The Playboy's Mistress

‘Are you all right?’

Now she asks! ‘I’m fine!’

Darcy’s dark brows shot quizzically towards her fair hairline; his taut tone had been several degrees to the right of brusque.

‘You’re obviously not.’ No doubt such stoicism was admirable but in this instance not really practical. ‘Have you hurt yourself some more…? Shall I stop the car…?’

And prolong the agony of sharing space with Miss Sweetness and Light? Anything, he decided, was better than that—even replying to her incessant questions for another five minutes.

She obviously wasn’t going to be satisfied until he owned up to something. ‘I jarred my shoulder. Why can’t I be staying at the Hall…?’ he asked before she could press the point any further.

‘Well, leaving aside your injuries…’

‘Yes, let’s do that…’

Repressing the angry retort that hovered on the tip of her tongue, Darcy jammed her foot on the brake as the lights ahead turned red. ‘And the fact that the place is uninhabitable…’

‘I found it quite cosy.’

‘It’s Christmas!’

‘Your point being…?’

‘Time of good cheer and loving your fellow man… Does that ring any bells…?’

The cynical light in his hooded, secretive eyes intensified. ‘And come the New Year I can go back to screwing the bastards…?’ he queried hopefully.

The sound of an impatient car horn brought her attention to the green light. ‘Are you always unpleasant just for the hell of it?’

‘It does give me a nice glow,’ he admitted glibly.

‘I don’t think you’ve got the hang of the Christmas-spirit thing, Mr Erskine.’

‘It’s Reece, and as far as I’m concerned, Darcy, Christmas is just like any other day of the year…’

‘But…’

‘…except, of course, for the exceptionally high hypocrisy factor.’

‘You mean you don’t celebrate at all?’ Darcy knew that it was none of her business how this man celebrated or didn’t during the festive season, but for some reason she just couldn’t let it go. ‘What about your family…?’

‘I don’t have a family.’ Reece hardly even felt a twinge of guilt as he brutally disposed of his numerous relatives.

‘Oh!’ Darcy, who was pretty blessed in that department, felt guilty at her abundance. ‘That’s sad, but even someone like you must have friends,’ she insisted earnestly. She heard his startled intake of breath. Oh, dear, that hadn’t come out quite as she’d intended.

‘Are you trying to wind me up?’

‘Why would I?’ Even if it was exhilarating in a dangerous sort of way.

‘Sins of a previous life catching up with me…?’

Darcy repressed a grin. Sarcastic pig…!

‘Maybe you don’t have any friends,’ she countered nastily.

‘I have friends,’ he confirmed tightly. ‘The sort who respect my privacy,’ he added pointedly.

‘Then it’s a religious thing…?’

Her swift change of subject made him blink. ‘What is…?’

‘Ignoring Christmas.’

‘It’s a personal-choice thing,’

‘There’s no need to yell,’ she remonstrated gently.

Reece’s nostrils flared. ‘Hard as this might be for you to comprehend, I don’t like the festive season.’

‘It must be pretty spartan inside,’ Darcy mused, thinking about the bleak aspect of the old Hall.

An image of walls stripped back to bare brick ran through his mind; the draught from the open window whistling down his neck wasn’t the only thing that made him shudder.

‘Depends on what you’re used to,’ he responded evasively.

He looked to her as if he was used to the best—of everything. In fact, Darcy thought, shooting another covert glance in his direction, she didn’t think she’d ever met a man who looked more accustomed to the good life and all its trimmings than him.

That wasn’t to say there was anything pampered or soft about him—in fact, the opposite was true. Even in his present battered and bruised condition it was obvious he was in peak physical condition, and he had the indefinable but definite air of a man who would be ruthless to achieve his own ends.

Of course looks weren’t everything, and for all she knew he might be afraid of the dark and give generously to charities. Either way, why would a man like him choose to spend any time, let alone Christmas, alone in a dump like…? It made no sense…unless he was hiding out, or running away…? Perhaps Nick’s suspicions weren’t so crazy after all!

Well, even if he is a sex maniac I should be safe; he doesn’t come over as the type who goes for women who can be mistaken for boys—lucky me!

Darcy gave herself a mental shake and shrugged off the self-pitying direction of her reflections. Whilst there wasn’t much point pretending that physically this man hadn’t seriously unnerved her, there was no point advertising the embarrassing fact—though no doubt he was used to women making fools of themselves over him. As the feeling was obviously one-sided, and they were going to stay strangers, there didn’t seem much point getting bogged down with uncomfortable self-analysis.

‘Well, obviously I don’t know what the Hall is like inside at the moment, but I would have—’

Reece was not used to explaining his actions, and he decided it was time to call a halt to her interminable speculation once and for all.

‘You do surprise me,’ his acid drawl interrupted. ‘I was under the impression the locals keep fairly up-to-date with all the developments around here. I imagined I’d discovered the net-curtain-twitching capital of Yorkshire.’

Two pink spots appeared on Darcy’s smooth cheeks; she sucked in an angry breath and crunched her gears. The faintly amused condescension in his voice made her see red. Why not just call us nosy yokels with nothing better to do than gossip and be done with it? She’d have liked to bop him one on his superior nose.

‘You’ll have to make allowances for me— I’m only home for the holiday, so I’m not completely up to speed yet.’

‘That accounts for it, then.’

Darcy’s eyes began to sparkle dangerously; the man had a very nasty mouth and there were limits to how much she was willing to make allowances for his delicate condition.

‘We’re nosy? That’s pretty rich coming from someone who was spying on me from up a tree!’ She hadn’t been going to mention it because of his injuries, but he was asking for it…

Reece, who hadn’t been in a situation that made him blush for years, felt his colour rise for the second time today.

‘I wasn’t spying.’

‘That’s what all the peeping Toms say,’ she cut back with a provoking little smile.

Reece gritted his even white teeth.

‘I’ve been demoted from sex maniac, then?’

‘You were eavesdropping!’ she exclaimed accusingly, a rush of colour flooding her cheeks. Her memory in playback mode, she tried to recall exactly how bad what they’d said had been.

‘It was hard not to, the way you were yelling.’

‘Yelling is better than spying,’ she countered with undeniable accuracy.

‘I was investigating the noise pollution,’ he gritted with the air of a man on the brink of losing his temper.

At that moment they approached a particularly savage bend in the road. His knuckles whitened as he braced his good hand against the dashboard.

‘Will you do me a favour and keep your eyes on the road?’ he pleaded grimly as her smouldering eyes showed a tendency to linger indignantly on his face.

‘It’s so hard,’ she confessed apologetically, ‘when there’s you to look at.’ She sighed soulfully, placing a hand momentarily over her strongly beating heart.

Actually it was getting increasingly hard to treat the fact she was a long way from immune to his raw brand of physical magnetism as a joke.

He shifted in his seat once more, as if trying to alleviate some discomfort, and his broad shoulders nudged against hers in the restricted space of the small car.

Darcy was conscious of a fleeting feeling of guilt that she was being so mean to someone who was injured and in pain. The other feeling the brief contact created was less fleeting and much more disturbing; the fluttery sensation low in her belly went into overdrive, and pulses had started hammering a loud tattoo in places she didn’t know she had pulses! Her palms felt uncomfortably damp as she grimly gripped the cold steering-wheel.

‘Ha ha.’ Reece’s nostrils flared as he watched the provoking little witch toss her bright head. ‘You were making a racket and I came out here for peace and quiet.’

She’d never claimed to be Kiri Te Kanawa, but a racket—charming! What a great confidence-boost just when she needed it.

‘If this is a sample of your usual behaviour I think I can guarantee you that,’ she promised him drily. ‘It’s true that in the country we do take an interest in what our friends and neighbours are doing; perhaps it can be intrusive sometimes…’ she conceded.

Reece found his wandering attention captured and held by the dramatic rise and fall of her well-formed bosom. The fascination bothered him—it was totally irrational: he’d seen bosoms a lot more spectacular. He worriedly recalled reading somewhere that head injuries could totally alter someone’s personality.

‘…but I’d prefer that to indifference…’

‘God!’ Reece groaned as if in pain and rolled his head from side to side in an effort to alleviate the increasing stiffness in his neck. ‘I knew I should have taken a taxi.’

‘My driving’s not that bad,’ Darcy muttered truculently. The fact he was treating the journey like a white-knuckle ride hadn’t escaped her notice.

‘I’m very grateful for what you’ve done,’ he ground out.

He sounded as if each syllable hurt.

‘Save it! I don’t want your gratitude.’ With an airy gesture that caused the car to lurch slightly towards the centre of the road she brushed aside his protest. ‘We may be nosy in the country, but we don’t step over sick people yet, or ask for payment when we pick them up!’

She shot a disgusted glance at his perfect, slightly bruised profile; anyone would think his movements were front-page news, the way he was acting!

‘I wouldn’t like you to run away with the impression I give a damn if you get triple pneumonia. I was just making polite neighbourly conversation to take your mind off your pain.’

‘I’m not in pain.’

With a lofty sniff Darcy dismissed this transparent untruth. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.’ An expression of fierce concentration on her face, she stared unblinkingly through the rain-washed windshield.

‘No, I don’t, do I?’

Another five minutes and the hospital came into view. Even as he broke the silence, Reece couldn’t understand what made him do so.

‘I’m being a great deal of trouble.’

As much as he liked to give the impression he didn’t have one, it looked to her as if the cranky Mr Erskine’s conscience was giving him trouble—she was in no hurry to ease it.

‘Yes,’ she agreed sweetly.

Reece was gripped by an urgent and irrational desire to make those wilful lips smile once more.

‘And behaving like an ungrateful monster.’ His efforts were rewarded: her lips twitched.

‘Such perception.’

Truly kissable lips; shame about the sharp tongue that went with them. A nerve along the chiselled edge of his strong jaw began to throb.

‘I came here to escape Christmas…’

‘You should have said.’

‘Should have said what?’ he demanded in a driven voice.

Darcy drew up beside the Casualty doors with her engine running. ‘Christmas has bad associations for you, doesn’t it?’

He stiffened.

She had spoken on impulse; now she wished she hadn’t. For an unguarded moment there she’d seen something in his eyes that made her feel like an intruder. The moment was gone; now there was only hostility and suspicion as he scowled at her.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Darcy shook her head. ‘I just got the impression… Forget it; I obviously got the wrong end of the stick. I’ll drop you off here—less far to walk.’ She thought about leaning across him to open the door but, recalling what she had experienced the time she’d touched him, she changed her mind.

When he’d gone Darcy drove around looking for a parking space, and even when she found one she wasn’t sure whether or not her presence would be appreciated. But, personality clashes aside, it didn’t seem quite right somehow to drive off without even finding out how he was. The family would certainly think it very odd if she returned with no news.

It was with mixed feelings she finally presented herself at the reception desk.

‘I’m enquiring about a Mr Erskine,’ she began tentatively as she approached the smart-looking female who presided over the empty waiting area. ‘I came in w—’

‘Did you really?’ The young woman blushed and continued in voice absent of wistful envy this time. ‘I mean, they’re expecting you.’

Darcy looked blank. ‘They are?’ she said doubtfully. It occurred to her this was a case of mistaken identity.

‘They said to send you right on in. Rob!’ The receptionist flagged down a white-jacketed young nurse. ‘Will you take Mrs Erskine through to cubicle three?’

Mrs…? God, they thought…!

‘I’m not!’ Darcy denied hoarsely, but nobody seemed to be listening to her as she trotted obediently along beside the young nurse.

My God, this was so embarrassing. She just hoped Reece Erskine didn’t think the mistake any of her doing.

‘I think there’s been a mistake,’ she began firmly as the young man drew back a curtain and stood to one side.

‘Here she is…Darcy, darling.’

Darling…?

‘Oh, God!’ she breathed, her eyes riveted on the bare torso of the man who had greeted her with such a highly deceptive degree of warmth.

He was standing there, stripped to the waist, in the process of zipping up his trousers one-handed; her makeshift sling had been replaced by a more professional-looking collar and cuff arrangement.

Darcy didn’t make a habit of mentally stripping casual acquaintances, but it seemed she must have made an exception with him because she found herself comparing the reality to that mental image stored in her head and finding it had hardly done him justice. With wide shoulders, amply endowed with muscle in a lean, athletic, unbulky way, his body was way better than good—it was sensational!

Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth as her hot eyes went into exploration mode. No wonder her emergency stop had made him cranky—there were spectacular darkish-blue bruises all the way down one side of his rib-cage.

‘It looks a lot worse than it is,’ he comforted her.

Blushing wildly, Darcy tore her eyes from his body. ‘Good,’ she croaked hoarsely.

‘I could do with a hand here.’

Darcy almost choked when she realised he was talking about his zip. Eyes wide, she mutely shook her head. The alarmed backward step she took brought her into abrupt contact with a second person in the tiny cubicle, who until that moment she hadn’t even been aware of. No, I was too busy leching over Reece Erskine, she thought shamefully.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled incoherently.

‘No harm done,’ the white-coated figure assured her cheerfully. ‘Just a few cracked ribs, lots of bruising and the dislocated shoulder, of course.’

‘What?’

The doctor looked bemused for a moment by her alarm, then he grinned. ‘I see what you mean…no, I’m talking about your husband, not me.’ Chuckling over their crossed lines, the doctor held an X-ray film up to the light.

There was that husband thing again. Darcy waited expectantly, sure that Reece would take this opportunity to correct the error—he didn’t, and her confusion deepened.

She felt obliged to respond. ‘A few seems a bit vague.’ Even as she spoke, she was overpoweringly aware of the tall, scantily clad figure who had moved up behind her.

‘Point taken.’ With an unoffended grin, the medic clipped the film onto an illuminated screen and pointed out the defects with his pen. ‘One, two and here’s number three.’

‘I thought he might have broken his collar-bone.’

‘I can see how you might, but no. It was a dislocation. Agony to pop back, of course.’ The disgusting, bloodthirsty popping noise he made to illustrate the point made Darcy shudder.

‘It sounds awfully painful,’ she protested.

‘It was,’ Reece volunteered.

‘We offered him an anaesthetic, but your husband insisted we do it right away.’ The doctor hastily defended his actions. ‘A few days and the shoulder should be back to normal,’ he promised. ‘Actually, it’s on account of the head injury we’d like to keep him in overnight, Mrs Erskine, but he doesn’t seem too keen.’

‘I’m not…’

‘She’s not surprised, are you, darling?’

The warm, caressing note froze her to the spot without the added trauma of hearing her addressed again as ‘darling’. ‘She knows how much I hate hospitals.’

She felt a large competent hand push aside the hair from the nape of her neck. Darcy’s hair was plentiful and incredibly silky, but very fine and inclined to go kinky when exposed to moisture—it had definitely been exposed and right now it was a mass of crinkly curls.

Her breath expelled in a soft hiss as she felt the unmistakable touch of cool lips against the sensitive flesh of her exposed nape. Her eyes closed and the strength drained from her body.

The doctor only gave a slightly benevolent smile as he watched them. ‘Of course, if he hadn’t been going home in the care of an experienced nurse I’d have insisted…’

Darcy’s eyes flickered open. He’s married, married to a nurse, was her first thought. Then it clicked— Me, he’s talking about me!

‘Where are you working at the moment, Mrs Erskine?’

‘I…I’m…’ It was bad enough realising she had a whole new identity created by this madman without being expected to act in character too!

‘Darcy is staying at home. Making a home is a full-time job as far as we’re concerned, isn’t it, darling…?’ A firm hand beneath her jaw turned Darcy’s head so that she was exposed to the full intensity of his green eyes. No desperate appeal for her co-operation there—on the contrary; if anything, there was a hint of challenge.

‘You’re a full-time job!’ she breathed incredulously.

The doctor laughed. ‘I’ll send a nurse in to suture up that head wound,’ he explained, scribbling rapidly on the sheet in front of him.

Darcy waited until he’d gone before she exploded.

‘Are you mad?’ she seethed. Why hadn’t she just told the doctor he was lying through his teeth when she’d had the chance?

‘Hush, darling, or they’ll hear you.’

She saw that he was looking well pleased with himself—and why not? Her anger escalated rapidly as he calmly began to shrug on his shirt as if nothing had happened. The man had the gall to stand there looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, when… Her train of thought skittered to an abrupt full stop—it had been a bad mistake to think mouth; she could still feel the tingling area on her neck where his lips had been moments before.

‘Let them!’

He directed a mildly irritated glance in her direction.

‘I don’t know what you’re playing at…’

‘Sure you do; you’re not that stupid.’

Darcy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let’s pretend for the sake of argument that I am,’ she suggested sweetly.

‘I think I can just about make that giant leap. They were highly reluctant to discharge me without assurances I have someone responsible to take care of me. Whilst I could have just walked out of here, it seemed less stressful all round if I was married.’ The longer he was here, the more likelihood there was of someone recognising him and then it was only a matter of time before the local Press showed up…in his experience these things snowballed pretty fast.

‘And you thought of me. Naturally I’m deeply flattered,’ she spat sarcastically. ‘Why on earth did I have to be a nurse…?’ she wailed.

‘I thought that was a nice touch,’ he agreed complacently. ‘If the doc had been on the ball he’d have realised you’re not old enough to be experienced.’

‘You’re mad…quite mad!’ she announced with conviction.

‘You’re not a nurse, then?’

‘Of course I’m not a nurse!’

‘Just when your father said you were a great little nurse I thought…’

‘I’ve got brothers—I can stick on a plaster. I’m not Florence Nightingale…!’

‘True. Nobody with an ounce of caring in their body could stand there watching me struggle like this.’ He stood there, one arm inserted in his shirt, wondering what to do next.

‘If that was a hint, you’re really pushing it!’ she growled. ‘What if someone asks me to do something…nursey?’ she worried hoarsely.

‘Is that likely?’ he drawled, managing to project the distinct impression he found her complaints slightly hysterical.

It occurred to Darcy that they were drifting away from the real cause of her simmering anger. ‘Don’t try and change the subject,’ she growled.

One slanted dark brow quirked. ‘Which was…?’

‘I’m not your wife!’

‘This is true,’ he conceded with an expression that suggested he was mightily relieved about this. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind—it’s not like I’m actually asking you to marry me or anything drastic.’

‘For your information, I’ve been proposed to several times!’ she felt goaded into unwisely boasting.

‘Congratulations,’ he drawled, looking amused.

Darcy’s cheeks were burning with humiliation as she discovered a major flaw in his manipulations. ‘What were you going to do if I’d driven straight off?’

‘I knew you wouldn’t do that,’ he stated confidently.

‘How could you possibly…?’

‘You’d be eaten up by guilt if you did. You’re deeply into doing the right thing.’ He made it sound like a flaw in her character. ‘Be a sport, Darcy,’ he cajoled.

‘I’m not lying for you.’

He sighed. ‘Just don’t say you’re not, that’s all I’m asking. It’s no skin off your nose. Walk out of here with me and then you’ll never have to see me again.’

Darcy’s shoulders slumped in defeat. ‘I must be mad…’

A wolfish grin split his lean, dark face. ‘Good girl,’ he approved.

Further comments were made impossible by the arrival of the nurse who’d directed Darcy here originally.

‘I’ve come to suture your head wound,’ the young man explained.

Darcy took the opportunity to excuse herself. ‘I’ll wait outside.’ Halfway through the curtain, she paused. ‘Are you going to give him a local anaesthetic?’ she asked the young nurse.

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