Элли Блейк - Falling for the Rebel Heir

And? Hud thought. For she wasn’t finished yet. He could almost see the wheels turning behind those smoky eyes. Right, she was thinking, he’s going to make me say this, isn’t he?

She squared her shoulders. Tossed her hair again. Looked him dead in the eye and said, ‘But, since you think I’ve done such a good job of keeping your pool house in tiptop shape, perhaps we can come to some arrangement where I can continue.’

She tried to make it seem a by the way kind of statement, but he knew from the tightness in her neck and the way she grabbed hold of clumps of her tie-dyed skirt that this was what she’d come here to say.

Hud opened his mouth to tell her she could do whatever she liked, when she held up a hand, palm forward, and he stopped before the words made it past his larynx.

‘I’m prepared to buy the chlorine, the tile cleaner, pay a portion of your water bill, get on my hands and knees and clean the grout with a toothbrush, anything. I just…’ She stopped to swallow, and for the first time he saw a flutter of vulnerability beneath the resilient exterior. ‘I just need to keep swimming in your pool. If it’s okay with you.’

She made it seem as if she needed it the same way he needed oxygen in his lungs. The same way he needed to find out how to clear his head so that he could get back to work. And the way he had come out here into the misty forest with some strange need to make sure that she was real.

‘Where on earth will you find the time to do all that?’ he asked.

‘I am a fact checker for several regional newspapers. I work freelance. My time management is my own.’

‘Sounds pretty cushy.’

‘Suits me. Not so many rave parties and shoe shops to keep a girl in trouble in Saffron, so one doesn’t need a great deal of money to have a very nice life here.’ She glanced over his shoulder to what was no doubt a gorgeous view of Claudel’s elegant gabled rooftop beyond. ‘Well, I don’t, anyway.’

He didn’t give her the satisfaction of turning. Instead he just waited for her pointed gaze to rock back to his. For suddenly he was having ideas.

Her time was her own. And he had nothing but time. Maybe this woman’s needs and his could work together. He slid his hands into his pockets. ‘So I take it you can type,’ he said.

Her hands slowly let go of the skirt fabric they’d been clinging to until the red and black cotton swished about the tops of her heavy boots. ‘Can I type?’

He nodded.

‘So fast you won’t see my fingers move for the speed. But I don’t see what that has to do with—’

‘I have a story I need to get down on paper,’ he said. ‘And I am a two-finger typist of the worst kind.’

‘You’re a writer? But I thought you were some kind of flashy documentary photographer,’ she said, then her face dropped as she realised she’d given away the fact that she’d done some asking around about him.

‘I am,’ he said, letting her off the hook. ‘But a situation has presented itself that means I need to record some of my more recent experiences.’

That much was true enough. He had been offered a book deal. A lucrative one from a big London publisher. Not that he needed the money. But if that was what it took for his boss to see he was willing and able to get back to work, to the adventures he was missing out on while real life trudged on around him, then that was what he’d do.

‘I see,’ she said, mouth turned down, bottom lip popped out, nodding. Though by the look in her wide open eyes he could tell she couldn’t see the brilliance of his plan at all. The balance. The simpatico.

‘So I have a proposal for you,’ he said.

She stopped nodding. Her eyes narrowed so far they became dark slits of mistrust. For a siren she was turning out to be some kind of hard work. Hud almost backed off. But not quite. For there was something stronger pushing between his shoulder blades again, telling him he had to go through with this. With her.

‘I dictate,’ he said. ‘You type my story. And in return…’

Her arms slid across her chest to cross, creating a shield between them. He bit back the need to laugh. The woman was so guarded she put his clandestine return to Claudel to shame.

So he added, ‘And in return you can use my pool as much as you like.’

She blinked furiously, then a fast breath dashed from her nose. ‘What’s the catch?’

‘There’s no catch. I’ll supply food. A comfy chair. I can get my hands on a new computer if you need me to. It shouldn’t take any longer than, say…two weeks.’

Which was when his crew were due back in London after a shoot in Uzbekistan. And he wanted to be on the next trip out. He needed to be. For, if he wasn’t, he feared he might never get back out there again. And out there was where he belonged.

‘Am I still in charge of its upkeep?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘No need. The whole place needs a tidy up. I’ll have to hire a gardener. A backhoe. A mini-skip. Or maybe a magic wand to put things back the way they’re meant to be.’

She nodded. ‘Excellent. Happy with that. But what about after I’ve finished taking notes for you? What kind of deal will I have to make with you then?’

Her arms tightened across her chest, pressing her breasts together until she produced some damn fine cleavage. She glared at him and he tried his hardest to keep eye contact as her hot gaze dared him to even think that she might be thinking something raunchy. But the second the thought entered his mind he could think of little else.

A half hour swim for a kiss. An hour for a roll in the grass. A whole afternoon lazing in the pool and maybe she’d agree to going through the rest of Aunt Fay’s rooms and deciding what furniture and knick-knacks to keep and which to let go. For that he’d let her have the darned pool.

‘None,’ he said. ‘No more deals. Doing this one thing for me would be a huge favour, so for that you can use the pool any time you please. For evermore. So how about we clap hands and a bargain?’ He held out his hand to seal the deal.

‘Henry V,’ she blurted, an honest-to-goodness smile creasing her lovely face. She was something when she frowned; she was something else again when she truly smiled. He decided then and there that if she agreed to his terms it would be his mission over the next two weeks to make that happen again and again.

Then her cheeks turned pink and she bit her lip and looked down at her right foot, which was kicking at a small pile of dead pine needles.

‘Henry who or what?’ Hud asked.

‘Clap hands and a bargain,’ she repeated, looking up at him from beneath her dark eyelashes. ‘That was a quote from the proposal scene of Henry V. It’ll make you laugh and cry and your heart go pitter-pat. And, if it doesn’t, well then, I fear you’re just not human.’

Hud took a moment to wet his suddenly dry throat. The woman not only had the hair of a Botticelli model, the skin of a Scandinavian princess and the ability to fill the dark nooks and crannies of his subconscious with light, but he had just accidentally stumbled upon a subject that made her eyes flash like the heralding of a summer storm.

When he said nothing she continued. ‘Shakespeare. Dead English playwright. Quite famous in his time. Funny too that the line comes from the proposal scene and you just made me a proposal. Not like it’s the same kind of proposal, of course. I’d hardly agree to marry a guy for the use of his amenities—’

‘I have heard of him,’ Hud said, cutting her off before she got herself so deep into a verbal hole that she disappeared into her shoes like the wicked witch at the end of The Wizard of Oz. ‘Though I think it’s too late to bluff my way into making you think I was quoting him on purpose. A guy I work with…used to work with, said it all the time. What’s your excuse?’

‘Double English Lit major at Uni,’ she said, back to kicking at pine needles again as she breathed through her recent verbal misstep. ‘That and a computer will get a girl a fine fact checking job with an added sideline in Shakespeare and Keats and Byron quotes on tap. I’m quite the hit at parties.’

‘I don’t doubt it for a second.’ He’d be surprised if she ever made it out of a party without half a dozen new male fans. He wondered if one of those fans had managed to pin her down. Make her his. And if he truly knew what a gem he had. ‘And might I say I’m suitably impressed. You’re the first girl who has ever picked a Shakespeare quote when I’ve given one. Not that I’d rightly know.’

She grabbed a hunk of layered skirt and gave him a little curtsy. Yeah, it would be a fine thing if some guy at a party had taken this woman off the market. For though he was most enjoying looking, he hadn’t come to Claudel to shop for that kind of…what? Tryst? Crush? Holiday romance? Stormy, once-in-a-lifetime, go-for-broke affair?

This girl was witty, cautious and beguiling. It had taken an instant for him to see she was the kind of woman a man could spend a lifetime unravelling, pleasing, knowing. But he didn’t have a lifetime. He had two weeks. Which was more than he’d given any woman in years. He’d just have to be careful to remember that.

She flattened her skirt back to a less frivolous position. ‘So who’s the guy?’ she asked.

Hud lifted his gaze from the fluttering movement of her pale hands to her magnificent eyes. He raised an eyebrow.

‘Whose quotes you steal?’ she continued. ‘The guy with whom you used to work?’

‘Ah. His name was Grant, a sound guy who works for Voyager Channel films.’

‘His name…was Grant?’ she asked, her voice suddenly softer, slower, winding itself around him like one of Aunt Fay’s warm cashmere throw rugs.

‘It still is Grant, actually. Will be for many long years, I hope. He’s fine. He’s just a million miles away and I’m here, in the middle of backwoods Victoria, only it feels like he’s gone when really that honour goes to me.’

When Hud stopped talking, his heart raced as if he’d climbed a mountain, when really all he’d done was tell this strange girl more than he’d told anyone about what he was really feeling. More than he’d told his boss. Or the doctors in London. Or the editor who’d thrown money at him to ‘tell his tale’. Or any of the friends and colleagues who’d asked how he was every time they’d picked up the phone, which was more and more rare with every passing day.

‘So do we have a deal?’ he asked, knowing the time had come to bring this little rendezvous to a close. ‘Your typing fingers for my pool?’

‘Sure,’ she said, her voice still soft, still making him feel as though she had somehow wrapped him in cotton wool.

This time she held out her hand to seal the deal. He stepped forward and took it, entering her personal space, that intangible area that contained a person’s spent energy, and touched her for the very first time.

Her hand was small. Soft. Warm. Enveloped so wholly in his, it made him feel strong. Big. Commanding. It was a feeling he didn’t realise until that moment had been lost somewhere over the past months. A feeling he wanted back. He wanted more. He needed more.

After a few seconds of simply holding hands, her stormy eyes darted to his. Blinking fast. Locking. Connecting. A current seemed to flow from her hand to his. Or maybe it was the other way around.

And in that moment he saw that she felt it too. This strange compulsion pulling them together. He saw in her eyes a deep-seated desire to hold on to him and not let go.

He understood his own reasoning completely. He was a man on the verge of drowning—in violent memories, in red tape, in commiserations where he was used to commendations. And she was a bright light. Sparky, warm, flitting just out of reach.