The Royal Collection. Rebecca WintersЧитать онлайн книгу.
she shrieked.
‘I thought you had drowned!’
He’d called her name. He’d knocked on the door. Silence. And then he’d remembered how tired she had been, because of him. He’d gone cold, picturing her sliding beneath the water, too tired to rouse herself, and he’d panicked, bursting into the room, convinced that he would find her limp and lifeless, desperately trying to remember resuscitation techniques.
And there she was, her eyes huge and frightened, her shoulders bare, and Corran’s eyes had taken on a weird life of their own and were ensnared by the wet, glowing body in the bath, skidding from clavicle to earlobe to elbow to the arms clamped firmly over her breasts.
‘I did knock,’ he said, but his voice seemed to come from a long way away. He was disgusted with himself. He knew he had to get out of there, but he couldn’t move. He didn’t know whether he felt light-headed with relief or cold with anger.
Anger was easier to deal with. ‘Why the hell didn’t you answer?’ he demanded.
‘I didn’t hear. I was d-daydreaming.’
The tiny stammer jolted Corran back to himself. I still stammer a little when I’m nervous, she had said.
She shouldn’t be nervous of him, but what else could she feel when he had stormed into the bathroom and was standing there, staring at her? Mortified, Corran forced himself to move at last. Turning his back on her, he strode for the door.
‘Well, since you’re alive after all, dinner’s ready,’ he said curtly.
‘I—I’ll be down in a minute.’
How long was it going to be before he got the image of Lotty in the bath out of his mind? That luminous skin, the wet, lovely slope of her shoulders. Her short hair was spiky, the grey eyes wide and startled, and a pulse had hammered in the bewitching hollow at the base of her throat.
Corran glowered as he drained the pasta. He’d been alone too long. The last thing he needed right now was a complication like Lotty.
She appeared a few minutes later, modestly covered in jeans and a cardigan. Not her fault that the soft pink wool seemed to hug her arms enticingly, reminding him of the bare skin beneath, or that the top she wore beneath the cardigan emphasised the delicate line of her clavicle.
Corran dragged his eyes away from it. ‘I’m sorry about earlier,’ he said stiffly.
‘No, it was my fault,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you and I might well have fallen asleep if you hadn’t checked, so thank you.’
An awkward silence fell.
‘It must have been some daydream,’ he said to fill it. ‘I was quite loud.’
A wash of colour swept up Lotty’s throat.
Her eyes slid from his as she pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Something smells good,’ she said, pointedly changing the subject, and Corran’s interest was perversely piqued. What did a woman like Lotty dream about? he wondered.
Who did she dream about?
Well, it was none of his business, he reminded himself as he turned the pasta in the sauce. And he didn’t care anyway. He had to remind himself of that too.
‘Spaghetti bolognaise,’ he told her, plonking the pot onto the table. ‘I can only cook three dishes. This isn’t going to be a great gastronomic experience for you.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Lotty, who was still jittery from the shock of Corran bursting into the bathroom. One moment she’d been dreaming that, and the next he’d been there, looking furious, and reality had slapped her around the face. This was no ardent lover. This was a man with far more on his mind than her pathetic little fantasies.
In one of those gruff acts of kindness that kept catching her unawares, he’d retrieved her rucksack from the barn and put it in her room. She felt a little better once she was dressed in the outfit she’d worn every evening on the walk, but she was still desperately aware of Corran moving around the kitchen and her breathing kept getting muddled up. His presence seemed to be sucking all the oxygen from the air. The only other person Lotty knew who had that same compelling presence was her tiny autocratic grandmother.
‘Help yourself.’ Corran gave her a plate and pushed the pot towards her. ‘It’ll be filling if nothing else.’
Lotty was still burning with embarrassment, but she took some pasta to be polite. The spoon and fork rang against the edge of the saucepan, loud in the silence.
A princess always puts people at their ease. The memory of her grandmother’s voice was so clear that Lotty almost expected to turn and see her at her shoulder.
Clearing her throat, she forced herself to make conversation. ‘Do you always cook for yourself?’
‘I don’t have much choice. Fortunately, I’m not that bothered about food, but I get pretty sick of the same three dishes, I have to admit.’ Corran paused in the middle of helping himself to pasta. ‘I don’t suppose you cook, do you?’
There was no use pretending. Lotty had barely been in a kitchen before arriving at Loch Mhoraigh. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Pity. I was going to suggest you might like to earn some extra money.’
‘Extra?’ Lotty raised her brows. ‘I’m not earning any money, so how can I earn extra?’
‘All right, maybe you’d like to earn some money on top of your board and lodging.’ He looked at her assessingly. ‘You could be my housekeeper. I can’t pay much, mind, but it would be worth it not to have to do any more cooking myself for a while.’
‘If you can afford to pay a housekeeper, why not give me something for cleaning the cottage?’
‘That was a different deal,’ said Corran. ‘You wanted to do it. This is something I don’t want to do. See the difference?’
Lotty chewed a mouthful of pasta. He was right. Filling was the best thing that could be said about it. Could she do much worse? The idea of earning her own money was ridiculously exciting for one who had been wealthy beyond most people’s dreams since she was born.
Nearly as exciting, but not requiring nearly as much nerve as the idea of losing her virginity.
Over Corran’s shoulder she could see a few tatty recipe books propped on the otherwise bare dresser.
‘I can’t claim any cooking experience, but I can read,’ she said. ‘I could have a go.’
‘Great,’ said Corran. ‘Consider yourself hired.’
Lotty stared at him. ‘Is that it?’
‘I’m hardly going to give you an interview,’ he pointed out. ‘I don’t care what the meals are like as long as they’re edible and I don’t have to cook them myself.’
It was a little late to start negotiating, Lotty realised, but she tried anyway. ‘Do I get extra time to finish the cottage? It’ll take me some time to do the cooking as well as the cleaning.’
Corran finished his mouthful as he considered. ‘Fair enough,’ he agreed at last. ‘You can have an extra day. But that’s all. Take it or leave it.’
Léopold Longsword would no doubt have wrung more concessions out of him in a process of wily negotiations, while Raoul the Wolf would probably have just chopped his head off, but Lotty took the deal.
THERE were no curtains at her bedroom window. When the summer light woke her early in the mornings, Lotty would allow herself a few moments to just lie and remember where she was before she launched into another