were married,” Rachel interrupted quietly and then crossed the room to run a hand soothingly over his arm. “I was just teasing. I’m sorry if I brought up bad memories.”
Thomas shrugged the matter away as if it weren’t important and then turned to lead the way to the door. “We should get moving. The sooner you drop me at the airport, the sooner I’ll get to London, find Aunt Marguerite, and set everyone’s minds to rest.”
Chapter One
“This is as close as I can get, love,” the taxi driver announced apologetically. “That’ll be fourteen pounds.”
Inez Urso frowned as she noted they were at least three sets of doors from the gate she wanted. Unfortunately, there was a long line of cars waiting to collect arrivals and the driver couldn’t get any closer. Knowing she had a jog ahead of her, Inez handed him the money, managing not to grimace at the expense.
It isn’t coming out of your pocket anyway, she reminded herself. It’s a business expense. That was the only reason she was here. Only a direct order from Bastien Argeneau would make her suffer through forty-five minutes of London traffic in an airless taxi during one of the hottest Septembers in history. If she’d had more warning, Inez would have had one of the company cars take her to the airport to meet Thomas Argeneau. She also would have gone to bed earlier last night. But she hadn’t had more warning. Bastien Argeneau, head of Argeneau Enterprises and her boss, had called at five o’clock in the morning, waking her from a dead sleep to ask her to pick up his cousin at the airport. Worse yet, he’d called a very short forty-five minutes before the plane was supposed to land.
Knowing it would take that long to get to the airport from her flat, Inez hadn’t even taken the time for a shower or cup of tea, but had dragged on her clothes from the night before with one hand as she’d rung for a taxi with the other. Still doing up buttons, she’d grabbed her purse and run downstairs, rushing outside just as the taxi had stopped in front of her apartment building.
Inez wasn’t at her best. No makeup, hair a mess, unshowered, and wearing her day-old clothes, she wasn’t likely to impress anyone. Fortunately, Thomas Argeneau wasn’t someone she felt she had to impress. She’d only met the man once. After being promoted to vice president of UK operations several months ago, she’d gone to New York to tour the company’s head offices. That was when she’d met Thomas, or at least seen him. They hadn’t been introduced. She and several other top executives had been in a meeting in Bastien’s office when Thomas had sauntered in—unannounced and without knocking—to spout a lot of gobbledy gook that Inez hadn’t quite been able to catch except to note that it seemed to be sprinkled liberally with “yos, dudes, and dudettes.”
Inez had seen enough movies to know he was talking like a stereotypical 90’s California surfer. She somehow doubted the old terms were still used, but it didn’t matter since he wasn’t from California and—as far as she knew—there wasn’t much surfing done in Southern Ontario. She’d decided it was all an affectation. He was just a lazy layabout youth, taking on this surfer lingo in a misguided attempt to impress someone.
It had turned out that Bastien had called for him to deliver something to one of his brothers. Thomas was nothing more than an errand boy, she’d realized, and that had simply confirmed her assessment of him. He was an Argeneau, but rather than get a degree and take a position in the company, he delivered things and talked like a stoned idiot.
Which meant, Inez thought now, that she’d been dragged out of her bed at five in the morning to pick up a man who had no importance, and probably didn’t have a good reason to be in the country other than to loaf on new shores. It made him nothing more than an annoying pain in the arse in her mind.
Unfortunately, the request had been made by Bastien, and he was someone she did want to impress. So Inez snatched the receipt the taxi driver handed her, said thanks, and then flung the door open and hurled herself out of the cab to charge toward the Arrivals entrance.
A glance at her watch as she raced through the pneumatic doors and into the milling people said she’d made