LITMIR.BIZ

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‘I suppose that’s true.’

      Not but you’re desirable, Lotty. Not I think you’re wrong. I find beautiful women very desirable.

      Well, what had she expected? Lotty chewed glumly on the second half of her sandwich. It was stupid to feel disappointed because he didn’t think that she was desirable.

      A pedestal could be a cold and lonely place. Thousands of people said they thought she was beautiful. Thousands loved her. But would they still love her, still want her, if they really knew her? Lotty wondered. If they could get past the mystique of royalty, past the security guards, past the rigid protocol of palace?

      Lotty longed for someone to want her enough to try.

      She longed to be desired, not for her title or her wealth, but for her body. She longed to know what it was like to love a man, to know what every other woman, it seemed, knew. What was the point of being beautiful if you could get to twenty-eight having barely been kissed? Lotty had never met a man who wasn’t intimidated by the suffocating etiquette that surrounded her in Montluce. Sometimes it felt as if she was the only twenty-eight-year-old virgin in the world.

      Dispiritedly, Lotty finished her sandwich and brushed the crumbs from her hands. Beside her, Corran was drinking his coffee, his eyes narrowed at the hills across the loch. The fingers around the mug looked very strong. He had a farmer’s hands, square and capable and scarred with nicks and scratches. There was a focused quality to him, a forcefulness that sharpened the air around him and made it impossible to ignore even the smallest detail: the flat hairs at his wrist, the plaster dust in his hair, the creases edging his eyes.

      He sat easily on the rock, long legs thrust ahead of him into the shingle, dusty boots crossed at the ankle. Never in a million years would Lotty have that assurance, that sense of being utterly at home in one’s skin. Corran McKenna wasn’t a man who would be intimidated by anything. If he wanted something, he would go out and get it.

      He wouldn’t care about mystique. If Corran wanted her, he wouldn’t think twice about brushing aside her close protection team and knocking down her pedestal.

      If Corran wanted to lose his virginity, he wouldn’t bleat about how difficult it was to meet the right person. He wouldn’t feel overwhelmed by ignorance or insecurity. He would reach out with those big hands and take what he wanted.

      Lotty’s mouth went dry and she swallowed, yanking her eyes away from that ruggedly uncompromising profile. It had taken all her courage to jump off her safe, lonely pedestal for a while. She might be descended from the likes of Raoul the Wolf and Léopold Longsword, but she wasn’t brave enough to take the next step just yet.

      She tipped the last of her coffee onto the shingle. ‘I think I’d better get back to work,’ she said in a hollow voice.

      Afterwards, Lotty was never sure how she got through that first week at Loch Mhoraigh House. She had been tired before, but never with that bone-deep physical weariness that left her feeling leaden and light-headed at the same time.

      Determined to prove Corran wrong that first day, she shut the doors and windows of the cottage once the midges gathered at four o’clock and began stripping off the peeling and faded wallpaper until her arms ached and her eyes bulged with exhaustion. Her grandmother had brought her up to do whatever needed to be done without complaint, and Lotty was going to stay there until she was finished.

      ‘What are you still doing here?’ Corran stomped into the cottage, slapping irritably at the midges. He had finished baling half an hour ago, and had expected to find Lotty back at the house. Having to come and find her had done nothing to improve his temper.

      Slamming the door behind him, he took in Lotty, who was halfway up a stepladder, swaying alarmingly as she scraped at the sitting room wall. There were curls of wallpaper clinging to her scarf, and what little he could see of her face through the layer of grime was smudged with exhaustion. ‘For God’s sake, woman, get off that ladder before you fall off!’

      ‘You told me I had to get the cottage ready for painting.’

      ‘I didn’t tell you to spend all night in here!’

      ‘I will if that’s what it takes.’ Lotty jutted her chin at him in a stubborn gesture he was already finding familiar. ‘There’s no point in wasting the light when the evenings are long like this.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Corran snapped. ‘You’re dead on your feet.’

      ‘I’m all right,’ she said, which was so patently untrue that he didn’t even bother to argue.

      ‘What about the dog?’ He glared down at Pookie, who was scrabbling at his knees in the usual fawning welcome. Like Lotty, the dog was filthy, his white coat grey with dust and tangled with scraps of wallpaper and other rubbish. ‘I don’t suppose it occurred to you that he might need to be fed?’

      As he’d intended, Lotty was instantly guilty. ‘No, I didn’t think of it. Sorry, Pookie.’ She looked back at Corran. ‘I don’t suppose you could take him back with you and feed him now, while I finish this?’

      ‘You suppose right,’ he said. ‘I want you to stop being so stubborn and come back to the house before you collapse.’

      It was amazing how a mouth that looked so soft could set in such an implacable line. ‘I want to finish this job.’

      Corran had had enough. ‘If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to sack you, and then you won’t have a job.’ He jabbed his finger at her. ‘Now, you get off that ladder right now or I’ll come and drag you down myself!’

      There was no mistaking that tone of voice. Lotty scrambled down from the ladder without another word. Nobody had ever spoken to her like that before and, even through her exhaustion, she was conscious of a flicker of shameful excitement. It was almost worth provoking Corran’s temper to have the satisfaction of being treated so unlike a princess!

      And the truth was that she wasn’t sorry to be forced to stop. After a sixteen-mile walk the previous day, a sleepless night and the day’s hard physical work, she was so tired she couldn’t even muster the energy to brush the midges away, and she stumbled over her own feet until Corran took her arm in a hard grip.

      ‘You are one stubborn woman, you know that?’ he growled. ‘Why don’t you just admit that it’s all too much for you?’

      ‘Because it’s not. I’m fine, honestly.’

      ‘You can’t even walk straight! This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen,’ he said grouchily. ‘I haven’t got time to worry about what sort of state you’re in, you know. I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing if I have to wonder about whether you’ve collapsed in a heap somewhere because you’ve got no idea how to be sensible!’

      He harangued Lotty all the way back to the house, although she was too tired to take in much of it. As soon as they were inside and could shut the midges out, he let go of her arm and she slumped against the wall without his support. It was all she could do not to slide onto the floor with Pookie, who was yapping hysterically at the prospect of being fed.

      Corran looked from one to the other as if unable to decide which of them was more exasperating. ‘You!’ He pointed at the dog. ‘Shut up! And you,’ he added to Lotty, jerking his finger at the ceiling, ‘go up and have a bath. You’ve got half an hour before supper. And don’t fall asleep in there!’ he shouted after her as she bumped against the wall on her way to the stairs, the prospect of getting clean too delicious to resist.

      The bathroom was draughty and as cheerless as the rest of the house, with linen fold panelling halfway up the walls and lino that curled at the corners. The cast iron tub had claw legs and rusty stains beneath the taps, but to Lotty it beat any five star bathroom hands down. She sank into the hot water with a groan of pleasure.

      It felt as if every millimetre of her was caked with grime. Holding her breath, she squeezed her eyes shut and sank below the surface, to emerge smiling

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