home for example—and a few tissues, she walked carefully back to the hall, opening her front door and then making her way down the wide staircase which led to the lobby.
The old Victorian house had been converted to three fairly large flats, one on each floor. The ground floor flat was owned by a retired couple with a massive German Shepherd called Arnie who had a howl like a wolf’s. This was the biggest apartment, having three bedrooms and its own tiny garden. Cory’s flat and the one above each had two bedrooms and a large balcony off the sitting room French windows. The young married couple above her had made their balcony into a miniature garden, but Cory’s contained a small table and two chairs and a large lacy palm in a big pot and that was all. Her work sometimes involved excruciatingly long hours for a couple of weeks or so and if a problem occurred in one of the families she was assigned to the last thing she wanted to worry about was watering plants.
She was concentrating so hard on descending gracefully, balanced as she was on her giddily high, needle-thin heels, that she didn’t lift her head until she’d reached the safety of the tiled floor of the small entrance lobby.
‘Wow.’
The deep male voice brought her head turning. Nick Morgan was leaning against the far wall, hands thrust in his pockets and black hair slicked back from his brow. He looked like something every red-blooded woman from the age of sixteen to sixty would love to find in their Christmas stocking. An exquisitely cut dinner jacket sat on shoulders broad enough to satisfy even the most demanding female, and the smile lighting up his blue eyes was electric.
Cory forgot to breathe as he walked towards her, only managing to mumble, ‘Hello,’ at the last moment.
‘You look sensational.’
‘Do I?’ Oh, come on, you can do better than that. She wasn’t totally without the ability of social repartee. She took hold of herself, adding, ‘Thank you, you look pretty good yourself,’ with a coolness she hoped he didn’t know was completely feigned.
His gaze moved over her hair, eyes made up to look huge, and carefully painted lips, and there was a faint note of surprise in his voice when he said, ‘You’ll set tongues wagging tonight. They’ll all want to know where I found you.’
He made it sound as though she was a stranded puppy he’d brought in from the cold. She forced a smile, saying lightly, ‘I think it was the other way round, don’t you? Or rather, it was Rufus who did the finding.’ And then, because his comment really had caught her on the raw for some reason, she added sweetly, ‘Perhaps it would be better if we didn’t explain I had to pick you up from the floor.’ She hadn’t, not exactly, but if ever there was justification in stretching a point, Cory felt this was it.
He blinked, just once, but she knew she’d taken him aback. The smile dimmed a little for one thing. ‘Quite.’ He took her elbow. ‘Shall we go?’
That had set the boundaries quite nicely; at least she hoped so. There was no way she was going to let this man patronise her, even if he did have the clout to take half of London to Templegate as his guests. Wealth did not equate to lordship, not in her book.
Once outside, even the heavily laden city fumes couldn’t obliterate the beauty of a perfect June evening. The air was soft and warm, the buzz of the city lazy and evocative. Cory felt a little thrill of anticipation she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of just minutes before.
Instead of the taxi she’d been expecting, she found herself led to a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. After seating her inside the vehicle, Nick Morgan joined her. ‘Templegate, please, George,’ he said easily, before settling himself more comfortably beside her. She could feel the imprint of a hard male thigh against her hip but didn’t dare move. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking he bothered her in any way—if he was thinking along those lines, which he probably wasn’t, of course.
Burningly aware of the way the slits in the dress revealed a tantalising amount of leg, Cory tried to think of something else. Nothing came to mind.
Too late she realised he’d said something and she’d missed it. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said politely.
‘I asked you if you’d been to Templegate before.’
It was slightly