Once Upon a Pillow Page 23

  He was so handsome. His broad cheekbones and wide chin were harsh and unyielding, but his mouth…she adored his mouth. Beautiful, rich, broad, the kind of mouth that promised a woman sensual satisfaction so intense…

  Laurel could scarcely catch her breath. The promise of that mouth had been fulfilled. She could have kissed him for hours…but then she would have missed all the other delights he had provided.

  “I proposed,” he said.

  “Be still my heart.” Which at his touch was pounding hard and irregularly.

  “All right.” His beautiful mouth was grim, his eyes serious. “It wasn’t my finest moment, but I was in shock. I wasn’t expecting a vir—”

  She slapped her hand over his lips. “Do you have to keep saying that? Are virgins so rare in England?”

  “You’re the first one I’ve ever—”

  “Yes, I know, or you’d already be married.” She tried to roll away from him.

  He wrapped her tighter against him.

  “Your mother taught you never to debauch innocent young women, and to correct your mistakes when you make them, so…Will you marry me, Laurel?” As she quoted him, her mockery was fierce and scornful. She pretended to shiver. “Oo, I got a warm fuzzy from that proposal. I wonder how I had the presence of mind to turn it down.”

  “Have you thought that maybe it meant so much to me I botched it?”

  “No.”

  “You’re determined not to give an inch.”

  “If there are any inches to be given, they should come from you.” At once she’d realized what she’d said, and closed her eyes against him.

  For a long moment, he didn’t say anything—she reluctantly gave him points for that—before saying, “Tonight I’ll take you out for dinner.”

  Her eyes sprang open. “What?”

  “I can’t show you how willing I am to…cooperate if you won’t go out with me.”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll stay in with you.”

  Persistence was his middle name. “Don’t you get it? I’m not interested.”

  “If I believed that were true, I’d leave you alone. But we’ve got this.” He swooped on her, kissing her with passion and a possessiveness that branded her as his. On that one night, he’d been a lover who initiated her with such tenderness she’d spent all the time since wanting him. Fruitlessly, desperately wanting him.

  Now he took her mouth with the assurance of knowing he would be welcome. He held her beneath him, his leg draped over her hip, and tasted her, thrust his tongue into her mouth and demanded she answer him.

  She did. She couldn’t not. She’d waited for him all her life. As a lover, he was everything she’d ever dreamed of, and he was here. He was now. He kissed with the assurance that marked his every movement. Her hands crept up his chest, up his shoulders, into his hair. The straight strands were silk between her fingers as she held him to her. The scent of him enveloped her; setting her adrift in raw pleasure. His chest pressed against hers; his weight pushed her into the mattress.

  “My God, Laurel,” he muttered against her lips. “How can you give this up?”

  “We barely know each other,” she whispered, but oh, how familiar and warm and wonderful this felt.

  “Have dinner with me.”

  She was tempted. So tempted. Then…

  “Here you two are!” Grace, the housekeeper, bustled in.

  Laurel vaulted off the bed in a flurry of guilt and embarrassment. “Yes. Grace. What do you need?”

  “I was wondering where you wanted your tea—and I’d venture I got here just in the nick of time.” The round-cheeked old lady frowned disapprovingly. She was tall, almost six foot, and raw-boned, but like every other grandmotherly-type in Trecombe she wore an apron over a blue flowered house dress, and stockings rolled down to her knees.

  Kenneth, the butler, trailed along after her. “Maybe they want their tea in bed.”

  With a sniff, Grace announced, “I would not serve it there.”

  “Grace, you were young once, too.” Kenneth was the same height as Grace, and was probably in his late sixties, too, but he hadn’t aged well. Wrinkles scored his stubbled cheeks, his teeth were stained, and he walked as if each movement gave him pain. “A long time ago.”

  If Laurel left them alone, they’d start quarreling as only old enemies could do. “I’ll take tea in the library,” she said. “Mr. Ashton will take tea right here. He has a job to finish.”

  “She’s a slavedriver,” Max informed Grace.

  “Aye, Mr. Max, but she’s right. Everything’s got to be done before the new owners arrive.” Grace nodded over and over again, adoring Max as she had done since the first day he arrived.

  Max hadn’t gone out of his way with the housekeeper; he’d used his usual impeccable manners, opening doors, carrying loads, and escorting Grace back and forth from the village to the manor every day.

  And she rewarded him with worship. “I wouldn’t want you to get a bad report,” she said. “I’ll bring your tea right to you.”

  Kenneth shot Laurel and Max a sharp glance. “It’s not eating they’re interested in.”

  Max sat up. “That’s enough.”

  Kenneth glared.

  Max stared him down.

  With a snort, Kenneth shuffled out the door.

  “Well!” Grace eyed Max with a new respect. “You’re to be congratulated, sir. ‘Tis not every man who can intimidate Kenneth.” She nodded again. “I’ll bring tea just as soon as I get the kettle boiling.” She bustled out, leaving Max and Laurel alone again.

  But this time the memory of that kiss was between them. Laurel shot him a glance, expecting to see an evil gleam of triumph.

  Instead, he watched her with all the intensity of a wolf who’d enjoyed a taste of his prey. He didn’t feel satisfaction at the first sign of her capitulation. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he had his way about everything. Until she was in his bed, clinging to him, his ring on her finger and his body possessing hers.

  Well, she might have suffered a moment of weakness, but he hadn’t won yet. “Get your boots off the bed,” she said.

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Standing, he walked toward her, and didn’t stop until he stood toe to toe with her.

  Of course.

  She was willing to bet Max Ashton never backed away from a challenge in his whole life. He wouldn’t know how.

  She stepped sideways until he no longer towered over her. “And get away from me.”

  He followed her, leaned down until his breath touched her face. He whispered, “Not ever.”

  Chapter Four

  “You’ll lock this door and set the security system as soon as we leave.” Max didn’t ask; he commanded.

  “Yes. As I always do.” Laurel would have snapped with quite a bit more irritation, but Grace hung with obvious adoration on Max’s arm.

  “I already checked the locks on the other doors and all the windows,” he informed her.

  Laurel hung on to her civility by the barest of threads. “Thank you.”

  “Max is right,” Grace chirped. “You must keep yourself safe.”

  “And the antiques,” Kenneth said in his hoarse, smoker’s voice.

  “Now, Kenneth, the contents of the house aren’t as important as Miss Whitney’s well-being. You know they aren’t.” Grace smiled and shook her head at Laurel. “Older men are so gruff, but he doesn’t mean a thing by it.”

  Kenneth grunted and shuffled down the road.

  Max looked at Laurel and repeated, “Lock the doors. Set the security system.”

  For the second time that day, Laurel slammed the door.

  This time, she knew he’d heard her. But her satisfaction was short-lived. She knew Max was standing on the other side, waiting to hear the solid clunk of the bolt in the lock, and she wanted so badly to wait him out.

  But he wouldn’t go away. He’d simply come back in, and if she saw him one more time today, she would shriek like a frenzied cat. So she shot th
e bolt and set the security system, and told herself she should be grateful that he’d secured the other locks. The problem with Masterson Manor, the reason why it was so difficult to make safe, was that it boasted four different entrances—the servants’ entrance into the kitchen, the door from the souvenir shop into the covered portico, the front door that led into the foyer, and a door that led from a narrow stairway into the bedroom that held the Masterson Bed.

  Heaven only knows which Masterson had added that, and why.

  As she trudged to the kitchen and heated up the meal Grace had left her, she tried not to think that dinner with Max would have been entertaining and tasty … and would have ended up in bed. She’d already proved she had no resistance where he was concerned. She didn’t need to test the matter again.

  If only she hadn’t kissed him as if he were the only man alive, or rather…the only man for her. Which, if she were truthful, he was. But what good was that when she was so obviously not the only woman for him?

  He didn’t talk about his past loves, but that meant only that he didn’t kiss and tell. Of course there had been other women. A man didn’t look like Max and walk like Max without suffering from a surfeit of lady friends to warm his bed. Laurel wouldn’t care…if he loved her. But she was only a woman he took responsibility for.

  Who would have thought, in this day and age, that a man would hold such nineteenth century values? According to her friends, guys didn’t care about honor or commitment. In fact, the mere word commitment sent guys scurrying in the opposite direction.

  Only Laurel, lucky Laurel, had discovered the one man who steadfastly believed in doing the right thing by a woman, even if the woman found such an attentive performance downright insulting.

  She had only two more weeks before the new owner appeared and she would have to leave. She’d already started packing her belongings, and before long she’d be on to another location where she would find just as much information for her paper and feel just as much at home. Max would decide he had made a valiant effort, but since she still refused him, he was free to go his own way, and everything would be right with the world.

  Somehow, that thought failed to cheer her.

  By the time she’d cleaned up, checked the security system and the locks again, and located and hidden away each one of the valuable antiques in her care, darkness had fallen, and she was ready for bed. It was still early, a little before ten, but the emotional wear and tear of leading the last tour had taken its toll.

  And the tussle with Max might have upset her a little, too.

  In her bedroom, she strode to the window to shut the drapes and glanced out across the pitch black darkness that separated her from the castle and the cliff.

  With a sharp intake of breath, she leaned into the window. There, up by the ruins, a red light was blinking.

  The signal. Just like before.

  Violence and fury rose and mixed in Laurel’s head. She hated these thieves who sold their past for a profit. Every year, thousands of artifacts from every corner of the world disappeared into private collections, never to be seen again, and she wouldn’t let it happen here.

  At least—not again.

  Her hand hovered over the telephone. Surely…but no. Last time she’d called the police, Frank Shelbourn had answered and he’d been worse than useless. He’d been insulting.

  Catching up her navy blue windbreaker, her cell phone and a flashlight, she headed down the stairs at top speed. Groping her way through the darkness, she found her way to the door. She set the security system, slipped out onto the terrace, and locked up.

  The half moon was low on the eastern horizon. Ragged clouds slipped across the sky, and the breeze blew off the ocean.

  It was a perfect night for smuggling.

  And for sneaking up on the smugglers. She set out across the field toward the castle, stubbing her toes on rocks and stumbling into rabbit holes. But she kept walking, her eyes fixed on that blinking red light. It seemed stationary. And … oh, look. There were two lights now. The second beam glowed steadily. It wasn’t moving. It was white.

  Had the smugglers left? Or were they watching out to sea as a small boat motored in, took the loot and motored out again?

  Clutching her cell phone, she climbed the small hill to the tumbled ruins. Except for the sound of the waves, it was silent here: abandoned, ancient, dead. If there were ghosts in Trecombe, surely they resided here.

  As she stepped into the midst of the ruins, she could hear nothing. Was someone standing in the shadow of a tall stone column and watching as she entered? Was she in danger of attack? The hair on the back of her neck rose, and she stepped into the deepest shadow she could find. The remains of the medieval tower rose above her, the rocks shaped and set by the hands of a workman long dead. She knew pieces from far above littered the uneven ground. Grass grew liberally between them, and each step she took was a hazard.

  As the moon rose, she scrutinized the cliff, but no figures stood silhouetted against the moonlight. Nothing moved in the ruins. Senses on alert, she worked her way toward the red light.

  The large lamp rested on a grassy hummock just inside the wall, and had been set to flash. The other light, a flashlight, had been placed on a broken column higher than she could reach.

  She prowled the length and breadth of the castle, and found nothing. There was no one here. No one at all. At last she ventured out into the open and paced toward the blinking light. She reached out to flip the switch. Either she’d missed the smugglers, or—

  An arm wrapped around her neck, tightened and lifted her off of her feet. “Got you!”

  She screamed in pure fright.

  “Laurel?” The arm fell away. “Bloody hell. Laurel!”

  She leaped into the air, doing a flip that brought her around to face Max and to back away, all at the same time. She came down on a stone, stumbled and fell backward in an ignominious heap.

  He took one long step and stood over her, the red blinking of the light making him look like a demon at a stoplight. “What are you doing here?” He spoke quietly, shooting words at her.

  She answered the same way. “What are you doing here?” Dressed all in black, like a thief or a…smuggler?

  He embodied everything she feared.

  He extended a black gloved hand.

  She ignored it and scrambled upright, light on the balls of her feet, prepared to flee. “What are you doing here?”

  As if sensing her intention, he clasped her upper arm. “I asked first.”

  She couldn’t lie. What was the point? He held her, and he could outrun her. Her only hope was to play dumb. “I saw lights.”

  “You saw lights.” He sounded patient, but he pulled her around the corner into a shadow so deep she could see nothing but the gleam of his eyes. “You came haring up here after admitting to your tourists that you knew smugglers still prowled this coast?”

  “Yes.”

  “You put your life at risk because the smugglers are stealing England’s national heritage?”

  “It’s true!”

  He sounded cold, clear, resolute. “I ought to beat you for this.”

  “I beg your pardon!” She rubbed her already bruised rear. “You’re the one who scared me. If there is violence to be done, I get to do it.”

  “I could have been one of the smugglers.”

  She hesitated a second.

  “Hell and damnation.” He took her shoulders. “You think I’m one of the smugglers!”

  That crisp English scorn certainly drove her toward insanity, or at the least, rage. “Yes!”

  “It would serve you right if I was.” Walking to the blinking light, he flipped it off.

  She followed him; oddly enough, she felt safer close to him than alone.

  “Do you have no sense of self-preservation?” he demanded.

  “I do, so I brought…oh, no.” She started groping at her pockets.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I dropped my cell ph
one.”

  The waves crashed against the beach below. The scent of the ocean filled the air. And Max’s silence was awesome. “You thought if you stumbled on some smugglers, you’d be able to call the ambulance while you were bleeding to death because they’d shot you?”

  “You’re over-reacting.” And if he was a thief and a smuggler, he was hiding the fact well. Either that or he really wanted to marry her for her expertise at antiques.

  She had to get a grip on her imagination. “I was supposed to call the police if I found smugglers.”

  “What bright soul suggested this to you?”

  “Frank Shelbourn. The constable.”

  That shut Max up. She could see him in the moonlight, and his expression could only be called astonished. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. The village constable told you to come up to the castle ruins, see if there were smugglers working in the area, and call him on your cell phone?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You must have misunderstood him.”

  She enjoyed setting Max straight. “Trust me. That was his idea, which came right after I reported lights on the cliff and he accused me of having PMS-related hallucinations.”

  “My God.” Max sounded awed.

  “I love being a girl.”

  “I can see it carries previously unimagined difficulties.” Leaning down, he picked something up and handed it to her.

  It was her cell phone. She debated calling the police, then decided she was safer with Max than with the idiots in the village. She slipped her cell phone into her jacket pocket.

  “Laurel, tell me the truth.” He spoke slowly and carefully, as if he worried for her intelligence. “Have you realized the smugglers were stealing antiques from Masterson Manor?”

  Chapter Five

  Laurel’s harsh breath was clearly audible in the silence.

  “You have, then.”

  “But how did you know?” she asked.