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Powerful, sexy, beautifully styled, its origins were as obvious as the classy sweater she wore. Either her job paid mega-bucks or she had a rich lover.
From the look of her, and what he knew of her, from what he remembered of the way she was in bed, he’d lay odds on the sugar daddy. He activated the remote control, then tossed it to her and instructed tightly, ‘Lock up after you. You’re in your old room. Supper in ten minutes; Mrs Moody held it back.’
He’d been watching the double doors slide open as he spoke, and now he turned to look at her again. Her hair shimmered under the security lights and her eyes were dark amber pools that said, Arrogant bastard! as clearly as if she’d spoken the words aloud.
He acknowledged the challenge, the confrontational gauntlet thrown down by those unwavering golden eyes with a brief dip of his head, a tight smile, then strode back into the house.
She could find her own way. Whatever else she might have forgotten—her morals, her responsibilities towards the new life she had once carried and, yes, to him—she could hardly have forgotten the way to the suite of rooms that had been hers. And she could carry her own bags.
Politeness cost nothing, but now he wasn’t even prepared to give her that. Had she been as unsure of herself, as outwardly quashed as he remembered, then he might have been able to manage a stilted pretence of polite behaviour. But this new sassy, super-confident creature with the gleam of battle in her eyes could expect nothing from him.
After the funeral, after he’d satisfied himself that she was prepared to take her new responsibilities seriously, Georgia Blake was on her own.
Her old room. Georgia flung it a look of deep distaste.
She had always hated the little-girly pinks and peaches Vivienne had chosen for its decor, the frills and flounces everywhere and the delicate white and gold furniture that looked as if it might fall to pieces if she went anywhere near it. She had felt like a lumbering elephant in a fairy grotto, but had been too unsure of herself, too cowed by her mother’s resentment of her existence, to object.
If Jason had possessed any sensitivity at all he would have asked Mrs Moody to make a bed up for her in one of the several guest rooms.
Thankfully, she would only have to make use of the room that had been the scene of her humiliation and anguish for a couple of nights at most. Thankfully again, a quick inspection revealed that all of the things she’d left behind on that terrible evening had been turfed out of the drawers and hanging cupboards. Mrs Moody would have binned them on her mother’s instructions.
She tossed her overnight bag on the frilly pink bedcover and stood in front of the mirror, running her fingers through her untidy mane of hair.
‘Mouse’ was a thing of the past. After the trauma of losing everything—Jason, their baby, the right to show her face at Lytham, to have anything more to do with her mother—her hair had grown because she simply hadn’t bothered to have it cut, and the puppy fat had dropped off her because she had only been able to pick at her food.
A final fleeting glance told her she’d do. Jason would have to take her as she was. Vivienne had always insisted they dress for dinner. How well she remembered having to climb out of her uniform of baggy tops that hid a multitude of sins and deck herself in the frilly frocks her mother deemed suitable for a young girl.
Or perhaps Vivienne had deliberately picked out those awful fussy dresses because she’d known they made her daughter look a fright, the contrast with her own elegant perfection all the more pointed.
She wouldn’t let it hurt her. Why should she? Vivienne was dead, the past was dead, and Jason—despite appearing as handsome and virile as ever; even more so if she were to be painfully honest—might just as well be.
Being at Lytham again brought back far too many uncomfortable memories, and if what Jason had said about her inheritance was true then she’d get rid of the place faster than it took her gorgeous, powerful new car to get from nought to sixty!
She found him in the breakfast room, and he hadn’t changed what he was wearing, either. So the old order had altered. Which, she thought, raking her eyes over the lean, powerful frame enhanced by his casual jeans and sweater, was a pity. She would have taken perverse pleasure from annoying him, underlining her confident independence.
‘Ready to eat?’ Did she have to look at him as if they were squaring up for the fight of the century? He lifted the lid of the steaming casserole Mrs Moody had brought through five minutes ago, along with a clutch of jacket potatoes, and found the enticing aroma repelled him.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Georgia stated, helping herself from the opened bottle of red wine, filling a glass for him, making it look like a slightly insulting afterthought, before carrying her own drink to one of the armchairs that flanked the brightly burning fire. ‘But you go ahead.’
Bitch! he thought savagely, but held his tongue. Who would have thought the vulnerable, too-eager-to-please Georgia would have grown up into—into this? But then who would have thought that that same, seemingly loving child-woman would have coldly and callously aborted their baby without even consulting him?
He put the cover back on the untouched casserole and pulled out one of the dining chairs, angling it to face her. Time to get any necessary talking out of the way: details of tomorrow’s funeral, the exact extent of her very considerable inheritance, and a lecture on her responsibilities to the resident staff if she decided to liquidise her property assets.
Instead he found himself deriding, ‘Is that how you stay thin? By starving yourself? There was a time when you’d eat everything you could lay your hands on.’
The forbidding, steely eyes, the dark, slashing frown would have sent the old Georgia running to hide. The new one was unquenchable, and it was high time he got to understand that.
‘Not thin, surely?’ With deliberate provocation she ran one hand slowly over her body, drawing attention to the pert swell of her breasts, the very feminine curve of her hip. ‘Let’s say slender.’ Her gaze was coolly mocking and Jason’s breath hissed in his throat as he silently amended ‘bitch’ to ‘witch’.
She had matured into one very sexy lady. But outward appearances meant nothing. He preferred the admittedly over-generous curves of the extraordinarily loving body that had been his for that brief time, when a combination of medicinal drugs and a hefty dose of alcohol had made him forget that he was supposed to be a responsible adult.
Memories of that amazing night, so rigorously denied for seven years, punched holes in his brain, and he drained his wine glass, wishing it were something stronger, as she told him languorously, ‘Normally I have a healthy appetite, I assure you. The difference is, I no longer go in for comfort eating.’
That made sense; he had to admit that. The kid had had a loveless, largely lonely life, packed off to boarding school and encouraged, when possible, to spend as much time during the holidays with her schoolfriend—all because the elegant Vivienne hadn’t wanted her teenage daughter to clutter up her new, sophisticated lifestyle.
He remembered arriving for the weekend, one summer Saturday morning, and finding Georgia in the kitchen, her face red with guilt and covered with crumbs, being lectured by Mrs Moody for polishing off a whole batch of newly baked cookies.
He didn’t want to remember feeling sorry for her. Or the way he’d cast around for something to take her mind off the humiliating scene he’d walked in on, telling her he was stiff from driving, suggesting she accompany him on a walk over the fields. He didn’t want to remember anything about her.
