Carole Mortimer - Glass Slippers And Unicorns

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Cover

Title Page Glass Slippers and Unicorns Carole Mortimer www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright

‘FOR God’s sake, Darcy, I know you’re always losing things; but my mother!’

Put like that it did sound a little careless. But it wasn’t completely accurate. She hadn’t exactly lost Maud Hunter; misplaced her was a better way of describing what had happened, she thought.

But Reed didn’t look as if he wanted to hear that right now, and Darcy doubted he would find the distinction at all reassuring. After all, she had gone to the airport to meet Maud Hunter, and she had returned without her and now had no idea where she could be!

Reed stood up in a forceful movement. ‘My God, Darcy, you lost my mother !’

She sighed, pulling a face at his incredulity. ‘You already said that.’

Sparks flew in accusing green eyes, his mouth tight. ‘And I’ll say it again, too, as many damned times as I have to to be able to take it in!’ He paced the room with long legs, his movements not made with their usual fluidity but with spasmodic energy. ‘You lost a sixty-year-old woman who’s just endured a long flight and is on her first trip to England in ten years!’ It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact. ‘This is a human being I’m talking about here, Darcy,’ he growled. ‘Not one of those dozen left shoes sitting in the bottom of your closet—and this is not the time for you to point out that closet means something else over here,’ he snarled as she opened her mouth to speak, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes as she quickly closed it again. ‘… Dozen left shoes sitting in the bottom of your closet,’ he repeated hardly, ‘because you have somehow lost the right ones!’

‘It’s the right shoes in the wardrobe and the left ones lost,’ she nervously corrected; Reed hardly ever lost his temper, but she knew that right now he had, his whole body tensed with it. Well she had misplaced his mother between here and Heathrow. Or did she mean Heathrow and here——

‘Darcy!’ he grated between clenched teeth. ‘I don’t give a damn if it’s half a dozen of each——’

‘I thought you were trying to stop swearing?’ She frowned as he used the word twice in as many minutes after days of holding back his usual habit of cursing whenever something didn’t go exactly as he planned it should.

‘Darcy!’ Her name came out as a fierce guttural growl this time. ‘A saint would swear at a time like this,’ he added in exasperation as she looked at him with bewildered confusion.

A saint was something they both knew he wasn’t. As a professional speculator—in just about anything!—he often didn’t have the time to wait around and be pleasant. Admittedly he was dealing mainly in shares at the moment, but even so he was ruthless, was first and foremost a businessman. He was also very successful at what he did. The only way that Darcy could see he might possibly have fallen down on that success was hiring her as his secretary! And she had a feeling he felt the same way at the moment.

He looked at her with sharp green eyes, stopping his pacing. ‘I suppose you did actually meet her at the airport?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Of course I did,’ she protested indignantly.

Reed eyed her suspiciously. ‘Are you sure?’

Her mouth compressed. ‘She’s a short lady, about my height, I suppose,’ she frowned thoughtfully, ‘with curly white hair, and green eyes like yours.’

‘I told you all that before you left for the airport,’ he snapped impatiently.

‘I have her luggage downstairs in the boot of the car!’ Darcy told him exasperatedly. She might have a habit of losing things, but she certainly didn’t invent meeting people. ‘She told me all about how naughty you were as a little boy,’ she remembered, her eyes dancing merrily. ‘How you turned the hose on the——’

‘All right,’ Reed barked irritably, obviously not in the mood to reminisce about his mischievous childhood. ‘I’ll accept that you did meet my mother——’

‘Well thanks!’ she bit out caustically, glaring at him.

‘But what the hell have you done with her now?’

Reed had such a deep timbre of voice that when he raised it you felt like putting a hand on all the breakable objects in the room in case they clattered from their resting place and shattered on the ground. She saw his eyes narrow as she winced, clasping her hands together in front of her to resist the urge.

‘I haven’t done anything with her, Reed,’ she denied wearily. ‘On the drive back she mentioned it was years since she had read an English newspaper, and when she fell asleep——’

‘You calmly parked the car and went off to buy her one,’ he finished disgustedly.

Her eyes blazed deeply blue. ‘I was only gone a couple of minutes!’

‘Long enough for my mother to disappear!’

‘Will you stop saying that as if you think I had something to do with it!’ she protested, frowning heavily as his raised eyebrows seemed to say, ‘Well, didn’t you?’ ‘When I came back out of the shop with the newspaper, she had gone,’ Darcy defended.

‘That was over an hour ago.’ He glared at her. ‘And you had no right going off and leaving her like that.’

‘I didn’t think she could come to any harm just sitting in the car.’ Darcy glared right back.

At least, she tried to glare. She was sure it didn’t come out quite as fierce as it was meant to do, though, as she squinted slightly to bring her myopic vision into focus enough to read Reed’s expression.

Reed seemed to stiffen even more as he saw that squint. ‘Did you forget to put your contacts in again?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘No, I didn’t forget!’ she snapped, the guilty flush that coloured her cheeks giving the instant lie to that statement. ‘I just haven’t had time to put them in yet! I was late getting up, and then as soon as I arrived you told me I had to go and meet your mother, and——’

‘Great,’ he ground out fiercely. ‘This is just great ! I can see it all now.’ He raised his head to look at the ceiling, taking deep controlling breaths. ‘It probably wasn’t even my mother you met. The poor woman probably realised that after a while and made her escape at the first opportunity.’

Darcy stood up indignantly, too angered by his scornful tone to want to admit to the vanity of wearing her rarely used glasses to go to the airport to meet his mother, but of having taken them off only seconds ago before she entered the office, not wanting Reed to see her wearing the heavy dark frames. ‘You’re being very unfair, Reed.’