His Temporary Mistress by Cathy Williams

level, Damien could feel the sudden sexual tension in the air. Her words might say one thing but her breathlessness, the way her eyes were huge and fixed on him, the clenching and unclenching of her small fists...a different story.
    He smiled, a slow, curving, triumphant smile. Whilst he had privately acknowledged the unexpected appeal she had for him, whilst he had been honest about the charge he got from a woman who was so different in every possible way to the type of women he had become used to, he had pretty much decided that a Hands Off stance was necessary in her case.
    But they were going to be together in Devon and, like an expert predator, he could smell the aroma of her unwelcome but decidedly strong sexual attraction towards him. She was as skittish as a kitten and it wasn’t because she was nervous about spending a week in the company of his mother. Nor was she hesitant about his brother. He had detected the sincerity in her voice when he had suggested that she might be.
    He took his time looking at her before turning away with a casual shrug and turning the key in the ignition. Her presence next to him for the remainder of the very short drive felt like an aphrodisiac. Potent, heady and very much not in the plan.
    The drive up to the grand house was tree-lined, through wrought-iron gates which he could never remember being closed. Having not been to the estate for longer than he liked to think, Damien was struck by the sharp pull of familiarity and by the hazy feelings he always associated with his home life—the sense of responsibility which was always there like a background refrain. Having a disabled brother had meant that any freedom had always been on lease. He had always known that, sooner or later, he would one day have to take up the mantle left behind by his parents. Had he resented that? He certainly didn’t think so, although he did admit to a certain regret that he had failed to extend any input for so long.
    Was it any wonder that his mother had been so distraught when she had been diagnosed, that she might leave behind her a family unit that was broken at the seams? He had a lot of ground to cover if he were to convince her otherwise.
    ‘What an amazing place,’ Violet murmured as the true extent of the sprawling mansion, gloriously lit against the darkness, revealed itself. ‘What was it like growing up here?’
    ‘My parents only moved in when my grandfather died, and I was a teenager. Before that, we lived in the original cottage my parents first bought together when they were married...’
    ‘It must have seemed enormous after a cottage...’
    ‘When you live in a house this size you get used to the space very quickly.’ And he had. He had lost himself in it. He had been able to escape. He wondered whether he had been so successful at escaping that a part of him had never returned. And had his mother indulged that need for escape? Until now? When escape was no longer a luxury to be enjoyed?
    Not given to introspection, Damien frowned as he pulled up in the large circular courtyard. The house was lit up like a Christmas tree in the gathering darkness and they had hardly emerged from the car with their cases when the front door was flung open and Anne, the housekeeper who had been with the family since time immemorial, was standing there, waving them inside.
    Violet wondered what her role here was to be. Exactly. Sitting by a hospital bed, she had known what to do and the impersonal surroundings had relieved her of the necessity of trying to act the star-struck lover. A few passing touches, delivered by Damien rather than her—more would have seemed inappropriate in a hospital room, where they were subject to unexpected appearances from hospital staff.
    But here she was floundering in a place without guidelines as they were ushered into the grandest hall she had ever seen.
    The vaulted ceiling seemed as high and as impressive as the ceiling of a cathedral. The fine silk Persian rug in