The Only One

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

SHE hadn’t wanted to come to this party, and now that she was here, it was proving every bit as dreadful as she had envisaged, Brooke thought, almost instantly mocking herself for the immaturity of the thought. She was twenty-six for heaven’s sake, not sixteen. A wry grimace firmed the soft contours of her full mouth and across the width of the generously proportioned drawing room a man engaged in conversation with his companion caught the faint movement and watched her, slate grey eyes narrowing assessingly.

She had always known she wouldn’t be able to keep Abbot’s Meade, Brooke acknowledged, absently twirling her wine glass by its stem, her glance drifting over the view afforded by the drawing-room window. The view outside was as familiar to her as her own features; she knew exactly how many tall lime trees went to make up the lined drive that led from the front gates to the front of the house, just as she knew every inch of the grounds in which they stood. Abbot’s Meade had been in her family since the fifteenth century and her uncle had been the last male Meade left.

Ancestor worship was always something she had faintly despised, but there was something sad, almost painfully so, about having to come face to face with the fact that they had reached the end of an era.

Even during her uncle’s lifetime there had been insufficient funds to keep the estate going. Bits had gradually been sold off and eventually even the house itself had had to be mortgaged, and now that her uncle was gone, as her solicitor had said, there was nothing to be gained from hanging on any longer. And she had agreed with him. Even so … She was unaware of the faintly sardonic twist to her mouth as she glanced round the room, or that her contempt had been witnessed. The house had eventually been sold to a large corporation who intended to turn it into their headquarters. This party was being thrown to celebrate their new acquisition. Brooke hadn’t wanted to attend, even though she had been invited, but Sam Brockbank, her solicitor, had persuaded her. ‘Don’t forget, you’re going to be living practically on their doorstep,’ he had reminded her. ‘There’s no point in antagonising them, Brooke.’

That much was true. Although the house, the Dower House in which she had lived as a child with her parents, and the parkland had been sold, she had retained the rights to the small cottage just by the gates which had once been the lodgekeeper’s home. The cottage had its own garden and its own gate on to the main road which made her independent of the main house, but it would be difficult to remember that she no longer had the right to walk through that small garden into the main park, or to saddle up a horse from the stable and ride through it, as she had done in the past. Mentally mocking herself Brooke studied the occupants of the rooms. In the main, business-suited men with matching wives, they all exhibited the same glossy success-orientated sheen; all except one man. Frowning Brooke fought not to let her glance slide away as her own scrutiny was returned, a thousand times more assessingly. Whoever he was this man plainly wasn’t afraid of flouting conventions.

Tall, with carefully schooled black hair that looked as though it preferred to be unruly he had a face that suggested it might have been carved out of granite—or marble, Brooke corrected herself noting with a small shock of surprise, the almost too-perfect symmetry of bones and flesh as she caught a glimpse of his profile. Without the hard muscled strength his dinner suit did little to conceal he might almost have been too good looking she reflected, too engrossed in her own thoughts and conclusions to avoid the sudden trap of steely grey eyes as they meshed with hers and held her an unwilling prisoner.

Years ago Brooke had learned to be skilled in avoiding unwanted confrontations with the opposite sex. At five foot ten with a mane of dark red hair, long long legs and a well curved body she was used to dealing with a variety of unwanted come-ons from over-assertive males, including the accusation that by returning their scrutiny she was implicitly inviting their advances.

By some odd meshing of fate Brooke had inherited not her mother’s pretty, fair, Meade looks, nor her father’s darker French ones, but those of a long-ago Scots ancestor, which had resulted in a fine Celtic bone structure to match her red hair and golden-green eyes.

As a teenager she had been gawky and too thin; she had also been reasonably popular with her own sex, but in her late teens when she had flowered into womanhood she had discovered that her popularity decreased in direct ratio to her blossoming femininity.

‘You’re becoming too sexy,’ one girl had told her bluntly when she had asked why she was no longer included in invitations. ‘You’re just too much competition for the rest of us, Brooke.’

It had been shortly after that that her parents were killed in a freak car ferry accident—eight years ago now, and in those eight years she had learned to wear her unwanted mantle of ‘sexiness’ as best she could.

Grim humour etched a smile across her face. ‘Sexy’—if only they knew—her sexual experience was limited to the teenage fumblings she had indulged in until loneliness had driven her into her protective shell. Why was she feeling so sorry for herself, she derided herself mockingly. She was celibate by choice, not circumstance. There had been plenty of opportunities for her to indulge herself in sexual adventurings had she wanted to do so, but a certain fastidiousness made her hold back. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe in the myth of love and the perfect one and only—that was for adolescents; nor had she any moral reservations; men felt perfectly free to indulge in as many sexual encounters as they wished—she only needed to think of the many married men of her acquaintance who had approached her for dates if she needed proof of that—so why shouldn’t women? No, it was something other than that that held her aloof; something that had been born about the same time as she lost her friends and heard her mother saying almost reverently, ‘Brooke, you’re going to be the most stunningly beautiful woman….’

Physical beauty was all very well in its way, but it had its drawbacks. Unacknowledged, but lying at the back of her mind, was the knowledge that she wanted a man who would look beyond the façade of her beauty; a man who would want to know her … not just her face and figure.

She glanced down at her glass. Her wine had run out along with her patience with this party. She grimaced faintly again. Time she was making a move.

Sam, her solicitor, had been disapproving because she wanted to know so little about the people buying Abbot’s Meade, and she hadn’t had the energy to explain to him that the less she knew the more easy it was to shut herself off from the pain of losing the place. As always Brooke was half-amused by her own intensity of feeling, the logical, French side of her nature mocking her sentimentality about a few acres of land and a house that common sense said she could never hope to hold on to or preserve as it should be preserved. During the last few years of his life she had helped nurse her uncle and had lived here at Abbot’s Meade with him, giving up her secretarial job in London.

The late autumn afternoon was fast fading into dusk. She had every excuse to leave. It was a half-mile walk down to her cottage; she had no car, and the drive wasn’t illuminated. That would soon be changed, she reflected grimly. The new owners planned to put in lighting; perhaps they’d cut down the limes to make way for the lamp posts, was her sardonic thought as she started to make her way with lazy ease towards the door. With luck Sam wouldn’t notice she had gone until it was too late. Almost a head taller than the majority of the other women in the room, her tailored black suit a perfect foil for her red hair Brooke was unaware of how many pairs of eyes charted her progress, many of them with envy; some of them with sexual appraisal, and one pair in particular with sharp curiosity.

‘Adam, you aren’t listening to me….’

Dark eyebrows rose as Adam Henderson turned towards his companion, cold grey eyes masking his thoughts. ‘Sorry Bill,’ he apologised, ‘my mind was on other things.’ A cool glance in the direction of the tall redhead heading for the door made Bill Edwards frown. As head of Hart Industries, Adam had no equal; he had built up his empire from the most humble of beginnings; his father had died when he was a child and his mother had worked as a cleaner to support and educate him, and Bill, who was ex-Eton and the Guards, had nothing but admiration for him; but he knew that look in Adam’s eyes and his heart sank. When Adam embarked on the chase and inevitable capture of some hapless member of the female sex it always resulted in a sudden charge of energy that left the rest of his executive staff drained and exhausted.

The last time Bill had seen him look like that had been in New York. Adam had ended up adding a developing maintenance company to his building empire and yet another scalp to his belt.

‘Who is she?’ Adam asked him softly, not bothering to waste any time on pointless preliminaries. All his life he had seen a goal and worked punishingly towards it, once reaching it abandoning the pursuit in favour of something else, and at thirty-six he didn’t see why he should change now.

‘Brooke Beauclere, you bought this place from her.’ Bill told him dryly. He made it his business to always have these sort of facts at his finger-tips—that was how he kept his job as one of the highest paid executive directors in the country. If there was one thing Adam would not tolerate it was complacent, sloppy staff. That was why his companies won so many prestigious building contracts; why he could now pick and choose those contracts; because any architect who worked alongside a Henderson company knew that the specifications would be fulfilled right down to the last nail. And Adam believed in maintaining that same quality throughout every aspect of his business.

‘I did?’ The dark eyebrows lifted again. ‘She doesn’t look too pleased about it. How much did we pay?’

‘Just under half a million, but the place was heavily mortgaged, and I believe she’s donated most of the rest of the money to the local children’s hospital.’

‘Ah, one of the old brigade; an old name, a crumbling mansion and a set of values her ancestors would have laughed to scorn—this place was never acquired through genteel manners and do-goodiness. Still, with that face and body she can always raise another half a million—perhaps more.’

The cynical comment was too much in keeping with his boss’s nature for Bill to question it. One of that same ‘old brigade’, Adam had just derided, he knew when to keep his mouth closed. While it wouldn’t be entirely true to say that Adam had a chip on his shoulder, there was an awareness in him that in some circles he was accepted very much on sufferance because of his working-class origins, and Bill knew that it goaded him.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his mother had worked as a cleaner in the Manor House of the small Yorkshire village where Adam had grown up. He certainly kept his feelings on the subject well hidden, but there were occasions, like now, when he allowed them to surface. Bill had a vivid memory of his own interview with Adam and the latter’s faintly derogatory remarks about ex-public schoolboys playing their way through life. When he had explained that an uncle had paid for his education, Adam had altered his attitude slightly.

‘What does she do?’ Adam asked without taking his eyes off her tall, fluid body.

‘Nothing, she nursed her uncle up until his death, and before that apparently worked in the city as a secretary.’

‘Umm … was she a good one?’

‘So it seems. She’s fluent in several foreign languages—especially French. Her father was French.’

On her way to the door Brooke had been stopped by her solicitor, who insisted on appropriating another glass of warm white wine for her.

‘Surely you’re not leaving already Brooke?’ he complained. ‘I wanted to talk to you about this donation to the hospital.’

‘Sam, I’m not going to change my mind,’ she told him positively. ‘They need that money far more than I do. I’ve got the Lodge,’ she persisted, when he would have interrupted, ‘and I have the ability to earn my own living. What more do I need?’

‘A job,’ he told her wryly. ‘My dear girl, have you thought yet? Where are you going to find a job round here? Abbot’s Meade is a small country town, there’s nothing here for a woman like you….’

‘Apart from my roots,’ she reminded him equally wryly. ‘Sam, when are you going to accept that I don’t want a glamorous high life. I’m quite content to stay here….’

‘Maybe now,’ he agreed, ‘but what about in five years’ time? Surely you don’t intend to stay single all your life?’

‘And London is a better hunting ground for husbands?’ she mocked him. ‘Or perhaps you were thinking that if I didn’t make the donation to the hospital I could buy myself one, after all it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened in this family; an old name in exchange for new money.’

Someone else claimed his attention and as she watched her solicitor turn away Brooke eyed a nearby rubber plant and then looked distastefully into her glass of unappealing wine, unaware that she was being observed.

She had just finished pouring the contents of her glass into the peat when she saw him.

At close quarters he was even more magnetising than he had seemed across the width of the room. Slate grey eyes appraised her thoughtfully, the smile that touched his mouth a combination of insolence and experience. She disliked him on sight, Brooke acknowledged, repressing the small shiver of response quivering through her—an unusual reaction for her, and one she was careful to conceal from him, like a quarry suddenly scenting its hunter.

‘Why did you do that?’ He gestured towards her empty glass, his smile assured and knowing—knowing the effect his particular brand of intense masculinity must have on her sex, Brooke thought, covertly studying him. Perhaps it was time someone gave his massive ego a jolt. Smiling with saccharine sweetness she responded. ‘I’m a reformed alcoholic forbidden to touch spirits or wine.’

For a moment he seemed taken aback and then amusement glinted in the depths of his eyes, no longer cold, but warmly slumberous, their expression flashing warning signals to Brooke’s brain.

‘Umm … and what could drive a beautiful woman like you to seek refuge in drink, I wonder?’

‘Oh, all the usual things,’ Brooke responded nastily, ‘but most particularly men who look at me as though they’re sizing me up for their next meal.’

‘That frightens you?’ If anything he looked even more amused.

Brooke snapped her teeth together and spoke through them. ‘No, it offends me—just as it would offend you if the boot were on the other foot.’ When he continued to look amused, she added coolly. ‘I can see that you aren’t convinced, but believe me if you had to fend off every member of the female sex who found you attractive and who thought that that gave her the right to make a play for you, you’d soon realise how offensive it can be.’

‘Really? I’ve always found a simple “No thanks” perfectly adequate.’ He flashed white teeth in a faintly cruel smile, and Brooke found herself wondering cattily who had done his dental work. If it wasn’t for that slight chip in one of them she might almost have believed they had been falsely enamelled.

‘Then I’m saying “No thanks” to you right now,’ she told him recklessly, suddenly searingly angry without really knowing why she should be. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to see an irate wife bearing down on them. Why was it that women always acquitted their erring husbands of the blame? She had received more frosty looks from her own sex than she could count, and if they had but known it her interest in their dull husbands had been less than nil.

‘Are you now?’ The deep voice was unexpectedly soft, shooting warning flares along Brooke’s nerve endings. ‘I wasn’t aware that you’d been asked.’

There were several responses she could have made. She could have pointed out that the way he was looking at her was invitation enough, but she was too stunned to speak, and he used his initiative relentlessly watching her colour change and deepen as she fought against her growing anger.

‘When you’re angry your eyes change from green to gold,’ he remarked softly. ‘Did you know that? What are you doing here? You look as out of place as a goldfish in a village pond.’

‘If that was meant to be a compliment you can keep it,’ she told him crisply, spoiling it by adding, ‘anyway in Japan goldfish do inhabit the village pond.’

‘And women know their rightful place,’ he tormented her, ‘so what conclusions are we to draw from that?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ Her expression was disdainfully uninterested. She glanced at her watch, a twenty-first present from her uncle and bought in the days before she discovered the state of his financial affairs. It was a gold Piaget and she treasured it more because he had given it to her than because of its value.

The grey eyes watching her had suddenly darkened, flashing storm signals that startled her. ‘A present from a grateful admirer?’

His voice was taunting, his expression one she was familiar with on male faces. So he thought the watch had been given to her by a lover; well let him.

Pinning a false smile to her lips she responded coolly, ‘Of course…. And now if you’ll excuse me….’

‘You’re leaving? Why?’

His arrogance infuriated her afresh. What business of his was it if she chose to leave?

‘Because I’m bored,’ she told him sweetly.

‘The company not good enough for you? Perhaps there isn’t anyone here wealthy enough to supply you with another of these?’ His fingers circled her wrist just below her watch, stroking the fragile bones, sensitising her flesh in a way that Brooke couldn’t believe possible. She was torn between wanting to tug her wrist away, and giving way to the melting sensation of pleasure spreading up her arm, making her finger-tips tingle. The intensity of her response startled her to the point of not being able to correlate her thoughts, and the rough drawl of his voice broke the physical spell momentarily binding her to him as he continued mockingly, ‘But I’m sure they’d be willing to give you other if less valuable baubles in return for some of your time….’

‘Only my time?’ Inwardly Brooke was seething, but she hid it well, as she had grown used to doing.

‘Or perhaps you’re playing for higher stakes,’ the soft drawl continued. ‘One large item is so much more worthwhile than several cheaper ones, and easier to earn,’ he added cynically.

It wasn’t the first time Brooke had come up against such an attitude, and she doubted that it would be the last. By some trick of fate the delineation of her facial features was such that she possessed a slumberous, almost sensual quality that men automatically assumed meant that she was sexually available. That, in a way, she could understand and excuse, but what she couldn’t forgive was their immediate reaction that being available meant she could be bought—and by the highest bidder. This man it seemed was no different from the rest, and despite the fact that he lacked the smooth polish of many of the other men in the room with him, he did possess all the discreet trappings of wealth. Brooke’s mouth tightened. He was an arrogant, over-confident male who seemed to think he could just reach out and take whatever he wanted from life. Perhaps it was time someone taught him a lesson.

‘Meaning?’ Brooke queried, mentally holding her breath.

‘Meaning,’ came the audacious response, ‘that I’m in a position to provide the one large item.’ A lazy smile accompanied the lightly spoken words, his expression saying that this conversation was really unnecessary, as the result was already a foregone conclusion. For one moment Brooke was tempted to blast him with the full force of her wrath, but caution, and a searing need to humiliate him as he had just humiliated her, intervened. How dare he imagine that she was his simply for the buying; that she would ever dream of agreeing to the sort of sordid bargain he had just suggested? Her quick brain agilely sifting through their conversation, Brooke thought she had found a way to make sure he would never again look at a woman with the same contemptuous confidence with which he had just smiled at her.

‘Which do you prefer,’ she was asked as she remained silent, ‘cash or kind?’ When she turned shocked gold eyes towards cold grey ones, Adam shrugged and said easily, ‘I do prefer to get these annoying details sorted out beforehand, don’t you? It makes life easier all round.’

‘You prefer paying for your sex?’ Brooke asked him, hardly able to believe she was having this conversation.

The broad dinner-suited shoulders shrugged. ‘I believe in an honest exchange of commodities—yes, and women always intend men to pay in one way or the other don’t they?’ He added less pleasantly, ‘It’s just that the majority of them prefer their payment in emotional coin—far more damaging to the pocket in the long run.’

‘Meaning?’ Again Brooke put the brief question.

‘Meaning that I’m not in the market for emotional involvement,’ Adam told her coolly. ‘I always like to make that clear right from the start.’

‘Very wise of you, I’m sure.’ Brooke hid her surprise under a veil of indifference. From his attitude she wasn’t the first woman he had approached in this way, by a long chalk. How had the others reacted? Or was this the first time he had mistaken his quarry? Brooke wasn’t blind to the fault of her sex; there were women, and she knew plenty of them, who would be quite happy to accept his offer—providing it was more prettily packaged to be sure, and yet one look at him had been sufficient for her to know that he possessed a sexual magnetism that few women would be able to resist, and that they would want him for himself alone.

‘So, do we have a bargain?’

Caution warned her to refuse—to stop the game while she still could, but a deep inner burning anger overruled caution and she heard herself saying calmly, ‘Yes, I believe we do.’

‘So … tonight, then?’

He didn’t waste much time, Brooke reflected, concealing her consternation. ‘Very well, tonight. I live in the Lodge at the end of the drive.’

‘I’ll be there at ten.’

No pretence of wining and dining her first, Brooke noted, one half of her applauding his cynical down-to-earth attitude while the other half was horrified, cringing away from the implications of his comment. Obviously he was a man well used to getting what he wanted, but tonight she was going to blast a hole into that immense self-conceit which she told herself a little fancifully was going to be not just a blow for herself, but for the whole of womankind—or at least that part of it young and attractive enough to catch the eye of Mr—–? She frowned, realising that she didn’t even know his name, subduing the hysterical bubbles of laughter rising up inside her, at the thought that she had verbally committed herself to going to bed with a man whose name she didn’t even know, and who didn’t know hers.