LITMIR.BIZ

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knot of bitterness inside Holly tightened. If there was one thing she loathed, it was being made fun of. Belittled. Mocked.

      ‘How do you do, Miss, er...?’ He glanced at his housekeeper, who had come in behind Holly, for a prompt.

      ‘Miss Perez,’ Sophia said. ‘Hollyanne.’

      ‘Holly,’ Holly said with a black look.

      Julius offered his hand. ‘How do you do, Holly?’

      She glared at his hand as if he’d just offered her a viper. ‘Keep your hands to yourself.’

      Natalia entered his office sounding a little flustered. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Dr Ravensdale, but I had to take an urgent call about another client—’

      Holly swung around and frowned at Natalia. ‘Doctor? You didn’t tell me he was a doctor. You said he was a computer geek.’

      The caseworker gave Julius a pained smile before addressing Holly. ‘Dr Ravensdale has a PhD in astrophysics. It’s polite to call him by his correct title, if that’s what he prefers.’

      Holly swung back to look at Julius. ‘What do you want me to call you? Sir? Master? Oh Mighty Learned One? Your Royal Tightness?’

      His lips twitched as if he was fighting back a reluctant smile. ‘Julius will be fine.’

      ‘As in Caesar?’

      ‘As it turns out, yes.’

      ‘You’re into Shakespeare?’ Holly said it as if it was a noxious disease from which she had so far managed to escape contamination. No point letting him think she was anything but what he had already judged her as: uneducated and unsophisticated. Trailer trash.

      ‘No, but my parents are.’

      ‘Why’d you agree to have me here?’ she said, eye-balling him.

      ‘I didn’t want you here,’ he said. ‘But my current domestic circumstances made it impossible for me to refuse.’

      Holly folded her arms across her chest. ‘I can’t cook,’ she said with an obdurate ‘so what are you going to do about that?’ look.

      ‘I’m sure you can learn.’

      ‘And I hate housework,’ she said. ‘It’s sexist expecting women to clean up after you. Just because I’ve got boobs and ovaries doesn’t mean I—’

      ‘Point taken,’ he said quickly. So quickly Holly wondered if he was worried she was going to list all of her feminine assets. ‘However, you need to do your stint of community service,’ he continued. ‘I need some help around the house until Sophia gets better. It’s win-win.’

      Holly made a harrumphing noise and unwound her locked arms, turning her gaze to the caseworker. ‘Have you done a police check on him to make sure he’s the real deal?’

      ‘I can assure you, Holly, Dr Ravensdale is a totally trustworthy guardian,’ the caseworker said.

      Holly pushed her bottom lip out like a drawer as she swung back to size Julius up. ‘Do you drink?’

      ‘Socially.’

      ‘Smoke?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Drugs?’

      ‘No.’

      Holly upped her brazenness another notch. ‘Sex?’

      ‘Holly...’ the caseworker began.

      ‘What?’ Holly asked with a petulant scowl.

      ‘You’re embarrassing Dr Ravensdale.’

      ‘I’m not embarrassed,’ Julius said. ‘But I’m also not going to answer such an impertinent question.’

      Holly coughed out a laugh. ‘Which means you’re not getting any, right?’

      He stared her down with a look that made her insides feel wobbly. He didn’t look the type of man to go too long between drinks. He looked the type of man who could take his pick of women. She could feel his sensual allure like a force field. Her mind ran wild with images of him getting down to business. He wouldn’t be one for a quick, sleazy grope. He would take his time. He would know his way around a woman’s body. He would know how to send female senses spinning into the stratosphere. She could see it in the darkly confident glint of his gaze. ‘While we’re on the topic,’ he said, ‘I would appreciate it if you would abstain from bringing men here for the purpose of having intimate relations with them.’

      ‘So...you get to have sex but I don’t? That is...’ Holly dropped her voice to a deliberately husky purr ‘...unless we have it with each other?’

      ‘I have to get going,’ the caseworker said as her phone buzzed with an incoming message. ‘Holly, I hope you’ll behave yourself while you’re here. This is your last chance, don’t forget. If this fails you know where you’ll be going.’

      ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Holly said with a bored flicker of her eyelids as she turned to look at the view from one of the windows next to a wall of bookshelves. She didn’t want to go to prison but neither did she want to be exploited by yet another man who assumed he had some sort of power over her. If Julius Ravensdale wanted a plaything, why hadn’t he cut one from the herd? The herd he belonged to—the ‘beautiful people’ herd. She wasn’t even his type. How could she be, with her cheap chain-store clothes? Not to mention her background. The background she was still trying to escape. It clung to her like thick axle grease. No amount of washing and cleansing and sanitising would remove it.

      Julius Ravensdale came from money. She could see it in the way he dressed, in the way he held himself with supreme confidence, with cool and collected authority. She could see it in the furnishings he surrounded himself with: the priceless paintings, the books and the hand-woven floor coverings. He hadn’t lived his childhood in sweat-soaked fear. He hadn’t had to fight for survival. He’d had everything handed to him on a gilt-edged platter. Why was he agreeing to have her here if not to make use of her? She clenched her back teeth in determination. He would not use her.

      She would use him first.

      * * *

      ‘I’ll call each day to see how she’s getting on,’ the caseworker said to Julius as she shook his hand. ‘It’s very good of you to commit to this programme. It’s helped many people turn their lives around.’

      ‘I’m sure everything will be fine,’ Julius assured her. ‘Sophia will do most of the mentoring.’

      ‘All the same, it’s very kind of you to open your home like this.’

      ‘It’s a big house,’ he said. Maybe not big enough.

      Julius turned once Sophia had escorted the caseworker out of his office to find Holly looking at him with a flinty gaze. ‘How much are they paying you to have me?’ she said.

      ‘I’ve told them to donate the fee to charity.’

      ‘Big of you.’

      He leaned against the windowsill behind his desk with his hands balanced either side of his hips to study her. It was a casual pose that belied the havoc her presence caused to his senses. He could feel the blood humming through his veins in a way it hadn’t since he’d been a teenager. He looked down at her upturned, defiant face with its flashing caramel-brown gaze and sulky cherry-red mouth. A tiny diamond winked from the side of her right nostril. The bridge of her retroussé nose was dusted with freckles that reminded him of nutmeg sprinkled on top of a dessert. But that was about as far as he could go with the sweetness description. She looked sour and bitter and ready for a fight.

      Something about her blatant rudeness made everything that was cultured in Julius stiffen. Not, perhaps, the best choice of word, he thought wryly as he scanned her impudent features. But her rudeness wasn’t the only thing that was blatant about her.

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