‘And then?’
‘Well, obviously,’ she said, ‘I’d have got you an offer within the week.’
Her smile was bright and as brittle as spun sugar. He wanted the real thing. Not just mouth and teeth, but those eyes lit up, glowing...
‘Despite the dodgy staircase and the leaking roof?’ he pressed.
She tutted but it earned him a hint of what her smile could be. ‘It hasn’t rained all week.’
‘This hot spell can’t last.’
‘No, which is why we need to get cracking. Hadley Chase has so much potential,’ she continued. ‘I hadn’t realised the extent of the outbuildings until I went down by myself. The stables, the dairy and how many houses have got a brewery, for heaven’s sake?’
‘It was standard for big houses back in the day, when drinking small beer was safer than water. It hasn’t been used in my lifetime. Nor has the dairy.’
‘Maybe not, but they’re ripe for conversion into workshops, holiday accommodation, offices. Miles isn’t usually so slow...’ She let it go, a tiny frown buckling the smooth skin between her brows. ‘My mistake.’
‘Surely it was his?’
‘It’s a little more complicated than that.’
She propped her elbow on the arm of the sofa, chin on hand, giving him another flash of her assets. By way of distraction, he picked up the cakebox and offered it to her.
‘You do still want to sell the house?’ she said as she leaned forward and did an eeny-meeny-miny-mo over the cakes with a dark red fingernail before choosing one.
Some distraction.
‘I assumed you’d been sent by Morgan to persuade me to drop my suit,’ he said, helping himself to another look straight down the front of her shirt. She was wearing one of those lace traffic-accident bras and all the blood in his brain went south.
She looked up when he didn’t say any more. ‘Do you still think that?’
Thinking? Who was thinking... He shook his head. ‘No. You’re pitching for the business.’
She looked up, no smile now, just determination. ‘This isn’t business, it’s personal. What you do about Morgan and Black is your own affair, but my expertise won’t cost you a penny.’ She gave another of those little shrugs and, as she recrossed her legs, he switched from imperial to metric. A metre...
It had to be deliberate, but he didn’t care.
‘Of course, if you’d rather sit back and wait a year or two for the fuss to die down...?’ she offered before biting into a small square of lemon drizzle cake, her teeth sinking into the softness of the sponge. White teeth, rose petal lips...
Forget the inner woman, he wanted to draw her naked, wanted to mould that luscious body in clay, learn the shape with his hands and then recreate it. Wanted to taste the tip of her tongue as it sought out the sugar clinging to her lip...
‘You might be lucky,’ she said, cucumber-cool, apparently unaware of the effect she was having or of the turmoil raging within him. ‘It might be a big news week in the property business and they won’t dredge up the story all over again. Reprint the original advertisement.’ She finished the tiny square of cake, sucked the stickiness off a fingertip. It was deliberate and he discovered that he didn’t care. Just as long as she went on doing it. ‘I’ll leave you to imagine how likely that is.’