Carole Mortimer - His Defiant Mistress

Knowing she could depend on the quality of the wine Oliver sometimes brought her to keep in her fridge, Sarah filled two of her mother’s best glasses and handed one to Alex. ‘Do sit down,’ she invited.

He waited for her to take her usual perch on the windowseat, then sat on the sofa, trying not to stare at her pink toenails. Her untidy curls framed a face bare of even lipstick, he noted with amusement. As usual she’d made no attempt to tidy herself up to meet him. But, polished and perfect though she’d been for their meeting this morning, he liked the barefoot dishevelled look far more. So much more it was taking all his will-power to stay on the sofa instead of snatching her up in his arms to kiss her senseless. Whoa! Where had that come from? He swallowed some wine hastily. The first step, Merrick, is to get her used to the idea of you as a friend.

Sarah waited patiently for Alex to speak. His lean, clever face looked very brown in the light above his open white collar, and for once she considered him solely on the merit of his looks—which, she had to admit, were considerable. She had always been attracted to brains rather than muscles, but Alex had both. He had a degree, so he obviously had brains, and if the muscles came from playing cricket rather than hard, physical work, at least he had some.

‘What did you want to discuss?’ she asked, after an interval where he seemed inclined just to sit and look at her rather than talk.

With effort, Alex removed his gaze from the hair curling on her bare shoulders. ‘Have you forgotten about the furniture, Sarah?’

Not Miss Carver any more, then. She frowned. ‘What furniture?’

‘The first Medlar Farm cottage in the row is full of your belongings,’ he reminded her.

Sarah’s eyes widened. ‘Good heavens!’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I can’t believe I’d forgotten that. No more champagne at lunchtime for me!’

He shook his head. ‘You were merely enjoying your first triumph too much to remember.’

‘Which is pretty stupid of me, because it’s my mother’s furniture!’

‘You think of it as hers rather than belonging to both your parents?’ Alex gave her the benefit of his crooked smile. ‘Forgive my curiosity.’

Sarah was pretty sure most people forgave him anything when he smiled like that. But she wasn’t most people. ‘I was speaking literally. It actually was my mother’s. She inherited it from her parents, along with the house—but I mustn’t bore you with my life history.’

‘It wouldn’t bore me—quite the opposite. I’d really like to hear it. Unless you find it painful to talk about your parents?’ he added quickly.

To her surprise, she found she wanted to talk about them. ‘My mother was a landscape gardener. She was working in the grounds of a big property when my father arrived with his crew to do restoration work on the house. One look and that was it—for both of them.’ Sarah smiled wryly. ‘Dad said her parents were not exactly thrilled when their only child told them she’d fallen in love with a builder brought up in a children’s home. But when they met him they liked him. So much so that eventually they suggested he moved into their home with Louise after their marriage, instead of taking her away from it. Dad told me that he was only too happy to be part of a family at last, and from then on he did all the maintenance work on their sizeable North London home as a way of showing his gratitude.’

‘As a son-in-law he was a valuable asset, then?’

‘In every way,’ Sarah agreed. ‘He helped Mother care for her parents as they got older and frailer. How about you?’ she added. ‘I heard that your father’s based in London these days?’

Alex nodded soberly, and drank some of his wine. ‘Did your source tell you he’d remarried?’

‘No. My “source”, as you put it, is Harry Sollers. He’s not big on gossip. He just gave me the bare bones of the Merrick success story.’

Alex smiled wryly. ‘Then he must have mentioned Edgar, my grandfather, scrap baron extraordinaire. The old boy’s a bit of a legend in this part of the world.’

‘For turning scrap metal into gold?’

‘That’s not far off the truth. He started from nothing, which is hard to believe when you think of the group’s present level of expansion.’

‘Is he still alive?’

‘God, yes. In his late eighties and still alive and kicking. My aunt—a saint by any standards—lives with him, and does her best to care for the cantankerous old devil.’ Alex grinned at the look on Sarah’s face. ‘Don’t look so shocked. I say exactly the same to his face.’

‘If your father has remarried, did you lose your mother when you were young, like me?’ she asked with sympathy.

He was silent for a moment. ‘I suppose you could say that,’ he said at last. ‘After I graduated she divorced my father and bought a house near her sister in Warwickshire.’

‘Alex, I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known,’ Sarah said remorsefully.

‘At least it shocked you into calling me Alex at last.’

‘I could hardly do that while you were still addressing me as Miss Carver.’

‘I make it a rule never to mix business with pleasure. But,’ he said, holding her eyes, ‘we concluded the business part this morning, Sarah.’

‘So we did.’ She took his empty glass. ‘Let me give you a refill. Or I could make you some coffee.’

‘Does that mean you’d like me to stay awhile?’

She nodded. ‘I was feeling a bit lost until you came. I’ve been so busy lately it was strange to have time on my hands.’

‘You could have contacted Dan Mason to keep you company.’

‘No, I couldn’t,’ she said flatly.

‘Why not? You were having a good time with him last night.’

She glared at him. ‘You were watching me?’

Alex’s eyes glittered coldly. ‘From where I was sitting I had no option. You didn’t notice me when you arrived, but Danny boy did. He deliberately seated you with your back towards me, so he could catch my eye now and again to make sure I noticed what fun you were having together.’

‘Why would he do that?’ she said, astonished. ‘Besides, just between you and me, it wasn’t much fun. In fact it was boring. Whereas—’ She stopped dead.

‘Whereas?’ he repeated suavely.

‘I never feel bored with you,’ she said, and flushed, eyeing him so warily he almost threw the ‘good friends’ idea to the wind and snatched her up in his arms.

‘Then now we’ve got the business deal out of the way, there’s no reason why we can’t be friends.’ He smiled persuasively. ‘We have a lot in common, Sarah. We property developers should stick together. Which is why I offered you the services of our security men. Your crack-brained idea of sleeping at the cottages worried the hell out of me.’

‘Did it?’ she said, surprised.

He nodded grimly. ‘I would have hated the thought of anyone at risk down there on their own, but in your case it was even worse.’

‘Why? Because I’m a girl?’

‘And a small one, at that.’ Alex looked her in the eye. ‘One I’d like to have for a friend.’

Sarah looked back very steadily. The idea of Alex as a friend appealed to her more strongly than she wanted him to know. The only friends she had in this part of the world were on the elderly side. Besides, since he was in the same line of business, broadly speaking, a friend like Alex Merrick could be very useful.

Alex eyed her curiously, aware that she was debating with herself. ‘While you’re thinking it over, enlighten me. Why did you say yes to dinner with Dan Mason when you always refused me? Because I’m one of the local lads you won’t socialise with? Dan’s local too,’ he reminded her.