The Most Scandalous Ravensdale (The Ravensdale Scandals) Page 3

  Kat turned to face her opponent with a bravado she was nowhere near feeling. This was the upside of having gone to acting classes. She could do ‘affronted driver’ down pat. But the man wasn’t growling and swearing or shaking his fists at her. He was smiling.

  She rolled down her window and glowered at Flynn Carlyon’s amused expression. ‘I would ask you what the hell you’re doing here but I’m not sure I want to know the answer.’

  He leaned down so his head was on a level with hers. Kat dearly wished he hadn’t. This close she could see the bottomless depth of his glinting eyes. The cleanly shaven jaw of this morning was gone; in its place was the dark shadow of late-in-the-day, urgent male stubble peppered all over it. And, if that wasn’t enough to make her heart come to a juddering stop, some strands of his ink-black hair fell forward over his forehead, giving him a rakish look. ‘Want me to park it for you?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Kat said, doing a prim schoolmistress tone straight out of her actor’s handbook. ‘I’m perfectly capable of parking my own car.’ Not quite true. She had always had trouble with reverse parking, especially in busy traffic. She had failed her driving test three times because of it.

  His smile stretched to tilt one corner of his mouth. ‘It looks like it.’

  Kat clenched her teeth hard enough to crack a walnut. And to add insult to injury two more cars tooted. Flynn straightened and turned, flattening his back against the side of her door as he waved the traffic through. The fabric of his coat—one hundred per cent cashmere, if she was any judge—was close enough for her to touch. She gripped the steering wheel like her hands were stuck there with superglue and wondered why the planets had conspired against her to have Flynn Carlyon witness her humiliation in a busy Notting Hill street.

  He turned back and tapped the roof of her car. ‘Watch out for the car behind,’ he said. ‘It’s mine.’

  She double-blinked. ‘Yours?’

  ‘Yeah, didn’t I tell you?’ That annoying smile again. ‘We’re neighbours.’

  Later, Kat didn’t know how she’d parked that car without ramming into his. She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. Nothing would have given her more pleasure than to smash up his pride and joy. To reverse her car at full throttle time and time again.

  Crash. Bang. Crash. Bang. Crash. Bang.

  She got out of her car and pretended she didn’t notice how out of place it looked sandwiched between his showroom-perfect BMW and the silver Mercedes. It looked like a donkey at the starting gates at Royal Ascot.

  Kat joined him on the footpath. ‘Just answer me one question. Did you have something to do with my appointment at the Carstairses’ next door?’

  ‘They were looking for a house-sitter. Your name came up.’

  Kat narrowed her gaze. ‘Why me? You know nothing about me.’

  ‘On the contrary, Miss Winwood,’ he said with a slow smile that had a hint of imperiousness, ‘I know quite a lot about you.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Your father is Richard—’

  ‘Apart from that.’

  ‘Why don’t you want to meet him?’ Flynn said.

  ‘The first time we spoke you wanted to stop me meeting him. Now you want me to come to his stupid party. How do I know what he’ll want tomorrow or the next day?’

  He gave a loose shrug of a very broad shoulder. Did he row for England? Work out? Lift bulldozers in the gym? ‘He’s changed his mind since then,’ he said. ‘He wants to make amends. He feels bad about the way things turned out.’

  Kat gave a scoffing laugh. ‘“Turned out”? Things didn’t “turn out.” He was the one who tried to get rid me as a baby. He treated my mother appallingly. The only thing he feels bad about is my mother finally telling me of my origin. That’s what he’s upset about. He thought his dirty little secret had gone away. His agent is probably only doing this as some sort of popularity stunt. I bet Richard couldn’t care less about meeting me. He just doesn’t want his adoring public to see him as a deadbeat dad.’

  ‘The rest of the family would like to meet you. They haven’t done you or your mother any wrong.’

  There was a part of Kat that conceded he was right, but she wasn’t ready to join them for family get-togethers, because it would pander to Richard Ravensdale—not to mention Flynn, who was acting for him. ‘What about his wife, Elisabetta Albertini?’ she said. ‘I bet she isn’t waiting for me with open arms to welcome me to the bosom of the family.’

  ‘No, but she too might change her mind when she sees how sweet and lovable you are.’

  Kat shot him a withering look. ‘But I thought she was going to divorce him. Who will you represent if she does? Don’t you act for both of them?’

  ‘I’m hoping it won’t come to that. A divorce would be costly to both of them.’

  ‘Why should you mind?’ she said. ‘Either way, you’d still get paid bags and bags of money.’

  ‘Contrary to what you might think, money is not my primary motivation in representing my clients,’ he said. ‘The Ravensdales are people I admire and respect and am deeply fond of. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get in out of this rain.’

  Kat had barely noticed the rain but now that he mentioned it she could feel it dripping down the back of her coat collar in icy shards. God knew what her hair looked like. She could feel it plastered to her scalp and over her shoulders like a Viking helmet. Not that she cared a fig for how she looked in front of Flynn Carlyon. She didn’t care for his opinion one way or the other. So what if he only ever surrounded himself with beautiful people?

  She. Did. Not. Care.

  She balled her hands into fists. ‘What do you possibly hope to achieve by having me installed next door?’

  His look was inscrutable. ‘If you’re so uncomfortable with the notion then why not call the agency and be transferred?’

  Kate would have done so if it hadn’t been for the money. The Carstairs family was paying extra for her to Skype them each day with the cat. Weird, but true. She only hoped Monty would agree to sit on her lap long enough to look at his family on the other side of the globe. ‘Once I commit to something, I don’t like to let people down,’ she said.

  ‘Nor do I,’ he said and, giving her another one of those annoying winks, he turned and went inside his house.

  * * *

  Flynn was enjoying a quiet drink in his sitting room, with his little dog Cricket snoring at his feet while he went over a client’s brief, but his mind kept drifting to his conversation with Kat Winwood. Conversation? More like a verbal fencing match. As soon as he’d met her last October he had felt a compulsive desire to see her again. Even if Richard had told him to forget about making contact with her, Flynn knew he would still have done so, for his own reasons, not his client’s.

  She was simply unforgettable.

  Her sparking green-grey eyes, her beautiful, wild brown hair with its copper highlights, her gorgeous figure, her razor-sharp tongue and acerbic wit were a knockout combination. A sexy, heady cocktail he wanted to get smashed on as soon as he could.

  When his neighbours had phoned and asked him if he knew anyone who could house-sit for them at short notice, he had immediately thought of her. Why wouldn’t he recommend her? He knew she was well respected at the agency. It suited him to have her close. He was a fully paid-up member of the keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer club.

  Not that she was really his enemy. She was a challenge he couldn’t resist.

  As he saw it, Kat had everything to win by making peace with her father. Not that Flynn believed Richard was trying to make up for the way he had handled things. He wasn’t so gullible he couldn’t see what his client’s motives were. He knew it had more to do with Richard wanting everyone to think he was doing the right thing by Kat. He hadn’t been a class act in how he had treated Kat’s mothe
r, but as for his apology being genuine and heartfelt? Well, Richard hadn’t received all those acting awards for nothing.

  Kat was being stubborn on principle. Flynn could understand it but he wanted her to put her prejudices aside and form some sort of relationship with the man whose DNA she carried. She was lucky. At least she knew who both her parents were.

  He had no idea who his were. And he never would.

  For the last couple of months Kat had filled his every waking moment and far too many of his sleeping ones. He wasn’t sure what it was about her that intrigued him so much. He’d had his fair share of beautiful women over the years since Claire had left him, but none had made him feel this power surge of attraction. He looked forward to seeing her, to bantering with her. She was smart and funny, and her broad Scottish accent was so darn cute it never failed to make him smile. He liked her energy, the feisty flare of temper that made him wonder what she would be like in bed. All that passion had to have an outlet. He wanted to be the trigger that made her explode.

  He had to get her to that party. It was his mission. His goal. It wasn’t just because Richard had entrusted him with the task of getting her to meet with him. It was because once Flynn set his mind to a task he allowed nothing and no one to get in his way. He had faced down huge challenges all of his life and won.

  This was no different.

  The party was going to be televised live. His reputation would be on the line. Everyone knew he had been assigned the task of getting Kat into the bosom of the family. He couldn’t accept failure. He had to pull this off no matter what. Failure wasn’t in his vocabulary. His professional tag line was ‘Flynn Equals Win.’

  Kat was being pig-headed about meeting Richard out of loyalty to her mother. That wasn’t a bad thing. He understood it. Admired it, even. But this wasn’t just about her father. The whole family wanted to embrace her because they were decent people who wanted to do the right thing by her. She had no one else. He couldn’t see why she wouldn’t welcome the chance to be included in one of London’s wealthiest and most talented families. Plus they could fast-track her to the fame she was striving for.

  Cricket lifted his head off his crossed paws and gave a sharp bark.

  ‘You want a walk at this time of night?’ Flynn said.

  Cricket bounced up and yapped in excitement, spinning in circles like a dervish on an upper. Flynn put his papers down and smiled. ‘You do realise this is why my mother got rid of you? You’re seriously high maintenance.’

  Cricket ran to pick up his lead, trailing it behind him and getting his stubby little legs tangled up in it in his excitement. Flynn bent down to clip the lead on the dog’s collar and ruffled his odd little one-up, one-down ears. ‘Come on, you crazy little mutt. But, if it starts snowing, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  KAT WAS ON her way to bed when she realised she hadn’t seen Monty since she had given him dinner—or tried to. He had turned up his nose at her and stalked off with his tail twitching as though someone had sent an electric current through him. The Skype attempt hadn’t gone well either—she bore the scratches on her hands to prove it. But at least she had met the Carstairs family, who were as lovely as they appeared in their array of photographs. They assured her Monty would soon be purring contentedly in her lap once he established trust. They never once mentioned their handsome neighbour, which seemed a bit suspicious to Kat. If he was smack, bang in the middle of their most recent Christmas photo, then surely they would mention him in passing?

  She couldn’t stop looking at that photo every time she went into the sitting room. It wasn’t just Flynn’s smiling face that pulled her gaze, but the way he was so comfortable around those kids. The little boy called Josh was looking up at Flynn in what looked like a state of hero worship. There was another photo in the study, with Flynn and the Carstairses’ little girl Bella, who was about three years old, sitting on Flynn’s knee. She was sucking her little thumb and leaning contentedly against Flynn’s broad chest as he read to her from a children’s picture book.

  It made Kat wonder if he planned to settle down and have his own family one day. He was known to be a bit of a ladies’ man but not as much of a full-on playboy as Jake Ravensdale had been before becoming engaged to Jasmine Connolly. But if Flynn had been seeing anyone on a regular basis lately there hadn’t been anything in the press—or not that Kat had been able to find.

  The only person he had been seen with, ironically enough, was her.

  She looked through each of the rooms but Monty wasn’t anywhere to be seen. There was a circular patch of sooty fur where he had been sleeping on the Carstairses’ white linen bed but no sign of him in the flesh...or fur, so to speak.

  She checked all the windows, even though she hadn’t opened any, to make sure he hadn’t escaped. But when she checked the laundry window she noticed there was a cat flap on the bottom of the door. She hadn’t noticed it there before, but then, why would she? Monty was supposed to be an inside cat. Kat had cleaned his litter tray earlier. He wasn’t supposed to go outside and get wet, or snowed on, or run over by a car...or bring in—gulp—horrible hunting trophies. The cat flap was unlocked. Should she close it? What if he was outside and couldn’t get back in?

  Kat decided to do another thorough search of the house before she locked the cat flap. Surely Monty wouldn’t go outside on such a foul night? What was that saying about mad dogs and Englishmen? Or was that just a saying about summer?

  She was coming through the sitting room when she heard the bump of the cat flap opening and closing. Then she heard the sound of Monty giving a weird-sounding miaow. Every hair on Kat’s scalp fizzed at the roots. Every knob of her spine froze. She knew what that was. That was a victory miaow. The sort of miaow a cat makes when it lands its prey and was about to show it off to its owners.

  But Kat wasn’t his owner. She didn’t want to see his handiwork. No way. This was why she didn’t own a cat. This was why she didn’t even like cats. They brought in stuff, horrible stuff, like dead birds and...and...she couldn’t even think the word without wanting to jump on a chair and scream. Dread as cold as the snow falling outside chugged through her veins. A hedgehog climbed up her windpipe until she couldn’t take a breath. Fear tightened her chest, making her heart go into arrhythmia so bad any decent cardiologist would have rushed for a defibrillator.

  Her eyes were glued to the door of the sitting room. It was like a scene in a Friday night fright film. She was frozen with primal fear, unable to move a step forward or a step back. Her feet were nailed to the floor. Monty made that muffled miaow again from just outside the sitting room, the miaow that sounded like he had his mouth full of...something.

  No. No. No. Kat chanted manically. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not on her first night in this lovely house. Lovely houses like this didn’t have dreadful, ghastly, horrid, unmentionable creatures inside them...

  It was so quiet she could hear each soft pad of Monty’s paws on the carpet as he came round the door into the sitting room. Puft. Puft. Puft. Puft. Her eyes widened in horror when she saw what was dangling from his mouth. ‘Eeeeeek!’ She screamed so loudly she was vaguely aware she might shatter the chandeliers or windows. Or wake the neighbours. In France.

  But then the stupid cat let the thing go. And it wasn’t dead! It streaked across the floor right next to Kat’s feet and disappeared under one of the sofas.

  Kat bolted from the room so fast she could have qualified for the Olympics. She snapped the door shut behind her and fled to the front door, barely stopping long enough to grab her coat from the coat stand. She didn’t bother with gloves—she would never have been able to get them on her shaking hands. She had only taken one flying step out of the Carstairses’ house when she came face to face with Flynn, who was walking a weird-looking dog.

  He frowned and steadied her with a hand on
her arm. ‘Are you all right? I heard you screaming and—’

  Kat pointed back at the house with a quaking finger. ‘In—in there... M-Monty brought in a...a...’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I can’t say it,’ she said. ‘Please will you get rid of it for me? Please? I’ll never be able to sleep knowing it’s in there.’

  ‘What’s in there?’

  Kat absolutely never cried. Not unless it was written in the script. Then she could do it, no problem. But fear colliding with relief that someone had come to her rescue made her want to throw herself on Flynn’s chest and howl like a febrile teething baby. She bit her bottom lip, sure she was going to bite right through before she could stop it trembling. ‘I—I have this thing...a phobia... I know it’s silly but I—I just can’t help it.’

  He put his gloved hand on her shoulder. Even though there were layers of fabric between his skin and hers, she felt something warm and electric go right through her body from the top of her shoulder to the balls of her feet. ‘Did Monty bring in a mouse?’

  Kat squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her ears. ‘Don’t say that word!’

  His hand slipped down from her shoulder to take her bare hands in his gloved ones. ‘Look at me, Kat.’

  Kat looked. But he wasn’t laughing at her. His expression was serious and concerned. ‘It got away from Monty,’ she said, almost wailing like a little kid. Waa-waa-waa. ‘It—it went under the sofa.’

  He gave her freezing hands a warm squeeze. ‘I’ll deal with it, or at least Cricket and I will.’

  ‘Cricket?’

  The little dog at Flynn’s feet yapped and spun around on his back legs as if on cue. He was not the sort of dog she was expecting someone like Flynn to own. She had expected some classy, Crufts-standard, purebred Malamute, a regal Great Dane or a velvet-smooth German pointer. Cricket wasn’t any bigger than a child’s football, was of indeterminate breed and looked like something out of a science fiction movie. His wiry coat was a caramel brown with little flecks of white that stood up at odd angles like they had been stuck on as an afterthought. He had one ear that stood up and one that flopped down, a thin, wiry tail that curled like a question mark over his back and a lower jaw that stuck out a few millimetres like a drawer that hadn’t been shut properly.