Damage (21 page)

All this cleaning, it was wrecking her hands. The skin was dry. It made her feel old when she wasn’t even 25 until January. She hated this time of year, hated this sinking feeling, the Fall blues. She needed change. She needed something new.

She needed this not to be
it
.

Just then, with perfect timing, the door burst open, slamming against the wall as the gale took it. Standing there, framed in the doorway, was the guy Cassie would come to know as Denny McGowan.

In that tailored tux he looked like he should be someplace else entirely, but yet... it looked like he had walked here. On a night like this! His patent leather shoes were scuffed and dirty, there was mud around the cuffs of his pants; his shirt was untucked, his undone bow tie hanging loose. His jacket hung heavy with the rain, and his black hair was plastered to his skull. Maybe there had been an accident, or his car had broken down back on the highway.

Then, with a cheeky grin that cracked his face and put a sparkle in his eyes, he reached into his pocket, produced a fat roll of hundred dollar bills, and casually thumbed one free of the sodden mass of paper.

“So tell me, what does a guy have to do to get a drink around here?” he asked in an accent somewhere between Boston and genuine Irish, and then he stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind him and shutting the wild storm out.

(continues...)

Winner Takes All
is available from:
Amazon.com
,
Amazon.co.uk
and other Amazon stores.

When Trudy goes to her estranged brother's wedding, the last thing she expects is one of those moments: a handsome stranger, their eyes meeting across a crowded room... a tempting, but dangerous stranger. Determined to find out more, she discovers that dark secrets bind him to her brother; she also learns that he's the kind of man who gets what he wants, and what he wants right now is Trudy.

Introducing her to the world of the super-wealthy, he showers her with designer clothes, shoes, and diamonds, whisking her off to dinner dates by private jet... what more could a girl want?

But as she finds out more about him, Trudy begins to wonder if she can ever love a man she can never fully trust. A man involved in murder and blackmail, who may just be using her as an alibi. Should she run or let herself fall for him? And will he give her a choice?

A passionate erotic romance, where scandals buried away in the past lead to murderous intrigue in the present, in the intensely steamy world of the super-wealthy and powerful.

The Object of His Desire
is available from:
Amazon.com
,
Amazon.co.uk
and other Amazon stores.

Excerpt

Even now, I’m unsure whether it was a
genuine Jane Austen moment or the worst of clichés: eyes meeting across a
crowded room, for heaven’s sake.

What can I say?

I was nervous, in a crowd of mostly
strangers and distant acquaintances.

I was feeling flustered after a difficult
journey and finally arriving at this little chapel in the middle of nowhere
later than I’d intended – I hate not being in control.

 I was unsettled by the rush of mixed
emotions in my head. I was about to see my big brother again after far too long;
despite following him across the Atlantic to England we’d drifted ever farther
apart over the last couple of years.

I was thrown by the realization that his
best man was Charlie, the ex who could still wrap me around his posh little
English finger after all this time.

Under these circumstances a girl can surely
be forgiven a lapse into cliché. No?

§

I’d driven for nearly four hours to reach
this remote little Norfolk chapel. It had taken far too long to escape the
tangle of London traffic, and even longer driving through the winding East
Anglian lanes trying to find the place.

Deep breath, Trudy
. I was here. I’d made it on time.

I stood outside the chapel and straightened
my three-quarter length Anoushka G dress. Deep cornflower blue, with scooped
neck-line and a lily fascinator pinned to my long auburn hair, even I’d admit
that I felt good in my wedding outfit.

I realized I was falling back on coping
strategies I’d developed in my teens: a constant interior monologue of commentary
and pep talks.

You look good, Trude.

That dress will make up for all sorts,
and you can get away with those sucky-in Magic Knickers you bought in desperation,
because you just know you’re the only one who’s ever going to see them.

 Nice shoes, by the way.

Whatever it takes.

I recognized a few of the faces of the
guests milling around in the churchyard. They were Cambridge buddies of Ethan’s.
When I’d first come over from New Haven, I’d hung out with him in his college
halls for a few weeks before landing my temporary job at Ellison and Coles, a
wonderfully quaint traditional publisher with offices just off Covent Garden,
right in the heart of London.

As we waited to enter the chapel, people
smiled at me and nodded, but they were all in their own little groups and no
one seemed particularly interested in me. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t in any mood
for small talk, just yet. Instead, I checked my cell phone, only to find that
there was no signal. I opened my mail just the same, and glanced through emails
I’d already downloaded.

“You’ve got signal? Or are you just
bluffing so you look busy even though you’re here on your own and nobody’s
talking to you?”

I didn’t look round. I didn’t have to.

“Bastard,” I said softly.

“But a good-looking bastard, right? You
always did say that I scrubbed up rather well.”

I turned. Honey-blond hair, sharp blue
eyes, and the way the tuxedo and neatly pressed pants hung on his lean body... I
took a deep breath and tried not to find him attractive.

Charlie didn’t look a day older than when I’d
last seen him over a year before, ducking a flying ash tray as he backed out of
the Islington apartment we’d shared back then.

“Last time I saw you–”

“You were a lousy shot. I only ducked to
make you feel better about your aim. See? Even then I was looking out for you,
babe.”

“I only missed because I didn’t want blood
on the carpet. It was deliberate.”

“You preferred that dent in the door?” The
ash tray had made a nasty gouge in the wood-panel door on impact. I’d never got
round to fixing it: my little memento of the year with Charlie.

“Okay, so I misjudged that one. I should
have hit you with it.”

“You look good, Trude.”

“Too damned right I do. You think I’d come
to my brother’s wedding and look like shit?”

I was smiling by then. Our arguments went
like that: they either got more and more intense or we’d end up laughing and
wondering what we’d been fighting about.

“It’s been a long time, Trude.”

I leaned forward and kissed him on the
cheek. He smelt of Issey Miyake and cigarettes.

“Shouldn’t you be inside with Ethan? I
assume he’s turned up?”

“Fresh air break,” said Charlie, tapping
the cigarette-box-shaped bulge in the breast pocket of his tuxedo. “You know
how it is.”

“Haven’t you given that stuff up yet?”

“Everyone’s got their vices, Trudy. Even
you.”

I raised one eyebrow and fixed him with a
hard stare until he was forced to look away. If the occasional vodka and tonic
too many and a tendency to over-stretch my credit cards on Karen Millen and
Jimmy Choo were vices, then yes, Charlie had a point, but he was pushing it.

I looked around again. The chapel was set
in a stand of pine trees, a short distance from a sprawling country house, all
tall windows and mock classical columns. The landscape was so flat here: fields
stretching away to another line of dark pine trees, and the sea beyond. I don’t
think I’d ever seen a landscape so haunting, so weighted down with sadness.

“I need a drink,” I muttered. I don’t know
why I was so tense. There was no bad feeling between me and Ethan; we just hadn’t
seen each other for a while. A bit of awkwardness, that was all.

“Later, Trude. Later.”

“So how did my brother end up getting
married in a place like this? Does all this belong to her family? Is that it?”

One further element of embarrassment was
that I’d never actually met Ethan’s fiancée, Eleanor.

I didn’t know much about her at all.
Very
English
, was how Ethan had described her on the phone, way back when they’d
just started to realize they were getting serious.
An English rose, Trudy.
Can you believe that? Me, with my very own English rose?

I thought he was a bit scared then, feeling
out of his depth with this girl and her landed family and their English ways.

“Family with money,” said Charlie. “It’s
all about who you know. Connections.”

That was when it happened. My Jane Austen
moment. My cliché.

My attention was snagged by movement in the
chapel doorway and I turned, thinking Ethan must be emerging and now was the
time for me to go and hug him and sweep away the distance that had grown
between us.

Instead, it was a guy I’d never seen
before.

He was in a tux, this newcomer. He was
about six foot, and his shoulders were square, almost as if he was wearing a
quarterback’s shoulder pads. He was either an athlete or he spent far too much
time looking after himself in the gym.

So: first impression was okay, but nothing
to write home about.

And then... that Jane Austen moment.

He peered around, as if lost, and then his
eyes fell upon me. It was almost as if he recognized me, as if he’d been
waiting all his life for me... but then realized he was mistaken, he didn’t
know me at all – exactly that kind of double take.

He looked away, and then glanced back.

His eyes were dark, but when they settled
on you it was as if you’d been fixed by a hawk. A raptor, eyeing his prey.

I shook myself, made myself look away. I
couldn’t believe I was actually blushing.

Eyes meeting across a crowded gathering.

It was a cliché. I was flustered by my late
arrival and by the tense undercurrents of the occasion.

That’s all it was.

Nothing more.

And yes, perhaps I protest too much.

(continues...)

The Object of His Desire
is available from:
Amazon.com
,
Amazon.co.uk
and other Amazon stores.

Published by James Grieve Press

©
PJ Adams 2015

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