Christmas Angel for the Billionaire. Liz Fielding

THREE

      ‘I’M AFRAID it’s your bad luck that my daughter answered your call,’ George replied, not bothering to either confirm or deny it. ‘If I’d got to the phone first I’d have told you to ring someone else.’

      ‘I see. So why didn’t you simply call another garage and arrange for them to pick me up?’ Annie asked, genuinely puzzled.

      ‘It would have taken too long and, since you were on your own…’ He let it go.

      She didn’t.

      ‘Oh, I see. You’re a gentleman beach bum?’

      ‘Don’t count on it,’ he replied.

      No. She wouldn’t do that, but he appeared to have a conscience and she could work with that.

      She’d had years of experience in parting millionaires from their money in a good cause and this seemed like a very good moment to put what she’d learned to use on her own behalf.

      ‘It’s a pity your concern doesn’t stretch as far as fixing my car.’ Since his only response was to remove his jacket and hang it over the back of a chair, the clearest statement that he was going nowhere, she continued. ‘So, George…’ use his name, imply that they were friends ‘…having brought me here under false pretences, what do you suggest I do now?’

      ‘I suggest you finish your tea, Annie…’ and the way he emphasized her name suggested he knew exactly what game she was playing ‘…then I suggest you call a taxi.’

      Well, that didn’t go as well as she’d hoped.

      ‘I thought the deal was that you were going to run me there,’ she reminded him.

      ‘It’s been a long day. You’ll find a directory by the phone. It’s through there. In the hall,’ he added, just in case she was labouring under the misapprehension that he would do it for her. Then, having glanced at the cup of instant coffee and the delicate china cups she’d laid out, he took a large mug—one that she’d just washed—from the rack over the sink and filled it with tea.

      Annie had been raised to be a lady and her first reaction, even under these trying circumstances, was to apologise for being a nuisance.

      There had been a moment, right after that lorry had borne down on her out of the dark and she’d thought her last moment had come, when the temptation to accept defeat had very nearly got the better of her.

      Shivering with shock at her close brush with eternity as much as the cold, it would have been so easy to put in the call that would bring a chauffeurdriven limousine to pick her up, return her home with nothing but a very bad haircut and a lecture on irresponsibility from her grandfather to show for her adventure.

      But she’d wanted reality and that meant dealing with the rough as well as the smooth. Breaking down on a dark country road was no fun, but Lydia wouldn’t have been able to walk away, leave someone else to pick up the pieces. She’d have to deal with the mechanic who’d responded to her call, no matter how unwillingly. How lacking in the ethos of customer service.

      Lydia, she was absolutely certain, wouldn’t apologise to him for expecting him to do his job, but demand he got on with it.

      She could do no less.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she began, but she wasn’t apologising for being a nuisance. Far from it. Instead, she picked up her tea and polite as you please, went on. ‘I’m afraid that is quite unacceptable. When you responded to my call you entered into a contract and I insist that you honour it.’

      George Saxon paused in the act of spooning sugar into his tea and glanced up at her from beneath a lick of dark hair that had slid across his forehead.

      ‘Is that right?’ he asked.

      He didn’t sound particularly impressed.

      ‘Under the terms of the Goods and Services Act,’ she added, with the poise of a woman for whom addressing a room full of strangers was an everyday occurrence, ‘nineteen eighty-three.’ The Act was real enough, even if she’d made up the date. The trick was to look as if you knew what you were talking about and a date—even if it was the first one that came into her head—added veracity to even the most outrageous statement.

      This time he did smile and deep creases bracketed his face, his mouth, fanned out around those slate eyes. Maybe not just the sun, then…

      ‘You just made that up, Annie Rowland,’ he said, calling her bluff.

      She pushed up the spectacles that kept sliding down her nose and smiled right back.

      ‘I’ll just wait here while you go to the local library and check,’ she said, lowering herself into the unoccupied Morris chair. ‘Unless you have a copy?’ Balancing the saucer in one hand, she used the other to pick up her tea and sip it. ‘Although, since you’re clearly unfamiliar with the legislation, I’m assuming that you don’t.’

      ‘The library is closed until tomorrow morning,’ he pointed out.

      ‘They don’t have late-night opening? How inconvenient for you. Never mind, I can wait.’ Then added, ‘Or you could just save time and fix my car.’

      George had known the minute Annie Ro-o-owland had blundered into him, falling into his arms as if she was made to fit, that he was in trouble. Then she’d looked at him through the rearview mirror of the truck with those big blue eyes and he’d been certain of it. And here, in the light of his mother’s kitchen, they had double the impact.

      They were not just large, but were the mesmerizing colour of a bluebell wood in April, framed by long dark lashes and perfectly groomed brows that were totally at odds with that appalling haircut. At odds with those horrible spectacles which continually slipped down her nose as if they were too big for her face…

      As he stared at her, the certainty that he’d seen her somewhere before tugging at his memory, she used one finger to push them back up and he knew without doubt that they were nothing more than a screen for her to hide behind.

      Everything about her was wrong.

      Her car, bottom of range even when new, was well past its best, her hair was a nightmare and her clothes were chain-store basics but her scent, so faint that he knew she’d sprayed it on warm skin hours ago, probably after her morning shower, was the real one-thousand-dollar-an-ounce deal.

      And then there was her voice.

      No one spoke like that unless they were born to it. Not even twenty-five thousand pounds a year at Dower House could buy that true-blue aristocratic accent, a fact he knew to his cost.

      He stirred his tea, took a sip, making her wait while he thought about his next move.

      ‘I’ll organise a rental for you while it’s being fixed,’ he offered finally. Experience had taught him that, where women were concerned, money was the easiest way to make a problem go away. But first he’d see how far being helpful would get him. ‘If that would make things easier for you?’

      She carefully replaced the delicate bone china cup on its saucer. ‘I’m sorry, George. I’m afraid that’s out of the question.’

      It was like a chess game, he thought. Move and countermove. And everything about her—the voice, the poise—suggested that she was used to playing the Queen.

      Tough. He wasn’t about to be her pawn. He might be lumbered with Mike Jackson’s Bentley—he couldn’t offload a specialist job like that at short notice as his father well knew—but he wasn’t about to take on something that any reasonably competent mechanic could handle.

      Maybe if she took off her glasses…

      ‘As a gesture of goodwill, recognising that you have been put to unnecessary inconvenience,’ he said, catching himself—this was not the moment to allow himself to be distracted by a pair of blue eyes, pale flawless skin, scent that aroused an instant go-to-hell response.