drive staring after him.
‘Perhaps he has a pony I can ride,’ Martha enthused, slipping a warm hand, trembling with excitement and anticipation, into Caroline’s.
‘Not without a hat, Martha,’ she told her, squeezing her hand.
‘Perhaps he has hats too, like the riding school. Does he have children?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Caroline murmured; in fact she’d bet her life savings he had no one warm and cuddly in his life. He looked and sounded the sort who got more pleasure out of thrashing a wild stallion around the countryside than bouncing a child on his knee.
He was back almost immediately, with a young girl groom in tow, and Caroline could hear the instructions he was rapping out to her as they approached across the gravel.
‘Keep her away from Blaize. Show her the foals and Misty and on no account let her mount any of them. Watch her like a hawk and keep her away from the house.’
Caroline felt her blood run cold and prayed Martha didn’t pick up on the hostility in his tone. But Martha was so excited that she wouldn’t even have noticed if a thunderbolt landed at her feet. She skipped happily away with Karen, the young groom, who was giving little Martha a wide grin of welcome which made Caroline feel a whole lot better. She reached into the car for her bag with her sketching gear and locked the car after her, which didn’t go unnoticed by the glaring Frazer. He obviously thought it an insult to his hospitality.
‘Force of habit,’ she returned to that look of disapproval.
‘Sign of the times,’ he muttered in return and turned to the house.
‘I’m really sorry about bringing Martha, Mr Frazer,’ Caroline said as she followed him a pace or two behind, trying to catch up.
‘Ellis,’ he corrected her. ‘What’s done is done,’ he clipped over his shoulder as he led her between the stone columns of the house and into a wide, spacious hallway that screamed out his wealth. She wasn’t surprised by the opulence but was surprised by the warm ambience of the place. She’d imagined him a man of marble and austere elegance but, as her feet sank into inches of luxurious Axminster and the smell of ancient beeswax assailed her nostrils, she guessed she’d got it wrong about him again.
‘You have a lovely home,’ she murmured as he led her through double doors to an equally spacious and luxurious reception-room.
He said nothing in return, obviously not a small-talker, but stopped at another panelled door with Georgian gilt hardware and before opening it said, ‘I’ll introduce you to my mother, but remember she’s a frail lady and I don’t want her tired. Be as brief as possible, do what you have to do and don’t antagonise her. She has a biting temper so be warned.’
Caroline stared at him in open dismay. She sounded an ogre—a family trait, no doubt!
Suddenly he lifted her chin and looked deep into her anxious eyes. ‘Do you think you’re up to this?’
Already he was having doubts about selecting her for this commission, but no more than she had about taking it on, Caroline told herself. Well, rats to him. She was a professional and besides, he didn’t know it but she didn’t suffer fools gladly either.
She twisted her chin away from his grasp and her eyes darkened to glare back at him.
‘Mr Frazer…Ellis, I’ve told you already, I want this commission but don’t need it. I see this as a two-way proposition. You have doubts about me and I have doubts about you. Let’s see who cracks first!’
A glint of humour crept sideways into his eyes. He leaned back against the door-jamb and crossed his arms over his chest, lightly tapping the riding crop against his shoulder.
‘I’m beginning to like you,’ he uttered under his breath.
Feeling her chest tightening, Caroline covered the sensation with a defiant jut of the chin he was so fond of lifting.
‘You have an advantage over me, then,’ she told him coolly. ‘For I fear I won’t live long enough to begin to like you.’
The humour in his eyes didn’t flag, which was curious to Caroline because she had expected him to rise to such an insult.
‘So what brought that on?’ he asked quietly, raising a teasing dark brow to accompany the query.
With difficulty Caroline held his quizzical look, but without difficulty she knew what was bothering her. He was an attractive man and she had acknowledged that in her heart but there could be nothing more. David had taught her a salutary lesson in what made attractive men tick. But she would have to be careful with this man. Her defences were spilling silly insults from her lips. If she wasn’t careful she could insult her way out of his commission.
‘Attitude,’ she said at last. She’d go for that. He was obviously very displeased with her for bringing Martha.
Both brows came up this time. ‘Oh, I have one, do I?’
‘Yes,’ Caroline said bravely.
‘Perhaps you’d like to expand on that.’
To be honest Caroline didn’t know where to begin because now that she had started all this she didn’t know where it was going.
‘You can’t, can you?’ he said when she failed to respond. ‘Allow me to try and analyse you, then. I suspect it has something to do with me not falling rapt at the feet of your small daughter. Appealing as she is, I’m afraid I have no rapport with females under the age of twenty-five. I don’t know any children, I’m not about to father any in this world or the next and frankly I find your daughter an irritating encumbrance I’d rather live without.’
Flushing hotly, Caroline opened her mouth to protest, but she wasn’t allowed such a pleasure.
‘But,’ he went on deliberately, ‘she is here and a part of your life and I accept that because I want you to do these commissions for me. Now I will make a deal with you. I will suffer your bringing the child with you when you need to be here but in return you will have to suffer my “attitude”. If we can put personalities aside and get on with the job I see no reason why we can’t both part happily at the end of it. Does that sound like a deal to you?’
It sounded like a deal between her soul and the devil! Of all the pompous, arrogant, child-hating, misogynist creeps it had ever been her misfortune to meet, he was the Prince of Darkness! Wild horses in his crummy old stables wouldn’t keep her here to immortalise his wretched stud horse and his wretched mother. Over and out Caroline.
With one last contemptuous look of disdain she turned to walk away but before she knew what had happened he had swept her back against the oak panelling of the wall, so imprisoning her, and his mouth came down to hers in a shocking kiss that was pure thousand-watt electricity.
The pressure was intense, searing with a heat she could never have imagined from such a cold, inhospitable Prince of Evil. It charged through her whole body, turning bones to jelly, skin to flame, sending emotions through the roof of her head. Her head swam dizzily as the pressure on her mouth eased and drifted and swirled into something more infinitely dangerous than the initial thrust, a softness that stilled her pulses till she thought her life’s blood had ceased to function her heart. Her heart was floundering badly and nothing else was working either. Suddenly she realised the pressure on her mouth had gone and she fluttered her eyes open. She stared at him in horror, shocked that he had done that, shocked that she hadn’t done anything to stop it.
His dark eyes were riveted on where his lips had just assaulted her, drinking in her heated lips with the same ferocity. Her tongue snaked out to balm those lips, to somehow smooth away the fire that stung as if he had used his riding crop on them. His eyes shifted up to meet hers and his voice when it came was soft and beguiling yet speaking arrogant poison that wrenched at her sensibilities, infuriating her even more.
‘I suspect that will go a long way to dispersing any animosity between us.’
Taking