The Billionaire Bodyguard(7)

Her hair had been rumpled by the beanie and she  hadn't brushed it, so  it fell in ebony disarray over the pale silky  sweater she wore. Her  pale cheeks were tinged with roses, a combination  of heat from the fire  and the exertion of her walk through the snow. Yet  she looked far more  touchable and desirable than the ice princess in  the diamonds and  silver gown, who had pouted and swirled for the camera  earlier.

'If you must know, you look a little … wild,' he said softly. 'Like a wood nymph who has just been woken out of a long sleep.'

Keri  had never in her life been called 'wild', neither had she been  compared  to a wood nymph, and the poetic imagery of his words was so  seductively  powerful that for a moment she felt a slow, pulsing glow of  pleasure.  Until she reminded herself that this was madness.

Complete and utter madness.

Models  had notoriously fragile egos-inevitable in a job in which you  were  judged so critically on physical attributes alone-but surely hers  wasn't  so bad that she needed praise from a house-breaking driver with a  dark  and dangerous air about him?

Suddenly she felt like a baby fish, swimming around in uncharted waters. 'Didn't you say something about food?'

'Sure.'  He rose to his feet and wondered if she knew how cute she  looked when  she lost the frost princess look and let her lips soften  like that. 'How  about a fair division of labour? I'll go and see if I  can find more  fuel for the fire, and you can fix us a meal.'

'You'll be lucky!'

'Oh?'

'It's just that I don't cook. Can't cook,' she amended hurriedly as she saw him frown.

'I'm not expecting you to spit-roast a pig to impress me,' he bit back. 'Just rustle up any old thing.'

Impress  him? In your dreams. 'There wasn't,' said Keri deliberately,  'anything  much in the way of food, save for a few old tins.'

'Then get opening,' said Jay, and threw another log on the fire.

But  Keri quickly discovered that this was easier said than done,  because  the tin-opener looked as though it should have been in a  museum.

Jay  walked out into the kitchen to find her slamming a tin frustratedly   onto the table. Great, he thought! Have a tantrum, why don't you?


'Having problems?' he questioned laconically.

'You try using it!'

He picked up the tin and read the label. His voice was cool. 'Tinned peaches?'

'Well, obviously there's no fresh fruit-'

'That wasn't,' he exploded, 'what I meant!'

'Well, there was nothing much else to choose from.'

'If you think I'm existing on tinned peaches, then you are very much mistaken!'

'Well, would you mind opening them for me?'

He  dealt with the can quickly, and thrust it away as if it had been   contaminated, then bent to examine the contents of the cupboard,   rummaging around until he produced a sealed pack of dried spaghetti and a   solitary tin of meat sauce, which he slammed down onto the worktop.   'What's wrong with these?'

She suspected that it was going to be a  mistake to try to explain her  dietary requirements, but she forged  ahead anyway. 'I don't eat wheat,'  she said.

Jay shuddered.  Bloody women and their food fads! Well, I do,' he said  coolly. 'So would  you mind heating these up?' He saw her open her mouth  to protest.  'Unless you'd rather tend to the fire?'

She could see the mocking  look of challenge in his eyes, as if he knew  perfectly well that she  had never 'tended' a fire in her life. Lots of  people she knew hadn't-so  why was he trying to make her feel as though  she was in some way  inadequate? Just because he was the original  cave-dweller, that didn't  mean the rest of the world had to follow  suit. Very well, she would heat  his revolting food for him. 'I'll  cook.'

'Good.' And he turned  and walked out of the kitchen without another  word, thinking that she  was undeniably beautiful but about as much use  as an igloo in a  heatwave. He cast an assessing eye over the fuel.  There were a couple of  cupboards he'd noticed upstairs; they might  yield an armful of blankets  which they would need to see the night  through. The strain of spending a  night closeted with her made a tiny  muscle work at the side of his  temple, and then he remembered the only  room they hadn't explored. Maybe  the cellar might come up trumps.  Something to ease the tension.                       
       
           



       

When  he returned to the kitchen it was with a look of triumph on his  face  and a bottle of dusty wine in his hand. He put it carefully on the   table.

'Look at that! Would you believe it?'

Fractiously,  Keri looked up from the steaming pot. Half the spaghetti  had snapped on  the way into it, and she had scalded her finger into the  bargain. 'It's a  bottle of wine-so what?'

'It is not any old bottle of wine,' he  contradicted, running his thumb  reverentially over the label, as if he  was carressing a woman's skin.  'It just happens to be a bottle of St  Julien du Beau Caillou.'

His voice had deepened with appreciation  and his French accent was  close to perfect. Keri couldn't have been  more amazed if he had  suddenly leapt up onto the table and started tap  dancing.

'You know about wine, do you?'

Jay's eyes  glittered. The tone of her question said it all. 'Surprising  for a  common-or-garden driver, is that what you mean?' he drawled.  'Thought  I'd be a beer man, did you?'

'I hadn't given it much thought, actually.'

Liar,  he thought. You'd placed me in the little box of your  sterotypical  expectations. Though, when he stopped to think about it,  hadn't he done  exactly the same to her? Except that she seemed to be  living up to  hers-with her faddy eating habits and general inability to  cope with the  practicalities which misfortune sometimes threw up at  you. In fact, she  seemed pretty good at looking beautiful and not a lot  else, as far as  he could make out.

He found a corkscrew and raised his dark eyebrows at her in question.

'So, will you be joining me, Keri?' he queried. 'Or holding out for a glass of water?'

She  would normally have had water, yes-damn him-but tonight Keri had  never  felt more in need of a drink in her life. And at least it might  make the  time go a little faster. Might even calm her frayed nerves and  help her  to sleep. She gave the pot another stir. She didn't even want  to think  about the sleeping arrangements.

'Yes, I'll join you in a glass,' she said repressively.

'How  very gracious of you,' he murmured. He eased the cork from the  bottle  with a satisfying pop and, as always, the sensual significance  of that  didn't escape him.

Keri looked down at the saucepan and grimaced.  She had seen more  appetising things served up in a dogbowl. 'Shall I  dish this out?'

Hunting through a cupboard for glasses, Jay glanced over his shoulder. 'Can't wait,' he murmured.

He  poured two glasses of wine and watched while she picked up the heavy   saucepan with two hands and carried it over to the sink. Hell, her   wrists were so thin they looked as if they might snap.

'I can't find a colander anywhere.'

'Give  it to me,' he said tersely. He rolled the sleeves of his sweater  up and  took it from her before she could drop it, using the lid to  drain it,  shaking his dark head a little as he did so. 'I can't believe  that  you've got to … what age are you?'

She supposed it would be pointless to tell him that it was none of his business. 'Twenty-six.'

'Twenty-six!' He carried back the pot. 'And you can't even cope with spaghetti!'

'This is the twenty-first century!' she retorted. 'And it isn't written into the female contract that she needs to cook!'

'Then pity the poor man you marry,' he offered.

'Well,  there's no need to worry on that score,' she answered, more  testily  than she had intended, because her attention had been caught by  the  sight of his arms-all tanned and muscular and sprinkled with hair  as  dark as his head. At his wrist was a slim plait of leather.

A stir of interest quickened his blood. 'You mean there's no likely candidate on the horizon?'

She  heard the sultry change in his voice and her eyes met his in a  long,  unspoken moment across the table. Its impact was such that she  felt as  if he had turned her to stone. Or clay. Yes, clay-far more  malleable  than stone, and that was exactly what she felt like at that  moment.  Clay-all damp and squidgy. Malleable.

Keri was used to a man  looking at her with interest-she had encountered  it often enough in the  past-but never, never with such devastating  effect. The slanting eyes  glittered only momentarily, and the hard  smile was so brief it might  almost have been an illusion, but it was  enough.

Enough to what?  To set her pulses racing with the knowledge that this  was a man quite  unlike any other she had ever come into contact with.  Steely-edged and  strong and capable-and yet, inexplicably, one who  could read a wine  label in the most perfect accent.