Pride After Her Fall

Who cared about a silly car when her life was coming apart at the seams?

So she did what she always did when a man challenged her, called her to account or tried to make himself king of her mountain. She brought out the big guns. The ones she’d learned from her beloved, irresponsible father.

Wit and sex appeal.

Lorelei dipped her glasses and gave him full wattage.

‘I can hardly wait,’ she purred.

CHAPTER THREE

FROM her rumpled appearance she had clearly just rolled out of bed, and for one out-of-bounds moment Nash had a strong urge to roll her back into it.

Hardly surprising. She was a striking-looking woman who exuded a sultry, knowing sensuality that could have been a combination of her looks and the way she moved her body and displayed it, but he sensed came from the essence of who she was.

In another era she would have embodied the romantic idea of a courtesan. A woman who required a great deal of money to keep the shine on her silky curls, the glow in her honeyed skin and her eyes from straying to the next main chance.

Yeah—another time and another place this could go down a lot differently.

A man like him...a woman like her...

But not today.

Not now.

And it didn’t have a lot to do with the car.

With a media circus about to start up around him again, this smouldering blonde had a little bit too much attitude to burn. He might as well slap a big no-go sticker on that shapely ass of hers. She fairly neon-glowed with sex of a crazy, messy kind, and tempted as he was he couldn’t afford to be indiscriminate—not this close to race-start. He’d do well to remember that.

Although his first impression of this woman had been of something quite different. When she’d first emerged for a timeless instant he’d seen only a tall, delicately built girl as graceful and hesitant as a mountain deer. She’d given him pause. For a moment there he hadn’t wanted to shift a muscle in case he scared her off.

Then she’d looked right at him and headed for the Bugatti.

And right now her hands were on her hips and the glamour-girl in her was in full flow. Which was when he noticed something rather more down to earth. She wasn’t wearing much. Or rather what she was wearing was advertising the lack of anything else.

Trying to be a gentleman, he dragged his attention upwards. But he needn’t have bothered. She was clearly unfazed, and his cynicism about who she was and the price she put on herself lodged into place—because, despite his initial impression of something better, blondie was pure South of France glamour. If he upended her she probably had “Made on the Riviera” stamped on the soles of her pretty bare feet.

For a moment she’d looked a little thrown. He didn’t know if she was embarrassed to be caught out or simply defensive because she didn’t like being in the wrong. Frankly, he didn’t care.

He cared about the car.

He whipped out his cell, punched in a number.

‘As far as I’m concerned, lady, you’ve committed a felony. That car is a work of art and a treasure, and you’ve trashed it.’

She dragged off the huge sunglasses and a pair of pale-lashed doe eyes regarded him with a fair degree of astonishment. As if he were massively overreacting.

Nash knew he was staring back, but after the clothes and the attitude he just hadn’t expected amber-brown, slightly tip-tilted, lovely... The eyes of a gentle fawn.

‘I haven’t trashed anything,’ she countered in that low, sexy voice of hers.

Nash folded his arms, still shaking off the effect of those eyes. Somehow she was going to try and take the moral high ground. This should be good.

‘It might be a little scratched—that’s all,’ she conceded. ‘I suppose there are only a couple of thousand in the world—’

‘Eight,’ he said grimly. ‘There are eight left in the world.’

For a moment he fancied he saw her take a deep swallow, but she continued on blithely, like a pretty blonde lemming running over a cliff.

‘Seven more than this one—not such a catastrophe, non?’

He stared at her.

‘Besides, it’s man-made.’ She smoothed her hands over the gentle swell of her hips, drawing attention to the obvious fact that she wasn’t.