At the Cattleman's Command. Lindsay Armstrong
by car, but we could do a discreet changeover somehow or other. And horses do seem to feature prominently in your lives.’
Harriet sat up and Vanessa drew an excited breath. ‘Awesome!’ she said.
‘Wonderful,’ Harriet agreed. ‘You can leave that bit to me, Chas. Of course, we’d need matching carriage horses but that shouldn’t be too hard.’
Chas came back to the present and bit her lip. Matching horses?
She really needed to know what her budget would be before she made any more expensive suggestions. Not—she gazed around the impressive guest bedroom—that the Hockings appeared to be short of a dime, but there was the mysterious Thomas and his ‘registry office’ notions to take into account.
She yawned and was startled to see it was close to midnight so she changed into her night gear. Then she remembered that, impressive though the room was, with a king-size bed invitingly turned down, lovely drapes and a matching carpet, and warm as it was from central heating, there was no en suite bathroom.
The guest bathroom was several doors down a passage. She picked up her sponge bag and walked to the door, and the lights flickered, went out and stayed out.
Damn, she thought. I hate going to bed without cleaning my teeth! I’ll just have to manage in the dark.
She stepped out into the passage and waited a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. The house was quite silent.
She found the bathroom and, after a bit of fumbling around, managed to clean her teeth, wash her face and attend to all else that was necessary.
As she came out of the bathroom she hesitated and felt for her watch. It wasn’t there, for the simple reason that she’d taken it off when she was changing.
Not that it matters, she assured herself. I know that I have to turn this way, count two doors down and the third is my bedroom.
It all worked to plan and with a sigh of relief she shut herself into the room. There was nothing for it but to go to bed, since the lights were still out—she’d flicked the switch she’d groped for beside the door then flicked it off when nothing had happened. She pulled off her robe, felt around for the bed, and slipped into it.
The next few moments were electrifying. An arm descended on her waist, a sleepy exclamation issued forth, a pair of hands started to run down her body and a man’s deep voice said, ‘Holy mackerel! Not again!’
CHAPTER TWO
CHAS gasped, twisted and reared up. To her mortification, the sounds she uttered, which were meant to be serious screams, came out instead as a series of squeaks.
‘Whoa!’ She was determinedly wrestled back to the bed. ‘Look here, sweetheart, you came into my bed, not the other way around, so your objections are a bit bogus, surely?’
‘Stop!’ Chas hissed.
‘Why? Do I know you?’
‘No! There’s been a terrible mistake.’
To her fury, he moved his hands on her again, from her breasts down to her waist, and left them there. ‘Mistake?’ he mused as his hands almost spanned her waist. ‘I would have thought you were rather divinely put together, Aphrodite. Definitely an ornament to any man’s bed.’
‘Will you stop doing that!’ Chas commanded as she wriggled beneath the feel of his hands on her body. Not that he was hurting her. It was the opposite if anything…
‘I can explain. I must have lost—’ she stopped as the bedside lamp flickered on ‘—my way,’ she finished as her eyes widened.
She was in another vast bed but this one had a magnificent carved headboard. The pillows were plump and exotic, the colours ranging from pomegranate to slate-blue, and there were at least six of them. The sheets were slate and the quilt, now pushed aside, was patterned in pomegranate on a slate background.
Two bedside tables carved to match the bedhead bore lamps with silver foil shades. The walls were mushroom-pink, the ceiling was café au lait and a vast expanse of pale-toffee carpet fled into the shadows.
It was a stunning bedroom but not only that. Talk about Aphrodite—she was in the hands of a stranger who could have been Adonis.
The silence stretched as they stared at each other.
He had longish brown hair and a broad forehead tapering to a determined chin. He had smoky grey eyes, highly quizzical but all the same quite magnetic, beneath darker brows. He was naked, to the waist at least, and just about male perfection personified.
The skin of his broad shoulders was smooth and golden. His chest was sleekly muscled and sprinkled with dark hair, his throat was strong and his hands, now removed from her body, were tapered but powerful.
If she was taken aback, so was he, for a moment, as his grey gaze roamed over her.
He inspected her mass of shiny dark hair, the oval of her face, the naked pink of her lips and the velvet blue of her eyes.
She wore a slip of a cranberry silk nightgown with shoestring straps. It had a V-neckline that plunged quite low and the creamy swell of her breasts was visible. The narrowness of her waist was hinted at and the lovely curve of her hips was more than hinted at where the cranberry silk clung. Her legs were long and slender and her skin was satiny.
He took it all in then returned his gaze to hers, and as their eyes locked, for one crazy moment, Chas felt as if she’d all along been destined for this bed and this man; it just seemed—fitting somehow.
Her lips parted in amazement as the kind of frisson she hadn’t experienced for a while touched her deliciously in all her secret places down her smooth body.
He read the amazement in her eyes and the ghost of a smile touched his mouth, then he looked down her body again.
The nightgown ended just below her hips and was rucked up anyway.
She followed his gaze down to her thighs and, with a gasp of horror, pulled the sheet up to her throat.
He smiled lazily this time and said softly, ‘Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, Aphrodite? You really are a mass of contradictions.’
Chas sat bolt upright, still clutching the sheet with some hazy idea of wrapping herself in it while she beat a hasty retreat, but he anchored his side of it firmly to the bed. He also circled his other hand round one of her wrists.
‘What are you doing?’ Her eyes widened.
‘Taking out some insurance,’ he drawled. ‘Just in case you decide to rush from the room screaming rape.’
‘I had no intention of doing that!’
He shrugged. ‘Ah, seduction then. Tell you what, I’ll make up my mind about that in a moment. So,’ he said, ‘you lost your way?’
Chas felt a tremor of fear run through her—what had she got herself into? She set her teeth. ‘Yes. There was a power failure. I—I went to the bathroom and got…disorientated.’
‘Really?’
There was so much sardonic disbelief in this single word that Chas blushed vividly, but she soldiered on. ‘If you don’t believe me, how do you explain your lamp coming on of its own accord?’
He thought for a moment. ‘I decided to read for a while.’ He reached around and pulled a book from under a pillow. ‘I must have fallen asleep with the lamp on, and we do get power failures. That would explain—some things,’ he said and sat up suddenly, although he didn’t release her wrist. ‘Who are you?’ he asked grimly.
‘I—I’m here to organise a wedding,’ she said disjointedly, ‘but I’m having some trouble convincing myself this isn’t a madhouse.’
His eyebrows disappeared into his hair. ‘Chas