It Started With... Collection

‘I wouldn’t say I’m crazy about the game, but I like it well enough. To be honest, you have to be able to play golf when you’re in the sport-management business. You’ve no idea how many deals I’ve negotiated on a golf course, especially at the nineteenth hole.’

Laura frowned over at him. ‘I thought there were only eighteen holes?’

Ryan smiled. ‘I see you don’t play golf. The nineteenth hole is the golf club.’

‘Oh, silly me. Slow down a bit; our driveway’s coming up. There …’ Laura pointed a finger to a spot just ahead. ‘Between those two gum trees. You won’t have to stop, the gates are always left open.’

‘I can’t see any house,’ Ryan said, glancing around as he turned into the driveway.

‘That’s because you’re not looking in the right place. That’s it on top of that hill over there.’

His eyes followed the direction of her finger to what was a large two-storey homestead sitting majestically on the crest of a very distant hill. It was rectangular and colonial in style, with a high-pitched roof, and verandahs all the way around, top and bottom. Several chimneys more evidence of real fireplaces, no doubt with elegant hearths to go with the elegant architecture of the building.

‘I thought you said your family wasn’t seriously rich,’ came his rueful remark.

‘They’re not,’ Laura replied.

‘Possibly you and I differ on what ‘seriously rich’ is.’

Unless this property was mortgaged to the hilt, then the owner, in Ryan’s opinion, was seriously rich. The fences around the paddocks were in excellent condition and the cattle grazing on the pastures were fat and healthy looking. Despite his knowledge of country living being confined to watching the occasional programme on TV, Ryan could already see he was looking at money.

‘I presume all the land leading up to the house belongs to your grandmother?’ he asked as they crunched over the gravelly surface.

‘No. The whole property actually belongs to Uncle Bill. My grandfather—dear, sweet man that he was—left everything to his son rather than his wife.’

Ryan frowned. ‘Why would he do that?’

When he glanced over at her, he saw Laura’s face crinkle up in disgust.

‘Because he was of the old school,’ she said sourly. ‘The one which believes that men should rule the world and own all the land.’

Mmm. Perhaps Laura’s man-hating ways started long before that client she slept with. Still, Ryan could understand that a girl of Laura’s intelligence would find it hard to accept her grandfather’s chauvinistic—and decidedly unloving—ways.

‘Was your grandmother very hurt at the time?’ he asked.

‘She was disappointed,’ Laura said. ‘But she didn’t make a fuss, though she should have. I certainly did when Uncle Bill gave her a pitiful allowance out of all the money he’d inherited.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Threatened the bastard that I’d persuade Gran to contest the will if he didn’t give her a decent amount each year. Which he did do, grudgingly.’

‘I’ll bet you weren’t too popular for a while.’

‘I’ve never been popular with the men on this side of my family,’ she replied.

Ryan laughed. ‘I wonder why?’

‘Why should I suck up to the opposite sex?’ she asserted with her usual stroppiness. ‘I’m as good as they are.’

‘Yes, well, just remember that for the next couple of days you’re playing the part of a woman in love.’

The expression on her face when he said this was worth all the money in China.

‘I knew this was a terrible idea,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t know what possessed me to do it.’

‘Pride possessed you.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ she said with a deeply weary sigh. ‘Good old pride—one of the seven deadly sins.’

She looked so dispirited all of a sudden that Ryan felt genuinely sorry for her.

‘Not just pride, Laura,’ he said gently. ‘Kindness too. Let’s not forget that. We’re here to make your gran happy. What does it matter if you’re forced out of your comfort zone for a couple of days? It’s not like it will last for ever. Let me do most of the talking. You just smile and agree to everything I say. Which I know will be extremely difficult for you,’ he added before she could say a single word. ‘But it’s all in a good cause.’

She was quiet for a long moment, but then she nodded. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Good.’

Good!

Laura felt anything but good every time she looked at the man. She wanted to hit him for making her find him so darned attractive all of a sudden.

It wasn’t pride that was possessing her at this moment. It was another of the seven deadly sins, one that terrified the life out of her.

Laura was not intimately acquainted with lust, had never been held in its thrall before. Both Brad and Mario had seduced her into their beds, and she’d gone out of the need to be loved, not the need to have sex with them.

But she wanted to have sex with Ryan. It was a most disturbing thought. Her sigh carried regret that she’d ever thought of this charade in the first place. Regret too that she’d given in to Ryan’s suggestion and bought that sexy red dress.

Alison had spelled it out for her. That dress was the sort which would get an octogenarian’s hormones up and going. And Ryan was a lot younger and hornier than that. It worried her, what might happen if he did make a pass at her tonight?

‘Come now, Laura,’ Ryan said with a touch of exasperation in his voice. ‘Anyone would think you were going to your execution.’

An execution would be preferable to ending up in bed with you, Laura thought, keeping her eyes firmly off his corrupting body and on the road ahead. She tried thinking of what he’d just said, about this all being in a good cause, but nothing could unwind the knots of tension in her stomach. The niggling fear she’d had that this weekend would end in disaster became steadily magnified as they drew closer to the house. The sight of her Aunt Cynthia standing on the verandah waiting for them reminded her of that other fear she’d had earlier today—the fear that they’d be put in the same bedroom for the night!

CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_bd1c3ed7-1325-5b07-9b51-4b32b2e95084)

ONE look at Aunt Cynthia gave Ryan a clue as to why Laura was so tense.

The woman was formidable looking to say the least, tall and solidly built, with a manner of the sergeant major about her as she stood there at the top of the front steps with her arms folded over her battleship bosom and her thick-ankled legs slightly apart. The skirt and top she was wearing was battleship grey as well. Possibly in her late fifties, she had very short, tightly curled blonde hair—probably permed and dyed—large facial features and the hint of a moustache above her thinly pressed lips. Her eyes were small and closely set, widening slightly as Ryan braked the convertible to a halt at the bottom on the front steps.

‘Don’t you dare get out of this car,’ Ryan muttered under his breath as Laura automatically reached for the door handle.

When her eyes jerked round to his he bestowed a one-thousand-kilowatt smile upon her, then bent over to graze her right cheek with his lips.

‘Just do as I say,’ he whispered at the same time. ‘And smile, for pity’s sake.’

She didn’t smile, he noted. But she did as he said, staying put while he exited the car and strode round to open the door for her like a gentleman of the old school. Ryan deliberately didn’t look up at Aunt Cynthia until Laura was standing up, her hand safely enclosed in his.

By then he was gratified to see true surprise on the woman’s face, along with an almost welcoming smile. She’d even unfolded her arms by the time he dragged Laura up onto the verandah with him. Thankfully, the woman was staring at him and not at her rather robotic niece.