She was annoyed her voice sounded so husky. As if she was unnerved by his closeness or something. Well, maybe she was. A little bit. He was so...so arrantly masculine. Not in a brutish, knuckle-dragging way, but in a cultured man-about-town way that was disturbingly attractive. The clean-shaven skin, the casually styled hair with those finger-mark grooves in amongst the dark brown strands, the alluring cologne with the enigmatic base notes and the freshly laundered clothes were a potent package of metropolitan, made-it-big-time manhood.
His fingers tightened on her forearms for a moment and then fell away. He stepped back as if she had suddenly emitted a skin-melting radiant heat. ‘I won’t take no for an answer, Clementine. I want you with me tomorrow otherwise the police get involved. Understood?’
Clem had a thing about her full name. She hated it. Loathed it. Resented having been labelled with it for the past twenty-six years. She had suffered years of people singing Oh My Darling Clementine within her hearing until she’d wanted to stomp and scream with frustration and embarrassment. But, whenever she made a fuss, invariably people insisted on calling her by it. She had thought about switching to her middle name but that was even worse. She told no one that. No one. Which was another reason she didn’t travel abroad. No immigration official could resist commenting on the name on her passport.
She fixed Alistair with a look. ‘Call me Clem or Ms Scott.’
His brows lifted ever so slightly. ‘Very well then, Ms Scott.’ He gave her a mocking salute. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Ciao.’
* * *
Alistair pulled down the seatbelt on his hire car, clicking it into place. While he resented the time off work, there was something eminently appealing about taking Clementine Scott with him on this wild goose chase. She had changed. A lot. He almost hadn’t recognised her...apart from those flashing brown eyes and pertly set mouth. At sixteen she had shown a faint promise of future beauty—a beauty that had stirred him back then much more than he wanted to admit. But he had been unprepared for just how beautiful she had become. Not the sort of beauty that was in your face, but a quiet, understated beauty. A beauty that snuck up on you and completely stole your breath.
Gone was the awkward, overweight teenager with the bad skin and bad temper. She still had the temper but her body more than made up for that. Lush curves her dark, conservative clothing couldn’t hide. Skin that glowed, wavy, honey-brown hair that was styled and artfully highlighted. She hadn’t worn much in the way of make-up but for some reason it made her all the more fascinating to look at. Those tawny-brown eyes with their frame of thick lashes and prominent brows reminded him of pools of honey dusted with tiny iron filings.
But it was her mouth that had kept drawing his gaze. Her lips were rosy and full, the Cupid’s bow arch of her top lip and the soft pillow of her bottom lip making every male hormone in his body heat and hum and honk with lust.
Getting involved with Clementine Scott was not on his agenda. Not in this lifetime or the next. Why would he get involved with the daughter of the woman who had destroyed and desecrated his mother’s last months of life? Brandi whatever-her-last-name-was-now had hooked up with his father ten years ago while Alistair’s mother had been in a palliative-care hospital. Brandi had brazenly moved in with her two children and sponged off his father during a vulnerable time. Not that he didn’t hold his father largely responsible for his behaviour, but Brandi and her badly behaved brats had caused Alistair enough grief without inviting them to dish out more.
Do. Not. Go. There.
Even if Clementine was far more attractive than he’d been expecting. Even if she’d made his body light up like a furnace when she’d looked at him with that scornful arch of her brow and those flashing eyes. Even if he had to call on every bit of willpower he possessed and then some.
He was going to get his stepsister back and packed away to boarding school where she belonged. Harriet was not his responsibility. She wasn’t—strictly speaking—his father’s either. But, until her mother came back to claim her, Alistair was left holding the baby, so to speak.
Not a choice.
A duty.
And of course there was the little matter of his car. He’d only had it a couple of months. There was no way he was letting Clementine’s wayward younger brother destroy anything of his. He could have called the police straight up. He wasn’t the hand-out-a-second-chance type. But he had to concede Jamie Scott hadn’t had the best upbringing in the world. There was no way Alistair was going to let his stepsister be corrupted by a prison stat waiting to happen.
Not on his watch.
He had considered going alone to collect Harriet but he figured he might achieve more by taking Clementine. She could take charge of Jamie while he sorted out Harriet.
It was a win-win.
Besides, he had an old score to settle with Clementine.
He gritted his teeth in determination and pulled out into the traffic. If these next few days achieved nothing else but to teach that young lady a lesson in manners and decorum, then he would be happy.
‘BUT OF COURSE you must take time off, my dear,’ Dougal McCrae, Clem’s boss, said when he came into the shop an hour later. ‘When do you want to leave?’
‘Now.’ Clem straightened the pens on her desk, each one exactly a centimetre apart. ‘It’s...kind of an emergency.’
His bushy brows came together in a concerned frown. ‘Not your mother again?’
‘Yes and no.’ Clem mentally crossed her fingers at her little white lie. ‘It’s hard to explain.’
He patted her on the shoulder like he was patting a pet of which he had grown terribly fond. ‘You’re a good girl, Clem. Always doing the right thing by your mother when as far as I can see she’s never done the right thing by you.’
Clem hadn’t told Dougal much about her background but her mother had come into the shop a number of times. Needless to say, he’d figured everything else out for himself. He was an excellent judge of character and each time her mother left he would look at Clem with an empathetic grimace and hand her the packet of chocolate digestives without saying a single word.
‘I’ll only be a week at the most,’ Clem said, slinging her bag over her shoulder and snatching up her coat off the back of her chair. ‘If there’s any change, I’ll let you know.’
‘Take all the time you need,’ Dougal said. ‘You deserve a holiday.’
Some holiday this was going to be.
* * *
It took Clem way too long to pack. That was another reason she rarely went away. She could never decide what to take and ended up taking too much. It came from years of having to pack at short notice when her mother would get sick of her latest lover and announce they were leaving. Now. Clem had flown in a heart-flapping panic every single time. She’d always packed Jamie’s things first because that was what big sisters did, especially when you had a mother who couldn’t spell, let alone understand, the concept of organisation. But it had often meant she hadn’t got to pack her own things in time for their mother’s theatrical flounce out the door.
But these days Clem was too organised. She didn’t have a crooked knife or fork in her drawer. The cups and mugs were all perfectly aligned, the handles turned to the right. The plates and bowls were in neat stacks in neat rows. The glasses were lined up like soldiers ready for an inspection parade. The clothes in her wardrobe were positioned according to colour—not that she had a lot of it in her wardrobe. That was the problem with having been fat as a teenager; she had got used to wearing dark clothing to disguise her shape and had never really thrown the habit.
Deciding what clothes to take and what to leave behind was a problem. What if it was hot? What if it rained? The French Riviera had a much warmer climate than London