“I never wanted... ”

Claire stopped, but Brad knew what she was going to say.

“You never wanted me here in the first place,” he guessed wryly.

“Why can’t you leave me alone to live my life the way I want to?” she demanded fiercely. “You...even Sally with that ridiculous trick to force us to catch her bouquet. As though anyone places any credence on that ridiculous superstition these days.”

“What superstition?” Brad asked her curiously.

“The one that says the girl who catches the bride’s bouquet will be the next to marry,” Claire told him angrily. “Sally arranged it so that both her two bridesmaids and I were tricked into catching it.”

Claire glowered at him furiously as she saw the way he had started to grin.

“Look, I’ve got to go,” he said, “but I am coming back, and when I do...don’t even bother to think about running away.”

Dear Reader,

What is more natural than a bride wanting her closest friends also to find happiness in love? For Sally, this means tricking three of her wedding guests into catching her bouquet! Three women, each very different, but all with their own reasons for never wanting to marry. That is why they agree to a pact to stay single, but just how long will it take for the bouquet to begin its magic?

Penny Jordan has worked her magic on these three linked stories. One of Mills & Boon most successful and popular authors, she has written three compelling romances—all complete stories in themselves—which follow the lives—and loves—of Claire, Poppy and Star. Woman to Wed? is Claire’s story. She is Sally’s youthful stepmother, whose calm, well-ordered world is about to be shattered forever.

THE BRIDE’S BOUQUET—three women make a pact to stay single, but one by one they fall, seduced by the power of love

Woman to Wed?
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

PROLOGUE

THERE has been a long tradition at weddings that the one to catch the bride’s bouquet as she throws it will be the next to marry.

The bride emerged from the hotel bedroom, giving her skirts a final shake, turning round to check on the long, flowing satin length of her train before turning to smile lovingly into the eyes of her new husband.

Her two adult bridesmaids—her best friend and her husband’s young cousin—and her stepmother had been dismissed for this, her final appearance in her wedding gown. Chris could be her attendant on this occasion, she had told them.

‘Come on; we’d better go down,’ he warned her. ‘Otherwise everyone will be wondering what on earth we’re doing.’

Laughing, they walked to the top of the stairs and then paused to stand and watch the happy crowd in the room below them. The reception was in full swing.

The bride turned to her husband and whispered emotionally, ‘This has been the happiest day of my life.’ ‘And mine too,’ Chris returned, squeezing Sally’s hand and bending his head to kiss her.

Arm in arm they started to walk down the stairs, and then, somehow or other, Sally missed her footing and slipped. The small group of people clustered at the foot of the stairs waiting for them, alerted to what was happening by Sally’s frightened cry, rushed forward, James, the best man, Chris’s elder brother and two of the ushers going to the aid of the bride, whilst the two bridesmaids and the bride’s stepmother reacted immediately and equally instinctively, quickly reaching out to protect the flowers that the bride had dropped as she’d started to fall.

As three pairs of equally feminine but very different hands reached out to grasp the bouquet, the bride, back on her feet now, smiled mischievously down at them and warned, ‘That’s it! There’ll be three more weddings now.’

‘No!’

‘Never!’

‘Impossible!’

Three very firm and determined female voices made the same immediate denial; three pairs of female eyes all registered an immediate and complete rejection of the bride’s triumphant assertion.

Marry? Them? Never.

The three of them looked at one another and then back at the bride.

It was just a silly old superstition. It meant nothing, and besides, each of them knew that no matter what the other two chose to do she was most definitely not going to get married.

The bride was still laughing as she swept down the few remaining stairs on her husband’s arm.

Her two bridesmaids had both already separately and jointly informed her that they had no intention of taking part in any silly old rituals which involved the degradation of them vying for possession of her wedding bouquet, and as for her stepmother...

A tiny frown pleated Sally’s forehead. When would Claire accept that, at a mere thirty-four and widowed, she was not, as she always insisted, too mature to want to share her life with a new partner?

While Sally and Chris made sure that they spoke with every guest once the speeches were over, the two bridesmaids and Claire worked together to gather up the scattered wedding presents. Poppy, Chris’s cousin, suddenly spotted Sally’s wedding bouquet lying on one of the tables. Unable to help herself, she went over to it and picked it up, tears filling her eyes.

‘Forget it,’ Star, her fellow bridesmaid, instructed her, grimly removing the flowers from her tense grip. ‘It’s just a stupid superstition. It means nothing, and I for one intend to prove it by saying publicly and unequivocally here and now that I never intend to marry.’

As her eye was caught by an unopened bottle of champagne, she reached for it, opened it deftly and poured the foaming liquid into three empty glasses, challenging the other two, ‘I’m willing to make a vow not to marry. What about you two?’

‘I certainly have no plans to remarry,’ Claire, Sally’s stepmother, agreed more gently.

Tearfully Poppy nodded. ‘I shan’t marry now. Not now that Chris... Not now...’ Fresh tears filled her eyes as she solemnly joined the other two in a pledge of solidarity.

All three of them raised their glasses, none of them aware that their conversation had been overheard...

CHAPTER ONE

CLAIRE MARSHALL gave a rueful look at the now empty, still confetti-strewn reception area of the hotel.

Was it really less than a couple of hours since her stepdaughter and her new husband had run laughing down those stairs, trying to dodge the happy bombardment of rose petals?

Most of the guests had left now, just a small nucleus remaining in the hotel lounge. She had only come back in here to check that nothing had inadvertently been left behind.

It had been a lovely day, a perfect wedding, marred only by the fact that her husband, Sally’s father, had not been with them.

It was over two years now since his death but she still missed him; he had been a good husband—kind, loving, protective. As she bent to touch the bouquet which Sally had so cleverly tricked the three women into catching, Claire acknowledged that the adjectives she was using to describe her husband were more those that she would use to describe a loving father.

‘You should marry again,’ Sally had urged her more than once recently. Sadness darkened her eyes. She had been lucky to find one loving and understanding man; she doubted that she would ever be lucky enough to find a second. And besides, she didn’t really want to marry a second time—to make explanations, excuses or apologies.

She was distracted from her thoughts as both the adult bridesmaids came to join her. Poppy, the bridegroom’s cousin, glowered angrily at the bridal bouquet and curtly echoed Star’s earlier bitter comment.

‘No one pays any attention to those silly old superstitions these days anyway...’

Claire gave her a gentle smile. Sally had confided to her that it was an open secret in her new husband’s family that his cousin had been hopelessly in love with him for years.

Poor girl, Claire thought compassionately. No wonder she looked so pale and strained; the whole day must have been an unbearable ordeal for her, and the bridegroom’s brother hadn’t made things any easier for her. She had accidentally come across the pair of them deep in the middle of a very angry quarrel earlier and she suspected now that at some point in the day Poppy had been crying.

‘I never want to get married—never!’ Poppy announced savagely now.

‘A statement with which I fully concur,’ the third member of the trio murmured calmly.

Claire turned her head to smile at her stepdaughter’s closest and oldest friend. Claire could remember quite vividly how as a young teenager Star had always insisted that she never intended to marry and that her career was going to be the most important thing in her life.

‘Such a shame that none of us truly appreciated Sally’s gesture,’ Claire commented ruefully as she picked up the bouquet and studied it.

‘Careful,’ Star warned her drily. ‘You don’t know what effect holding it could have...’

Claire laughed but she still replaced the bouquet. ‘It is only a tradition,’ she reminded the other two.

‘Mmm... but perhaps for safety’s sake we ought to do something constructive to ensure that we stick to the vow we made earlier and remain unmarried,’ said Star.

‘Such as what?’ Poppy demanded, adding bitterly, ‘Not that I shall ever change my mind...if I can’t...’ Tears were already filling her eyes. Angrily she blinked them away.

‘Look, why don’t we agree to meet, say, once every three months just to remind each other that we intend to stay husband-free? Then if one of us does start slipping we’ve always got the others to turn to for support,’ Star suggested.

‘I won’t need any support,’ Poppy declared.

But Claire, who could sense already how Sally’s marriage was bound to alter the relationship they each had with her and one another, said firmly, ‘I think that’s a very good idea. Let’s make a date to meet here three months from now. We can have lunch together... my treat.’

‘Great, I’ll put it in my diary,’ Star confirmed.

Claire looked across at Poppy. She didn’t know her as well as she did Star, who had been Sally’s best friend ever since they had started senior school together, but she could sense how unhappy the younger girl was. It must have been hard for her, seeing the man she loved marrying someone else.

Sally had confessed that when she had first heard about Poppy she had been inclined to feel very wary of her but that once she had met her, and knowing how strong Chris’s love was for her, she had simply felt desperately sad for her.

‘It must be so awful loving someone who can’t love you back in the same way,’ Sally had said. ‘Chris likes her, of course—she’s his cousin-but...’

‘But he loves you,’ Claire had agreed.

Sally had come over to her and given her a quick hug. They had always got on well together from the moment John had introduced them. Sally had been a pupil at the huge comprehensive where Claire had done her teacher-training practice.

She had often wondered if one of the reasons why Sally had accepted her so lovingly and so readily as her stepmother had been that she had never known her own mother. Sally’s mother, John’s first wife, had died just after Sally’s birth.

‘Paula will always be part of my...of our lives. I shall always love her,’ John had told her seriously when he had proposed to her.

She had accepted that, felt warmed by it, almost reassured... Knowing how much he had loved his first wife and still loved her made her feel...safe.

Sally had once asked innocently when Claire was going to have children of her own and when she was going to have a little brother or sister. Claire had had to turn away from her, leaving it to John to answer, to defuse the situation.

She sighed faintly now. Of course she would have liked children, if things had been different. As a girl she had always imagined that one day she would have them.

‘I think we ought to be going now,’ she told the two bridesmaids. ‘I don’t think we’ve left anything behind. I can’t see anything, can you, Poppy?’

‘No. There’s nothing left,’ Poppy agreed drearily. ‘Not now.’

Claire gave her a quick look but said nothing. It seemed kinder not to.

‘So now that the wedding is over, what do you intend to do with the rest of your life?’

‘Oh, I don’t plan to make any major changes,’ Claire told her sister-in-law. ‘I’m thinking of putting in a few more hours at the school but apart from that...’

Claire worked part-time as a volunteer at a local school for mentally and physically handicapped children. John had left her very well provided for financially but, as she had explained to his sister, Irene, when she had first started working at the school, she felt that she wanted to put something back into the community, and since she had originally trained as a teacher...

‘Mmm, you wouldn’t be interested in taking a lodger, I suppose?’

‘A lodger?’ Claire stared at her.

‘Mmm... a colleague of Tim’s who wants somewhere “home-like” to stay. A service flat is out of the question. He doesn’t care for that kind of anonymity. He’s an American and from a large family and he doesn’t want to live alone.’

Irene went on to give her details of his background, before concluding, ‘He’s in his late thirties, not a young student, and it simply wouldn’t be appropriate to put him in to just any kind of lodgings. He holds quite a high position in the company,’ Irene said. ‘In fact his family own it.’

‘How high?’ Claire asked her, alarm bells ringing.

‘He’s Tim’s boss,’ Irene told her a little stiffly.

‘Ah, I see.’ Claire grinned. ‘He’s Tim’s boss and it’s down to Tim to come up with somewhere suitable for him to stay, is that it? I can’t see why you don’t move him into your house, Irene,’ Claire told her mockinnocently. ‘After all, you’ve got the room,,with Peter away at university and Louise working in Japan.’

‘No, I don’t think that would be a good idea: Things aren’t going all that well for Tim at the moment—sales have dropped and there have been problems with delivery and installation. I keep telling Tim that he should be tougher, more assertive—’ She broke off, shaking her head.

‘Would you do it, Claire?’ she asked with unfamiliar humility. ‘Tim is getting himself in a dreadful state about the whole thing. Apparently this American, his new boss, is something of an...individual—’

‘An individual...? What does that mean?’ Claire asked her warily.

Irene started to frown. As Claire knew from past experience, likeable though her sister-in-law was, she was inclined to steamroller people in order to get her own way when it suited her, and Claire could tell that she wasn’t particularly pleased at having been interrupted and questioned.

‘I’m sure he’s not an awkward character. Oh, Claire, I wouldn’t ask you,’ Irene pleaded, ‘but Tim is feeling so vulnerable about his job at the moment. He has convinced himself that this American is coming in very much as a new broom; psychologically it will make him feel so much more confident if he feels that he’s done something constructive ahead of his arrival...’

‘“Something constructive”? Are you sure this man is going to want to be my lodger? From the sound of it, it seems to me that he’s used to a far more luxurious lifestyle than I enjoy. You know how quietly I live, Irene. I’ve never been a keen socialiser.’

‘No, maybe not, but people like you, Claire; they feel drawn to you—your house is always full of callers, your phone never stops ringing.’

Claire digested her comment in silence, knowing that it was an argument she could not refute.

John had often remonstrated with her about her tendency to attract people who needed a shoulder to cry on. The only time the big Edwardian house had ever really been quiet had been during those pitifully brief weeks leading up to John’s death, and then only because Claire had specifically asked people not to call. She still missed him dreadfully—his support, his wise counsel, his protection.

His protection.

A tiny tremor shook her body.

‘Irene, I don’t think that it would be a good idea... I—’

‘Oh, Claire, please.’

As Claire looked at her sister-in-law she could see that her anxiety was genuine. She gave a small sigh.

‘Very well, then,’ she agreed. ‘But I doubt that this man, Tim’s new boss, is going to be very thrilled when he discovers—’

‘Nonsense. Your house complies with all his stipulations,’ Irène told her, then proceeded to tick them off on her fingers as she listed them.

‘It’s a proper home right in the centre of the community—well, at least in the best residential part of the town. You’ve got a proper guest suite—or at least you will have now that Sally’s gone. He can have her old room and bathroom and he can use one of the other bedrooms as an office. After all, you have got five of them.

‘There’s a garden with adequate space for his car. He’ll be part of a large family network—’

‘What? There’s only me,’ Claire protested.

‘No, there’s not; there’s Sally and Chris and all his family and us, and you’ve got enough friends to fill a fair-sized church hall twice over. You’re a member at the sports club so you’ll be able to take him there and—’

‘I’ll be able to take him where? Hang on a minute, Irene...’ Claire started to protest, but her sister-in-law wasn’t listening to her any more.

She was standing up, reaching out to hug her affectionately and gratefully as she told her warmly and, Claire was sure, slightly triumphantly, ‘I knew you’d do it... It’s the perfect solution, after all. Tim will be so pleased and relieved. He was terrified that you might not agree, poor dear, especially since...’

‘Especially since what?’ Claire demanded suspiciously.

‘Well, it’s nothing really; it’s just that this man is due to arrive tomorrow and of course he’s going to expect Tim to have worked out his accommodation requirements. We’ve booked him into an hotel for the first couple of days...’

‘He’s arriving tomorrow?’ Claire protested, and demanded, ‘Irene, just how long have you known—?’

‘I must run,’ Irene interrupted her. ‘I’ve promised Mary I’ll give her a hand sorting out the cricket teas and I’m already late.

‘We’re picking Brad up from the airport when he arrives, and naturally we thought we ought to have him for dinner tomorrow evening. You’ll join us, of course. It will be an ideal opportunity for him to meet you and for you to make arrangements to show him the house...’

‘Irene...’ Claire started to remonstrate, but it was too late. Her sister-in-law was already beating a strategic retreat.

‘What on earth are you doing?’

Claire raised her flushed face from her kneeling position in the bathroom adjacent to the spare bedroom and put down her damp cloth.

She hadn’t heard her friend and next-door neighbour Hannah come in.

‘Clearing out this room ready for my new lodger,’ she told Hannah breathlessly, and quickly explained to her what had happened.

‘Oh, trust Irene; she really has pulled a fast one on you this time, hasn’t she?’ Hannah commented wryly. ‘A lodger, and single too, I imagine, otherwise he would be looking for a house to rent. Mmm... that’s going to cause a bit of excitement in the close... Wonder what he looks like...?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ Claire told her firmly, standing up and surveying the tiles she had just finished polishing with an abstracted frown, pushing one hand into her hair to lift its heavy weight off the nape of her neck.

Thick and naturally curly, its rich dark exuberance was the bane of her life. Sally often teased her enviously that, with her petite, small-boned frame and her small, heart-shaped face, framed by her glossy chestnut curls, she looked young enough to be her peer rather than almost a decade her senior.

‘You should be being one of my bridesmaids,’ Sally had teased her. ‘You certainly look young enough to get away with it.’

Claire had shaken her head over such foolishness. She was, she had reminded her stepdaughter, a mature woman of thirty-four.

‘A mature woman?’ Sally had scoffed unrepentantly. ‘You look more like a young girl. It’s odd, you know,’ she had added more seriously, ‘but, despite the fact that you’d been married to Dad for over ten years when he died, there’s still something almost...almost—well, virginal about you.’

She had given Claire a wry look as she’d spoken. ‘I know it sounds crazy but it’s true, there is, and I’m not the only one to think so. Chris noticed it as well...’

‘You’re unreal, do you know that?’ Hannah told her fondly now. ‘Here you are, an adult, fully functioning woman in the full power of her womanhood...without a man, and you turn round and tell me...’

As she saw the look Claire was giving her Hannah backed off, apologising.

‘All right, all right... So I know how close you and John were and how much you must still miss him. It just seems such a waste, that’s all. One thing does puzzle me, though; if this guy is Tim’s boss, what on earth is he doing looking for lodgings? Why doesn’t he—?’

‘He wants to live in a family home,’ Claire explained patiently, repeating what Irene had told her.

‘Apparently he’s used to having a large family around him. According to Irene, he and his brothers and sisters were orphaned when his parents were killed in an accident. He was just eighteen at the time and he stepped in as a surrogate parent, put himself and all of them through college, then took a job locally with the family business to keep the family together.’

‘Oh, I see, and I suppose he was too busy taking care of his siblings to have time to marry and have his own family... Mmm... I wonder what he is like? He sounds...’

‘Incredibly dull and worthy,’ Claire supplied wryly for her.

Both of them started to giggle.

‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ Hannah protested. ‘Oh, by the way, what’s all this about you and Sally’s two bridesmaids making a pact to stay single?’

‘What?’

Claire gave her a confused look and then realised what she meant.

‘Oh, that... It wasn’t so much of a pact, rather an act of feminine solidarity,’ she explained ruefully.

‘I felt so sorry for poor Poppy, Hannah. It’s no secret how she feels about Chris. Sally was in two minds about whether or not to ask her to be her bridesmaid, not because she didn’t want her, but because she was worried about the strain it would place her under. But, as she and Poppy agreed, for her not to have done so could have placed Poppy in an even more invidious position.

‘And as for Star—well, you know her background; her mother has been divorced several times and is currently having an affair with a boy who’s younger than Star and her father has, at the last count, nine children from four different relationships, none of whom he seems to have any real time for. It’s no wonder that Star is so anti-marriage...’

‘So it isn’t true, then, that the three of you took a vow to support one another in withstanding the famous power of the bride’s wedding bouquet?’ Hannah teased her archly.

Claire stared at her.

‘Who told you that?’

‘Ah... so it is true... Someone—and I’m afraid I simply cannot reveal my source—happened to be walking past the door and overheard you.

‘I don’t know if it’s true, but I have heard rumours that there are plans to run a book on the odds of the three of you being unattached by the time Sally and Chris celebrate their first anniversary.’

‘Oh, there are, are there?’ Claire retorted fiercely. ‘Well, for your information... I shall never marry again, Hannah she said, more quietly and seriously. The laughter died from her friend’s eyes as she listened to her. ‘John was a wonderful husband and I loved him dearly.’

‘You’ve only been widowed for two years,’ Hannah reminded her gently. ‘One day some man is going to walk into your life, set your heart pounding and make you realize that you’re still very much a woman. Who knows? It could even be this American,’ she teased wickedly.

‘Never,’ Claire declared firmly, and she meant it.

She had her own reasons for knowing that there could never be a second marriage or any other kind of intimate relationship for her, but that was something she could not talk about to Hannah, or to anyone else. That was something she had only been able to share with John, and was just one of the reasons why she still missed him so desperately.

John had known her as no one else, man or woman, had or ever could, especially no other man—most especially another man.

As he boarded his flight for Heathrow Brad Stevenson was frowning. He hadn’t wanted to take up this appointment in Britain; in fact he had done every damn thing he could to try to get out of it, and in the end it had taken the combined appeal of the president of the company himself and the retired chairman to persuade him to change his mind.

As he had faced his two uncles across the boardroom table he had protested that he was quite happy where he was, that the last thing he wanted was to be sent across the Atlantic to sort out the problems they were having with the British-based offshoot of their air-conditioning company, which they had insisted on buying into, against his advise.

‘OK,’ he had said at the time, ‘so right now Britain is sweltering in a heatwave and everyone wants air-conditioning. Next summer could be a different story and you’ll be left with a warehouse full of unwanted conditioners and a long, long haul until the next hot spot.’

It had taken all his powers of persuasion then to get certain British organisations to agree to fit the air-conditioning systems in their business premises, and by doing so he had managed to avert the financial disaster with their British distribution outlet which he had predicted, but enough was enough. The thought of spending God alone knew how much time rescuing the ailing outlet to get it running efficiently and profitably was enough to make him grind his teeth in angry frustration.

How the hell had those two old guys guessed that he had intended to take the easy way out and oh, so slowly ease himself out of the business and out of the task of eventually having to step into their shoes, which he could see looming ominously ahead of him?

He was thirty-eight years old and there were things that he wanted to do, things he needed to do, that did not involve running a transatlantic company.

There was that boat out on the lake that he still had only half built, for instance; that voyage he had been promising himself that he would make ever since his high-school days when he had earnestly traced the voyage of Christopher Columbus through the Indies and the rich, Spanish-owned lands of South America.

Yes, there were things he wanted to do, a life he wanted to live, now that he was finally able to do so—now that the last of his siblings had finally left home and got settled.

‘You watch; you’ll be the next,’ Sheri, the second youngest of the family, had teased him. ‘Now that you’ve not got all of us at home to fuss over you’ll be looking around for a wife...raising a family with her, starting the whole thing over again...’

‘Never,’ he had said firmly. ‘I’ve done all the child-raising I plan to do with you five.’

Sheri had given him a serious look. ‘Has it really been so bad?’ she had asked him quietly, and then, answering her own question, had said softly, ‘Yeah, I guess at times it must have been. Not from our point of view but from yours. We’ve given you a hard time over the years but you’ve always stood by all of us, supported us... loved us... It hasn’t really put you off finding someone of your own, though, has it, Brad? Having your own kids?

‘I mean, look at all of us... All of us married and all of us with kids except for Doug, and he’s only just got married. My bet is, though, that he and Lucille won’t want to wait very long. You’ve been so good to all of us; I hate to think—’

‘Then don’t,’ Brad had advised her firmly, and after one look at him Sheri had acknowledged that there were times when, for all his great love for them, it was best not to push her eldest brother too far.

She didn’t care to think what would have happened to them if Brad hadn’t been there to take charge when Mom and Dad had been killed. There were six years between him and Amy, the next eldest, who had been twelve then, but no more than a year to eighteen months between Amy and the rest of them, going right down to Doug, who had been only just five. The accident had happened twenty years ago.

Brad had tried his best to get out of going to Britain to act as his uncle’s right arm and troubleshooter, even resorting to what he had privately admitted was the unfairly underhanded ploy of laying down a set of criteria on how he wanted to live whilst he was in Britain, which he’d known full well would be virtually impossible to fulfil. Or, rather, which he had assumed would be virtually impossible to fulfil. He had not reckoned with the British distributor having a widowed sister-in-law who could, apparently, provide him with exactly the homely living accommodation he had specified.

Brad was grimacing to himself as he took his seat on the plane, but the stewardess still cast a dazzling and very approving smile in his direction. Unusually for a first-class passenger, he was wearing a pair of soft, well-worn denims and an immaculate white T-shirt that revealed the firm, tanned muscles of his arms—and hid what she suspected would prove to be the equally tanned and certainly equally firm muscles of his torso.

Generally speaking, she didn’t care for such dark haired and formidable-looking men; macho was all very well in its way, but she preferred something a little softer, a little more malleable. In this particular hunk’s case, however, she was willing to make an exception, she decided enthusiastically.

It was true that those grey eyes looked as though they could hold a certain stern frostiness if required to do so, but there was no denying the sexual appeal of those thickly curling dark eyelashes or the hawkish, downright sexiness of that male profile with its warmly curved bottom lip.

‘Miss, miss... we’re Row F; where is that, please...?’ Reluctantly she turned her attention to the middle-aged couple approaching her. Just her luck, she thought—it was a busy, fully booked flight and she doubted that she would get any spare time to flirt with their sexy solitary passenger.

Brad was aware of the stewardess’s interest but chose to ignore it. He was not in the market for a relationship right now—of any kind. What he wanted more than anything else was to get this business in Britain all cleared up and functioning profitably so that he could hightail it back to the States and tell his uncles politely but firmly that there was no point in them looking to him to step into their shoes.

He wanted out. What he had in mind for his future was not another twenty-odd years worrying over the fate of the family business and its employees, but the freedom to pursue his own life and his own dreams.

What he had in mind was to leave work altogether, to finish building that boat of his, and then, who knew what...? To sail it around the world, maybe...? To do, in short, all the things he had never had the opportunity to do when he was younger, when he had been busy and too preoccupied with raising his brothers and sisters. He deserved some time for himself, didn’t he?

He wondered briefly what the elderly widow would be like. Not too fussy and house-proud, he hoped. He was beginning to regret using that particular delaying tactic and he wondered how quickly he would be able to make his excuses to his landlady and explain that he had changed his mind and decided that it might be better if he rented himself an apartment. He had certainly never expected Tim Burbridge to come up so quickly with someone who so closely fitted all his criteria.

Worrying about hurting his prospective landlady’s feelings by telling her that he had changed his mind should have been the last thing on his mind, he told himself as the plane started to lift into the sky.

Somewhere over the Atlantic he fell asleep. The stewardess paused to watch him, wondering enviously if there was already a woman in his life and how it must feel to wake up beside him every morning. Sighing regretfully, she moved further down the aisle.

CHAPTER TWO

CLAIRE was having a bad day. In fact, it had been a bad day from the moment she had woken up and remembered that this evening she was due to meet her prospective lodger for the first time. Irene had rung to stress to her how important it was that Tim’s new boss was made to feel welcome and at home.

‘I’ll do my best,’ Claire had promised meekly, but she had felt that Irene was going a touch too far when she’d informed her that she had borrowed from a friend with American connections a recipe book containing favourite traditional American recipes.

‘There’s a recipe in it for pot-roast, which, apparently, they love, and one for pecan pie and—’

Hurriedly thanking her, Claire had quickly brought the telephone conversation to an end. In the brief time which had elapsed since Irene had used strong-arm tactics to make her agree to help she had already begun to regret her decision, but, as yet, she had been unable to find the courage or the excuse to rescind it.

She liked Tim, who was a gentle, amiable man, technically brilliant in his field but slow to express himself verbally, unaggressive in his approach to others. She liked Irene as well, of course, but...

The small hand tugging on her arm distracted her from her private thoughts. She smiled lovingly and patiently as she waited for Paul to say something to her. He was the oldest of the children who attended the school, and whilst mentally extremely clever and quick, suffered very badly from cerebral palsy.

All the children were special in their own way but she had a particularly soft spot for Paul.

It was a lovely, warm, sunny spring day and, knowing how much they enjoyed the treat, she had taken Paul and one other child for a walk in the local park.

Everything had been all right until Janey, a Down’s syndrome girl, had seen the ice-cream van parked by one of the exits from the park.

Both of them, of course, had wanted an ice cream, especially Janey, whose wide, loving smile touched Claire’s heart every time she saw her, as did her loving hugs and cuddles.

Several other children and adults had already clustered around the van, waiting to be served, and Claire had had no inkling of what was to come as she’d joined them, although, as she had told herself bitterly later, she should have done. She was not, after all, completely unfamiliar with the cruelty with which people could sometimes treat those whom they perceived as different from themselves.

It had been a young woman who’d started it, quickly pulling her own child out of the way when pretty, brown-eyed Janey had tried to reach out and touch the girl’s blonde ringlets.

‘Keep away; don’t you dare touch her,’ she had screamed, her daughter now frightened and screaming too. Janey had also started to cry, but it had been the look of resigned knowingness in Paul’s eyes that had hurt Claire most of all—that and the awareness that she could not protect him from that knowledge.

As the other woman had led her screaming child away she’d turned round and shouted to Claire.

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Kids like that should be with their own sort, not allowed to mix with normal kids.’

It had been Paul—bright, clever and pitifully physically limited Paul—who had asked her on the way back, ‘What did she mean, Claire—our own sort...?’

She had wanted to cry then. But not in front of them. To have done so would have demeaned everything that they struggled so hard to achieve, everything that they were, but she would cry later in the privacy of the staff loo.

Now, as she walked Janey and Paul back through the park to their respective homes, Janey ‘helping’ to push Paul’s chair, she hesitated when Paul asked if they could stop for a while to watch several children playing football.

Janey was starting to get tired and they still had several minutes before Paul’s mother would be home from her part-time job, so they headed for a nearby bench.

A man was seated on it, watching the young foot-ballers. A parent? Claire wondered. An odd feeling, unfamiliar and, because of that, all the more disconcerting, threw her very much off balance as she glanced at him. It wasn’t, surely, those warmly tanned, hard-muscled male forearms revealed by the immaculate white T-shirt that were having such an extraordinary effect on her, was it?

Hastily she assured herself that it couldn’t possibly be. Other women might be susceptible to that kind of arrant male sexuality, but she most certainly wasn’t. Quite the opposite. Open male sexuality was something she invariably found distasteful, alarming...sometimes even threatening.

It certainly didn’t normally have the effect of making her glance want to linger and examine...to explore...

A sudden flush of embarrassed, self-conscious heat flooded her body. What on earth had come over her? No wonder the man was frowning as he looked from the children to her and then back again to the children, watching them, studying them...his frown deepening as he started to stand up and walk away from them.

At her side Paul made a small, distressed sound, focusing Claire’s thoughts and emotions on his feelings rather than her own, and a huge fierce wave of protective anger swamped her as she recognised the reason for Paul’s pain.

Without giving herself time to think, she told Janey quietly but firmly to wait with Paul and then ran after the man, catching hold of his arm so that he stopped and turned round to look at her.

‘How dare you do that?’ she exploded. ‘How dare you walk away from us like that...? Hurt them like that? They are human beings, you know, just like us. No, better than us, because they accept and love us. Have you any idea how much it hurts them when people do what you’ve just done? Have you no compassion...no understanding...?’

To Claire’s horror she could feel her eyes starting to flood with tears, her anger starting to die away as quickly as it had arisen. What on earth had got into her? She had never in her whole life behaved so aggressively to anyone as she was to this man. It was simply not in her nature—or so she had always thought.

Thoroughly shaken by her own behaviour, and ashamed of her outburst, she turned to go but, to her shock, instead of letting her walk away the man reached out and took hold of her, imprisoning her shoulders with his strong grip.

Later, reflecting on the incident, her face burning with chagrined dismay and guilt, she wouldn’t be able to understand or explain her own lack of reaction at being thus confined, or her own lack of fear, because she certainly didn’t feel any.

Shock, yes. Outrage, yes. But fear? No.

‘let go of me,’ she demanded, struggling to break free.

But he refused to comply, giving her a gentle little shake and telling her in a soft, slow American accent, ‘Will you quit yelling at me for a breath, woman, and listen to me...?’

Listen to him.

‘No, I will not,’ Claire stormed back at him, her rage flooding back. ‘Let me go!’

‘Not until you’ve let me have my say, you little firebrand. You’ve had yours and now it’s my turn...’

‘Let me go,’ Claire insisted, glowering up at him.

He had the most amazingly warm grey eyes, thickly fringed with dark, curly lashes. Her breath caught in a small gasp, the look in his eyes somehow mesmerising her, so that when he cursed softly under his breath and lowered his head—his mouth—towards her own she simply stood there, her own lips softly parted... waiting... knowing...

Just before his lips touched hers, she thought she heard him mutter, ‘Seems to me like there’s only one way to silence a feisty lady like you,’ but, since her attention was focused far more on what he was doing rather than what he was saying, she couldn’t be too sure.

It was a long time since she had been kissed by a man as if she was a woman, Claire acknowledged—a very, very long time. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever being kissed quite so...quite so...

Her heart started to hammer frantically against her ribs as the firm, warm pressure of a kiss meant to impose silence on her somehow or other became the slow and deliberate exploration of her mouth by lips that seemed to sense, to know...to understand... She felt herself starting to respond, her own lips suddenly pliant and soft.

With a small, outraged cry Claire wrenched herself away, her face burning not just with indignation and shock but with something far more intimate and far more worrying.

‘Look, I’m sorry...I never meant... I didn’t intend...’ he started to apologise.

‘You had no right,’ Claire stormed, but he wouldn’t let her finish, shaking his head and agreeing firmly.

‘No, I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I overstepped the mark... It should never have happened... It’s just that you made me so damned mad, ripping up at me like that...

‘I didn’t walk away from you because of the kids,’ he told her quietly. ‘Or at least not in the way that you meant. That bench over there is pretty small—not much room for me and the three of you, and so I did what I thought was the gentlemanly thing and decided to move on to give you your own space. It’s the kinda thing we do where I come from,’ he told her pointedly.

Claire could feel her flush deepening. She had never . felt more mortified or embarrassed in her life, and not just because she had totally misjudged his actions.

She turned to walk back to the children, who were still waiting patiently and anxiously by the bench, and as she did so she realised that the man had fallen into step beside her. As they reached Paul’s wheelchair he crouched down beside him and, giving him a warm smile, told him conversationally, ‘I spent a few months in one of those a good while back.’

Whilst Claire watched, Paul’s small, thin face glowed with happy colour as he slowly showed his new friend all the things his chair could do.

Janey didn’t miss out on the unexpected attention either, disengaging her hand from Claire’s and going up to Paul’s chair, flirting coyly.

It was only later, when Claire had delivered both children to their respective homes and she had time to herself to review the entire incident, that a horrid thought struck her.

That man, the American, he couldn’t possibly be Tim’s new boss and her prospective lodger, could he? No, of course he couldn’t, she reassured herself. Tim’s boss wouldn’t be sitting on his own in a small park watching children, dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans... He wouldn’t, would he?

If it had been him—if it had been—she had probably solved the problem of trying to wriggle out of her agreement to offer him a temporary home. Irene would probably kill her, she decided faintly. No, not probably—Irene would kill her!

‘You look very...er...formal. Where on earth are you going?’ Hannah asked curiously, surveying the heavy calf-length black skirt that Claire was wearing, and its equally businesslike and repressive-looking tailored black jacket.

‘Dinner at Irene and Tim’s to meet my prospective lodger,’ Claire told her.

‘Help! Poor man!’ Hannah exclaimed, gulping back laughter. ‘One look at you in that outfit and he’ll think he’s moving in with a Victorian matron. Where on earth did you get that suit...?’

‘I bought it for John’s funeral,’ Claire told her quietly, adding quickly when she saw the guilty chagrin in her friend’s eyes, ‘Oh, it’s all right... I was in such a state at the time I just bought the first black suit I could find.’

‘Yes...well...for a funeral...but why are you wearing it tonight? You’ll be boiled alive in it, for one thing.’

‘Irene wants me to make a good impression on Tim’s new boss,’ Claire explained.

‘In that? You’ll terrify the life out of him,’ Hannah protested. ‘You can’t possibly wear it. What about that pretty knitted three-piece—the one with the little waistcoat? You look lovely in that...’

The oatmeal knitted outfit in question did suit her, Claire acknowledged. Sally had been with her when she had bought it and had insisted on her getting it, even though Claire herself had been inclined at first to think that it was too sexy for her.

‘I don’t think Irene would totally approve,’ Claire told Hannah hastily.

‘Irene might not but I’ll bet your new lodger certainly will,’ Hannah countered forthrightly. ‘The honour of the close is at stake here, Claire; there is no way I can allow you to go out of here wearing that suit. No way at all...’

Claire gave a faint sigh, smiling ruefully at her friend.

‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll go and get changed...’

‘Into the knit,’ Hannah prompted.

‘Into something,’ Claire prevaricated.

‘Into the knit,’ Hannah said emphatically. ‘And I shall come with you to make sure that you do.’

It was going to be easier to give in than to argue, Claire recognised, and if she didn’t she was going to be late, which would really please Irene.

‘Very well, then, the knit,’ she agreed cravenly.

There was absolutely no logical reason at all for her to fear that her American—the American of the park—might be Tim’s boss, Claire assured herself firmly as she parked her car in her sister-in-law’s drive, behind Tim’s large Volvo and the unexpectedly ordinary Ford which she assumed must belong to the American. After all, he had hardly looked as though he might be Tim’s boss and an important, high-ranking executive with a successful go-getting American company, did he? He had looked... He had looked...

Hastily Claire dismissed the startlingly explicit and detailed printout that her brain immediately produced of the American’s physical attributes and concentrated instead on the probable appearance of Tim’s boss. He would in all likelihood be an American version of Tim—middle-aged, well fed, business-suited, going slightly bald.

A kind enough man, she was sure, she acknowledged quickly. He must be, given the brief, potted history that Irene had given her, but hardly the sort to wear the casual garb of youth with such devastating sexiness—which her American had, and with far more masculinity than the vast majority of those young men who did wear it, Claire admitted as she wove her way between the closely parked cars and headed for the house.

Irene had obviously been waiting for her because she was opening the door even before Claire knocked, beckoning her inside, telling her in a low voice that Tim and Brad were in the garden.

‘Brad, apparently, is a keen gardener, so at least that’s one thing you’ll have in common,’ she told Claire firmly as she led the way through the house to the small sitting room at the back where French windows led out onto a sunken patio with steps up onto the lawn.

Two pairs of male legs were currently descending those steps, both of them suit-trouser-clad. One pair—the bulkier pair—Claire immediately recognised as belonging to Tim; the other, she decided in relief, obviously belonged to his boss.

The navy wool with the fine, barely discernible chalk stripe running through it was such a reassuring contrast to the well-washed, snug-fitting jeans that were now beginning to haunt her that she almost laughed out aloud. How could her protagonist from the park possibly be...?

Claire literally felt the blood draining from her face as the two men finally stepped down onto the patio and came into full view.

She could feel the sharp, questioning look that Irene was giving her as she inadvertently drew in her breath in a short hiss of horror, but she refused to look back at her. She dared not do so.

Her face felt as though it was burning hot with chagrined embarrassment and dismay and she knew too that he had recognised her just as instantly as she had him, even though he gave no indication to the others—thankfully—as he extended his hand towards her and said formally, ‘Mrs...?’

‘Oh, good heavens, there’s no need for such formality. Claire—Brad,’ Irene announced, quickly introducing them.

‘Tim, get everyone a drink, will you, whilst I go and check on dinner...?’

‘I... I’ll come with you and give you a hand,’ Claire offered, desperate to escape.

But Irene wouldn’t let her, shaking her head firmly and telling her pointedly, ‘No, you stay and talk to Brad. We’ll drive you over to see the house tomorrow,’ she told their other guest. ‘But in the meantime, if there are any questions you want to ask Claire...’

Claire could feel her heart starting to thump unevenly and heavily as he gave her a long, steady look. Her face, her whole body felt so suffused with colour that she was surprised that Irene hadn’t commented on it.

‘I understand you’re a widow...’ was his only comment as Tim, obedient to his wife’s commands, bustled about getting them drinks.

‘Yes...yes. John, my husband, died some time ago...’

‘And you’ve lived on your own since then?’

Claire gave him a sharp look, made faintly uncomfortable by some undercurrent to his words. What was he trying to imply? Did he assume that just because... just because he had caught her momentarily off guard this afternoon with his...his unforgivably arrogant male behaviour in taking hold of her and kissing her... and just because, for the briefest possible smidgen of time, she might actually have involuntarily and inexplicably responded to him...that she was some kind of...that she...that her widowhood had been filled with a series of relationships...men...?

Indignation as well as a certain amount of self-conscious guilt coloured her face a soft, pretty pink, but when she opened her mouth to refute his subtle condemnation to her own shock she heard herself saying almost coyly, ‘Well, no, as a matter of fact...until recently there was someone...’

It was left to Tim, returning with their drinks, to rescue her from the potential consequences of her own folly by picking up the tail-end of their conversation and telling Brad jovially, ‘Claire’s only been on her own a matter of days. Sally, her late husband’s daughter, was living with her until she got married—’

‘Your stepdaughter,’ Brad elucidated, turning to take his drink from Tim with a brief smile that was far, far warmer than the one he had given her but nothing like as warm as the one he had bestowed on Paul and Janey in the park this afternoon, Claire registered, wondering at the same time why on earth she should feel so ridiculously forlorn and shut out somehow because she was excluded from that warmth.

Well, at least one thing was pretty sure, Claire decided fatalistically; now that he had recognised her and knew who she was, Brad Stevenson was hardly likely to want to stay with her.

For some reason, instead of the security and relief she would have expected to feel at such knowledge she felt a small and astonishingly painful stab of regret.

Regret...for what? Or would it be more appropriate to ask herself for whom?

‘Yes...yes. Sally, my stepdaughter,’ she agreed, flushing a little more pinkly under the look he was giving her.

‘Claire is the sort of person that others just naturally gravitate towards,’ Irene added, coming into the room to announce that dinner was ready. ‘She always seems to have a house full of people. If John hadn’t been so much older than her I’m sure she would have filled their home with children—’

‘Your husband was a good deal older than you?’ Brad interjected, looking even more assessingly at Claire.

What on earth was wrong with the man? Why did he have to make every question he asked her sound not merely like an accusation but virtually like a denunciation? Listening to him just then, she had heard quite dearly the disapproval and the cynicism in his voice, and she could see herself quite clearly through his eyes: the young, calculating woman deliberately enticing a much more financially well off and vulnerably older man into falling for her.

The truth was that her relationship with John had been nothing like that...nothing at all.

‘He was older, yes,’ she confirmed quietly now. Suddenly she felt very tired and drained. She was the one who should be questioning him, not the other way round, she told herself indignantly. How could she possibly allow him to move into her home after what he had done?

But, no matter how hard she tried to stir up a sense of injustice as they made their way to the dining room, honesty compelled her to admit that the last thing she had experienced in his arms was her normal lack of interest in sensual intimacy between a man and a woman and that she had, disconcertingly, actually responded to him.

Brad might have broken all the rules by kissing her but, startled though she had been by his behaviour, it had been her own unfamiliar and totally unexpected response to him which had really thrown her.

After years of passively accepting that she was simply not a very sexual person it had not been a pleasant experience to discover that she was in danger of responding to a totally unknown man with the kind of sensual hunger that she had always associated with books and films and with having far more to do with fiction than reality.

She still wasn’t quite sure which aspect of her own behaviour she found the least palatable—the fact that she had been so unexpectedly sensually aware of and aroused by him or the fact that her behaviour had made her question if she knew herself as well as she had always thought.

Both led to the kind of in-depth thinking about herself and her past which she found easier to avoid than to face, which was probably why, right now, she found herself not just embarrassed to have met Brad again but almost antagonistic towards him as well.

Once they were sitting down and eating, to Claire’s mild irritation and embarrassment, Irene started to list enthusiastically Claire’s domestic abilities for Brad’s benefit.

‘Claire is a wonderful cook,’ she told him when he had commented on her own cooking. ‘Of course, my brother, John, was an extremely fussy eater and he never really approved of the fact that Claire insisted on growing her own vegetables...’

‘Oh?’ Brad gave Claire a curious look. ‘Most health-conscious people these days take the view that homegrown produce is the best.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t that he disapproved of that,’ Irene explained. ‘No, John simply thought that that kind of gardening wasn’t really suitable for a woman. He—’

‘My husband would have preferred me to hire someone to look after our vegetable plot.’ Claire felt compelled to interrupt Irene and explain. ‘He didn’t think that sort of gardening was... He felt I should confine myself to—’

‘John was a very old-fashioned man,’ Tim cut in, giving Claire an affectionate, supportive smile. ‘He believed that a woman’s role in the garden should be confined to the picking and arranging of flowers.’

‘John simply didn’t want Claire overtaxing herself.’ Irene bristled, quick to defend her brother.

‘And besides, our mother always had someone in to do the heavy work. Of course, you know, Tim, that John always blamed you for Claire’s interest in her vegetable garden. You were the one, after all, who encouraged her, going round there virtually every weekend to help her.’

Whilst Claire and Tim exchanged slightly guilty and conspiratorial looks Irene sighed and shook her head, grumbling about the amount of time that Tim gave to his precious garden.

Then Tim commented enthusiastically to Claire, ‘I’m going to have another try with the asparagus, dig out a new bed, and I was thinking... That south wall of yours—there’s no reason why we shouldn’t try a grapevine on it. There are some new strains now that are far more hardy.’

‘You prefer the domestic environment, then, do you, Claire?’ Brad overrode Tim, his voice somehow unexpectedly hard-edged as he looked almost challengingly at her. ‘You’ve never had any desire to have a career?’ he asked pointedly, or so it seemed to Claire.

‘Being a stepmother to Sally and John’s wife was my career,’ Claire told him stiffly.

‘A career which is now over,’ Brad said silkily. ‘Haven’t you been tempted, as so many modern women are, to take up the challenge of making a place for yourself in the commercial arena? After all, these days there is no such thing as a job for life. All of us have to be flexible, adaptable and to accept that sometimes, for our own good, we have to change career paths.’

Claire could see how nervous Brad’s comments were making Tim. Was he simply trying to get at her, she wondered, or was he using her as a means of warning Tim of what lay ahead?

Either way there was something she intended to point out to him.

‘I did train as a teacher,’ she told him coolly. ‘That’s how I met John and—’

‘John wanted Claire to be at home for Sally once they were married,’ Irene intervened. ‘She works part-time now on a voluntary basis at a special school for disadvantaged children...’

‘I see... Such work must be very emotionally draining. I should have thought you would prefer the...tranquillity of your gardening.’

‘Plants can be as quarrelsome and awkward in their way as children,’ Claire told him with unusual sharpness as she watched the way he looked from Tim’s face to her own. ‘And besides, it isn’t the children I find hard to deal with so much as the way that other people treat them...’

‘No matter how well intentioned they are or how well drawn up, no amount of anti-discrimination laws can genuinely legislate against people’s prejudices—what they feel gut-deep inside themselves,’ Brad told her quietly, his earlier sharpness subsiding.

‘No,’ Claire agreed. ‘They can’t.’

‘I realise that it may not necessarily be of any comfort to you, but there is a school of thought that suggests that we can and do choose what we will and will not be when we are reincarnated on this earth, and that such children bring with them special gifts of courage and understanding.’

Claire gave him a surprised look. In view of what had happened between them she had not expected him to want to offer her any kind of emotional comfort.

As though he had read her mind, he told her calmly and unexpectedly openly, ‘I went through a very bad time when my folks were killed. I was very angry, very resentful, very bitter. We were never what you would call a religious family but out local pastor did his best to help. He told me that some people found it helped to view such tragedies as indications that they were stronger than others, that somehow they must be and that they would find strength to overcome whatever had happened to them. Or perhaps he simply judged that I would react better that way.’

Instead of lapsing into silence and so escaping from the extremely odd and disturbing sensations, both emotional and physical, that Brad was somehow arousing inside her—sensations which were not unlike the unpleasantness of pins and needles experienced when feeling finally started to return to a formerly numb limb, she recognised warily—she heroically subdued her instinct to retreat into herself and said firmly to Brad, ‘I understand that one of the reasons you want to lodge in a family home is because you have a large family back at home in America...’

‘Yes,’ Brad agreed. ‘I’m the eldest of six. They’ve all left home and established lives and families of their own now—all but the youngest... He got married a short while back. But it doesn’t stop there. Ours is a small town by American standards, and at times it feels like I can’t so much as walk down Main Street without bumping into an aunt or a cousin or some other relative.

‘My father and his two brothers set up an air-conditioning plant in the town in the early fifties. Until recently both my uncles still worked in the business. One of them retired on doctor’s orders last fall and the other...’

He paused, his eyes suddenly becoming shadowed, and Claire wondered what it was he was thinking to have caused that look of mingled anger and pain.

It was gone eleven o’clock when she eventually left, and when Brad stood up politely as she said her goodbyes and came towards her she suddenly discovered that instead of holding out her hand for him to shake she was virtually on the point of lifting her face to his... For what...? For him to kiss... And not decorously and socially on the cheek either, but as he had done this afternoon—on her lips, on her mouth, slowly caressing and exploring, making her feel...making her want.

Hot-faced, she took a quick step back from him and almost barged into Irene, who was watching her frowningly.

‘Well, don’t forget that we’re bringing Brad round to see the house in the morning, will you?’ Irene reminded her bossily as Claire turned to her. ‘Will eleven suit you?’

‘Eleven...yes. Eleven’s fine,’ Claire agreed jerkily.

She couldn’t understand why on earth Brad hadn’t already said that he had changed his mind. This evening they had made polite conversation with one another but it must be as obvious to him as it was to her that it would be impossible for them to live under the same roof.

She found him far too...disturbing...far too...male, and underneath her hard struggle for an air of calm she could feel her nerve-ends bristling with anxiety-induced aggression.

Just sitting there this evening on the opposite side of the dinner table to him had mentally and emotionally exhausted her, although quite why he should be having such an extraordinary effect on her she didn’t really know.

Be honest with yourself, she told herself firmly as she drove home; you never wanted to have him lodging with you. Irene caught you at a weak moment and now that you’ve actually met him...

Now that she had actually met him...what? Guiltily she realised that the traffic lights had changed colour and that the driver behind her was hooting impatiently for her to move off.

It wasn’t dignified for a woman of her widowed status to experience emotions and physical sensations which more properly belonged to the early years of a woman’s sexual burgeoning, although in her case her sexual burgeoning had been delayed so that she had assumed that it would never happen. Had been delayed—did that mean—?

Hastily she censored her thoughts.

Suddenly, she was defensively resentful of the way Brad’s unwanted intrusion into her quiet, well-ordered life had brought to the surface issues, emotions and feelings that she had long, long ago thought safely buried.

It was a relief to get home, to walk into the familiar warmth and smell of her own kitchen.

John had originally bought the house on his marriage to Sally’s mother, and, as he had explained to Claire, since it had always been Sally’s home he felt it would be unfair to her to sell it and move somewhere else, especially since it was such a large and comfortable house situated in the most sought-after area of the town.

Claire had agreed with him—genuinely so. She herself had liked the house from the first moment she had walked into it, from that very first night when John had taken her there. It had felt right somehow—welcoming, warm, protective, reaching out to hold her in its sturdy Edwardian embrace.

She had known, of course, that there were other reasons why John didn’t want to move. He had loved his first wife very, very much indeed. The house was a part of her, her home. Even now there were still photographs of her in the drawing room, and an oil painting of her hung at the bend in the stairs, revealing how very like her Sally was.

Some of the rooms were still furnished with the pieces of antique furniture she had inherited from her family.

Down the years Claire had lovingly cared for and polished them and when Sally had announced her engagement she had immediately offered them to her.

‘No, thanks,’ Sally had told her, wrinkling her nose. ‘Just thinking of how much it would cost to insure them makes me feel ill.’

‘But they are yours,’ Claire had insisted. ‘Your father left them to you. They were your mother’s...’

‘The best and most important gift my father ever gave me, the most valued asset he left, is you,’ Sally had told her emotionally, hugging her fiercely, making them both cry.

‘Until you came into my life, into this house, I can only remember how dull and dark my life was—how shadowed. When you came you brought the sunshine with you. When I hear people talking about wicked stepmothers I want to stand up and shout that it doesn’t have to be that way, that there are “steps” who are genuinely loved and valued.

‘Don’t you dare even think of going out of my life, Claire,’ she had told her stepmother fiercely. ‘When I eventually have my children I want you there for them just like you were there for me. You will be their grandmother... you...and I will need you to be there for me and for them so much.

‘I still wish that you and Dad had had children of your own, you know. I know that Dad always felt that it wasn’t fair to me but he was wrong. You were the one he wasn’t fair to, and I would have loved a brother or a sister or, even better, both...’

‘Sometimes these things just aren’t meant to be,’ Claire had told her huskily.

She loved her stepdaughter as though she were her own child—had loved her from the moment John had introduced them. Sally had then been a solemn, too serious and mature child, who had stood out from her peers with her too big school uniform and the neat plaits which John had copied from photographs he’d had of Sally’s mother at the same age.

It had been left to Claire to explain gently to him that Sally felt self-conscious and different because of them, that such a hairstyle was out of date and could tempt other children to pick on her and bully her.

Those first years of her marriage had been happy, productive years. Years when she had eagerly reached out to embrace the opportunity to put the past behind her—something she felt she had done very successfully and thoroughly.

So why had it now started to force its way past all the careful barriers she had erected to protect herself from it? And, more importantly, why was it Brad who was somehow responsible for the unwanted turbulence and disturbance of her normally calm and easily controlled emotions?

CHAPTER THREE

‘SO COME on, then, tell me. What was he like...?’

‘You’ll be able to judge for yourself soon enough,’ Claire told her neighbour placidly. ‘Irene’s bringing him round at eleven to look over the house.’

Hannah had called round ostensibly to show Claire a photograph of the hotel where she would be staying on holiday in Turkey, but Claire was more amused than deceived by her old friend’s ploy to satisfy her curiosity.

‘I’ll go if you want me to,’ Hannah offered, but. without making any real attempt to dislodge herself from her comfortable seat at Claire’s kitchen table.

In order to dispel some of her unwanted nervous energy Claire had been trying out a new biscuit recipe. The results of her work would be eaten by the children at the school, but there was a deeper purpose to her self-imposed task than merely the execution of her culinary skills.

The school, which was privately and voluntarily funded, with some council aid, took, in the main, children from backgrounds where for one reason or another there were certain social deprivations.

In many cases these sprang solely from the fact that the child’s mother had to work and could not be there full-time, and one of the things Claire enjoyed doing was showing the children and teaching them when she could, the kind of simple domestic tasks which they would have learned as a matter of course in a different age.

The biscuit recipe she had been trying out this morning was of the very simplest variety and one she was sure that her children would thoroughly enjoy trying for themselves.

‘Mmm...these are good,’ Hannah opined as she sampled the first of the batch to be removed from the oven.

‘I thought you were supposed to be on a diet,’ Claire reminded her.

‘Tomorrow,’ Hannah muttered through a second mouthful of warm biscuit, turning her head in the direction of the kitchen door as they both heard a car pull up onto the drive.

‘Oh, Hannah...were you just about to leave?’ Irene demanded bossily as Claire opened the door to let her and Brad into the kitchen.

Hannah and Irene were old adversaries, probably because Irene knew that she couldn’t boss the other woman about in the same way as she could Claire, Claire admitted wryly, mentally acknowledging that that was, perhaps, one of the reasons why she had not encouraged Hannah to leave. She didn’t care to think of herself as being manipulative, but there were times...

‘You must be Brad,’ Hannah announced, ignoring Irene’s suggestion to get up and go and shaking Brad’s hand. ‘I’m one of Claire’s neighbours... Your neighbour too, I understand. You’ll love living here with Claire; she’ll spoil you to death,’ she declared. ‘She’s a wonderful cook.’

‘Mmm...smells like it,’ Brad agreed pleasantly.

He was more casually dressed this morning, although not in the jeans and T-shirt in which she had first seen him. This time he was wearing a pair of plain, casual, neutral linen trousers with a white linen shirt and a soft knit neutral unbuttoned waistcoat. On another man such clothes might have looked too stylish and uncomfortable but Brad wore them so easily that they seemed; to be an intrinsic part of him.

There was something about a man who took an interest in his appearance but at the same time managed to look as if he didn’t care if sticky little fingers touched his clothes that was infinitely appealing, Claire recognised. Too appealing, she warned herself hastily as she became aware that Brad had turned his head and was watching her watching him.

‘I...er... Where would you like to start...? The bedroom?’ she suggested quickly, and then for no reason that she could think of immediately blushed so hard and so colourfully that she felt completely humiliated by her ridiculous reaction.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.