He settled the pick-up details and was strolling over to the Veyron when he was distracted by the very distinctive sound of high heels hitting flagstones.
‘Miss St James’ had re-emerged in silky white pants, which were swishing around her long legs, some sort of floaty, shimmery silky green top, which barely skimmed the tops of her arms and left her shoulders bare, and she’d applied bright crimson lipstick to that smart mouth of hers. Although her eyes were impenetrable behind those ridiculously large sunglasses she had a faint smile on her lips as she headed over to a boat of a convertible parked by the garden wall. He watched her climb in.
He was done here. He still wanted the car, and he wanted it fixed. But first he’d deal with the thorny question of why the Bugatti was nose-down in a bunch of roses.
‘Hold it, sweetheart.’
She paused from rummaging in her bag, pointed chin angled over her shoulder, shades lowered, eyes assessing. ‘Is there something else?’ she enquired civilly.
Yeah, too civil.
He knew how to get his point across—how to use leashed aggression as a weapon in the male-dominated industry in which he’d shouldered his way up to the top.
He was somewhat stymied by the fact that as he approached the car she smiled, and her whole face softened, became sensuously lovely, almost expectant.
‘Before you rip out of here,’ he drawled, leaning in, ‘just a word of advice.’
‘Advice?’
‘Lawyer up.’
Her smile flickered and faded. But before he could read her expression she pushed the shades abruptly up her face.
‘As much as I like being tumbled out of bed by a handsome man and lectured to,’ she shot out rapidly, her words scrambling over one another, ‘I do have an appointment and this is all getting rather complicated.’ She gave him a haughty look. ‘If there is any damage to the car, add it to the bill, why don’t you?’ She zipped up her bag and muttered something about it being just one more thing to add to the list.
She wasn’t stupid, Nash thought, looking down at all those bright pretty curls, but her sense of self-preservation was clearly running on zero. Didn’t she realise if she was a man he would have hauled her out of that car and done what was necessary?
Maybe she did. Maybe she was relying on her woman status to keep her out of harm’s way.
He reached in and palmed her keys.
‘Hey!’
He levelled her with a look and had the satisfaction of seeing her back up in her seat.
‘Yeah, about that. The world doesn’t run on your timetable, princess.’
Her expression was hidden behind those shades, but the pulse at the base of her slender throat was pounding and the old bloke’s accusation about her being a nice woman and him frightening her returned full strength.
He dropped the keys into her lap.
‘Just as a matter of interest—mine, not yours, doll—how did the car end up in the garden?’
She fumbled to start her engine and he frowned. He wanted her to understand the consequences of her carelessness, but he didn’t bully women.
She started up the engine, not looking at him.
‘I think that would be when I left the handbrake off,’ she responded, and without another word reversed fast in a cloud of dust.
* * *
Douleur bonne, what did she think she was doing?
Lorelei held on tight to the wheel as she tore up the drive, her heart pounding out of her chest. She just had to get away before the handsome stranger wrecked everything.
Alors, she could have just offered up a standard apology and volunteered to pay for all repairs. A more prudent woman would have done just that. But prudence wasn’t her forte lately...
She just wanted today to be a nice day.
One more day.
Was it too much to ask?
She licked her dry lips, dragged her bag over as she drove, fumbled for her lipstick.
Don’t think about it, she told herself, swiping her lower lip with the crimson colour, making a mess of it.
She braked, dropped the lipstick, fished it from her lap and hooked off her sunglasses impatiently to restore her face with a tissue in the rear-vision mirror.
For a moment all she saw were her eyes, huge and dilated and vulnerable.
Taking a deep breath, she put herself back in order and forged onto the highway, determined to put this behind her. Oui, she’d had a bad start to the day, but that didn’t mean anything, and it wasn’t that bad. Despite the trembling of her hands on the wheel she’d had a little fun, hadn’t she? She was sorry about the car, but it hadn’t been intentional and it was only a little scratched. She was a good person, she’d never hurt anyone on purpose in her life, she wasn’t careless with other people’s property; she wasn’t a criminal...