Pride After Her Fall. Lucy Ellis

and then slowly began unhooking her seatbelt. Her movements were slow, deliberate. She unlatched the door, hesitated only for a moment and then swung her long legs out. She shut the door with a click behind her and leaned back against it.

      ‘How can I help you, Officer?’

      The scent of her hit him, swarmed through his senses like a hive of pretty bees, all honey and flowers and female.

      Expensive, a steadying voice intervened. She smells and looks expensive.

      Like any other rich girl on this coast. A dime a dozen if you’d got a spare billion in the bank.

      He folded his arms. ‘Going to tell me what’s going on?’

      He actually saw the moment the flirtatious persona fell away.

      She gave a little shrug. ‘There seems to be a problem with the engine. I accelerate but I lose speed.’

      He nodded and headed for the front of her car.

      Lorelei found herself following him, hands on her hips. He got the bonnet up with no trouble—something she never could. He leaned in.

      ‘It’s the original,’ he told her in that deep, male voice.

      ‘Are you a mechanic?’

      ‘Near enough.’

      Lorelei looked down the road as a couple of cars swished past, then back at the man leaning into the business end of her car.

      Her eyes dwelt on the tail of an intricate dragon tattoo running down his flexed left arm, on his muscled shoulders, shifting under the fit of his close-weave black T-shirt, broad and imposing as he bent low, drawing attention to the strong, lean length of his torso and tapering to a hall-of-fame behind—all muscle. Prime male.

      She snagged her bottom lip contemplatively, stroking him up and down with her eyes. She couldn’t get over how thick and silky his dark brown hair looked, the wavy ends caressing his broad neck. She wondered how they would feel tangled between her fingers. She wondered what he would say if she apologised, if she told him she wasn’t always this out of control …

      ‘Whoever looks after it deserves a medal.’

      Lorelei wondered a little hopelessly if he was ever going to look up—look at her. She gave a little inner sigh. Probably not. She’d burnt her bridges with this man.

      ‘What was it?’ he prompted. ‘A gift?’ When she didn’t reply he straightened up and gave her a speculative look. ‘I’d say from a guy who knows his engines.’

      Lorelei cleared her throat, aware she’d been staring at him and that he was probably aware of it. ‘I bought it myself. At auction.’

      He looked so sceptical her hands twitched all over again on her hips.

      ‘You need a specialist to run some tests on the engine.’ He was looking at her steadily, as if he expected her to be writing this down. ‘It’s in good nick, so I assume you’ve got a specialist mechanic.’

      She found herself recalled to her usual good sense. ‘Oui. I’ll call him.’

      ‘Everything else looks to be in order.’

      As he spoke he set the bonnet down carefully, checked it was locked in place. His movements were assured and methodical and, oddly, Lorelei felt soothed by them. He treated her car with respect. Which was more than she had done with his employer’s Bugatti, a little voice of conscience niggled.

      ‘What will happen with the Bugatti?’ she found herself asking.

      ‘I expect the man who owns her will have some questions for you.’

      Lorelei shoulders subsided.

      ‘Do you want me to follow you back?’

      No, most definitely not. Because she wasn’t going back. She’d been running the Sunbeam like this for weeks, but she got the impression her handsome stranger would not be best pleased. He might not think much of her, but he was clearly in love with her car.

      ‘Mais non. You stopped.’ She pushed back a rogue curl dangling over the left side of her face. ‘It’s more than most people would have done. Merci beaucoup.’

      Nash hesitated. He hadn’t seen her like this before—calm, almost subdued—and it suited her. She wasn’t quite as young as he’d first assumed—maybe thirty—and there was a maturity about her that he’d missed in all the glamour-girl theatrics.

      ‘Right. Take care of her. She’s a beauty.’

      He ran his hand lightly over the paintwork and for the life of him couldn’t work out why getting back into his car was so hard. Except she was just standing there, looking a little uncertain.

      He sat in the Veyron, waiting, watching as she climbed into the sapphire-blue roadster, waiting for her to start the engine, waiting for her to pull out, all the while waiting to feel relief that she was off his hands. She gave him a simple wave and drove slowly back down the road.

      Telling himself he was satisfied, he pulled out and took off.

      Lorelei watched until she couldn’t see him any more in her mirror, then ignored the pinch in her chest because she wasn’t going to see him again, before turning the big car around and heading back the way he was going. Into town.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘LORELEI, good morning.’ The girl behind the desk beamed. ‘You’re early!’

      ‘No, I have a client at midday, so I’m running late, chère. Can you be an angel and put a call through to the arena to let them know I’m on my way?’

      As she reached her locker Lorelei finished keying her successful morning’s tally into her cell: Smashed up a Bugatti. Met a man. Then she hesitated, because ‘met a man’ implied she would be meeting him again. Monaco was a postage stamp of geography, but person per square foot it was the most densely populated postage stamp in the world, making it highly unlikely …

      She sighed, pressed Send to her best friend’s number and dropped the cell into her bag, placing that in her locker. Her love life was fairly, well, non-existent these days. Getting close to a man in her current situation just meant another person to hide things from.

      She stripped, pulled on jodhpurs and a white shirt, and crouched down to yank on her riding boots. It was only when she stood up to don the regulation jacket and caught sight of her reflection that she paused to enjoy the little moment when she stepped into this world.

      It was almost a moment of relief. She understood this world. There were rules and regulations and they were satisfying. It was what she had always loved about dressage and showjumping. She had had so little structure growing up, and the sport had provided for the lack. Ironically it was fulfilling the same function now.

      She smiled wanly as she buttoned herself up. The jacket hung a little on her, but so did everything. She’d lost weight during her father’s trial and somehow never regained it.

      Gathering up her clipboard, Lorelei made her way out into the stands to wait for her student.

      Once this had been her dream, until a bad fall had put paid to her ambitions. Nowadays she trained up-and-coming equestrians on a freelance basis. It didn’t pay spectacularly well, but it was work for her soul. After the accident she hadn’t thought she would ever saddle up again. Two years of rehabilitation had taught her both patience and determination, and she brought them to her work. It made her a good trainer.

      In a couple of years, when she was financially back on her feet again, she hoped to set up her own stables on a property she had her eye on outside Nice. For now, she trained and kept two horses at the nearby Allard Stables, where she also volunteered.

      She brought her focus to bear as a glorious bay gelding entered the arena, carrying a long-legged teenager. Lorelei had been working with her for a month. She