A Wicked Persuasion by Catherine George Read Free Book Online

roof.’
    ‘And you’re willing to take my money to pay for it.’
    ‘Yes.’ She led the way up the steps to the terrace, desperate now for him to leave so she could recover from the tension of the morning. As they reached the Lodge, Harriet looked up at him in query. ‘Have you seen all you need to see?’
    ‘Not exactly. May I come in?’
    ‘Of course.’ What else could she say? She opened the door and went ahead of him into her small sitting room.
    ‘It looks very different in here now,’ he commented, looking round.
    ‘I’ve stamped my personality on it over the years.’
    ‘Years?’ James frowned. ‘How long have you been living here?’
    ‘I used it to study in as a teenager, if you remember, but since I qualified the Lodge has been my permanent home.’
    ‘May I sit down?’
    ‘Of course. Take the sofa.’ Harriet curled up on the window seat.
    ‘You had a desk in here,’ he observed, after a silence a shade too long for comfort.
    ‘It lives in my bedroom these days.’ She eyed him warily. ‘Is there anything else you need?’
    ‘Yes, a chat.’ James leaned back, irritatingly at ease as he dominated the room just by sitting there. ‘When I introduced myself this morning I fully expected to be runoff the property. It was an anticlimax to find your father obviously didn’t know me from Adam.’
    Harriet nodded. ‘I only spoke about you once in the past, when I said I was going to live with you. I just referred to you as James.’ She frowned. ‘But he must have known your full name to get your boss to fire you—or transfer you, as it turned out.’
    James shrugged. ‘He just told George Lassiter to fire the techie who dared to have designs on his daughter. George knew exactly who came to River House that day, so maybe my surname never came into it.’
    ‘You’re probably right,’ she agreed, and smiled. ‘But I was wound a bit tight before you came.’ For more reasons than he knew.
    ‘I could tell.’ James eyed her thoughtfully. ‘If you won’t live up in that wonderful house with your father, why the hell do you stay here, Harriet? It can’t be filial loyalty, because even to the casual observer—which I’m not—it’s obvious that the two of you aren’t close.’
    ‘I love the house.’
    He raised an eyebrow. ‘The house you refuse to live in. Are you hoping to inherit it one day?’
    ‘I have two sisters,’ she reminded him. ‘The estate will be divided between us.’ She slid to her feet. ‘Would you like a drink?’
    ‘No, thanks. I’d better be on my way.’ He stood up, crowding her enough to make Harriet claustrophobic. ‘It’s been good to see you again.’
    ‘Has it? I thought you still harboured old resentments,’ she said lightly.
    James shook his head. ‘Not any more. You were only a kid when we broke up, and now I’ve been over River House I understand why you couldn’t leave it.’
    ‘Actually, you don’t,’ she informed him, and moved to the door.
    He stood in her way. ‘Enlighten me, then.’
    ‘There’s no point. It was all a long time ago.’ She smiled brightly. ‘You’ve come a very long way since then, while I’m still here where we first met.’
    ‘And I still want to know why.’ For the first time since meeting her again he gave her the smile which had once made her fall so helplessly in love with him.
    Harriet shook her head. ‘It’s no big mystery, but still not one I intend to share.’ With anyone, least of all with a forceful, successful man like James Crawford. The truth was simple. Her father revelled in the cachet of a home like River House, but not in the responsibility of looking after it. She held the door wider as James moved to stand beside her.
    She flinched as he took a strand of her hair and pulled it out straight before letting it spring back into a curl. ‘I always liked doing that. Your hair is the only thing about you that hasn’t changed.’
    ‘Hardly surprising. I was a teenager when we knew each