LOVE IS FOR THE LUCKY

  SUSANNE McCARTHY-LOVE IS FOR THE LUCKY

  “Relax.” Griff’s deep voice was seductive

  And it was hard to resist. “You’re a very attractive woman,” he added.

  “Don’t.” Ros almost flinched away from him. “I hate that sort of stupid attempt at flattery.”

  A flash of annoyance lit his eyes. “I’m not flattering you,” he retorted bluntly. “Of course, you’re not beautiful—I didn’t say you were. You don’t need to be—your effect on men has nothing at all to do with having a pretty face.”

  She felt her cheeks flush and looked away quickly. “I… I don’t know what you mean,” she protested.

  “No?” he laughed softly. “I don’t think I can be the only one to sense it—it’s like a fire inside you.”

  His hand slid slowly down her back, holding her far too close for modesty.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘IN THE North there will be more snow over high ground. Many roads over the Pennines are blocked. Police and motoring organisations advise drivers to stay at home unless their journey is absolutely necessary.’

  ‘Thank you’, muttered Ros, turning off the car radio. Conditions hadn’t been too bad on the motorway—a snow-plough and the weight of traffic had cleared two lanes all the way from Derbyshire, where the snowfall had started. But from the time she had turned off the main road the going had been getting increasingly difficult. And now it was getting dark.

  She should be home soon—so long as the car didn’t break down. When had she last had it serviced? Not recently, she admitted wryly to herself. It was time she thought about trading it in, really—for one with a decent heater!

  She was warm enough, though, huddled up in her serviceable old duffel coat, with a woolly hat pulled down hard over her wild ginger curls. The hands that gripped the steering-wheel were snug in a pair of ancient knitted gloves that she had found—they must have gone through a hole in the pocket of the duffel coat, and been nestling in the lining for years.

  She should have stayed in London—one of her old schoolfriends lived there now, and would have gladly

  put her up. But she had been anxious to get home. She didn’t like London at the best of times; she had only gone down to have lunch with her publisher, to celebrate the acceptance of her fourth novel, another political thriller set amid the glitter and intrigue of the court of the first Elizabeth. But something she had read in the paper that morning had given her the germ of an idea for her next plot, and already some complex twists were forming themselves in her mind.

  Suddenly a dark figure loomed up in the head¬lights. She braked sharply, and the tyres slithered on the ice. It was clear that there had been an accident— she could see the offside rear of a light-coloured car that had run off the road at the bend, and buried itself in a snowdrift. Already the fluttering white flakes were beginning to cover it. Suppressing her natural dislike of strangers, she leaned over and opened the passenger door.

  He climbed in stiffly, muttering a thank you in a voice that was thick with cold. He had a black leather travelling-bag that he put on the back seat. Before he closed the door she had a fleeting impression of a tall frame, a dark coat—sheepskin?—with the collar turned up, and damp black hair receding slightly from a high intelligent forehead.

  She slid the car into gear, and drove on carefully. Her passenger had stripped off his gloves, and was trying to warm his hands over the inefficient heater-vent. Ros flickered a swift glance at them. They were well-made hands with long, slender fingers, and his wrists were strong with a smattering of dark hair across the backs. But it was his watch that made her

  look twice—it was either a very expensive Cartier tank-watch or a good fake.

  After a while she came to the conclusion that, if she waited for him to start the conversation, she would wait all night, so she asked in a pleasant tone, ‘How long have you been there?’

  ‘It seems like hours, but it’s probably no more than ten or fifteen minutes.’

  The accent was American. What on earth was a rich American doing driving around the wilds of Yorkshire in this weather? It wasn’t exactly the tourist season. ‘What happened to your car?’ she enquired. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No, I’m OK. Didn’t see the bend,’ he answered succinctly.

  ‘It’s a bad night to be driving if you don’t know the road,’ she said. ‘It can get nasty up here very sud¬denly. One minute it’s nice and sunny, the next fog or snow comes down and everything grinds to a halt.’

  ‘You’d think the Brits would be ready for it—they do nothing but talk about the weather,’ he drawled.

  Her eyes flashed indignantly. Damn tourist! She abandoned her attempt to be pleasant, and fixed all her attention on her driving. It was still snowing lightly, and the wind was drifting the snow against the dry-stone walls that lined the road. But she had lived up here in the Yorkshire Dales all her life, and she knew every inch of the way, so she could still make good time.

  The man beside her began to seem a little restless. ‘Listen, lady, if you don’t mind me saying so, do you really have to drive quite so fast?’ he enquired.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she reassured him. ‘I know these roads like the back of my hand. And I’d like to get home before the weather gets any worse.’

  ‘Oh-h. Still, if it’s all the same to you, I’d kind of like to get home in one piece.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded, needled. ‘Don’t you trust my driving?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I just ain’t too keen on women drivers,’ he told her bluntly.

  Of all the cheek! ‘I can assure you, you’re perfectly safe with me,’ she retorted, an acid edge to her voice. ‘I’ve been driving for years, and I’ve never had an accident.’

  ‘Well, I guess that might be reassuring,’ he drawled lazily. ‘But it surely can’t have been too many years? What are you—twenty two? Twenty-three?’

  ‘I’m twenty-seven,’ she told him coldly, ‘and I passed my test when I was seventeen—first time! And if you don’t like my driving, you can always get out and walk!’ Her anger lent a sharp edge to her voice. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was that patronising, ‘helpless little woman’ attitude. She had to put up with enough of that, living in a small Yorkshire village, where the men still thought they were living in the nineteenth century.

  Her passenger seemed to find her annoyance a source of amusement. ‘Oh, I don’t think I’d care to do that,’ he drawled. ‘Anyway, you seem to be doing OK so far.”

  ‘Besides, who was the one who drove his car into a snowdrift?’ she couldn’t resist pointing out.

  He chuckled with laughter. ‘Touchef he acknowl¬edged. ‘OK, lady—you drive and I’ll shut up.’

  Actually, he had quite a nice voice—deep and sort of velvety. She allowed herself to relax a little. ‘Where are you going, anyway?’ she asked him.

  ‘I’m heading for a place called Arnby Bridge.’

  ‘Arnby Bridge?’ She risked taking her eyes off the road for a fraction of a second to try to get a look at his face. ‘Why on earth are you going there?’

  He smiled at her astonishment. ‘I’ve just bought a house there.’

  ‘So it’s you!’ There was a note of accusation in her voice that he picked up at once.

  ‘If you’re talking about the Priory, then yes, it’s me,’ he admitted, one eyebrow raised in quizzical en¬quiry. ‘Do you have some objection?’

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ she demanded, her manners forgotten along with her customary shyness.

  ‘Live in it, of course.’

  Obviously he hadn’t seen it yet! ‘It’s not been lived in for years,’ she warned him.

  ‘Is
it haunted?’

  ‘Haunted? Of course not,’ she responded, puzzled.

  ‘What a pity.’

  She gurgled with laughter. ‘What on earth do you want a ghost for?’ she enquired cautiously.

  ‘To scare off unwelcome guests.’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell them to go away?’

  He laughed cynically. ‘Oh, if only it were that easy!’

  Ros was intrigued. The identity of the Mystery Buyer had been the talk of the whole village for weeks. ‘Whatever made you pick Arnby Bridge?’ she asked curiously. ‘I’m surprised anyone in America has even heard of it.’

  ‘My grandfather was born around here,’ he ex¬plained. ‘His folks took him to America when he was just a kid, but he was always a Yorkshireman at heart—never stopped talking about the place. So when I decided to shift my base of operations to England, it was a natural choice.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’U be so keen once you’ve seen it,’ she mused. ‘It’s a bit off the beaten track.’

  ‘No problem—when the weather’s OK I’ll be using the chopper to commute.’

  He said it in a completely matter-of-fact tone, as if everyone travelled in helicopters all the time. She took a steadying breath, determined not to gawp as if she were impressed. ‘Won’t your wife find it a bit dull while you’re away?’ she queried with casual interest.

  ‘No, lady,’ he informed her in a sardonic drawl. ‘I’m not married.’

  His tone rankled with Ros. As if she cared whether he was married or not! She risked another sideways glance at him. He had turned down the collar of his coat, and she could see his face properly.

  It was a strikingly handsome face, with strongly carved cheekbones and a faintly aquiline nose. His hair had dried a bit, but it was still almost black, cut short and receding slightly over his temples—but that served only to emphasise the classical symmetry of the bone structure. There was definitely arrogance in the firm line of his mouth, but there was an unmis¬takable hint of sensuality, too. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she was aware that they were watching her steadily.

  An odd little frisson of heat shimmered down her spine, and she snatched her gaze away again self¬

  consciously. The last thing she wanted was for this stranger to think he was having some effect on her. She had learned long ago to be wary of good-looking men—learned the hard way.

  She had no illusions about her own lack of beauty. She had the sort of face that people usually described as ‘interesting’, for want of a better word; none of her features seemed quite to fit—her nose was too long, her mouth too wide. And at school they used to call her ‘Olive Oyl’ because she was so tall and skinny.

  But she didn’t mind, not any more. She had come to terms with it, and now she had better things to do than worry about what people thought of her. Shaking off the momentary agitation, she enquired politely, ‘Are you warm enough now?’

  ‘Fine, thank you.’ To her relief, he had stopped looking at her, and relaxed back in his seat. ‘I reckon you saved my life. I thought I was going freeze to death out there.’

  She laughed, relaxing a little too. ‘That would have caused a stir,’ she remarked audaciously. ‘Mind you, you’ve created quite a stir already. Everyone’s been dying to know who’d bought the Priory. It’s been odds on in the bar at the White Hart that it was going to be turned into a health farm.’

  ‘Heaven forbid!’

  ‘Or else that it had been bought by one of those weirdo religious set-ups.’ She shot him an anxious look. ‘You aren’t, are you?’

  He burst out laughing. ‘No, I am not!’

  ‘Only it was all so mysterious,’ she explained. ‘Why did you keep it such a secret?’

  ‘I like to guard my privacy.’

  She nodded—that was something she could under¬stand. ‘Have you actually seen the house yet?’ she asked him.

  ‘No—only a batch of photographs. Quite a ruin, by the look of it. But 1 understand the builders have made good headway with the renovations. I don’t think I’ll have to rough it too much.’

  ‘You’re not going to spoil it, are you?’ she enquired wistfully.

  ‘Not at all, I hope.’ He didn’t seem to mind her intrusive questioning. ‘I’m aiming to restore most of it as authentically as possible—it’s had some real bad alterations done to it over the years. But I shall be putting in a few modern conveniences, too—I’m afraid us Yanks are too used to our creature comforts to do without,’ he added, an inflection of sardonic humour in his voice. ‘I’ve got to have central heating.’

  ‘Central heating!’ Ros sighed with envy, thinking of her own draughty old cottage.

  ‘Is that permitted?’ he requested teasingly.

  ‘Oh, I think so.’ She slanted him a quick smile. He smiled back, and her heart lurched. His smile had an almost irresistible charm, and in the confined space of the car she was suddenly overpoweringly aware of his physical presence. She swallowed hard, struggling to hide her reaction from him, but she could sense that he was still watching her, and the air between them seemed to crackle with electricity.

  He seemed to sense her nervousness at once. ‘What’s up?’ he enquired, a trace of amusement in his voice, as if he was perfectly well aware that he was the cause of her tension.

  ‘N…nothing,’ she managed to say. ‘I… By the way, we haven’t introduced ourselves yet, have we? If we’re going to be near neighbours, I can’t go on calling you “you”.’

  ‘I guess not,’ he conceded, an odd quirk of humour in his voice. ‘Well, my friends call me Griff.’

  Griff—yes, it suited him, she decided, flickering a quick, wary glance in his direction. It had a hard, uncompromising ring to it—she could well imagine that whatever line of business he was in, he could be a tough customer to deal with.

  ‘My name’s Ros,’ she told him. ‘Actually it’s Rosalind—my father chose it, but I hate it.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Why? It’s a very pretty name.’

  ‘ “Thus Rosalind of many parts by heavenly synod was devis’d”? I don’t think that’s really me, do you?’

  ‘“Sweetest nut hath sourest rind”,’ he quoted in return.

  She flashed him a look of astonishment. ‘You know Shakespeare?’

  ‘We aren’t entirely without culture in LA.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean… I hope you didn’t think…’

  He laughed again. ‘Not at all. It’s all the sun, sea and surf propaganda we put out.’

  Rather to her surprise, she found that she was be¬ginning to like him. He had an easy sort of charm… Careful, Rosalind, she reminded herself sharply. You’re not a kid any more—you can’t claim nai’vet6 as an excuse now. Ten years ago… she had certainly been naive then!

  Maybe if her mother had been alive… but she had died when Ros was only twelve. And her father had been completely out of touch with the modern world.

  He had been a highly respected academic, living more in the sixteenth century than the twentieth. He had doted on his only child, in his own rather vague way, but he just hadn’t been equipped to prepare her for real life.

  At seventeen, she had been painfully coming to terms with the fact that there was little about her that would attract the opposite sex. So, when Stuart Cooper had suddenly started paying her a flattering degree of attention, it had turned her head. She had had a crush on him for ages—all the girls in her sixth-form class had.

  She had been easy prey. He had promised her the moon, and she had believed him. It hadn’t seemed the least bit wrong or sordid, making love on warm summer evenings, up on the heather-clad moors. And he had listened with seeming interest to her chatter, entering into her vivid fantasy-world—she had been the red-haired Queen Elizabeth the First, he her secret lover, my Noble Lord Essex.

  She had been so happy—until that awful night of the harvest festival dance in the church hall. Stuart had completely ignored her, dancing the whole evening with Thea McKenzie. The other b
oys had started sniggering at her, and one of them had jeered, ‘Hey, Queen Elizabeth,’ mocking her with an old-fashioned | bow—and one of the others had added with a spiteful laugh, ‘She couldn’t be Queen Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth was a virgin.’

  She had run all the way home, sick to her stomach. Suddenly she had understood—he had never really been in love with her, he had only been using her, and boasting about her to his mates. She was so upset,

  she couldn’t even face going back to school, knowing that they would all be gossiping about her. Her father, anxious and uncomprehending, had let her make her own choice, even though it had meant forfeiting her place at university.

  Ten years ago—but the memory still lingered, like a bad taste in her mouth. But there was no point dwelling on it now. Resolutely she drew her mind back to the present. ‘We should be there soon,’ she told him. ‘I warn you, one blink and you’ve missed it. There are three shops, a church, and the pub—where ladies are barely tolerated except on Saturday eve¬nings. Mind you, I think you’ll feel quite at home,’ she added audaciously.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes danced as she glanced across at him. ‘I’ve never met such a bunch of male chauvinist pigs!’

  ‘What makes you think I’m a male chauvinist pig?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say so,’ he drawled provocatively. ‘I just think a woman should know her place.’

  ‘Chained to the kitchen sink, I suppose?’

  ‘Not to the kitchen sink, no,’ he returned softly, the mocking note in his voice telling her exactly what he meant.

  Ros felt herself blushing furiously, and was glad of the darkness to hide the rush of panic that had seized her. She had never met a man quite like this before, and she felt herself completely out of her depth. Her pulse was beating at an alarming rate. A memory echoed down the years—of the time Stuart Cooper had first smiled at her. It was a warning—look where that had led!

  Griff was still looking at her. ‘What lovely hair you have,’ he murmured. ‘It’s the most incredible colour I’ve ever seen.’ He put up his hand, and coiled a finger into one long corkscrew curl.