He slanted a look at her from between sultry azure eyes. ‘Oh? Says who?’
‘Says me! You’re not the person I signed the lease with!’
‘And who did you sign the lease with?’
‘I had to meet a man in Winchester—’
‘Called?’
‘Doug Something-or-Other...’ Holly frowned as she recalled the smoothie who had tried plying her with gin and tonics in the middle of the day and sat leering at her thighs. His oily attitude had had a lot to do with the speed with which she had signed the lease. ‘I know! Doug Reasdale, that was it.’
‘Doug’s the letting agent,’ he informed her. ‘He acted for my uncle.’
‘Well, he certainly didn’t mention that there was an absentee and highly hostile landlord!’ snapped Holly.
‘No longer absentee,’ he amended thoughtfully. ‘And Doug neglected to mention to me that he’d just rented out one of my properties to someone who doesn’t even look old enough to vote!’
‘I’m twenty-six, actually,’ she corrected him tightly. She was getting fed up with people thinking she was just a kid. Maybe it was time she started wearing a little make-up, maybe even cut her hair...
‘Twenty-six, huh?’ He looked at the wild tangle of her curls and her wide-spaced green eyes. Bare lips that excited...invited... Right at that moment she looked like jail bait. ‘Well, maybe you should try acting it,’ he suggested softly.
Holly smirked. ‘Really? That’s neat, coming from you! You mean I should follow your shining example of adult behaviour and start throwing my weight around? I thought that dictatorships had gone out of fashion until I met you!’
‘But clearly a very ineffective dictatorship in this case,’ he observed, trying very hard not to laugh, ‘since I asked you to move your car, but it still seems to be taking up half the road!’
‘You didn’t ask me anything!’ she fumed. ‘You issued the kind of order that I haven’t heard since I was at school!’
‘Then you were obviously a very disobedient schoolgirl,’ he murmured, before realising that the conversation was in danger of sliding helplessly into sexual innuendo and that he was in very great danger of responding to it.
Holly had never met a man she found as physically attractive as the one standing in front of her, and maybe his allure was responsible for what she did next. She tried to tell herself that it was purely an instinctive reaction to that suggestive velvet whisper, but, whatever the reason, she found herself slanting her eyes at him like a courtesan. ‘Why?’ she murmured provocatively, and put her hands on her hips. ‘Have you got a thing about schoolgirls?’
Luke froze. When she leaned back like that it was easy to see that she wasn’t wearing a bra, that her lush breasts were free and unfettered. He saw the way her lips were parted into a smile and he knew for certain that, if he tried to kiss her right then, she would melt into his arms in the way that so many women had done before. But no more. His mouth hardened.
‘I’ll tell you what I have a “thing” about,’ he said carefully. ‘And that’s people who take on more than they’re obviously capable of—’
‘Meaning me?’
‘Meaning you,’ he agreed evenly, as he fought to keep his feelings under control. ‘You clearly can’t tell your left from your right, judging by your parking—so heaven only knows how you intend to run a thriving business! Or maybe that’s why you enjoy flirting with me so outrageously. Maybe you suspect that you’re destined to fail? Perhaps you like to have a little something to fall back on, huh? So that if your business goes bust, then the landlord might be lenient with you.’
Holly stared at him, first in horror, then in disbelief. Then with an irresistible desire to giggle. ‘My God, you’re actually being serious, aren’t you? Are you really from planet Earth, or have aliens just dropped you here? Or do you honestly think that I’d leap into bed with you if I didn’t have enough money to pay the rent?’
Luke knew that he had two choices. If he allowed her to think that he had actually meant that outrageous suggestion, then she would seriously underestimate his critical judgement—and Luke didn’t like being underestimated by anyone. If she underestimated him then she wouldn’t respect him either, and for some reason the thought of that disturbed him. Then he thought of Caroline, and swallowed. Maybe, under the circumstances, that would be the best of the two options.
Alternatively, if he laughed it off—then some of this rapidly building tension might dissolve...
He relaxed and let his blue eyes crinkle at the corners. It was a calculated move because he knew only too well the effect that particular look had. It worked on everyone—men, women, children, animals. It was a charm he had in abundance, but he had never used it quite as deliberately as he did right now. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ he denied softly. ‘It was just a joke.’
‘Pretty poor taste joke, commented Holly, but it was impossible not to thaw when confronted by that melting blue gaze.
‘Listen, why don’t I help you unload your roof-rack so that you can move your car more easily?’ He smiled at her properly then, and Holly honestly couldn’t think of a single objection.
‘UNLESS,’ Luke queried, blue eyes narrowing, ‘you have someone else to help you?’
Holly shook her head. ‘Nope. Just me. All on my own.’
‘Well, then. Show me what needs doing.’
She looked into his eyes, confused by this sudden softening of his attitude towards her. One minute he was Mr Mean, the next he was laying on the charm with a trowel, and—surprise, surprise—he was very good at that! ‘What’s the catch?’
‘No catch.’
‘Well, that’s very sweet of you—’ she began, but he shook his head firmly.
‘No, not sweet,’ he corrected. ‘I am never sweet, Holly.’
‘What, then?’ She wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Let’s go on what we know about you already. Kind? Polite? Gentlemanly?’
He laughed, and even that felt like a brief betrayal, until he told himself that he was being stupid. Men could be friends with women, couldn’t they? Or, if not actually friends, then friendly. Just because you had a laugh and a joke with a woman, it didn’t mean that the two of you automatically wanted to start tearing each other’s clothes off.
‘Let’s just say that it wouldn’t rest very easily on my conscience if I walked away knowing that I had left you to deal with that outrageous amount of luggage. I’m kind of old-fashioned like that.’
Holly regarded him steadily, but her heart was beating fast. She wasn’t used to men coming out with ruggedly masculine statements like that last one. ‘You mean that I’m too much of a delicate female to be able to manoeuvre a couple of suitcases off the roof-rack?’
‘Delicate?’ Luke looked her over very thoroughly, telling himself that she had asked the question, and therefore he needed to give it careful consideration.
She was getting on for six feet—tall for a woman—with correspondingly long limbs. She had legs like a thoroughbred, he thought, then wished he hadn‘t—long and supple legs that seemed to go all the way up to her armpits. She was slim and narrow-hipped, but not skinny in the way that tall women very often could be. And her breasts were almost shocking in their fullness—they looked curiously and beautifully at odds with her boyish