Mistress by Mistake

She’d show Uncle Drew she wasn’t the sort of girl he could push around, the sort of girl who ran away meekly, the sort of girl who was reduced to inarticulate compliance by a set of bulging biceps and a few harsh words! She liked a joke as much as the next person, but she hadn’t found anything humorous in Theo and Nick’s appalling suggestions. Chemistry indeed!

‘Come on through!’ A disembodied voice instructed. 26

Startled, Eve looked over her shoulder, half expecting to find someone these words were directed at standing there.

‘Through here!’ Impatience this time, and also the distinctive touch of gravel she’d noticed before. A man who didn’t suffer fools gladly—or at all.

You heard what the man said, Evie. Don’t just stand there, girl. She hadn’t expected it to be quite this easy to get back into the Beck residence.

‘It’s the card table by the door. Can you do it in situ,or will you need to take it away? If that’s the case I need it back by Thursday at the latest.’

Somehow the top of his dark blond head managed to convey harassment. When his head finally lifted, this impression was reinforced. His hands were still immersed in a bucketful of soapy water as he spoke. ‘Well?’

‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’

‘Should I?’ he began impatiently, pushing aside a wing of fair hair that had flopped in his eyes. ‘You’re not the French polisher? Dear God!’ he breathed, his eyes widening in recognition. ‘It’s the femme fatale. Not looking very femme or fatale,’ he added unkindly, getting to his feet and rubbing his wet hands against the legs of his jeans.

Eyebrows raised, he let his curious glance run incredulously over her simple stripy top and sleeveless fleece jacket. The loose lines of her khaki pants blurred the outline of her long legs and the flat, practical boots were about as far removed from the strappy stilettos she’d worn earlier as was possible.

It was ironic, considering his initial assessment, that she could now easily be taken for a schoolgirl—and he knew for sure she wasn’t. She had a freshly scrubbed, wholesome quality that some men found attractive. Personally, he found the long-limbed athletic look attractive on racehorses rather than women.

Is this display of masculine bad manners meant to make me feel uncomfortable? Dream on, she thought scornfully. Lips pursed, she deliberately mimicked his action and let her eyes rather obviously wander critically over his body. She didn’t actually hold out much hope of finding anything to criticise—she was right.

He was wearing a light-coloured cotton shirt, not tucked into the waist of his jeans. His wet hands had left dark marks on the paler material which outlined thighs that Eve already knew were powerfully muscular. She noticed two wet marks where he’d been kneeling on the floor. He was the sort of man who looked good in any clothes, she reflected, but better without them. Just when her confidence was riding high this random thought sent a flurry of panic zinging along her nerve-endings.

To her surprise, when her flustered glance returned abruptly to his face, she found amused appreciation of her retaliatory action in his expression. A couple of deep breaths and she was able to dismiss her embarrassing observation as an aberration. Stress did things like play havoc with your concentration. She comforted herself with this widely accepted fact.

‘What do you want?’

‘You can ask that?’

‘Oh, you’ve come to apologise…sorry, I still don’t know your name.’

Apologise! Her eyes widened. The cheek of the man! ‘I was under the impression that you didn’t want to know my name.’

He didn’t pretend not to understand her. ‘Earlier I was trying to dispel—shall we say, any sense of intimacy.’

Not even a shred of embarrassment, she decided, searching his face. The man was totally shameless. Nick hadn’t gone into details—well, actually, honesty forced her to acknowledge she hadn’t exactly given him the chance—but this man must know by now she was innocent of sinister intentions towards his nephew.

‘Tell me, are you planning to use that?’

‘What…? Oh.’ She followed the direction of the inclination of his head and flushed deeply as she saw the trowel she was brandishing in her hand. ‘I didn’t realise…it was in my pocket,’ she mumbled in explanation.

‘Got anything else muddy and lethal I should know about in there?’ he asked, sounding insultingly amused as she shoved the tool back into the capacious pocket of her warm fleece.

‘Not muddy.’ She took exception to this slur; she was scrupulous about caring for the tools of her trade. ‘I’m a gardener—a landscape gardener—freelance.’ ‘Freelance’ sounded more impressive than ‘worried about where her next job was coming from’ besides, things weren’t really like that any more. Under the circumstances, she had no qualms about making her business sound a lot grander than it was.

After her parents had died she’d had to scale down her plans for the future appropriately. Starting her own garden maintenance business had been a far cry from the degree in landscape architecture she had planned, but what had started as little more than hedge-trimming and lawnmowing had gradually led to better things.

She knew the turning point had been the roof garden she’d created for Adam Sullivan the previous year. He’d been delighted with the results and generous with his praise. And Adam had a lot of upwardly mobile young friends who were keen to employ her services.

‘You sound very intense about it,’ Drew remarked.

The only evidence of the make-up she’d worn earlier was a slight dark smudging of soft grey kohl around her eyes. Lucky girl. Those eyelashes were a natural ebony that matched her hair. He could think of several women who would kill for those lashes. He took a step closer and noticed the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose that had been concealed behind a layer of foundation on their last meeting. She had that rarest of all complexions, a genuine peaches and cream one.

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ she countered, suspecting condescension in his voice. ‘Aren’t you intense about your work? Is it only the financial wizards in banks who juggle millions who are allowed to take their work seriously?’ It was easy to be a big cheese when Daddy Cummings owned the bank, she thought scornfully. How well would he have done if he’d had to fight his way up the ladder?

‘My, my, Dan has been talking, hasn’t he?’ Drew mused, mentally adding another subject he needed to bring up with his nephew in the near future. ‘But point taken.’

‘I’ll tell you what I do take seriously, shall I, Mr Cummings?’

His only visible response to her aggressive tone of voice and scornful glare was a quirk of one well-defined brow. ‘Feel free, Miss…’ What had the boy called her? Just how much of his personal history had Daniel supplied to this young woman? he wondered grimly. He was a man who guarded his privacy zealously, and there were some episodes in his personal history he preferred stayed within the confines of the family.

Well, didn’t I make a big impression? He doesn’t even remember my name! ‘I take people assaulting my brother seriously.’

‘Assault! You’ve got to be kidding, lady! What the hell is your name anyway?’

Eve was pleased to see his air of vaguely amused condescension had vanished. He sounded extremely irritable.

‘Eve Gordon.’

‘Well, Eve Gordon, I didn’t lay a finger on your brother. But if I can’t get his blood out of my sister’s carpet I might just oblige you.’ He gave the bucket at his feet a frustrated kick, and some of the sudsy water splashed on his leather boots.

All he was bothered about was blood on his rotten carpet, when poor Nick might have been scarred for life or bled to death! ‘You should have left well alone and got it professionally cleaned.’

Drew, who had just come to this conclusion himself, gave her an unfriendly look. ‘I had enough trouble finding a French polisher who’d come straight out and repair the damage your young thug did to the table.’

‘I’ll tell him you were asking after his health. He’ll be so touched by the concern.’

Drew’s lips tightened at this dose of irony. ‘He looked fine when he left here.’

‘I doubt that very much,’ she snorted. ‘I don’t suppose it occurred to you to take him to the hospital. I call it the height of negligence to let an injured boy walk out of here in that state.’

‘He didn’t walk. A pretty girl picked him up.’

That sounded about right, she grudgingly conceded. Pretty girls were always picking Nick up. Eve suspected pretty girls would be running around after him most of his life. In that respect he probably had quite a lot in common with this man.

‘Sara,’ she said, not looking mollified by this information.

‘If you say so. She was the hysterical type too,’ he said dismissively.

‘Meaning she couldn’t look at the mess you’d made of Nick without displaying some emotion?’ She could hardly trust herself to speak at this display of callousness.

‘I thought I’d already told you I didn’t touch your brother. I was the victim of the assault. A fact you appear to be conveniently forgetting. What was I supposed to do? Stand there and let him batter my brains in?’

‘One look at you and a person can see straight off how savagely you’ve been battered,’ she observed scornfully, looking at his perfect profile with an expression of disgust.

‘Lightning reflexes,’ he agreed complacently. ‘But come back after my sister sees I’ve managed to let her house get trashed,’ he suggested drily. ‘And if she even suspects I’ve allowed her son’s morals to be tainted…’