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Built up suburban ugliness gave way to fields and pastures. Green grass met blue sky and even Caradoc, who denied his British heritage at every opportunity, felt a stirring of something in the pit of his stomach.
For a brief time in his life, this had been home. Before his mother had discovered Gower’s numerous affairs and left the marriage for a film producer named Max, Caradoc had lived –presumably happily – in a mansion amongst these verdant hills. He couldn’t remember that time, but he’d seen photographs.
The memory was like sharp glass in his skin.
He didn’t like to think of that day.
At nineteen, he hadn’t deserved to come home and find his mother half dead, overloaded on a near-lethal combination of prescription medications. She’d been foaming at the mouth, and her saliva had bubbled over the photographs. Pictures from his childhood. Baby Caradoc, a younger Gower, and his mother Sasha, glamorous and adoring.
Sasha had eventually recovered. Caradoc had not. The wounds of rejection were scored in his soul, and a few conciliatory visits with a fading Gower would not heal them over.
Nothing could do that.
If it weren’t for the circumstances he was in, would he have been so distracted by the woman at the wheel of the powerful luxury car? Or was it only that he was in desperate need of an alternative focus? Her gentle fragrance had filled its interior now, surrounding him in a tantalising web of sensuality.
She wore her hair in a bun at the nape of her head, but a tendril had escaped. It ran like a vine down her fine, swan-like neck, curling gently and vibrant against the creaminess of her skin.
He wondered how long her hair was. It was difficult to tell when it was pulled back, but he liked to imagine it fell halfway down her back. If she were naked it would be glorious, like a Titian masterpiece against her milky flesh.
He flicked his eyes away, but his body had charged up a gear. His blood was beginning to thrum with the promise of physical satisfactions.
What was she like? A woman who shied away from the indulgence of pleasure for pleasure’s sake? Or was she more like him? A woman who was open to brief interludes of sex so long as it was consensual and safe?
Would she come to him easily? Or would he need to pursue her? To seduce her? Either option filled him with the heady promise of anticipation. For both would bring about the same result. Her, in his bed, her legs spread in invitation, her hair fanned against the crisp white pillows.
Though he didn’t know it, he smiled, and it transformed his face. He went from good-looking to stunning and Finn just happened to glance at him at that exact moment.
Caradoc flicked his gaze towards her and their eyes met in the mirror. His chest flickered with the beat of certainty.
Caradoc Moore made a living placing bets, and he would bet his last dollar on the fact that he would take this woman and make her body his.
And Caradoc Moore was almost always right.
CHAPTER TWO
He deliberately held her gaze until she was forced to look back at the traffic. He could see a delicate pulse point firing in her throat and it brought him pleasure.
“You must work odd hours,” he drawled, his Boston accent deep and husky.
“Yes.”
She was running scared! Not of him, but of the magnetic attraction that had begun to throb heavily between them. It had caught her off guard. Good. He had the advantage.
Gently, gently, he reminded himself. She was not one of his errant CEOs being raked over the coals. Nor was she one of the women he usually went for; women who were every bit as hungry for quick gratification as he was.
“Do you ordinarily take assignments such as this?”
Again, her eyes flew to his in the mirror. Had he ever seen any quite so green? They were like moss, or fresh-cut lawn.
“Out of London, I mean.”
“Oh.” She blinked back to the road. It was getting dark now; dusk light surrounded the car. “Sometimes.”
She was being deliberately evasive. It was a technique people employed without realising it, and it was one of the most obvious red-flags of weakness. Caradoc saw such verbal brevity as a desperate plea to back off, and therefore he never did.
“It must make a personal life difficult.”
Her lips formed a perfect circlet of surprise and her fingers wrapped around the wheel with a sound of leather on leather. His arousal jerked in response. “I don’t see that’s your place to ask,” she said finally, stiffly.
