Harriet gave a sigh of pure envy, before resolutely pulling herself together. ‘OK. I’m willing to talk to this man. But until I’ve met him that’s as far as I’m prepared to go.’
‘Just wait till you see this guy. You won’t be able to believe your eyes!’ her friend told her, before leading the way through the tightly packed throng of people towards a group on the other side of the room.
Sophie was quite right.
Harriet simply could not believe her eyes—or her bad luck—as she watched the other girl breaking into a circle of women surrounding the tall, dark man in the corner, whom she’d viewed across the room earlier in the evening.
‘Here we are!’ Sophie trilled, deftly elbowing a small blonde out of the way as she grabbed hold of the man’s arm, dragging him out of the crowd towards Harriet, who was standing rooted to the spot, almost paralysed with shock and dismay.
‘I just know that you two lovely people are going to get on like a house on fire!’ her friend continued, blissfully unaware of a highly embarrassed flush spreading over Harriet’s cheeks, or the sudden stiffening of the man’s tall figure.
‘Let me introduce you. This is my friend Harriet Wentworth, and—’
‘I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting Miss Wentworth,’ he drawled sardonically. A tight-lipped, grim smile of amusement flickered over his handsome features as he viewed the dawning consternation in the tall, red-headed girl’s green eyes.
‘Oh, that’s good!’ Sophie burbled happily.
No, it isn’t—it’s a bloody disaster! Harriet wanted to scream out loud. Although, considering the horrendous amount of noisy laughter and shouting going on around them, no one would have taken any notice if she had suddenly started yelling her head off.
Life was just so damned unfair! Of all the men in London—why did it have to be this particular man who was now wanting to rent a flat in her house? she asked herself incredulously. But—as much as she wanted to tell him to get lost—she simply didn’t have enough nerve to cause a scene.
‘Well, actually…’ she began, desperately trying to pull herself together. ‘I’m sure that Mr…um…’ What was the guy’s name? ‘That Mr—’
‘My name is Finn Maclean,’ he interrupted curtly.
‘Oh, yes…er…sorry…’ she mumbled, suddenly hating both Sophie and this awful man for putting her in such a difficult position, and desperately wishing that she’d never—absolutely never—agreed to come to this awful party. ‘The fact is…’
‘The fact is, you apparently have a flat to let. And I need to rent one, almost immediately,’ he told her in a firm let’s-have-no-nonsense tone of voice, which immediately raised her hackles.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that Sophie has jumped the gun,’ she told him quickly. ‘I’ve only just got rid of the builders, and—’
Busily intent on explaining just why it was not possible for him to rent her new apartment, Harriet was startled to find herself abruptly cut off in mid-sentence, the man quickly grasping her arm and towing her determinedly towards the back of the room, before opening a door and issuing her into a dimly lit small office.
‘Now, just a minute!’ she protested, rubbing the top of her arm where he’d gripped her so fiercely.
‘I’m sorry. But we were hardly able to hear ourselves think—let alone hold a reasonable conversation,’ he said, perching himself down on the edge of a large partners desk and stretching his long legs out in front of him.
‘I’ve bought this new flat, in Holland Park,’ he continued, before explaining the problem he was likely to have with so many workmen, and his need for alternative accommodation for anything up to six months. ‘And so, when your friend told me that you’d completed the conversion of the second floor in your house, it seemed the perfect solution to my problem,’ he added with a warm, engaging smile.
While Harriet would normally admire a guy who was prepared to take decisive action in pursuit of his goal, she’d already had dealings with Finn Maclean—and it had not been a pleasant experience.
So, it was no good him trying to turn on the charm—which he clearly possessed in abundance. Or trying to smooth-talk her into allowing him to rent her flat, she told herself grimly. Because he was definitely not the sort of tenant she’d had in mind.
‘I’d be at work in the City all day—and I’m out quite a lot in the evenings,’ he was saying as she stared mulishly back at him, determined to stick to her guns. ‘So, most of the time you’d hardly know I was there.’
‘What do you do? I mean,’ she added quickly as he looked at her in surprise, ‘Sophie seems to think that you are some kind of film producer.’
He gave a deep chuckle of laughter. ‘No, I’m afraid not. I work in the City as a lawyer,’ he explained. ‘In fact, my only contact with the film company giving this party concerned drawing up a contract for some work they were doing recently, on location.’
‘Oh, right,’ Harriet murmured, feeling somewhat relieved to know that if she was going to let her flat to this man—which, of course, she wasn’t—he would be unlikely to be throwing wild parties full of weird people, and disturbing her neighbours in the early hours of the morning.
However, Finn Maclean was obviously a very successful lawyer, if that wafer-thin Cartier gold watch on his wrist was anything to go by. So there seemed no point in mentioning that she, too, was a lawyer—albeit having worked as a very junior solicitor in a large, multinational firm.
‘Come on, you gorgeous girl—give me a break!’ He grinned engagingly at her. ‘I really am desperate to find somewhere to live.’
Easily able to discard his outrageous flattery—‘gorgeous girl’ indeed!—and frantically searching her mind for a good excuse to avoid renting him her apartment, Harriet was nevertheless finding it very difficult to concentrate on the problem.
Even though she was still relatively sober—mostly because she hadn’t liked the look of those peculiar-coloured cocktails—she was finding it extraordinarily difficult to ignore the amazing good looks, heady attraction and all-persuasive allure of this man.
Despite being perched on the desk, a few feet away from her, the magnetic force of his personality—not to mention the staggering effect of so much sheer naked sex appeal—was causing her to feel confused and breathless. The warm sparkling glints in those large blue eyes of his seemed to contain an almost seductive enticement; the atmosphere between them now was so thick that she could practically cut it with a knife.
‘Well…?’
‘I don’t know…’ she muttered weakly, realising that it would be no good saying that, since he hadn’t even seen the house, it was far too soon to take any sort of decision. Because not only did he know her house very well—but he’d also been extremely angry when she’d refused to sell it to him, all those months ago.
Unfortunately, it seemed that Finn Maclean—alongside all the other gifts with which nature had clearly endowed him—was also quite capable of reading her mind.
‘You may not want to rent me that flat of yours, Harriet. But I reckon you owe me a favour,’ he told her bluntly, the icy-cold, forceful determination in his voice sharply at variance with the warm, soothing tones he’d been using only a few seconds ago.
‘You were responsible for the fact that I wasted a great deal of time and money,’ he continued grimly. ‘Which is why I feel it’s not asking too much for you to now help solve my current difficulty.’
‘Yes, well…maybe I did…but…’
‘So, we’ve got a deal—OK?’