Crush (5 page)

She enjoyed another short nap, this time in the decadent comfort of a massive four-poster bed draped with ivory linen and silk. Soon after she awakened, stylists imported from London came to her suite to do her hair, makeup and wardrobe. She allowed them to wash and condition her hair but passed on a cut and style, opting to keep her hair subdued by a simple bandanna. The first hair plucked from her right eyebrow made her scream, so she passed on the makeover. And she insisted on wearing her own clothes: blue jeans and a formless sea-green sweater.

When Bernie came to her suite to escort her to dinner, his eager smile became a fright mask of disappointment. “This is the best you could do?” he squawked. He plucked at her sweater and flipped a hand through her hair. “They came to my room with a dozen or more designer gowns…all in Meg’s size, of course, since they thought she would be the one coming here with you. I can’t imagine that Fletcher’s people didn’t do the same for you.” He turned to ring for Morgan.

Miranda grabbed him by his arm and stopped him. “I didn’t want to wear any of those dresses. That runway stuff just isn’t me. And I’m not some Barbie doll to be dressed up.”

“Well, I am.” Bernie clutched the satin lapel of his tux with one hand and passed the other over his recently styled hair.
“
‘007 Ken,’ Caribbean style. You likey likey?”

Miranda smiled in spite of herself. “You look great.”

He took her hand and set it over his arm. “And you look like a farmhand,” he said tenderly.

“I’m sorry if I’m ruining your fun, Bernie,” she said as they left her suite and began the long, convoluted route to the Banquet Hall.

“It’ll take more than your bandanna and blue jeans to ruin this trip for me. I just wish that you would loosen up and enjoy this.”

Miranda looked up at the colorful banners hanging from the high ceiling of the corridor and she passed her hand along the huge stones that had been laid to form Conwy’s walls centuries ago. “I do appreciate this. Parts of it. I didn’t like being forced into it by Rex, and I don’t like the pampered poodle aspect on this end. I don’t know if Lucas Fletcher is trying to be nice, or if he’s…”

“Preparing you for the slaughter,” Bernie finished.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

“That’s exactly why you should give the nerves and suspicion a rest and lap up every morsel of this experience. I’m being treated like a queen—no pun intended—and you know what? I deserve it. So do you.”

“But you want it, Bernie. That’s the difference.”

He patted her hand and began leading her down a wide, steep stone staircase. Morgan was at the bottom of it, waiting for them. “You want this, Miranda,” Bernie said. “You just don’t know it yet.”

* * *

Told to wait in the solar while Bernie was taken, presumably, to the Banquet Room in the Great Hall, Miranda’s curiosity became impatience, then anger, as she wore a path in the floor. The solar was on the third level of the keep. The windows set in the rounded walls were modernized and as large and deep as the ones in her suite. They were polarized, most likely to cool the glare of the sunrise off the waters of the Irish Sea. The room was luxuriously furnished in subdued leathers and velvet, yet still maintained an inviting coziness. Thick carpeting in muted shades of rust and umber muffled her footsteps and warmed the stone floor. Under different circumstances, she might have taken a leather-bound volume from one of the ceiling-high oak bookcases and snuggled up for a quiet read.

But Miranda was too mad to read. She placed her palms flat against the wall, and the cool stone made a great sound barrier as she spat out a furious strand of Portuguese curse words.

“Who does Lucas Fletcher think he is?” she asked the empty room.
Just because he has money and celebrity and a frickin’ kingdom, he thinks he can manipulate people!
she raged inwardly. She wanted to kick something, but she was afraid of breaking her toe—or worse, damaging Lucas’s furniture, which looked plenty expensive.

She seethed. On both sides of the ocean, powerful men trapped her, and she resented it. Deeply.

And Bernie. Her friend, her confidante, her fellow Double D…he was already in the Banquet hall, socializing in the enemy camp.
It’s
my
date
, she thought bitterly.
Why is Bernie having more fun than I am?

The answer came to her quickly. He was having fun because no one had forced him to be there.

“That’s it.” She tossed up her hands. “I’m going home.”

She marched to the wooden double doors. She would have dramatically thrown them open if they hadn’t been fifteen feet tall and two hundred pounds apiece. She shoved the left door open just enough to slip into the wide stairwell. Careful to keep her feet on the wool runner to mute her footsteps, she made her way down a spiraling stone staircase. She walked for at least a mile it seemed, before she came to the Great Hall, where a few people hung about, talking. No one attempted to intercept her as she headed for Morgan’s office. The Master Steward was supposed to be at her disposal at all times, and she was determined to turn him into her impromptu travel agent.

She wore sneakers, but her feet were killing her by the time she’d completed the hike from the solar to Morgan’s office, a room just off the Banquet Hall where he managed the castle’s daily business. Miranda stood in the low, narrow corridor leading to Morgan’s office, her hands on her knees, catching her breath and steeling her nerves before confronting him.

The cheerful music of lively conversation drifted from the Banquet Hall. Bernie’s distinctive voice and island dialect rose above all the others. “Tell me,” he began, “how often does your lord and master entertain his paramours and their chaperones in such grand fashion?”

Miranda pasted herself to the stone wall and crept closer to the Banquet Hall for a better listen.

“Aye, he’s never brought a lady friend to Conwy,” said an anonymous female voice with a thick Irish brogue. “Lucas is a very private person.”

“Then why, may I ask, has Mr. Fletcher gone to such extremes to please my darling Miranda?” Bernie asked.

Miranda peeped into the room. Bernie was the only person standing at the table, which was easily 25 yards long. Dark wood chairs with tall, intricately carved backs lined each side of the table, and bodies were seated in each. The diners, all of whom Miranda assumed were Conwy’s staff, served themselves from lovely porcelain casseroles, platters and tureens situated amidst fresh bouquets of wild roses and ivy. Five chandeliers, four smaller ones surrounding a magnificent central one the size of her Toyota, hung from the ceiling, which was so high the rafters escaped the light cast by the sparkling crystal ornaments. Elegant tapers of ivory and ecru burned on the table and from brass sconces throughout the room. The flames danced when someone laughed or reached across the table. Miranda caught the scent of something warm and meaty, and her belly noisily growled.

“We don’t question what Lucas does,” said an older woman with silver hair and a Welsh accent. “Our instructions were to treat Miss Penney as though she was the bloomin’ queen of England.” The woman paused, and then said, “We took it upon ourselves to treat her better than that.”

The table erupted in laughter. Miranda chewed her lip, desperate to join them. It spoke well of Lucas that his employees were so happy. But he was still the boss, and she was his queen…at least for the night. Since she was the one they were supposed to impress, they probably wouldn’t be able to relax if she were to walk in on them and take a seat.

“Thanks, Lucas,” she muttered sullenly as she turned and headed for Morgan’s office.

* * *

“Ken, have you seen…Oh, my…Hello.”

Miranda was sitting on a sofa, leafing through a golf magazine and she turned to face the man who had appeared in Morgan’s doorway. It was in her mind to tell him that Morgan wasn’t there, that she herself had been waiting for him for over twenty minutes, but the words fled her mind the instant the man walked into the room.

“Hello.” Miranda stood on legs suddenly gone very weak and very shaky.

“Hello,” he said again. “Miranda.”

His melodic pronunciation of her name turned her belly to jelly. When he offered his hand, she didn’t see it. Her eyes were fixed on his, marveling at their unusual shade of blue. Were his eyes really that blue, or was it the deep navy of his fisherman’s sweater making them seem so? Her eyes dropped to his mouth. The delicious shape of it and how it formed her name thrilled her, and his accent gave her goose bumps. He spoke to her again and she heard nothing other than the tone and timbre of his sexy voice.

“Miranda?” he repeated. “Are you all right?”

This was the man who had saved her from the crush. This man with the broad, muscled chest, glossy hair and incredible smile, who looked at her as though he had found a treasure at the end of a rainbow was…“Fine.” She shook herself out of her reverie. “I’m fine.”

“You wanted to see Kenneth? Perhaps I can help you.”

“No!” she said a bit too sharply. “Uh…no. I just…got a little bored waiting for you.”

He smiled. “For a moment I was afraid that you were trying to duck out.”

A loud, brittle laugh burst from her. She quickly turned it into a cough. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry I’m so late. We had to reschedule some playing dates in Europe to accommodate a makeup performance for the concert last week in Boston,” he explained. “Thunderstorms in Rome delayed my return. How was your flight over?”

Miranda still wasn’t hearing him. She had interviewed hundreds of celebrities, both major and minor, and Lucas was one of the few who actually looked the same in photos as in real life. Actually, photos didn’t do him justice. In real life, he was so gorgeous it was hard to breathe and look at him at the same time.

“I’m starving.” Lucas took her hand. “I imagine you are, too. Shall we?”

Miranda gave herself a mental slap. All the man had done was walk into the room, and she had become a drooling, mindless slave to his exquisite male beauty. This wasn’t like her, and it wasn’t how she wanted to be. She cast her eyes to the floor. It was easier to remain in control when she wasn’t swimming in his beautiful eyes.

“Yes.” Miranda noticed that he wore jeans and athletic shoes. Heat surged through her as her gaze lingered on how well he filled out his jeans. “Do you need to dress or something?”

“No,” he chuckled. “Do you?”

“No. Not if you don’t.”

He tucked her arm through his. “Then, my lady, we’re off.”

* * *

Lucas led her past the crowded Banquet Hall and up a long flight of stairs to a smaller, more intimate chamber. Smaller meaning that the room could seat only fifty people comfortably, where the Banquet Hall easily sat one hundred. A wooden table was set elegantly with an enormous floral display, and crystal and silver for a five-course meal. At one end of the table were a lit candelabra and one place setting. Twenty-five feet away, at the other end, was another candelabra and place setting.

Morgan posed staunchly near the center of the table, close to a standing bucket of ice from which jutted a bottle of champagne and at least three bottles of wine. He was dressed in a black cutaway coat and gleaming white gloves that matched his white silk cravat. Miranda wondered if he’d been waiting for her and Lucas all this time.

“Good evening, sir,” Morgan began formally, “and lady. Tonight, a warm appetizer of escargot avec garlique will start your meal, followed by crab tartlets with leek puree accompanied by a lightly chilled Verdicchio from Conwy’s award-winning wine collection. Next, we shall serve duck with kumquats, complemented by a well-rounded Brouilly. Blue cheese soufflés will follow, and the grand finale to your meal will be Belgian chocolate mousse and fresh raspberry sorbet presented with a sweet Gewürztraminer.” Morgan bowed crisply before approaching them. With great ceremony he took Miranda from Lucas and escorted her to one end of the table.

Lucas went to the other end. He didn’t sit until Miranda had been seated, but once he took his chair, she disappeared. His view of her was completely blocked by a three-tiered monument of roses, phlox, bear grass, philodendrons and Queen Anne’s lace in the center of the table.

Lucas was glad that Miranda couldn’t see him. It had taken every particle of will power he had to walk her to his private dining room when what he’d really wanted to do was pitch himself atop her right there on Morgan’s sofa. He drank long, hard gulps of his ice water, hoping it would cool the fire burning through him. The woman wore jeans, a sweater that revealed only a bit of her collarbone, no makeup and no jewelry and she had done nothing to her hair other than restrain it with a rolled bandanna. Yet she was still the sexiest thing he had ever seen.
Maybe I’ve built this meeting up in my head for so long, I’ve made her something she isn’t
, he considered.

To test himself, he cleared his mind completely, slowly stood, and peeped at Miranda over the top of the mountainous floral arrangement. She slumped against the tall back of her chair and appeared to be trying to hang the smallest of her three spoons from the end of her nose. She caught it deftly each time it dropped off. Her small frame looked even tinier in the massive chair. When she set the spoon back down, her sweater shifted, allowing him to steal a glimpse of the caramel glow of her right collarbone and the graceful place where her neck met her shoulder. Lucas winced in sweet pain at the sight of her smooth, ginger-brown skin, and the front of his pants began to feel more snug. Miranda tugged her sweater back in place, pulled off her bandanna and ran a hand through her hair. The spill of warm brown caught the candlelight, and Lucas was mesmerized by the crackle of natural red highlights in her hair. She looked forward, and her eyes pinned him in place.

“I-Is…uh…everything all right down your end?” he hedged, reaching for something to say now that he’d been caught staring.

Miranda slightly rose, to see him over the flowers. “Everything’s fine. Thank you.”

Her sweater slipped again, and Lucas dropped into his chair. “It’s not me, damn it all,” he cursed under his breath. “It’s her.”