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Now her laugh was delightful, like church bells pealing on a warm Sunday morning. “Whatever for? It’s only a flat.”
Caradoc was not accustomed to being laughed at.
“Would you mind waiting over there?” She nodded towards the verge. “I’d suggest you wait in the car but you look like you weigh a bit and I’d sooner not jack you up as well as this.”
“Jack …” He closed his eyes and turned away from her. When he’d regained himself enough to face her once more, she’d lifted the boot and was pulling a tyre from it.
Belatedly he realised that she’d also pulled all of the bags from the trunk – his suitcase and workbag, and a small black leather tote which he presumed must belong to her. She travelled light for a lengthy appointment.
It was freezing, but he shrugged out of his coat and moved to drape it over her shoulders.
It smelled like him; it was warm and soft. Finn’s eyes were enormous when she lifted them to his face. “That’s okay.” Was that her voice, so husky and inviting? “I don’t want to get grease on it.”
“I don’t care if you do,” he said with an equally desirous timbre.
“Seriously,” she murmured throatily. “Please take it back. You’re my client. I can’t have you getting hypothermia.”
“Oh, but you can?” He prompted.
She placed the tyre down on the road and lifted her hands to the lapels to remove the jacket. But Caradoc placed his broad, masculine hands on her shoulders and curled them around her slender shape. Gently, he turned her to face him. They were only inches apart. Every fibre of his body was alert and energised. He arranged the coat so that she could slide her arms into it properly, but it was enormous on her.
“I’m only going to be a minute,” she said discordantly, simply trying to break the strange hum of desire that was tracing circles around them.
He didn’t respond. His hands had moved back to her shoulders. His eyes were boring into hers with an intensity that made her blood boil. He had fine lines around his eyes. Laughter lines. Did he laugh often? For some reason, Finn thought not.
“Sir,” she went to take a step backwards but the car was right behind her.
“I’m torn between telling you to call me Caradoc and letting you continue calling me sir. You see, I like it when you say it. It’s very … sexy.”
“Sexy?” She cleared her throat and her eyes darted past him, down the road. “That’s … not what I’m trying to be,” she promised and he absolutely believed her.
“No,” he nodded slowly. “I don’t think you have to try very hard at a
ll.”
She closed her eyes to bank down on the simmering sense of desire. She was a professional. Women in her industry had to work hard to get past the stupid stereotypes and she wasn’t about to let one handsome man undo her. “You should wait on the verge please. I won’t take long.”
She was running scared. Gently, gently, he told himself, but it was with impatience and irritation that he stepped away from her. His eyes though he kept firmly trained to her face, so he saw the disappointment that briefly clouded her features before relief breathed out of her.
She didn’t look at him. Instead, she bent down and lifted the tyre as though it weighed nothing, and carried it to the side of the car. Back to the boot she went, to lift a box from beneath the upholstery. There was a jack. She crouched beside the car and placed it carefully, then began to work.
Caradoc felt, for one of the first times in his life, utterly inadequate. He could pinpoint the reason for a company’s weakness with military precision, but he had never learned something as simple as tyre-changing.
Yet this woman managed it deftly. Her face was beautiful. She concentrated on the job until it was completed, then lifted the damaged tyre back in the boot. As she did so, her leather-clad hands worked over the rubber until she found it.
“Look,” she beckoned, all awkwardness forgotten. “It can be the tiniest thing sometimes that chinks the armour.”
He moved towards the tyre to be closer to her. He could see something shiny embedded in the wheel.
“It’s small,” he remarked, wishing he could touch her once more.
“Yes.” She slid her arms out of his jacket and shrugged it off her frame. “It can be the most surprising thing, sometimes, that leads to problems.”
Was she being deliberately cryptic? He took the jacket with a frown on his face. “You did that expertly,” he complimented.
“Changed the tyre?” She would have smiled except the easy sense of friendship she’d been errantly enjoying was gone. In its place there was now just awareness. And that made her as uncomfortable as heck. “It’s about as easy at it gets.”
Still, Caradoc felt at fault for knowing so little about the machinations of vehicles.
