The Most Scandalous Ravensdale (The Ravensdale Scandals) Page 2

  Flynn cocked an eyebrow. ‘Aren’t you going to give me a cake fork?’

  Kat rounded her eyes in mock surprise. ‘Oh, you actually know how to eat with cutlery, do you? I would never have guessed.’

  His lopsided smile did that swoop and dive thing to her belly. ‘You should be onstage.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s the plan.’

  ‘So how’s that going for you?’

  Kat wasn’t going to tell him anything about her audition in a few days’ time in the West End. The AR Gurney play Sylvia couldn’t have come along at a more opportune time. It was one of her favourite plays and she knew deep in her bones she was right for the part of the dog Sylvia. Audiences worldwide loved the notion of a human playing a dog. If she landed the role and did it well, it could launch her career. She wanted the part on her own merit, not because of whose DNA she shared. She didn’t trust Flynn not to leak something to Richard Ravensdale, who might then open doors she wanted to open with her own talent.

  ‘I’ll go and get that fork for you.’ She gave Flynn a tight smile. ‘Or would you like a shovel?’

  His eyes held hers with implacable intent. Hinting at an iron will that was energised, excited, exhilarated by the mere whiff of a challenge. ‘I’d like to see you tonight.’

  ‘Not going to happen,’ Kat said. ‘I have an appointment with a cat and a fur ball.’

  That glint was back in his eyes. ‘I didn’t know you had a cat.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve picked up a new house-sitting job. The agency I work for occasionally rang me this morning. The person they had for the post had to pull out at short notice due to a family crisis. Apparently the cat is one of those ones that are too precious to go to a boarding centre. It has—’ she put her fingers into air quotes ‘—issues.’

  ‘How long will you be house-sitting?’

  ‘A month.’

  ‘Where in London?’

  Kat gave him a cynical look. ‘Why would I tell you? You’d be on my doorstep day and night pestering me to meet my sperm donor.’

  The corner of his mouth tipped up in an enigmatic smile. ‘So, I guess I’ll see you when I see you.’

  Not if I can help it. She swung around and stalked back to the kitchen.

  * * *

  Flynn’s gaze followed that deliciously pert behind until it disappeared into the servery. The thrill of the chase had always excited him but this chase was something else. Kat Winwood was hot. Flames, flares, and hissing and spitting fireworks hot.

  It was amusing to set the bait and sit back and wait for her to take it. She pretended to hate him. To loathe the ground he walked on, the space he occupied. The air he breathed.

  But behind the fiery flash of her green-grey gaze he could see something else. Something she was at great pains to conceal. That betraying flicker of attraction. The way her pupils flared like spilled ink. The way she swept the tip of her tongue over her lips. The way her eyes kept tracking to his mouth as if drawn there by an invisible, irresistible force.

  He felt the same stirring in his body whenever he was near her. Lust rumbled and rolled through his body like a cannonball. It was taking longer than usual to get her to admit her interest. But that was what made him all the more determined. The challenge made his blood tick and flick with excitement. He was used to having anyone he wanted. Dating had become almost boring. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had said no to him.

  Not since Claire had walked out on their engagement.

  He ducked back out from under the crime-scene tape in his mind that blocked him from thinking of how desperate he had felt back then. Desperate to be with someone. To have a family. To have a future to make up for the blank space of his past.

  He wasn’t that commitment-with-a-capital-C man now.

  He was a lower-case lover. The chase, the conquest, the ‘don’t call me I’ll call you’ was how he played things now.

  And he wanted to play with Kat Winwood.

  He wanted to feel her sexy little body gripping him like a clamped fist. To feel her mouth breathing fire over his skin. To feel her tongue twisting, twirling and tangling with lust around his. He wanted to hear that cute little Scottish accent screaming out his name as she convulsed around him.

  Kat might be playing it cool, but how long could she ignore the heat that flared between them?

  Especially when he was going to be a lot closer to her than she’d bargained for.

  A whole lot closer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  OKAY, THERE HAS to be catch. Kat unlocked the door of the Notting Hill Victorian mansion the house-sitting agency had assigned her. Call her a pessimist, but she knew from experience that anything that looked too good to be true usually was. But so far all she could see was luxury. The sort of opulent luxury she had dreamed of since she was a kid growing up on a council estate in Glasgow. Even the air inside the house smelt rich. The grace notes of an exclusive perfume and the base note of some sort of essential oil made her nostrils quiver in sensory delight. She closed the door and the stunning crystal chandeliers overhead tinkled against the bitter early January wind, as if disturbed by the whispery breath of a ghost.

  Kat ignored the faint shiver that crept over her scalp. She was being ridiculous. Of course she was. It was her nerves because of the audition next week. She could feel the moths fluttering in her belly even now. Big, winged ones, beating against the walls of her stomach like razor blades. If she got the part in the West End play and her career finally took off she would never have to waitress or house-sit again. She would be able to buy her own luxury mansion, have her own space instead of borrowing a stranger’s.

  Usually the houses she looked after were a little more modest than this. But she wasn’t complaining. Although, four weeks of living with such decadence was going to make it hard to adjust once she went back to a poky little bedsit—if she was lucky enough to secure one.

  Someone had kindly left the heating on...or maybe that was because of Monty, the cat Kat was supposed to be minding along with the house. Kat wasn’t a great fan of cats. She was more of a dog person. But apparently Monty was a delicate ‘inside’ cat, which meant there wouldn’t be any nasty unmentionable creatures to deal with because he wouldn’t be out at night hunting.

  Anyway, turning down a job because of a bit of a feline prejudice wasn’t an option just now.

  Besides, she was an actor, wasn’t she? She would pretend to like the cat.

  Kat wandered through the house looking for the cat...or so she told herself. What she was really looking at were all the photos of the couple that lived there. The Carstairses were both professionals—the wife was a GP and the husband a barrister, and they had two gorgeous kids, a boy and a girl who were both under five. They had taken the kids to Australia to see relatives—or so the agency lady had told her.

  It was hard to look at those photos and not feel a little twinge of envy. Well, maybe not just a little twinge. More like a large fist grabbing at her innards and twisting them until the blood supply was cut off.

  Kat’s childhood hadn’t looked anything like these kids’ childhoods. Firstly, she hadn’t had a father. She had one now but that was another story. Secondly, her mother hadn’t looked as relaxed and content as the mother in the photos. Her mother had spent most of Kat’s childhood inviting the wolf at the door in for sleepovers. And as for any exotic holidays abroad...the only ‘overseas’ holidays she’d had with her mother had been to visit her grandparents in the Outer Hebrides on the Isle of Harris. But typically those visits had only lasted a couple of days before her mother had got tired of the I-told-you-so lectures from her strict Presbyterian parents.

  Kat found more photos in the gorgeous sitting room that overlooked the even more gorgeous garden. Even though it was back to its bare bones, being the first week in Ja
nuary, it would be the perfect place for a couple of kids to play on long summer afternoons, or for two adults to sit out there with a glass of chilled wine and chat about their day while they watched the children gambolling about.

  Funny, but at her last damp and mouldy bedsit the rain had looked every bit as bleak and dismal as winter rain could be. It would drip down the panes of glass...on both sides, unfortunately. But at the Carstairses’ house the droplets trickled down—thankfully on the outside only—the triple-glazed windows like strings of glittering diamonds.

  Kat shifted her gaze to a photo in a frame on a mahogany drop-sided table next to the window. It was a Christmas photo: she could see a brightly decorated Christmas tree with heaps of beautifully wrapped presents underneath its branches. The same tree was still in situ—it was on her lists of tasks to pack it away before the family returned. There were ten or twelve people in the photo, the children in the front, the shorter adults at the sides and the tallest at the back. But there was one man who stood head and shoulders over everyone else. She picked up the photo with a hand that wasn’t quite steady.

  What was he doing there?

  Kat clenched her teeth so hard she could feel the tension turning the muscles in her neck and shoulders into boulders. She put the photo down before she was tempted to smash it against the wall. She swung away from the window, pacing the carpeted floor like a swordfish in a salad bowl.

  What was Flynn Carlyon doing in the bosom of the family she was house-sitting for?

  The sticky feet of suspicion crawled up her spine and over her scalp. She had thought it a little odd that the people hadn’t wanted to speak to her on the phone, especially since there was a pet involved. People were sometimes fussier over who minded their pets than their kids. But her supervisor had said another client had recommended her. Not just the agency, but her. By name.

  Which client?

  Kat was starting to smell a six-foot-four, Savile Row–suited rat with sooty black hair and eyes the colour of the espresso he drank.

  What was Flynn up to?

  Kat had told him in no uncertain terms she wanted nothing to do with her father.

  No contact. No favours. No money.

  She hadn’t spoken to the press even though they had hounded her for weeks. She had gone underground to escape them. She kept a low profile when she was out and about. She wore her hair under a beanie or wore sunglasses. It might be considered a little crazy in the dead of winter, but at least she was able to avoid eye contact. She was even auditioning under a false name in order to distance herself from the Ravensdales. She couldn’t win either way. If she auditioned under her real name, Katherine Winwood, everyone would know she was Richard Ravensdale’s love child, so she might be given the part for all the wrong reasons. Everyone would be crying nepotism. She wanted the part because of her talent, not because of her bloodline. A bloodline she was intent on ignoring, thank you very much, because her father hadn’t wanted her in the first place. Why on earth would she want to connect with the man who had not only insisted on her mother having an abortion but had paid her to do it?

  What was it about the Ravensdales and money? Did they think they could pay her to go away one minute and then lure her back the next?

  Why couldn’t they accept she wanted nothing to do with them?

  Kat had been tempted to meet Miranda, her half-sister. It felt a little weird to think she had half-siblings—twin brothers ten years older, Julius and Jake, and then Miranda who was only two months older than Kat. Two months. Which just showed what a jerk Richard Ravensdale was because he had still been seeing Kat’s mother while he’d been reconciling with Elisabetta Albertini, his then ex-wife. His soon-to-be ex-wife again if the tabloids were to be believed.

  But, in spite of her longing for a family to belong to, Kat wanted nothing to do with any of them. Not even Jasmine Connolly, the bridal designer who had grown up at Ravensdene with Miranda. Jasmine was the gardener’s daughter and had recently become engaged to Jake Ravensdale. She seemed a nice, fun sort of girl, someone Kat would like to be friends with, but hanging out with anyone who had anything to do with the Ravensdales was not on.

  Kat was used to being an only child. She was used to being without a family. She was still getting used to being without her mother. Not that they’d had the best mother and daughter relationship or anything. Kat always felt a little conflicted when it came to days like Mother’s Day. Somehow the pretty pink cards with their flowery and sentimental verses and messages didn’t quite suit the relationship she had with her mother. Growing up, she’d felt unspeakably lonely because of it.

  If you couldn’t talk to your mother, then who could you talk to?

  Kat certainly didn’t need a rich and famous family to interfere with her life and her career. She was going to make it on her own. She didn’t need any favours, leg-ups or red carpet invitations. And she certainly didn’t need any hotshot, too-handsome-to-be-trusted London lawyers manipulating things in the background. What was his connection with the Carstairs family? Was Mr Carstairs a work colleague? What did Flynn hope to achieve by having her mind a colleague’s house? Did he think it would give him a better chance of ‘accidentally’ bumping into her so he could flirt and banter with her?

  Over her dead and rotting body it would. There was no way she wanted anything to do with Flynn Carlyon. He was exactly the sort of man she avoided. Too good-looking, too sure of himself, too much of a ladies’ man.

  Too tempting.

  There was the sound of a miaow and Kat turned around to see a large Persian cat the colour of charcoal strutting in as if he owned the place. Which he kind of did. ‘Hello, Monty.’ She reached down to pat him. ‘I believe we’re going to be housemates for a few weeks.’ Monty gave her a beady look from eyes as yellow as an owl’s and shrank away from her outstretched hand with a hiss and a snarl that sounded scary enough to be in a horror movie. A Stephen King movie.

  She straightened. ‘So it’s going to be like that, is it? Well, you’d better get over yourself quick smart, as I’m the one in charge of feeding you.’

  The cat slunk out of the room with its tail twitching like a conductor’s baton.

  Kat rolled her eyes. ‘That’s why I prefer dogs. They’re not stuck-up snobs.’

  The rain was coming down in icy sheets when Kat came back from picking up some shopping an hour later. There was food for the cat and some basic things in the pantry but she preferred to purchase her own food. She would have ordered it online but her credit card was still maxed out after her mother’s funeral. The thought of that big, fat cheque Flynn Carlyon had dangled under her nose when he’d come into the café a couple of months back was dismissed by her pride.

  No way was she being bought.

  No. Way.

  If she wanted to speak to the press, she would. If she wanted to connect with her father, she would in her own good time. Not that it was going to happen any time soon, if ever. She couldn’t imagine a time when she would feel anything but disdain for a man who had used her mother so callously. Just because she shared some of his DNA didn’t mean she was going to strike up a loving, all-is-forgiven father-daughter relationship with him. Where had he been when things had been so dire growing up? He hadn’t contributed anything towards her upbringing. Not a brass razoo. He had paid off her mother and then had promptly forgotten about her. The money he had paid had gone before Kat was a year old. She and her mother had lived in hardscrabble poverty for most of her childhood.

  The shame of not having enough, of wanting more but never having enough to pay for it, was not something she could easily forget. Her mother had worked a variety of cleaning and bar jobs, none of them lasting very long. Her mother would always have ‘an issue’ with someone in the workplace. Kat had felt utterly powerless as she’d watched her mother swing from manic enthusiasm for a new job to coming crashing down in a depress
ed stupor when she lost it and/or walked out. Her black mood would last for weeks, sometimes months, until the cycle would begin all over again.

  Kat had decided as a young child she would do everything in her power to make life better for her mother. She’d thought if she could find a way to get her mum some help, to get her some financial stability and support, then her mother might magically turn into the mother she’d dreamed of having.

  But in the end she hadn’t been able to do it. Her mother had died of cancer, perhaps not in dirt-poor poverty, but close enough to make Kat feel nothing but anger towards her biological father who could at the very least have made their lives decent instead of desperate.

  It wasn’t just anger she felt. It hurt to think Richard Ravensdale hadn’t cared anything about her. His own flesh and blood had been nothing to him. Just a problem that had to be removed and then swiped from his memory. Permanently.

  The parking space outside the Carstairses’ house was tight, especially with the rain obscuring her vision. Kat’s car wasn’t big by any means but trying to get it into the tiny space between the shiny black BMW and the silver Mercedes was like trying to squeeze an elephant’s foot into a ballet slipper.

  Not going to happen.

  She blew out a breath and tried again. But now a line of cars coming home for the day was banking up behind her. In spite of the biting cold, beads of sweat broke out over her brow. She put her foot on the accelerator and nudged the car backwards, but someone behind her impatiently tooted their horn and put her off her game. She slammed on the brakes and gripped the steering wheel even tighter. She was tempted to roll down the window and give the driver behind the finger, but then a tall figure appeared at her driver’s door.

  Oh, God. A surge of panic seized Kat’s chest. Road rage. Was she to be beaten senseless? Dragged out of the car and kicked and shoved and stomped on and then thrown to the gutter like a bit of trash? She could see the headlines: Struggling actor beaten to a pulp over traffic incident. She could see the social media footage. It would go viral. Millions of people would view her demise. She would finally be famous but for all the wrong reasons.