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He imagined then saying the words that were forming in his mind. The promise that they would know one another very, very well in the coming days, if he had his way. Which he was sure he would.
Instead, he nodded with an effort at appearing unconcerned.
“Perhaps you would feel more inclined to share your stories if I told you some of mine.”
The offer was not what he’d intended to say at all. But he could hardly retract it.
Her curiosity was obvious, and it rewarded his strange statement. Curiosity was good. Curiosity spoke of her interest quite plainly. She nodded.
“What would you like to know?” He settled back in his seat and tried to see this as another meeting. She was the company he wanted to bet against and he was simply getting her measure. He could give her enough information to draw her in; to make her interest and curiosity threaten to eat her alive unless she indulged it.
His smile was encouraging but it hid the machinations of his mind.
For the first time, but certainly not, as it turned out, the last, he thought of her as a small creature, being hunted by him across the fields. Their playing field wasn’t at all level, but she didn’t seem to realise that.
“Anything,” she shrugged, and slowed down expertly to let a line of ducks cross their path.
“I presume you know most of my biography.” His certainty was not arrogance. In America, he was, after all, as well-known as Donald Trump had been in his zenith.
“I’m sorry,” she bit down on her lip again. “I really don’t.”
Well, that was novel. “What do you know?”
She waved a hand through the air. “That you’re in finance. That you were born here but live in America.”
“That’s all?” He drummed his fingers against his knee. How far were they from Bagleyhurst? If he had his way, he would carry this woman straight through that enormous corridor up to whichever bedroom he could find first and slowly strip her naked.
“I don’t need to know more,” she said honestly. “Not to do what I do.”
God, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been more disastrously attracted to a woman. Her allure was her unavailability, he assured himself. Unlike most of the women he slept with, who were obviously out to meet a man like him.
“Some clients are well-known, so I guess I do know their history. But I don’t research who I’m driving. I simply take people where they want to go.”
“I see.”
He stared out of his window contemplatively. Did it change things? That she knew nothing of who he was and what he was capable of? He couldn’t have said. His reputation was well-established. If she googled him, she’d see that when he wasn’t busy running unprofitable companies into the ground he was making his way through Manhattan’s social elite.
“So?” She prompted, slowing down again. This time, it was for bits of detritus that were strewn across the bitumen. She compressed her lips together. “Looks like an accident’s happened here.” She pointed across the verge. “They’ve cleared it off though, but I’d say it’s fresh wreckage.” She eased the car gently down the road and then speeded up once more.
Caradoc was shaping his sentence in his mind when the car began to make a strange warbling noise
“Oh, darn it,” Finn swore with endearing sweetness.
“A problem?” His tone was business-like. A delay or problem was never welcome to Caradoc, particularly not given what he was anticipating at the end of this trip.
“No,” she said, flicking the indicator on and pulling over onto the side of the road. She cut the engine and stepped out of the car. Caradoc did likewise.
The problem was immediately obvious. A flat rear tyre glared at them disapprovingly.
He looked left, then right. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Yes,” she said with a nod.
He pulled his cell from his pocket and stared at it. “I have no coverage.”
“Coverage?” She lifted her face to his.
“To call Roadside Assist.”
