Sarah Morgan - Temporary Mistress

‘It is. The beach is directly below us.’

As soon as the words were out of his mouth Nora’s heart began to sink and her palms dampen. ‘But, but—beach houses are usually at sea level…’

His mouth twitched at her choked protest. ‘I prefer not to run with the usual crowd.’

‘I knew there had to be a catch,’ Nora muttered as the driveway burst out into blazing sunlight and she found herself looking down at the red-tiled roof of a semi-circular house which jutted out from the side of the hill. Way out…over a very high, very sheer drop.

‘Oh, God…!’

‘The structural engineering was done by a highly reputable firm,’ murmured Blake reassuringly as they swooped down to the broad paved turning circle in front of three double-width garage doors. A short bridge fed across the falling ground to one side to a wide door protected by a wroughtiron grille. ‘If anything, it’s been over -engineered—the cantilevered beams are strong enough to support several times the actual weight of the house.’

He touched a slim remote and one of the wood-panelled garage doors silently lifted to allow the car to slot in beside a boat-trailer loaded with an inflatable rubber surf dinghy. Further along in the huge internal garage Nora could see a shadowy black four-wheel drive, a motorcycle, a beachbuggy, a stack of surfboards and a surf-ski next to rack of assorted wetsuits.

She debated refusing to budge, but Blake had already sprung open both doors and slid out of the car, and she suspected that sulking in her seat like a defiant child would get her nowhere.

Only when she had scrambled out and walked haughtily around the car did she remember that Blake hadn’t needed a key to start the car—he had just pushed a black button on the swooping dashboard. Her heart stuttered and she tucked her handbag under her arm as she sneaked a look at Blake’s bent head, half concealed by the raised boot. How careless of him! He really was taking it for granted that she would fall meekly in with his plans. She wondered if he would feel quite so smug watching her drive off in his precious car! The thought of handling all that power on that skimpy road made her feel even queasier, but a foolish rush of adrenaline sent her diving to pull open the driver’s door. Her seeking fingers collided with a smooth unbroken surface as she suddenly realised what was missing.

‘Mind you don’t damage the paintwork.’

Nora jerked around to stare up into Blake’s sardonic face. ‘This car has no door handles!’ she spluttered.

Blake smiled. ‘A very useful deterrent to thieves.’

‘Then how do you open it?’ she asked, endeavouring to project an air of innocent interest.

‘You could try saying Open Sesame, ’ he said smoothly, and she blushed at the reminder of their last ride together, in a lift.

‘I think it’s more to do with modern engineering than magic incantations,’ she said.

His deep-set eyes gleamed. In the periphery of her vision she was aware of him sliding a hand up over the gleaming wine-red curves as tenderly if he was caressing a woman, his fingers briefly cupping the jutting wing mirror. There was a quiet click and Nora’s bottom received a gentle nudge from the warm metal. Before she could react she had been swung decisively out of the way and Blake had re-shut the door and locked it with his remote.

As the garage door thunked definitively shut behind them, Nora zeroed in on the mirror he had so lovingly stroked and located the discreetly placed button beneath.

‘Very cunning,’ she said, torn between admiration and frustration. Just once she would like to get the better of him!

‘I thought so,’ said Blake, sliding his electronic control into his trouser pocket and picking up the bag, draped in his jacket and tie, which he had dropped at his feet. He strode over to punch a series of numbers into the electronic keypad on the wall, his lean back shifting to block her view when she craned for a look.

‘Is that an alarm?’

‘And remote deadlocking—it’s on password access now,’ he told her smoothly. ‘Would you like to come in?’ He opened the internal door to the house and stood back politely.

She lifted her chin. ‘You mean you’re actually giving me a choice ?’

‘We all have choices—they’re just not always the ones we’d like them to be.’

‘You have a very glib tongue, don’t you?’

It was his turn to try and look innocent. ‘That’s not what my teachers used to say. They said I was so quiet in class they hardly knew I was there.’

‘I bet half the time you weren’t,’ she sniped.

His wicked grin was supremely confident. ‘How did you guess?’

‘You’re the type to have problems with authority.’

‘And what type is that?’

She wrinkled her freckled nose, the only part of her that didn’t actively ache. ‘Arrogant.’

To her chagrin he seemed flattered rather than annoyed by her insult. ‘Is it arrogance to have faith in one’s abilities?’

‘If it gives you an exaggerated opinion of your own importance, then, yes. Conceit like that could be your downfall.’

‘Now you sound like my father. He didn’t have any faith in my personal vision of the future either. He hated it when Prescott offered me a job.’

‘Did he think you should have stayed in school?’

He gave up waiting for her to move and brushed past her through the doorway. ‘No, he just didn’t like the idea of his son betraying his origins by becoming an errand boy to The Bosses.’

Lured by the skilfully dangled bait, Nora automatically followed, hovering by a potted palm in the tiled entrance way as he re-engaged the deadlock, brooding over his words.

‘Didn’t he want you working for Sir Prescott?’ she asked, recalling the woman at the party who had mentioned the rumour about Blake’s paternity.

‘Let’s just say that Dad disapproved of my capitalistic yearnings,’ he said, with an irony that suggested a radical understatement. ‘He thought that multi-national corporate executives were the corrupt robber-barons of the modern age. He would have preferred to see me pursue a career in honest crime than assist in the legalised oppression of the working masses.’ He put his free hand under her elbow and guided her up a wide flight of stairs, their feet sinking soundlessly into thick wool carpet the colour of bleached sand. ‘We fought like hell about it every time we saw each other.’

‘That must have been tough on your mother,’ she murmured, her bleary eye caught by the paintings which enlivened the lime-washed plaster walls—an eclectic mix of signed prints and originals.

Irony turned into open amusement. ‘She wouldn’t thank you for saying so. Mum loves a good fight. She and Dad scrapped like cat and dog all their married life. Being a MacLeod meant you learnt from the cradle to stand your ground and fight tooth and nail to defend your beliefs. We were all extremely vocal.’

‘Except in the classroom,’ she said drily.

He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t interested enough to make myself heard there, and since I worked before and after school I had to catch up on my rest somehow. Thanks to large classes and inattentive teachers I perfected the art of dozing at my desk—and it didn’t cost me a cent in lost wages.’

‘It couldn’t have done much for your school grades.’

His mouth held shades of the cocky kid. ‘It wasn’t my academic record that caught Scotty’s attention; it was my willingness to hustle, to tackle anything that was thrown at me, to persist until a job was done…’

His fascinating frankness, Nora realised, had been a deliberate ploy to take her mind off their surroundings, but now that they had reached the top of the stairs she was hit by the full impact of his private eyrie.