After managing to unlock the front door—which was a feat comparable to breaking into Fort Knox—Lola dumped her suitcases in the utility room and went off to see if there was any post, shrugging off her jacket as she went and impatiently unbuttoning her blue uniform shirt.
The house was much too hot, she decided, and turned the thermostat right down. She had been advised to leave the central heating on whenever she was away on a trip, especially in winter when there was a very real risk of the pipes freezing over. And although it was March the weather had been unsettled enough for her to continue doing just that.
However, the atmosphere was sultry enough for the house to be mistaken for a greenhouse at the moment! Lola wiped her damp brow with the back of her hand and bent down to pick up the post.
As well as the usual sundry bills and an invitation to the Dream-makers ball in May there was a letter from her mother, declining Lola’s invitation to come and spend Easter at Marchwood and telling her she had decided to spend the holiday weekend quietly on her own.
Lola sighed, disappointed but not surprised. As Marnie had pointed out, her mother’s visits had been infrequent enough when she had lived in her scruffy little flat, yet in all the six months that she had been living at Marchwood her mother had not visited once.
When she had first discovered that Peter had left her the house, Lola had worried that June Hennessy might be suspicious of her daughter’s relationship with Peter Featherstone. So Lola had told her mother outright that there had been nothing of a sexual nature between her and her benefactor, and Mrs Hennessy had, to her credit, sighed with slightly over-the-top relief and believed her.
So why was her mother still being so cagey about coming here?
Lola sighed.
Unless she was challenged directly, as she had been by Geraint in the restaurant last night, she tried her hardest to play down her inheritance. She disliked being envied and envy was usually the overriding emotion experienced by people when they discovered that she had been bequeathed a million-pound house for basically having a friendly smile and soft heart.
But what those people failed to realise was just how much it cost to actually run a house this size, particularly on an estate with the prestige of St Fiacre’s, which had such strict regulations governing the appearance of all its houses and gardens.
Lola did as much gardening as she could, but she did work full-time, and just keeping the extensive grounds in order was costing her an absolute fortune in help.
And sooner or later, she recognised as the sharp peal of the front doorbell penetrated her thoughts, she was going to have to think about selling up.
She had completely forgotten to put the safety chain on the door, and her mind was distracted as she absently pulled the door open, to find Geraint standing there, his legs slightly apart and his hands on his hips.
He looked like a cowboy, she thought, with that aggressively masculine stance which immediately made her feel all small and weak and feminine. And smitten.
Which was not the way she wanted to feel at all! She opened her mouth to lambast him, but he beat her to it.
‘Are you completely mad?’ he demanded, without any kind of preamble.
His clipped query took the wind right out of her sails, and Lola just stood there, too flabbergasted to respond—and, if she was perfectly honest, too overwhelmed by the sight of him to have the will to do anything other than gaze at him hungrily.
In daylight he looked even better than he had done in the restaurant last night. He wore a cream-coloured silk sweater which provided the perfect foil for the thick, dark hair which curled so invitingly around the tanned column of his neck, and an old pair of jeans.
Lola had once thought that she could not imagine him wearing jeans but now she recognised that that might just have been her mind protecting her from the prospect of actually seeing him in close-fitting, faded denim which clung indecently to every contour.
Because the pale blue material emphasised every centimetre of those thighs—and Geraint had the most magnificent thighs imaginable, she thought lustfully. In fact, he had the finest physique Lola had ever seen. Finer than that of the movie star she had spotted jogging around St Fiacre’s the other morning. And finer even than that of the international tennis star she had served cocktails to on a flight out of Florence last month.
His grey eyes narrowed. ‘Are you?’ he demanded curtly.
Lola blinked, still too shaken by the mesmerizing effect of the stormy grey fire which blazed from his eyes to be able to think straight. ‘Am I what?’ she queried stupidly.
He gave an impatient little snort. ‘Aren’t you at all concerned for your own safety?’ And then, when he saw her look of bemusement, his face darkened even more as he continued his tirade. ‘I could have been anyone!’ he declared. ‘Anyone! Imagine living in a place like this and being stupid enough to answer the door without even using the safety catch!’
Lola’s heart rate had slowed down enough for her to feel able to speak. ‘But it was you!’ she pointed out. ‘Wasn’t it?’
‘You didn’t know it was me!’ he shot back immediately. ‘You didn’t bother using the spyhole, did you?’
Lola raised a belligerent chin. ‘So?’
‘So I could have hit you over the head by now,’ he ground out. ‘And while you were lying unconscious I could have been in the process of ransacking your house—’
‘But the security at St Fiacre’s is reputed to be the best in the country!’ she informed him with a triumphant sweetness. ‘Besides which I haven’t anything of value to steal!’
‘You don’t think so?’ He stepped over the threshold uninvited, his cold grey eyes taking in a large Chinese vase which stood in the corner of the hall, and which Lola had been using to house her small collection of umbrellas.
‘That vase on its own would net you a small fortune,’ he informed her, with a curt nod in its direction. ‘The sketch above the fireplace is an early Waterman and those two candlesticks on the man-telpiece are made of solid silver—late Victorian, and rather rare.’
Lola blinked, far too interested in what he was saying to register the fact that he had entered her home uninvited. And he certainly seemed to know what he was talking about where antiques were concerned—which was more than she did.
Peter had left her the entire contents of the house, in addition to the building itself, but so far she just hadn’t got around to having anything valued.
Oh, her solicitor had suggested it, but Lola had automatically shied away from the idea. She had already been overwhelmed by Peter’s generosity, and to then arrange to have the house contents assessed. . . well, that had seemed like an almost greedy, grasping thing to do.
‘But far worse than theft is what else could befall you, if you continue to be so cavalier about your security arrangements!’ Geraint continued relentlessly.
He met her questioning gaze with a bleak, candid look and Lola sucked in a shocked breath as she realised just what he was getting at.
‘No!’ she breathed.
‘Oh, yes!’ he contradicted her cruelly. ‘Intruders have been known to show no conscience if they are disturbed by a spectacular-looking woman. If someone is stealing from your house, you can bet your life they don’t possess much in the way of morals. If I were a burglar, I could be raping you, Lola—right now,’ he ground out brutally.
There was a short, shocked silence as Lola absorbed what he had said, and it was a horrified and white face which she eventually turned in Geraint’s direction. ‘How c-could you?’ came her squeaky protest. ‘How could you say something so crude—?’
‘But