Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of

readers all around the word in many different

languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have

published one hundred and eighty-seven novels

and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a

reader favourite right from her very first

novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to

recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan&’s

fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels

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About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixtyfive. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-bepublished authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

You Owe Me
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

THE letter caught up with Chris in New York. She had been working there for a month—one of her longest spells in one place in nearly six months—modelling clothes for one of New York’s top designers and sandwiching between the shows photographic sessions under her five year contract with a large cosmetics house.

That was the trouble with getting to the top of the modelling profession, she thought wryly, as she let herself into the apartment she had “borrowed” from an American model, for the duration of her assignments in New York—the work came thick and fast, but there wasn’t enough time to do it all. She was twenty-six now; and she had promised herself when she took up modelling she would only stay in it four years. She had been twenty then. Grimacing faintly she bent automatically to retrieve the mail that had slipped from her fingers on to the floor. Her needs were not extravagant, but her aunt’s final illness had been extremely expensive financially. The illness from which her aunt had suffered had been progressive and terminal involving mental as well as physical destruction, and Chris was only thankful that during those final few years her aunt had retreated into a world of her own where the true nature of her own decline was concealed from her. Two months ago her aunt had died, and although now there was no reason for her to continue earning large sums of money, Chris admitted mentally that it was too late for her to change her career. She could model for possibly another four years if she was lucky, and during that time she should earn enough to keep her in comparative comfort for the rest of her life—if she was careful. But what was she going to do with the rest of that life? Seven years ago she thought she had known exactly what course her life would take. Marriage to Slater; children. The smile curving her mouth was totally humourless. So much for dreams. Reality was a far cry from her late teenage hopes.

The midsummer heat of New York had darkened her honey-blonde hair slightly with perspiration. Thank God for air conditioning she reflected as she dropped the mail on the small coffee table and headed for the shower. Being able to lease Kelly Reading’s apartment had been a welcome bonus on this assignment, she was tired of living out of suitcases; of moving from city to city, always the traveller. That was never how she had envisaged her life. It was strange really that she, the stay-at-home one, should have a career that made her travel so widely, whilst Natalie, her restless, will o’ the wisp cousin should have been the one to marry, to have a child.

Frowning Chris stripped the silk suit from her body, the firm curving lines of it too familiar to her to warrant undue attention. In all her years of modelling she had always refused topless and nude shots. And received a good deal of heat from her first agent for it, she remembered wryly. Things were different now. As one of the world’s top models she could pick and choose her assignments and Hedi, her agent, had clear instructions about what she would and would not accept.

As she stepped into the shower stall she swept her hair up into a loose knot. Long and honey-blonde, it was thick and resilient enough to adapt to the different styles she had to adopt. She showered quickly and then stepped out, wrapping her body in a towel before starting to remove her make-up. As always when she had been wearing it for several hours she itched to be free of it. A model girl who hated make-up. She laughed derisively, cleaning eyeshadow from the lid of one sea-green eye. Her beauty lay in her bone structure and her eyes, and was ageless.

Her looks had always been a source of contention between them when she and Natalie were young. Orphaned at five she had been brought up by her aunt and uncle alongside their only child, Natalie, who was two years younger than Chris. Tiny, dainty Natalie, who she had soon learned possessed a cruelly vindictive streak, which she used unmercifully to protect what she considered to be hers, and that had included her parents and all her friends. Chris had not found it easy to accept her unwanted role as “orphan”, and many times during those early days she had retreated to her bedroom to indulge in secret tears when Natalie had taunted her about her orphaned status. “You would have had to go in a home if you hadn’t come here,” had been one of Natalie’s favourite taunts, often with the threat tagged on of “…and if I don’t like you, you will still have to go there.”

Under that threat Chris had weakly, hating herself for her weakness, given in to many forms of blackmail, which ranged from the subtle never-expressed pressure from Natalie that she would always keep herself in the background, to open demands for “loans” from Chris’s pocket money.

Sighing Chris moisturised her skin. She could see now that Nat had just been insecure. There had been a bond between aunt and niece that had never truly existed between mother and daughter. Even in looks she had resembled her aunt, Chris acknowledged, and Natalie with the perception that most children possessed had sensed her mother’s leaning towards her sister’s child and had bitterly resented Chris for it.

Nat, on the other hand had always been her father’s favourite. Uncle Roger had adored his small, dark-haired daughter, “his little pixie fairy” as he had called her. His death in a road accident when Nat was fourteen had severely affected her. Funnily enough she herself had never shared Nat’s deep resentment of their relationship, and as she had grown older she had adopted a protective instinct towards her younger cousin, knowing without anything being said that she was entering a conspiracy with her aunt which involved a constant feeding of Nat’s ego; a never-ending soothing of her insecurities. As a child Nat had grown used to her father describing her as the “prettier” of the two cousins, and with her dark curls and smaller, frail frame she had possessed a pretty delicacy that Chris lacked. When, as a teenager, Chris had started to blossom Natalie had been bitterly resentful.

“Boys hate tall girls,” she had told Chris spitefully. And Chris could still remember the occasion when, one very hot summer, she had been sent for by the Headmistress, because Nat had told her teacher that her cousin bleached her hair, strictly against the rules of the school. In point of fact, its extreme fairness that summer had been the result of more sunshine than usual, and when pressed for an explanation as to why her younger cousin should try to get her into trouble deliberately, Chris had leapt immediately to Natalie’s defence. She could still remember her headmistress’s words on that occasion.

“Chris, my dear,” she had told her firmly, “your desire to protect Natalie is very natural and praiseworthy, but in the long run you would be helping her more if you allowed her to take responsibility for her actions. That’s the only way we learn to think carefully before we commit them.”

Would life have been any different if she had heeded that advice? Grimacing, Chris extracted fresh underwear from the drawer. It took two to commit treachery; Natalie alone could not be blamed for the destruction of all her bright—and foolish—dreams.

It was another half-an-hour before she discovered the letter. She had just mixed herself a cooling fruit drink and sat down, when she caught sight of it, protruding ominously from among a stack of mail, the solicitor’s name and address in one corner, the airmail sticker in the centre.

She had grown used to correspondence with Messrs Smith & Turner during the weeks following her aunt’s death. On her marriage Natalie had deliberately, and to Chris’s mind, quite heartlessly cut off all ties with her mother. “She always loved you best,” she had told Chris spitefully, when she tried to talk to her about it. “I never want to see her again.”

It had been a couple of years after that that Chris had actually noticed the oddness of her aunt’s behaviour and another harrowing seven months before her condition had been correctly diagnosed. The specialist, sympathetic and understanding had told Chris of an excellent nursing home which specialised in such cases, and where her aunt would receive every kindness and the very best of care.

The fees had been astronomical. Chris had written to Natalie, believing that she would want to make her peace with her mother in view of her failing health, but Natalie had never even replied, and it had been more than Chris could have endured to go down to Little Martin and talk to her. In order to pay the nursing home fees she had committed herself to a gruelling number of assignments, and for the last four years she had barely had time to take a breath.

Now it was over, and she presumed the letter from Smith & Turner related to the final details surrounding her aunt’s estate, if her few belongings and the house in Little Martin could be classed as that.

It had come as no surprise to Chris to discover that her aunt had left her the house. She had bought it after Uncle Roger’s death, selling the larger property and investing the difference. Chris had always loved the thatched cottage, despite its many inconveniences, but Nat had hated it. She had never forgave her mother for selling the larger property, and constantly complained about their drop in living standards. In anyone else Chris would have denounced her cousin’s behaviour as brutally selfish, but because of her childhood conditioning Chris was constantly finding mental excuses for her. Although there was one sin she could never forgive her…Idly sliding her nail under the sealed flap she extracted the sheets of paper inside.

Her heart thumped as she read the first line, barely taking in its message, her eyes racing back to the beginning and tracing the words once again. “…regret to inform you of the death of your cousin, Natalie James ne´e Bolton, and would inform you that…”

Without reading any further Chris lifted her eyes from the paper. Natalie dead! She couldn’t believe it. She was only twenty-four. What had happened?

She glanced at the date on the letter and her heart dropped sickeningly. Natalie had been dead for six weeks! Six weeks, during which she had travelled from Nassau to Rio, then on to Cannes and finally to New York.

She dropped the letter on the floor, filled with a mixture of nausea and guilt. How often during the last seven years had she wished Natalie out of existence? How often had she prayed that she might wake up and discover that what had happened was all just a nightmare? Only now could she admit to herself the frequency of such thoughts, generally after she had just had to point out to yet another male that being a model did not mean that she was also available as a bed mate. She had never wanted her present life; it had been thrust upon her in a manner of speaking; a means of salvaging her pride and her dignity, and also a means of…of what? Escaping her own pain?

No. Not entirely. Deep inside her had been the unacknowledged thought that by leaving somehow she was giving something to Natalie’s unborn child—Slater’s child. The child that should have been hers.

The doorbell rang and she slipped the intercom switch automatically, shocked out of her involvement with the past when she heard Danny’s familiar New York accent.

“Danny, I’m not ready yet,” she apologised. In point of fact she had lost what little desire she had possessed to go out with the brash New Yorker, who had forced his way into her life three weeks ago. Tall, fair, good looking, and well aware of his attractions Danny had been chasing her from the moment of her arrival, and was, Chris was certain, supremely confident that in the end he would catch her. She, however, had other ideas. Charming though Danny was he couldn’t touch the deep inner core she had learned to protect from the world. No man had touched that since Slater.

Ten minutes later she was down in the lobby with Danny, the poise she had learned over the years covering the innate inner turmoil.

They were dining out with a business associate of Danny’s. He wanted to show her off like a child with a new and status-symbol toy, it was an attitude she had grown accustomed to.

They were to go to a chic, “in” restaurant, which would be full of New York glitterati, and Chris’s spirits sank as she got into the taxi. Natalie dead! Even now she could not take it in. What had happened? She wished now she had read the letter more fully, but she had been simply too stunned. She supposed it was natural that the solicitors should write to her as Natalie’s closest blood relative after her daughter. She knew that Natalie had had a girl, her aunt had told her, wistfully, longing for an opportunity to see her only grandchild, but knowing it would be denied her.

If it hadn’t been for Ray Thornton, she herself would have had to stay in Little Martin, enduring the sight of Natalie living with Slater as his wife. She had a lot to thank Ray for. Slater had never liked him. “Flash” he had called him, and in a way it was true. Ray had made his money promoting pop stars. He had been thirty-one to Slater’s twenty-five then, fresh from the London “scene” and defiantly brash. She had liked him despite it, although then she had turned down the job he had offered her in the new club he was opening in London. She had then only known him a matter of months and yet he had been the one she had turned to that night, when she had discovered Natalie in Slater’s arms. He had comforted her bracingly then, just as he had done when Natalie announced her pregnancy. It was Ray who had told her she ought to become a model. It was Ray who had introduced her to the principal of the very select London modelling school were she had trained. “A little too old for a beginner” was how Madame had described her, but she had more than repaid Ray’s faith in her. For a while he had pursued her, but only half-heartedly, recognising that she was still far too bruised to contemplate putting anyone else in Slater’s place. They had kept in touch. Ray was married now and lived in California. Chris liked his wife and he had the most adorable two-year-old son.

The evening dragged on interminably. Chris was aware of the sharp, almost disapproving looks Danny was giving her, and made an effort to join in the conversation. The other two men and their wives were obviously impressed both by Danny and the restaurant. Two out of the three wasn’t bad averaging, Chris thought cynically, wondering what sort of deal Danny was hoping to arrange with these two very proper Mid-Western Americans and their wives. Danny was a wheeler-dealer in the best sense of the word; he thrived on challenge and crises.

Chris could tell he was still annoyed with her when he took her home. He wanted to come in with her, but she told him firmly in the taxi that he could not. His brief infatuation with her was nearly over, she recognised when he let her get out of the cab, but then what had she expected? It was hardly Danny’s fault that she didn’t live up to her image. She had grown used to seeing her photograph plastered over the gossip press, generally with that of a casual date, nearly always referred to as her latest “conquest”. What would those editors say if they knew that in actual fact she was still a virgin?

The thought made her wince. That she was, was only by virtue of the fact that Natalie had interrupted Slater’s lovemaking. He had cursed her cousin that day. They had thought themselves alone at his house. He had rung Chris at home just before lunch, and the sound of his voice had sent shivers running down her spine. She had known him a long time. His father had been friendly with her uncle, but he had been away at University and then he had worked in Australia for a couple of years preparing himself for his eventual take-over of his father’s farm machinery company. His father had died of a heart attack very unexpectedly and he had come home; tanned, dark-haired, hardened by physical work, Chris had felt an immediate attraction to him.

She had been nineteen, and falling in love with him was the most exhilarating, frightening thing she had ever experienced. She had thought he loved her too. He had told her he did; he had spoken about the future as though it was his intention that they shared it, but in the end it had all meant nothing.

She ought to have guessed that day when Natalie suddenly appeared unexpectedly, but she had simply thought of it as another example of her cousin’s bitter jealousy of her.

She had been on holiday from her job in a local travel agents. Slater had rung her at home, suggesting they met for lunch, but when he picked her up, he had told her throatily that the only thing he was hungry for was her. She could remember her excitement even now, she could almost taste the exhilarating fizz of sexual desire and intense adoration. They had gone back to his house—he had inherited it from his father along with the family business; a gracious late Georgian atmosphere that Chris loved. She hadn’t considered then how wealthy Slater was; she had simply been a girl deeply in love for the first time in her life. If Slater had taken her to the tiniest of terraced houses she would have felt the same.

They hadn’t even waited to go upstairs, she remembered painfully. Slater had opened the door to the comfortable living room, and she had been in his arms before it closed behind them, eagerly responding to his kisses, trembling with the desire surging through her body.

They had kissed before, and he had caressed her, but they had never actually made love. Slater knew that she was a virgin. He had asked her, and she had answered him honestly. She had imagined then there had been tenderness as well as anticipation in his eyes but of course, imagination was all it had been. They had been lying on the settee when they were interrupted by Natalie. Chris’s blouse had been unfastened, her breasts tender and aroused by Slater’s kisses. Natalie had burst in on them completely unexpectedly, half hysterical as she accused Chris of deliberately misleading her about her plans for the day. The only way Chris had been able to calm her down was to go home with her. Slater, she remembered had been tautly angry, and she had thought then it was because he resented her concern for Natalie. Had he even then been making love to her cousin as well? What would have happened if Natalie had not interrupted when she did? What would he have done if he made both of them pregnant? Hysterical tension bubbled painfully in her throat. Perhaps they could have tossed a coin for him?

The pain grew sharper and she suppressed it from force of habit. Dear God, even now after seven years, the thought of him still made her ache, both emotionally and physically. She had never truly got over him—or more truthfully, she had never truly recovered from the blow of discovering he was not the man she had believed. Not only had she suffered a gruelling sense of rejection, she had also to endure the knowledge that her judgment was grossly at fault.

She would never forget the day Natalie came to her and told her the truth. It was just a week after she had seen her cousin in Slater’s arms.

She had been working all day, and normally Slater picked her up after work. On this occasion though, the girl she worked with told her that Slater’s secretary had rung and left a message asking her to go straight round to his house.

She had no car of her own, and it was a two mile walk, but Chris had been too much in love to consider that much of an obstacle. At Slater’s house they would be alone. Something he had seemed to avoid since Natalie interrupted them. She knew he was having problems with the company; a matter of securing a very important order which was vital to its continued existence and had put his behaviour down to this.

His car had been parked in the drive when she arrived, and for some reason, which even now she could not really understand, instead of ringing the front door bell she had decide to surprise him by walking in through the sitting room and gave her an uninterrupted view of the settee and its occupants. Her whole body had gone cold as she recognised her cousin’s dark head nestled against Slater’s shoulder, her arms were round his neck, his head bent over hers. Chris hadn’t waited to see any more. On shaky legs she had walked away, dizzy with sickness and pain, unable to come to terms with what she had just witnessed.

She went home and rang Slater from there to tell him that she wasn’t feeling well, hoping against hope he would mention Natalie’s presence; that there was some explanation for what she had seen, other than the obvious, but he hadn’t.

Natalie had returned many hours later, her face pale, and her eyes smudged, her whole bearing one of vindictive triumph and Chris knew that somehow Natalie knew what she had witnessed. It was never mentioned by either of them, at least not then, and Chris had determinedly refused to accept any of Slater’s calls in the week that followed, too hurt to even confide in her aunt. Later she was glad she had not done so.

Never in a thousand years would she forget her shock and pain when Natalie came home and announced that she was expecting Slater’s child. She had only told Chris at that stage, gloating over her pain, violently triumphant, almost hysterical with pleasure. Her cousin had always been volatile, Chris remembered, always subject to emotional “highs” and “lows”; dangerously so, perhaps.

She had not got in touch with Slater. The only thing left for her now was her pride and her profound thankfulness that she would not share Natalie’s fate; at least she had told herself it was thankfulness. Even now pain speared her when she thought of Slater’s child, but she dismissed it, forcing herself to remember the events of that traumatic day.

Just as soon as she could escape from Natalie she had gone out, simply walking herself into a state of numb exhaustion, and that was how Ray had found her. She hadn’t even realised how far she had walked or that it was getting dark. He had taken her home with him, and although he had questioned her closely, all she would tell him was that she wanted to get away from Little Martin. That was when he had made his suggestion that she should take up modelling as a career. Previously she had only known him casually, but now she found him a warm and helpful friend. When Chris mentioned Natalie’s name briefly, not wanting to tell him the truth, Ray had looked angry, and she had gained the impression that he did not like her. That alone had been sufficient to underwrite her trust in him, and it was a trust that had never been misplaced, unlike that she had had for Slater.

She had left that night for London with Ray, and had written to her aunt the next day, explaining that she had worried that her aunt might dissuade her from leaving, giving this as an explanation for her unplanned departure.

A month later Natalie and Slater were married. Her aunt was both stunned and concerned. “She’s so young, Chris,” she had sighed, “far too young for marriage, but perhaps Slater…” she had broken off to frown and say quietly. “My dear I know that you and Slater…”

“We’re friends, nothing more,” Chris had quickly assured her, hastily changing the subject, telling her aunt about her new life and making it sound far more exciting than it actually was.

She had worked hard for two years, before suddenly becoming noticed, and was now glad that she had not accepted any of the more dubious assignments that had come her way in those early days. No magazine was ever going to be able to print “girly” photographs of her simply because none had ever been taken.

She had heard from Natalie once, that was all. A taunting letter, describing in detail her happiness with Slater, and his with her.

“It was very wise of you to leave when you did,” Natalie had written. “You saved Slater the necessity of telling you he didn’t want you any more.”

Chris hadn’t bothered replying and she had never heard from either of them since. Now Natalie was dead.

It took her a long time to get to sleep, images from the past haunting her, and then when, at last she did, the impatient jangling of the telephone roused her.

Her room was in darkness, and for a few seconds she was too disorientated to do anything but simply listen to the shrill summons of the ’phone.

At last she made a move to answer it. The crisply precise English accent on the other end of the line surprised her by sounding almost unfamiliar, making her remember how long it was since she had visited her own country. “I have Mr Smith for you,” the crisp voice announced, the line going dead, before Chris heard the ponderous tones of her aunt’s solicitor.

“Chris my dear how are you?”

“Half asleep,” she told him drily. “Do you realise what time it is here?”

“And do you realise we’ve been trying to get in touch with you for the last six weeks,” he retaliated. “I’ve practically had to subpoena your agent to get this address out of her. Chris, it isn’t like you to be so dilatory…I’d expected to hear from you before now.”

He must mean about Natalie’s death, Chris realised, suddenly coming awake.

“I only got your letter today,” she told him. “It must have been following me round. What happened? How did Natalie…?”

“The coroner’s verdict was suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed,” she heard Tom Smith saying, the words reaching her stupefied brain only very slowly. “I did tell you that in my letter, my dear. Your cousin always was a mite unbalanced, I’m afraid. Your aunt recognised that fact and it used to cause her considerable concern. Roger’s mother had a similar temperament.”

Since Tom Smith had known the family for many years Chris did not dispute his comments. Suicide! The word seemed to reverberate painfully inside her skull, resurrecting all her childhood protective instincts towards her cousin. “Why? Natalie had had everything to live for, a husband, a child…”

“It seems that your cousin had been suffering from depression for a long time.” Tom Smith further shocked her by saying. Remorse, hot and sharp, seared through her. Had Natalie needed her, wanted her? Could she have helped her cousin. Pain mingled with guilt; her animosity towards Natalie forgotten, all her bitterness directed towards Slater. Perhaps he had been as unfaithful to Nat as he had her? She should never have blamed her cousin for what had happened; Nat had been an impressionable seventeen, Slater a mature twenty-five. Hatred burned white hot inside her, he had robbed her of everything she thought childishly, all her illusions; her unborn children, and now her only relative. No, not quite her only relative, she realised frowning. There was Nat’s little girl…Sophie.

“How is Sophie taking it?” she asked Tom Smith automatically, voicing the words almost before she realised she was going to. She had deliberately held herself aloof from all knowledge of Sophie, unable to contemplate the pain of knowing she was Slater’s child—the child she had wanted to give him.

“That’s why I’m ringing you,” Tom Smith told her, further stunning her. “She’s always been a very withdrawn, introverted child, but now I’m afraid there’s cause for serious concern. Sophie hasn’t spoken a single word since her mother died.”

Pity for her unknown niece flooded Chris, tears stinging her eyes as she thought of the child’s anguish.

“Natalie wouldn’t have named you as Sophie’s guardian if she hadn’t wanted to do so. I know it’s asking a lot of you, Chris, but I really think you should come home and see the child.”

Guardian! She was Sophie’s guardian? Chris couldn’t take it in. Her hand was slippery where it gripped the receiver, all her old doubts and pain coming back, only to be submerged by a wave of pity for Natalie’s child.

“But surely Slater…” she began huskily, knowing that Slater could never willingly have agreed to Natalie’s decision to appoint her as his child’s guardian.

“Slater is willing to try anything that might help Sophie,” Tom Smith astounded her by saying. “He’s desperate, Chris.”

There was a hint of reproach in his voice, and guiltily Chris remembered the unread pages of his letter, which she had discarded. “Did you write to me about this?” she asked.

“I set everything out in my letter,” he agreed patiently. “I was surprised when Natalie came to see me nine months ago and said that she wanted to appoint you as Sophie’s guardian, but she was so insistent that I agreed. If only I’d looked more deeply into her reasoning I might have realised how ill she was, but she seemed so calm and reasonable. Her own experience of losing her father had made her aware of how insecure a child could feel with only one parent; if anything should happen to her she wanted to be sure that Sophie would always have someone she could turn to.

“I had no idea then of course, that she hadn’t discussed her intentions with Slater, or indeed that you weren’t aware of them. There’s nothing legally binding on you, of course, and naturally Slater will continue to bring up his daughter, but at the moment he seems unable to reach her. She needs help, Chris, and you might be the only person who can help her.”

“But I’m a stranger to her,” Chris protested, realising fully what Tom was asking of her. How could she return to Little Martin? How could she endure the sight of Slater’s child; of Slater himself…but no, she was over that youthful infatuation. She knew him now for what he was, a weak man too vain to resist the opportunity to seduce a trusting seventeen-year-old.

Had he really loved Natalie or had he simply married her because he had had to? She had had a lucky escape Chris told herself. She could have been Natalie, crushed by marriage to a husband who didn’t love her, trapped…She was letting her imagination run away with her, Chris told herself. She had no reason to suppose that Slater did not love Natalie, perhaps it was even wishful thinking! No! Never!

“Well, Chris?”

“I’m coming home.” It wasn’t what she had intended to say at all, but now the words were out they could not be retracted.

“Good girl.” Tom Smith’s voice approved, and Chris shivered wondering what train of events she had set in motion. She didn’t want to go back to Little Martin; she didn’t want to see Slater or his child. The past was another country; and one she had sworn she would never re-visit, but it was too late now, she was already committed; committed to a child she had never seen, and remembering instances of Natalie’s vindictiveness, she wondered momentarily just why her cousin had named her as her child’s guardian. This thought was brushed aside almost instantly by a flood of guilt. If Natalie had been jealous of her, hadn’t she been jealous too in turn? Hadn’t she felt almost ready to kill her cousin when she saw her in Slater’s arms. She sighed. All that was over now, Natalie was dead, and in the end, for whatever reason, her cousin had entrusted to her care her child, and she could not in all honour ignore that charge, if only for her aunt’s sake.

CHAPTER TWO

LESS than thirty-six hours later when she stepped off a ’plane at Heathrow, Chris still wasn’t sure quite how she had got there. A brief call to her agent explaining the situation had resulted in cancellation of several of her assignments and the postponement of others. It was a testimony to her success that this was allowed to happen, her agent told her drily when she rang from London to tell Chris what she had done.

London was much cooler than New York. To save herself the hassle of a complicated train journey Chris had elected to travel to Little Martin by taxi. The cabbie raised his eyebrows a little when she explained where she wanted to go. The fare, would she knew, be astronomical, but that was the least of her worries right now. Had she done the right thing? Time alone could answer that. She had acted impulsively, rare for her these days, listening to the voice of her conscience rather than logic. Sophie did not know her and it was almost criminally stupid to imagine the child would respond to her when she could or would not to her own father.

Closing her eyes Chris leaned back into her seat, unaware of her driver’s appreciative scrutiny of her through his rear view mirror. Her clothes were simple, but undeniably expensive, and the cabbie wondered what it was that took her to such a remote part of the country in such a rush. She wasn’t wearing any rings.

It was three o’clock when the taxi deposited her at Slater’s house. She hadn’t known where else to go, and since Tom Smith had told her that Slater would be expecting her it had seemed the sensible thing to do. She had only brought one case with her. The local estate had the keys to the cottage she had inherited from her aunt and she planned to collect them later on. The cottage would make an ideal base for her whilst she tried to get to know Sophie and decided what to do. It had at one time been let out but the past tenants had left some time ago and now it was empty.

Her ring on the doorbell produced no response and as she waited for someone to appear Chris acknowledged that at least some of the tension infiltrating her body was caused by the thought of meeting Slater.

The house seemed deserted and she rang again, frowning when there was no response. Tom had assured her that Slater would be there. He wanted to see her before she saw Sophie, so Tom had said. Sighing she tried the door handle, half surprised when it turned easily in her hand.

The moment she stepped into the hall memories flooded through her; she had often visited the house with her aunt and uncle who had been friends with Slater’s parents, but most of her memories stemmed from the brief months when she had met Slater here, when merely to cycle down the drive and arrive at the house had sent dizzying excitement spiralling through her veins. It had been in this hall that he had first kissed her the afternoon she had come on some now forgotten mission from her aunt. Slater had taken her by surprise, and she had been too stunned to resist. He had seemed half shocked himself, but he had recovered very quickly, making some teasing remark about her being too pretty to resist. That had been the start of it…

She sighed, glancing anxiously round the panelled room. Where was Slater? She called his name doubtfully, shivering a little in her thin silk dress. What had been warm enough in New York was far from adequate here at home, despite the fact that it was June.

The sitting-room door was half open and drawn by some force greater than her will Chris walked towards it, almost in a trance. It had been here in this room that all her bright, foolish dreams had been destroyed. Like a sleepwalker she walked inside, surprised to find how little had changed. Natalie had loathed the house’s traditional decor and she had half expected to find everything different. The sun shone rosily through the french windows, clearly revealing the features of the man stretched out on the settee and Chris came to an abrupt halt, her breathing unexpectedly constricted, almost unbearably conscious of the air burning her skin, as though someone had ripped off an entire layer and left her exposed to unendurable pain. The shock of seeing Slater was a thousand times worse than she had envisaged, and it mattered little that he was oblivious to her presence, apparently fast asleep. Suddenly the intervening years meant nothing, the sophisticated shell of protection she had grown round her during them dissolving and leaving her acutely vulnerable.

His hair was still unmarked by grey, thickly black and ruffled, his frame still as leanly powerful even in sleep. His eyes were closed, lines she didn’t remember fanning out from them. His mouth curled downwards, a deep cynicism carved into his skin that she didn’t recall, and that shocked her by its unexpectedness. His face was the face of a man who had suffered pain and disillusionment, or so it seemed as she looked at him, and yet where she should have felt glad that this was so, his appearance made her heart ache. Seven years and God alone knew how many thousand miles, they had been apart, and yet as she looked at him Chris found her reaction to him as intense and painful as it had been so long ago.

She couldn’t possibly still love him; that was ridiculous, no, what she was experiencing now was something akin to déjà vu… It was only the shock of seeing him so unexpectedly that caused this reaction… She must remember that he was not and never had been the man she had thought him. She had invested him with qualities, virtues that he had never possessed.

Unaware of what she was doing, she moved closer to him. Tiredness was deeply ingrained in his features. As she moved something clinked against her shoe and she glanced downward to see a half-empty bottle of whisky and a glass. Slater had been drinking? She frowned, and then reminded herself that he was a man whose wife had only recently committed suicide, and that whatever his feelings for Natalie, there must be some feelings of pain and guilt inside him. He moved, frowning in his sleep and the cushion on which he was resting his head slipped on to the floor.

Chris bent automatically to retrieve it, balancing herself against the edge of the settee. Her fingers brushed accidentally against Slater’s wrist and he jerked away as though the light contact stung. His shirt was open at the throat, and she could see the dark hair shadowing his skin, thicker now than she remembered, or was it simply that at nineteen she had been less attuned to sheer masculine sexuality than she was now.

Her heart started to jump heavily and she began to draw away, grasping with shock as Slater’s fingers suddenly closed round her wrist. His eyes were still closed, a deep frown scoring his forehead. His thumb stroked urgently over the pulse in her wrist, and Chris didn’t know what shocked her the most; his caress or her response to it. He was still deeply asleep and she dropped to her knees at his side, gently trying to prise his fingers away without waking him. Anger and tension brought a hectic flush of colour to her skin. Seven years when she had learned to defend herself against every awkward situation there was, and yet here she was reduced to the status of an embarrassed adolescent, simply because a man held her wrist in his sleep.

But Slater wasn’t simply any man, she acknowledged bitterly and her combined embarrassment and pain sprang not so much from the fact that he was touching her, startling though her reaction to that touch was, as from the knowledge that he undoubtedly believed she was someone else; perhaps Natalie, perhaps not. She couldn’t release his fingers. She would have to wake him up. Inwardly fuming, outwardly composed, she leaned over him, trying not to admit her awareness of the smooth firmness of his flesh beneath his shirt-sleeve as she touched his arm.

The moment she shook him his eyes flew open. She had forgotten how mesmeric they could be, topaz one moment, gold the next. They stared straight into hers.

“Chrissie…” He started to smile, the fingers of his free hand sliding into her hair and cupping the back of her head. Too startled to resist, Chris felt him propel her towards him. Her eyes closed automatically, her lips parting in anticipation of his kiss. She might almost never have been away. His kiss was tender and powerful; she was nineteen again quivering on the brink of womanhood, wanted him and yet frightened of that wanting and his kiss told her that he knew all this and understood it.

She barely had time to register these facts before his hold suddenly tightened, his eyes blazing burnt gold into hers as he withdrew from her. Chris blinked, slower than he was to make the transition from past to present, until she saw the biting contempt in his eyes and recognised that when he had kissed her he had not been fully awake; not fully aware of what he was doing.

“So you finally came.” He released her and was on his feet, whilst she still knelt numbly on the floor. “I suppose we ought to be honoured, but I’m sure you’ll forgive us if we don’t bring out the fatted calf. What brought you back, Chrissie? Guilt? Curiosity?”

Just about to tell him that she had only just learned of Natalie’s death, Chris stumbled to her feet as she heard sounds outside. The sitting-room door opened and a smiling plump woman in her fifties walked in holding the hand of a small child.

Chris breathed in sharply. So this was her niece…Natalie’s child. Slater’s child. She couldn’t endure to look at him as she studied the little girl, and knew instinctively why Natalie had named her as guardian, just as she knew that her cousin’s decision had not been motivated by any of the gentler emotions. Natalie had not changed, she decided helplessly, studying the small face so like her own; the untidy honey-blonde hair, and the general air of dismal hopelessness about the child. By some unkind quirk of fate Sophie could more easily have passed for her daughter than Natalie’s although unlike Chris she had brown eyes.

Chris frowned. Natalie had had blue eyes, and Slater’s were amber-gold. No one as far as she knew in either family had possessed that striking combination of blonde hair and velvet-brown eyes, and yet it was familiar to her, so much so that it tugged elusively at her memory.

“There you are, Sophie,” her companion said brightly, “I told you you were going to have a visitor didn’t I?”

The child made no response, not even to the extent of looking at her, Chris realised sadly.

“I have to go and get some shopping now Mr James,” she added to Slater.

“That’s fine, Mrs Lancaster. You’ve made up a room for our visitor, I take it?”

“The large guest room,” Mrs Lancaster told Chris with a smile, adding reassuringly to Sophie. “I’ll be back in time for tea, Sophie, and then perhaps tonight your aunt will read your story to you.”

Once again there was no response. Chris ached to pick the child up and hug her. She looked so pitifully vulnerable, so lost, and hurt somehow, and yet she sensed that it would be best not to approach her. She frowned as she remembered what Slater had said about a room for her. She must tell him that she would be staying at the cottage. She glanced at her watch, remembering that she still had to collect the keys.

“Bored with us already?” Slater drawled sardonically.

Chris saw Sophie conceal a betraying wince at her father’s tone and she frowned, wondering what had caused the child’s reaction. Had Slater perhaps often spoken to Natalie in that sarcastic voice? Children saw and felt more than their parents gave them credit for, but she could hardly question Slater on his relationship with her cousin. Did he know why Natalie had appointed her as Sophie’s co-guardian?

She glanced at him bitterly. Perhaps he had shared Natalie’s resentment that their child should so much favour her. She shuddered to think of the small unkindnesses Sophie could have suffered at Natalie’s hands; torments remembered from her own childhood, and then reminded herself that Sophie was Natalie’s child, and that as usual she was letting her imagination run away with her.

Chris looked up to find Sophie studying her warily, as she crept closer to her father. His hand reached out to enfold her smaller one, the smile he gave her was reassuring. A huge lump closed off Chris’s throat. She had been wrong about one thing at last. Patently Slater did love his small daughter—very much. There was pain as well as love in the gold eyes as they studied the small pale face.

“I can’t think why Natalie specified that I was to be her guardian,” Chris murmured unguardedly.

Almost at once Slater’s expression hardened. “Can’t you?” he said curtly. Sophie tensed, and as though he sensed her distress, he stopped speaking, smiling warmly at the child before continuing, “I’d better show you to your room.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Chris was cool and very much in control now. She gave him the same cold brief smile she reserved for too-eager males. It normally had an extremely dampening effect, but Slater seemed quite unimpressed. “I’ll be staying at the cottage,” she continued. “In fact I’d better get round to Reads and collect the keys. They’ve been keeping the place aired and cleaned for me.”

“Chris!” There was anger and bitterness reverberating in his voice, and Chris saw Sophie tauten again. Slater must have been aware of her tension too, because he broke off to say soothingly, “It’s all right Sophie, I’m not cross. We have to talk,” he told Chris levelly, “and it would be much easier to do so if you stayed here, but I remember enough about you to realise that you’ll go your own way now, just as you did in the past. I’ll walk out to your car with you.”

No doubt so that he could say the things to her he wanted to without upsetting Sophie. It was strange, Chris reflected painfully. All these years she had deliberately refused to think about Slater’s child, and yet now that she had seen her, she felt none of the resentment or pain she had expected. Sophie was simply a very unhappy, vulnerable child whom she ached to comfort and help, but she was sensible enough to know that the first approach would have to come from Sophie herself.

“I don’t have a car,” she told Slater coolly. “If I can leave my case here for an hour I’ll come back and collect it once I’ve got the keys for the cottage. I can use my aunt’s Mini to drive back in.”

Slater’s smile was derisive. “Please yourself Chris,” he drawled mockingly. “I’d offer to take you, but I can’t leave Sophie, and she isn’t too keen on riding in the car.”

Chris frowned, but Sophie’s face bore out her father’s statement, she looked tense and frightened.

IT TOOK HER longer than she had anticipated to walk to the village—she had forgotten that she was no longer a teenager and accustomed to the almost daily walk. The estate agent expressed concern when she told him her intentions.

“But my dear Chris, the place has been empty for nearly two years…”

“I arranged for it to be kept cleaned and aired,” Chris reminded him frowningly.

“Which we have done, but the roof developed a leak during the winter, it needs completely rethatching. I have written to tell you,” he told her half apologetically, and Chris sighed, hearing the faintly accusatory note in his voice. “Using your aunt’s Mini is completely out of the question. I doubt you could even get it started. I’ve got a better idea. My sister has a small car which I know she won’t mind you borrowing. She’s in Greece at the moment on holiday, and won’t be back for several weeks. How long are you intending to stay in Little Martin?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Chris told him accepting his offer of the loan of a car, but refusing to allow him to book a room at the village inn for her. However bad the cottage was, she could stay there one night, surely? She was already befuddled with all the decisions she had had to make recently. Tomorrow she could decide where she was going to stay. It would have to be somewhere close to Sophie otherwise there would be no point in her visit.

After she had collected Susan Bagshaw’s small Ford and thanked Harold Davies for the loan of it, Chris drove straight back to Slater’s house. She had been longer then she expected and her heart thumped anxiously as she approached the house. Unbidden the memory of Slater’s warmly persuasive kiss made her mouth soften and her pulses race.

Stop it, she warned herself angrily. He had kissed her almost as a reflex action, his true feelings towards her more then clearly revealed in his attitude to her once he was properly awake. What was the matter with her anyway? She had been kissed by dozens of men since she left Little Martin. But their touch had never affected her as Slater’s had done, she admitted tiredly. Perhaps now that she was back in Little Martin, it was time for her to face up to the fact that she had never really overcome Slater’s rejection of her; that her feeling for him had never properly died; principally because she had never allowed herself a true mourning period. She had rushed straight from the discovery of his infidelity into the hectic world of modelling, refusing to even allow herself to think about what had happened. Had she really come back simply for Sophie’s sake, or had some instinct, deeper and more powerful than logic drawn her back, forcing her to face the past and to come to terms with it, because until she did, she would never really be free to love another man?

She could admit that now, just as she could admit how barren and empty her life was. All the things she had really wanted from life had been torn from her and so she had been forced to set herself alternative goals, but career success had never really attracted her; the values instilled in her by her aunt still held good. At heart she was still that same nine-teen-year-old. She wanted a husband and children, Chris admitted, surprised to discover how deep this need was, but Slater stood firmly in the way of her ever forming a permanent relationship with any other man; as did her life-style. The men she met were not marriage material. Disturbed by the ghosts she had let loose inside herself, Chris parked the car and walked towards the front door.

It was several minutes after she had rung the bell when Slater appeared. He had changed his clothes and in the checked shirt and jeans he could almost have been the Slater of seven years ago. Chris felt her muscles tense as he invited her in. As he stepped back her body brushed briefly against his in the close confines of the half-opened door. Her nerve endings reacted wildly, shivering spasms of awareness flickering over her skin, whilst she schooled her face to betray nothing.

“What happened to the Mini?” he asked once she was inside.

“Harold didn’t think it would start. He’s loaned me his sister’s car in the interim.”

“What did you do? Flash those sea-green eyes at him? You’ll have to be careful, Chris, this isn’t New York. Husband-stealing isn’t acceptable practice down here.”

Anger burned chokingly inside her. Who was he to dare to criticise what he assumed to be her way of life? After what he had done to her, how dare he…She bit back the angry retort trembling on the tip of her tongue. Tom Smith had warned her that should he wish, Slater could protest against and possibly overrule Natalie’s will. If she wanted to fulfil the role Natalie had cast for her she must try to maintain some semblance of normality between Slater and herself.

“Where’s Sophie?” she asked hesitantly, trying to fill the bitter silence stretching between them.

“In bed,” Slater told her, adding sardonically, “Children often are at this time of night. It’s gone eight, and she’s had a particularly tiring day. Meeting strangers always seems to have a bad effect on her.”

He had no need to remind her of her status, Chris thought tiredly. No one was more aware of it than she; it made her feel very guilty. There was something about Sophie that touched her almost painfully. Perhaps it was the physical resemblance to herself; the memories of the pain and loneliness of her own childhood, once her parents had died and before she realised the depth of the bond that could exist between her aunt and herself.

“I don’t know exactly why you’ve come here Chris,” he added tautly, “But Sophie isn’t a toy to be picked up, played with for a while, and then put down when you’re bored. She’s a very vulnerable, unhappy little girl.”

“She’s also my only living relative,” Chris said unsteadily, “and I feel I owe it to Natalie to do whatever I can for her.”

“Is that how you see her?” he jeered unkindly. “As a responsibility? She’s a responsibility it’s taken you damn near six weeks to acknowledge, Chris. Sophie doesn’t need that sort of half-hearted, guilt-induced interest.”

“I’ve only just received Tom Smith’s letter,” Chris protested angrily.

“Why? Or is it that you only return to your own address at six weekly intervals, just to check that it’s still there?”

His inference was plain and dark colour scorched Chris’s face. Let him think what he wished, she thought bitterly. Let him imagine she had a score of lovers if that was what he wanted. Why not? It was far better than him knowing the truth. That there hadn’t been a single lover, because in her heart she was still aching for his lovemaking…still grieving for what she had lost.

“I didn’t want you here,” she heard him saying curtly to her, “but Natalie did appoint you as Sophie’s joint guardian, although I think we both know that can’t have sprung from any altruistic impulse.”

Hard eyes impaled her as she swung a startled face towards him. But then why should she be so surprised? Naturally Natalie would have told him how much she hated her. After all in the early days at least they had been deeply in love; in love enough for him to have discarded her in the cruellest and most painful way he could. “I suppose Natalie did resent the fact that she looks like me,” Chris agreed bleakly.

Slater’s face was grim. “In the circumstances it hardly endeared the child to her,” he agreed, and Chris frowned a little. At times he had a manner of speaking about Sophie that seemed to distance her from him, almost as though the little girl were not his daughter, and yet there was such an obvious bond of affection between them. Before she could question him further about his remark he went on to say, “Tom Smith seems to think you might be able to reach Sophie, and so does John Killigrew, the doctor in charge of her case at the hospital. Sarah and I aren’t so sure.”

Sarah? Chris’s heart pounded. Was this the explanation for Natalie’s suicide. Did Slater have another woman?

“Sarah?” she questioned lightly, avoiding his eyes, in case he read in them what she was thinking. Much as she had cause to resent her cousin, she could only feel sympathy with her, if she too had suffered the pain of being rejected by Slater. At least in her case all he had destroyed was her ability to love and trust, while in Natalie’s…

“Sarah is the psychotherapist in charge of Sophie’s case. Such behaviour isn’t entirely unknown in children and generally springs from a deep-seated trauma. Until we discover what that trauma is it is unlikely that she will speak, although there are various ways in which we can encourage her, but if you do intend to stay and help, Sarah will brief you on these herself.”

Chris stared at him nonplussed. “I thought the trauma was obvious,” she said unsteadily. “Sophie has lost her mother in the most distressing way…Surely that…”

“Sarah doesn’t believe that is the cause and neither do I.” He was almost brusque, turning slightly away from her so that his face was in the shadows. “Sophie and Natalie did not get on. Natalie spent very little time with the child.”

Chris was not entirely convinced.

“Why did Nat commit suicide?” she asked him abruptly.

He swung round, the shadows etching the bones forming his face, stealing from it every trace of colour. His eyes glittered febrilely over her as he studied her, his body tense with an emotion she could not define.

“Tom Smith has already told you. She was mentally disturbed.”

“You don’t seem particularly concerned.” It was a dangerous thing to say, and she almost wished it unsaid when he continued to stare at her.

“What is it you want me to say Chris?” he demanded bitterly at last. “Natalie and I elected to go our separate ways a long, long time ago. My main concern now is Sophie. She’s already suffered enough at the hands of your cousin. I don’t intend to let you increase that suffering. Just remember that while you’re here I’ll be watching every step you take. Do anything that affects Sophie adversely and you’ll be leaving.”

“I’m not leaving Little Martin until I see Sophie running about, laughing and chattering as a six-year-old should,” Chris retaliated fiercely, the commitment she had just made half shocked her, almost as though she had been impelled to take the first step down a road she hadn’t intended to traverse. Slater was still watching her and fantastically, despite his cold eyes and grim mouth she had the impression that he was pleased by her reaction, although she could not have said why. Imagination, she told herself sardonically. Slater could have no reason at all for wanting her to stay.

“That’s quite a commitment you just made,” he told her softly. “Are you capable of seeing it through I wonder?”

She bent to pick up her case pushing the honey blonde cloud of hair obscuring her vision out of the way, impatiently, as she stood up to face him.

“Just watch me,” she told him grimly.

She was outside and in the car before she realised that she had not made any arrangements for the following day. A quick mental check informed her that it would be Friday—how travelling distorted one’s sense of time—that meant that Slater would be working. She would call on him early in the morning and tackle him about what access she could have to Sophie. Feeling as though she had cleared at least one obstacle, she put the car in gear and set out for the cottage.

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