Christmas Angel for the Billionaire
The nearest held the vintage Bentley that his father was in such a state about. Beautiful, arcane, it was in constant use as a wedding car and the brake linings needed replacing.
As he reached for the light switch he heard the familiar clang of a spanner hitting concrete, a muffled curse.
‘Hello?’
There was no response and, walking around the Bentley, he discovered a pair of feet encased in expensive sports shoes, jiggling as if in time to music, sticking out from beneath the bonnet.
He didn’t waste his breath trying to compete with whatever the owner of the feet was listening to, but instead he tapped one of them lightly with the toe of his shoe.
The movement stopped.
Then a pair of apparently endless, overall-clad legs slid from beneath the car, followed by a slender body. Finally a girl’s face appeared.
‘Alexandra?’
‘George?’ she replied, mocking his disbelief with pure sarcasm. ‘Gran told me you were coming but I didn’t actually believe her.’
He was tempted to ask her why not, but instead went for the big one.
‘What are you doing here?’ And, more to the point, why hadn’t his mother warned him that his daughter was there when she’d given him her keys?
‘Mum’s away on honeymoon with husband number three,’ she replied, as if that explained everything. ‘Where else would I go?’ Then, apparently realising that lying on her back she was at something of a disadvantage, she put her feet flat on the concrete and rose in one fluid, effortless movement that made him feel old.
‘And these days everyone calls me Xandra.’
‘Xandra,’ he repeated without comment. She’d been named, without reference to him, after her maternal grandmother, a woman who’d wanted him put up against a wall and shot for despoiling her little princess. It was probably just as well that at the time he’d been too numb with shock to laugh.
Indicating his approval, however, would almost certainly cause her to change back. Nothing he did was ever right. He’d tried so hard, loved her so much, but it had always been a battle between them. And, much as he’d have liked to blame her mother for that, he knew it wasn’t her fault. He simply had no idea how to be a dad. The kind that a little girl would smile at, run to.
‘I have no interest in your mother’s whereabouts,’ he said. ‘I want to know why you’re here instead of at school?’
She lifted her shoulders in an insolent shrug. ‘I’ve been suspended.’
‘Suspended?’
‘Indefinitely.’ Then with a second, epic, I-really-couldn’t-care-less shrug, ‘Until after Christmas, anyway. Not that it matters. I wouldn’t go back if they paid me.’
‘Unlikely, I’d have said.’
‘If you offered to build them a new science lab I bet they’d be keen enough.’
‘In that case I’d be the one paying them to take you back,’ he pointed out. ‘What has your mother done about it?’
‘Nothing. I told you. She’s lying on a beach somewhere. With her phone switched off.’
‘You could have called me.’
‘And what? You’d have dropped everything and rushed across the Atlantic to play daddy? Who knew you cared?’
He clenched his teeth. He was his father all over again. Incapable of forming a bond, making contact with this child who’d nearly destroyed his life. Who, from the moment she’d been grudgingly placed in his arms, had claimed his heart.
He would have done anything for her, died for her if need be. Anything but give up the dream he’d fought tooth and nail to achieve.
All the money in the world, the house his ex-wife had chosen, the expensive education—nothing he’d done had countered that perceived desertion.
‘Let’s pretend for a moment that I do,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ She coloured slightly. ‘Nothing much.’ He waited. ‘I hot-wired the head’s car and took it for a spin, that’s all.’
Hot-wired…
Apparently taking his shocked silence as encouragement to continue, she said, ‘Honestly. Who’d have thought the Warthog would have made such a fuss?’
‘You’re not old enough to drive!’ Then, because she’d grown so fast, was almost a woman, ‘Are you?’
She just raised her eyebrows, leaving him to work it out for himself. He was right. He’d been nineteen when she was born, which meant that his daughter wouldn’t be seventeen until next May. It would be six months before she could even apply for a licence.
‘You stole a car, drove it without a licence, without insurance?’ He somehow managed to keep his voice neutral. ‘That’s your idea of “nothing much”?’
He didn’t bother asking who’d taught her to drive. That would be the same person who’d given him an old banger and let him loose in the field out back as soon as his feet touched the pedals. Driving was in the Saxon blood, according to his father, and engine oil ran through their veins.
But, since she’d hot-wired Mrs Warburton’s car, clearly driving wasn’t all her grandfather had taught her.
‘What were you doing under the Bentley?’ he demanded as a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature ran through him.
‘Just checking it out. It needs new brake linings…’ The phone began to ring. With the slightest of shrugs, she leaned around him, unhooked it from the wall and said, ‘George Saxon and Granddaughter…’
What?
‘Where are you?’ she asked, reaching for a pen. ‘Are you on your own…? Okay, stay with the car—’
George Saxon and Granddaughter…
Shock slowed him down and as he moved to wrest the phone from her she leaned back out of his reach.
‘—we’ll be with you in ten minutes.’ She replaced the receiver. ‘A lone woman broken down on the Longbourne Road,’ she said. ‘I told her we’ll pick her up.’
‘I heard what you said. Just how do you propose to do that?’ he demanded furiously.
‘Get in the tow-truck,’ she suggested, ‘drive down the road…’
‘There’s no one here to deal with a breakdown.’
‘You’re here. I’m here. Granddad says I’m as good as you were with an engine.’
If she thought that would make him feel better, she would have to think again.
‘Call her back,’ he said, pulling down the local directory. ‘Tell her we’ll find someone else to help her.’
‘I didn’t take her number.’
‘It doesn’t matter. She won’t care who turns up so long as someone does,’ he said, punching in the number of another garage. It had rung just twice when he heard the clunk as a truck door was slammed shut. On the third ring he heard it start.
He turned around as a voice in his ear said, ‘Longbourne Motors. How can I…’
The personnel door was wide open and, as he watched, the headlights of the pick-up truck pierced the dark.
‘Sorry,’ he said, dropping the phone and racing after his daughter, wrenching open the cab door as it began to move. ‘Turn it off!’
She began to move as he reached for the keys.
‘Alexandra! Don’t you dare!’ He hung onto the door, walking quickly alongside the truck as she moved across the forecourt.
‘It’s Granddad’s business,’ she said, speeding up a little, forcing him to run or let go. He ran. ‘I’m not going to let you shut it down.’ Then, having made her point, she eased off the accelerator until the truck rolled to a halt before turning to challenge him. ‘I love cars, engines. I’m going to run this place, be a rally driver—’
‘What?’
‘Granddad’s going to sponsor me.’
‘You’re sixteen,’ he said, not sure whether he was more horrified that she wanted to race cars or fix them. ‘You don’t know what you want.’
Even as he said the words, he heard his father’s voice. ‘You’re thirteen, boy. Your head is full of nonsense. You don’t know what you want…’
He’d gone on saying it to him even when he was filling in forms, applying for university places, knowing that he’d get no financial backing, that he’d have to support himself every step of the way.
Even when his ‘nonsense’ was being installed in every new engine manufactured throughout the world, his father had still been telling him he was wrong…
‘Move over,’ he said.
Xandra clung stubbornly to the steering wheel. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Since you’ve already kept a lone woman waiting in a dark country lane for five minutes longer than necessary, I haven’t got much choice. I’m going to let you pick her up.’
‘Me?’
‘You. But you’ve already committed enough motoring offences for one week, so I’ll drive the truck.’
CHAPTER TWO
ANNIE saw the tow-truck, yellow light flashing on the roof of the cab, looming out of the dark, and sighed with relief as it pulled up just ahead of her broken-down car.
After a lorry, driving much too fast along the narrow country lane, had missed the front of the car by inches, she’d scrambled out and was standing with her back pressed against the gate, shivering with the cold.
The driver jumped down and swung a powerful torch over and around the car, and she threw up an arm to shield her eyes from the light as he found her.
‘George Saxon,’ her knight errant said, lowering the torch a little. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘Y-y-yes,’ she managed through chattering teeth. She couldn’t see his face behind the light but his voice had a touch of impatience that wasn’t exactly what she’d hoped for. ‘No thanks to a lorry driver who nearly took the front off the car.’
‘You should have switched on the hazard warning lights,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘Those sidelights are useless.’
‘If he’d been driving within the speed limit, he’d have seen me,’ she replied, less than pleased at the suggestion that it was her own fault that she’d nearly been killed.
‘There is no speed limit on this road other than the national limit. That’s seventy miles an hour,’ he added, in case she didn’t know.
‘I saw the signs. Foolishly, perhaps, I assumed that it was the upper limit, not an instruction,’ she snapped right back.
‘True,’ he agreed, ‘but just because other people behave stupidly it doesn’t mean you have to join in.’
First the car park attendant and now the garage mechanic. Irritable men talking to her as if she had dimwit tattooed across her forehead was getting tiresome.
Although, considering she could be relaxing in the warmth and comfort of Bab el Sama instead of freezing her socks off in an English country lane in December, they might just have a point.
‘So,’ he asked, gesturing at the car with the torch, ‘what’s the problem?’
‘I thought it was your job to tell me that,’ she replied, deciding she’d taken enough male insolence for one day.
‘Okaaay…’
Back-lit by the bright yellow hazard light swinging around on top of the tow-truck, she couldn’t make out more than the bulk of him but she had a strong sense of a man hanging onto his temper by a thread.
‘Let’s start with the basics,’ he said, making an effort. ‘Have you run out of petrol?’
‘What kind of fool do you take me for?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to establish,’ he replied with all the long-suffering patience of a man faced with every conceivable kind of a fool. Then, with a touch more grace, ‘Maybe you should just tell me what happened and we’ll take it from there.’
That was close enough to a truce to bring her from the safety of the gate and through teeth that were chattering with the cold—or maybe delayed shock, that lorry had been very close—she said, ‘I t-took the wrong road and t-tried to—’
‘To’ turned into a yelp as she caught her foot in a rut and was flung forward, hands outstretched, as she grabbed for anything to save herself. What she got was soft brushed leather and George Saxon, who didn’t budge as she cannoned into him but, steady as a rock, caught her, then held her as she struggled to catch her breath.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked after a moment.
With her cheek, her nose and her hands pressed against his chest, she was in no position to answer.
But with his breath warm against her skin, his hands holding her safe, there wasn’t a great deal wrong that she could think of.
Except, of course, all of the above.
She couldn’t remember ever being quite this close to a man she didn’t know, so what she was feeling—and whether ‘okay’ covered it—she couldn’t begin to say. She was still trying to formulate some kind of response when he moved back slightly, presumably so that he could check for himself.
‘I think so,’ she said quickly, getting a grip on her wits. She even managed to ease back a little herself, although she didn’t actually let go until she’d put a little weight on her ankle to test it.
There didn’t appear to be any damage but she decided not to rush it.
‘I’m in better shape than the car, anyway.’
He continued to look at her, not with the deferential respect she was used to, but in a way that made her feel exposed, vulnerable and, belatedly, she let go of his jacket, straightened the spectacles that had slipped sideways.
‘It was d-dark,’ she stuttered—stuttered? ‘And when I backed into the gate there was a bit more of a d-drop than I expected.’ Then, realising how feeble that sounded, ‘Quite a lot more of a drop, actually. This field entrance is very badly maintained,’ she added, doing her best to distance herself from the scent of leather warmed by a man’s body. From the feel of his chest beneath it, his solid shoulders. The touch of strong hands.
And in the process managed to sound like a rather pompous and disapproving dowager duchess.
‘Good enough for a tractor,’ he replied, dropping those capable hands and taking a step back. Leaving a cold space between them. ‘The farmer isn’t in the business of providing turning places for women who can’t read a map.’
‘I…’ On the point of saying that she hadn’t looked at a map, she thought better of it. He already thought she was a fool and there was nothing to be gained from confirming his first impression. ‘No. Well…’ She’d have taken a step back herself if she hadn’t been afraid her foot would find another rut and this time do some real damage. ‘I banged the underside of the car on something as I went down. When I tried to drive away it made a terrible noise and…’ She shrugged.
‘And what?’ he persisted.
‘And nothing,’ she snapped. Good grief, did he want it spelling out in words of one syllable? ‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’ Then, rubbing her hands over her sleeves, ‘Can you fix it?’
‘Not here.’
‘Oh.’
‘Come on,’ he said and, apparently taking heed of her comments about the state of the ground, he took her arm and supported her back onto the safety of the tarmac before opening the rear door of the truck’s cab. ‘You’d better get out of harm’s way while we load her up.’
As the courtesy light came on, bathing them both in light, Annie saw more of him. The brushed leather bomber jacket topping long legs clad not, as she’d expected, in overalls, but a pair of well-cut light-coloured trousers. And, instead of work boots, he was wearing expensive-looking loafers. Clearly, George Saxon hadn’t had the slightest intention of doing anything at the side of the road.
Her face must have betrayed exactly what she was thinking because he waved his torch over a tall but slight figure in dark overalls who was already attaching a line to her car.
‘She’s the mechanic,’ he said with a sardonic edge to his voice. His face, all dark shadows as the powerful overhead light swung in the darkness, matched his tone perfectly. ‘I’m just along for the ride.’
She? Annie thought as, looking behind her, he called out, ‘How are you doing back there?’
‘Two minutes…’
The voice was indeed that of a girl. Young and more than a little breathless and Annie, glancing back as she reached for the grab rail to haul herself up into the cab, could see that she was struggling.
‘I think she could do with some help,’ she said.
George regarded this tiresome female who’d been wished on him by his daughter with irritation.
‘I’m just the driver,’ he said. Then, offering her the torch, ‘But don’t let me stop you from pitching in and giving her a hand.’
‘It’s okay,’ Xandra called before she could take it from him. ‘I’ve got it.’
He shrugged. ‘It seems you were worrying about nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked, calling back to Xandra while never taking her eyes off him. It was a look that reminded him of Miss Henderson, a teacher who had been able to quell a class of unruly kids with a glance. Maybe it was the woolly hat and horn-rimmed glasses.
Although he had to admit that Miss Henderson had lacked the fine bone structure and, all chalk and old books, had never smelt anywhere near as good.
‘I’m done,’ Xandra called.
‘Happy?’ he enquired.
The woman held the look for one long moment before she gave him a cool nod and climbed up into the cab, leaving him to close the door behind her as if she were royalty.
‘Your servant, ma’am,’ he muttered as he went back to see how Xandra was doing.
‘Why on earth did you say that to her?’ she hissed as he checked the coupling.
He wasn’t entirely sure. Other than the fact that Miss Henderson was the only woman he’d ever known who could cut his cocky ten-year-old self down to size with a glance.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, pretending he hadn’t heard.
Back in the cab, he started the engine and began to winch the car up onto the trailer but, when he glanced up to check the road, his passenger’s eyes, huge behind the lenses, seemed to fill the rear-view mirror.
‘Can we drop you somewhere?’ he asked as Xandra climbed in beside him. Eager to be rid of her so that he could drop the car off at Longbourne Motors.
That took the starch right out of her look.
‘What? No…I can’t go on without my car…’
‘It’s not going anywhere tonight. You don’t live locally?’ he asked.
‘No. I’m…I’m on holiday. Touring.’
‘On your own? In December?’
‘Is there something wrong with that?’
A whole lot, in his opinion, but it was none of his business. ‘Whatever turns you on,’ he said, ‘although Maybridge in winter wouldn’t be my idea of a good time.’
‘Lots of people come for the Christmas market,’ Xandra said. ‘It’s this weekend. I’m going.’
All this and Christmas too. How much worse could it get? he thought before turning to Xandra and saying, ‘You aren’t going anywhere. You’re grounded.’ Then, without looking in the mirror, he said, ‘Where are you staying tonight?’
‘I’m not booked in anywhere. I was heading for the motel on the ring road.’
‘We’d have to go all the way to the motorway roundabout to get there from here,’ Xandra said before he could say a word, no doubt guessing his intention of dropping the car off at Longbourne Motors. ‘Much easier to run the lady back to the motel through the village once we have a better idea of how long it will take to fix her car.’
She didn’t wait for an answer, instead turning to introduce herself to their passenger. ‘I’m sorry, I’m Xandra Saxon,’ she said, but she was safe enough. This wasn’t an argument he planned on having in front of a stranger.
Annie relaxed a little as George Saxon took his eyes off her and smiled at the girl beside him, who was turning into something of an ally.
‘Hello, Xandra. I’m R-Ro…’
The word began to roll off her tongue before she remembered that she wasn’t Rose Napier.
‘Ro-o-owland,’ she stuttered out, grabbing for the first name that came into her head. Nanny Rowland…‘Annie Rowland,’ she said, more confidently.
Lydia had suggested she borrow her name but she’d decided that it would be safer to stick with something familiar. Annie had been her mother’s pet name for her but, since her grandfather disapproved of it, no one other than members of the household staff who’d known her since her mother was alive had ever used it. In the stress of the moment, though, the practised response had gone clean out of her head and she’d slipped into her standard introduction.
‘Ro-o-owland?’ George Saxon, repeating the name with every nuance of hesitation, looked up at the rear-view mirror and held her gaze.
‘Annie will do just fine,’ she said, then, realising that man and girl had the same name, she turned to Xandra. ‘You’re related?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ she replied in that throwaway, couldn’t-care-less manner that the young used when something was truly, desperately important. ‘My mother has made a career of getting married. George was the first in line, with a shotgun to his back if the date on my birth certificate is anything—’
‘Buckle up, Xandra,’ he said, cutting her off.
He was her father? But she wasn’t, it would appear, daddy’s little girl if the tension between them was anything to judge by.
But what did she know about the relationship between father and daughter? All she remembered was the joy of her father’s presence, feeling safe in his arms. If he’d lived would she have been a difficult teen?
The one thing she wouldn’t have been was isolated, wrapped in cotton wool by a grandfather afraid for her safety. She’d have gone to school, mixed with girls—and boys—her own age. Would have fallen in and out of love without the eyes of the entire country on her. Would never have stepped into the spotlight only to discover, too late, that she was unable to escape its glare.
‘Are you warm enough back there?’ George Saxon asked.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
The heater was efficient and despite his lack of charm, he hadn’t fumbled when she’d fallen into his arms. On the contrary. He’d been a rock and she felt safe enough in the back of his truck. A lot safer than she’d felt in his arms. But of course this was her natural place in the world. Sitting in the back with some man up front in the driving seat. In control.
Everything she’d hoped to escape from, she reminded herself, her gaze fixed on the man who was in control at the moment. Or at least the back of his head.
Over the years she had become something of a connoisseur of the back of the male head. The masculine neck. All those chauffeurs, bodyguards…
George Saxon’s neck would stand comparison with the best, she decided. Strong, straight with thick dark hair expertly cut to exactly the right length. His shoulders, encased in the soft tan leather of his jacket, would take some beating too. It was a pity his manners didn’t match them.
Or was she missing the point?
Rupert’s perfect manners made her teeth ache to say or do something utterly outrageous just to get a reaction, but George Saxon’s hands, like his eyes, had been anything but polite.
They’d been assured, confident, brazen even. She could still feel the imprint of his thumbs against her breasts where his hands had gripped her as she’d fallen; none of that Dresden shepherdess nonsense for him. And his insolence as he’d offered her the torch had sent an elemental shiver of awareness running up her spine that had precious little to do with the cold that had seeped deep into her bones.
He might not be a gentleman, but he was real—dangerously so—and, whatever else he made her feel, it certainly wasn’t desperation.
Annie didn’t have time to dwell on what exactly he did make her feel before he swung the truck off the road and turned onto the forecourt of a large garage with a sign across the workshop that read, George Saxon and Son.
Faded and peeling, neglected, it didn’t match the man, she thought as he backed up to one of the bays. He might be a little short on charm but he had an animal vitality that sent a charge of awareness running through her.
Xandra jumped down and opened the doors and then, once he’d backed her car in, she uncoupled it, he said, ‘There’s a customer waiting room at the far end. You’ll find a machine for drinks.’ Dismissed, she climbed down from the truck and walked away. ‘Annie!’
She stopped. It was, she discovered, easy to be charming when everyone treated you with respect but she had to take a deep breath before she turned, very carefully, to face him.