“I’ll never get married!”

“You say that now,” Rafe replied, “but when you meet someone…”

Tess glared at him. “Marriage is all about providing a loving, secure environment for children. That’s why a man gets married.”

“That’s why women get married,” he corrected. “They’re the practical ones. A man gets married for other reasons. Most men are thinking about love when they get married, Tess.”

“You’re talking about sex!”

KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Anglesey, Wales. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons and the various stray animals that have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

Kim Lawrence’s fast-paced, sassy books are real page-turners. She creates characters you’ll never forget, and sensual tension you won’t be able to resist….

Books by Kim Lawrence

HARLEQUIN PRESENTS®

2123—HIS SECRETARY BRIDE (2-in-1)

2147—WIFE BY AGREEMENT

2161—THE SEDUCTION SCHEME

2171—A SEDUCTIVE REVENGE

Kim Lawrence
A CONVENIENT HUSBAND

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘TOMORROW…? So soon…?’

Tess Trelawny closed her eyes tight in denial and willed herself to wake up from this nightmare. Minor—no, major flaw in this plan: she already was awake, awake and shaking as if she had a fever. Along with the deluge of adrenalin, blind, gut-twisting panic raced through her body. The leaden hand she lifted to her throbbing head was trembling and icily cold.

Chloe chose not to respond to the pulsating note of entreaty in her aunt’s voice. She often ignored things which made her feel uncomfortable; besides, there was no reason for her to feel guilty. If Tess got awkward, Ian would back her up. Tess would listen to him; everyone did. He was the smartest person she’d ever met…and he was hers…A dreamily content smile curved her collagen-enhanced, red-painted lips…

‘Ian is just dying to meet dear little Benjy.’ Her lips tightened in exasperation as the pedicurist began to paint her toenails. ‘Hold on a sec, Aunty Tess…’

The prefix invariably made Tess feel as if a generation separated her from her elder sister’s only child, not a mere seven years. Now was no exception.

‘This stupid girl is using the wrong colour.’

Tess could hear the muffled sounds over the phone as Chloe paused long enough to sharply inform the unfortunate young woman attending her that she had no intention of being seen with a shade that was so sadly dated.

‘I was wondering,’ Chloe continued once she’d satisfied herself the right shade was being applied to her toes. ‘Has he got more hair these days?’

The question bewildered Tess. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, you keep saying it’s going to grow!’ Chloe responded in an ill-used tone that implied Tess had been heartlessly leading her on. ‘I mean, those little wispy bits are not very attractive, are they?’ she elaborated sulkily. ‘And they look gingery.’ Her worried tone implied there were few things in life worse than a red-headed child.

Tess closed her eyes and took a deep breath…sometimes she felt the unworthy desire to shake her beautiful niece until her white even teeth rattled.

‘Yes, Chloe,’ she replied woodenly. ‘Ben does have some hair now, and you’ll be pleased to hear it’s a gorgeous strawberry blonde.’

‘You mean sandy…?’

‘No, I mean strawberry blonde.’

‘That’s excellent,’ came the relieved reply. ‘And, Aunty Tess, for God’s sake dress him in something half decent. How about that nice little outfit I sent from Milan…?’

Chloe’s fleeting visits had always been infrequent, but during the last few months her acting career had taken off with several small but well received film roles, and the visits had become almost non-existent.

Tess was guiltily aware that she should have remonstrated with the younger girl, but the truth was life was easier without the stress and disruption of Chloe’s visits. The problem was her niece resented not being the centre of attention and she didn’t like to share that attention with anyone—not even a baby.

‘He grew out of it.’

‘Oh, pity…at least make sure he’s not covered in jam or anything!’ Chloe found it hard to accept that spotless, freshly scrubbed and sweet smelling wasn’t the normal state of babies. ‘I want him to make a good impression on Ian.’

If she were here right now, so help me, I’d strangle her! Tess’s voice shook with suppressed outrage as she responded. ‘This isn’t an audition, Chloe.’

‘No, this is the start of the rest of my life!’ came back the dramatic, throbbing response. To Tess’s uncharitable ears it sounded as though she were practising a line from her latest part. Abruptly Chloe’s tone changed. ‘Must dash, Aunty Tess…I’ve got a yoga class in half an hour, and I really can’t miss it. You should try it yourself—I’ve really attained an inner harmony you wouldn’t believe. See you soon!’ The phone line went dead.

Tess didn’t think she’d ever feel harmony, inner or otherwise, again as she responded urgently to the stomach-churning nausea and dashed up the narrow flight of stairs two at a time to reach the bathroom. When her stomach was quite empty she splashed her face with cold water. The face that looked back at her from the mirror was waxily pale, dominated by a pair of wide green eyes. The desperation and panic she felt was clearly reflected in those haunted emerald depths, and, even though speaking to Chloe always made her feel middle-aged, the person staring back at her looked a lot younger than her nearly thirty years.

Her feet automatically took her to the half-open door of the smaller of the two bedrooms in the cottage. Quietly she went inside. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon sunlight. She went to stand silently by the cot in which a small figure was taking his afternoon nap. He was dressed in dungarees—he was sound asleep.

The figure’s ruffled blonde hair lay in spiky tufts over his little head. His face was rosily tinged and his long eyelashes lay dark against the full curve of his infant cheek.

Tess closed her eyes and a single tear slid down her cheek. Not so very long ago if anyone had told the dedicated career girl she had been that it was possible to love anyone so much it hurt—with the possible exception of George Clooney—she’d have laughed. But she did; she loved this little boy with all her heart and soul. Part of her wanted to bundle him up and run away somewhere safe, somewhere Chloe would never find them.

The sleeping figure opened his eyes, saw Tess and, with a sleepy smile, closed them again. Tess held the noisy sobs in check until she had stumbled out of the room.

The village was in total darkness as Rafe Farrar drove towards the stone manor house tucked behind its high walls on the outskirts of this picturesque little hamlet. A hamlet that was just far enough away from the popular stretch of coast to avoid exploitation and remain relatively unspoilt and sleepy.

He’d spent what most people would consider his idyllic childhood here. Since the death of his elder brother, Alec, and their father’s enforced retreat to the Riviera, the only permanent occupant of the Farrar family home was his grandfather, an elderly but far from frail individual who was not adapting well to his belated retirement from the world of international banking. His relationship with his grandfather being what it was, Rafe could be sure of a tepid welcome from the old man, who didn’t consider the black sheep of the family warranted breaking out the fatted calf for.

When he’d made the arrangements for this duty visit he hadn’t planned on making the journey alone; a third party to act as buffer zone was always helpful when he and the old man came face to face. In this instance he’d been hoping to introduce the third party as his future wife. This had always been a situation with explosive possibilities, especially when his grandparent had learnt this future bride would have to rid herself of a husband before she made her second trip to the altar. At least he didn’t have that problem now.

Thinking about the reason for his solitary state—for an individual not given to brooding or self-pity, he was catching on fast—kept the mobile curve of Rafe’s sensual lips in a firm thin line. He was normally a scrupulously careful driver, but his dark embittered gaze did not on this occasion flicker towards the speedometer as his big powerful motor sped grimly through the narrow silent main street.

‘Hell!’ His language went rapidly downhill from this point as, with a display of reflexes that bordered on the supernatural, he only hit the dog that had darted out in front of him a glancing blow.

Still cursing, he leapt from the car, performing this simple task with the athletic fluidity that typified all his movements. He noticed immediately that his front headlight had not escaped as lightly as the animal. He kicked aside the broken glass that surrounded the tree he’d collided with. His unbroken headlight picked up the mongrel that lay trembling on the grass verge.

‘All right, boy,’ he crooned in a firm but soothing voice. With the careless confidence of someone who had never experienced a moment’s nervousness with any animal—and this one was big and powerful—Rafe’s capable hands moved gently over the animal’s spare frame. The dog endured his examination passively. Rafe was no expert but it seemed likely to him that the animal was suffering from shock rather than anything more immediately life-threatening.

‘Looks like this was your lucky night, mate.’ Rafe scratched the dog, who gazed up at him with slavish adoration, beneath one ear. ‘That makes one of us,’ he added bitterly. He didn’t need to look at the tag on the mutt’s collar to work out where this jaywalker originated from.

This wasn’t the sort of animal most people would consider worth a broken headlight. This was the sort of animal that looked mean, the sort of animal that was left behind at the animal shelter when all the more appealing ones had been selected. His off-white tatty coat didn’t gleam, it was covered in an interlaced network of old scars; then there was the mega-bad case of canine halitosis. Given all this, there was only one person this animal could belong to. Even when they’d been kids she’d always managed to pick up every waif and stray within a ten-mile radius!

Trying not to think about what was happening to his pale leather upholstery, Rafe laid the old dog out on the back seat. Climbing back into the car, he headed in the direction of the picture-postcard cottage Tess Trelawny had inherited from her grandmother, old Agnes Trelawny, four years back.

Even if the lights hadn’t been unexpectedly on in the cottage Rafe would have had no qualms about waking Tess up. Actually he welcomed the fact he had a legitimate reason to yell at someone—tonight he really wanted to yell! And with Tess he didn’t have to fret about delicate female sensitivities; she was as tough as old boots and well able to give as good as she got. The more he thought about it, the happier he felt about his enforced detour.

Arms full of damp, smelly dog, he gave the kitchen door a belligerent kick. It opened of its own accord with a horror-movie series of loud creaks.

‘Your door needs oiling,’ he announced, stepping over the well-lit threshold.

It wasn’t just the bright light that made him blink and recoil in shock, it was the disordered state of the room. For some reason the entire contents of the kitchen cupboards seemed to be stacked in haphazard piles all around the room.

‘My God!’ he ejaculated. ‘Has there been a break-in?’ He voiced the first most likely possibility that came to mind.

The shortish, slim figure, dressed incongruously in a cotton jersey nightshirt and yellow rubber gloves—a fashion statement this ensemble was not—ignored this question completely.

Tess rose in some agitation from her crouched position in front of one of the empty kitchen cupboards and rushed forward.

‘Baggins!’ she shrieked huskily. ‘What have you done to him?’ she demanded indignantly of Rafe.

‘Why didn’t you lock the door?’ he enquired with a censorious frown. ‘I could have been anyone!’

Tess spared her caller a brief unfriendly glare before her attention returned to the dog. ‘But you turned out to be you. Aren’t I the lucky one?’ she drawled.

‘Quit that!’ he rapped out sternly as she tried to forcibly transfer the animal from his arms to her skinny ones. ‘He’s too heavy for you. Besides, the miserable, misbegotten hound is quite capable of walking under his own steam.’

To demonstrate this he placed the animal on the floor. ‘I just didn’t want to risk him sloping off again and killing some poor unsuspecting motorist.’ He pointedly snapped shut the door behind him.

‘Oh!’ Tess’s anxiety retreated slightly as Baggins began to behave like the puppy he no longer was. ‘I fixed the fence, only he’s started burrowing under it. You hit him with that flashy car of yours, I suppose?’ Her full lips pursed in disapproval.

‘Barely.’ He noticed that Tess’s narrow feet were bare too. Like the rest of her they were small, and though she was skinny it wasn’t a matchstick, angular sort of skinniness, more a pleasing, rounded, supple svelteness…all over.

Rafe was unprepared for the mental postscript, only once the thought was out there it seemed natural to speculate on what was underneath the skimpy shirt thing. He cleared his throat and managed to drag his wayward thoughts to a slightly less tacky level—it wasn’t thinking about sex that bothered him, it was thinking about sex and Tess simultaneously!

‘Spare me chapter and verse on your lightning reflexes…please.’

Rafe, who was working up a cold sweat getting other reflexes under control, smiled grimly, displaying a set of perfect white teeth. ‘Your gratitude for my sacrifice is duly noted.’

‘What sacrifice?’

‘One smashed headlight, and, yes, thanks for your concern, I did escape uninjured.’ Testosterone surge firmly in check, Rafe found to his intense relief he could look her in the eye and see Tess, his friend, not Tess, a woman. It was a well-known fact that rejection could make a man act and think weird.

‘I can see that for myself.’

‘Why am I getting the distinct impression you’d have preferred it if I was sporting the odd broken bone or three?’ he mused wryly. ‘If this is the sort of welcome your guests usually receive, I’m surprised you get any.’

‘I might be happier if I didn’t,’ she snarled.

‘Thinking of becoming a recluse, are we?’

‘You may be lord of the manor and the product of generations of in-breeding, but isn’t the royal we a bit over the top, even for you?’

‘I wasn’t actually referring to myself.’ He flexed his shoulders and rotated his head slowly to ease the tension in his neck. ‘But what’s a bit of poetic licence between friends?’ Another shrug. ‘And that was a great line.’

This drew a rueful laugh from Tess. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

‘Before you fling any more stones, try and remember, angel, that beneath this strong, manly inbred exterior there lurks a sensitive soul.’ He took Tess’s hand and planted it with a slap against his chest. ‘See, I’m flesh and blood.’

Tess couldn’t feel any evidence of a soul, but she could feel his body heat and the slow, steady beat of his heart. She stared at her own fingers splayed out against his shirt for what seemed like a long time; it was a strangely enervating experience to stand there like that. The distant buzzing in her head got closer. Feeling slightly dizzy, even a little confused, she lifted her eyes to his face…it swam dizzily out of focus.

Rafe looked down into her wide-spaced jewel-bright eyes and he hastily removed his fingers from around her wrist. Her hand fell bonelessly to her side.

He cleared his throat. ‘And, incidentally, you may not be aware of the difference, but there is a big one between class and flash.’

‘Toys for boys.’ I really should have eaten something, she decided, lifting a worried hand to her gently spinning head.

‘Insult my car, insult me.’

She gave a relieved sigh and grinned; she was no longer seeing him through soft focus. ‘I’d prefer to insult you.’

‘I thought you were.’

Tess gave a concessionary shrug—he was actually taking her nastiness pretty well, which made her feel even more guilty than she already did. She knew perfectly well that it was Chloe she wanted to yell at…only she wasn’t here and Rafe was…Just as well he had a broad back—very broad, as it happened, she mused, her eyes sliding briefly to the impressive muscular solidity of his powerful shoulders. Her empty stomach squirmed uncomfortably.

‘Well, Baggins doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge,’ she admitted. The undiscriminating animal’s juvenile performance was obviously for Rafe’s benefit, not her own. ‘You naughty, naughty boy,’ she clucked lovingly.

Rafe didn’t make the mistake of thinking her affectionate scolding was meant for him. ‘You always did have a novel approach to discipline, Tess,’ he observed drily.

Tess sniffed. ‘I’m glad I’m not a blustering bully,’ she retaliated. ‘I saw you being incredibly horrid to that poor man last night.’

‘I thought you didn’t have a telly. Not in keeping with your green, eco-friendly, lentil-eating, brown-rice lifestyle…?’

His amused scorn really got under her skin. How dared he look down his autocratic nose at her? It obviously hadn’t occurred to him that she might actually miss the odd trip to a concert or the theatre that had once been an important part of her life.

‘Gran didn’t have a telly, I have a small portable, and just because I grow vegetables I resent the implication I’ve turned into one,’ she told him tartly. ‘Besides, you’ve room to talk. At least when I do things it’s out of personal conviction.’ Or in this case a desire to cut down on the grocery bill—fresh organic vegetables cost the earth to buy!

‘Meaning I don’t…?’

‘Well, you didn’t show much interest in saving the planet before Nicola.’ Nicola, the environmental activist, had been one of Rafe’s first serious girlfriends. Along with strong convictions Nicola had possessed—in common with all the girlfriends who had followed her—endless legs, a great body and long, flowing blonde hair. ‘You haven’t forgotten her, have you?’

Nicola had been a long time ago and in point of fact his recall was a little hazy.

‘A man doesn’t forget a girl like Nicola.’ He gave a lecherous grin just in case she’d missed the point—Tess hadn’t.

‘That girl had boundless enthusiasm.’

Not to mention a D cup had she chosen to wear a bra, Tess recalled cynically. ‘Some might call it fanaticism.’

She was distracted from her theme when at that moment Baggins’ tail caught a pile of plates and sent the top one spinning towards the floor. Rafe neatly caught it just before impact.

‘This dog’s a liability,’ he grunted.

‘Insult me, insult my dog,’ she responded, mimicking his earlier retort. ‘Perhaps,’ she fretted anxiously, ‘I should call the vet just to be absolutely sure…?’ She ran an exploratory hand over the dog’s back.

‘If he was a horse he’d be dog meat.’

‘Not if he was my horse.’

‘You sentimental old thing, you.’

‘That’s rich coming from someone who has his first childhood pony munching happily away in the lap of luxury.’

‘Reasonable comfort,’ he modified. There was a twinkle in Rafe’s eyes as he acknowledged her pot-shot with a rueful grin. ‘If you’re really worried about the mutt, I’m sure the worthy Andrew would be happy to make a house call.’

Rafe wasn’t up to speed with the status of their romance, but it was well known locally that the middle-aged veterinarian had been sniffing after Tess since he’d bought into the local practice. Even though his acquaintance with that individual had been brief, Rafe didn’t doubt that his estimation of the man as dull, pompous and self-righteous was essentially correct.

Tess flushed at the snide comment and her spine grew defensively rigid. ‘Didn’t you know, Andrew sold the practice? He’s moved up north.’ She knew what Rafe, like everyone else, thought. If he dared offer her any false sympathy…

Why did everyone automatically assume that because she was single, female and just about on the right side of thirty she had to be gagging for the romantic attentions of any half-decent male in the vicinity? Admittedly, half-decent males were thin on the ground, and Andrew had been pleasant company, but even though the only thing they’d shared had been the odd meal the entire neighbourhood, if sly comments and knowing looks were anything to go by, had assumed Tess had been sharing a lot more with him.

Rafe’s upper lip curled. ‘I always thought he was slimy,’ he drawled insultingly.

‘If it’s any comfort, he didn’t like you much either.’

Rafe patted the fawning animal. ‘He’s new…?’

‘So are most things since you last honoured us with your presence.’

‘You’re still the same.’

Tess wasn’t flattered; she didn’t think she was meant to be. ‘He’s pretty second-hand, actually. He was Mr Pettifer’s dog—you remember him…?’

Rafe nodded, dimly recalling a frail octogenarian.

‘Nobody wanted him.’

‘What a surprise!’ He couldn’t imagine there were many households that would be likely to welcome this ugly brute.

Exasperated, Tess pushed the heavy fringe of chestnut hair, which was overdue a trim, impatiently from her eyes and focused on Rafe’s sternly handsome face.

‘He’s got a lovely nature.’

‘And bad breath.’

‘Well, Ben loves him.’ From the way she said it he could tell that, as far as she was concerned, there was no greater recommendation.

She might be wrong—she didn’t see Rafe much these days—but there seemed to be something a bit different about him tonight. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it…

‘Have you been drinking?’ she speculated out loud.

‘Not yet,’ he told her with a jarring, reckless kind of laugh. ‘Just the thing!’ he announced, swooping on a dusty bottle from the wine rack. His dark eyes scanned the label.

‘Elderberry, my favourite. Corkscrew…?’ he added imperiously, holding out his hand expectantly.

Gran’s elderberry! She now knew for sure that something was up! In other circumstances it might have nagged him to tell her what it was. Only at that moment she didn’t much care what was bothering him, she just wanted him out of her hair so she could think…not that that had got her anywhere so far, she was reluctantly forced to acknowledge.

‘You’re not proposing to expose your discerning taste buds to gran’s home-made wine?’ she mocked.

‘Not alone.’

‘A tempting invitation, but it’s three o’clock in the morning,’ she reminded him, automatically consulting her bare wrist to confirm this statement and realising she wasn’t wearing her wrist-watch. Come to think of it, she wasn’t wearing much, she acknowledged uncomfortably, pulling fretfully at the hem of her washed-out cotton nightshirt.

She had a distinct recollection of waving her arms around wildly, revealing in the process God knew what! Still, it was only Rafe and it wasn’t likely he’d turn a hair if he’d walked in to find her stark naked!

Three a.m. or not, Rafe, of course, was looking as tiresomely perfect as ever. It went without saying that his outfit was tasteful and expensive. It consisted of dark olive trousers and a lightweight knitted polo shirt—not that the details really mattered, not when you were at least six feet four, possessed an athletic, broad-shouldered, skinny-hipped, long-legged body, and went around projecting the sort of brooding sensuality that made females more than willing to overlook the fact you had a face that wasn’t strictly pretty. Strong, attractive and interesting, yes…pretty…no.

‘I know what time it is, I was kind of wondering about you…’ His gaze moved rather pointedly over the disarray in the room. ‘Do you often get the urge to spring-clean in the wee small hours, Tess?’

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she explained defensively, peeling off the yellow rubber gloves and throwing them on the draining-board.

She didn’t much care if Rafe thought her eccentric, bordering on loopy; she didn’t much care what Rafe thought at all these days. In her opinion success had not changed Rafe for the better. He’d been a nice, if irritating kid when he’d been two years younger than her.

She supposed he still must be two years younger, time being what it was, only the intervening years seemed to have swallowed up the two-year gap and had deprived her of the comfortable feeling of superiority that a few extra months gave you as a child.

Superiority wasn’t something people around Rafe were likely to feel, she mused. He was one of those rare people folk automatically turned to for leadership—not that she classed herself as one of those mesmerised sheep who hung on his every word.

Still, although she often teased him about his old family name, he wasn’t like the rest of the Farrars who were a snooty lot, firmly rooted in the dark ages. Traditionally—they were big on tradition—the younger son entered the military and the elder worked his way up through the echelons of the merchant bank which had been founded by some long-dead Farrar.

His elder brother Alec had obligingly entered the bank, even though as far as Tess could see the only interest he’d had in money had been spending it. She didn’t suppose that his family had been particularly surprised when Rafe hadn’t meekly co-operated with their plans for him. Since he’d been expelled from the prestigious boarding-school that generations of Farrars had attended they’d expected the worst of him and he’d usually fulfilled their expectations.

He hadn’t even obliged them and turned into a worthless bum as had been confidently predicted. He’d worked his way up, quite rapidly as it happened, on the payroll of a national daily. He’d made a favourable impression there, but it was working as the anchor of a prestigious current affairs programme that had really made his name.

The job was tailor-made for Rafe. He wasn’t aggressive or hostile; he didn’t need to be. Rafe had the rare ability of being able to charm honest answers from the wiliest of politicians. He made it look so easy that not everyone appreciated the skill of his technique, or realised how much grinding background research he did to back up those deceptively casual questions.

Such was his reputation that people in public life were virtually queuing up to be interviewed by him, all no doubt convinced that they were too sharp to be lulled into a false sense of security. Without decrying his undoubted abilities, Tess cynically suspected that being incredibly photogenic had something to do with him achieving an almost cult-like status overnight.

‘I think better when I keep busy,’ she explained glibly. Tonight, it would seem, was the exception to that rule. Fresh panic clawed deep in her belly as she realised afresh that there was no magical solution to her dilemma.

Rafe’s narrowed gaze objectively noted the blotchy puffiness under her wide-spaced green eyes. She had that pale, almost translucent type of skin that tended to reflect her every mood, not to mention every tear! He recalled how impossibly fragile her wrist had felt when he’d caught hold of her hand.

‘I promise I won’t tell you things will get better—they probably won’t.’

Tell me something I didn’t already know! ‘You always were a little ray of sunshine, but the depressive traits are new.’

‘I’m a realist, angel. Life sucks…’ He pulled the cork on the bottle and glugged an ample amount into a stray mug.

‘I’m so glad you stopped by, I feel better already.’ Absent-mindedly she accepted the mug he handed her. ‘This is actually rather nice,’ she announced with some surprise, before taking another, less tentative sip of her grandmother’s famous wine—famous at least within the narrow precincts of this parish and then for its potency rather than its delicate bouquet.

Rafe shuddered as he followed suit and decided not to disillusion her. ‘What’s happened to you that’s so bad?’ he enquired carelessly, refilling his mug.

‘Still the same!’ It gave her a feeling of perverse pleasure to see her sharp, sarcastic tone ignite a spark of irritation in his dark eyes. ‘You always did have to go one better than everyone else, didn’t you? You even have to be miserable on a grand scale!’ There was a warm glow in the pit of Tess’s empty stomach; she hadn’t been able to eat a thing since that awful phone call from Chloe.

‘Meaning…?’

‘Meaning my simple life can’t possibly be expected to reach the supreme highs and hopeless depths of yours.’

Rafe’s dark brows rose to his equally dark hairline. ‘You got all that from a simple, what’s up?’

‘You asked, but you weren’t really interested!’ she accused, waving her mug in front of him for a refill. ‘But then why should you be?’

‘I thought we were friends, Tess.’

‘We were friends when we were ten and eight respectively,’ she corrected, injecting sharp scorn into her observation. ‘Actually, I didn’t think you went in much for slumming these days, Rafe.’

There was just enough truth in her words to make him feel uncomfortable and just enough unfairness to make him feel resentful. Before she’d had the baby and left behind her city lifestyle they’d got together pretty frequently. Things being the way they were, he wasn’t likely to visit home often and after the first few refusals he’d stopped inviting Tess up to town.

‘You moved away too,’ he reminded her.

‘I came back.’ And that was the crux of the matter. When she’d been a driven, goal-orientated career woman they’d still had common ground, but that common ground had vanished when her life had become baby-orientated. She felt her life was pretty fulfilling, but she wasn’t so naive as to expect others, including Rafe, to share her interest in Ben’s teething problems!

It was on the tip of Rafe’s tongue to ungallantly remind her that decision hadn’t been initiated entirely by a nostalgia for the rural idyll of their childhood. He restrained himself and instead poked a finger against his own substantial chest.

‘What do you call this, a hologram?’

‘I call it visiting royalty.’ She performed a low mocking bow, blissfully unaware that the gaping neck of her loose nightshirt gave him an excellent view of her cleavage and more than a hint of rosy nipples.

‘Got the latest girlfriend in tow again? Going to impress her with the family crypt or maybe the family ghost?’

Her soft, teasing chuckle suddenly emerged as she misread the reason for the dark tell-tale stain across the angle of his high cheekbones.

‘Or is that the problem—she isn’t here? A frustrated libido would explain why you stalked in here with a chip a mile wide on your shoulder. Smouldering like something out of a Greek tragedy…I’m right, aren’t I? The girlfriend couldn’t or wouldn’t come…?’ she speculated shrewdly.

At least theorising insensitively about someone else’s problems stopped her thinking—if only in the short term—about her own!

Now he had a pretty good idea what was under the shirt thing it was even less easy to stop thinking about it. ‘Is it that obvious I’ve been flung aside?’ he bit back.

‘Like an old sock?’ she chipped in helpfully.

There didn’t seem much point indulging Rafe’s inclinations towards drama; she’d had enough of that with Chloe. He thought his life was a mess, he should try wearing her shoes—not that they’d fit, she conceded, comparing his large, expensively shod feet with her own size fours.

It was hard to feel sympathetic when the worst thing likely to happen to Rafe Farrar was a bad haircut! She gave his thick, healthily shining dark hair an extra-resentful glare.

‘It didn’t take a psychic to see you came here spoiling for a fight!’

Despite his growing anger, Rafe couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of her accusation. ‘I knocked on the right door, then, didn’t I?’

‘You didn’t knock, you just barged in…’ Quite as abruptly as it had arisen, the aggression drained from Tess. Feeling weak, she gave a deep, shuddering sigh. ‘Maybe I just got tired of being patronised…? Has someone really given you the push?’ Her wondering smile was wry. It hardly seemed credible.

‘You find that possibility amusing?’

She found the possibility incredible. ‘You must admit that it does have a certain novelty value. Look on the bright side…’

‘I can’t guarantee I won’t throttle you if you go into a Pollyanna routine,’ he warned darkly.

‘I’m trembling.’

Rafe’s jaw tightened as he encountered the sparkling mockery in her eyes. He found himself grimly contemplating how hard it would be to make her tremble for real…and he wasn’t thinking of scare tactics! What he was thinking of scared him a little, though. If he was going to vent his frustration on anyone, it couldn’t be Tess!

‘It might actually do you some good,’ she mused thoughtfully. ‘You’re way overdue a dose of humility,’ she explained frankly.

Looking at him properly for the first time, Tess saw that he actually did look pretty haggard in a handsome, vital sort of way. She couldn’t recall ever seeing that hard light in his eyes before. The price of partying at all the right night spots?

‘Then I’ll give you a real laugh, shall I?’ he flung the words angrily at her. ‘The woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with—have children with—has decided not to leave her husband!’

Tess’s startled gasp was audible in the short, tense silence that followed his words.

‘Does that have the required degree of character-enhancing humility to suit you?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU were going out with a married woman?’ Tess didn’t know what made her feel most uncomfortable: the part that Rafe had been messing with a married woman, or the part that said he’d been contemplating wedding bells and babies.

‘You want to have babies…?’

Rafe, regretting his unusual episode of soul-baring the instant the self-pitying words emerged from his lips, dragged an angry hand through his hair as Tess, after visibly recoiling from him as though he had a particularly nasty disease, started staring at him with the expression she obviously reserved for moral degenerates. He resisted the impulse to unkindly point out she was no saint herself!

‘I don’t think I’ve got the hips for it.’ He didn’t understand why this sarcastic response should make her flinch.

‘And just for the record I didn’t know she was married until it was too late.’ He didn’t know why the hell he was explaining himself to her.

‘Too late for what?’

Rafe scowled at her dogged persistence. ‘Too late not to fall in love!’ he bellowed.

He saw her soft wide lips quiver and a misty expression drift over her almost pretty features. Oh, God, not sympathy…please…he thought with a nauseated grimace.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I need to sit down, and from the look of you so do you.’

Tess looked askance at the guiding hand on her arm but decided not to object; she found that she did need to sit down too. She made no immediate connection between the half-empty mug of wine still clutched in her hand and the shaky quality of her knees.

Rafe was relieved to find that Tess’s spring-cleaning efforts hadn’t extended as far as the small oak-beamed sitting room. He pushed a sleeping cat off the overstuffed chintzy sofa and sat down with a grunt. The grunt became a pained yelp as he quickly leapt up. A quick search behind the cushion recovered the item responsible for his bruised dignity.

He held aloft the culprit, a battered-looking three-wheeled tractor.

‘I searched everywhere for that earlier,’ Tess choked thickly, taking the toy from his unresisting fingers and nursing it against her chest.

‘Are you crying…?’ Rafe wondered suspiciously. He didn’t associate feminine tears or even more obviously feminine bosoms, of which he’d had that unexpected eyeful, with Tess, and he was getting both tonight. It intensified that vague feeling of discomfort.

Tess sharply turned her slender back on him and stowed the toy away in an overflowing, brightly painted toy chest tucked in the corner of the room. Scrubbing her knuckles across her damp cheeks, she turned back.

‘What if I am?’ she growled mutinously.

A nasty thought occurred to Rafe. ‘Ben is all right, isn’t he?’ he asked sharply. A picture of a dribbly baby came into his head and he felt an unexpected twinge of affection. ‘I mean, he’s not ill or anything…?’

It occurred to him, as it perhaps should have done sooner if he was the friend he claimed to be, that it must be hard bringing up a baby alone. He couldn’t be a babe in arms any longer, he must be—what? One…more, even…?

‘Ben’s fine…asleep upstairs.’ The tears were starting to flow again and there was zilch she could do about it, so Tess abandoned her attempt at pretence of being normal or in control—of her tears ducts, her life…anything!

‘Something’s wrong, though.’

‘You don’t usually state the obvious,’ she croaked.

Rafe gave an indulgent sigh. ‘You’d better tell me.’

‘Why bother?’ she asked with a wild little laugh. ‘You can’t do anything!’

‘Oh, ye of little faith.’

‘Nobody can,’ she insisted bleakly. The alcohol had broken down all the defensive walls she’d built up with a resounding bang. Without lifting her head to look at him, she laid it against the wide expanse of chest that was suddenly conveniently close to hand. Eyes tight closed, hardly aware of what she was doing, she brought her fist down once, twice, three times hard against his shoulder.

At some deep subconscious level that dealt with things beyond her immediate misery her brain was storing irrelevant information like the level of hard toughness in his body and the nice, musky, warm scent that rose from his skin.

‘I can’t bear to lose him. I just can’t bear it, Rafe!’ she sobbed in a tortured whisper.

Her distress made him feel helpless. Helpless and a rat! Tess was putting herself quite literally in his hands, displaying a trust and confidence she had every right to expect if he was any sort of friend. It made the response of his body to the soft, fragrant female frame plastered against it all the more of a betrayal!

‘Lose who? Your vet…?’ he prompted. He took her by the shoulders and gave her an urgent little shake.

‘You can’t lose what you never had and furthermore don’t want! Don’t you ever listen?’ she demanded hotly.

‘Then who or what have you lost?’

‘Lost my inhibitions—it must be the wine.’

‘Stop laughing.’

Fine! If he preferred tears, he could have them! ‘Lose Ben!’

‘You’re not going to lose Ben,’ he soothed confidently.

Rafe always did think he knew everything—well, not this time! Angrily she lifted her head; tears sparkled on the ends of her spiky dark eyelashes.

‘I am. Chloe wants him!’ she wailed.

Rafe looked at her blankly. She wasn’t making sense at all…maybe she had an even lower tolerance for alcohol than he’d thought.

‘I know Chloe gets what she wants,’ he observed drily,

‘but on this occasion I don’t think you’re obliged to say yes. You really shouldn’t drink, Tess…’

‘You don’t understand!’

Rafe shook his head and didn’t dispute her claim as haunted, anguish-filled emerald eyes fixed once more on his face.

‘I’m not Ben’s mother, Chloe is…’ Sobbing pitifully, she collapsed once more against Rafe’s chest, leaving him to digest the incredible information she’d just hit him with.

If it was true, and he couldn’t for the life of him think why she’d lie about something like that, it was a hell of a lot to take in.

When Tess had taken leave of absence from her job as a high-powered commodities trader, he’d been as shocked as her other friends when she’d returned afterwards complete with a baby. Compared to that, the shock had been relatively mild when she’d walked away from the job she’d loved after a brief, unsuccessful attempt to combine motherhood with a demanding career and moved into the cottage she’d inherited from her grandmother.

Now she was saying she wasn’t Ben’s mother! She wasn’t anyone’s mother!

It was a good ten minutes before Tess was capable of continuing their discussion. Looking at her stubborn, closed-in expression as she sat with primly folded arms in the old rocking-chair, Rafe could see that talking to him was the last thing she wanted to do.

‘Why?’

‘Morgan and Edward were out of the country, some jungle or other,’ Tess recalled dully, speaking of her elder sister and brother-in-law who were both brilliant, but unworldly palaeontologists of international renown. They might be the first people everybody thought of consulting when a prehistoric skull was unearthed, but when it came to a pregnant daughter they wouldn’t have been high on anybody’s list.

‘Besides which they would have been worse than useless even if they had been around.’

Tess chose to ignore this accurate summing-up. ‘Chloe was five months gone before she realised and absolutely distraught when she was told it was too late to…’ Tess paused and looked self-consciously uncomfortable.

‘She wanted to be rid of it.’ Rafe shrugged. ‘That figures. She always was a selfish, spoilt brat.’

Honesty prevented Tess disputing this cruel assessment. Her elder sister and her husband always had either indulged or ignored their only child, and the product of this upbringing had turned into a stunningly beautiful but extremely self-absorbed young woman.

‘A scared spoilt brat back then,’ Tess snapped sharply.

‘She didn’t want anyone to know about it; she made me promise. So I took her away.’

‘Isn’t that a bit…I don’t know, Victorian melodrama…?’

‘You’ve not the faintest idea of how weird she was acting.’ Tess had been genuinely worried that Chloe might have done something drastic. ‘I thought a change of scene, away from people that knew her, might help. I imagined,’ she recalled, ‘that after the birth she’d…’

‘Be overcome by maternal instincts.’ Rafe gave a scornful snort.

‘People are,’ Tess retorted indignantly.

‘A classic case of optimism overcoming what’s right under your nose. Chloe was never going to give up partying to stay at home and baby-sit. I can’t believe you were that stupid.’

‘Why?’ she asked, roused to anger by his superior, condescending attitude. It was easy for him to condemn—he hadn’t been there; he couldn’t possibly understand what it had been like. ‘You don’t usually have any problem believing I’m an idiot!’ She shook her head miserably.

‘I don’t know why I’m even telling you all this. It won’t make any difference. The fact is, Chloe is his mother and if she wants him there’s nothing, short of skipping the country, that I can do about it! I wish now I’d adopted him legally myself when she suggested it,’ she ended on a bleak note of self-condemnation.

‘Don’t worry,’ she added, slanting him a small, bitter smile. ‘I haven’t got the cash to skip the country.’

That was another thing that had been nagging away at him. Tess had lived a starkly simple life since she’d moved here, she owned this place outright, had no debts that he was aware of, and she must have made a tidy pile during her brief but successful career. Yet this place needed a lick of paint. In fact it needed a lot of things—not big things, but…And when had she stopped running a car? He couldn’t remember; it hadn’t seemed important at the time. But covering the primaries in the States had been? In light of Tess’s distress there was a big question mark hanging over his priorities.

‘I could lend it to you.’

Just as well he didn’t know how tempting she found his offer, even though she knew it was meant as a joke. “‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be,”’ she quoted sadly.

‘I can’t believe you’ve fooled everyone all this time.’ Rafe was looking at her as though he were seeing her for the first time. It had taken him long enough to get his head around the idea that she was a mother—now he’d have to unlearn something that had been surprisingly hard for him to accept in the first place.

‘It wasn’t intentional, it just sort of happened,’ she replied, knowing her explanation sounded lame.

‘You didn’t just sort of happen to give up a great job you loved. You didn’t just sort of happen to spend over a year of your life bringing up someone else’s child.’

‘I forgot that sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘That he wasn’t really mine,’ she explained self-consciously. ‘And I know what I did must seem a bit surreal to you now, but it was never meant to be a permanent solution. Chloe didn’t want Ben, she wanted to give him up, have him adopted. It seemed so awfully final. You hear about women who have given up their babies suffering, never coming to terms with the regret.

‘I didn’t want that to be Chloe ten years down the line. I thought it was only a matter of time before she realised, and then I suppose as time went on I lost sight of the fact I was just a stopgap.’ With a choked sound she buried her face in her shaking hands. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? She has realised that she wants him. Only it’s been so long I…’

‘God, Tess!’ Rafe thundered, banging his fist angrily down on a blameless bureau. A dozen images he didn’t even know he’d retained of Tess with the baby drifted through his mind—she loved that kid and he loved her. Mother or no mother, they should be together. ‘She can’t just take him away from you!’

Tess’s lips, almost bloodless in her pale face, quivered. The eyes that met his were tragic. ‘Yes, Rafe, yes, she can.’

‘Don’t give me all that martyr stuff, Tess. You don’t actually believe it’s in Ben’s best interests to live with Chloe, do you?’ he grated incredulously. ‘You know Chloe—the novelty will wear off within a couple of months and where will that leave Ben?’ he intoned heavily as her eyes slid miserably away from his. ‘So stop crying and decide how you’re going to stop her.’

The callous implication that she was behaving like a wimp really stung. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing? Whichever way you look at it, Chloe is his mother!’ she reminded him shrilly. ‘I’m just a distant relation.’

‘You’re the only mother Ben has ever known.’

Tess choked back a sob and turned her ashen face away from him. ‘I’ve been so selfish keeping him. I should have encouraged Chloe to take an active part in…’ The horror in her voice deepened as she wailed. ‘He won’t know what’s happening…God, what have I done…?’

Rafe dropped down on his knees beside her chair and took her chin firmly in his hand. ‘You loved him,’ he rebuked her quietly. ‘There’s one person you haven’t mentioned…’

Tess looked at him blankly.

‘What about the father?’

Tess’s slender back stiffened defensively. ‘What about him?’

‘Doesn’t he have some influence? I take it she does know who…’

‘Of course she does.’

‘He’s been providing financial support?’

‘He’s not around.’

‘You could contact him and ask—’

‘He’s dead,’ she interrupted harshly. ‘He died before Ben was born. Chloe is getting married, that’s why she feels that now is the time to have Ben live with her.’

‘Who’s the lucky man?’

‘Ian Osborne.’

Rafe’s brow wrinkled. ‘That name seems familiar.’

‘Ian Osborne the actor…?’

Rafe shook his head.

‘He’s got his own series…’

Rafe nodded. ‘The medical soap.’

‘Drama,’ Tess corrected automatically.

‘A canny career move on Chloe’s part rather than true love, I take it.’

‘Actually, she’s besotted,’ Tess told him gloomily. From their telephone conversation she had the impression that Ian Osborne had a lot to do with Chloe’s change of heart.

‘You’re such a cynic, Rafe.’

‘Better than being a victim.’

His casual contempt really hurt. ‘I am not—!’

He was pleased to see the spark of anger in her eyes; anger was way better than that awful dull, despairing blankness.

‘Whatever,’ he drawled. ‘You could convince this Osborne guy he doesn’t want a kid around.’ With a thoughtful expression he drew a hand slowly through his thick hair.

Tess stared at him. Only Rafe could come up with an idea like that and make it sound reasonable. ‘I don’t think I want to know what machiavellian schemes are running around in your warped little mind. I need to do what is best for Ben,’ she responded firmly, trying to sound braver than she felt. ‘I need to do what I should have been doing all along, I need to prepare Ben to go live with his mother.’

If it was going to happen she’d have to put her feelings on the back burner and make this transition as painless as possible. And if Chloe and this Ian person made him unhappy she’d make them wish they’d never been born!

‘You can’t prepare someone to lose the only mother they’ve ever known!’ His hooded eyes were veiled as she stiffly turned away from him. ‘What we need is inspiration. In the meantime, will you settle for coffee?’

‘I don’t want coffee.’

‘You need it; you’re drunk.’

She opened her mouth to deny this when it occurred to her he was probably right. If she weren’t drunk they wouldn’t be having this conversation. If she weren’t drunk his shirt wouldn’t still be damp from her copious tears.

‘Don’t move, I’ll make it.’

Tess, who hadn’t been going to offer, retained her seat. If she hadn’t felt so dog-tired she might have asked Rafe since when he’d made her problem his crusade. She already knew, of course, even if he didn’t recognise the reason himself at least consciously. The parallels might be tenuous, but she could see exactly why he was so fired up.

Rafe had doted on his own mother; he still did. The reasons that had made her run away, leaving her two young sons behind, had been wide and varied depending on who you listened to in the small community—everyone had their own pet theory.

To say Rafe’s relationship with his stepmother had been bad would have been like saying he was quite tall and fairly good-looking. A child of seven or eight didn’t have the weapons required to prevent a clever, manipulative woman from alienating him from his father. These days Rafe wasn’t short of weapons, or overburdened with moral qualms about using them. In short, Rafe could be pretty ruthless. Maybe that was what the situation called for…? She firmly pushed aside the tempting idea of letting Rafe have free rein.

A few minutes later Rafe returned carrying two mugs of strong black coffee. ‘Do you take sugar? I couldn’t remember…’

The small figure on the rocker stirred restlessly in her sleep, but didn’t waken.

CHAPTER THREE

GROANING, Tess subsided weakly back against the pillow. Her head felt as though it might well explode.

‘That wine should carry a warning.’ The not unsympathetic response to her visible discomfort came from a point not too far from her left ear.

If her head hadn’t felt so fragile she’d have nodded in rueful agreement. ‘If I go so far as to look at that stuff again…’ With a disorientated gasp she opened her heavy eyelids with a snap—actually, in her head it sounded like a loud, painful clang.

Dark eyes smiled solicitously back at her. Her disorientation deepened and the clanging got infinitely worse.

‘You’re in my bed.’

Tess tried to sound as though finding an extraordinarily attractive man in her bed was an everyday occurrence. She failed miserably to achieve the right degree of insouciance.

Her manic thoughts continued to race around in unhelpful circles without delivering a single clue to explain away this bizarre situation.

‘On your bed,’ Rafe corrected pedantically as he curved an arm comfortably under his neck and rolled onto one side.

Did that make a difference? She hoped it did! A quick glance beneath the cosy duvet confirmed she was still wearing the least glamorous night apparel in her admittedly largely unglamorous wardrobe. Tess felt anything but cosy at that moment but she did clutch eagerly at this small crumb of comfort. And Rafe was fully clothed; that had to be a good sign…didn’t it?

A sign of what? a drily satirical voice in her head enquired. It wasn’t as if Rafe had ever displayed anything remotely resembling interest in her body. Why would he, when he had an obvious weakness for the tall, statuesque type? His married lover was probably another in the long line of blonde confident goddesses.

When she looked at the situation sensibly Tess was forced to concede that it bordered on the bizzarely improbable that he’d been overcome by lust! A fact which ought to have cheered her up, but since when did being forced to face the fact you didn’t have any sex appeal cheer up any girl?

Hell! I just wish I could remember so I know what I need to forget!

Unfortunately her amnesia only covered the problem of how, when and with whom—cancel the with whom, that was fairly obvious—she had gone to bed. The other awful events of the previous day were not at all fuzzy. Chloe and her betrothed were coming to take Ben to the zoo. Even Chloe had recognized—after a little judicious nudging—that she couldn’t remove her baby son without a little preparatory work.

Discovering she’d done something she would definitely regret with Rafe of all people might confirm her irresistibility, but it would also round off the worst day of her life perfectly! No, I couldn’t have…could I…? She surreptitiously searched his handsome face for some clue and discovered only a moderate degree of amusement, which could mean just about anything.

‘It isn’t the first time I’ve shared your bed, Tess—not by a long chalk, if you recall.’

Tess was surprised at the reference. Her tense expression softened. She did recall; she recalled hugging his skinny juvenile body to her own and as often as not falling to sleep with his dark head cradled against her flat chest.

The poignant image unexpectedly brought a lump to her throat. She’d never had a friendship as close as the one she’d once shared with a much younger, more vulnerable Rafe. It wasn’t reasonable to expect that degree of intimacy to extend into adulthood, but it was depressing to realise how far apart they’d grown recently. If something was that good it was worth making a bit of effort to preserve it. Their friendship might not have thrived on neglect, but at least it hadn’t withered and died.

She let out a tiny sigh and allowed herself to feel hopeful. If this time had been as innocent as those far-off occasions he was referring to, she had nothing to worry about. She’d have felt even more relieved if Rafe didn’t have the sort of voice that could make something as innocent as a nursery rhyme sound suggestive.

‘Is the old walnut tree still outside the bedroom window?’

These days women usually opened the door for him…except for Claudine…His eyes grew chilly as he recalled that significant door that had been closed firmly in his face. Pity it hadn’t closed before he’d made a total fool of himself!

‘No, it was diseased, we had to have it chopped down,’ Tess told him in a brisk tone that didn’t even hint at how upset she’d been by this necessity.

‘Time gets to us all,’ he sighed mournfully.

Her eyes made a swift, resentful journey over his large, virile person. Sure, he looked really decrepit! To add insult to injury, she suspected that even in this sizzlingly spectacular condition he was some way off his prime just yet.

‘It doesn’t seem right,’ he continued. ‘A Walnut Cottage without a walnut tree.’

The same thought had occurred to her but she didn’t let on. ‘You’re not going all nostalgic on me, are you? If it makes you feel any better,’ she conceded, ‘I planted several seedlings after they cut the old one down. And in the interests of accuracy I ought to point out that this was Gran’s room back then; so was the bed.’

The one he had shared with her had been a narrow metal-framed affair that would probably collapse under him these days, she thought, letting her eyes roam over his lengthy, muscular frame.

Who’d have thought that skinny kid would turn into something as perfectly developed as this awesome specimen? Aware that her breath was coming faster as her eyes lingered, she took a deep breath and passed the tip of her tongue over her dry lips. When she swallowed, her throat was equally dry and aching as if she wanted to cry—only she didn’t.

It was all right to notice that a man oozed sexual magnetism; it was quite another to let the fact turn you ga-ga. Rafe had enough people raving on about his physical perfection without her joining the fan club! She looked up anxiously to see if he’d noticed her drooling display and saw his eyes weren’t on her face at all.

‘A lot of things have changed since then.’ His deep voice was warmly appreciative as he continued to stare at the up-tilted outline of her small breasts.

He lifted his head and his eyes were slumberously sexy. Her breasts responded as though he’d touched the soft mounds of quivering flesh with his warm mouth. The startling image banished all rational thoughts from her head for one long, steamy moment. Nostrils flared, cheeks burning, she fought her way back to sanity.

‘Some things don’t change—things like your complete disregard for other people’s feelings.’ It was a whopping big lie, so to justify it she began to feverishly search her memory for some example to prove her point. Triumphantly she discovered one. ‘Your family must have worried like crazy about you when you went missing all those times…?’ Looking at it now through adult eyes, she saw aspects to Rafe’s frequent nocturnal wanderings that her childish eyes had never seen.

‘If concern is expressed by the vigour of the punishment, they were deeply concerned.’ Something in his cynical voice made her search his stony face.

The memory of the bruises she’d once seen on his back when they had all gone swimming popped into her head. Suddenly all those times he’d refused to take off his heavy, long-sleeved sweater on a hot summer day made horrible sense. Everything clicked into place and she felt sick.

Tess forgot her throbbing head; she jerked herself upright.

Outrage glowed in her eyes. ‘He hit you!’ She thought of Guy Farrar with his mean little mouth and big meaty fists and her skin crawled. ‘You never said!’ she began angrily.

Nobody, not her dimly remembered parents or dear gran Aggie had ever laid a finger on her. Her chest felt tight and her eyes stung. She knew now what should have been obvious to her ages ago: their efforts to force Rafe to fit the mould of a perfect Farrar had gone beyond the verbal chastisements she’d heard often enough for herself…they’d tried to beat him into submission!

‘Leave it, Tess,’ Rafe said curtly.

‘But—!’

‘You’re hyperventilating,’ he told her, studying with clinical interest the agitated rise and fall of her small but shapely breasts. So, he’d noticed she had breasts! It was no big deal. However, noticing was one thing, staring was another. He firmly averted his eyes.

Tess wasn’t about to apologise for her emotional response; she couldn’t understand his lack of it! ‘I’m not!’ she denied breathlessly. ‘Doesn’t it make you mad?’ she persisted incredulously.

For a long time it had, but Rafe had no intention of explaining how much effort and determination it had taken him to finally shelve the resentment that had simmered for years.

Her firm jaw tightened and her smouldering eyes narrowed. ‘I’d like to—!’ she began hotly.

Rafe took hold of her hands and, inserting his thumbs inside her clenched fingers, slowly unfurled her white-knuckled fists. ‘I can see what you’d like to do…’ he remonstrated softly.

Rafe frequently thanked his lucky stars that his only personal legacy from a father who’d automatically raised his fist on the frequent occasions when his troublesome younger son had annoyed him was a deep revulsion for violence and individuals who used it to control those who were weaker and more vulnerable. He was well aware that all too often the pattern repeated itself in each successive generation.

There had only been the one occasion when he’d used his physical strength to punish someone else—actually there had been three of them, sixth formers who had been making the life of another fourth former a living hell.

It was a sad fact of life, he reflected, but some kids had victim written all over them, and bullies of all ages could smell fear. You only had to be a little bit different—different but desperate to be the same as everyone else.

Rafe had walked into the common room one day to find them holding the kid up against a wall taking it in turns to punch him. He’d literally seen red; a red haze had actually danced before his eyes. That day he’d rid himself of several devils, and got expelled.

The touch of his thumb against the skin of her palm made Tess grow very still. The odd shivery sensation deep inside brought a troubled frown to her smooth wide brow as, warily, her eyes encountered his rather dark, rather luscious velvety orbs.

She hadn’t been prepared to discover this sort of intensity in the searching quality of his dark glance. Quite suddenly the quality of the tension that gripped her altered. If anything, this fresh, tingling jolt of sexual awareness was even more intense than before. It left her incapable of doing anything but staring dry-throated and breathless back at him.

‘I know you’re aching to ask…’

Tess ignored the melting sensation low in her belly. It was perfectly understandable—Rafe’s low drawl was pitched at an intimate, toe-curling level guaranteed to bemuse, bewilder and befuddle just about any female with a hormone to call her own. Tess’s hormones, after years of wilful neglect, were staging an ill-timed comeback. She was aching all right, in ways she didn’t want to think about; it was all extremely embarrassing.

‘But, no, I didn’t accept your drunken invitation. However, I couldn’t leave you asleep in that chair so I carried you up to bed.’

‘I didn’t invite you into my bed!’ Fists clenched, she robustly rejected his gentle taunt.

Stomach lurching horridly, she glanced uncomfortably at the solidity of his biceps. It wasn’t difficult to see how he’d carried her up the stairs. It was so easy, in fact, that a ridiculously romanticised version of this event was playing in her head at that very second. The only thing that was difficult to see was how she’d forgotten it…

‘No,’ he agreed with a grin that was slightly strained around the edges. The frequent occasions in the night when she’d cuddled up to him couldn’t legitimately be called invitations—they could be called extremely…provoking, however, and they had been a reminder that, though his heart might be broken, his more basic bodily functions were still in full working order!

The enigmatic quirk of his sensual lips sent her tummy muscles into a fresh series of uncomfortable fluttery acrobatics. Tess ruthlessly gathered her straying wits and recognised that this was only half an explanation. Rafe had carried her up, but that didn’t mean he’d had to stay—in fact if he’d been a gentleman the idea would have occurred to him!

‘And you were overcome by exhaustion…?’ she suggested tartly.

‘I guess I was,’ he conceded, not responding to the challenge in her eyes.

Tess permitted herself a little snort of disbelief. He didn’t look exhausted; in fact, she decided crankily, it ought to be illegal for anyone to exude that sort of vitality this early in the morning.

‘Trust you to turn out to be a morning person,’ she grumbled.

‘Not exclusively,’ Rafe corrected her solemnly.

Tess’s puzzled frown encountered the sensual, amused gleam in his eyes; a few seconds later heat washed over her as the meaning of his smutty innuendo hit home.

‘You always did have an overdeveloped opinion of your own abilities.’ She aimed for amused but tolerant and almost made it.

Rafe heard the almost and grinned as he defended himself. ‘I’ve had some very positive feedback,’ he reflected innocently.

Tess could imagine but she tried not to. ‘I don’t require references, glowing or otherwise. What time is it?’

He told her and with a yelp she leapt out of bed. ‘Chloe and her boyfriend are coming this morning.’

‘What are you going to do—roll out the red carpet?’ he drawled.

His critical tone really got under Tess’s skin. He made it sound as though she had a choice. ‘I know what I’m not going to do and that is resort to covert dirty tricks and manipulation.’

‘Have it your own way.’

She shot him a sweetly malicious smile. ‘I will,’ she assured him calmly.

‘I don’t understand it,’ she continued fretfully as she pulled a motley assortment of garments from deep drawers in the heavy old mahogany chest. ‘Ben always wakes up before seven.’ She’d found that having a baby made her alarm clock redundant.

Rafe’s hand shot out and he caught the latest garment she’d carelessly flung over her shoulder in the general direction of the bed. It turned out to be a flimsy bra. A passing glance told him his educated guess had been bang on size-wise.

There had been a plus side to his sleepless speculation: he hadn’t thought too much about Claudine. An arrested expression crossed his face when he realised how little he’d been thinking about her.

‘Ben did look in earlier.’

‘He what…?’ she snapped, stomping towards the bed, hands on her hips.

‘I suppose he decided there wasn’t much room this morning,’ Rafe speculated, gazing at the narrow stretch of tumbled bed she’d just vacated. On impulse he reached out and felt the warmth that still lingered from her body on the cotton bed linen. ‘He tootled off. I did go check on him—he seemed happy playing with his toys so I left him to it.’

She gazed at him incredulously. ‘Didn’t it occur to you he must have climbed over the bars of his cot?’ She’d known for some weeks that the cot’s days were numbered. Ben had been eyeing up the bars lately with a very determined eye, and she’d already foiled a couple of abortive escape attempts.

‘And that is…?’

His laid-back approach was intensely irritating. ‘Dangerous!’ she snapped.

‘Well, he looked fine to me.’

‘I can’t believe you just let him wander around unsupervised! He could have fallen down the stairs!’ she cried out, her voice rising sharply in alarm.

‘Calm down, there’s a gate thing over the top of the stairs. I should know—I nearly killed myself trying to step over it while I was carrying you last night.’

Tess gave a sigh of relief. That was Ben’s physical well-being sorted. There were other traumas. ‘He must have seen me in bed with you!’ she wailed.

‘What has got your knickers in a twist—the fact Ben saw you in bed with someone, or the fact that he saw you in bed with me?’

Tess recognised immediately that there was some merit in what he said, only she’d have died before she admitted it to him or herself.

‘Like I said,’ Rafe continued, a shade of impatience creeping into his languid tone, ‘I hardly think the sight will have seriously corrupted his morals.’

‘That’s not the point, you should have woken me. Routine is very important for children.’

‘Remember to tell Chloe that, won’t you?’ Tess flinched and looked so stricken that he instantly regretted his cheap wisecrack. ‘I would have woken you if he’d seemed distressed. What are you going to do about Chloe?’ he asked her gently.

He swung his long legs over the side of the bed and stretched. The light material of his shirt stretched taut across his broad chest and Tess looked hastily away.

‘What can I do?’ She did her best to resist the tide of helplessness that washed over her. ‘I’m going to remind Chloe that this thing has to be done slowly, sensitively, with as little disruption as possible. In fact, at Ben’s pace. It’s not like I won’t still be seeing him…’ There was a tell-tale little tremor in her voice as she lifted her chin defiantly. ‘He’ll visit, I’ll visit…I’ll be his favourite aunt…’ It wouldn’t get her very far if she let herself wallow in self-pity; being an aunt would have to be enough.

‘And you think she’ll agree to the cautious approach…?’

Rafe watched as Tess’s delicate heart-shaped little face screwed up into a mask of iron determination.

‘She’ll agree, all right,’ she intoned grimly. Stern-faced, she picked up the bundle of clothes she’d selected en masse from the bed. ‘I take it you can find your own way out.’ Distractions she didn’t need and Rafe could now be safely categorised under that heading.

‘Shower…?’

Tess gave a snort of exasperation. It was a mistake to try the pathetic Spaniel look when you resembled more closely a sleekly muscled Doberman.

‘I suppose so,’ she conceded ungraciously. Halfway to the door she paused and turned back. ‘I don’t need to say that I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention to everyone just yet about…about what I said…Ben not being mine. I got a bit silly…’ Not to mention deeply embarrassing. She winced inwardly as she recalled sobbing pathetically on his chest.

Another memory attached itself to the coat-tails of this recollection: the masculine scent of warm skin was so real it unnerved her totally. ‘T-To be honest, Chloe’s phone call out of the blue…it was all a bit of a sh-shock,’ she stammered.

A nerve in Rafe’s lean jaw clenched and his nostrils flared. So much for supposed friendship! This little display of trust was just charming!

‘You mean I can’t run around the village with my loudspeaker…?’ Rafe knew a lot of people, but he was pretty selective about the people he called friends, he always had been, and he trusted that select band implicitly. It didn’t seem too much to expect them to return that trust.

Tess sighed. Perhaps he did have a right to act a bit miffed—she probably could have made her request a bit more tactfully. But the fact was she had more to worry about just now than Rafe’s feelings.

‘All right, all right…there’s no need to get all huffy, I was just checking.’

‘It may have escaped your notice, but you’re not the only one that feels a little emotionally exposed after last night. Perhaps I should be asking you to sign the Official Secret Act, too.’

‘Oh, I forgot about that,’ she lied fluently. She wasn’t quite sure why the idea of being the recipient of further confidences concerning Rafe’s love life should make her want to run and hide. It had been easy to mock and be mildly contemptuous, even laugh in her more tolerant moments, about Rafe’s numerous, shallow affairs. She couldn’t see the funny side for some reason of Rafe in love, Rafe talking marriage…

‘You make it sound so easy.’ The flicker of torment in his dark eyes made her look quickly away. ‘Forgetting…’

Tess decided at that moment she definitely didn’t want to know anything more about the woman who had discovered Rafe’s heart only to comprehensively break it.

‘I didn’t mean to be insensitive, but…’ An intriguing thought occurred to her and she made a tentative effort to explore the idea further. ‘Didn’t you want to be alone last night? Is that why you didn’t leave?’

‘Regressing to behaviour patterns laid down in childhood?’ He rubbed a hand thoughtfully over the short dark growth over his jaw. Tess had never been kissed by a man who was other than smoothly shaven; she found herself idly wondering…‘Sanctuary? I wondered about that myself…’

Tess, her cheeks a little flushed, brought her own line of wondering to an abrupt halt.

‘Wouldn’t it be something if I headed for your bed every time I needed a bit of TLC?’ he mused, lifting his dark eyes to her face thoughtfully.

The thud of her heart sounded odd and echoey in her ears. ‘Very funny!’ she responded hoarsely.

‘Yeah, hilarious,’ he confirmed without a trace of humour.

When Rafe emerged from his shower Tess was in the kitchen having produced breakfast for Ben, who as usual was in no hurry to finish it. There was as much porridge on the floor as was in his stomach. She had stopped trying to tempt the baby to another mouthful and had returned to her frenzied task of refilling the cupboards when Rafe strolled in.

‘Morning, mate.’ Rafe, who could deal with the wiliest of politicians, felt distinctly unsure of how you were meant to speak to a one-year-old. He winked at the solemn-faced youngster.

Ben responded with a grin that suggested he wasn’t quite as angelic as he looked. ‘Seed man!’ he cried, poking his chubby finger in Rafe’s direction.

‘Saw, Ben,’ Tess responded automatically. At least Ben’s limited vocabulary meant she was spared any embarrassing elaboration on this theme.

‘Seed,’ the toddler responded immediately. Eyes bright, he waited expectantly for Tess to praise him.

‘Well done, darling.’ When she looked away she saw Rafe was watching her with a curiously intense expression on his lean hungry features, which faded as he turned to the baby.

‘I don’t expect you remember me, but my name’s Rafe. Or should that be Uncle Rafe?’ he enquired, turning his attention once more to Tess. ‘Can he talk?’

‘After a fashion, but you might need the aid of an interpreter,’ she admitted. ‘You and Ben can decide between you what he calls you. My money’s on complete nuisance…’ she added softly.

‘I heard that.’

‘You were meant to.’ She reached up on tiptoe to replace a casserole dish in a high cupboard.

Rafe found himself unexpectedly noticing the way stretching pulled her already neat, high behind extremely taut. Despite the fact that her clothes could have been designed specifically to conceal the fact, it was hard to miss the fact she had a good—no, better than good body. Dark brows almost meeting above the bridge of his masterful nose, Rafe reached over her head and took the item from her extended hand.

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