do the meet-and-greet—she’d do anything the Aviary Foundation asked of her—just not today …

She gave a shriek as something small and furry tunnelled its way onto her lap, claws digging into her flesh.

‘Fifi,’ she admonished, pulling the silk to her waist, ‘behave, ma chere. ’

Lifting her beloved baby, she buried her face in a ball of white fluff.

‘Now, be good and stay here. Maman has things to attend to.’

Fifi sat up expectantly in the pool of white silk sheets, curious eyes on her mistress as she opened the French doors and went to step outside. Lorelei doubled back as she remembered she wasn’t wearing any underwear. She wasn’t prudish about her body, but she knew Giorgio was conservative and she didn’t want to embarrass him unnecessarily.

Belting her robe at the waist, Lorelei wandered out onto the terrace. It was going to be another one of those perfect early September days, and she inhaled the briny breeze filled with lavender and rosemary scents from the garden. She most definitely didn’t want to go and sort this out. As she weaved her way down the stone steps, pulling her sunglasses into place, she told herself that whoever it was couldn’t do anything worse than yell at her.

But it wasn’t easy being shouted at, and she wondered if she was ever going to become inured to other people’s anger. In her defence, she’d been facing more than her fair share lately—and it wasn’t getting any easier. Maybe she was suffering from overload, because this morning it felt harder than ever. But Giorgio didn’t deserve this either, and the buck had to stop somewhere.

It would just be nice if for once it didn’t stop with her.

Lorelei saw the Bugatti first and her heart sank. How on earth had it ended up in the garden? On second thoughts, she had a pretty good idea …

And then she saw the man who had disturbed her slumber.

He was … She was …

Lorelei was vaguely aware that her mouth had formed a little ‘oh’ of wonder. In the next instant she remembered that she hadn’t run a brush through her hair, she wasn’t wearing any make-up and her panties were upstairs.

Too late now. He’d spotted her.

She couldn’t do anything about her wrinkled evening gown, but she smoothed her sleep-mussed hair, glad of the shades—which this morning were hiding a thousand sins. She tried to remember that even if she wasn’t looking her best she wasn’t without her own certain charm.

Besides, men were so easy.

He headed over, all six foot forever of him, with shoulders that would have served a linebacker, a deep chest, a lean waist, tight hips and long, powerful legs—and one of those classically handsome faces that made her think of old-time movie stars.

Lorelei knew better than to be a sitting target. She took the initiative and approached the Bugatti, giving her scowling uninvited guest her back view, which she knew—thanks to riding and an hour a day on her Stairmaster—wasn’t bad, and came up with her best line.

‘Goodness me,’ she drawled, ‘there’s a car in my rose bushes.’

On the other hand, maybe humour hadn’t been the best direction to take this in. As she listened to the crunch of gravel—big, heavy male footsteps coming up behind her—Lorelei experienced that sinking feeling: the one that told her she’d read the situation all wrong.

Giorgio’s expression told her to duck and cover, but after a brief, desperate glance at the older man she decided to stay where she was. It wasn’t her style to cut and run, and she’d come this far—she just needed to brazen it out. And the guy had stopped shouting, which was encouraging.

‘Are you responsible for this?’

Lorelei took in three things. He was Australian, he had a voice that made Russell Crowe sound like a choirboy, and—as she turned around and looked up into a set masculine face—he clearly wasn’t in any mood to be amused or charmed. She couldn’t blame him. The car did look pretty bad.

‘ Are you?’ he repeated, snapping off his aviators and revealing a pair of spectacular eyes—navy blue rimmed with grey, surrounded by dense, thick, dark lashes.

Those eyes. They were sort of … amazing. Lorelei couldn’t help gazing helplessly back.

Except they pinned her like a blade to a dissection board. She could almost feel him deciding which part of her to excise first. She came back to earth with a thump and tried to ignore the pinch in her chest. It was a look she was becoming depressingly familiar with of late, and it didn’t mean anything, she told herself. She would have thought she’d be used to it by now.

He shoved the aviators into the back pocket of his jeans and settled his arms by his sides—stance widened, pure masculine intimidation.

‘Anything to say for yourself?’

He was pumping out lots of frustrated testosterone, which was making her a little nervous, but she couldn’t really blame him. He wanted another man to punch on the nose and he’d got her.

He clearly didn’t know what to do about that.

She lifted a trembling hand and smoothed down her hair.

‘Are you high, lady?’

Lorelei was so busy staying her ground that his questions hadn’t quite penetrated, but now that he was turning away the last one landed on her with a thump.

‘Pardon?’

But the guy was already focussing his entire attention back on the car, his hands on those lean, muscled hips of his as he eyed the Bugatti nose-deep in the rose bushes.

Giorgio was muttering in Italian, and the guy said something to him in his own language. Before her eyes the men appeared to be bonding over their shared outrage about the car. Freed from that penetrating stare, Lorelei frowned.

Well, really.

This wasn’t how the man-meets-Lorelei scenario was supposed to play out. Her Italian was minimal, at best, and she didn’t like the feeling of being forcibly held at bay by her inability to understand what was being said.

She was also a little piqued at being ignored.

And she most definitely didn’t like being intimidated.

She cocked a hip, one slender hand resting just below her waist.

‘So, do you think you can extract it before it does any more damage to my flowers?’

Giorgio muttered something like, ‘Madonna!’

Good—now she’d get a little action.

The man’s broad shoulders grew taut, and as he turned around she felt her bravado flicker uneasily. His movements were alarmingly deliberate—as if this was his estate, Giorgio his employee and she was trespassing on his land. A stone-cold stare slammed into her. He suddenly seemed awfully big, and Lorelei knew in that instant he wasn’t amused, he wasn’t charmed and he wasn’t going to be easy.

‘As far as I’m concerned, lady,’ he said, his expression giving no ground, ‘you’re screwed.’

Her reaction was fierce and immediate. She hated this feeling. She’d been dealing with it for too long. It felt as if all she’d done lately was shoulder the blame. So this time it was her fault, but for some reason his anger felt disproportionate and just plain unfair. It was too much, coming on top of everything else.

Who cared about a silly car when her life was coming apart at the seams?

So she did what she always did when a man challenged her, called her to account or tried to make himself king of her mountain. She brought out the big guns. The ones she’d learned from her beloved, irresponsible father.

Wit and sex appeal.

Lorelei dipped her glasses and gave him full wattage.

‘I can hardly wait,’ she purred.

FROM her rumpled appearance she had clearly just rolled out of bed, and for one out-of-bounds moment Nash had a strong urge to roll her back into it.

Hardly surprising. She was a striking-looking woman who exuded a sultry, knowing sensuality that could have been a combination of her looks and the way she moved her body and displayed it, but he sensed came from the essence of who she was.

In another era she would have embodied the romantic idea of a courtesan. A woman who required a great deal of money to keep the shine on her silky curls, the glow in her honeyed skin and her eyes from straying to the next main chance.

Yeah—another time and another place this could go down a lot differently.

A man like him … a woman like her …

But not today.

Not now.

And it didn’t have a lot to do with the car.

With a media circus about to start up around him again, this smouldering blonde had a little bit too much attitude to burn. He might as well slap a big no-go sticker on that shapely ass of hers. She fairly neon-glowed with sex of a crazy, messy kind, and tempted as he was he couldn’t afford to be indiscriminate—not this close to race-start. He’d do well to remember that.

Although his first impression of this woman had been of something quite different. When she’d first emerged for a timeless instant he’d seen only a tall, delicately built girl as graceful and hesitant as a mountain deer. She’d given him pause. For a moment there he hadn’t wanted to shift a muscle in case he scared her off.

Then she’d looked right at him and headed for the Bugatti.

And right now her hands were on her hips and the glamour-girl in her was in full flow. Which was when he noticed something rather more down to earth. She wasn’t wearing much. Or rather what she was wearing was advertising the lack of anything else.

Trying to be a gentleman, he dragged his attention upwards. But he needn’t have bothered. She was clearly un-fazed, and his cynicism about who she was and the price she put on herself lodged into place—because, despite his initial impression of something better, blondie was pure South of France glamour. If he upended her she probably had “Made on the Riviera” stamped on the soles of her pretty bare feet.

For a moment she’d looked a little thrown. He didn’t know if she was embarrassed to be caught out or simply defensive because she didn’t like being in the wrong. Frankly, he didn’t care.

He cared about the car.

He whipped out his cell, punched in a number.

‘As far as I’m concerned, lady, you’ve committed a felony. That car is a work of art and a treasure, and you’ve trashed it.’

She dragged off the huge sunglasses and a pair of pale-lashed doe eyes regarded him with a fair degree of astonishment. As if he were massively overreacting.

Nash knew he was staring back, but after the clothes and the attitude he just hadn’t expected amber-brown, slightly tip-tilted, lovely … The eyes of a gentle fawn.