ruby necklace lay heavy in her palm, the sun hot on her shoulders. She’d have to get it back to him as soon as possible, but, while Beckett had entrusted it to the postal service, Carly wasn’t so trusting. She’d much rather hand it back in person.
Spying her cotton shirt under a nearby lounge chair, Carly was about to fetch it when Gregory started yapping as if the grim reaper were bearing down on him.
Carly frowned at the pretentious little dog. All her life she’d brought home orphaned children and injured animals to take care of, her mother even complaining that she would save a caterpillar from a broccoli stalk if she’d let her, but when it came to Benson’s prized Pekinese she had to admit she struggled. The pampered pooch had more of a sense of entitlement than Beckett, but she supposed it wasn’t entirely his fault. Not with the way Benson doted on him.
‘Okay, Gregory,’ she said to him, ‘you’re going to bring the fire brigade if you keep making that racket.’ She frowned as he pulled against his leash. ‘What’s got you so riled up anyway, boy?’
He was looking off towards the forest and Carly made the mistake of following his gaze because while her gaze was averted he did his funny little twist manoeuvre she’d been warned about and slipped his collar.
‘Gregory. No,’ Carly called in frustration. ‘I mean heel. Dammit,’ she muttered as the dog tore off across the lime-green lawn, his caramel and black coat flying back in the breeze. ‘Come back here!’
The last thing she needed was the Baron’s beloved pet getting lost right before his operation. She’d never forgive herself.
Muttering a string of curse words, she shoved her feet into her flip-flops and took off after the cantankerous animal.
Halfway across the lawn she was glad she’d been exercising because she was gaining on him when he ducked through a border of shrubs and into the forested area. Cursing her bad luck, she vowed she’d give him to Mrs Carlisle to make potluck soup with when she got him.
The Baron would never complain about tofu again!
The thought made her smile. He’d been complaining about her menu plan ever since she’d arrived, trying to convince her that French fries and battered fish were fine in moderation for a man in his condition.
‘Gregory, you little pain in the backside.’ Carly shoved low-hanging branches aside and tried not to scratch her bare arms and legs any more than she had. ‘If you get prickles in your coat I’ll send you to that nasty dog groomer again! Gregory, dammit, come on, there’s a good boy.’ She tried to inject warmth into that last command but she wasn’t sure he bought it.
A slight movement had her turning left and she stopped at the edge of a clearing. A family of rabbits lay sunning themselves on a small patch of grass as if they didn’t have a care in the world. It was so lovely she forgot about Gregory until he burst out from behind an old oak tree like a bullet from a gun, scaring the daylights out of her and the unsuspecting rabbits.
‘Gregory, no,’ Carly shouted, rushing after him. The rabbits scattered, the largest—most likely the mother—dashing through the brush. Cursing the cranky dog for real now, Carly tried to keep pace with them. No way was he going to kill the mother rabbit on her watch.
In no mood to chase the Baron’s insubordinate dog, Carly didn’t hear the gunmetal-grey motorcycle bearing down on her around the bend in the driveway until it was too late. In what seemed like slow motion she realised that she wasn’t going to be able to stop her forward momentum in time and, irrelevantly, that she was going to die with Beckett’s silly necklace still gripped in her hand.
Half waiting for the sleek machine to barrel into her, Carly skidded on the gravel and landed on her bottom, rolling down the grassy embankment that ran alongside the road.
Winded, she lay unmoving, blinking dazedly up at the china-blue sky above.
She heard a choice curse word before a male head abruptly blocked out the light. The man was little more than a huge outline against the bright sun and then he went down on bended knee, leaning over her.
If she’d thought she was breathless before it was nothing compared to how she felt staring up into eyes so strikingly blue she could still have been staring at the sky. Combine those with chestnut hair that curled forward over his forehead, a square jaw, and strong nose and he had the kind of face Carly bemusedly thought she could look at for ever.
‘Don’t move.’ He had quite the voice too. Deep and low with just the right amount of authority to it. Which surely explained why she did exactly as he bade.
It wasn’t until his large hands ran down her arms and over her legs that she tore her eyes from the way his black leather jacket hugged his wide shoulders and impressive chest.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Checking if you’ve broken anything.’ The cold censure in his voice immediately put her back up.
‘Are you a doctor?’
‘No.’
She hadn’t really expected that he would be—she’d never met a doctor encased in black leather before. ‘I’m fine,’ she huffed, not really sure if she was but, heck, she was a doctor!
‘Keep still,’ he growled as she struggled up onto her elbows.
‘I said I’m fine.’ She pushed at his hand on her leg and he rocked back on his heels. Carly could feel her heart beating hard behind her chest as he silently surveyed her.
‘Good,’ he finally said, standing up so that he once again towered over her. ‘Perhaps you can explain what the hell you were doing running across the road like that. You could have been killed.’
Carly glanced at the sleek motorcycle waiting in the middle of the road like something out of a Batman movie. A flash of the motorcycle skidding in a graceful arc right before hitting her made her stomach pitch. The man had been riding that thing as if he were in the Indie 1000—or whatever that silly race was called—and now he wanted to make it her fault?
‘Really?’ she murmured pleasantly. ‘If I could have been killed it was only because you were driving like a maniac on a narrow, unpaved road.’
Dare gazed down at the redheaded goddess spitting fire at him from eyes that were too grey to be green and too green to be grey. Olive perhaps.
‘I was hardly driving like a maniac.’ He’d barely been pushing fifty.
‘Yes, you were and you were also on your phone!’
She said the last with wide eyes as if he’d been traversing a high wire at the same time.
‘Don’t get hysterical,’ he told her. ‘I wasn’t on the phone. I was checking my GPS.’ And in complete control the whole time.
‘You had a phone in your hand while you were on a motorcycle! That’s illegal!’
‘Calm down, would you? I handled it.’
‘Only just. And it’s still illegal!’
Dare glanced down at her skimpy attire, a smile entering his voice. ‘So what are you going to do? Arrest me?’
She glared up at him as if she’d like to do exactly that but not in the way he’d just been imagining. ‘Who are you anyway?’ she said haughtily.
He felt like saying the big bad wolf, given her snooty tone, but a better question was who was she? He glanced again at her cut-off denims and bright pink swimsuit that should have clashed with her bright hair but somehow didn’t, immediately dismissing the notion that she was his elderly grandfather’s guest. She looked more like the pool girl. The very hot pool girl. ‘Who’s asking?’
Her lips pursed into a flat line. ‘I am.’ She went to push up to her feet and paused when Dare automatically stuck his hand out to assist her. It didn’t surprise him when she tried to ignore his offer of help but Dare was in no mood to put up with