The Playboy's Mistress

‘I’m fine.’ Darcy unwrapped the looped scarf from around her throat.

‘And you, Mr…?’

The dazed-looking stranger with blood running down the side of his face closed his eyes and leaned heavily against the wall. An anxious Jack looked to Darcy to supply the information.

Her shoulders lifted. ‘Don’t ask me—I’ve no idea who he is.’

‘How come you were in the summer-house with a guy and you don’t know his name?’ Nick wondered, regarding the stranger with a suspicious light in his hostile blue eyes.

‘I wasn’t in the summer-house; I was outside.’ Darcy kept her impatience in check—Nick always chose all the wrong moments to play the protective big brother; he was the most infuriatingly inconsistent person she knew.

‘Doing what?’ Nick persisted doggedly.

Darcy rolled her eyes in exasperation before returning her attention to the man beside her. ‘You should sit down,’ she said in soft aside to the object of her brother’s suspicions.

‘Give me a minute,’ the stranger responded tersely, resisting her efforts to point him in the right direction. Darcy was a strong girl but she knew right away that moving this man against his will was beyond her capabilities.

‘Harry, Charlie, could you give me a hand?’ she called to her younger brothers.

The twins shook their identical heads in unison.

‘We’d like to, but…’ Harry began.

‘There’s blood…’ Charlie completed with a shudder of disgust.

Darcy, in no mood on this occasion to see the amusing side of a pair of strapping, beefy specimens who came over ‘funny’ at the sight of blood, gave a snort of exasperation. ‘You’re hopeless, the pair of you!’

‘Wimps,’ Charlie agreed cheerfully.

Harry nodded his agreement. ‘Maybe he’s one of those contractors working on the Hall.’

‘Nah! They’ve all gone home for the holiday,’ his identical twin pointed out. ‘Besides, does he look like a builder to you…? He’s obviously loaded.’

Darcy was inclined to agree with Charlie, but she couldn’t help but reflect that the injured stranger looked more than physically capable of the odd bit of manual labour. Her mind drifted back to the way the hard, muscular contours of his lean torso and broad chest had felt— With a muffled snort of dismay she brought her reflections to an abrupt halt mid-drool.

The tiny sound drew Jack’s concerned attention.

She flushed uncomfortably, shook her head and silently mouthed ‘I’m fine’, which she was, if you discounted the fact she was sleazing over a total stranger who was bleeding on their kitchen floor. She grabbed a clean tea towel from the dresser drawer to stem the flow.

‘Maybe he’s the bloke that bought the place,’ Darcy heard Harry suggest.

Reece, who was feeling less awful, noticed a little hazily that the notion seemed to afford amusement all round.

‘My God, mate, but you’ve been done,’ the instigator of the theory sniggered, digging his twin in the ribs.

Darcy gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘I hardly think now is the right time for a cross-examination,’ she told them repressively.

At first it had felt as if the room was full of a lot of people. On closer examination Reece now realised there were actually only four besides himself and the choirboy, all male. The two youngest, despite being almost his own height, were scarcely more than boys, and either they were identical twins or he was seeing double.

‘Shut up!’ With enviable lung power the diminutive figure beside him silenced the assembly. ‘Let’s not get sidetracked here; it doesn’t matter who he is—he’s had an accident. Charlie, go get the First Aid kit.’

‘I don’t know…’

Darcy, wise to male helplessness ploys, was ahead of him. ‘First shelf down in the bathroom.’ She turned to the younger—by five minutes—of her twin brothers. ‘Harry, get the dogs out of here.’ With a lot of noisy encouragement the dogs eventually removed themselves from the chairs.

Reece remained mildly disorientated while his youthful rescuer continued to throw out a steady stream of orders as if they were going out of fashion to everyone, including himself. The hell of it was he found himself obeying the kid and meekly sitting down in the larger of the two armchairs. The small figure was arguing with the dark-haired male around his own age.

‘How should I know why he was up a tree? Maybe he’s a tree surgeon…?’ Her elder brother had a very suspicious nature and seemed to have jumped to the deeply embarrassing and bizarre conclusion that she was trying to cover up some sort of secret assignation.

Darcy couldn’t help but wistfully wonder what life was like with a few secret assignations—alas, unless she could rid herself of her wholesome image and get herself a bit of glamour it seemed unlikely that she would ever find out!

‘My name’s Reece Erskine.’ So much for anonymity.

Nobody started in recognition at the sound of his name— Maybe I’m not as famous as I think, he wondered. A self-deprecating little smile made his mobile lips quiver as he relaxed a little.

‘I don’t need to trouble you; if I could just use your phone…’ His firm words only elicited a few fleeting glances of benevolent dismissal.

Reece wasn’t used to having his opinion dismissed and he found the novel experience irritating. It was even more irritating that he didn’t have enough functioning brain cells to demonstrate to them how very much in control he really was.

‘Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?’ a worried Jack Alexander appealed to his eldest stepchildren.

‘Was he out long?’ Nick asked his sister.

‘I’m not sure…’

‘I wasn’t unconscious at all.’ Reece’s jaw tightened; he might just as well have spoken to the brick wall beside him for the notice anyone was taking.

‘It would probably be quicker to take him to Casualty ourselves.’ Darcy held out her hand expectantly as young Charlie returned conspicuously empty-handed.

‘I can’t find it.’

She gave a sigh of exasperation and glared up at her tall young brother. ‘Do I have to do everything myself?’ she wondered witheringly.

To Reece’s amazement, the big guy shifted uncomfortably and looked sheepish before he joined his twin at the far end of the room. He was finding the family dynamics of this noisy household deeply confusing. Maybe it’s me…? Maybe I’m concussed, he thought. He closed his eyes and the room continued to spin.

Darcy took the stairs at the far end of the room two steps at a time. She tore along the narrow upper hallway, shedding her layers as she went—the First Aid kit was exactly where she’d said it would be. Why couldn’t men find something when it was right under their noses…?

‘Learnt helplessness,’ she snorted in knowledgeable disgust, and Mum let them get away with it, she thought disapprovingly as she rapidly retraced her steps. Her respect for what her mother accomplished on the home front had increased by leaps and bounds since she’d arrived home.

She ripped the scrunchy thing that had slid down to the slippery end of her shiny pony-tail free and shoved it in her pocket before she gave her head a little shake and lifted her fine hair free of the collar of her ribbed polo-necked sweater.

‘I’ll just clean up this head wound first.’ He endured her cleaning the small but deep head wound with stoicism. ‘I think it might be your collar-bone.’ Darcy bent over the chair, bringing her face almost on a level with his.

He didn’t know where she’d come from but he wasn’t complaining; she was a major improvement on all the brawn. He watched her narrow, slender hands as she set about her task. They were nice hands, and it was an even nicer face. A roundish face with a pointy little chin, a hint of sultriness about the full lower lip…? No more than a hint, he decided, revising his original estimate as she raised the big blue kitten eyes to his face and murmured… ‘Sorry. I broke mine once,’ she continued in a slightly husky, oddly familiar voice. ‘I know how much it hurts. I think it’ll be less painful if it’s supported, but if I hurt you too much, yell.’

‘I will.’

Darcy’s eyes lifted; under the scrutiny of those wide-spaced blue eyes, Reece got that strange feeling of familiarity again as she gave an unconvinced little smile.