The Only One
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Adam, you aren’t listening to me….’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Umm … was she a good one?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You’re leaving? Why?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Meaning?’ Again Brooke put the brief question.

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

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

‘So, do we have a bargain?’

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

‘So … tonight, then?’

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

‘I’ll be there at ten.’

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

‘I’m Brooke Beauclere by the way,’ she introduced herself, rectifying the omission.

‘Adam Henderson.’ He watched her carefully, but she made no response to the name, which was unfamiliar to her. Nor did he offer to shake her hand, instead, sliding his grip from her wrist to her hand, lifting it palm upwards to his mouth and placing his lips against it. The brush of his tongue against her palm made her jump in surprise, a thousand tiny nerve endings pulsing into life as his lips moved down to her fingers, nibbling erotically at her skin. When he finally released her hand she felt hot and disorientated. No one had ever made her feel like that before, but as she pulled herself together she reminded herself that practice makes perfect, and that no doubt he had learned long, long ago, just how to make a woman responsive to him. He certainly didn’t look the type of man who would expect his partner to lie back and think of England, and he must want something for his money other than an unresponsively receptive body, Brooke thought cynically.

‘Until tonight….’

He let her go and watched her walk out of the door. Brooke was acutely conscious of his eyes on her back, and only realised when she got outside that she had been holding her breath.

A brisk walk down the drive to her lodge did much to restore her normal equilibrium, and by the time she reached the Lodge she was mentally berating herself for her stupidity. It must have been the wine, was her only excuse, but as she had drunk only the one glass it was a feeble one. Never one to deceive herself for long as she opened the door and braced herself to receive the enthusiastic embrace of her uncle’s Afghan hound Brooke acknowledged that it was the man himself who had affected her, infuriating her to the point where she felt compelled to give the antagonism she had felt towards him an actual physical life.

‘Down Balsebar,’ she commanded the dog, grinning as he dropped pathetically to her feet. Balsebar was a dog of positive and slightly eccentric character; a true ham who loved playing to his audience. Right now he was doing a sterling impression of a down-trodden and mistreated innocent—a picture to tear at the heart of sweet old ladies and innocent children. Remembering his many escapades Brooke was unimpressed.

Black with golden paws and chest, his eyes could gleam with a wickedness that made him look almost devilish, but apart from his eccentric nature he was a first-rate guard dog. He also had an aversion to the male sex, excluding only her uncle, and Brooke grinned again at his possible reception of Adam Henderson. For some reason, despite all her determined efforts to stop him, Balsebar slept on the floor at the bottom of her bed—nothing could shift him from his chosen spot, and his normal reaction to any unwary male entering the Lodge was so craftily and cleverly worked out that the victim rarely knew what was happening to him until it was far too late. Not for Balsebar the reaction of other, less Machiavellian dogs—the frenzied barking or the doggy sulks. Every encounter involving Balsebar was a triumph of tactics and canine intelligence over his chosen human victim.

There had been the man who was allergic to dog hairs whose lap he had insisted on sitting on; there had been the one who had announced that he knew exactly the right way to handle recalcitrant dogs—no one was quite sure how it happened, but one moment he had been commanding Balsebar to ‘sit’, the next, for some reason the dog’s claw had caught in the zip of his trousers as Balsebar leapt up in direct disobedience to his command and the poor man had been left standing in her uncle’s drawing room with his trousers round his ankles and his rather stunning striped boxer undershorts on display to the world.

There had been countless others who had retreated in disorder, and Brooke wondered idly as she prepared his meal how Balsebar would deal with Adam Henderson. She also wondered how Adam would react when she told him she had changed her mind and that no matter how expensively he paid her she wouldn’t go to bed with him. Now that she had left the party the tension which had led her to betraying her antagonism towards him had gone and in its stead was the uneasy knowledge that he was not a man who would take kindly to being duped. Her hand brushed the dog’s head and he glanced up at her in mute enquiry. At least she could rely on Balsebar to defend her honour she thought wryly, even if she was incapable of doing so herself.

CHAPTER TWO

BY the time the grandfather clock in the small living room struck quarter to ten Brooke was an aching mass of too tense nerve endings, one moment mentally berating herself for her stupidity, the next telling herself that it was time that someone cut Adam Henderson down to size.

She had changed out of the suit she had worn to the cocktail party—an outfit left over from the days when she had worked as a secretary in an upmarket advertising agency and had had to dress accordingly. These days she thought herself fortunate if she was able to buy herself a decent skirt and blouse, never mind blowing half a month’s salary on an expensive cocktail outfit. Glancing through her wardrobe she had dismissed most of its contents as unsuitable almost instantly—they were ‘officey clothes’, geared to executive lunches and board meetings. The odd dress she possessed was equally unsuitable, which left her normal uniform of jeans and a sweater or the pleated skirt and jumper she had worn when nursing Uncle James—he had hated the sight of women in trousers, and seemed to think that her soft heathery skirt and its toning cashmere jumpers were the right sort of thing for her to wear, and knowing how ill he really was she had purposely dressed to please him.

What did women normally wear in these circumstances? Her mind switched irresistibly to glamorous black silk négligés heavily trimmed with lace; but somehow she couldn’t imagine Adam Henderson being impressed by such a garment, even had she possessed one.

In the end she compromised with a plain black skirt and a pretty cream angora jumper with some self-embroidered detail on the boat-shaped neckline. She was still wearing the sheer silk stockings she had worn beneath her suit and she left these on, slipping her feet into a pair of lower heeled shoes.

Ready by nine thirty, she had spent the intervening fifteen minutes prowling restlessly round the small living room, much to Balsebar’s annoyance.

Fifteen minutes later when the imperious rap on the old-fashioned door knocker heralded Adam’s arrival, Balsebar did not, as other, less intelligent canines were wont to do, burst into a volley of barking. Instead he slid silently from his perch on the chair he had adopted as his and padded silently behind Brooke as she headed for the door.

The rooms in the Lodge were small, especially when compared with both Abbot’s Meade and the Dower House that went with it, but that surely did not account completely for the sense of suffocation she experienced when Adam stepped into the tiny hall, Brooke thought breathlessly.

Like her he had changed, switching the formality of his dinner suit for a pair of dark trousers in fine mohair and a white silk shirt, open at the throat beneath a grey leather blouson jacket.

‘Very prompt.’ He congratulated her as she closed the door behind her. Unlike his clothes his manner was anything but casual, his grey eyes moving over her with a gleam she recognised from her days working at Harrods during the New Year sale. Stepping hastily away she cannoned into Balsebar who signalled his disapproval with an unnerving howl.

Having seen the effect of this peculiarly nerve-shattering sound on the unsuspecting before, Brooke was a little surprised to see Adam’s grin.

‘Let that be a warning to you,’ he murmured as he followed her into the sitting room, ‘it isn’t always wise to step too hard on a member of my sex.’

‘Sometimes it’s unavoidable,’ Brooke snapped back feeling thoroughly unnerved, ‘you will get underfoot.’

‘What a strange attitude in a lovely lady. I thought that was where you loved having us—right under your dainty heels.’

‘It appears to me that you have a very jaundiced view of the relationship between the sexes,’ Brooke told him, indicating a bottle of sherry and asking if he would like a glass.

After briefly scrutinising the label he nodded his head. ‘Full marks,’ he told her accepting the glass she handed him. ‘For some reason that escapes me, the majority of your sex seems to prefer a revoltingly sweet version of what is really a most pleasant drink. Perhaps they think it reinforces the sweetness inherent in their natures.’

‘Or perhaps they think that your sex prefer pure syrup to something a little more astringent,’ Brooke retaliated. A little to her surprise amusement tugged at the corners of his mouth. He was, she realised on a small start of shock, the most compellingly attractive man she had ever met, and not just on a physical level.

‘Well,’ he drawled in the soft way she was becoming familiar with, when he had finished his drink, ‘that was the appetiser, now I’m ready for the main meal, but first….’

Balsebar, who had thus far ignored the presence of their guest, got slowly to his feet as Adam produced his cheque book.

Watching him in fascinated horror Brooke saw him flick it open and produce a pen.

‘You’re very businesslike,’ she managed to mutter faintly, hoping that the frail stem of her sherry glass wouldn’t snap beneath the tense pressure of her fingers.

‘I’ve found it pays.’ Adam agreed urbanely. She wasn’t quite in the same mould as his previous conquests, this tall redhead who was looking at him as though he had suddenly crawled out from under a stone. Fool, he mocked himself cynically, they’re all the same inside the packaging, every last one of them, and this one had made no secret of the fact that she was available—at a price.

As though he sensed her tension Balsebar gave a warning growl deep in his throat, padding silently to Adam’s side, the teeth that Brooke knew could deliver a painful little nip, slightly bared.

Adam merely laughed, and said, ‘I think it might be best if we conduct the rest of our business upstairs—without the presence of your watchdog. As it is …’ he glanced at his watch and frowned slightly, ‘I have to be back by twelve, I’m expecting an overseas call….’

His sheer cold-bloodedness made Brooke seethe. Even if she was madly, desperately in love with him, his attitude would chill her, freezing her into an inability to respond to him. Was he always like this, she wondered in awed fascination. If so, no wonder he had to pay his women to…. She shivered slightly her thoughts skidding to a standstill as she looked into his eyes. Cold he might seem outwardly, but inwardly…. The heat of that grey glance seemed to sear deep into her skin, warming her blood to a pulse beating rhythm that was totally alien and yet somehow intensely familiar.

‘What’s the matter? Having second thoughts?’ The grey eyes narrowed; the effect of his total concentration on her almost hypnotic. It was very disturbing, this ability he seemed to have to follow her thoughts, and now perhaps was as good a time as any to let him see that on this occasion his male aggression and the power of his cheque book weren’t going to be enough to get him what he wanted.

As this was the conclusion she had anticipated when she agreed to see him Brooke couldn’t understand the too dry tension of her mouth; the emotion that could almost be fear which crawled down her spine. Unconsciously straightening her back she stared up at him. He must be at least six foot two she thought irrelevantly, because she had to tilt her head back to look him in the eyes—an advantage he was making full use of as he stared assessingly back at her.

‘I’m afraid I am,’ she agreed, giving him a small smile, ‘Naughty of me isn’t it?’

At any other time the sickening coyness of her response would have nauseated her, but now there was only a primaeval instinct for survival; an inner voice that urged her to turn and run and which she determinedly withstood, praying that the man standing opposite her wouldn’t guess that her knees were shaking and that her stomach was churning sickeningly.

‘Naughty?’ One dark eyebrow rose. ‘Oh I wouldn’t say that. Unwise perhaps … maybe even greedy….’ He moved as he spoke, grasping her arms with a swiftness that left her in a state of acute shock. No one had ever ignored the keep off signs she posted round her the way this man was doing.

The low growl coming from Balsebar’s throat brought her back to reality, steadying her shaken nerves. ‘I don’t think Balsebar likes the way you’re touching me,’ she told Adam pleasantly. He looked at the dog, and to Brooke’s disbelief he grinned.

Balsebar too seemed taken aback. He stopped growling and stared at him. Man and dog seemed to enter some silent male communication from which she was excluded, much to Brooke’s frustration.

‘Look, this has gone far enough,’ she said tensely. ‘Despite the outsize ego you possess which seems to lead you to believe you can simply walk in here and buy me, I’m really not interested in you—or your money.’

‘No?’ The slate eyes derided her. ‘That wasn’t how I heard it this afternoon.’

‘That was this afternoon. This is tonight….’

‘Second thoughts? Or perhaps you simply want to be coaxed.’ The cynical twist to his mouth made Brooke wonder how many other women he had put the question to.

‘You want to believe there’s more to it than merely sex, is that it? You’re “not that kind of woman”.’ The savagery in his voice as he mimicked the words, sliced through her. ‘I know all about the kind of woman you are,’ he told her roughly, ‘the kind who likes to play by the rules on the surface but who breaks them underneath it; the kind of woman who marries into the “right set” but who isn’t above entertaining herself with someone from outside it, discreetly, of course. Oh yes, I know all about your kind of women—innate snobs who’d die rather than admit they can feel lust for a man of lower class; a man who doesn’t play the game by their rules; who can’t trace his ancestors back for half a dozen generations and who wasn’t educated at the right schools….’

‘No….’ Brooke was genuinely horrified by his accusations. She knew exactly the sort of snobbery he referred to—she had seen it in action and to be given the label of the type of woman she most abhorred made her feel almost tainted.

‘No? Then make good the promise you gave me,’ he told her sardonically. One hand left her arm, his finger curling round her throat, his thumb lifting her chin, so that he could look into her eyes. ‘Or do you want me to make it good for you, is that it?’

‘All I want you to do is to leave here.’ Brooke was more shaken than she wanted to admit. There was something about the rough abrasion of his hand against her skin that her body reacted to. It took an effort of will to drag her eyes from his face, and as she saw the shuttered contemptuous anger fill his eyes panic seized her. She struggled wildly to pull away from him, distantly conscious of Balsebar’s warning bark, and the sudden flurry of black-and-gold fur as his teeth bit into the soft leather.

She heard Adam curse as he released her, staggering back under the weight of the dog. Never had she been more grateful for Balsebar’s protection, she thought dizzily, mentally acknowledging that she had only herself to blame for her present predicament. She should never have allowed her own antagonism to reach the point where she had felt compelled to strike a blow for her own sex; the whole episode was rebounding badly on her. Half expecting to hear Adam demanding that she call off her guard dog, she was stunned to see him reach round and prise the dog’s jaws out of his jacket. Balsebar was as surprised as her, especially when lean fingers closed firmly round his muzzle.

‘I think the remainder of our discussion is best conducted without this animal’s interference.’ Adam told her grittily, and yet there was no cruelty or anger in the way he grasped the dog’s collar or manoeuvred him into the kitchen, firmly closing the door against any further intrusion.

‘Now,’ he said pleasantly, when he had completed his task. His eyes weren’t grey, they were a devilish, dangerous black, Brooke thought dismally, watching him advance towards her and yet totally unable to do a single thing to evade him.

‘Where were we?’

‘I was just telling you that I wanted you to leave.’

‘So you were, and I was just about to tell you that I always get what I’ve paid for,’ he told her less pleasantly, indicating the cheque he had placed on her coffee table. ‘This …’ he picked it up and waved it tauntingly in front of her, ‘entitles me to certain….’

Before he could continue Brooke wrenched the cheque from his fingers and tore it to pieces, flinging the scraps of paper on the fire.

‘Now will you leave,’ she demanded, knowing that her cheeks were flushed with temper, and her eyes glittering with the fear she could feel inching through her, driving out her normal composure.

‘We made a bargain,’ Adam reminded her softly, ‘and I intend to make sure we both adhere to it.’

‘You can’t want me now, not knowing that I don’t want you,’ Brooke protested making a last desperate stand and measuring the distance between them. She was standing between Adam and the stairs; perhaps if she made a bolt for it, she could lock herself in the bathroom and sit it out until he decided to give up and leave. Undignified but….

‘Since I was never under that illusion in the first place, I don’t see why. You sold yourself to me,’ he reminded her. ‘Or is that something else you’ve conveniently forgotton?’

It was the look in his eyes that did it, panicking her into a wild headlong flight up the stairs, which she knew that she had lost when she heard him behind her. He grabbed her just as she reached the landing, his breathing still under control where hers was rapid and erratic. By some misfortune he had caught her just outside her bedroom door—it stood open, the old-fashioned half tester bed plainly in view.

‘Well, well, how convenient,’ he drawled, following her dismayed glance.’

Despite her height he picked her up as though she were a doll, kicking the door closed with one foot, and advancing towards the bed.

Having expected to be flung down on it, it came as a surprise to Brooke to find herself standing upright, Adam’s fingers manacling her wrists.

‘Well now,’ he drawled softly, ‘there are two ways of doing this. You can admit defeat— gracefully and charmingly as befits a lady …’ his voice lingered insolently over the noun, ‘or we can indulge in a little of the rough and tumble it seems so many of you ladies enjoy—a relic of the days when that was the way your ancestors won their rich brides perhaps? Which is it to be?’

He looked so controlled and indifferent, standing there watching her, that Brooke could hardly believe what she was hearing.

‘Either way it will be rape,’ she told him coldly. Too late now to bitterly regret her foolhardiness. Who was this man anyway? Her blood chilled as she remembered news stories of women abused and then murdered. Was this man….

The sound of his laughter as it filled the room, warm and genuine, threw her, stopping her terror-stricken thoughts in their tracks.

‘A nice try my dear, but hardly applicable.’ One hand unclasped her wrist, his thumb running slightly and tormentingly over the soft fullness of her bottom lip.

‘You have the most sensuously inviting mouth I’ve ever seen, and I wanted to feel it beneath mine, sweet and hot, the moment I set eyes on you. You’re no young girl just out of school to plead innocence and ignorance. You know exactly what you do to me when you look at me with those green-gold eyes.’

‘Rape …’ he laughed again. ‘It might be worth calling your bluff.’

He said it so with so much calm self-assurance that something inside Brooke snapped. Like all the others he couldn’t see beyond her looks; didn’t want to see beyond them. Just for a moment she wanted to hurt him as painfully as he had just hurt her.

‘Well, Brooke, which is it to be?’ His voice was soft, mesmeric almost, his thumb probing the closed line of her lips, its roughness oddly pleasant against her smooth skin. His other hand was travelling up her arm, his thumb tracing the line of the blue vein that pulsed against her skin. Anger and despair mingled in an explosive reaction. Brooke opened her mouth, her teeth snapping defensively against his thumb. Just in time he realised what she intended to do and drew back.

This time when his eyes darkened she was in no doubts about the emotions she saw mirrored there. Anger and a desire so intense that it stunned her. This time she was flat on her back, fighting for breath and for freedom as the weight of his body kept her there, precious little finesse in his actions as her angora jumper was pushed up to reveal the soft thrust of her breasts in her cream silk bra. The delicate cups were pushed aside as cavalierly as her jumper had been.

‘Very well, if this is the way you want it’

She opened her mouth to protest and then closed it quickly sucking air into her deprived lungs, torn between humiliated shock and a tearing, searing pleasure that invaded her body when Adam opened his mouth over the centre of one rounded breast and tugged impatiently at the soft pink crest.

Her body’s response was electrically immediate. No one had ever touched her so intimately, and intermingled with a bitter fury that he should dare to do so was an undeniable physical response. Her body had gone rigid with the shock of his intimacy, her mind spiralling wildly out of her control as she fought to marshall her defences, but before she could utter a word Adam was releasing her, pulling her into a sitting position and matter-of-factly straightening her clothes, the sudden about-face stunning her.

‘Well, well,’ he drawled when he had finished. ‘You are a surprise package, aren’t you?’

‘Am I?’ Brooke’s chin tilted belligerently. Now that Adam was no longer touching her a little of her courage filtered back.

‘Well, there can’t be many virgins of your age still left,’ he told her mockingly. ‘You must be in your mid-twenties, and when one takes into consideration all your many physical attributes….’ His glance slid insolently over her body, resting for several seconds on the soft curve of her breasts. Remembering how he had caressed them only minutes before Brooke felt her face go a deep and unhideable scarlet.

‘You’re not gay are you?’

The matter-of-fact question stunned her into fresh silence, and then he started to laugh again, further adding to her humiliation. ‘No, something tells me that you’re not, so that doesn’t leave us with many alternatives does it? Are you going to tell me why, or are we going to sit here all night playing guessing games until I find out,’ he asked her pleasantly.

This can’t really be happening, was Brooke’s first thought. She had expected him to be furiously angry when she rejected him, which he had been, but this unexpected turn of events totally flummoxed her.

‘Why should you want to know?’ She was dismayed to hear herself sounding like a sulky, petulant adolescent.

‘Oh for a variety of reasons, including the very natural Curiosity of any man who a woman chooses as her first lover.’

Once she had assimilated the implications of his remark Brooke flushed angrily again.

‘I did not choose you as my lover,’ she stormed back at him. ‘You made totally false suppositions about me which led you to believe that I was sexually available—at a price,’ she finished bitterly.

‘And you did nothing to deny those suppositions,’ he reminded her calmly, adding, ‘and something tells me that I’m far from being the first male to make them. Is that the reason you’re still a virgin?’

He was far too astute Brooke recognised on a wave of trepidation. Far, far too astute.

‘You can hardly blame them you know,’ he added grinning at her. ‘That mouth …’ he traced the outline of it with his thumb before she could retreat out of range, ‘in fact everything about you, possesses an earthy sensuality that can’t help but turn men on.’

‘Looks, is that all your sex concern themselves with?’ Brooke derided angrily, ‘Don’t bother to answer,’ she told him. ‘I already know the answer….’

‘And because of that you’re waiting for Prince Charming to turn up? The perfect lover who you will fall blissfully in love with and live with happily ever after?’

‘I don’t believe in love—at least not that variety,’ Brooke told him coldly. ‘Friendship is more important to a relationship than sexual desire—it lasts longer too. My parents were friends first and lovers second.’

‘How very cynical,’ Adam derided gently.

‘No, just practical,’ was Brooke’s heated response. ‘You see I’ve seen what happens to women when they believe they’ve fallen in love and I don’t want that for me. If I ever marry I want a husband who respects me as a person, someone who’ll never treat me as a second-class citizen, a physical convenience who he’ll tire of and want to discard the moment I’m no longer young and attractive enough to swell his ego. I’d like you to go now,’ she added lamely, knowing that she had told him more about herself in ten short minutes than she had told other people in almost a life time. ‘I’m sorry about … about leading you on….’

‘Mmm … why did you?’

‘I didn’t like your attitude,’ Brooke told him honestly. ‘I resented your assumption that I was available to you provided you were willing to pay. When I share the act of love with a man it will be because it is something that we both want; not merely because either of us wants to satisfy a brief sexual need.’

She felt him tense as he studied her through narrowed silver-grey eyes that carefully blanked off whatever he might be feeling.

‘Well, Brooke Beauclere, tonight I think we’ve both learned something we didn’t know before, don’t you?’ He leaned forward, smiling with faint malice as she edged away from him. ‘No need to look at me like that, virgins, no matter how appealing, aren’t quite my line, but just to add to your education and to reward myself for my forbearance.’ His mouth brushed hers, the brief contact electrifying. She had been kissed before, many times, but never like this Brooke acknowledged meltingly as his mouth continued to explore and tease hers, firm, masculine lips tracing the tremulous outlines of the mouth she was unable to keep still.

When the roughly persuasive stroke of his tongue was added to the sensual torment, something seemed to unfurl inside her. White teeth nipped erotically at the full lower curve of her mouth, Adam’s tongue making full use of the advantage her silent gasp gave him to invade beyond the barrier of her teeth.

Sensations so unexpectedly pleasurable that they stunned her jammed all the warning signals of her brain, her hands going instinctively to Adam’s shoulders, her body barely registering the fact that he was pushing her back against her bed, or that his hand was caressing the full warmth of her breast, his thumb and finger teasing the burgeoning hardness of her nipple.

Heat seemed to envelop her body; a heat so intense and unexpected that she trembled with the force of it. When Adam released her, for several seconds she could do no more than stare blankly up at him, unable to understand how he could have conjured up a response from the body that had hitherto obeyed her every command.

‘I like that,’ he told her softly, still smiling. ‘I like knowing that I can make you respond to me, and that no man has ever touched you or kissed you the way I was just doing. They haven’t, have they Brooke?’

She wanted to deny his arrogantly self-assured claim; to tell him that just because she was a virgin it didn’t mean she had no sexual experience at all, but caution intervened. Adam had more than enough experience to know when she was lying; her almost adolescent reaction to him was hardly that of an experienced woman; and she doubted that he would be very impressed by the inept fumblings of her early teenage years, dismissing them with the same mocking contempt that he would use to decimate her lies, if she was foolish enough to speak them.

‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘but it won’t happen again, Adam. I don’t want to see you again….’

‘You haven’t been asked,’ he reminded her tauntingly, adding. ‘I can let myself out. Sleep well won’t you?’

He had been gone for over ten minutes before Brooke could rouse herself sufficiently to go down and let Balsebar out of the kitchen. The dog was patently aggrieved, almost as though it was her fault he had been incarcerated there in the first place. Which in a way it was Brooke admitted, opening the back door to let him out. In the cool darkness of the autumn evening her skin heated betrayingly—thank goodness she was never likely to see Adam Henderson again she reflected, as Balsebar emerged from the garden and followed her inside. She wouldn’t let herself think about what might have happened if he hadn’t recognised her virginal inexperience. His mood hadn’t been kind when he had manhandled her into the bedroom and she shivered, recognising that he could be a very dangerous enemy if he chose to be. But not her enemy; not anything in her life except an error of judgment she had made which had had potentially embarrassing repercussions. Know your own limitations my girl, she chided herself as she locked the back door … don’t jump into deep water like that again. Now it was difficult to conjure up the feeling of antagonism that had urged her to confront him in the first place; in fact the entire episode, from meeting him to his leavetaking tonight, already seemed to be part of a dream; totally unreal and inappropriate to her normal everyday life.

Forget him, she urged herself as she prepared for bed. Forget him, and concentrate on how you’re going to support yourself from now on.

The Lodge was hers outright and she had a bank balance of some few thousand pounds. That her solicitor thought she was mad to donate what was left of the purchase money from Abbot’s Meade to the local children’s hospital she knew quite well, but they were doing research there on all forms of children’s cancer and from the conversations with her uncle’s doctor Brooke knew how badly they needed extra funds. She could get herself a job; she was old enough and intelligent enough to support herself, unlike those poor children. A job … she sighed … she would have to start looking round, although she suspected that Sam was right when he said that a secretary of her calibre was hardly likely to find a suitable position locally.

Not even to herself was she prepared to admit that she might be using her mental busyness concerning her lack of employment to cover deeper and even more disturbing thoughts. That Adam Henderson had affected her as no man had ever done before, she could not deny, but she certainly wasn’t prepared to admit that there was anything especially significant in the fact that he had done so; it had simply been a question of fate running with him and against her, and she doubted that he was ever likely to have exactly that dynamic effect on her ever again.

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