Authors: Lynne Graham
‘Let me tell you, in some cases never knowing your relations could be a gift,’ her companion opined wryly, surprising her with that hint of greater depth than his candid expression and easy smile suggested.
A couple of hours later, with Samson at her heels, Harriet took a rough tour of the fields that were designated as hers on the property plan. A wave of happiness and enthusiasm had temporarily banished her
exhaustion. It was on this fertile ground that she would build a viable business that would still allow her the time to savour life. It didn’t matter that the fencing needed to be renewed, or that the outbuildings that had not been built by Fergal were badly in need of repair: she had enough money in the bank for now to take care of things. The green rolling countryside ornamented by scattered groups of stately mature trees was truly beautiful, and that was infinitely more important to her.
The smell of the sea was in the air when she followed a winding uneven track that took her right down to the seashore and a stretch of glorious white deserted beach that disappeared into the distance. With the sun setting in crimson splendour it was breathtaking. The sound of the Atlantic surf breaking against the silence of true isolation enclosed Harriet and she smiled. Tomorrow she would deal with any problems, but this evening was just for celebrating—not only the joyful surprise of ownership but also a new beginning and an independence that she had never known before.
Back at the cottage, she unpacked only the necessities and enjoyed a quick supper of soup and a roll. She thought how comfortable it was not to have to stick to a strict diet or feel the nagging need to retire still hungry from the table. Not having a man
around had advantages, she told herself with determined good cheer as she went into the bedroom: she didn’t care that she had put on weight since breaking up with Luke. She pulled on a floral jersey camisole and matching shorts and sank into the blissfully soft brass bed with a sigh of grateful contentment. Cosy comfort and a full tummy felt good.
It was daylight when she wakened with a jolting start and sat up. From somewhere she could hear a loud clattering and banging noise. Alarm made her tense. Scrambling out of bed, she raced through the kitchen to look out into the stable yard. Her breath tripped in her throat in dismay when she saw the door of Pluto’s stall swinging back on its hinges in the stiff breeze. How the heck had he got out?
Yanking open the back door, she hauled on the muddy Wellington boots she had worn while she walked the boundaries of her land the evening before. As she hurried round the corner of the cottage she was just in time to see Pluto sail like a ship on springs over the fencing that marked the division between the livery yard and the grounds of Flynn Court. Saying a rude word under her breath, Harriet threw herself at the fence and clambered over it to set off in keen pursuit…
CHAPTER TWO
J
UST AFTER DAWN
, Flynn Court was wreathed in a sea-fret that semi-obscured the classic elegance of the great house and concealed the worst of the dilapidation inflicted by decades of neglect. As the sun broke through the mist, Rafael settled his helicopter down on the landing pad situated to the north side of his ancestral home.
Ireland felt cool and airy and fresh after the heat of the Caribbean sun. Emerging from the helicopter, his current lover, Bianca, had a dramatic fit of the shivers and announced that she was freezing. As Rafael had warned her already that accompanying him to the wilds of County Kerry would involve a degree of physical hardship, a total absence of luxury and no exclusive social outlets whatever, he ignored the complaint. On Irish soil he always relaxed, secure in the knowledge that the local community respected
his privacy and that the paparazzi who had finally connected his dual Irish-Italian heritage would receive no assistance and even less encouragement to pry further.
Breakfast was brought up to the master bedroom suite by one of the staff he’d had flown in to make the house ready for occupation the previous week. Barefoot, his shirt hanging open, Rafael sprawled along the window seat with his coffee and feasted his attention on the rolling parkland that ran down to the jagged rocks and the sand dunes that bounded the bay where he had played as a child.
In his father’s home in Italy he had been watched every hour of the day by nannies and bodyguards. The staff had walked in fear of Valente’s violent temper and had restricted Rafael’s play in an effort to protect him from even the smallest injury. Only at Flynn Court had Rafael had the chance to get dirty and paddle, fishing in rock pools and building dams. With his mother too out of it to know what he was doing most of the time, Rafael had run wild and free on the windswept beauty of the beach at the foot of the hill.
‘This is sublime…’ Bianca employed her favourite word, which she used to distinguish everything from a good meal to phenomenal sex and expensive perfume.
Rafael had forgotten her presence. She had little stimulating conversation, so tuning her out was not a challenge. Previously he had decided that the ability to emulate wallpaper was a something in her favour. Now, blonde hair trailing into a flowing mane over one shoulder, she was reclining on the bed. As befitted a supermodel who was internationally renowned for her beauty, she looked as inhumanly perfect as an advertising hoarding. She was posed for maximum effect, her flawless body arrayed in silk lingerie the colour of a café latte, artfully dampened nipples poking through the lace for his admiration. Oozing confidence in her manifold attractions, she stretched out languid legs that were an incredible thirty-six inches long. But Rafael wasn’t a photographer, and he liked his sex a little less choreographed. At this moment he felt nothing and knew that, once again, he had become bored.
Anyway, Bianca’s green eyes, smoky with smudged kohl, were fixed with mesmeric intensity on the true object of her desire. She smiled a Helen of Troy smile of unsurpassable luminosity that lit up the exquisite symmetry of her face. Rafael watched this display of blatant self-love that no mere man—or woman—could ever hope to equal. Bianca shifted position, skimming a light, caressing hand down over the smooth sculpted line of her slender thigh.
She was enthralled to the point of ecstasy by her own beautiful reflection in the eighteenth-century mirror on the wall opposite.
A sudden noise from outside sent Rafael’s attention flying back to the tall sash window. A horse was galloping at breakneck speed across the field below his lawn. His interest was caught; he was a great horse-lover, and the owner of an internationally acclaimed stud farm in Kildare. He stood up for a better view; a flutter of colourful movement behind the lower hedge that bounded the field made him reach for the binoculars on the pier table.
A woman was fighting her way through the hedge. She was wearing a quite bizarre outfit: a camisole and shorts fashioned of fabric decorated with large pink flowers. Pyjamas? Worn with green Wellington boots? An aristocratic black brow climbed. A stray shard of sunshine made her hair shine as bright as polished copper in firelight. It was an amazing colour, red as the richest wine against her pale skin. Could this be the tough and savvy London career woman who had refused to sell the Gallagher property back to the Flynn Court estate? The woman who wanted to downshift to the idyllic illusion of rural simplicity? Rafael grinned. One more dreamer bites the dust….
‘If the mountain won’t come…’ Bianca giggled
and let intimate hands stray below his shirt to trace his muscular back and then sink below his waist.
Rafael’s even white teeth gritted and he shifted to dislodge her. He wasn’t in the mood. After a week on the yacht in which Bianca had entertained his entire crew by walking around nude at every opportunity she had lost all mystery and allure. He had shagged her on the plane to pass the time. Perhaps out of guilt over his essential indifference now that desire had fled. Why did he get bored so easily? Why was the chase always so much more exciting than the sexual catch? But then, honesty urged him to admit, when had he ever had to mount a pursuit to score with a woman? Or employ the tactics of charm and persuasion?
His intent gaze narrowed on the woman charging across the field full tilt. Her firm round breasts bounced with unfettered abandon. The stallion soared like a great bird over the fence onto the rolling lawn. The redhead flung herself sideways over the same barrier, got into difficulties and virtually fell down the other side. She had a generous bottom, shaped like a heart. In fact, he acknowledged, his interest fairly ensnared, the body below that clinging jersey fabric was as lush and ripe with curves as an old-fashioned hourglass. That voluptuous hint of pure feminine abundance was distinctly sexy.
Without any warning, she achieved the effect that Bianca had failed to rouse. His slumbering libido kicked in with a surge of sexual enthusiasm that startled him.
‘There’s a fat woman running round your garden!’ Bianca exclaimed in disbelief.
Fat?
Rafael would have laughed out loud had he not at that moment registered that the stallion was frantically rolling its eyes in fear and panic. In that state of terror the horse was as much a danger to himself as to the foolish woman chasing him. Without hesitation, Rafael raced for the stairs.
‘Pluto…shush, there’s a nice boy,’ Harriet wheezed, struggling to make her voice calm and comforting, but so out of breath that her lungs felt strangled.
Showing the whites of his eyes, Pluto careered round like a crazy mechanical bucking horse, and then he started coming right at her and she froze. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of sudden movement, but that was the only warning she got before she was snatched off her feet and pinned face down to the damp ground, her ribcage momentarily squashed flat beneath a powerful masculine body. The thunder of hooves passing too close to her ears for comfort made her appreciate that she had very nearly been trampled.
‘Stay here,’ an accented male voice growled, and the weight on her back lifted again as he tugged Pluto’s head collar from her loosened grasp.
Harriet flipped over and watched him approach the sweating, snorting stallion. He was very tall and his movements were incredibly quiet, assured and graceful. His black hair was cropped short, his feet bare in the dew-wet grass. His blue shirt fluttered back in the morning breeze from the soft, well-worn denims that hugged his narrow hips and long powerful thighs to reveal a hair-roughened bronze torso that was as sleek and hard with muscle as the proverbial six-pack. She flushed at her straying attention and then noted that he was talking softly to Pluto. He knew his way around horses all right. The huge stallion trembled. The man reached up and, still talking with soothing cool, slowly and deftly slipped on Pluto’s head collar. In silence she watched as the stallion calmed down beneath much firmer handling than she would have dared to attempt.
Prior to this point she had only seen her rescuer’s bronzed profile, and now she saw him face-on. Her blue eyes widened and her heart began a slow, heavy beat that echoed her growing tension. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and for an instant she thought there was something eerily familiar about that stunning bone structure of his. Frowning, she discarded that
unlikely notion, but still she stared at him, drinking in every vibrant aspect of him with a hunger that was startlingly new to her. His high cheekbones framed brilliant, dark golden eyes, divided by a strong masculine nose and completed by an aggressive jawline.
‘Thank you,’ Harriet said unevenly.
‘So you’re the lady who is planning to get back to nature and raise organic vegetables on my doorstep,’ he husked. ‘I’m Rafael Flynn.’
‘Harriet Carmichael.’ Only when she encountered that mocking scrutiny did she finally recall that she was wearing her comfy floral pyjamas, which could not be said to flatter the fuller figure. Her face coloured up and burned with embarrassment. She was furious with herself for blushing. After all, only a bikini would have shown more flesh. ‘Sorry about all the fuss. I don’t know how Pluto got out—’
‘If your horse had strayed onto the road he would be dead,’ Rafael Flynn slotted in smoothly.
Feeling that it was grossly insensitive to point out the obvious, Harriet stiffened defensively and resisted the urge to inform him that Pluto did not belong to her. Technically the stallion had been in her charge, and she was not one to duck responsibility. ‘But fortunately he didn’t,’ she countered tightly, while also trying not to wonder how long Pluto would have had to hang around the very quiet road to get run over by passing traffic.
A weather-beaten older man in a dark suit hurried round the side of the house towards them and came forward to take charge of the stallion. ‘Tolly will ensure that Pluto is brought back to you in a horsebox,’ Rafael Flynn asserted.
Harriet bit her lip, feeling like a schoolgirl being rebuked for imprudent behaviour. She would dearly have loved to seize hold of Pluto herself and frogmarch him back to his stable. But there were too many barriers to be cleared, and she was too sensible to even consider taking such a risk with a horse too powerful for her to hold. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced.’
‘Relax…I would have been gutted had I missed out on those enchanting pyjamas,’ Rafael murmured silkily.
His heavily lidded dark eyes roamed with unashamed intent over the jutting swell of her ripe breasts and lingered there with wicked appreciation before he directed his attention back up to the wonderfully voluptuous promise of her full-lipped pink mouth. If it had not been for Bianca he would have invited his neighbour to join him for breakfast in bed. At the same time, he knew that with regard to Harriet Carmichael he had to take care of business first. He never, ever allowed anything to deflect him from his goal. And she was in for a rough and rocky passage if she continued to oppose him.
Wholly unprepared for his comment and appraisal, and interpreting both as derisive amusement, Harriet flung him a look of angry disconcertion. ‘Very funny. Don’t let me keep you!’
Taken aback by that inept response to a mildly flirtatious comment, Rafael frowned as Bianca chose that inopportune moment to stroll out of the house. ‘The countryside is sublime,’ she sighed, invading his space.