Liz Fielding - The Billionaire Takes a Bride

Instead, she got down on her knees and felt underneath, relieved to discover that the trick to it was nothing more complicated than a finger ledge.

She pulled and discovered the answer to her question. The drawer contained a quantity of products that suggested Richard Mallory was a man whose guiding principle in life was ‘be prepared’.

Frequently.

She closed it quickly. Okay. Enough was enough. She was running out of time here. And Sophie was running out of luck. She’d check the other table so that she could say she had done everything possible. After that, she was out of there.

Then, as she began to get to her feet, something caught her eye. A glint of something small and shiny under the table, right up against the wall, that might be a key. For a moment she was torn. What was the likelihood that this was the key she was looking for?

But then it had to fit something…

She had to lie down and stretch out flat before she could reach it. It felt right—long and narrow—and she emerged, flushed from the effort as she backed out, holding up the object to get a better look. Light, she needed more light. As she reached for the lamp it came on by itself. Startled, she stared at it for a moment, then grinned. That was so brilliant! She’d heard of lamps that did that…

But this was not the time to investigate. She turned her attention back to the small metallic object she’d picked up. ‘Oh, drat…’

‘Not one of yours, I take it?’

The voice, low and gravelly, had emerged from the heaped-up quilt, along with a mop of dark, tousled hair and a pair of heavy-lidded eyes. It was followed by a hand which tossed aside a remote and lifted the sliver of platinum from her open palm and, warm fingers brushing against her neck, held it up against her ear.

Not a key, but an earring. Long, slender…

And that was just his fingers.

‘No,’ he said, after looking at it and then at her for what seemed like an age, during which her heart took a unilateral decision not to beat—probably something to do with all the magnetism flowing from those electric blue eyes—before dropping it back into her hand. ‘Not your style.’

A sound—something incoherent that might have been agreement—emerged from Ginny’s throat. Recycled charity shop was cheap. That was its attraction. Whether it could be described as a style…

‘If you tell me what you’re looking for I might be able to help?’ he prompted.

More of Richard Mallory emerged from beneath the quilt as he propped himself up on one arm. Naked shoulders, a naked chest with a spattering of dark hair that arrowed down to a hard, flat stomach…

‘Um…’ she murmured, mesmerised.

‘I’m sorry?’ One brow kinked upward. ‘I didn’t quite catch that.’

The sleepy lids were deceptive. His eyes, she realised, were wide awake. How long had he been watching her? Had he witnessed her attack on his bedside drawer?

She swallowed hard. There was nothing to do but bluff it out and hope for the best. If she could handle a room full of eighteen-year-old undergraduates who thought they knew it all—and who almost certainly knew a lot more than her about pretty much anything other than Greek myth—she could surely handle one man…

As his eyes continued to burn into her, she decided she’d take the lecture hall any day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an option. Bluff would have to do it.

‘I said, “um”,’ she replied, pushing her glasses up her nose as she found her ‘teacher’ voice. After all he couldn’t sack her…

He could, of course, call the police.

‘Um?’ He repeated the word back at her as if it was from some foreign language. One he’d never before encountered.

Bluff, bluff.

It was easy. She did it all the time. It was how she had got through the lectures she had given to help support herself through her doctorate. All she had to do, she reminded herself, was use the classic technique of imagining that he was naked. From what she’d seen so far she wasn’t finding it difficult. He probably was naked…

Oh, bad idea.

Think of something else. Her mother…

‘Not the acme of clear thought translated into speech—’ she said, her thoughts—and vocal cords—snapping right back into line ‘—but then you did startle me, Mr Mallory.’

This, for some reason, appeared to entertain him. ‘Do you expect me to apologise?’

‘That really isn’t necessary.’ She finally wrenched her gaze from the wide expanse of his shoulders and, scrambling to her feet, put a little distance between them. ‘It’s entirely my fault, after all. I didn’t realise you were here, or I wouldn’t have just…’ Her desperate attempt to appear cool in a difficult situation buckled under his undisguised amusement. He was, she realised belatedly, teasing her…

‘Just?’ he prompted.

‘Um…’ That foreign word again…

‘Just um?’

‘I wouldn’t have just walked in,’ she snapped. Then, because that seemed to lack something, she said, ‘I’d have knocked first.’

‘Really?’ His eyebrows suggested he was seriously surprised. ‘That would be a first.’

She frowned, confused, unable to drag her gaze from his shoulders. Or the way the muscle, emphasized by deep shadows, bunched up as he shrugged.

Then she realised what he was implying and felt herself blush. Of all the arrogant, self-opinionated…She wasn’t some Richard Mallory ‘groupie’, intent on flinging herself on his irresistible body!

‘If it’s a regular problem maybe you should keep your bedroom door locked,’ she advised, perhaps more sharply than was wise under the circumstances.

‘Maybe I should,’ he agreed. Then, bringing her back to the point, ‘So? What were you looking for?’

Her heart—which was having a seriously bad morning—skipped a beat. She should have legged it while she had the chance, instead of sticking around to chat. He might have dismissed the whole incident as a bad dream. She’d had worse nightmares.

‘Looking for?’ she repeated.

‘Under my bed.’

‘Oh.’

Help…

Her excuse had sounded perfectly reasonable as she’d rehearsed it in the safety of her own apartment. But then she’d never expected to have to use it. She’d be in and out in a flash, Sophie had promised.

When would she ever learn?

What had sounded reasonable as a back-up story, in the event that the cleaner returned early from her morning flirtation with the porter, lacked any real credibility when confronted with the man himself.

Or maybe it was just guilt turning the words to ashes in her mouth.

That was silly.

It wasn’t as if she was a real burglar, for heaven’s sake. She was only going to borrow the disk—it would be back on his desk before he’d missed it. Hardly a matter for the Crown Court.

Unless, of course, she killed Sophie.

‘In your own time,’ he encouraged.

Faced with a pair of sharp blue eyes that suggested Richard Mallory would not be so easy to flannel as a ‘daily’ with dalliance on her mind, that seemed a very attractive idea. Right now, however, she had a more pressing problem and she trawled her brain in a desperate attempt to come up with a story that was just a little less…ridiculous.

Her brain had, apparently, taken the day off.

But then why else would she be here?

Please, please, she prayed, let the floor open up and swallow me now. The floor refused to oblige.

She was out of time and stuck with the excuse she’d prepared earlier.

‘I was looking for my hamster,’ she said.

‘Excuse me?’ He laughed. ‘Did you say your hamster?’

Faced with his amusement she felt a certain irritation. A need to defend her story. It wasn’t that ridiculous.