Cara Colter - Rescued by the Millionaire

She found that very cynical, but since it was precisely the attitude she hoped to adopt toward her life, she said firmly, “I agree, totally.”

He regarded her for a minute, and that sinfully sexy half smile lifted a corner of his mouth again. “Somehow, I doubt that,” he said.

She was flabbergasted by his arrogance. How could he possibly think he knew anything about her given both the shortness and the unusual circumstances of their meeting?

“And why would you doubt that?” She made sure her voice was very chilly.

“Because, Miss Marsh, everything from the color of your toenails, to the little—” he squinted at her, “—teddy bears frolicking across your housecoat tells me you are not cynical. Your devotion to your cat, the abundance of eyelet lace and lilac paint in your bedroom and your determination to believe the best of that pair of matched bookend fiends wrecking your sofa, tells me a great deal about you.”

Oh! He had noticed the bedroom. And he hadn’t liked it any better than Miles!

“I’m redoing my bedroom,” she said. “I even have the paint. And a picture on my fridge door.”

She glared at him, hoping he would take the hint and be quiet, but he did not take the hint at all.

“You are,” Daniel Riverton declared with aggravating authority, as if she hadn’t said one word about redoing her bedroom, “a little old-fashioned, somewhat innocent and extremely hopeful about the goodness of the world and your fellow man.”

He shuddered slightly as if those qualities were reprehensible to him.

She knew she would regret him seeing her bedroom!

“You think I’m boring,” she said.

“Boring?” he looked puzzled.

She rushed on. “You make me sound like a complete Pollyanna. I happen to be a totally independent woman.”

“Ah, fiercely independent,” he said, amused rather than convinced. “Let me guess. You’ve had a setback. A man, I would guess. You’re disenchanted. You’ve put all your dreams of babies, a golden retriever, a cozy little house with a wading pool in that backyard, on hold. Temporarily.”

Her mouth worked but not a single sound came out. She was in shock. It was true. That was the world she dreamed of, the world of her childhood, the place she longed to go home to.

Her whole world had just been clinically dissected in so few words. Was he right? And she did still long for those things, though it felt like a weakness to want a life so desperately that clearly others saw as unexciting.

Miles had been right, though he had taken his sweet time arriving at the conclusion Daniel Riverton had reached in seconds.

Irritatingly, Daniel was right about almost all of it. No wonder he was so good at business. He could read people and situations with startling accuracy, if a rather ruthless lack of sensitivity.

But Trixie was determined he be wrong about the most important part of it. The temporarily part of it. At least she hoped he was wrong! No! She knew he was wrong!

“Not that any of that is of any interest to me,” he decided before she could get her protest out. “We need to talk about getting you some medical attention.” He winced as one of the twins used a jam-covered hand to smooth a curl out of her face.

“You know,” Trixie said, wanting to reassert her independence, to make him question his overly confident judgments of her, “don’t worry about it. If I need a trip to the doctor, I’ll manage to get us all down to the car.”

“Look, it’s not if, and I seriously doubt you can drive anywhere.”

He looked hard at her, hesitated, ran a hand through his hair. With the grim reluctance of a soldier volunteering for a tedious mission, he decided, “I’ll drive you.”

She planned to protest it wasn’t necessary. Then she moved her arm a fraction of an inch and the pain was so monstrous, she gasped from it.

He nodded knowingly. “I’m afraid you need my help, like it or not.”

“Not,” she muttered.

“I have to go get a shirt,” he said, looking down at himself as if he had just realized he was without one. “I’ll pull my car around, and call you when I’m downstairs.”

She had a sense of needing to get this situation under control—her control—immediately.

“No.”

Again, Daniel Riverton looked poleaxed, as if he had never heard the word no spoken to him. Or at least, Trixie suspected, not from female lips.

It gave her a certain grim satisfaction that she, who he considered to be utterly readable and utterly predictable, boring, in every way, had managed to surprise him.She enjoyed the sensation so much, that she said it again, even more firmly than the first time.

“No.”

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.