Tall, Dark & Scandalous: Jordan St Claire: Dark and Dangerous

‘Are you okay?’ he asked with concern.

She didn’t even glance at him but continued to stare straight ahead, her eyes wide in a face that was completely devoid of colour, her jaw clenched as she spoke between gritted teeth. ‘Fine.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Jordan contradicted flatly as he undid his seat-belt. ‘Keep it steady, Gideon,’ he warned as he began to climb into the back.

‘What are you doing?’ Stephanie’s expression was one of complete panic as Jordan’s movements redistributed the weight and made the helicopter tilt slightly from side to side.

‘Coming to sit next to you,’ Jordan explained patiently as he sat down and buckled himself into the seat. Then he reached out and prised the fingers closest to him from the armrest, before taking Stephanie’s hand firmly into his own. ‘You don’t like flying.’ He stated the obvious.

‘Hate it!’ she muttered as her fingers tightened painfully about his. ‘No criticism of your capabilities intended, Gideon,’ she added shakily.

‘None taken, I assure you,’ he drawled confidently from the front of the aircraft.

Jordan ignored his brother’s insouciance and concentrated on Stephanie. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me you don’t like flying?’

She flashed him a green-eyed glare before hastily resuming her death-stare towards the front of the helicopter. ‘I did tell you last night that I wasn’t sure about flying in a helicopter!’

‘Not sure and terrified are two distinctly different things!’

‘What difference would it have made if I had been more forceful about it?’ she snapped.

‘We could have let Gideon fly back on his own and driven down.’

Stephanie shook her head, and then obviously regretted it as even her lips seemed to go white. ‘You needed to get to London as quickly as possible.’ Her jaw was once again tightly clenched.

Jordan scowled. ‘If it had been that urgent then we would have flown down last night. You—’

‘Leave the girl alone, Jordan,’ Gideon rapped out from the front of the plane. ‘Can’t you see she feels ill?’

Jordan could see that all too easily. He was furious with himself for not realising how nervous Stephanie was about flying—preferably before the helicopter had taken off!

His fingers tightened about hers. ‘You’re an idiot for not telling me.’

‘Thank you so much for that, Jordan,’ Stephanie snarled back. ‘Comments on my mental state are just what I want to hear when I’m hanging hundreds of feet from the ground in a helicopter that looks as if a brisk wind might blow it out of the sky!’

Gideon chuckled softly in the pilot seat. ‘No need to worry, Stephanie. The accident record in this type of helicopter is minimal, I assure you.’

‘Minimal, maybe,’ she gritted out through her teeth. ‘But not non-existent.’

‘I suggest you keep any more helpful information like that to yourself, Gid,’ Jordan said.

‘I could always turn back—’

‘No!’ Stephanie shuddered at the mere thought of Gideon turning the helicopter, let alone landing it on the helipad behind Mulberry Hall.

‘But if this really is a problem for you, Stephanie…?’ Jordan frowned, clearly not happy.

‘We’re in the air now,’ she said tautly, her fingers curled so tightly about Jordan’s that she was sure she must be cutting off the blood supply to his own fingers. ‘I’ll just make a mental note to myself to never, ever fly in a helicopter again!’

Stephanie was grateful for having Jordan’s hand to hold during the rest of the flight, but even so, by the time they landed at the private airfield a few miles outside London, where the St Claire helicopter was obviously parked when not in use, she was aching from head to toe from the pure tension of just getting through the flight. Even her teeth ached as she staggered thankfully down onto the tarmac and all but fell into the chauffeur-driven car that was waiting for them to arrive.

‘All right now?’ Jordan prompted gently as he climbed into the back beside her, while Gideon sat in the front with the chauffeur, the glass partition raised to give them privacy.

Stephanie dropped her head back onto the leather seat beside him, some of the colour thankfully returning to her cheeks as she swallowed before answering. ‘That was the most terrifying experience of my life.’

Jordan gave a mocking grin. ‘You have yet to share a house with the whole of the St Claire clan.’

Stephanie had shared a house with Jordan for the past few days, and that had been traumatic enough!

Although he looked most unlike the unkempt man she had spent those two days with. When he’d appeared in the kitchen earlier this morning his long hair had been washed and brushed back from his face in silky dark waves, his jaw freshly shaven, once again revealing that fascinating—and sexy!—dimple in the centre of his chin, and he was wearing a pale brown cashmere sweater over a cream-coloured shirt and tailored brown trousers with brown shoes.

Today he looked every inch the charismatic actor Jordan Simpson—which was probably the whole point of the exercise, when he was about to see the mother the three St Claire men so obviously all adored.

Stephanie certainly felt decidedly underdressed in the company of the handsome St Claire twins, wearing her normal jeans and a white T-shirt beneath a short black jacket. Their arrival at St Claire House in Mayfair only confirmed her rapidly growing impression—after the grandeur of the Mulberry Hall estate and then flying around in a private helicopter—that she was completely out of her depth with this family. The townhouse itself was absolutely enormous: four storeys high, with a painted cream façade.

A stiffly formal butler opened the door to admit the three of them into the cavernous entrance hall.

‘Mr St Claire is in his study, and Her—Mrs St Claire is upstairs in her suite, resting,’ the grey-haired man politely answered Jordan’s query.

‘I’ll leave Lucan to you while I go up and see Mother,’ Jordan informed Gideon, and he took a firm hold on Stephanie’s elbow.

‘Thanks,’ his twin accepted dryly. ‘No doubt I’ll see you later, Stephanie.’ He quirked quizzical blond brows at her.

‘No doubt,’ she answered distractedly.

‘A tray of tea things upstairs for Miss McKinley, if you please, Parker,’ Jordan instructed the butler, before putting a hand beneath Stephanie’s elbow and escorting her to the back of the hallway, to open the two carved oak doors there and reveal a lift. ‘My grandmother had arthritis, and had it installed fifty years ago so that she could still go upstairs,’ he explained as they stepped inside the spacious mirror-walled lift.

Of course she had, Stephanie accepted ruefully; obviously the St Claire family was wealthy enough to do anything it chose.

Jordan easily read the look on her face as she stood against the opposite wall of the lift. ‘Don’t let all the grandeur of Mulberry Hall and here fool you—normally none of us step foot in either of these houses.’

‘Why on earth not?’ She frowned her curiosity.

It was a curiosity Jordan had no intention of satisfying. St Claire House, like Mulberry Hall, was part of the Duke of Stourbridge’s estate, and they were all only here now because their mother, still the Duchess of Stourbridge despite the divorce, always stayed at St Claire House on the rare occasions she came down to London.

‘We’re all too busy doing other things,’ Jordan dismissed evasively as he stepped out into the thick carpeted hallway on the third floor. ‘I’ll make you comfortable in my suite before I go and see my mother.’

‘Your…suite?’ Stephanie echoed hesitantly.

‘All the family have their own suite of rooms here.’ Jordan gave a brief smile at she hung back uncertainly. ‘Parker will bring you tea in my private sitting room. I expect the bedroom adjoining that has been prepared for your use. Is that going to be a problem?’

Stephanie had no idea—was it? It felt a little too intimate to have him next door. Entirely too close to him for comfort, in fact!

‘I would be quite happy with something a little less…grand.’ She frowned her discomfort.

‘There isn’t anything less grand,’ Jordan informed her dryly as he opened a door to the left of the hallway. ‘Come on, Stephanie,’ he encouraged impatiently. ‘I’d like to see you settled before I go and visit my mother.’

She was being ridiculous, Stephanie knew as she followed Jordan reluctantly. It just felt so very strange to be here with him and his family, in this grand house they rarely visited, but which was still run by what was no doubt an army of servants.