Pride After Her Fall by Lucy Ellis Read Free Book Online Page B

effort for her to see. The charming bon vivant, lavish with money and affection, especially with his darling daughter.
    But she’d always been aware he romanced older women up and down the coast to keep the wolf from the door.
    Her grandmaman had been the one with the real money, doled out sparingly.
    Raymond had never complained, and his phone calls from the low-security prison where he was currently serving out the last months of a two-year gaol term were always full of jokes and cheer. She loved him for it, but she wished sometimes she could speak seriously to him.
    She never had been able to breach that gleaming surface. Raymond didn’t want to hear about the difficulties of life. And under the current circumstances she felt guilty even raising the subject of the villa.
    Alors, she was back to thinking about the villa.
    ‘Lorelei.’ A deep voice said her name almost gently.
    ‘Oui?’ She blinked, took a breath.
    Nash was watching her with an intensity that hadn’t been there before, as if he knew something had changed.
    ‘Sorry.’ She made a forgetful gesture with one hand. ‘You were saying?’
    ‘Nothing that won’t keep.’
    He continued to watch her, a quiet smile conveying so much more than words. In that moment Lorelei knew she was in trouble.
    Oh, she knew how to deflect a man, how to make it clear that despite sitting across from him, sharing a meal with him, she was not on the menu.
    But right now she felt she was every dish he might like...
    Finally Nash spoke.
    ‘We’ve got a lot in common.’ He settled back, angled in his chair, all shoulders and lean, muscular grace.
    He seemed to be saying, Take a good long look. It could all be yours.
    But for how long? she wondered.
    ‘How do you gauge that?’ she asked aloud.
    ‘I like to compete. You’re a serious trophy.’
    ‘Pardon me?’
    He gave her a lazy once-over she should have found insulting after the “trophy” description. Instead she felt it like a direct hit to her sleeping libido.
    ‘You’re smart and seriously sexy and I haven’t been bored since I sat down with you. Like I said, you’re a serious trophy.’
    Lorelei inhaled sharply.
    She knew this was how some men saw an attractive woman. She had just never met a man who had the nerve to say it to her in so many words.
    ‘Nash, a trophy is an inanimate object you sit on a shelf.’
    ‘A trophy can be anything you want to win,’ he countered, sitting forward.
    Lorelei had to remind herself not to edge back. He fairly emanated thumping male entitlement.
    ‘I don’t get in the race, Lorelei, unless I’m fairly confident of the outcome.’
    For a breathless moment she considered asking him exactly how confident he was of her. But deep down she feared the answer.
    Another Lorelei—the one who could hold men off with a death stare at a hundred paces—would have stood up and thrown the contents of her drink all over him. This Lorelei—the one clutching her glass like a life jacket and breathing in the spicy, earthy scent of him like oxygen—found herself asking, ‘Is that a problem for you? Women boring you?’
    He sat back, his hand resuming its drumming action. ‘On occasion.’ His head dropped a little to the side, as if he were considering her. He smiled slowly. ‘Most of the time.’
    Arrogant bastard.
    She couldn’t help smiling back.
    ‘Perhaps the better question is, do you think you’ll bore me? ’ she asked sweetly.
    ‘How am I doing so far?’
    Lorelei paused long enough to take another sip of her drink.
    ‘Oh, I think you’re in the race.’
    * * *
    Nash weighed up two options: dinner and dancing here in Monaco, or would he fly them to Paris? He was leaning towards the latter, because something about this woman made him want to impress her. She was beautiful, but she was also clearly highly intelligent...and wasn’t that a turn-up for the books? He hadn’t exaggerated when he’d told her he hadn’t stopped thinking about her. But what if she