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how?’
    Those dark eyes glittered down at her with mocking satisfaction. ‘I would have thought that was obvious, Lexie.’
    ‘Humour me, Mr St Claire,’ she bit out between gritted teeth.
    He shrugged those broad shoulders beneath his tailored jacket. ‘For the next three days you work for me. I need to go to Gloucestershire for the next couple of days at least, to assess the damage to the house there and to organise repairs. Obviously I expect my temporary temporary PA—namely you—to accompany me.’
    Lexie felt the colour drain from her cheeks as she stared up at him in stunned disbelief.
    Lucan wanted her to accompany him to Gloucestershire? To Mulberry Hall? The St Claire ducal estate in the village of Stourbridge?
    The same village where Lexie’s grandmother still lived…

CHAPTER THREE
    L UCAN couldn’t help but see the way Lexie reacted as he outlined his plans for spending the next couple of days in Gloucestershire; her eyes had become dark and haunted, her cheeks deathly pale.
    Obviously Lucan had a personal aversion to going anywhere near the family estate—which was the reason he had decided to take this intriguing woman with him—but he saw no reason why she should feel the same way. Unless, of course, she had personal commitments that kept her in town—maybe a boyfriend or a live-in lover?
    ‘Do you have a problem with that? ‘ he rasped harshly.
    Did Lexie have a problem with that?
    She couldn’t even begin to list the problems she had with going anywhere near the village of Stourbridge in the company of this particular man. With Lucan St Claire. The head of the despised St Claire family.
    Lexie had been visiting the village of Stourbridge for years, of course, on frequent visits to her grandmother and Grandpa Alex. As a child she had gone there with her parents, and latterly on her own. Stourbridge was a delightful village, full of charming thatched cottages, and Lexie always enjoyed spending time there with her grandmother.
    Which was the pertinent point, of course.
    To go anywhere near Stourbridge, the village where Lexie had been known by many of the locals from the time she was a baby, with Lucan St Claire of all people, was simply asking for trouble.
    Oh, what a tangled web
…
    And that web had just become more tangled than Lexie could ever have imagined when she had allowed curiosity to get the better of her!
    Her throat moved convulsively as she swallowed hard, and her gaze avoided meeting that probing dark one as instead she looked somewhere over Lucan’s left shoulder. ‘I can’t simply up and leave London at a moment’s notice…’
    ‘I’ve already checked with your agency, and part of your contract of employment states that you agree to accompany your employer in the course of his/her business,’ Lucan informed her coldly.
    Having worked at the agency alongside her parents for the last three years, Lexie knew exactly what the Premier Personnel contract said concerning their expectations of employees. As the daughter of the owners of the company it was also a contract
she
hadn’t signed—a fact Lexie obviously couldn’t share with him.
    Her mouth firmed. ‘Your reasons for going to Gloucestershire appear to be personal rather than business-related.’
    ‘Correct me if I’m wrong—’ his icily taunting tone implied that he already knew he wasn’t ‘—but I believe the initials PA stand for Personal Assistant…?’
    ‘Yes. But—’
    ‘In which case, as you are my PA, I fully expect you to accompany me to Gloucestershire.’
    ‘I disagree—’
    ‘And do you believe that your opinion on the subject is of
any
relevance to me?’ he cut in brutally.
    Lexie looked at Lucan searchingly, easily noting the hard glitter of those dark eyes, the pulse pounding in his rigidly clenched jaw, the thin, uncompromising line of his mouth. ‘No,’ she finally acknowledged heavily. ‘But surely this visit could wait until my replacement takes over on Thursday?’ she added