An Imperfect Affair

  “But I know what you want, Rupert. You want what you came here for tonight, sex on demand, and to make it easier you want me on an intravenous drip in your own house so you don’t even have to go out for it... “

  They were adamant that they would not fall in love, however desperately everyone else wanted them to. As far as Verity was concerned, she had made it all too plain - sex was one thing, love another. Only, however much she continued to repeat that this was absolutely fine, she knew there was one person that still needed convincing – herself.

  An Imperfect Affair

  NATALIE FOX

  Harlequin Mills & Boon

  Natalie Fox was born and brought up in London and has a daughter, two sons and two grandchildren. Her husband, Ian, is a retired advertising executive, and they now live in a tiny Welsh village. Natalie is passionate about her two cats, both of them strays brought back from Spain where she lived for five years, and equally passionate about gardening and writing romance. Natalie says she took up writing because she absolutely hates going out to work!

  First published in Great Britain 1992

  Australian copyright 1992

  New Zealand copyright 1992

  Philippine copyright 1992

  © Natalie Fox 1992

  ISBN 1 86386 868 2

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘You!’

  The very male figure seated at a desk by the bedroom window of the old Spanish mill house had turned as Verity opened the door. Their mutual shock at the sight of each other, the stunned disbelief in both their eyes, had erupted with that simultaneous ‘You’.

  Shocked, Verity gripped the iron handle of the door till her fingers went white, but it was red that flamed through her in a fiery second of realisation. This wasn’t some freak coincidence. This had been arranged!

  Her violet eyes flashed round the bedroom and in a split second took everything in. Rupert Scott was living here, and working too. A lap-top computer was on the desk and papers were strewn everywhere; on the floor, on the bed.

  They had met twice before, under awkward and embarrassing circumstances, and now this. Verity couldn’t believe the man was here in this remote Andalucían mill house. El Molino, the house her cousin, Stuart, had arranged for her to work in for a month. She’d kill Stuart for this when she got back to England, slowly and painfully.

  Rupert Scott found his voice before Verity could summon hers. A deep voice she remembered well-it had haunted her enough times since first they had met.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he growled.

  Nothing had changed. His tone was as derisive as ever. He was as good-looking as ever too, though she’d never seen him like this before, so very laid-back in his mode of dress.

  Verity’s voice came back in a spluttering rush with a not very original exclamation. ‘I could ask you the same question!’

  She had a ghastly feeling that he probably thought this was her idea, as he probably thought their other meetings had been engineered by her. After all, Rupert Scott could be considered quite a catch, in a monetary sense; his personality wasn’t such a snip. The man was cool, aloof, and wretchedly moody. But at least they had one thing in common: neither liked being match made by her cousin. Oh, yes, if Stuart was to step into the room now she would happily garrotte him for this, and she had a feeling Rupert Scott would readily assist her.

  ‘This is beginning to get boring,’ Rupert grated through tight lips. ‘First the dinner party your cousin arranged for us, then that “accidental” meeting in a Knightsbridge restaurant, and now this. Can’t you and your persistent cousin take a hint?’

  Verity burned with embarrassment. She didn’t want to be reminded about that awful matchmaking dinner party and that excruciating incident in the restaurant when Stuart had hovered over Rupert as he had dined alone, clutching her to his side as if she were a sacrificial offering. Of course he had asked them to join him—what else could he have done?—but he had made it quite obvious that he wasn’t impressed with Stuart Bolton’s cousin, who was being so determinedly pressed on him at every opportunity.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she blurted to cover her shock and embarrassment.

  The ‘arranged’ theory swelled by the second. Stuart and her editor, Alan Sargeant, had set this up for her. A month in a converted mill house in Andalucía. Not a holiday, not in January, for she was here to work, but a change of scene after a bout of flu that had laid her out over Christmas and, as Alan had reiterated, she’d had a rough time after her boyfriend’s death and needed some space and time on her own. This wasn’t on her own, though. Rupert Scott was here and Verity was inflamed.

  ‘To work; what does it look like?’ was his sharp retort, which sliced into her fury.

  ‘Yes, I can see that! I’m not blind!’ she huffed impatiently. ‘But why here of all places? Andalucía, in a remote mill house, miles from anywhere. Why did you have to pick this place?’

  ‘Because it’s quiet and peaceful—at least, it was.’ His barbed sarcasm left no doubt he thought her a disruptive nuisance, just as he had at that dinner party and the restaurant. The man didn’t like her and she didn’t like him, and finding each other in the same house was incredibly awful.

  ‘Is this your house?’ she blurted.

  ‘Is it yours?’ he countered coldly.

  ‘Well, this is getting us a long way, isn’t it?’ she spiked back. ‘At least we’ve established this place belongs to someone else.’

  ‘A friend of your cousin’s, I was led to believe,’ he drawled and stood up as he did so. Verity thought he was going to come towards her and bodily throw her out, but he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back on the desk. ‘So perhaps you’d better explain your presence here,’ he added.

  ‘I’m here to work!’ Verity exploded and then suddenly the fizz went out of her as sheer embarrassment swamped her once again. This must look dreadful to him. She actually felt more sorry for him than herself. She dragged a fretful hand through her pale blonde hair. ‘Look, this is ridiculous,’ she said levelly. ‘Stuart arranged for me to come here for a break—’

  ‘Did he, now?’ he interrupted disbelievingly. ‘Am I supposed to swallow that?’ Before she could answer he went on, ‘I don’t, not for a minute. I know why you’re here and so do you, so shall we stop pussyfooting?’

  Verity’s eyes widened and her mouth opened and shut as if she’d forgotten how to work it.

  He gave her a grim smile. ‘And don’t come on as if you haven’t a clue what I’m getting at. You’re here to work your sexy charms on me. You’re here to seduce me, aren’t you?’ Rupert Scott accused drily, his eyes glinting with what Verity could only assume to be disgust.

  She matched his outrage and worked her mouth into a cry of horror. ‘What?’ The very thought, the very idea... She realised that her hand was still fused to the door handle and was aching badly. She let it go and pumped her fist at her side to get the blood flowing again.

  Slowly, almost wearily, as if boredom had suddenly hit him, he said, ‘Look, dear, you’re a sweet kid but absolutely not my type...’

  ‘Don’t sweet kid or dear me!’ Verity bit back. ‘You’re light years from my type too, I assure you. I thought you would have got the message on our previous meetings. As for seducing you, heaven forbid! Some hyper-imagination you have!’

  His grey eyes darkened threateningly. ‘Look, I don’t believe for a minute this meeting is pure coincidence. I know exactly why you’re here but you can forget it. No sale!’

  No sale! Verity gaped at him, gazing at his shabby black tracksuit. He had a long red scarf draped several times round his throat for warmth, and heavy army-type boots on his feet. At Stuart’s dinner party he’d been dressed formally in a black eve
ning suit and he’d looked strikingly handsome; not handsome enough to impress her, though, and now he didn’t impress her either, just made her so flaming mad that she wanted to bite his knees. His eyes were too grey, his mouth too mean, his hair too damned black and long, and ‘no sale’ went for her too.

  She pushed her long golden hair from her face and steeled herself. ‘I’m here to work,’ she told him defiantly, ‘not to mess with you. My cousin arranged for me to stay here—’

  ‘And me too,’ he interrupted icily. ‘And, though I admire your cousin’s ambition, I can’t say I’m enamoured by his methods. I thought I made it quite obvious that night and at the restaurant that I take exception to being manipulated. I don’t do blind dates and I don’t do business in bed. Tell your cousin that when you get back.’

  ‘Business in bed?’ Verity echoed with horror. She dredged her memory pool to recall what he did for a living. And it was some living she remembered. Airline company, state-of-the-art recording studio, film company, so what had all that to do with bed?

  His mean mouth broke into a cynical smile. ‘Don’t look so innocent, treasure. You know exactly what I’m getting at.’

  Verity actually stepped further into the room, though her senses told her she ought to be thinking of getting out, back down that twisty mountain road to the coast, back to the airport and home to give her cousin a stripping-down for this. But she was curious, madly curious to know what all this was about. ‘I wouldn’t look so innocent if I had a clue what you were getting at.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? Blondes have always struck me as being a contradiction of the old adage, dumb.’

  Folding her arms across her scarlet sweat-shirt, Verity told him haughtily, ‘I’m certainly not dumb but at the moment you are talking in riddles I find difficult to comprehend. If that’s dumb, I’m it! So could you repeat what you just said and enlarge on it? I would like to know what my cousin and I are being accused of.’

  ‘Frankly I don’t think there’s a name for it, and frankly I don’t believe you don’t know why this ridiculous charade has been set up.’

  And it was a set-up, Verity inwardly agreed, a matchmaking set-up, though she failed to understand why this man needed someone to organise his love-life—he looked very capable of doing that for himself. She didn’t fancy him but she could imagine other women tripping over their hormones to get to him. He had a certain bile-churning attraction—to sows!

  ‘I want more than that!’ she told him bitterly. ‘I want a full explanation and a damned apology for thinking I’m here to bed you.’

  He actually smiled. ‘An apology for the truth you won’t get from me, and if there’s any explaining to do there’s a phone in the village. Call your cousin on the way back to the airport and tell him his scheme won’t work. I can’t be bought with sexual favours.’

  He sat down and swung back to his work and started tapping away at his computer. Verity’s blood started to overheat. Sexual favours! The man was crazy and he expected her to go—and now!

  ‘You expect me to go? Just as if I lived round the corner?’ She took a deep defiant breath when he made no attempt to answer. He owed her an explanation and an apology and she was going to get both before she left.

  ‘I’ve endured a delay at Heathrow Airport, a two-and-a-half-hour flight with a plastic lunch and an hour and a half of cross-country rallying to get here,’ she rattled on crossly. ‘I arrive here expecting the same peace and quiet you did, and what do I find when I’m exploring the rooms? A nightmare in the form of you. I’m tired, thirsty and hungry and I’m damned well going to satisfy my needs before you dictate to me what I should do! So stick that up your jumper, Mr Rupert Un-Bearable, and incubate it!’

  She stormed from the room and slammed the door after her and tore down the stone stairs to the kitchen. When she got there, breathless with fury and exertion, she slumped into a kitchen chair and held her head in her hands.

  This was awful! So awful that she just didn’t know what to do. She looked up, out of the window. The sun had gone, dipping down over some distant hill. It was suddenly colder than ever in this cavernous house, and exhaustion claimed her. She would have to drive down that fearful, twisty, narrow road back to the airport in the dark. Her return flight was a month from now and she’d have to mess around trying to get another flight back, struggling with her luggage, all alone... She covered her face and very nearly burst into tears.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. ‘Beryl, I’m—’

  ‘The name’s Verity, Verity Brooks!’ she snapped, swatting at his hand as if it were a disease-carrying mosquito. ‘Get your hands off me!’ Damn him! He hadn’t even remembered her name!

  She felt the warmth recede, heard him moving across the room to the sink.

  ‘I’m sorry, Verity. It’s a bit unfair of me to expect you to go immediately. The morning will do.’

  ‘Oh, how very considerate of you!’ she blazed sarcastically. ‘Why don’t yow go? I’ve as much right here as you have!’ She wasn’t going to go without a fight—hell! She wasn’t going to go at all!

  He didn’t answer till he’d filled a kettle and plugged it in. ‘Squatters’ rights, I’m afraid. I’ve been here a week already and have no intention of packing up and getting out to please the whims of you. I’m in the middle of an important project—’

  ‘I don’t care if you’re in the middle of a mid-life crisis!’

  ‘Too young. Now will you stop hissing at me like a she-cat and listen to some good down-to-earth reasoning?’

  Her eyes flashed warningly at him when she realised he was quite angry now. Well, she was mad too, and she had more reason to be than him!

  ‘Only if it’s constructive,’ she iced back. ‘This situation is quite intolerable and you are making it worse. I arrived here in all innocence, not knowing you were here, but you seem to think it’s some sort of scheme to get us together. I promise you, I wouldn’t have come if I’d thought you’d be here. You talk of seduction and business in bed and I don’t know what the blazes is going on!’

  ‘I don’t know you well enough to believe you’re not in on this,’ he insisted darkly. ‘So perhaps you’d better start by explaining exactly why you think you are here.’

  He held her warring eyes with those of steely fire and Verity felt the heat scorch through her. Now she knew what it felt like to be interrogated. So this was the famed Spanish Inquisition, was it?

  ‘Why I think I’m here?’ she flamed. ‘I know exactly why I’m here...to work. Nothing more sinister than that, whatever your corrupted mind wishes to deceive you with!’

  She didn’t know if he believed her or not; he simply asked if she wanted tea or coffee.

  Surprised, she uttered, ‘Tea, please, decaffeinated if there is any.’ She ignored his intake of resigned breath at that. ‘You don’t believe me; you don’t believe I’m here to work, do you?’

  ‘I’m getting a little tired of this game,’ he told her brittly as he measured tea into a metal teapot. ‘Were you or were you not despatched here to lower my resistance with a seduction attempt?’

  Verity laughed, incredulously. ‘Don’t take this as a compliment but you hardly appear to be an easy push-over, and I’m certainly no femme fatale.’

  He smiled, and it was the first indication that he believed her, though Verity wished it wasn’t because of that femme fatale remark. Blonde and innocent she might look, but she was streetwise enough to cope with his brash arrogance.

  ‘So what were your intended tactics if they weren’t to bed me into compliance?’

  ‘Compliance with what, for heaven’s sake?’ she croaked back in shocked disbelief. This conversation was getting ridiculous and her patience was running dry.

  Her strangled reply had him looking at her with sudden doubt, as if he just might be beginning to believe her. ‘Have you any idea what I’m talking about?’ he murmured.

  ‘None whatsoever, but no doubt some time this century you’ll get around to speaking withou
t a forked tongue.’

  She watched and waited while he made the tea, and she remembered the sour milk she’d found in the fridge while she was exploring on her arrival.

  ‘No milk,’ she told him quickly.

  She should have known then that the old mill was already occupied. There were enough signs lying around: the dirty dishes in the sink, keys on the kitchen table, the back door unlocked. She had stepped into the house, naively thinking that the maid who came with the property was here preparing for her stay. No maid, just his arrogant self. Goldilocks, discovering the grumpy grizzly bear.

  He poured two cups of black tea and brought them to the table, setting one down in front of her and one across from her. He sat and faced her, leaned back and gazed directly into her eyes.

  ‘Tell me, Verity Brooks, tell me why you are here?’

  God, how she hated his supercilious tone and the penetrating way he looked at her. ‘I’ve already told you! I’m here to work,’

  ‘What work? Scrubbing floors, plumbing—’

  ‘Don’t try getting funny with me,’ she cut in quickly. ‘There’s nothing funny about this situation whatsoever.’

  She had the power to annoy him. She felt satisfaction at that as his eyes glowered and his facial muscles pulsed. ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny, and will you quit fancy-footing around every question I drop in your lap? Let’s resolve this before I lose my patience.’

  Verity leaned forward. ‘Well, I have a patience too and at the moment it’s full of holes. If you just shut up for five minutes and let me have my say neither of us needs lose our cool.’

  He didn’t like that, being spoken to as if he were five. So what? Oh, boy, did he irritate her. So badly that her skin fizzed with it. She analysed that irritation and found that it stemmed from his forgetting her name. She hadn’t forgotten his, or anything about him, but nightmares had that effect on her!

  ‘Well?’ he prompted when she added nothing.

  She leaned back in her chair and tried to relax. Hard when a nightmare faced you across the table. So, if he hadn’t remembered her name she doubted he’d remembered her occupation. ‘I’m features editor of a health and beauty magazine. Looks Healthy,’ she told him, wondering if she was jogging any memory cells. ‘I had the flu over Christmas and I’d just returned to work and my editor, Alan—’