Falling for Alexander (Corkscrew Bay #2) (4 page)

“
That’s not an answer, it’s a symptom.”

He tried to figure that out, but came up empty. “
A symptom?”

Her head swivelled from the passenger window in a graceful arc until she faced him. “
You hide behind that massive perimeter wall, refuse to come out or let anyone else in. What’s the deal, Alexander? What made you so wary of human contact? What are you so afraid of?”

His mood frosted over, his jaw tightening until his teeth ached. He let it go. Took in a shallow breath, released it. Turned on the radio with a flick to the short lever attached to the steering wheel. Soft music flowed from the high perfo
rmance music system to smoothe his tension like a lover’s caress.

“
Alexander, I’m sorry.”

The whispered apology confounded him. “
Don’t do that.”

“
What? Apologise? I didn’t mean to pry, seriously.”

“
Like hell you didn’t,” he muttered beneath his breath. Louder, he informed her curtly, “Nothing you do or say can touch me. Please don’t assume otherwise.”

“
I don’t.”

“
An apology suggests otherwise.”

The kind of sigh she gave him usually came with rolling eyes. “
All I really want is to have the annual Easter egg hunt reinstated at the castle.”

“
And you thought psychoanalysing me would change my mind?”

“
That slipped out,” she shot back. “I said I’m sorry. If there’s something that’s stopping you, however, something I can fix—”

“
I’m not broken,” he drawled.

“
Something the town can do,” she continued with exaggerated patience, “to reassure you that we won’t intrude on your privacy. The kids stick to the forest near the entrance—”

“
No.”

“
We can erect a temporary fence enclosing the area—”

“
No.”

“
Why?” she blew out on an exasperated breath.

Good. Now she knew what it felt like to have one
’s wishes completely ignored. They were approaching the junction where the subsidiary road met the A30. Instead of veering Northbound, he hit a right, burning rubber as he made the tight corner without much reduction in speed.

“
Are you trying to kill us?” she yelped.

He glanced her way to find one hand clutching the armrest at her door. Her face had drained of colour.

“I know how to handle this car,” he assured her.

“
Famous last words.”

H
e pumped the brakes, slowing down to fifty miles per hour. “Better?”

“
Shouldn’t we have turned left back there and headed inland?”

“
I’ve decided to take the scenic route,” he said. “We can stop along the coast somewhere for lunch.”

“
You’re kidding, right?”

“
You don’t eat?”

“
This isn’t a date.”

“
You only eat on dates?” His gaze flicked between the narrow, winding road and her.

Blue eyes glittered at him. Fire and ice.

His blood heated up again at the thought of stroking passion to that spark. Covering that saucy mouth with his, delving deep inside to taste and clash in a fight for dominance.

“
We’ll be arriving in Penryn later than expected,” he said abruptly, irked by this arousal. How was it possible for his body to be so at odds with his head? “Perhaps you should give your aunt a call and let her know.”

“
That’s not necessary.”

“
She might worry.”

She tossed her hair and looked the other way. “
Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Her sheer audacity brought a chuckle from him that shaved the edge off his irri
tation. “Hmm, now there’s an idea.”

She had no comeback for that.

He didn’t push for the moment, content to enjoy the serenity of the green, rolling hills they were cruising through. When
Ruins of Love
came on the radio, he hummed along to the tune for one too many bars before he caught himself.

Kate was looking at him with an intense expression.

“I don’t hum that badly,” he said.

She shook her head. Blinked. Then shook her head again. “
I’d never have taken you for the soppy romance type.”

“
Ruins of Love
isn’t soppy.”

“
It’s a romantic duet.” She cocked her ear. “
You’re buried in the shadows of my heart. Lurking beneath the depths. Tearing me apart. Scraping at the edges. Filling me up, inside out and upside down. Treading on the pieces left behind…
”

“
Expression of emotion doesn’t always equate to soppy,” he said when her voice trailed off. “And this isn’t a love song.” He held a finger up as the male voice filtered in. “Listen.”

You
’re burning up the shadows of my heart. Exposing the ashes beneath. Tearing me apart. Scraping at the edges. Emptying me out, inside out and upside down. Crushing any pieces left behind.

“
They both know they’re bad for each other, but she can’t release him from her heart. She thrives on the pain. The pain fills her up, inside out and upside down, not love. It’s a destructive obsession that fills her and drains him.” He looked at her. “The clue is in the title.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “
That’s a very morbid interpretation.”

“
There’s a happy ending,” he said. “Every day they stay together, the acid of their sour relationship burns away another layer of shadows until there’s nothing left of him but ashes and nowhere for the despair to hide. He faces the truth, crawls from the ashes and rebirths himself into another life.”

“
That’s all very poetic,” she said lightly, “but thanks for ruining my favourite song.”

“
Don’t you ever listen to the words of songs?”

“
Of course I listen to the words. I’ve just never thought about them too hard and now I know why.”

“
So,” he said, unable to repress the smile tugging at his lips, “that’s your favourite song?”

She pulled a face at him. “
It was a moment ago.”

“
That’s the music industry for you,” he said with a mock groan. “Blink and you miss your second of fame in the charts.”

It was only after they
’d settled into a stretch of easy silence that it struck him. For a moment, he’d actually enjoyed the banter with Kate. As if she were simply a beautiful travelling partner instead of a lying, scheming journalist on the hunt for her next scoop.

Chapter
Five

Why the blazes did the man have to smell so good? With every breath, she inhaled another dose of Alexander Gerardo. The faintest traces of spice, forest and pine. All male and thoroughly intoxicating.

Debating lyrics of what she still thought of a
s a romantic duet wasn’t helping her cause. Not by half. Since when did a guy pay that much attention or express that much insight? Especially one with dubious scruples that included, but possibly not limited to, random threats, unreasonable firings, community snubbing and suspicious helicopter activity.

He was under her skin, an itch. The kind of itch you couldn
’t wait to get your claws into, to scratch long and deep with no regard for the devastation left behind. Oblivious to all and everything until that itch had been sated.

Oh, God, I
’m in such trouble.
How far was he going to take this stupid road trip anyway? His version of a scenic route had taken them onto a potholed, narrow road that swerved from one bend to another as it followed the shape of the coastline. If they’d actually been on their way to Penryn—which she’d looked up on the map last night and discovered it was indeed a small town directly across the peninsula—this diversion would have put at least an hour onto their journey.

She pulled her g
aze in from outside, from the ocean swelling on a rising tide, and risked a glance his way. Her eyes skimmed over his profile, a jaw with hard, clear lines that could have been sculptured from pure granite, down the sinful layers of black hair that dropped into the curve of his shoulder. His shirt was off-white and long-sleeved, one of those thin cotton cashmere hybrids that slithered against his lean, rippled torso and crept over the waistline of his jeans.

A pang of hot desire rammed her low in the belly
, shattering all her rock-solid reasons for despising this man.

With a grumble of disgust at herself, she snapped her eyes straight ahead, staring out the windshield as she mentally grabbed the shattered reasons and glued them together.

Even if he hadn’t fired Mrs. Pinnings.

Even if he wasn
’t an aloof billionaire who didn’t care that Darrock Castle was part of the town’s identity. Didn’t care that one couldn’t fully function without the other.

Even if they weren
’t engaged in a battle of lies, a fickle foundation for a house cards of that would come tumbling down before the end of the day.

There was that look he
’d given her. The
not even if you were the last female on earth
look.

And the fact that he thought he had her. He thought all he had to do was delay l
ong enough until her nerves cracked. That she’d suddenly
remember
an urgent engagement requiring her to return to Corkscrew Bay immediately and she’d never dare broach the subject of his housekeeper again.

Huh.

Maybe she should call his bluff. Admit she wasn’t Mrs. Pinnings’ niece and pull a U-turn on this charade. Contrary to whatever he thought, she had no interest in blackening his name all over the front pages for the sheer fun of it. The Corkscrew Weekly wasn’t that kind of rag.

All she wanted was the
truth as and how it affected the town and its people. And okay, on a really honest day, she admitted it was highly unlikely there was anything illegal going on at Castle Darrock. But seriously, the way some people lived their lives just invited snooping!

“
What do you do for a living?” she asked him, suddenly desperate for some validation that she wasn’t completely mad. That she hadn’t gone along with this ridiculous scheme when the line of direct questioning she usually applied would have worked.

He didn
’t answer, didn’t even glance at her.

“
You know what I do,” she said with a tart bite in her tone. “It’s not like I’m trying to pry a state secret from you.”

As soon as she
’d said it, of course, she wondered. It was those helicopters. The cloak he wrapped his life behind. Could it be?

“
You’re not like a—a—” She clamped her lips. Seriously? She was not about to ask if he was a spy, or a secret agent. What was she? Ten years old?

His head inclined in her direction. “
I’m a composer and songwriter.”

“
Alexander Gerardo?” Her brows shot up in disbelief. “I’ve never heard of you.”

“
I don’t perform,” he said, adding, “How many songwriters have you heard of?”

“
Not many,” she admitted, searching her mind.

Make that none.

But a songwriter? Was that even credible? Her gaze shifted to where his hand rested on the steering wheel, fingers tapping to the rhythm of the tune on the radio. Long, nimble fingers she could easily imagine flying over a keyboard. Or strumming a guitar.

“
Would I know any of your songs?” she asked, tipping over into belief.

He flashed a grin at her. A grin that kicked up on one side of his mouth and stirred butterflies at her pulse.

“
Ruins of Love
,” he said without a scrap of shame.

Idiot. That
’s exactly what she got for her naivety.

“
So,” she drew out sarcastically, “you wrote the song that’s been number one on the charts for the last three weeks? The song we just happen to have heard on the radio?”

The grin stayed. “
Too much of a coincidence?”

He was messing with her, but it didn
’t feel like a joke. Not with their track record, which, as far as she was concerned, went back three years.

“
Forget it,” she mumbled. “Silly me, for thinking we could attempt a civil conversation.”

“
We’re not doing too badly.”

“
I just thought we could get to know each other a bit. You know, like
normal
people do when they’re cooped together for any extended time.” The glare she sent him softened almost instantly.

There it was again, the butter-melting brain sensation that wanted to delve beneath his surface. She
’d never use this stuff for the paper. There was no justification for wanting to know.

She didn
’t care
what
he was so afraid of. She didn’t care
why
he hid behind his walls. All she cared about was that
he did
and that Corkscrew Bay suffered the ramifications. Traditions severed. Tourist trade reduced in a tough economic period.

So why couldn
’t she stop herself from asking? “Don’t you ever open up, Alexander? Show a piece of who you are without cloaks, walls and lies?”

“
The scope and magnitude of a person’s lies reveals more than any truth.”  He gave that just enough time to sink in before clubbing her over the head with a sweetly innocuous, “Don’t you think?”

Judged and damned. The whole of her defined by one little lie he
’d caught her out on.

She bristled from head to toe.
She felt as if her teeth had grown hair, and that bristled, too. “You don’t know anything about me.”

She wasn
’t a saint. She hadn’t reached the grand age of twenty-five without her share of white-lies, well-meaning fibs and, yes, maybe this one was a giant whopper. And maybe it wouldn’t have stung quite so badly if she hadn’t gone off record, hadn’t reached out to him as one human to another. If he’d picked another time, picked any other of her faults—God, she certainly had enough for him to choose from—to slam her down and shut her up.

“
An oversight I look forward to remedying,” he said. “Let’s start with you and your aunt. Are you close? Is she from your mother’s side or father’s?”

Kate shoved her hostility aside and took the opening. “
If you want to really know and understand me, we’ll have to go back further than my aunt.”

“
We have a few hours.”

“
Wonderful!” She’d never needed much encouragement to share her love for Corkscrew Bay and its history. That she might shake loose his stubborn resistance to the Easter egg hunt was simply an added advantage. “Let’s start at 1741.”

“
Let’s not,” he muttered.

Kate smiled, her mood remarkably improved. “
Margaret Ashley, married at some ungodly age to the second Earl of Ashley, a miserable guy by all accounts and what we’d consider nowadays a veritable psychopath.”

“
An ancestor of yours?”

She rolled her eyes. “
She was barely twenty when her husband locked her and their five-year-old son in the North Tower and set it on fire.”

That got his attention. “
Why would he do that?”

“
Well, there’s the psychopath thing,” she said. “And he was a mean drunk. But according to the story, he got it into his head that his wife was a witch and the boy the devil’s spawn.”

“
They were burnt alive?”

Kate shook her head. “
Margaret strapped her son to her back and managed to escape, using the ivy vines to climb down. The villagers hid them while her family was summoned down from Oxfordshire to take charge of the situation. Not too long after, a second mysterious fire razed the north tower to the ground and claimed the bastard’s life. Margaret’s son became the third Earl of Ashley. Not surprisingly, the north tower was never rebuilt.”

Alexander chuckled.

The echo of that rich tenor rumbled down her spine to toast her toes. The cost of amusing him. The moment the antagonism between them lowered, she started appreciating how utterly gorgeous the man was.

She pressed her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “
Moving swiftly on to 1783.”

“
There’s more?” he said with what might or might not have been a mock groan.

She could go on all day…
all year if required. Stories handed down from one generation to the next. Stories that wove threads through Castle Darrock and Corkscrew Bay, back and forth, give and take, marrying the two in a seamless history. Stories like the one where the seventh Earl and his lady created the ghostly legend of
The Purple Lady
with phosphorous smoke to distract excise officers on the nights when a new shipment of contraband sailed in on the opposite side of the bay.

Sto
ries to warm the cockles of a man’s heart or, in the case of Alexander Gerardo, maybe just defrost the edges.

After the first half-hour, his attempts to derail her toward more recent history, her own with regards to her aunt in particular, floundered. Duri
ng the course of the next hour, his flippant remarks dried up and she got a few more of those rumbling chuckles out of him. At this rate, they might even get their Easter egg hunt.

Her conservative optimism didn
’t last ten minutes past stepping out of the car. They’d stopped at a tourist strip along the coast, one of the many seaside resorts that boasted a string of restaurants, ice-cream parlours, curio kiosks and not much else.

Kate climbed the wooden slats to the promenade one step ahead of him, her fing
ers trailing the banister, her gaze on the stunning panoramic horizon where pale blue sky met the darker blue-green of the ocean. Long, warm fingers brushed hers, there and gone in a flash. Her breath hitched and didn’t release until the lingering tingle faded.

An accident?

No apology was forthcoming. She moved that hand from the banister to the strap of her backpack that was currently doubling as her purse, but the damage was done. She was suddenly, acutely aware of the man behind her.

Had he fallen back a
step? Was his gaze on the view or on her backside? Oh, God, she could feel his eyes exactly there, a caress almost as tangible as that fleeting brush of skin. Heat flushed her throat and the tingling sensation returned, spreading down her spine. Didn’t matter that he saw nothing tempting, that she was a challenge he had no trouble resisting.

She picked up her pace, bounding onto the promenade and into a stiff march.

“Kate…” he called. “Wait.”

“
What!” She stopped dead, took a second to breathe, then spun about.

That second had given him the time to catch up. He was right there, catching her at the shoulders just before she spun straight into his chest.

“Whoa…”

Her head jerked up.

His gaze hit hers, his face angled as he leant in slightly, their lips inches from smacking.

She blinked, her throat dry, her gaze level with that firm, wide mouth. His scent, that blend of tamed nature and wild man, filtered through her irritation. Would he taste as good as he smelled? Her pulse fluttered at the thought.