Free What His Money Can’t Hide by Maggie Cox Page B

taken the news of his plans for the street well. Yet it hadn’t affected the powerful allure she still had for him.
Damn it all to hell!
Layla Jerome had put a spell on him … either that or he had somehow lost his mind.
    The decision to return to the place of his birth to help regenerate the area was seriously backfiring on him. The
very
last thing he’d expected to happen was that he should end up seriously lusting after a beautiful local girl that worked in a café.
    He’d come back to Mayfair after finishing work that evening, but he’d neither eaten nor showered. His mind, body and senses had been too caught up in a tornado of longing and lust to accomplish either of those fundamental things so he had headed out to a hotel bar he knew in a bid to hopefully distract himself. Eating held no appeal when there was so much churning going on in the pit of his stomach, and he hadn’t showered because he didn’t want to wash away the alluring scent of Layla’s body. Her seductive smell was all over him, and if he shut his eyes he could recall the wonderful sensation of her soft velvety skin beneath his fingertips and the incredible taste of her sexy mouth …
    A bolt of inflammatory need shot straight to his loins and Drake silently cursed the ill-timed inconvenience of it. Even though she’d firmly told him that she wasn’t interested in a sexual fling that would last only a few days or weeks he was still hoping to get her into bed soon. She’d asserted that she wanted to get to know him, but he knew if he let her she would probably beextremely uneasy with the taciturn, insecure man behind the glamorous and successful reputation—a man who was still too haunted by his past to be anywhere near comfortable with the idea of making a serious commitment to a woman.
    Glancing impatiently down at his watch, and seeing that it was much later than he’d thought, he lifted the glass he’d put beside him on the bar and drank down the remaining contents in one hit. Even though Layla had been less than warm towards him when he’d dropped her off at the café, Drake had insisted he would ring her, and if he left it any later he knew he probably wouldn’t get to speak to her at all tonight.
    ‘Had a bad day?’
    He glanced round in surprise at the shapely blonde who lowered herself onto the barstool next to him. She wore a fitted silver-grey suit over a dark red shirt with a revealing neckline, displaying enough décolletage to start a small stampede.
Except that the provocative sight left Drake completely cold
. There was only one woman he would head up a small stampede for and that was Layla.
    ‘It wasn’t all bad,’ he drawled laconically, getting to his feet, ‘there were definitely some highlights.’
    ‘You’re not leaving?’
    The pneumatic blonde didn’t try to hide her disappointment. But once on his feet Drake knew emphatically what was next on his personal agenda—and it wasn’t whiling away the evening in a bar making small talk with a woman who was clearly on the lookout for a profitable sexual encounter with someone.
    ‘I’m afraid I am. Have a nice evening,’ he murmured,the automatic half-smile that touched his lips quickly fading because all he could think about was getting back home and phoning Layla.
    ‘She’s gone to bed?’
    On receiving this astounding information from Layla’s brother Marc, Drake stopped stirring the mug of strong black coffee he’d made and turned round to lean back against the marble-topped counter in the kitchen.
    Feeling stunned and aggrieved at the same time, he couldn’t help the irritation that seeped into his reply. ‘What do you mean, she’s gone to bed? It’s barely after ten.’
    ‘She’s never been able to hack staying up late. She’s a real morning person.’
    ‘And how is it that you’re answering her mobile? Is she staying with you at the moment?’
    ‘We share a house. I have the ground floor and Layla the top. Didn’t she tell you