Maid of Dishonour. Heidi Rice
thought struck and stopped her in her tracks—right beside the entrance to the hotel’s lobby bar.
Damn, her throat felt as if she’d been swallowing sand. She glanced at her watch. Ten to six. Still an hour before Carter was due to check in. She had time for a soft drink without risking bumping into him.
She shrugged off the thought of how much Carter appeared to have changed in the last ten years as she entered the brightly lit bar. Apportioning blame for that now was a little late.
Crowded with New York’s young and lively in-crowd celebrating the start of the weekend and a few tired-looking tourists ready to call it a day, the pristine blonde wooded space was already throbbing with life. One small table right on the outskirts of the action was still vacant. She nabbed it and waylaid a member of the wait staff.
‘A club soda, please.... No, scratch that,’ she said as indecision struck. ‘Make that a small dry martini, light on the vermouth.’ One drink couldn’t hurt and she’d earned it.
When the martini arrived, Gina took a single sip, then placed it on the table in front of her, savouring the flowery taste of the gin and resisting the urge to down it in three quick gulps. She never drank to excess any more. Mostly because she now knew that inebriation had a direct correlation to stupid behaviour.
She speared the olive at the bottom of her glass with a cocktail stick and swirled it around, savouring the light buzz from the alcohol as the guttural chatter of the Japanese tourists at the next table cocooned her in the blessedly anonymous corner. The muggy scent of body odour and expensive perfumes and colognes overwhelmed the blast of cold air from the bar’s air-conditioning system, drawing her back in time to a sultry summer afternoon a lifetime ago.
The ripples in her martini glass shimmered out to the rim and dissipated as the hazy memory floated at the edges of her consciousness and invaded her senses.
The phantom scent of lime polish and hyacinths tickled her nostrils as she recalled the pleasantly cool hallway of the clapboard house on Hillbrook College Campus. The parquet cold beneath bare feet as she tiptoed down the compact house’s corridor with her shoes clutched in her fist. Guilt tugged at the pit of her stomach—because she was creeping home at four in the afternoon after an all-night frat party when she had promised faithfully to spend the day revising at the college library with Reese. And then she heard again the sound of an unfamiliar male voice, low and brusque despite being infused with the lazy rhythms of the Deep South, echoing down the stairs from Marnie’s room on the first landing.
THREE
‘No is my final answer, Marnie. Mama’s not going to allow you to go on a road trip with your friends and neither am I. Once the wedding is over, you will be staying in Savannah for the summer.’
Gina’s brows drew down in a sharp frown. So the famous older brother, the Sainted Carter, had finally showed up to transport Marnie’s stuff back to Savannah. She slipped her shoes back on and decided to stay put in her hiding place—and get some vicarious pleasure from hearing Marnie give the guy the smack down he clearly deserved.
What a tool, ordering his sister about like that.
‘I don’t believe I need your permission, Carter,’ Marnie replied, succinctly. ‘You’re not Daddy—and Mama will come around once I’ve spoken to her.’
Way to go, Marnie.
Pride swelled in Gina’s chest at the knowledge that a year ago, when Marnie had first arrived at Reese’s house on campus from deepest, darkest Georgia, she never would have had the guts to talk back to the Sainted Carter like that. A man Gina and Reese and Cassie had all suspected was a total douche, hence the nickname they’d given him together, despite the way Marnie gushed about him.
‘Mama doesn’t control the mill’s finances, I do,’ came the low, irritatingly patient reply. ‘So I’d like to know how you’re gonna go on this road trip, if I refuse to pay for it.’
‘Daddy left me a share in the mill, surely I can—’
‘Daddy left your share in trust,’ he interrupted with the same implacable calm. ‘A trust which he left me to administer until you reach your majority—and I’m refusing your request for funds on this occasion.’
‘That’s not fair, Carter.’
Gina’s fingers fisted into tight balls as the argument continued and slowly but surely all the confidence and assurance Marnie had gained in the past year leached away as her brother refused to budge. In fact, Gina was fairly sure from his uninterested replies that he wasn’t even listening.
For that alone, Gina could have throttled him with her bare hands. Why did so many men have to be like her father, judgmental and superior and always, always right?
She pressed back into the alcove as Marnie’s bedroom door closed upstairs and footsteps came down the stairs. She caught a glimpse of a tall figure dressed in a creased chambray shirt and suit trousers as he strolled into the kitchen.
She stayed in the alcove, hearing his heavy sigh, and debated the wisdom of getting involved: with her tendency to be provocative she was liable to make it worse, and it really wasn’t any of her business. But as she walked to the kitchen doorway and spied on him helping himself to one of Reese’s chilled diet colas from the fridge, anger and resentment flared.
He closed the fridge, his broad back to her as he twisted the cap off the bottle and flipped it into the bin, then took a long swallow of the cola. One large hand gripped the edge of the sink but the rigid line of his shoulder blades relaxed.
Why should she respect his privacy when he hadn’t respected Marnie’s—and how could she possibly make things worse?
Leaning insolently against the doorjamb, she gave her voice the soft smoky purr she knew made men putty in her hands. ‘You know, you really ought to take that huge stick out from up your arse. It’s going to ruin the very nice line of those designer trousers.’
He swung round and her lungs seized in astonishment.
It seemed Marnie had failed to mention one fairly crucial bit of information about her big brother during all the gushing this year. Carter Price was a total hottie.
At six foot two or three, with mile-wide shoulders and the tanned skin of a pirate, he was as big and dark as his sister was small and fair, but the relationship was confirmed by the striking eyes that narrowed on her face—and shared the exact same shade of cerulean blue as his sister’s. On Marnie they looked cute and appealing. On her brother they looked cold and intense.
The unblinking gaze drifted down her frame as he took another swig of the stolen cola and Gina felt the prickle of response, everywhere.
She settled back against the doorjamb, but clamped down on the urge to stretch her back—thus displaying what she knew to be an exceptional pair of breasts to their best advantage.
Focus, Gina. You’re not here to flirt with the guy. You’re here to tell him a thing or two about women’s emancipation—and his sister’s emancipation in particular.
‘You’ve got quite a mouth on you, miz.’ The deep drawl was as slow and seductive as molasses but for the steely hint of censure beneath. ‘My daddy would have taken a hickory switch to my backside if I’d used that sort of language in the presence of a lady.’
‘I guess we’re both very fortunate then that you’re not in the presence of a lady,’ she replied tartly.
Carter Price wasn’t just a hottie, he was also a sexist control freak, but no way was he going to control her, with his cool Southern manners and his total contempt for a women’s right to self-determination.
She let her gaze drift over him too. ‘Because I’d really hate to see what I can imagine is an exceptionally cute backside being whipped with a hickory switch—unless I was the one doing it.’
Let’s see how you like being objectified, Buster.
Two