He was frowning. ‘What are you doing here, Georgina? Clarice told me that you needed to talk to me urgently. Is something wrong with my mother?’ The frown deepened. ‘I spoke to her on the weekend and she seemed all right. Well, don’t just sit there like a stuffed doll! What the hell’s going on?’
Having kept out of his way the last few times he had travelled down to Devon, Georgie had forgotten just how intimidating Pierre was up close and personal.
For starters, he was tall, over six feet and every inch of his body exuded menace, from the hard, muscular body to the imperious beauty of his face.
Yet he was a sensationally attractive male, blessed with perfect bone structure and the sort of presence that made women spin round in their tracks to get a second look.
Georgie considered herself immune to all that raw, sensual appeal, however. For her, the blue eyes were icy cold and the wide, sexy mouth carried an underlying cruelty that was like a forcefield around him.
‘There’s no need to shout, Pierre.’
‘I wasn’t shouting. I was asking a perfectly civilised question.’ He gripped both ends of the towel and eyed her with barely concealed impatience. Yet another one of his off putting character traits, Georgie thought. ‘I don’t often find time to relax and the last thing I need is to have my routine interrupted by someone playing hard to get. If you have something to tell me, then spit it out.’
Georgie sprang to her feet and glared back up at him. ‘Well, nothing ever changes, does it, Pierre? You’re still the rudest man I have ever met in my entire life!’
‘So tell me something I don’t already know. If I recall, you’ve shared that opinion with me on several occasions in the past, the last time memorably being when I came to Devon for my father’s funeral! While everyone else were paying their respects, you were busy letting me know what an inconsiderate human being I was! Not that any of that matters. Just tell me what you’ve come to say.’
‘Look, I don’t want to argue with you. Didi’s fine. Ish.’#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#
‘Ish? What the hell does that mean?’
‘Is there somewhere we could go and…talk? I know I’m dragging you away from the joys of working out, but I have come all the way from Devon…’ Uninvited, unannounced and ill prepared, but, heck, he wasn’t to know that. ‘I’ve had a hellish time of it, in case you’re interested. Delays at Plymouth, vile sandwich on the train, signal failures everywhere, surly taxi driver…not to mention using up endless credit on my mobile phone trying to get your secretary to tell me where you were! It was worse than pulling teeth! Tell me, has she ever tried out for a job in the secret service?’
‘Natalie knows that when I go to the gym, I don’t like to be disturbed.’ But he relaxed slightly. Maybe he had been a little harsh on her, but for some reason the woman had always rubbed him up the wrong way. Everything about her irritated him, from her glaring, judgemental moral high ground to her annoying tendency to say just whatever happened to pass through her head, without any vetting process. He liked his women perfectly groomed and perfectly in control. Opinions were welcome provided they were thoughtfully considered and open to healthy debate. Pierre, in fact, considered himself an eminently twenty-first-century man who enjoyed the company of highly intellectual women and supported their right in the workplace. Georgie was at the opposite end of the scale when it came to the attractions of the opposite sex and ten minutes in her company was usually enough for him.
‘I gather,’ she was telling him now. ‘She made it abundantly clear in the twenty minutes it took to wrench the information out of her.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘That I was the woman you secretly married on the weekend and I threw in Didi’s name to give my story a bit of authority.’ Course, she hadn’t, but it was worth the little white lie to see the expression on his face. ‘Just kidding.’
‘Hilarious. There’s a café in the gym. We can go and talk there.’ He spun round on his heel and began walking away while Georgie glowered at his departing back.
Needless to say, with Pierre preceding her, she was whisked through the forbidden gates like visiting royalty. The man, wherever he happened to go, had clout. He walked and doors opened. Any wonder he was so infuriatingly superior?
‘I’m shocked they let me through,’ Georgie said breathlessly, trying to keep pace with him and look around her at the same time. ‘They’re not a very welcoming bunch out there. Do they get special training in how to be impolite?’ she wondered aloud.