The Bachelor's Bargain. Jessica Steele

and shoving and hitting and generally making short work of her grim determination to hang on to her shoulder bag at all costs, and were escaping pell-mell down the road with it.

      Feeling stunned and winded, it was the violence of the assault that shocked her. She had never ever been hit before and she just sat there dishevelled and decidedly crumpled for ageless seconds, dazed, sickened, a cross between tears and fury.

      She did not cry, and there was no one there on whom she could vent her anger. How could she have been hit, pushed, knocked over in this salubrious area? Why not? What better place for a mugging than this well-to-do district? What better place for rich pickings.

      ‘Oh, you poor thing!’ So dazed and in shock was she, Merren hadn’t heard the sound of running feet; feet running towards her, not away. She looked up and recognised the young man who’d been carrying the travel bag out to his car. ‘Can you stand up?’ he asked, his face showing his concern.

      Merren, with his aid, got to her feet; it was incidental that there were great gaping holes in her tights. Everything seemed to spin about her for a second, so she was glad when the man held on to her.

      ‘Oh, you poor, poor thing,’ he crooned. ‘Those thugs will be miles away by now. Come on,’ he urged. ‘A cup of tea’s what you need.’

      With his hand under her arm supporting her he took the short way to a house where the front door still stood open. He helped her up the steps and Merren went with him.

      A few minutes later she came a little out of her shock to find she was seated in someone’s plush drawing room with barely any idea of how she had got there.

      Her head had started to pound when a voice, somewhere to the back of her, started to penetrate. ‘Not another of your waifs and strays, Piers!’ It was rather a nice voice. Piers, whoever he was, apparently went in for collecting waifs and strays.

      ‘Aw, don’t be like that, Jarad, the poor girl’s just been mugged!’

      Merren jerked upright on the sofa she found herself on. They were talking about her! Waif and stray! Indignantly she went to stand up—her legs were wobbly; she sat down again. ’So had the last one been mugged, if I recall correctly.’

      ‘It’s true this time. Honestly, it is.’

      ‘You haven’t time to plead your case. You’ll miss your plane.’ The voices were moving away, the Piers voice mumbling something, then the Jarad voice answering, ‘Yes, yes, I’ll look after her—don’t I always?’

      Merren made a more determined effort to get herself together. Huh, waif and stray! Look after her—he could go take a hike. But her head hurt, her shoulders hurt, and she had an idea she’d have a few bruises by tomorrow. In fact her head felt a bit muzzy, but she’d stand up in a minute and get out of there.

      She could hear some sort of a conversation going on, then silence. Then she heard a car start up. Good, they’d gone out somewhere. She heard the front door close, and, as a second or two afterwards someone came into the drawing room, Merren decided it was time to leave.

      Just as she went to struggle to her feet, though, a tall man with night-black hair, somewhere in his mid-thirties, came and stood in front of her, and she found herself pinned by what she could only describe as a pair of cool grey eyes. He certainly wasn’t going to believe a word she said, she could tell that, and that was before she so much as opened her mouth.

      Which was why she decided that she wasn’t going to bother saying anything. Though, since he was standing so close, she had to amend that decision. ‘If you wouldn’t mind getting out of my way, I’ll leave.’

      She hated his cynical right eyebrow that lifted at her haughty tone. ‘You’re different; I’ll say that for you,’ he drawled.

      ‘I’m certainly no “waif or stray”!’ she told him snappily. Though if she’d hoped to embarrass him by tossing back at him the words she’d overheard, she could have saved herself the bother.

      He did not look a scrap embarrassed, nor in the slightest apologetic when he apologised dryly, ‘Forgive me. I find it a trifle tedious being left to care for the lame dogs my brother constantly brings home—then, when his Samaritan impetuosity wanes, leaves me to deal with his problems.’

      Problems! Lame dogs! Of all the insufferable… ‘You miserable worm!’ she flared. ‘I was mugged!’

      The epithet about the miserable worm didn’t touch him, either. ‘Very conveniently mugged on my doorstep,’ he drawled, giving no quarter for her ruined tights and dishevelled appearance.

      But she’d had it with him. Abruptly, too abruptly, she shot to her feet. She took one step, and as waves of dizziness assaulted her she needed something to hang on to. She stretched out her hands and held on to him until her world righted itself.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled from a proud somewhere, dropping her hands from his arms as if burned, going to take another step. Only this time he held both of her arms and pushed her back to the sofa.

      ‘Stay there,’ he ordered, and, while every instinct in her urged her to tell him what he could do with his orders, she was feeling too drained just then to do anything other than obey.

      He went away, but returned in seconds with a glass of medicinal brandy. ‘Drink that,’ he commanded, and, at her belligerent look that said, Why should I? he flicked a glance over her shoulder-length natural blonde-streaked pale reddish hair, over her fine features and porcelain skin, and commented, ‘It could be that you’re naturally pale, but…’

      ‘Don’t bust a gut giving me the benefit of the doubt!’ Her spirit was returning—she felt better sitting down.

      ‘Just as it could be that you’re naturally lippy.’

      ‘It’s not every day I get mugged and then, while I’m coping with that, get accused of pretending to be mugged, for some reason my head’s in too much of a fog just now to be able to work out why.’

      ‘Drink the brandy.’

      She tossed him a malevolent look, but, since it seemed the brandy might make her feel better, she took a sip, determined not to choke on the unfamiliar spirit, and took another couple of sips—whereupon her determination not to choke let her down. But only so far as a lady-like splutter.

      She did, however, acknowledge, albeit reluctantly, that she was starting to recover from the shock and humiliation of being set upon by a trio of thugs.

      ‘Drink the rest of it and I’ll get a taxi to take you home,’ the man Jarad said.

      A taxi—to Surrey! ‘I haven’t the money for a tax…’ Aghast, she stopped, fresh shock hitting her as, looking round for her bag, suddenly she fully remembered that the last time she had seen it some young thug was making off with it. ‘The money!’ she gasped in horror, she’d had two thousands pounds in that bag!

      ‘Here we go!’ drawled the man Jarad nastily. And, as Merren stared blankly at him, ‘Would it be very impolite of me, do you suppose, if I enquire what money?’

      Merren had grown up loving her fellow man, but she had just come across one that she most definitely hated. She, who hadn’t a violent bone in her body, and maybe because of the violence recently done to her, felt she wanted to thump him, to hit him and keep on hitting him. But she had been better brought up than that. But her tone was full of loathing when she placed the brandy glass down on a nearby table and told him coldly, ‘Never, have I ever met a more odious creature than you.’

      ‘My heart bleeds—how much will it cost me?’

      You’d have thought someone would have bashed that good-looking face in before this! ‘You—nothing.’

      ‘Let me try again. How much did the muggers get away with?’

      Merren doubted that he’d decided to believe she’d been mugged after all. But pride about letting him know that she wasn’t the penniless ‘waif and stray’ he