AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Instead, he saw a bright girl who was good at science, who had flunked her exams because she’d been busy caring for her father. But he wondered who had been looking out for her.
He remembered flitting in and out of consciousness after his recent operation, wondering who had been stroking his brow during the surreal night which had followed. The woman with the soft voice which had washed over him like a cool balm. Next day he’d asked the nurse if he had been hallucinating and she’d told him it had been the girl with the ponytail, in the old raincoat. He remembered frowning and wondering who she was talking about. A kind girl, the nurse had added, and that was when he’d realised that she’d meant Carly.
She had visited him a few times after that and in a strange way he had found himself looking forward to her visits—mainly because she always seemed able to plump up the pillows and make him feel even more comfortable than the nurses. She’d sat beside him rather primly and had suggested he breathe deeply and move his ankles around. Actually, in a quiet way she had been a bit of a tyrant, but he seemed to have responded well to her general bossiness. And then one day she’d just stopped coming, and that had been that.
He picked up his coffee and sipped it. Despite her occasional bursts of fierceness, her company had been surprisingly tolerable since they’d been alone in the house, even if she did insist on scurrying away to her room at every available opportunity. Even if she seemed to play down every womanly trait she possessed...
At least tonight she wasn’t wearing that ugly uniform she always insisted on, though she had chosen a cotton shirt in yet another forgettable shade of beige. It was not a colour palette he would have ever chosen for her. With those eyes the colour of iced tea he might have dressed her in flame—or maybe scarlet. He gave the glimmer of a smile. Even if she was the antithesis of a scarlet woman.
His gaze flickered to her hands. Working hands, with short, unpainted nails which matched her scrubbed face and no-nonsense hairstyle. Briefly, he wondered why she was content to sublimate her femininity like this. Was it because she had stood for too long in the shadow of her beautiful sister? Or just that caring for her father during her formative years had blotted out her more frivolous side?
He thought that her childhood sounded pretty grim. Or maybe it was that all families were essentially dysfunctional. The wounds they inflicted never really healed, did they? He thought of his own family as the rain began to batter against the window again.
‘This weather is crazy,’ he said, his voice growing hard with frustration.
‘Of course it is. We’re in England.’
‘But we don’t have to be.’ He put his cup down with a rattle and stared at her. ‘Do you have a passport?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Good.’ He picked up his cards again. ‘Then make sure you’re ready to leave first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘Leave?’ Carly blinked. ‘Leave for where?’
‘St Jean Cap Ferrat. I have a house there.’
‘You mean...’ She looked at him in confusion. ‘Cap Ferrat in the south of France?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is there any other?’
‘But why do you want to go there, and why so suddenly?’
‘Because I’m bored,’ he said silkily.
Carly looked at him uneasily. She’d heard enough stories about his Mediterranean villa to know what it was like. It was where the beautiful people hung out. Where someone like her would never fit in. ‘I...I think I’d prefer to stay here, if that’s okay with you.?
?
‘But it is not okay with me,’ he returned, his voice edged with a steely arrogance which cut through her like a blade. ‘You are being paid an enormous amount of money to make my life easier, Carly, which means doing as I wish. And number one on my wish list is to get out of this damned rain and feel a little warmth on my skin again. So why don’t you wipe that dazed look off your face and start packing?’
CHAPTER FOUR
HATEFUL, ARROGANT MAN.
Even the beauty of her surroundings couldn’t blot out Carly’s indignation at the way Luis had spoken to her just before they’d left England.
You are being paid an enormous amount of money.
Yes, she knew that.
To make my life easier.
She knew that, too. So did that give him the right to treat her like a portable piece of property who could just be shifted around when it suited him? Her mouth tightened. But what Luis wanted, Luis got, didn’t he? And if the South American billionaire decided to uproot to his villa in the south of France because he was bored and wanted to feel the heat of the sun on his body, then that was exactly what would happen.
But Carly forced herself to stay positive as she packed her suitcase, concentrating instead on the massive bonus he was paying her. It made her dream of getting to med school one step closer. It was so close now that she could almost taste it. All she had to do was tolerate the arrogant Argentinian playboy for a little while longer and then she would be free.
They had spent a surreal morning getting here, boarding a private jet, which had flown them from London to Nice, where they’d been spotted by a lone paparazzi who apparently spent his days waiting for famous passengers to arrive on the incoming flights. Carly watched as he leapt in front of them, shooting off a role of film as Luis walked through the airport terminal.
