Mistress for a Night

She pressed the switch that let down the window at her side and cold air filled the car. She waited, her mouth grim, her eyes shadowed with the pain she could do nothing about.

The silver car swerved to a halt in front of her, and in moments he was striding back to her, long legs encased in mole-grey cords, wide shoulders rigid beneath a soft leather jacket, his face furious.

Almost as if she had known what he would do, she glued herself to the leather bucket seat and waited for the onslaught as he dragged open the door and bit out, ‘You could have killed yourself!’

She didn’t want to see him, to see his hauntingly handsome face. She didn’t want to talk to him either, but she had to because she wasn’t taking that!

She turned her face to his, her expression stony, and said, very precisely, her anger precariously contained, ‘No. I drive a fast car well. I don’t take risks. I know what I’m doing. If there was any danger it was because you were tail-gating.’

He ignored her words completely. ‘Get out!’ And before she could react he leant over her, taking the keys from the ignition, his hands clamping on her shoulders as she sat immobilised by an anger so intense she thought she might explode with it.

Impatiently, he slid his hands under her arms and hauled her out, and only when her booted feet met the grass of the verge did she find her tongue. She lashed him with it. ‘If you don’t get your hands off me and give me my keys I’ll have you prosecuted for assault. The police take road rage very seriously.’

‘Shut up!’ he snapped through his teeth, and wound an arm around her narrow waist, lifting her off her feet and carrying her, kicking and wriggling. He pushed her into the back seat of his car and slid in beside her.

Slithering round, she felt all the emotion she’d suppressed since he’d ended their brief island affair boil over as she slapped his face. Through a red mist of rage she saw his mouth tuck in at the corners, heard him do what she’d least expected—apologise.

‘I’m sorry. This wasn’t meant to happen.’ He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair, rumpling it, and said, his voice rough, ‘When she knew her relationship with Harold was over your mother came back to Lytham and collected her car—with tragic results. I thought you—’

Before he could offer the final insult to her character she stopped him with an oath worthy of a building site worker in a temper, then offered scathingly, ‘I am not my mother. I don’t go to pieces behind the wheel of my car—or anywhere else, for that matter—just because a man turns out to be a bastard. I expect a man to be a bastard!’ She held out a hand. ‘Now give me my keys.’

Jason’s heart lurched as he looked into the burnished, glittering gold of the eyes that dominated the frozen features of her gorgeous face.

All the hard edges were back in place; she’d rebuilt that fortress. She was sexy, tough, had attitude. And he loved her. Despite her muddy relationship with Harold. He couldn’t blame her for that, not if he viewed the subject rationally, put his possessiveness where she was concerned aside.

She’d felt betrayed, rejected by her lover and her parent, barred from her home. Ignored. Harold had been the only one who had had anything to do with her, shown her any affection.

It didn’t matter that she’d turned to the only one of them who hadn’t treated her like a pariah. He could understand it, shut it away in the past where it belonged, along with all the other emotional baggage—sleepless nights since he’d left her on the island had shown him that. He prayed to God it wasn’t too late.

‘No.’ He denied her demand for the keys. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘I can’t think why.’ She didn’t avoid his eyes, didn’t so much as blink. She would show him she could outface him. ‘You already thanked me for giving you a few days of good sex.’ She made a leisurely production of looking at her wristwatch. Loads of time, but he didn’t know that. ‘I’ve an appointment with Harold’s solicitor at Lytham. I don’t intend to keep him waiting.’

‘Georgia—just shut up.’ His voice had dropped, was soft as honey now, and the expression in his eyes reminded her of the way he had looked at her when everything had been so briefly wonderful. She couldn’t bear it. She lowered her eyes, swiftly veiling her own expression as she brushed an imaginary fleck from the knee of the tailored mulberry-coloured trousers she was wearing.

‘I love you,’ he said, and there was a strange catch in his voice. ‘But that’s nothing new. The only problem is, I can’t imagine life without you. And I’m a big enough fool to have overlooked that glaringly obvious fact.’ He took one of her hands in both of his and added carefully, as if he were mentally walking on eggshells, ‘Could a bright lady like you possibly marry a fool?’

Paralysed by the unexpected, Georgia let her hand stay in his, feeling his thumb slide back and forth over her clenched knuckles. She lifted her eyes, not looking at him, not daring to—hardly daring to breathe even—and fixed them on the winter-bare trees and fields she could see through the windscreen.

Was this a cruel trick? Or was she dreaming, putting words into his mouth that he hadn’t said? Or had his final betrayal of her love for him pushed her right over the edge? Was she going crazy?

‘If you say no, I’ll understand. I’ll hate it, but will understand. I had to find you and ask. I was cursing myself for being such an idiot, cutting myself off from the only woman I’ve ever loved, long before the plane to Heathrow touched down. I’ve been sleepless at night, thinking of you, wanting you. Desperate. So afraid I’d lost you again through my own stupidity.’ Briefly the pressure of his fingers tightened, and then relaxed. ‘I drove up to Birmingham to tell you all this, saw your car leave the street as I turned into it, and came after you.’

His heart thumped, constricting his breathing. If she didn’t respond soon he’d take her in his arms and kiss her until she was forced to, kiss her until the frozen features glowed with the vibrancy that was so much a part of her. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

Following her car, he’d admired the way she drove, entranced by the flirty, sexy package of sports car and driver. Then he’d remembered Vivienne’s fate, and couldn’t recall ever having been so terrified.

‘Marry me, Georgia,’ he said with thick urgency.

The landscape in her vision blurred and tilted because her brain was going haywire. If he’d asked her a few days ago, instead of saying, Thanks, it was nice knowing you, and catching the first flight out of her life, she’d have accepted like a shot and known she was in heaven.

But that wa

s then. This was now, and she’d spent much time and energy transforming herself back into the hard-nosed tough career woman she’d been before. The woman who didn’t need anyone. The woman who didn’t get hurt because she never let anyone close enough.

‘Georgia. Tell me you don’t love me and you get more than your keys; you get your life back. But if you do love me, and after our time together on the island I believe you do, then I get the rest of your life to cherish and hold dearer than my own. And you get mine, to do with as you will.’ One of his hands cupped the delicate line of her jaw, tilted her head. ‘Look at me.’

She met his smoky, smouldering eyes and lost herself. Lost the dedicated career lady and found the woman who’d been born to love this one man.