ERIN groaned with weariness. One more room to do and she could finish for the day. So much for finishing by four-thirty! It was after that now, and as the person had checked out of this last room it was going to take at least half an hour to clean it thoroughly.

She unlocked the door, and the mess that met her gaze made her groan anew. Whoever had occupied this motel room last night had obviously thrown a party; the air was stale with cigarette smoke and empty beer bottles littered every conceivable surface.

She left the door open to clear the stale air, and started to clear the beer bottles. This room was worse than they usually were, she would never finish tonight! When Mike Johnston, the owner of the motel, had employed her two weeks ago he hadn’t told her that his wife, the other cleaner, was more often out shopping than she was actually doing any work. He hadn’t told her to expect constant sexual advances from him either!

It had all sounded so good—but then what wouldn’t after serving greasy hamburgers in an even greasier restaurant for six weeks! Cleaning and vacuuming a few motel rooms had seemed so easy by comparison. The hours had been straight eight-thirty until four-thirty, with two clear days off a week, as a waitress she had been working shift hours, and more often than not her days off were counted as compulsory overtime. The trouble was the same thing was happening here, plus she had to fight off the advances of the men who stayed here, men who seemed to think that their rent for the night included making love to the maid in the morning.

The most recent one had been only this morning, a young boy of her own age who had tried to pull her into bed with him. Not that he hadn’t been good-looking—he had; she just didn’t go in for the casual sex these men expected of her.

The idea of coming to Canada had seemed so exciting—to actually visit the place she had been born, had lived in until she was three years old, when her parents had emigrated to England. And Canada itself was lovely, especially the part of Alberta she was living in, but it was also expensive to live in Calgary, the cost of living here one of the highest in the country, and the two demanding jobs she had managed to find for herself had given her little time to go out and enjoy herself.

Mike Johnston, her boss, had offered her what he considered a form of entertainment. His form of entertainment didn’t coincide with hers, and his advances were becoming more and more difficult to repulse in a joking manner, and he had implied that if she didn’t soon give him what he wanted then she could start walking.

‘Is this twenty-six, honey?’

Erin turned at the sound of that huskily attractive voice, the pleasant Canadian drawl she had come to love. Her eyes widened as she took in the man’s appearance, the worn leather boots, the faded tight-fitting denims, the matching denim jacket worn over a red and black checked shirt, the thick black hair partly concealed by the brown cowboy hat, something a lot of Calgarian men seemed to wear, this man looked perfectly natural wearing it.

Her gaze returned to his face, a face deeply tanned, a square jaw jutting out firmly, a deep cleft in its centre, the well-shaped mouth now curved into an enquiring smile, the nose hawkish, the eyes deep-set beneath jutting dark brows, the colour of the eyes hard to distinguish from this distance, but they were definitely a light colour, blue or possibly green.

His very presence seemed to fill the shabby room, and Erin shivered with apprehension. Something about this man unnerved her. He wasn’t a holidaymaker, she was sure of that, and yet he wasn’t one of the rough young crowd they often had staying here either. The inability to put him into a category worried her, made her unsure of how she should act with him. He was aged about the mid-thirties mark, very good-looking in an outdoor sort of way, and surely wasn’t one of those men who liked to make passes. Maybe he was in town from one of the ranches, he looked as if that sort of life——

‘Well?’ he tersely interrupted her thoughts, easing the holdall more comfortably on to one of his broad shoulders.

‘I—er——’ Erin blinked hard. ‘Sorry?’ she asked lamely.

He raised his eyebrows, sighing his impatience. ‘Is this room twenty-six?’ he repeated his first question.

‘Yes,’ she nodded eagerly, feeling more and more stupid by the moment, knowing she was making an idiot of herself, but unable to do anything about it.

She felt decidedly dirty in the denims and cotton top she had worn to work this morning, her blonde hair tumbling from the elastic band she secured it with while she was working, looking younger than her nineteen years with her make-up-less face and snub nose covered in freckles. She felt about fifteen, and knew she must look it too.

The man’s lids lowered slightly, the lashes thick, and the colour of jet, like his overlong hair. ‘Then why does it say twenty-nine on the door?’ he drawled, walking inside to deposit the holdall on the unmade bed, his nose wrinkling with distaste at the mess that surrounded them.

‘I—it does?’ Erin frowned, walking to the door. She put up her hand to the nine and twisted it round. As soon as she took her hand away it slipped back round to the nine position. She wiped her hands nervously down her thighs. ‘I think the—the screw must have fallen out,’ she stated the obvious.

His mouth twisted. ‘My thoughts exactly when I saw twenty-five one side and twenty-seven the other. English?’ he suddenly rapped out.

‘Er—yes,’ she admitted huskily.

‘Well, my little English miss,’ he drawled mockingly, ‘I happen to have rented this room for the night.’

‘You do?’ she asked in dismay, knowing it was going to be some time before she finished the cleaning, and she just couldn’t do it under this man’s watchful all-seeing gaze. She could see what colour his eyes were now; they were the deepest green she had ever seen, the colour of emeralds, a startling contrast to his deeply tanned skin.

‘I do,’ he confirmed tauntingly, removing his hat to reveal the darkest hair Erin had ever seen, a deep ebony, with a bluish sheen to the shine. And he was such a tall man, dwarfing her five feet two by at least a foot, his eyes narrowing as she continued to stare at him.

Erin grimaced. ‘I haven’t finished cleaning in here yet.’

He looked slowly around the room, not missing a bottle or a cigarette stub. ‘Honey, I hope you haven’t even started. I would hate to think rooms were rented out in this condition.’

She put her hand up to her untidy

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Elusive Lover Carole Mortimer

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

Elusive Lover

Carole Mortimer