The Pleasures of Spring (17 page)

Her joy was so evident that Andy felt a pang of guilt. He had no idea how long they would be here or what his mother would do when his ‘engagement’ suddenly ended.

Poppy raised her glass. ‘A toast – to the next generation at Lough Darra.’

‘The next generation.’ Maggie’s words echoed his mother’s as they clinked their glasses together.

For once, Roz was stunned into silence and Andy wanted to kick himself for being an idiot. Why hadn’t he noticed how pale she was? She’d been attacked, shot at
and engaged within the space of half a day. Her head must be spinning.

Poppy sipped her champagne and then said, ‘Let’s sit down by the fire, my dear, and you can tell me all about yourself.’

She gave Andy an arch look. ‘Men are so reticent when it comes to the important things.’

They returned to the sofa and Andy pulled Roz down beside him, resting his arm along the back of the couch. Roz relaxed into his embrace and rested her hand on his thigh as if it was something they did every night.

‘So tell me, dear, how did you meet my no-good son?’ Poppy asked. ‘Was it romantic?’

Roz smiled and Andy braced himself. The little madam was up to something. ‘We met in Paris last year, at the Eiffel Tower. Andy bought me a ticket to go up to the top.’

Poppy sighed happily. ‘How romantic.’

Roz’s smile turned evil. ‘Unfortunately, the ticket was for the stairs, not the lift. I had to climb the entire two thousand-odd steps to the top. He seemed to think I needed the exercise.’

Andy narrowed his eyes at her, silently promising retribution.

‘Oh, what a rascal. You have a perfect figure, how could he say that?’ Poppy looked genuinely distressed.

‘And when we met again in London this year, he complained that I had put on weight.’

Oh yeah, Roz was trying to drop him into it. ‘You have to admit that you had a cute little belly,’ he said. ‘It suited you.’

Roz choked on a sip of champagne. ‘It did not.’

‘Sure it did. I’d like to see you like that again.’

‘You are so full of it.’

He was teasing her, but for some reason, the idea of her round and pregnant had a certain appeal. ‘Try me and see.’

She had sense enough not to reply to that one.

‘More champagne, darling?’ His mother’s question broke the tension.

Poppy poured some more champagne and insisted on toasting them again. ‘You have no idea how wonderful it is to have you here. Dougal will be thrilled to meet you.’

That would be a first. Andy had never seen his dour father thrilled about anything that didn’t involve horses.

‘He’ll be down for dinner. Andy probably told you that he’s been ill.’

‘Yes,’ Roz murmured and took another sip from her glass.

Andy could tell that she was flagging. ‘Roz is dying to meet him. Aren’t you, darling? But she’s been up since 4am and –’

‘How dreadful. You must be dead on your feet. Why don’t you unpack and have a nap before dinner?’

Relieved, Andy stood up and took Roz’s glass from her hand. She really was shattered. A nap would do them both good. ‘Great. We’ll go upstairs and get settled in.’

‘I’ll see you both later. Maggie has made up the blue room for Roz.’

His mother had put them in separate rooms? She couldn’t be serious.

Andy was about to protest when his mother smiled
sweetly. ‘The blue room is traditionally used by the lady of the house.’

Yes – if she was ninety or widowed or her husband snored like a freight train. Andy didn’t want Roz sleeping somewhere that was almost a five minute walk away. ‘I’m sure Roz doesn’t want to put you to so much trouble.’

‘Nonsense. It’s no trouble at all.’

Andy picked up the shopping bags and led Roz up the staircase.

‘Your mum is a classy lady.’

‘Yes. She’s something,’ Andy muttered under his breath. On the landing he paused. ‘Would you like to see my room first?’

‘No thanks. I’m good. Lead the way to the blue room.’

They walked the endless corridor and he opened the door at the end. ‘The blue room, M’lady. Will you be needing anything else? Undressing perhaps? Or a turn down service?’

Roz paused in the doorway. ‘Well, there is one thing.’

Thank you, god. Andy took two steps into the room.

‘I need to use your phone to check on Frankie.’

He fished in his pocket and handed her his new BlackBerry.

She punched in the number quickly and walked away from him. ‘Frankie, it’s me. How are you? Yes. Yes. Okay. I will.’

Roz disconnected the call with a frown. ‘He says he’s fine but he sounds a bit off.’

‘He’s probably stressed after his encounter with Hall.’

Roz nodded. ‘I know. It’s just that …’

She swayed and Andy rushed forwards. He was a
thoughtless bastard. She might be tough, but she wasn’t trained. Even experienced operatives weren’t used to getting shot at every day. ‘Get undressed and go to sleep.’

She bent down to take off her boots and gasped. ‘My ribs!’

‘Here, let me help you.’ Damn! He should have realized she’d been coasting on adrenaline up to now. He hadn’t intended to undress her, but it was obvious she wouldn’t be able to manage on her own. Gritting his teeth, he eased the dress up over her head, taking care to be as gentle as possible.

The sight of the emerging bruise on her chest shocked him, and reminded him how close she had come to dying. ‘You need a doctor.’

‘No.’

Roz should have looked enticing, standing there in underwear, a lacy confection of a bra and cream suspenders holding up her stockings. But he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the massive purple bruise that spread over her ribs. If someone had hit her with a hammer, it would have done less damage.

He was scared to touch her.

‘No doctors,’ she insisted.

He unfastened her bra, and eased her into the bed.

Her eyelids fluttered closed and then opened again. ‘I’m usually tougher than this.’

‘Yeah, being shot at close range, escaping a psychopath and having champagne on an empty stomach is child’s play. You’re falling down on the job, Spring.’ In spite of his attempt at humour, his voice was rough.

She opened one eye and glared at him. ‘Well, fuck you too, McTavish.’ Then she snuggled into the bed and allowed her eyes to close again.

Andy hesitated. She looked so pale and vulnerable lying there and it was his fault. He was supposed to be looking after her. Instead, he had allowed her to come within inches of dying. Losing a client would be bad enough but losing Roz? He didn’t want to think about that. He wanted to kill something – preferably Hall.

Roz gave a soft snuffle. She was already asleep. Exhaustion was beginning to catch up on him too and the aches and pains of his recent fight were kicking in. He needed a shower and some sleep. In that order.

He had never really thought about settling down and, somehow, this wasn’t how he expected to be celebrating his engagement. Andy eyed the space beside her wistfully. The far end of the corridor was a long way away. He could always climb into bed with her. Make sure that she was okay.

You’re a bad bastard, McTavish
.

He and Roz in the same bed could have only one conclusion. Her naked and gasping his name, while he made up for the night they had spent apart after their encounter in Charleville Castle.

Despite his exhaustion, his cock stirred and he sighed. The only way either of them would get any sleep would be in separate rooms.

The ringing of a bell woke Roz. She jerked awake, alert in spite of her exhaustion, primed for danger, then winced as the movement reawakened the pain from her bruises. She heard the bell peal again somewhere in the bowels of the house.

House nothing. This was a freaking castle. The view of it from the driveway had been terrifying enough. Nothing could have prepared her for the inside, all marble and mahogany and leaded glass. That library had more books in it than most of the public libraries she had been in, and half of them looked like valuable antiques.

She flopped back on her bed and stared at the ceiling above her. Typical. Even the ceiling wasn’t ordinary. It was covered with tiny cherubs, picked out in blue and gold.

How rich was Andy? And if he was this rich, why was he slumming it, working as a glorified bodyguard for Niall Moore?

Roz was painfully aware of the gaps in her education. The flat she shared with her dad had been raided the night before her exams. She’d barely had two hours’ sleep before school. She had nothing – not even a GCSE – to her name. But while she had no fancy degrees, one thing she could do was hack computers. Roz had checked out Niall Moore in detail.

She knew Moore Enterprises was considered the best
operation of its type in Europe, and that Niall had a good income and a very comfortable lifestyle. But it was nothing compared to this. Andy sure as hell wasn’t paying for this house out of his salary from Moore Enterprises.

What else hadn’t he told her? she wondered, getting up and finding an old-fashioned bathroom through the side door of the room.

Andy hadn’t been wrong about the plumbing. The water pipes gurgled and the over-bath shower was noisy. The stream of water that eventually came never got really hot, but it was a distinct improvement on the make-shift showers on the film set. Roz stood still, allowing the warm water to soothe her aches.

She had no idea what she should wear to dinner but was pretty sure that jeans wouldn’t be acceptable. Roz sorted through her new clothes and picked out a demure black dress. She wanted to tease Andy with another pair of stockings, but her injured ribs wouldn’t let her bend enough to put them on. Bare legs it would have to be.

She had finished dressing when he knocked on the door. ‘I’ve come to escort you to dinner –’ he started, and stopped, stuck. He looked her up and down, and whistled. ‘Wow, you clean up well.’

‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ she said.

She wasn’t going to admit how the sight of him in a dinner jacket caused her breath to catch and a ball of heat to curl low in her belly. Andy was sexy in jeans, but in formal clothes, he was devastating.

He held out his arm to her. ‘Come and eat. I’ll show you around, otherwise you’ll get lost in this rabbit warren of a house.’

‘I’ll leave a trail of breadcrumbs so that I can find my way back,’ she told him.

‘Are you Hansel or Gretel?’ he asked, leading her down the wide staircase.

‘More like the wicked witch.’ She wasn’t some helpless child whose father had allowed her to be abandoned in the woods.

‘The witch came to a bad end,’ Andy pointed out.

‘She was stupid and short-sighted. I’m not.’

‘We’re eating in the breakfast room,’ Andy said, guiding her through the door.

Roz was stuck dumb. The round table might be a reasonable size for four people, but it was antique mahogany covered with Irish linen. A chandelier dripped from the ceiling, with dozens of small bulbs lighting the room and glinting off the crystal droplets. The table was set with far too many knives and forks, real linen and crystal glasses.

‘Mum is determined to impress you,’ Andy murmured into her ear. ‘I’d be lucky to get a seat at the kitchen table.’

Roz would have much preferred to eat in the kitchen. She wondered if she would be relegated to the scullery if she screwed up.

‘Well, bring her in so I can see her,’ an irascible voice said from the corner. She had managed to miss the elderly man sitting in an armchair, reading a newspaper.

‘Don’t worry, he’ll love you,’ Andy said.

Dougal Campbell McTavish did not love her.

Andy seated her at the table, with her back to the fireplace where whole logs blazed and crackled.

Once Andy had helped his father to his seat at the end of the table, the inquisition began.

‘So you’re from London?’ His tone made it clear that this was a mark against her.

Poppy helped Roz to a ladle of soup from the tureen in the centre of the table. To her relief, there was no army of servants standing over them. Maggie had brought in the soup and both Andy and Poppy had jumped up to help her.

‘Yes,’ Roz responded with a smile. ‘But I was born in Ireland.’

‘And your family?’

Oh yeah, this is what it was all about. Was she a suitable brood mare to carry on the bloodline? She was tempted to tell the truth, to see the look on Dougal’s face, but she needed to stay here, and fit in.

You’re a rich girl, you’re a rich girl
. Time to get into character.

‘My dad has his own IT business. My mother died when I was four.’

Poppy was all sympathy. ‘Oh dear, your poor father. How on earth did he cope?’

While Maggie brought in roast venison, carrots, cabbage and new potatoes, she elaborated her story. ‘He didn’t. My dad was broken hearted. Of course, the O’Sullivans tried to help as much as they could. They took my sister Sinead to live with them.’

She glanced at Poppy to watch which knife and fork she picked from the three at each place setting. ‘I stayed with my dad. I couldn’t bear to leave him.’

Beside her, Andy choked. He moved his hand under the tablecloth to grip her leg in warning. She thumped him hard on the back and the grip became a caress, sliding up her thigh, teasing as it went.

The trick, she knew, was not to tell an outright lie. Tell the truth in such a way that your mark believed the lie.

Dougal chewed a piece of meat before he asked, ‘O’Sullivans? Do you mean those airline people?’

Roz nodded, taking a bite of her meal. It tasted unlike anything she had ever eaten before; simple but full of flavour. ‘Yes, my uncle is Tim O’Sullivan.’ And there was something she never thought she’d admit.

Andy’s right hand was holding his wine glass. His left hand was making tiny circles on the soft skin of her thigh, distracting her from the questions.

‘New money.’ His father grunted as he cut into his meat. ‘And too flashy. But he does have an eye for horses.’

‘So I’m told,’ she said, trying to ignore the hand now tracing the dampness of her panties. She clamped her thighs shut and glared at Andy, while a small part of her wanted to open her legs and let him do whatever he wanted. He was much too good at this.

‘Have some more venison,’ Poppy interrupted. ‘Everything on the table is from our own farm. Except the wine, of course. We never managed to make good wine.’

‘Everything?’ Roz surveyed the table in awe. In her world, food came from Tesco. She could understand people growing vegetables. She had once managed to grow lettuce and radishes in a window box, but the rest? She was pretty sure venison came from deer. And the bread and butter? Her mind reeled.

‘Are you involved with horses yourself?’ Dougal asked.

All she really knew about horses was that one end bit and the other end shit. And that Nagsy liked carrots. She shrugged modestly. ‘A little.’

‘Well, you can take out a horse while you are here. Andy will find you something suitable to ride. Perhaps Flamingo or Kestrel.’

‘Are they horses or birds?’

He glared at her. ‘Very funny. I see you’ve inherited Tim O’Sullivan’s sense of humour.’

Poppy intervened. ‘And do you see much of your Uncle Tim?’

Andy’s hand had not stopped his tormenting tease, his index finger flicked lightly against her clit, provoking an insistent throb.

‘Not much, I’ve been working in Europe.’ Roz put her cutlery down with some relief and nipped Andy in the side. This meal was hard enough without him distracting her. She slipped her foot out of her shoe and slid it up his calf.

To her relief and a little regret, he left off his sensual torture while he took a mouthful of wine. Poppy collected the plates and Roz, horribly conscious that her dress was bunched up at the top of her thighs, had to sit still without helping. Any movement would reveal the state Andy had left her in.

Dessert was poached pears and crème fraîche, also from the farm, which she had to eat using another knife and fork.

Dougal returned to the attack. ‘Andrew went to Queens. Which college did you go to?’

Roz’s fingers tightened around her knife. For a moment, she considered plunging it into the suspicious old man’s gut. Or at least his dinner. Scare him into another heart attack. It was clear he didn’t consider her nearly good enough for his precious son.

Andy must have noticed the danger signal and put his arm around her in what looked like a loving gesture to anyone who couldn’t see how tight it was.

She pinched him hard and he laughed.

She couldn’t admit she hadn’t even done her A-levels, never mind gone to college. What colleges were in London? Her mind blanked. She remembered the local Polytechnic and she was pretty sure that wouldn’t do. ‘Oh,’ she said casually, ‘I went to the Sorbonne and Oxford.’

She had been inside the Sorbonne once, posing as a research assistant when she was there to meet a submissive client. When he had failed to show she had almost been arrested. That had been a lesson in getting paid upfront. And she had a vague memory of a windy weekend in Oxford while Dad visited a new girlfriend.

At least Dougal looked impressed, and returned his attention to his place. Andy took the opportunity to caress her in that delicate spot between her shoulder blades, the one that always turned her to mush.

She stopped eating, having lost her appetite – for food. ‘Do you mind if I skip coffee? It’s been a long day and I’m shattered.’

Poppy fussed anxiously, exclaiming at how pale Roz looked. Dougal raised his eyes from his dish, grunted something that sounded like ‘No stamina’, and waved her off.

‘I’ll escort her to her room,’ Andy said, but the wicked glint in his eyes promised that he didn’t intend to leave her there on her own.

‘I’ll pour your coffee, so don’t be long.’ Poppy wasn’t exactly subtle – she expected him back.

His hand at her back was warm and reassuring as he guided Roz out of the dining room.

‘He’ll love you,’ she mimicked when they were out of earshot. ‘Yeah right!’

Andy winced. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t expecting him to give you the third degree. He’s usually pretty nice to the girls I bring home.’

That stung. ‘Sure, girls who are from the same background.’ It was painfully obvious to her that she was not.

‘Don’t worry, he’ll come around. In a few days, he’ll love you.’ They had reached her door by now. He turned her around, tipped her face up and kissed her.

The kiss was light, delicate, almost sweet. There was no body contact at all. But it inflamed something inside her.

Here, in this monster of a house, this was something she knew. Something real and honest and familiar. And, oh, so tempting.

She leaned into him, her breasts aching for the feel of his hard body.

Andy groaned, holding her back. ‘Don’t, please. I have to go downstairs to my mother, and preferably without a hard-on. And you’re still bruised.’

With a grin, she pulled his head down to hers again. She didn’t attempt to touch him anywhere else, but she opened her mouth, inviting his tongue to tangle with her, and kissing him back with all the seductiveness she could muster.

His arms trembled as he kept a distance between them, but he didn’t pull back. His kiss got hotter, and she allowed herself the luxury of enjoying it. She could kiss him forever, without wanting more.

Time lost all meaning, and she was shocked when he pulled himself out of her grip. ‘So much for that plan,’ he groaned. She looked down and giggled when she noticed the bulge tenting the front of his trousers.

‘Witch! I’ll get you back for that.’

‘Oh yeah? Do your worst.’ Roz was almost hoping that he would.

‘Oh I plan to.’ He gave her a warning look before planting a swift kiss on her mouth, then pushed her into her bedroom and headed down the stairs.

She watched him until he was out of sight, then closed the door and sighed. Her nipples were hard achy points and she pressed her thighs together to contain the throb his kiss had caused. Andy wasn’t the only one who would need a cold shower.