Falling for the Rebel Heir

Blake Ally

‘I am,’ he said, letting her off the hook. ‘But a situation has presented itself that means I need to record some of my more recent experiences.’

That much was true enough. He had been offered a book deal. A lucrative one from a big London publisher. Not that he needed the money. But if that was what it took for his boss to see he was willing and able to get back to work, to the adventures he was missing out on while real life trudged on around him, then that was what he’d do.

‘I see,’ she said, mouth turned down, bottom lip popped out, nodding. Though by the look in her wide open eyes he could tell she couldn’t see the brilliance of his plan at all. The balance. The simpatico.

‘So I have a proposal for you,’ he said.

She stopped nodding. Her eyes narrowed so far they became dark slits of mistrust. For a siren she was turning out to be some kind of hard work. Hud almost backed off. But not quite. For there was something stronger pushing between his shoulder blades again, telling him he had to go through with this. With her.

‘I dictate,’ he said. ‘You type my story. And in return…’

Her arms slid across her chest to cross, creating a shield between them. He bit back the need to laugh. The woman was so guarded she put his clandestine return to Claudel to shame.

So he added, ‘And in return you can use my pool as much as you like.’

She blinked furiously, then a fast breath dashed from her nose. ‘What’s the catch?’

‘There’s no catch. I’ll supply food. A comfy chair. I can get my hands on a new computer if you need me to. It shouldn’t take any longer than, say…two weeks.’

Which was when his crew were due back in London after a shoot in Uzbekistan. And he wanted to be on the next trip out. He needed to be. For, if he wasn’t, he feared he might never get back out there again. And out there was where he belonged.

‘Am I still in charge of its upkeep?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘No need. The whole place needs a tidy up. I’ll have to hire a gardener. A backhoe. A mini-skip. Or maybe a magic wand to put things back the way they’re meant to be.’

She nodded. ‘Excellent. Happy with that. But what about after I’ve finished taking notes for you? What kind of deal will I have to make with you then?’

Her arms tightened across her chest, pressing her breasts together until she produced some damn fine cleavage. She glared at him and he tried his hardest to keep eye contact as her hot gaze dared him to even think that she might be thinking something raunchy. But the second the thought entered his mind he could think of little else.

A half hour swim for a kiss. An hour for a roll in the grass. A whole afternoon lazing in the pool and maybe she’d agree to going through the rest of Aunt Fay’s rooms and deciding what furniture and knick-knacks to keep and which to let go. For that he’d let her have the darned pool.

‘None,’ he said. ‘No more deals. Doing this one thing for me would be a huge favour, so for that you can use the pool any time you please. For evermore. So how about we clap hands and a bargain?’ He held out his hand to seal the deal.

‘Henry V,’ she blurted, an honest-to-goodness smile creasing her lovely face. She was something when she frowned; she was something else again when she truly smiled. He decided then and there that if she agreed to his terms it would be his mission over the next two weeks to make that happen again and again.

Then her cheeks turned pink and she bit her lip and looked down at her right foot, which was kicking at a small pile of dead pine needles.

‘Henry who or what?’ Hud asked.

‘Clap hands and a bargain,’ she repeated, looking up at him from beneath her dark eyelashes. ‘That was a quote from the proposal scene of Henry V. It’ll make you laugh and cry and your heart go pitter-pat. And, if it doesn’t, well then, I fear you’re just not human.’

Hud took a moment to wet his suddenly dry throat. The woman not only had the hair of a Botticelli model, the skin of a Scandinavian princess and the ability to fill the dark nooks and crannies of his subconscious with light, but he had just accidentally stumbled upon a subject that made her eyes flash like the heralding of a summer storm.

When he said nothing she continued. ‘Shakespeare. Dead English playwright. Quite famous in his time. Funny too that the line comes from the proposal scene and you just made me a proposal. Not like it’s the same kind of proposal, of course. I’d hardly agree to marry a guy for the use of his amenities—’

‘I have heard of him,’ Hud said, cutting her off before she got herself so deep into a verbal hole that she disappeared into her shoes like the wicked witch at the end of The Wizard of Oz. ‘Though I think it’s too late to bluff my way into making you think I was quoting him on purpose. A guy I work with…used to work with, said it all the time. What’s your excuse?’

‘Double English Lit major at Uni,’ she said, back to kicking at pine needles again as she breathed through her recent verbal misstep. ‘That and a computer will get a girl a fine fact checking job with an added sideline in Shakespeare and Keats and Byron quotes on tap. I’m quite the hit at parties.’

‘I don’t doubt it for a second.’ He’d be surprised if she ever made it out of a party without half a dozen new male fans. He wondered if one of those fans had managed to pin her down. Make her his. And if he truly knew what a gem he had. ‘And might I say I’m suitably impressed. You’re the first girl who has ever picked a Shakespeare quote when I’ve given one. Not that I’d rightly know.’

She grabbed a hunk of layered skirt and gave him a little curtsy. Yeah, it would be a fine thing if some guy at a party had taken this woman off the market. For though he was most enjoying looking, he hadn’t come to Claudel to shop for that kind of…what? Tryst? Crush? Holiday romance? Stormy, once-in-a-lifetime, go-for-broke affair?

This girl was witty, cautious and beguiling. It had taken an instant for him to see she was the kind of woman a man could spend a lifetime unravelling, pleasing, knowing. But he didn’t have a lifetime. He had two weeks. Which was more than he’d given any woman in years. He’d just have to be careful to remember that.