Free The Heir From Nowhere by Trish Morey Page A

he took her in. He snapped the phone shut. ‘What took you so long?’ he said as he reached for her bag and this time she almost did let fly with a few choice words. Until she saw the turned up lips and felt the urge to hit him instead. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
    ‘What’s so funny?’
    ‘You are. I thought the mouse was going to roar again.’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘Doesn’t matter.’
    He took her bag and their hands brushed and she felt that unwanted sizzle of electricity again. His smile evaporated instantaneously.
    ‘Don’t do that!’ she said.
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘Don’t touch me.’
    ‘My pleasure,’ he said, his lips tight as he led her to his car, clearly unhappy to be lumbered with her. But that wasn’t her problem.
    Her problem was him.
    She’d been furious. Blood-spitting furious. And then with one comment, one tiny tweak of his lips, she’d felt the rug pulled out from beneath her, leaving her senses reeling and her thought processes scrambled.
    He’d smiled and she’d faltered and lost her train of thought along with her anger, even with that mouse reference? Was that how he thought of her? A mouse? Little, drab and ordinary.
And clearly amusing.
She bristled, not sure if she resented the fact he thought she was drab and amusing, even if she was to someone like him, more than the fact he seemed to occupy more than his fair share of the car. And what he didn’t cover with his significant frame, his damn scent filled the rest.
    Spicy and warm, woody and real.
    Real.
    There was that word again. She remembered she’d thought it the first time she’d seen him smile. Strange. She couldn’t remember ever thinking it about any man before. Maybe it was because he was so unreal in so many ways. His obvious wealth. His mountain-likedemeanour. The way he dominated a room or a restaurant or any other space just by being there. Maybe that was why she noticed it when he reminded her he was just a man.
    Just a man?
    Who was she trying to kid? He was unlike any man she’d ever met before. He had presence and power and the ability to set her skin alight with just the brush of his fingers. She shivered. He made her feel uncomfortable on so many levels and she didn’t like it. She didn’t want to feel so vulnerable and so aware of any man, married or not. After Shayne, she had sworn off men for ever.
    Every last one of them.
Especially the arrogant ones who wanted to rule her life. And especially the ones with black-as-night eyes who laughed at secret jokes at her expense.
    Damn the man! She squirmed in her seat, the car filled with the scent of him, desperately needing a distraction.
    ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked in the stony silence, when they had left the side streets of Sherwill far behind and were heading east along the ribbon of highway towards the city. The traffic was busier now, close to peak hour, the tailbacks longer.
    ‘You’ll see.’
    ‘What if I don’t like it?’
    ‘You’ll like it,’ was all he offered, before he turned the radio on to the news channel, terminating the conversation. The stock market closing reports came on and Angie expected he’d change the channel, like Shayne had always done if he’d happened to stumble across it accidentally while flipping through the stations, but he didn’t. He hung on every word. She tried to make senseof it but clearly they were speaking another language and she tuned out.
    ‘What is it you actually do?’ she asked when the report had finished and he’d turned the volume down again, the city closer now, the buildings in the distance ahead growing taller.
    ‘The simple version? I invest.’
    ‘What does that mean, exactly?’
    ‘I play the share market. I buy shares low and sell them higher.’
    She thought about it for a moment. ‘So you don’t actually make anything.’
    ‘I make money and I use it to buy other things. Office blocks. Shopping centres.’
    ‘I get it.’ She wasn’t sure why but the