Czytaj książkę: «One Night In His Arms»

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU’RE not serious...’

Sylvie frowned as she studied the synopsis pinned to the front of the file her employer had just handed her.

Lloyd Kelmer the fourth was the kind of eccentric billionaire who, by rights, only ought to have existed in fairy stories—as a particularly genial and indulgent godfather, Sylvie thought. She had been introduced to him at a party to which she had been invited by some acquaintances of her stepbrother’s. She had only gone to the party because she had been feeling particularly lost and insignificant, having only recently left her American college and moved to New York. They had got chatting and Lloyd had begun to tell her about the trials and traumas he had experienced in running the huge wealthy Trust set up by his grandfather.

‘The old man had this thing about stately homes, I guess I kinda feel the same. He owned a fair handful of the things himself, so he kinda had a taste for them, if you know what I mean. There was the plantation down in Carolina and then a couple of châteaux in France and a palazzo in Venice, so it just kinda happened naturally that he should have this idea of using his millions to preserve and protect big houses, and now the Trust has a whole skew of them all over the world, and more wanting to have the Trust bankroll them every day.’

Sylvie, with her own admittedly second-hand experience of her stepbrother’s problems in running and financing his own large family estate in England, had quite naturally been very interested in what Lloyd had had to say, but it had still surprised her a few days later to receive not just a telephone call from him but the offer of a job as his personal assistant.

Sylvie wasn’t seventeen any longer, nor was she the naive and perhaps over-protected girl she had once been. Lloyd might be in his early sixties and might, so far, not have done or said anything to suggest that he had any ulterior motive whatsoever in making contact with her, but nevertheless, having asked him for time to consider his unexpected offer, the first thing Sylvia had done was telephone her stepbrother in England and ask for his advice.

An unscheduled and unfortunately brief visit from Alex and his wife Mollie to vet Lloyd and talk over the situation with Sylvie had resulted in her deciding to take the job, a decision which, twelve months down the line, she regularly paused to congratulate herself on making, or at least she had done until now.

Her work was varied and fascinating, and barely left her with any time to draw breath, never mind for any personal relationships with members of the opposite sex, but that didn’t worry Sylvie. So far, what she had learned from her experiences with men was that she was a particularly poor judge of the breed. First there had been her revoltingly humiliating teenage crush on Ran and his rejection of her, then there had been the appalling danger she had put herself and her family in with her foolish involvement with Wayne.

She and Wayne might never have been lovers but she had known, from the first, of his involvement in the drug scene and, as foolishly as she had tried to convince herself that Ran would fall in love with her, she had also tried to convince herself that Wayne was simply a lost soul in need of protecting and saving.

She had been wrong on both counts. Love was the last emotion Ran had ever felt for her. And as for Wayne... Well, thankfully he was now safely out of her life.

Her new job took every minute of her time and every ounce of her energy. Each new property the Trust decided to ‘adopt’ had to be inspected, vetted and then painstakingly brought up to the same standard as all the other properties the Trust financed and opened to the general public.

Sylvie knew that her employer’s highly individualistic and personalised way of deciding which of the multitude of properties he was offered as potential new additions to the Trust’s portfolio were worth acquiring caused other organisations to eye him slightly askance. For Lloyd to accept a house it had to have what he described as the ‘right feel’, but his eccentricities tended to make Sylvie feel almost maternally protective of him.

Or at least they had until now.

To return from a six-week trip to Prague, where she had been supervising the takeover of a particularly beautiful if horrendously run-down eighteenth-century palace they had recently added to their acquisitions, to discover that in her absence Lloyd had made yet another acquisition in the form of Haverton Hall, a huge neoclassical building set in its own parkland in Derbyshire, had caused her heart to sink into her shoes.

‘But Sylvie, this place is a gem, a perfect example of English neoclassicism,’ she could hear Lloyd protesting as he studied her stubborn expression. ‘I promise you, you’ll love it. I’ve had Gena book you onto the day after tomorrow’s Concorde flight for London. I thought you’d be pleased. You were only complaining way back in the spring how much you wanted to spend more time with your stepbrother and his wife and their son...

‘This house... Did I tell you, by the way, that the guy who inherited it just happens to know your stepbrother and that’s how he’d got to hear about us? It seems that he was telling your stepbrother about the problems he was experiencing, having unexpectedly inherited this place, and Alex suggested that he should get in touch with me... I wasn’t too sure at first. After all, we’ve already got that pretty little Georgian place down near Brighton, but, well, I kinda felt I owed it to Alex, so I flew over to Britain and went to have a look.’

Sylvie closed her eyes as she listened to Lloyd extolling the virtues of Haverton Hall.

How could she admit to him that it wasn’t so much the house itself she objected to as its owner?

Its owner...

There it was on the front page of the report... Haverton Hall... Owner... Sir Ranulf Carrington. Sir Ranulf now, not just Ran any longer... Not that Sylvie was impressed by a title. How could she be when her own stepbrother was an earl?

She had known all about Ran’s unexpected inheritance of course. It had been the subject of a good deal of discussion at Christmas, when she had gone home, not least because Ran, with an estate of his own to run, quite naturally could no longer run her stepbrother’s.

No one, least of all Ran himself, had expected that he would inherit. After all, his cousin had only been in his early forties and had seemed perfectly fit. The last thing anyone imagined was that he would suffer a fatal heart attack.

Sylvie had smiled politely, but without interest. The last thing, the last person she wanted to waste time talking about was Ran.

Her memories of the way he had rejected her might have been carefully and very deeply buried but...but every time she returned to her brother’s home she was painfully reminded of her seventeen-year-old self and her vulnerability.

No question about it, she must have annoyed and aggravated Ran with her unwanted adoration, but surely he could have handled the situation and her a little more gently, let her down a bit more caringly instead of...

Sylvie was aware that Lloyd was watching her expectantly. How could she, as her instincts urged her to do, totally and flatly refuse to have anything to do with Ran? She couldn’t. She was a woman now, a woman who prided herself on her professionalism, a woman who along with her outward New York shine and gloss had also developed an inner self-worth and determination. She loved her work and she truly believed that what Lloyd and the Trust were doing was extremely worthwhile.

Secretly, there was nothing she enjoyed more than watching the houses that Lloyd rescued from their often pitiful state of decay being restored to their former glory... Perhaps it was idealistic and, yes, even foolishly romantic of her, but there was something about watching the process, of seeing these once grand homes rising phoenix-like from the ashes of their own neglect, that touched a chord within her. She could well understand what motivated Lloyd, and she suspected that, ironically, it had been that long-ago conservation scheme she had worked on under Ran’s supervision which had awakened within her the awareness of how very important it was to preserve and care for—to protect—a landscape and its architecture, which had ultimately led to her sharing Lloyd’s passion for their task.

However, Sylvie’s responsibility as an employee of the Trust included a duty not just to share Lloyd’s enthusiasm but to make sure as well that the Trust’s acquisitions were funded and run in a businesslike manner, and that the Trust’s money was used shrewdly and wisely and not wasted or squandered—a responsibility which Sylvie took very seriously. No project, and certainly no bill, was too small for Sylvie to break down and scrutinise very carefully indeed, a fact which caused the Trust’s accountants to comment approvingly on her attention to detail and her excellent bookkeeping.

It had been pointless for Lloyd to protest when they had been renovating the Venetian palazzo that he preferred the red silk to the gold which Sylvie had favoured.

‘Red is almost twice as expensive,’ she had pointed out sternly, adding as a clincher, ‘And besides, the records we’ve managed to trace all indicate that this room was originally decorated in gold and hung with gold drapes...’

‘Then gold it is, then.’ Lloyd had given in with a sigh, but Sylvie had been the one who had been forced to give in to him a few weeks later when, on their departure from Venice, Lloyd had presented her with a set of the most exquisite and expensive leather luggage crafted as only the Italians could craft leather.

‘Lloyd, I can’t possibly accept this,’ Sylvie had protested with a small gasp.

‘Why not? It is your birthday, isn’t it?’ Lloyd had countered, and of course he had been right, and ultimately Sylvie had given in.

Although, as she had told her stepbrother defensively at Christmas when Mollie had marvelled enviously at the luggage, ‘I didn’t want to accept it but Lloyd would have been hurt if I hadn’t.’ She’d added worriedly, ‘Alex, do you think I should have refused...? If you...’

‘Sylvie, the luggage is beautiful and you did the right thing to accept it,’ Alex had reassured her gently. ‘Stop worrying, little one,’ he had commanded her.

‘Little one’! Only Alex ever called her that, and it made her feel so...so protected and safe.

Protected and safe? She was an adult, a woman, for heaven’s sake, and more than capable of protecting herself, of keeping herself safe. Irritably she dragged her attention back to the file she was holding.

‘You don’t approve, do you?’ Lloyd demanded, shaking his head ruefully. ‘Just wait until you see it, though, Sylvie. You’ll love it. It’s a perfect example of...’

‘We’re already very close to the limit of this year’s budget,’ Sylvie warned him sternly, ‘and—’

‘So what? We’ll just have to increase this year’s funding,’ Lloyd told her with typical laid-back geniality.

‘Lloyd,’ Sylvie protested, ‘you’re talking about an increase of heaven alone knows how many million dollars... The Trust...’

‘I am the Trust,’ Lloyd reminded her gently, and Sylvie had to acknowledge that he spoke the truth. Even so, she gave him an ironic look to which he responded by informing her loftily, ‘I’m just doing what I know the old man would have wanted me to do...’

‘By buying a decaying neoclassical pile in the middle of Derbyshire?’ Sylvie asked him dryly.

And she was still shaking her head as Lloyd told her winningly, ‘You’ll love it, Sylvie...I promise you!’

Cravenly Sylvie was tempted to tell him that she was far too busy and that he would have to find someone else to take charge of this particular project, but her pride—the same pride which had kept her going, kept her head held high and her spirit strong through Ran’s rejection of her and everything that had followed—refused to allow her to do so.

This time she and Ran would be meeting on equal ground—as adults—and this time...this time...

This time what? This time she wasn’t going to let him hurt her. This time her attitude towards him would be cool, distant and totally businesslike.

This time...

Sylvie closed her eyes as she felt the tiny shivers of apprehension icing down her spine. The last time she had seen Ran had been when he had unexpectedly turned up at the airport three years ago when she had been leaving England to finish her degree course in America. She could still remember the shock it had given her to see him there, the shock and the sharply sweet surge of helpless pleasure and longing.

She had still been so vulnerable and naive then, a part of her still hoping that maybe, just maybe, he had changed his mind...his heart... But of course he had not. He had been there simply to assure himself that she was actually leaving the country and his life.

Alex knew, of course, that she had once had a foolish adolescent crush on his friend and employee but, thankfully, that was all he did know; thankfully, he had no knowledge of that shaming and searingly painful, never to be thought about, never mind talked about incident that had taken place when she had still been at university in England.

No one knew about that Only she and Ran. But that was all in the past now, and she was determined that this time when she and Ran met, as meet they would surely have to, she would be the one who would have the upper hand and he would be the one who would be the supplicant; she would have the power to deny and refuse him what he wanted and he would have to beg and plead with her.

Immediately Sylvie opened her eyes. What on earth had got into her? That kind of warped, vengeful thinking was, to her mind, as foolish and adolescent as her youthful infatuation with Ran had been. She was above all that kind of thing. She had to be; her job demanded it. No, she would make no distinction between Ran and all the other clients she had had to deal with. The fact that Ran had once cruelly and uncaringly turned down her pleas for his love, for his lovemaking, the fact that he had once rejected and demeaned her, would make no difference to the way she treated him. She was above all that kind of small-mindedness. Proudly she lifted her head as she continued to listen to Lloyd enthusiastically telling her the virtues of his latest ‘find’.

Ran stared grimly around the unfurnished, dusty and cobweb-festooned hallway of Haverton Hall. The smell of neglect and the much more ominous dry rot hung malodorously on the still, late afternoon air. The large room, in common with the rest of the Hall, had a desolate, down-at-heel air of weariness which reminded him uncomfortably of the elderly great-uncle who had owned the property when Ran was growing up. Visits to see him had been something which Ran had always dreaded and, ironically, he could remember how relieved he had been to discover that it was not he but an older cousin who would ultimately inherit the responsibility for the vast, empty, neglected house.

But now that cousin was dead and he, Ran, was Haverton’s owner, or at least he had been until a week or so ago, when he had finally and thankfully signed the papers which would convey legal ownership of Haverton and all the problems that went with it into the hands of Lloyd Kelmer.

His initial reaction when he had unexpectedly and unwontedly inherited the place had been to make enquiries to see if any of the British trusts could be persuaded to take it over, but, as their representatives had quickly and wryly explained, the trusts were awash with unwanted properties and deluged with despairing owners wanting them to take on even more.

Faced with the prospect of having to stand aside and watch as the house and its lands fell into an even greater state of decay, Ran hadn’t known what on earth he was going to do—his inheritance had been the house and the land; there hadn’t been any money to leave for its upkeep—and then Alex had happened to mention the existence of an eccentric American billionaire whose main vocation and purpose in life was the buying up and restoring of old properties which he then opened to the public, and Ran had lost no time in getting in touch with him.

To his relief Lloyd had flown over to England to view the house and promptly declared that he loved it.

That relief had turned to something very different, though, when he had received a fax from Lloyd advising him that his assistant, Ms Sylvie Bennett, would be flying over to Britain to act as his representative over the repair and renovation of the property. He could, of course, have simply chosen to turn his back, walk away, and leave someone else to liaise with Sylvie, but Ran wasn’t like that. If he had a job to do he preferred to see it through for himself, no matter how unwanted or potentially problematic that task might be.

Potentially problematic! A bitter half-smile curled his mouth. There was nothing potential about the problems that Sylvie was likely to cause him... Nothing potential at all.

He had heard scraps of news about her over the years, of course, mainly from Alex and Mollie. Sylvie had completed her degree course and majored summa cum laude... Sylvie was living in New York and looking for a job... Sylvie had got a job... Sylvie was working in Venice... In Rome... In Prague... Sylvie... Sylvie... Sylvie...

Alex and Mollie weren’t his only sources of information, though. Only the previous winter in London, Ran had unexpectedly bumped into Sylvie’s mother, Alex’s stepmother, predictably just outside Harvey Nichols.

Belinda had gushed enthusiastically over his recent elevation to the peerage. She had always been the most appalling snob and Ran could still remember how bitterly she had opposed Alex’s request to her after his father had died that Sylvie be allowed to stay on at Otel Place with him instead of being sent to boarding school.

‘Sylvie cannot possibly live with you, Alex,’ she had told him sharply. ‘For one thing it simply wouldn’t be proper. There is, after all, no blood relationship between you. And for another... Sylvie has been spending far too much time with the wrong sort of people.’

Ran, who had been standing outside Alex’s library whilst this conversation had been taking place, had turned round and been about to walk away when, to his disgust, he had suddenly heard his own name mentioned. Alex had demanded of his stepmother, ‘What wrong sort of people...?’

‘Well, Ran for a start... Oh, I know you count him as one of your friends, but he’s still merely an employee and—’

Alex had immediately exploded, informing his stepmother, much to Ran’s chagrin, ‘Ran is a friend and, as for anything else, he happens to be far better born than either you or I.’

‘Really?’ had come back the acid retort. ‘He might be better born, Alex, but he still doesn’t have any money. Sylvie is very much in danger of developing the sort of crush on him that could totally ruin her reputation if she’s to make the right sort of marriage.’

“‘The right sort of marriage”?’ Alex had retorted angrily. ‘For heaven’s sake, what century are you living in...?’

‘Sylvie is my daughter and there’s no way I want her mixing with the estate workers...and that includes Ran... And whilst we’re on the subject, Alex, I really do think that as Sylvie’s stepbrother you do have a responsibility to her to protect her from unsuitable...friendships...’

Ran could still remember how bitterly, furiously angry he had been, how humiliated he had felt... He had made sure that he kept his distance from Sylvie after that, even if Sylvie herself had not made that particularly easy. He had been twenty-seven then, ten years older than Sylvie. A man, whilst she was still only a child.

A child... A child who had told him passionately that she loved and wanted him; a child who had demanded even more passionately that he love her back, that he make love to her...with her...that he show her...teach her... take her...