Millionaire's Woman: The Millionaire's Prospective Wife / The Millionaire's Runaway Bride / The Millionaire's Reward

So they said. And it must have been a man who coined the phrase. ‘We’ll shop tomorrow,’ she said, ‘for something for you to give her and something for me. What’s she like? Describe her to me.’

‘My mother?’ His mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘She’s quite a woman.’

She would have to be to have a son like you.

‘She and Dad had the sort of relationship where they’d be hammer and tongs one minute and then falling into each other’s arms the next—two strong minds, you know?’

She nodded.

‘But us kids never doubted how much they loved each other or us. Dad was the more staid, upright one, very conventional—typical lawyer, I guess.’

‘Your father was a lawyer?’ Somehow she’d assumed he would have been a businessman like Nick.

‘A damn good one.’ There was a wealth of affection and pride in his voice and it touched her deeply. ‘Mum…’ He smiled again. ‘Mum is one on her own. A true original. Nonconformist, feisty, stout-hearted. Dad used to say she was sent to keep him humble.’

Cory smiled but she thought Nick’s mother sounded a bit scary. ‘Does she work?’

‘She was involved in animal welfare when Dad first met her but while we were young she did the housewife bit and thoroughly enjoyed it. Once my youngest sister was at school she started doing one of her great loves—painting—and also went back to the animal welfare thing, but in a smaller way. She does voluntary work at a local sanctuary. On the painting side—’ he paused briefly while he executed a driving manoeuvre Cory was sure was illegal and which caused several other motorists to make use of their horns ‘—she’s done very well. She sells all over the country now.’

Cory was feeling more nervous by the minute at meeting this Superwoman. ‘What about your sisters?’ she asked a little weakly, feeling she didn’t really want to hear the answer.

‘Rosie’s thirty years old, married her childhood sweetheart at eighteen and has two kids, Robert who’s ten and Caroline who’s eight. She’s utterly content being a wife and mother and is in nature a carbon copy of our father. Jenny’s twenty-eight, travelled the world with a backpack from eighteen to twenty-three, married an artist who has his own pottery business and had twin girls four months after the wedding.’ He raised a laconic eyebrow. ‘That was a couple of years after Dad died, which is just as well as he’d have blown a gasket.’

Cory giggled. ‘The twins are about three, then?’

‘A few weeks before Christmas.’

‘You sound like quite a family.’

His mouth curved upwards in a crooked smile. ‘When Jenny and Rod called the girls Peach and Pears, Mum thought the names were terrific and Rosie and her husband were horrified. There isn’t a more devoted aunt and uncle than Rosie and Geoff though. Sums us up, really.’

‘What about you?’ she asked interestedly. ‘What did you think about the names?’

‘Jenny had survived what proved to be a traumatic birth when she haemorrhaged and we nearly lost her and the twins were well and healthy. They could have called them Noddy and Big Ears as far as I was concerned.’

Male logic. Cory smiled. ‘I like Peach and Pears,’ she said very definitely. ‘I don’t see why people are locked into tradition about names. Flower names are considered perfectly proper so why not fruit or anything else for that matter?’

‘Do I detect a smidgen of bohemian coming through? Is it possible that in the future you might be considering artichoke or cabbage, or even New York if the unfortunate infant was conceived away from home?’

Her smile faded. She didn’t reply for a moment and then she said flatly, ‘I don’t intend to have children.’

‘Perhaps all for the best if cabbage is a possibility.’

His voice was light and easy and he was smiling, but the warm intimacy in the car was gone and they both knew it. Cory felt a moment of deep regret that she had broken the mood.

The nifty little sports car fairly ate up the hundred and seventy miles or so to Barnstaple once they were out of London, but it was still almost dark when they neared the coast.

For some reason Cory was feeling an illogical sense of panic at the thought of seeing Nick’s house. She couldn’t actually have said why. It wasn’t so much that this was the weekend she would finally take the plunge and go to bed with him, more that this house—his home—would reveal more about him than the flat ever could. And what if she didn’t like what it revealed? Certainly the flat, beautiful as it undoubtedly was, didn’t do a thing for her. But then he had said he didn’t live in the flat, merely occupied it.

The morning star was high in a sky which was turning from mauve washed with midnight-blue to deep velvetblack when the car finally turned off the wide, pleasant avenue they’d been travelling along for a minute or so. A smaller road, almost a lane, took them past several houses set in beautifully manicured grounds. After several hundred metres there were no buildings at all, just the high stone wall one side and to their left rolling fields in which the round white bodies of sheep stood out in the evening shadows. Then the stone wall curved round in front of them, forming the end of the lane, and after drawing to a halt Nick opened the wrought iron gates set in the wall by remote control.

This was going to be some property! Even before they drove on to the long gravelled drive winding between established flower beds and mature trees, Cory was preparing herself for her first sight of Nick’s home. And then there it was in front of her. A large mellow-stoned thatched building flanked either side by magnificent horse chestnut trees, its leaded windows on the ground floor lit by lights within the house.

‘Good,’ Nick murmured at the side of her. ‘Rosie’s remembered to leave the lights on. She always comes in and stocks up the fridge when she knows I’m coming home,’ he added as they drew up in front of the huge stone steps leading to the front door.

‘Nick…’ For a moment Cory was devoid of speech. ‘This is beautiful, just beautiful.’

He smiled at her in the shadows, his blue eyes glittering. ‘I fell in love with the place the first time I ever saw it,’ he admitted softly. ‘It dates from 1703, although bits have been added here and there. Come in and have a look.’

The minute Cory stepped into the wide gracious hall she knew the inside of the house was going to match the outside. Warm-toned oak floorboards stretched into every room on the ground floor, their richness interspersed with big rugs. The huge sitting room, which overlooked the grounds at the back of the house, had big squashy sofas, one wall lined with books, low coffee tables and an enormous fireplace with a pile of logs in one corner ready for burning. The dining room, big breakfast room, Nick’s study and the farmhouse-style kitchen complete with Aga were all beautifully decorated but with a cosy feel to them which ran throughout the house.

By the downstairs cloakroom off the hall an open tread wooden staircase led to four generous-sized double bedrooms, all with en suite bathrooms, and a gigantic master bedroom. This room caused Cory to take a sharp breath when she first entered it. It wasn’t the walk-in dressing room, which would have swallowed her sitting room at home, or even the en suite bathroom, which was more luxurious than the one in Nick’s flat that was the trouble. It was the bed. It was unlike any bed Cory had ever seen. In fact, it was more of an ocean of billowy space than anything else.

That he had been expecting her discomfiture was obvious in the amused tilt to his mouth when he said, ‘You might have guessed I had the bed made specially. I’m a big boy; I like a lot of room.’

‘You’ve certainly got that,’ she squeaked weakly, wondering how many of his women he had shared it with.

It was set in front of huge windows, which had the same outlook as the sitting room below, the three carpeted steps which led to it the same length as the bed. The duvet and numerous pillows and cushions were various shades of coffee and taupe and this colour scheme was reflected through the whole suite. The bed was sensual and outrageous and sinful; it dominated the whole room and declared without any apology that pleasure was its chief aim.

Cory had to clear her dry throat before she could say, ‘The…grounds look very nice from what I can see in the dark.’ Nick had switched some outside lights on before he had begun to show her round the house, and now an area stretching some distance from the building was revealed.

‘Oh, it is nice, Cory,’ he said seriously.

Too seriously. She glanced at him sharply. He was laughing at her. She knew it, but she also knew she needed at least two glasses of a good wine before she could relax enough to contemplate that bed with any confidence or, more to the point, the man who slept in it.

She could just imagine the model type beauties who normally graced its languorous folds, she thought miserably. Suddenly all her imperfections had ballooned to giant size—particularly the vastness of her bottom and the dimples she could see at the tops of her legs when she looked hard enough. And Nick would be looking.

‘What’s outside, exactly?’ she asked with what she hoped was cool dignity.

‘Exactly?’

He grinned that fascinatingly sexy grin and Cory upped the wine to three glasses.

‘Let’s see. Covered swimming pool and sauna which can be reached via a door off the kitchen as well as from outside. I’ll show you when we go downstairs. Plus a tennis court and croquet lawn, an orchard and a walled garden, which is very old-fashioned but quite cute. And lawns and trees and bushes, of course.’

‘Wow.’ Her eyes had widened. ‘Quite a bit of land then.’

‘A bit, but manageable. I have a gardener come in once a week for a few hours.’

She nodded. Another world really. Her parents hadn’t been badly off and she had certainly never wanted for anything materially, but this sort of wealth was a thing apart. Of course she’d known his little empire was successful—he’d told her early on in their relationship that he’d been in the right place doing the right thing at the right time—but confronted with this beautiful house the reality of how rich he must be hit her for the first time.

She became aware that he was studying her face, the amusement gone from his eyes. ‘Relax, Cory,’ he said softly. ‘This is Nick, not William, remember? You’re allowed to leave this room without being ravished if that’s what you want. I wanted you to see my home, that’s all.’