Sharon Kendrick - The Billionaire Bodyguard

Thank God it was dark or he might have seen her blush—but Keri had never lived with anyone except for her family, and this was one more thing which felt too uncomfortably intimate.

They went back downstairs and moved in the opposite direction from the kitchen. Jay opened a door and looked down into pitch blackness.

‘Cellar,’ he said succinctly. ‘Want to explore?’

‘I think I’ll pass on that.’

On the other side of the hall was a heavy oak, door and Jay pushed it open, waiting for a moment while the candle flame stopped guttering.

‘Come over here, Keri,’ he said softly, his words edged with an odd, almost excited note. ‘And look at this.’

Keri went down the step and followed the direction of his gaze. ‘Oh, my word,’ she breathed. ‘I feel like Aladdin.’

‘Yeah.’ His voice was thoughtful. ‘I know what you mean.’

It was like stumbling unawares upon a treasure trove—a gloriously old and elegant room which looked as though it belonged to another age. Jay held the candle aloft and Keri could see that it was as high as four men—with a pointed raftered ceiling made out of dark, wooden beams—and the room itself was so big that she could not see the edges.

‘Where are we?’ she said. ‘What is this place?’

He was busy taking more candles from his pocket and lighting them, placing one on the mantelpiece and one on a low table in front of the empty grate. ‘I don’t know, and right at this moment I really don’t care.’

It was amazing what a little light did, and as more of it appeared so did the room, and the dark, threatening shadows were banished and forgotten as she looked around. It was beautiful.

There were high, arched windows and a mighty fireplace, with two enormously long sofas sprawled at right-angles beside it. In one corner stood a piano, and there were books crammed into shelves on one wall and pictures on the walls.

‘It looks almost like a church,’ she whispered.

‘Why are you whispering?’ he asked, in a normal voice, and the sound seemed to shatter through the air.

‘I don’t know. Anyway, you were whispering too!’ Keri’s teeth began to chatter as the icy temperature began to register on her already chilled skin. ‘B-but wh-wherever or whatever this place is, it’s even c-colder here than it is outside.’

‘Yeah.’ He crouched down beside the fireplace, an old-fashioned type he had never seen before and big enough to roast an ox in. ‘So why don’t I light this, and you go and have a scout about—see what kind of supplies there are?’ She was looking at him blankly, and he let out an impatient sigh as he began to pull some kindling towards him. ‘Sustenance,’ he explained. ‘Food, drink, coffee, a spare suckling pig—anything.’

Keri eyed the darkness warily. ‘On my own?’

He glanced up. Clearly she was a woman to whom the word ‘initiative’ was a stranger. ‘You mean you want me to come and hold your hand for you?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said stiffly.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ His voice softened by a fraction. ‘Here, take a candle with you.’

‘Well, I’m hardly going to feel my way out there in the dark!’ She lifted her hand to her head. ‘But before I do anything, I’m getting rid of this hat.’

His eyes narrowed as she pulled the snow-damp beanie off, shaking her hair out so that it fell and splayed in night-dark glossy tendrils before falling down over the soft curves of her breasts. It was a captivating movement, as elegant as a dancer, and he wondered whether it just came naturally or if she’d learnt it from her modelling career. Keep your mind on the job, he told himself.

Except that the job he had set out to do was turning into something quite different. He sat back on his haunches and his eyes travelled up the endless length of her legs. He felt a pulse beat deep in his groin—an instinctive reaction to a beautiful woman. God, it had been a long time. ‘Run along now,’ he said softly. ‘My throat is parched.’

Run along? Run along? ‘Don’t talk to me that way,’ she said in a low voice.

He looked up. ‘What way is that?’

As though he were some kind of caveman and she was the little woman, scurrying away with whatever he’d successfully hunted that day. Though when she stopped to think about it there was something pretty primitive about the deft way he seemed to be constructing the fire.

‘You know exactly what way I’m talking about!’

‘You mean you just can’t cope with a man unless he’s paying homage to you, is that it?’

‘Don’t put words into my mouth!’

If her feet hadn’t been hurting so much, and if she hadn’t been afraid that the candle might go out, then Keri might have flounced out of the room. But Jay Linur didn’t seem like the kind of man who would be impressed by any kind of flouncing, and so she made do with walking, her back perfectly straight, her head held very high.

She made her way back to the kitchen and looked around. It didn’t look very hopeful. An ancient old oven which looked as though it had seen better days. A big, scrubbed wooden table. And that was about it. A cupboard yielded little more than a couple of tins, and a box of dusty old teabags which had clearly seen better days.

She filled the kettle with water, but the kettle wouldn’t work, and she remembered why and went back into the huge room, where he had managed to coax a tiny flame from the fire.

He looked up. ‘What is it?’

‘The kettle won’t work! There’s no electricity—remember?’

He stared at her consideringly. ‘How about gas?’ He raised his eyebrows questioningly and then shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it—you haven’t even bothered to check, have you?’

She felt like telling him that she was a model, not a girl guide. And that she didn’t even want a hot drink, and that if he did then he could jolly well go and make it himself. But there was something so forbidding about the expression on his face that she decided against it. Being stuck here with him was like a nightmare come true, but Keri suspected that it would be even more of a nightmare if he wasn’t here.

‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly.

‘Then I suggest you go and try again.’

He was doing it again—dismissing her as if she was a schoolgirl. This had to be addressed some time, and maybe it was best she did it now. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you are distinctly lacking in the charm department?’

‘Oh.’ There was a pause. ‘Is it charm you want you want from me, then, Keri?’

The question threw her as much as the smoky look of challenge in his eyes and the silky note of caress in his voice, and suddenly she became aware of a whispering of unwelcome sensation, too nebulous to define. Almost as if… She shook her head to deny it and gave him her coolest smile, the kind which could intimidate most men—a frosty and distancing kind of smile. ‘Not at all—but if you could hold back on the arrogant, macho, bossing-me-around kind of behaviour, I’d be very grateful.’

He raised his eyebrows laconically. ‘You don’t like it?’

‘Show me a woman who does!’

‘I could show you legions,’ he observed softly, thinking of two in particular.

‘Not this woman!’

He watched her wiggle out of the room in that sinful leather skirt, imagining its softness as it swished against her thighs.

In the kitchen, Keri gingerly scouted around, trying to rid herself of that strange, tingly sensation which was making her feel almost light-headed—as if her blood had suddenly come to life in her veins, making her acutely aware of the way it pulsed around her body. Here to her temple. There to her wrist. And there. There.

Her cheeks burned uncomfortably. Somehow he had done this to her—brought to life in her something unknown and unwanted, with his silky taunts and that lazy way he had of looking at her. And he was so damned blatant about it, too!