Free All for You by Lynn Kurland Page B

irritating in the extreme. She watched him put her suitcase in the boot of his car, then walk around to the passenger side and open the door. He said nothing, he merely gestured for her to get in.
    She stopped on the driver’s side of the car. “Look,” she said, realizing that she was looking a nattily dressed gift horse in the mouth, but unable to stop herself, “you de Piaget men have this really annoying habit of bossing people around. My sisters may have to put up with it, but I’m not going to.”
    He looked at her evenly. “It is just a ride up the way, Miss Alexander.”
    She stuck her chin out. “I don’t need a ride.” Actually it had come out
I-I-I d-d-don’t n-n-need a r-r-r-ide
, but she didn’t suppose any of the topiaries were taking note of her chattering teeth. Professor de Piaget, however, was no doubt taking note of the same, to use against her at an inopportune moment.
    He stared at her for another minute or two in silence, then shrugged and walked around the back of the car. She wanted to ask him bitterly if he was going to pull her suitcase out of his trunk and hand it back to her before he continued on his way, but she didn’t have time before he was shrugging out of what had to have been an obscenely expensive overcoat.
    He draped it around her shoulders, then walked back around the passenger side of his car. He didn’t even glance her way before he simply got in.
    Peaches frowned. She also pulled the coat around her with a gingerness its owner didn’t deserve. It was cashmere, after all.
    The driver’s side door opened, making her jump back. She managed to find the only ankle-deep puddle in the area, apparently, but by landing in it instead of on her backside saved Stephen’s coat and her trousers. She suppressed the urge to swear and bent down to peer into the car.
    “What are you doing?” she asked.
    Stephen leaned over and looked up at her. “You don’t want to ride,” he said, “so I thought you might rather drive.”
    Peaches thought she might have more success guiding the space shuttle than his car, but perhaps now was not the time to say as much. His very expensive Mercedes was beckoning to her with all the irresistible charms of a male Siren; she could feel the warmth pouring out of the door from where she stood. She took a step forward, then made a last grasp for the remaining vestiges of reason and good sense.
    “I’ll ruin your seats.”
    “They’re leather. I daresay they were subjected to worse when they were still on the cow.”
    Peaches caught her breath. He had probably made steaks out of the rest of that cow—which she would think about later—but she had to admit he did have a point. She glanced up at the rapidly darkening sky and thought that perhaps she might do well to get out of the weather before she caught her death.
    Her feet made a sucking sound as she pulled them free of themuck, though, which made her rethink her enthusiasm to fall into the Mercedes’s seductive embrace. She put her hand on the door and the edge of the roof for support, then took another look at the immaculate insides of Stephen’s car. They would be forever sullied if she put her muddy, sopping self inside. She leaned over again and looked at him.
    “I could sit on the roof,” she offered.
    “Please, no.”
    “But—”
    “Please, Miss Alexander,” he said, sounding as if he had only one nerve left and she was getting on it, “just get in before we both spend the rest of this damned weekend sneezing.”
    Well, he didn’t sound all that enthusiastic about her fairy-tale-in-the-making, but maybe his invitation hadn’t been as nice as hers, or one of his girlfriends had let him know she wasn’t going to be attending. For all she knew, the fare was going to be strictly vegetarian and Stephen was mourning the future lack of animal fats adorning his plate. What did she know about British nobility apart from her uncanny knowledge of their ranks thanks to Aunt Edna’s