Mills & Boon® proudly presents a very special tribute

PENNY
JORDAN

COLLECTION

DESERT NIGHTS Available in August 2012

WEDDING NIGHTS Available in September 2012

MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS Available in October 2012

CHRISTMAS NIGHTS Available in November 2012

PASSIONATE NIGHTS Available in December 2012

SINFUL NIGHTS Available in January 2013

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of a 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-be published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dear Reader,

It was a standing joke between Penny Jordan and myself that we’d become a couple of Mills & Boon’s ‘oldest inhabitants.’

My writing career with the company began in 1975—the Golden Age—when the authors were free to go wherever our imaginations took us, except inside the bedroom, of course. The door to that was barely ajar in those days. Romance has always been a tremendously personal genre—a shared fantasy between author and audience, so whatever happened when the door shut was all in the mind rather than on the page, and possibly none the worse for that.

The dark, dangerous hero with a touch of cruelty about him was what the readers wanted then, and titles containing words like ‘Lucifer’, ‘Satan’ and ‘Devil’ added an extra, anticipatory thrill, as vulnerable but spirited girls were pitched against men who rarely took ‘no’ for an answer.

When Penny began writing for Mills & Boon in the early eighties, she was one of the leaders in demolishing the lingering sexual taboos. Her books, with their powerful alpha male heroes, immediately touched a chord with millions of women worldwide and she was a phenomenal success.

Penny was also immensely hard-working and prolific, partly because, as a shrewd North-country lass, she didn’t altogether trust her success, about which she was unfailingly modest. In addition, she was always generous and helpful to beginning writers, who came to regard her as a friend as well as mentor.

She will be sorely missed, so it’s good to have these tribute editions, if only to remind us all how marvellous she really was.

Goodbye, Penny love, and God bless.

Sara Craven

Passionate Nights
The Mistress Assignment
Mistress of Convenience
Mistress to Her Husband

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Mistress Assignment

Penny Jordan

CHAPTER ONE

‘WELL, here’s to Beth; let’s hope that this trip to Prague is a success and that it helps her to get over that rat Julian,’ Kelly Harris announced, picking up her glass of wine.

‘Well, she certainly deserves some good luck after all that’s happened,’ Anna Trewayne, Beth’s godmother, sighed, following suit and pausing before drinking her wine to add worriedly, ‘I must admit that I feel partly to blame. If I hadn’t persuaded the two of you to open your shop here in Rye-on-Averton, Beth would never have met Julian Cox in the first place.’

‘There’s only one person to blame for Beth’s unhappiness,’ the third member of the trio, Dee Lawson, Beth and Kelly’s landlady, announced starkly, ‘and that’s Julian Cox. The man is a complete and utter …’

She stopped speaking momentarily, lifting her glass to her lips, her eyes darkening painfully as she quickly hid her expression from the others.

‘We all know what he’s done to Beth, how much he’s hurt and humiliated her, telling her that he wanted to get engaged, encouraging her to make all those plans for their engagement party and then telling her the night before that he’d met someone else, making out that she’d misunderstood him and imagined that he’d proposed. Personally, I think that instead of bemoaning what’s happened what we should be doing is thinking of some way we can punish Julian Cox for what he’s done to her and make sure he can never do it again.’

‘Punish him …?’ Kelly enquired doubtfully. She and Beth had been friends from their first days together at university and Kelly had enthusiastically agreed to her friend’s suggestion that they set up in business together.

‘Rye-on-Averton is the kind of pretty rural English town that artists and tourists dream about, and my godmother was only saying the last time I was there that the town lacked a shop selling good-quality crystal and chinaware.’

‘Us … open a shop …?’ Kelly had protested a little uncertainly.

‘Why not?’ Beth had pressed enthusiastically, ‘You were saying only last week that you weren’t particularly enjoying your job. If we found the right kind of property there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to make your own designs to sell in the shop. With my retail experience I could be responsible for the buying and we could share the work in the shop.’

‘It sounds wonderful …’ Kelly had admitted, adding wryly, ‘Too wonderful … We’d need to find the right kind of premises, and it would only be on the strict understanding that we share the finances of the business equally,’ she had warned her friend, knowing that although Beth had no real money of her own her grandparents were rather wealthy and Beth was their adored and adoring only grandchild.

But Beth had swept aside all her objections, and in the end Kelly had been as enthusiastic about their shared project as Beth herself.

Over the last twelve months since the shop had first opened they had gone from strength to strength and then, just over eight months ago, Beth had met Julian Cox.

He had pursued her relentlessly whilst Kelly had stood helplessly to one side and watched as her friend became more and more emotionally dependent on a man whom Kelly had never liked right from the start.

‘Don’t you think you’re letting him rush things a little bit?’ she had suggested gently, just after Beth had announced that they were getting engaged. But Beth’s face had clouded and they had had their first real quarrel when she had responded uncomfortably, ‘Jules said you’d say something like that … He … he thinks that you’re … that you’re jealous of us, Kelly … I told him that just wasn’t possible, of course …’

Jealous of them! With that comment Kelly had been forced to acknowledge that Julian Cox had very skilfully robbed her of the chance to pass on to her friend a piece of information she ought to have given her weeks before. But right now, under the influence of her second glass of the strong Italian wine the three of them had been drinking in the busy Italian wine bar where they had gone for a drink after they had seen Beth off on her buying trip to Prague, the idea of revealing Julian Cox as the unpleasant and untrustworthy character they knew him to be seemed to have taken on the air of something of a crusade, a moral crusade.

‘Why should he be allowed to get away with what he’s done, to walk away from his guilt in the same manner he walked away from Beth?’ Dee had asked the others now.

‘Walk away! What he did was even worse than that,’ Kelly exploded. ‘He practically forced Beth to publicly humiliate herself. I can’t believe how many people seem to have fallen for the lies he’s been spreading about her, implying that not only did she misunderstand his intentions but that she also actively pursued him, to the point where he was supposedly thinking of taking legal action to stop her. Bunkum! I know which one of them was doing the lying and it wasn’t Beth. For goodness’ sake, I even heard him telling her how much he loved her, how much he couldn’t wait for them to be married.’

‘That would have been around the time when Beth’s grandfather was so seriously ill, I expect?’ Dee said grimly.

Kelly looked at her in surprise, but it was Anna who answered her question first, exclaiming, ‘Yes, that’s right! It was when her grandfather was ill that Julian proposed.’

At thirty-seven Anna was the oldest member of the quartet. As Beth’s mother’s younger cousin she had just missed out on being a bridesmaid at the wedding through a serious bout of German measles. In compensation Beth’s mother had asked her several years later to be one of her new baby’s godparents. Only a teenager, Anna had been awed and thrilled to be considered grown-up enough for such a responsibility and it was one she had taken very seriously, her relationship with Beth even more precious to her since she and her husband had not had any children of their own.

‘What’s the connection between Beth’s grandfather’s illness and Julian’s proposal of marriage?’ Kelly asked Dee curiously.

‘Can’t you guess?’ Dee responded. ‘Think about it. The girl Julian dropped Beth for is known to have a substantial personal trust fund.’

Kelly made a small moue of distaste and looked shocked.

‘You mean that Julian proposed to Beth because he thought …’

‘That her grandfather would die and Beth would inherit a lot of money,’ Dee finished for her. ‘Yes. Once he realised that Beth’s grandfather was going to recover he must have really panicked, but, of course, he met this other girl, whose inheritance is far more accessible …’

‘It sounds like something out of a bad melodrama,’ Kelly protested, her forehead puckering as she added, ‘Besides, I thought that Julian was wealthy in his own right. He certainly gives that impression.’

‘He certainly likes to give that impression,’ Dee agreed. ‘Needs to, in fact. That’s the way he draws the innocent and the naive into his web.’

Kelly’s frown deepened as she listened to Dee.

At thirty, Dee was older than Kelly and Beth but younger than Anna, and the two girls had originally met her after their estate agent had suggested that they might want to look at a shop property Dee owned and wanted to let.

They had done so and had both been pleased and impressed with the swift and businesslike way in which Dee had handled the letting of her property to them. She was a woman who, although at first a little reserved and cool, and very choosy about her friends, on later acquaintance revealed a warmth and sense of humour that made her fun to be with.

Anna, who had lived in the town for the last fifteen years following the tragic death of her young husband in a sailing accident off the coast of Cornwall, had known Dee a little before Beth and Kelly had arrived on the scene. After the death of her father Dee had taken over his business affairs as well as his position on several local charities, and so was quite a well-known figure in the town.

Dee’s father had been an extremely successful entrepreneur, and others in her family were members of the local farming community, and the more Kelly and Beth had come to know her, the more it had astonished them that such a stunningly attractive woman, and one whose company the male sex quite plainly enjoyed should not have a man in her life.

‘Perhaps it’s because she’s so busy,’ Beth had ventured when she and Kelly had discussed it. ‘After all, neither of us have partners at the moment …’

This had been in her pre-Julian days, and Kelly had raised her eyebrows a little, reminding Beth wryly, ‘We’ve only been in town a matter of weeks, and besides … I saw the look in Dee’s eyes the other day when we all went out to dinner and that little girl came trotting up to talk to her—the one from the other table. Do you remember? She made an immediate beeline for Dee and it was as though the pair of them were communicating on some special wavelength that blocked out the rest of us …’

‘Mmm … She does have a very definite rapport with children,’ Beth had agreed, adding helpfully, ‘Perhaps she’s just not met the right man yet. She strikes me very much as a woman who would only commit herself to a relationship if she was a hundred and fifty per cent sure it was right for her.’

‘Mmm …’ Kelly had agreed reluctantly. ‘Personally I think there must be rather more to it than that.’

‘Well, maybe,’ Beth had agreed. ‘But I wouldn’t like to be the one to pry into her past, would you?’

‘No,’ Kelly had agreed immediately.

Friendly though the four of them had become, and well though they all got on, there was a certain reserve about Dee, a certain sense of distance, an invisible line over which one knew instinctively one would not be encouraged to cross.

‘You seem to know a lot more about Julian’s background than the rest of us,’ Kelly told Dee now.

Dee gave a dismissive shrug.

‘He’s … he grew up locally, and in my position one … learns things.’

Kelly’s frown deepened.

‘But surely if you knew his reputation was unsavoury you could have warned Beth?’

‘I was away when she originally met him,’ Dee reminded her, adding dryly, ‘And anyway, I doubt she would have listened …’

‘No, you’re probably right,’ Kelly agreed. ‘I never liked him, but Beth was so loyal to him she wouldn’t hear a word against him. It’s all very well saying that we ought to do something to show him up for the rat he really is, but how can we? He’s dumped poor Beth, humiliated her, and he’s got clean away with it.

‘I’d like to tell this new girlfriend of his just what he’s like …’ she continued darkly.

‘It wouldn’t work,’ Dee warned her. ‘She’s as besotted with him as Beth was. No, if we’re going to have any chance of getting any kind of restitution for Beth, any kind of public recognition of the way Julian lied about her as well as to her, we’re going to have to use his own weakness, his own greed against him.’

‘We are? But how …?’ Kelly asked her curiously. Beth was such a loving, gentle, kind person, the last thing she had needed was the kind of pain and humiliation Julian had handed out to her, never mind the potential damage it could do to their own just burgeoning business. The whispering campaign Julian had so carefully and cleverly instigated when he had dropped Beth, insinuating that she had been the one pursuing him, obsessed by him, was bound to have its repercussions.

‘I do hope that Beth will be all right on her own in Prague,’ Anna put in anxiously, joining the conversation. Fine-boned and very youthful-looking, Anna was, in many ways, so far as Kelly was concerned, the epitome of a slightly old-fashioned type of femininity and womanhood.

Married young and then tragically widowed, in a medieval century she would have been the type of woman who would no doubt have withdrawn to the protective security of a small convent, or perhaps in the Georgian or Victorian age she would have been the doting aunt to her siblings’ large broods of noisy children.

As it was, she was apparently content with her single life, her pretty little house and her pets—a large fluffy cat and a smaller but just as fluffy dog. Her home had become for both Kelly and Beth a surrogate home from home since they had moved into the area and, whilst Kelly could never for a minute imagine Anna ever stepping into the role so vigorously occupied by her own energetic and feisty mother, there was still something very comforting and special about the gentle concern Anna showered on them both.

It was a pity she had never remarried, in Kelly’s opinion, and she knew that Beth agreed with her.

‘She adored Uncle Ralph; they were childhood sweethearts and they had only been married a few months when he died,’ Beth had told her.

‘Beth will have a wonderful time,’ Dee responded robustly now. ‘Prague is the most beautiful city.’

‘I’ve heard that it’s a very romantic city,’ Anna agreed a little wistfully, or so it seemed to Kelly. ‘I just hope it doesn’t make her feel even worse. She’s lost so much weight and looks so unhappy.’

‘She’ll be far too busy going round glass factories to think about anything other than business,’ Dee predicted firmly.

‘Mmm … It’s a godsend that this trip came up when it did,’ Kelly agreed. ‘And that’s all thanks to you, Dee. That was a brilliant idea of yours to suggest to her that we should think about buying some crystal from the Czech Republic. It’s been so awful for her.

‘You’d think that after what he’s done to her and the way he’s let her down Julian would at least have the decency to keep a low profile with his new girlfriend, but he actually seems to enjoy flaunting their relationship.’

‘Like I said, the man needs teaching a lesson and being given a taste of his own medicine,’ Dee reiterated. ‘And if you want my opinion we’re just the ones to do it.’

‘Us …? But …’ Anna started to protest uneasily.

‘Why not?’ Dee overruled her. ‘After all, you are Beth’s godmother, Kelly here is her best friend … If the three of us can’t be relied upon to do the right thing by her … if she can’t depend on us … then who can she depend on?’ Dee said firmly.

‘It sounds a good idea in theory,’ Kelly allowed, moved by Dee’s obvious emotion. ‘But—’

‘Have some more wine,’ Dee interrupted her. ‘There’s still over half a bottle left.’

Deftly she refilled both Kelly’s glass and Anna’s.

‘I—’ Kelly started to protest but Dee cut her off.

‘It’s got to be finished and I can’t have any more; I’m driving.’

It was true. It had been Dee who had taken charge when Beth had virtually collapsed after Julian had callously told her that he no longer wanted her, just as it had been Dee who had come up with the suggestion that Beth travel to Prague on a buying trip that would also hopefully take her mind off Julian and her unhappiness. And it was Dee who had driven them all to the airport so that they could see Beth off on her journey, and now it seemed that Dee was still taking charge and making plans for them.

‘So, now that we’ve agreed that Julian has to be punished and exposed for what he is, what we need to decide is how we’re going to put our plans into action.’

She paused and then looked at Kelly before saying slowly, ‘What I think would be best would be for us to punish him through his greed. You mentioned the other week, Kelly, that almost right from the first time you met him Julian was coming on to you, making overtures to you, trying to encourage you to date him behind Beth’s back …’

‘Yes. It’s true, he was,’ Kelly agreed. ‘I didn’t tell Beth at the time because I didn’t want to hurt her and then, when it was too late, I wished I had …’ She paused and then added uncertainly, ‘Dee, it’s all very well to talk about us punishing Julian for the way he’s hurt her so badly, but realistically what can we do?’

Dee smiled grimly at her before turning to Anna.

‘Anna, you’ve told us how Julian approached you for a loan, claiming that he wanted the money to use as a deposit on a house he was planning to buy for Beth and himself …’

‘Yes …’ Anna agreed. ‘He called round out of the blue one afternoon. He said that all his cash was tied up in various investments, but that Beth had seen this house she was desperate for them to buy and he didn’t want to disappoint her. He said he’d only need the money for a few months—’

‘Yes, no doubt because he was expecting that by then Beth would have received her share of her grandfather’s estate,’ Kelly cut in angrily. ‘How could anyone be so despicable?’

‘We aren’t talking about anyone,’ Dee pointed out acidly. ‘We’re talking about Julian Cox, and Julian has a long record of very skilfully and deceitfully depriving the innocent and naive of their money—and not just their money,’ Dee concluded quietly.

There was a look in her eyes that made Kelly check and study her a little woozily. The wine Kelly had drunk was beginning to make her feel distinctly light-headed, no doubt due to the fact that she hadn’t had very much to eat, but she knew she was not imagining that unfamiliar combination of vulnerability and haunted pain in Dee’s distinctive tortoiseshell-coloured eyes. Even so, there was something she still felt bound to pursue.

‘If you knew just what kind of man Julian is, why didn’t you say something to Beth?’ she asked Dee for a second time.

‘I told you why—because quite simply, when she first became involved with him, if you remember, I was in Northumberland nursing my aunt. By the time I’d come back and realised what was going on, how deeply she was involved with him, it was too late; she was on the verge of announcing their engagement.’

‘Yes, I remember now,’ Kelly acknowledged. It was true—Dee had been away for several months earlier in the year, looking after an elderly relative who had undergone a serious operation.

‘It seems so unfair that Julian should get away with convincing everyone that poor Beth is some kind of compulsive liar as well as breaking her heart,’ Anna put in quietly. ‘I know her and I know she would never, could never behave in the way he’s trying to imply.’

‘He’s very adept at maintaining a whiter than white reputation for himself whilst destroying the reputations of those who are unfortunate enough to become innocently involved with him,’ Dee informed them bitterly.

Kelly was feeling far too muzzy with wine to take Dee up on what she had said, but she sensed that there was some kind of past history between Julian Cox and Dee, even if she knew that Dee would not welcome any probing into it on her part.

‘What we need to do,’ Dee was telling them both firmly, ‘is to use his own tactics against him and lure him into a position where his true nature can be exposed. It’s no secret now to any of us that the reason he dropped Beth is because he realised that there wasn’t going to be any financial benefit to him in marrying her.’

‘Since we do know that, I can’t help but agree with Kelly that we ought to do something to warn his new girlfriend and her family just what kind of man he is,’ Anna suggested gently.

Dee shook her head. ‘We know how blindly in love Beth was, and, although I hate to say this, we could all be done an untold amount of harm if Julian Cox started trying to tar us with the same brush he’s used against Beth to such good effect. The last thing any of us needs is to be publicly branded as hysterical, over-emotional women, obsessed by some imaginary sense of injustice.’

She was right, Kelly had to acknowledge.

‘Besides, if my plan works successfully, and it will, then he’ll drop his current victim just as swiftly as he dropped Beth, and for very much the same reason.’

‘Your plan? What plan?’ Kelly asked her uneasily.

‘This plan. Listen,’ Dee commanded. ‘We are going to mount a two-pronged attack against Julian where he’s most vulnerable.

‘I happen to know that one of Julian’s clever little ways of funding his expensive lifestyle is to persuade gullible people to invest in his apparently initially sound financial schemes. By the time they realise that they are anything but sound, it’s too late and their money has gone.’

‘But surely that’s fraud?’ Kelly protested. Dee shrugged her shoulders.

‘Technically, yes, but Julian relies on the fact that his victims feel too embarrassed or are too timid to complain. For that reason he tends to prey on the elderly and the vulnerable, the innocently naive, too trusting and honest themselves to see what he really is until it’s too late.’

‘The man’s a menace,’ Kelly complained sharply.

‘Yes, he is, and we’re going to expose him as he fully deserves to be exposed,’ Dee told her. ‘You, Kelly, are suddenly going to become an extremely rich young woman. You have a great-uncle, previously unknown and now deceased, who has left you a considerable amount of money. This inheritance isn’t something you yourself have made public, of course; in fact you refuse to talk about it—its existence is something you wish to keep a secret—but its existence has subtly filtered through the town’s grapevine, at least as far as Julian’s ears.

‘We already know that he finds you attractive; you’ve told us both that he made advances to you whilst he was pretending to Beth that he loved her … All you have to do is let him believe that you’re prepared to commit yourself, and, more importantly, your future to him. His own ego and greed will do the rest.’

‘But I can’t pretend that I’ve inherited money … I can’t lie about something like that,’ Kelly said. ‘What will people think when they know?’

‘Only Julian will ever know about your supposed inheritance,’ Dee assured her. ‘Just as only Julian will ever know that you are a wealthy widow and have money to spare for investment,’ she told Anna.

Anna looked at her uncertainly.

‘He has already tried to borrow money from me, Dee, it’s true, as I’ve just told you both, but I’m certainly not a wealthy woman and …’

‘Look, when it comes to convincing Julian that you both have financial assets that we all know simply don’t exist, you can leave everything to me. I promise you that Julian is the only person who will be made aware of these imaginary fortunes.’

‘But will he believe it? Surely he’ll …’

‘He’ll believe it,’ Dee assured Kelly. ‘He’ll believe it because he’ll want to believe it. He needs to believe it,’ she told them grimly. ‘From what I’ve learned, his own financial position is so perilous at the moment that he’ll grasp just about any straw he can to save himself.

‘Once he switches his allegiance from his current girlfriend to you, Kelly, and once he tries to draw you, Anna, into one of his financial scams, we’ll be able to publicly reveal him for the cheat and liar that he genuinely is …’

‘It sounds plausible,’ Kelly acknowledged. ‘And it would certainly exonerate Beth if we could pull it off.’

‘As well as preventing his current girlfriend from suffering a potential broken heart and losing her inheritance,’ Anna supplied protectively.

‘So it’s agreed,’ Dee slipped in quickly. ‘We don’t have any option but to go ahead and bring him to book.’

‘No, I suppose we don’t,’ Kelly acknowledged.

She still wasn’t totally convinced that she was going to be able to carry off the role Dee had apparently cast for her as a wealthy heiress, but her head felt too muzzy for her to protest properly.

There was one thing she had to say, though.

‘How can you be so sure that Julian will drop his current girlfriend for me?’

‘He wants you, we already know that,’ Dee told her forthrightly, ‘and besides, you’re on your own, unprotected … It’s your money … yours to do with as you please … His current girlfriend isn’t; she’s got a brother who stands between Julian and her inheritance. Julian is running out of credit and credibility. He won’t be able to resist the bait you’re dangling, Kelly. He can’t afford to resist it.’

‘The bait …’ Kelly swallowed shakily. The bait Dee was referring to, as she knew only too well, wasn’t just her imagined fortune, it was Kelly herself, and since she personally thought that Julian Cox was the most loathsome, obnoxious, revolting and undesirable man she had ever met …

‘But if Kelly’s going to pose as a wealthy heiress, then surely Julian won’t be interested in my money as well,’ Anna protested.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Dee corrected her. ‘Julian is greedy and avaricious; he won’t pass up any opportunity to get his hands on some extra cash.’

‘But I’ve already refused to help him once,’ Anna pointed out.

‘You’re a woman; you can change your mind,’ Dee told her mock-sweetly. ‘Look, you can both leave all the details of putting our plans into action to me. All I want from you is your agreement, your commitment, to help Beth, and I know I can rely on both of you completely for that … Can’t I?’

Kelly and Anna exchanged uncertain looks.

‘Beth is very dear to us,’ Dee reminded them, looking first at Kelly and then at Anna.

‘Yes. Of course … of course you can,’ Anna agreed immediately.

‘Yes. Of course you can,’ Kelly agreed a little less confidently. Something warned her that, foolproof though Dee’s plan sounded, things might not fall into place just as easily as she assumed, but her brain felt too clouded by the wine she had drunk for her to be able to formulate any determined assault on Dee’s confident arguments and besides, Dee was right about one thing—she did feel that Julian deserved to be exposed for what he was …

For the next few minutes they continued their discussion, and as they did so Kelly’s doubts as to the feasibility of Dee’s plan resurfaced.

‘I’ve got an early start in the morning, so if you don’t mind we really ought to make a move,’ Dee announced finally, checking her watch.

As she stood up Kelly realised dizzily just how strong the red wine she had been drinking actually was. To her relief Anna seemed equally affected by it. Of the three of them, Dee was the only one who seemed to have a properly clear head, which was just as well since she was the one doing the driving.

As she shepherded her two slightly inebriated charges out into the car park and to her car, Dee acknowledged ruefully that she would thoroughly deserve it if both of them blamed her in the morning for their thick heads—she, after all, had been the one who had kept on refilling their glasses—but she comforted herself with the knowledge that what she was doing was right; she owed it to—Her eyes closed. She must not think of the past, only the future—a future in which Julian Cox would meet the fate he so richly deserved!

She hadn’t been able to believe it when she had discovered that Julian was up to his old tricks, but this time he wasn’t going to get away with it. This time … this time he was going to discover to his cost just how strong and powerful a woman’s desire for justice could be.

With an almost maternal concern she helped her two friends and fellow conspirators into her car. She intended to take very good care of them from now on, very good care … As they settled a little woozily into the rear seat Dee reflected that it was just as well that they couldn’t read her mind and that they didn’t know the truth. There had been one or two decidedly awkward moments back in the restaurant when Kelly had tried to question her, to dig a little deeper into the past, but fortunately she had managed to sidetrack her.

‘Poor Beth …’ Anna hiccuped mournfully as Dee started the car engine.

‘Poor Beth,’ Kelly agreed, blinking as she tried to clear her increasingly blurry vision.

‘No, not poor Beth,’ Dee corrected them sternly. ‘Lucky Beth. Just think how much more unhappy he could have made her if he’d waited until after they were engaged, or, even worse, until after they were married before betraying her,’ Dee pointed out to them.

‘It’s going to be easier for her this way. If she had married him …’

Instinctively she glanced down at her own wedding ring finger. It was slightly thinner than its fellows as if once …? Then determinedly she looked away.

In the rear of the car her two fellow conspirators were succumbing to the effects of the extremely potent red wine she had deliberately fed them, their eyes closing.

She knew she ought to feel guilty about what she was doing—they were both so innocent and unaware, so unsuspicious …

CHAPTER TWO

KELLY woke up with an aching head and a dry mouth. Groaning, she rolled over and looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table.

Ten o’clock. She must have slept right through the alarm. Thank heavens it was Sunday and the shop didn’t open until later than usual.

Swinging her legs out of bed, she winced as the ache in her head became a thunderous nausea-induced pounding.

It was all Dee’s fault, insisting that they finish that bottle of red wine.

Dee …

Kelly froze in mid-step and then collapsed back onto the bed, groaning. What on earth had she done? She would have to telephone Dee straight away and tell her that she had changed her mind, that there was totally, absolutely, completely and utterly no way she could go through with the ludicrous plan she had agreed to last night.

Tottering towards the phone, still clasping her head, Kelly saw the answering machine light was flashing. Obediently she pressed the reply button.

‘Kelly,’ she heard. ‘This is Dee. I’m just calling to confirm the plans we made last night. I’ve discovered that Julian and his new girlfriend will be attending a charity bash at Ulston House this evening. I’ve managed to get you a ticket and an escort—just as a bit of extra insurance. Julian is going to find you even more of an irresistible challenge if he thinks you’re with someone else. Remember, all you have to do is egg him on whilst playing just that little bit hard to get. I know how close you and Beth are and I know that you wouldn’t dream of reneging on our plan or letting her down.

‘Harry, your escort, will call for you at seven-thirty. He’s my cousin, by the way, and completely to be trusted, although, of course, he knows nothing of our special plan. He thinks you just need a date for the evening because you’re attending the do for business reasons. That could be the truth, incidentally—an awful lot of influential local people will be attending the dinner and the ball afterwards. Bye for now …’

What on earth did Dee think she was doing? Kelly wondered as she stared at the phone like someone in shock. And how on earth had she managed to get two tickets for that ball at such short notice? Kelly knew all about it. Those tickets were like gold dust. Not that she intended for one minute to go. Dee was taking far too much for granted and Kelly intended to tell her so. Where on earth had they put her telephone number?

Kelly winced as pain throbbed through her head. Last night’s red wine had an awful lot to answer for—oh, an awful, awful lot!

Dee’s number had to be somewhere and she certainly had to speak with her. Ah, there it was; she had missed it the first time in the address book. Breathing out noisily in relief, Kelly punched in Dee’s telephone number.

The tell-tale delay before the call was answered warned her what was going to happen even before she heard the familiar sound of Dee’s voice on the answering machine message.

‘I’m sorry, I shan’t be able to take your call today. Please leave your number and I’ll call you back tomorrow,’ Dee was announcing. Thoroughly exasperated, Kelly hung up.

Perhaps she could drive over to Dee’s and persuade her that they ought to change their minds and their plans. What had seemed a reasonable plan last night, this morning seemed more like a totally implausible, not to say highly dangerous thing to do. For one thing, it went totally against all her own principles and, for another, how on earth was she supposed to give Julian Cox the impression that she found him attractive and desirable enough to want to break up his relationship with someone else when the truth was that she found him loathsome, reptilian and repulsive?

Yes, physically he was an attractive enough looking man, if you went for his boyish brand of fair-haired good looks, but looks alone had never been enough to attract Kelly, and there had been something about him, something about his attitude not just towards Beth but towards her as well, which had set alarm bells ringing in Kelly’s head virtually from the first moment she had seen him. She had made a point of keeping out of the way whenever he was around and when they had had to meet she had kept a very cool and formal distance from him.

So how on earth was she supposed to convince him now that she suddenly found him the epitome of male sexiness?

She couldn’t. She wasn’t going to try. She had been a fool even to think of agreeing to Dee’s outrageous plan, but she had agreed and something warned her that it wasn’t going to be easy to convince Dee that she wanted to change her mind.

And if she backed out and Anna didn’t, how was it going to look? She was, after all, Beth’s best friend and, indeed, perhaps the best way of convincing Dee that her plan wouldn’t work would be for her, Kelly, to show her how impossible it was going to be, by going to tonight’s ball. She would be safe enough. There was no way that Julian Cox was going to repeat his attempt to come on to her, not after the way she had put him down the first time. And once she had failed to re-attract his notice Dee would surely accept that she had done her best and allow the subject to drop.

Yes, far better to do things that way than to risk offending Dee, who was, after all, only acting out of kindness and affection for Beth.

Where on earth were those wretched headache tablets? She had pulled everything out of their small medicine cabinet without finding them, and she knew she had bought some. And then she remembered she had given them to Beth, after the terrible crying jags she had had after her break-up with Julian had left her with a splitting headache. Glumly Kelly made her way to their small kitchen and filled the kettle.

The flat above the shop was on two floors; on the upper storey were hers and Beth’s bedrooms and their shared bathroom, and on the lower floor was their comfortably sized living room, a small dining room and an equally small kitchen.

Outside at the rear of the property was a pretty little garden, and at the bottom of it was the workshop which Kelly had made her own territory. That was where she worked on her new designs and painted the china she had accepted as private commissions. Painting pretty porcelain pieces and enamel boxes was her speciality.

Before joining forces with Beth, Kelly had worked as a freelance from her parents’ home in Scotland, supplying her pretty hand-decorated enamel boxes to an exclusive London store.

At three o’clock, with the shop still busy with both browsers and buyers, Kelly acknowledged that she was not going to be able to make time to snatch so much as a quick sandwich lunch, never mind drive over to Dee’s.

Ironically this Sunday had been one of their busiest since they had opened the shop, and she had not only sold several of her more expensive pieces, she had also taken orders for seven special commissions from a Japanese visitor who had particularly liked her enamel-ware boxes.

At four o’clock, when she was gently showing the last browser out of the shop so that she could lock up, she was beginning to panic, not just about the fact that it was becoming increasingly obvious that she was going to have to go through with Dee’s plans for the evening but, femalely, because she knew that she simply did not have in her wardrobe a dress suitable for such an occasion. She and Beth had ploughed every spare bit of cash they had into their business—both of them had been helped with additional loans from their bank, their parents and Beth’s grandfather. Anna, too, had insisted on making them a cash gift, to, as she’d put it, ‘cover any extras’. They were beginning to show a small profit, but they certainly weren’t making anything like enough to warrant the purchase of expensive evening dresses.

Ordinarily, knowing she was attending such an occasion, Kelly would have done as she had done for her graduation ball and trawled the antiques shops and markets to find something she could adapt, but on this occasion there simply wasn’t time, and the smartest thing she had in her wardrobe right now was the elegant dress and coat she had originally bought for her brother’s wedding and which, though smart, was hardly the kind of outfit she could wear to a charity ball.

After she’d checked that she had securely locked the shop and that the alarm was switched on she made her way up to the flat. She was still finding it hard to understand what on earth had possessed her to agree to Dee’s outrageous scheme last night. She was normally so careful and cautious, so in control of her life. Beth was the gentle, easily manipulated one of the two of them; she was far more stubborn and self-assured. Too stubborn, her brother often affectionately told her.

Certainly she knew her own mind; she was, after all, a woman of twenty-four, adult, mature, educated and motivated, a woman who, whilst she would ultimately want to have a loving partner and children, was certainly in no rush to commit herself to a relationship. The man with whom she eventually settled down would have to accept and understand that she would expect to be treated as an equal partner in their relationship, that she would expect in him the same qualities she looked for in a best friend: loyalty, honesty, a good sense of fun, someone who would share her interests and her enthusiasms, someone who would enhance her life and not, as she had seen so often happen in so many other relationships, make the kind of demands on her that would prevent her from living her life as she really wanted to live it.

‘But what happens if you fall in love with someone who isn’t like that?’ Beth had once questioned when they had been discussing men and relationships.

‘I won’t,’ Kelly had responded promptly.

Poor Beth. What was she doing right now? How was she feeling …? Kelly had never seen her looking so wretched or unhappy … Beth had really believed that Julian Cox loved her.

Since their break-up Kelly had heard rumours that Beth wasn’t the first woman he had treated badly. No, Beth was better off without him, Kelly decided as she went into their kitchen and filled the kettle. She gave a small shudder as she remembered the night she had returned early from a weekend visit to her parents to discover Beth almost unconscious on her bed. Taking too many sleeping tablets had been an accident, an oversight, Beth had assured her, and had pleaded with her not to tell anyone else what she had done as Kelly sat beside her hospital bed. Unwillingly, Kelly had agreed. Luckily she had found Beth in time … luckily …

Remembering that incident, Kelly slowly sipped her hot coffee. Was Dee really asking so much of her? No. She didn’t relish the role she was being called upon to play—what modern woman would?—but it was only a means to an entirely justifiable and worthwhile end.

But that still didn’t solve the problem of what she was going to wear. She and Beth were approximately the same size although Beth was fair-skinned and blonde, with soft, pretty grey eyes, whereas she was brunette, her skin tone much warmer, her eyes a dark purplish brown, damson—the colour of lilac wine, one besotted admirer had once called them.

The ball had been the subject of a great deal of excitement and speculation in town. It was to be the highlight of the town’s social year. The de Varsey family, who owned the elegant Georgian mansion where the event was to be held, had been local landowners for the last three hundred years and, despite their cost, tickets had been snapped up and the event sold out within a week of them going on sale, which made it even more extraordinary that Dee should have been able to produce a pair at such short notice.

Kelly could remember how thrilled and excited Beth had been when Julian had told her that he had bought tickets for the event.

‘I’ll have to hire something really special. This isn’t just a social event for Julian, it’s a very important business opportunity as well,’ she had told Kelly breathlessly.

Kelly had never properly discovered just exactly what line of business it was that Julian was in. He had talked very grandly about his own financial acumen and the hugely profitable deals he had pulled off, and he certainly had spent a lot of time talking into the mobile phone he took everywhere with him. He drove a very large and very fast BMW, but lived in a surprisingly small service flat in a new and not particularly attractive apartment block on the outskirts of town.

Kelly hadn’t been at all pleased when she had learned that he had suggested to Beth that she allow him to have some of his business mail addressed to their flat, but she had refrained from making too much fuss, not wanting to upset her friend.

Beth had been thrilled at the prospect of attending such a prestigious social event with him—as his fiancée; now another woman would be going there with him in Beth’s place.

‘Remember she could be just as much a victim of his ruthlessness as Beth was,’ Dee had reminded her and Anna last night when Kelly had commented that she didn’t know how any woman could date a man who she knew was supposedly committed to someone else.

If that was the case, Julian Cox deserved to be revealed as the unpleasant and untrustworthy creep that he was, for her sake as much as Beth’s, Kelly acknowledged, frowning as she heard her doorbell ring.

She wasn’t expecting any visitors. Although she and Beth had made several new acquaintances since moving to the town, as yet they hadn’t progressed to the stage of many close friendships. Getting up, she went downstairs to open the door that faced onto the main street.

A man was standing outside, a large box at his feet, a delivery van parked on the roadside behind him.

‘Kelly Harris?’ he asked her, producing a form for her to sign. ‘Just sign here, please …’

‘What is it?’ Kelly asked him uncertainly, automatically signing the form, but he was already picking up the box and handing it over to her.

Fortunately, despite its awkward shape, the box was very light. Mystified, Kelly carried it up to the flat and then, placing it on the sitting-room floor, sat down beside it to open it.

The outer layer of strong brown paper, once removed, revealed an elegant, glossy white box. There was a letter attached to it. Opening it, Kelly quickly read it.

Dear Kelly, you’ll need this to wear this evening.

Good hunting! Dee.

Intrigued, Kelly opened the box and then folded back the tissue paper inside it to reveal a dress that made her catch her breath in delight.

Two layers of material, one in conker-brown, the other a toning deep, dark damson, in the sheerest silk chiffon, floated through her fingers. Picking up the dress, she hurried into the bedroom and held it against herself, studying her reflection in the full-length mirror.

In both colour and design it might have been made with her in mind, the toning shades of chiffon so perfect with her colouring that they immediately drew attention to her eyes and made them look even more dramatically pansy-dark than usual. And as for the style—the current vogue for Jane Austen-type high-waisted, floating, revealing evening dresses was one that could, in the wrong hands, look insipid and totally unflattering to anyone over the age of seventeen, but Kelly knew instinctively that this dress was far from insipid, and that its deceptively sensuous cut could never be worn by a woman who was anything less than totally at ease with herself and her sexuality. In other words, Dee couldn’t have chosen a dress which would suit her more, and Kelly had no need to look at the immediately recognisable designer label attached to it to know that it must have been horrendously expensive.

Wonderingly she touched the fine chiffon. Although the dress was fully lined, the flesh colour of the lining meant that in a dimly lit room it could easily look as though she was wearing a dress that was virtually transparent.

Dee had even managed to get the size exactly right, Kelly acknowledged ruefully. Placing the dress reverently on her bed, she went back to the sitting room.

Inside the box beneath another layer of tissue paper lay a pretty matching chiffon stole and a pair of high-heeled satin sandals with a matching satin evening bag.

Dee had thought of everything, she admitted as she sat back on her heels.

Fortunately she already had some flesh-coloured underwear she could wear underneath the dress—a birthday present from her sister-in-law—and the pearls which had originally been her grandmother’s and which her parents had given her on her twenty-first birthday would be perfect.

It was a dream of a dress, she acknowledged ten minutes later as she carefully hung it on a padded hanger. A dream of a dress for what could well turn out to be a nightmare of an evening.

There was no way that Julian Cox wasn’t going to notice her wearing it. Although it was far too elegant and well designed ever to be described as sexy, Kelly knew even before she put it on that those soft layers of chiffon would have instant male appeal and be about as irresistible as home-made apple pie—although to a very different male appetite.

She glanced at her watch. If Dee’s cousin was going to pick her up at seven-thirty she ought to think about starting to get ready. Her hair would need washing and styling if she was going to do full justice to that dress. Fortunately its length meant that it was very adaptable and easy to put up. Equally fortunately it possessed enough curl to mean that she could attempt a very similar if somewhat simpler style to that adopted by Jane Austen’s heroines.

On the other side of town, someone else was also getting ready for the ball. Like Kelly, Brough Frobisher was attending it under protest. His sister had persuaded him to go, reluctantly wringing his agreement from him.

‘Julian especially wants you to be there,’ she had pleaded with him anxiously when he had started to refuse, adding slightly breathlessly, ‘I think … that is, he’s said … there’s something he wants to ask you …’

Brough’s heart had sunk as he’d listened to her. Initially when she had begged him to go with them to the ball he had assumed it was because her new boyfriend was looking for a backer for the new business venture he had already insisted on discussing with Brough; that had been bad enough, but now that Eve was dropping hints about Julian Cox proposing to her Brough was beginning to feel seriously alarmed.

At twenty-one Eve certainly didn’t need either his approval or his authorization to get married, and at thirty-four he was mature enough to recognise that any man who married the sister whom he had been so close to since the death of their parents nearly fifteen years ago was bound, in the initial stage of their relationship, to arouse in him a certain amount of suspicion and resentment. Since their parents’ death he had virtually been a surrogate father to Eve, and fathers were notoriously bad at giving up their claims to their little girls’ affection in favour of another man; but, given all of that, there was still something about Julian Cox that Brough just didn’t like.

The man was too sure of himself, too adroit … too … too smooth and slippery.

Eve had, after all, only known the man a matter of weeks, having initially met him quite soon after they had moved into the town.

Brough had decided that he had had enough of city life, and had sold out of the pensions management partnership he had founded, downsizing both his business and his equally hectic city social life by setting up a much smaller version of the partnership here in Rye-on-Averton.

Being a workaholic, city life—these were both fine at a certain stage in one’s life. But lately Brough had begun to reflect almost enviously on the differences between his lifestyle and that enjoyed by those of his peers who had married in their late twenties and who now had wives and families.

‘It’s a woman who’s supposed to feel her biological clock ticking away, not a man,’ Eve had teased him, adding more seriously, ‘I suppose it’s because you virtually brought me up with Nan’s help that you miss having someone to take care of.’

Perhaps she was right. Brough couldn’t say; all he could say was that the prospect of living in a pretty market town which had its roots firmly secured in history had suddenly been an extremely comforting and alluring one.

As for wanting a wife and family, well, over the years he had certainly had more than his fair share of opportunities to acquire those. He was a formidably attractive man, taller than average, with a physique to match—he had played rugby for his school throughout his time at university and it showed. His close-cropped, thick, dark hair was just beginning to show a sexy hint of grey at his temples, and his almost stern expression was enlivened by the dimple indented into his chin and the laughter that illuminated the direct gaze of his dark blue eyes.

‘It’s not fair,’ Eve had once protested. ‘You got all our inherited share of charisma … Look at the way women are always running after you.’

‘That isn’t charisma,’ Brough had corrected her dryly. ‘That’s money …’

In addition to the money both Brough and Eve had inherited from their parents, Brough’s own business acumen and foresight now meant that if he had chosen to do so he could quite easily have retired and lived extremely well off his existing financial assets.

Perhaps it was his fault that Eve was as naive and unworldly as she was, he reflected a little grimly. As her brother, stand-in father and protector, he had perhaps shielded her too much from life’s realities. Every instinct he possessed told him that Julian Cox simply wasn’t to be trusted, but Eve wouldn’t hear a word against the man.

‘You don’t know him like I do,’ she had declared passionately when Brough had tried gently to enlighten her. ‘Julian is so kind, even when people don’t deserve it. When I first met him he was being stalked by this awful woman. It had gone on for months. She kept telling everyone that she was going out with him, calling round at his flat, ringing him up, following him everywhere. She even tried to arrange a fake engagement party, claiming that he’d asked her to marry him …

‘But despite all the problems she’d caused him Julian told me that he just couldn’t bring himself to report her to the police and that he’d tried to talk to her himself … to reason with her … He’d even taken her out to dinner a couple of times because he felt so sorry for her. But he said that he simply couldn’t get through to her or make her understand that he just wasn’t interested in her. In the end he said the only way to get her to accept the truth was for her to see him with me. Luckily that seems to have worked.’

When he’d heard the passionate intensity in his sister’s voice Brough had known that it wouldn’t be a good idea to give her his own opinion of Julian Cox. Certainly the man seemed to be very attractive to the female sex, if the number of women’s names he peppered his conversation with were anything to go by.

No, he wasn’t looking forward to this evening one little bit, Brough acknowledged grimly—and he owed Nan a visit as well.

Nan, their maternal grandmother, was coming up for eighty but was still fit and active and very much a part of the small Cotswold community where she lived, and thinking of her reminded Brough of something he had to do.

His grandmother had in her glass-fronted corner cabinet a delicate hand painted porcelain teapot, together with all that was left of the original service which went with it. It had been a wedding present passed on to her and Gramps by her own grandparents, and Brough knew that it was one of her long-held wishes that somehow the teaset might be completed. Brough had tried his best over the years, but it was not one of the famous or well-known makes and it had proved impossible to track down any of the missing pieces. The only avenue left to him, according to the famous china manufacturers Hartwell, whom he had visited in Staffordshire, was for him to buy new pieces of a similar style and have them hand-painted to match the antique set.

‘The original manufacturers we amalgamated with produce a small range of antique china in the same style, but unfortunately we do not produce either that colour nor the intricate detail of the landscapes painted into the borders,’ the sympathetic Hartwell director had told him. ‘And whilst we could supply you with the correct shape of china I’m afraid that you would have to find someone else to paint it for you. Our people here have the skill but not, I’m afraid, the time, and I have to tell you that your grandmother’s set would be extremely time consuming to reproduce. From what you’ve shown me I suspect that each of the tea plates probably carried a different allegorical figure from Greek mythology in its borders, so your painter would have to be extremely innovative as well as extremely skilled. Your best bet might be someone who already works on commission—paints and enamels and that kind of thing.’

And he had suggested to Brough that he get in touch with a particularly gifted student they had had working with them during her university days. No one had been more surprised than Brough when he had tracked down the young woman in question only to find she lived and worked in Rye-on-Averton.

The telephone number and the young woman’s name were written down on a piece of paper on his desk. First thing in the morning he intended to get in touch with her. Time was running out; his grandmother’s eightieth birthday was not very far away and he desperately wanted to be able to present her with the missing items from the teaset as a surprise gift.

Although his grandmother hadn’t been able to take on Eve full time after their parents’ death—her husband had been very ill with Parkinson’s disease at the time—she had nevertheless always been there for them, always ready to offer a wise heart and all her love whenever Brough had needed someone to turn to for advice. She had a shrewd business brain too, and she had been the one to encourage Brough to set up his first business, backing him not just emotionally but financially as well.

She still took a strong interest in current affairs, and Brough suspected she would be as dismayed by Eve’s choice of suitor as he was himself.

And tonight Eve was expecting him to put aside his real feelings and to pretend that he was enjoying Julian Cox’s company, and no doubt, for her sake, he would do exactly that.

Eve might be a quiet, shy young woman, but she had a very strong, stubborn streak and an equally strong sense of loyalty, especially to someone who she considered was being treated badly or unfairly. The last thing that Brough wanted to do was to arouse that stubborn female protectiveness on Julian Cox’s behalf when what he was hoping was that sooner or later Eve’s own intelligence would show her just what kind of man he really was.

He looked at his watch. Eve was already upstairs getting ready. First thing tomorrow he would ring this Miss Harris and make an appointment with her to discuss his grandmother’s china. For now, reluctantly he acknowledged that if they weren’t going to be late it was time for him to get ready.

Seven miles away from town, in the kitchen of an old house overlooking the valley below and the patchwork of fields that surrounded it, Dee Lawson turned to her cousin Harry and demanded sternly, ‘You know exactly what you have to do, don’t you, Harry?’

Sighing faintly, he nodded and repeated, ‘To drive into town and pick Kelly up at seven-thirty and then escort her to the charity ball. If Julian Cox makes any kind of play for her I’m to act jealous but hold off from doing anything to deter him.’

‘Not if, but when,’ Dee corrected him firmly, and then added, ‘And don’t forget, no matter what happens or how hard Julian pushes, you must make sure you escort Kelly safely back to the flat.’

‘You really ought to do something about those maternal instincts of yours,’ Harry told her, and then stopped abruptly, flushing self-consciously as he apologised awkwardly, ‘Sorry, Dee, I forgot; I didn’t mean …’

‘It’s all right,’ she responded coolly, her face obscured by her long honey-blonde hair.

Seven years his senior, Dee had always been someone Harry was just a little bit in awe of.

Dee’s father and his had been brothers, and Dee had been a regular visitor to the family farm when Harry had been growing up. It had surprised him a little that she had chosen to continue her career in such a small, sleepy place as Rye-on-Averton after her father’s death. But then Dee had never been predictable or particularly easy to understand. She was a woman who kept her own counsel and was strong-willed and highly intelligent, with the kind of business brain and aptitude for making money that Harry often wished he shared.

There had only been one occasion that Harry could recall when Dee had found herself in a situation over which she did not have full control, a situation where her emotions had overruled her brain, but any kind of reference—no matter how slight—to that particular subject was completely taboo, and Harry would certainly not have dared to refer to it. As well as being in awe of his older cousin, it had to be said that there were times when he was almost, if not afraid of her, then certainly extremely unwilling to arouse her ire.

‘Kelly will be expecting you. You’ll like her,’ Dee informed him, adding almost inconsequentially, ‘She’d fit in very well here, and your mother …’

‘My mother wants me to marry and produce a clutch of grandchildren—yes, I know,’ Harry agreed wryly, before daring to point out, ‘You’re older than me, Dee, and you still haven’t married. Perhaps we’re a family who don’t …’

‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ Dee reproved him. ‘You have the farm to think of. It’s been passed down in the family for over four hundred years. Of course you’ll marry.’

Of course he would, but when he was ready and, please God, to someone he chose for himself. Although he tried desperately to hide it, considering that such idealism was not proper for a modern farmer, Harry was a romantic, a man who wanted desperately to fall deeply and completely in love. So far, though, he had not met anyone who stirred such deep and intense emotions within him.

CHAPTER THREE

VERY gently Kelly fingered the soft silk of her gown. Once on it suited her even more perfectly than she had expected, the colour of the chiffon doing impossibly glamorous things for her colouring.

As she looked up she saw that Dee’s cousin Harry was watching her rather anxiously. She smiled reassuringly at him as they waited in the receiving line to be greeted by their host and hostess. She had known from the moment he arrived to pick her up that she was going to like Harry. He was that kind of man—solid, dependable, reassuring, as comfortable as a familiar solid armchair, with the kind of down-to-earth, healthy good looks that typified a certain type of very English male. Just having him standing there beside her made her feel not merely remarkably better about the scheme which Dee had dreamt up but somehow extraordinarily feminine and protected. It was rather a novel sensation for Kelly, who had never been the type of woman to feel that she needed a man to lean on in any shape or form.

‘That colour really suits you,’ Harry told her earnestly as he arched his neck a little uncomfortably, as though he longed to be free of the restriction of his formal dinner suit.

‘Dee chose it,’ Kelly informed him, adding truthfully, ‘I feel rather like Cinderella being equipped for the ball by her fairy godmother … Although …’ She paused and then stopped. There was no point in discussing with Harry her doubts about what she was doing.

They had reached the line-up of dignitaries now. Kelly smiled mischievously as she caught the discreetly admiring second look the Lord Lieutenant of the county gave her before he shook her hand.

It’s all right, it’s not me, it’s the dress, she wanted to reassure his rather austere-looking wife, but then, remembering her new role as a femme fatale, instead she gave him a demure little smile plus a wickedly sultry look from beneath lowered lashes. It worked … His Lordship might be close on sixty, but there was no doubt that he was still a very virile man—at least if the look he was giving her was anything to go by.

Perhaps the evening wasn’t going to be so much of a challenge to her thespian talents as she had originally believed, Kelly mused as they passed down the line and then turned to accept a glass of champagne from one of the hovering waiters.

As Kelly already knew, the tickets for the ball had been unbelievably expensive, with only a relatively small number available, but, as she glanced appreciatively at her surroundings, she could well understand why.

Instead of more conventionally attaching a large marquee to the house to accommodate the event, guests were allowed to wander at will through the elegant antique-furnished reception rooms. Her own Regency-inspired dress couldn’t have been more felicitously in keeping with the decor, Kelly recognised, her attention caught by a pretty inlaid Chinese lacquered cabinet in one corner of the room, its shelves filled with what she suspected were Sèvres figurines.

Touching Harry’s arm, she pointed it out to him.

‘I’d like to go over and have a closer look,’ she told him. Nodding, Harry gallantly forged ahead to make a pathway through the throng of people now filling the hallway.

Kelly had almost reached her destination when abruptly she stopped dead. There, not a dozen feet away from her, stood Julian Cox. He hadn’t seen her as yet. He was busy talking with a pretty fair-haired young woman standing with him. In looks she was very similar to Beth, Kelly recognised, and she looked somehow as though she too possessed the same gentleness of nature that so characterised her best friend.

She doubted very much that that same description could be applied to the man standing on the opposite side of her. Tall, with incredibly powerful shoulders and frowning heavily, he looked extremely formidable and extremely masculine, Kelly recognised as her heart gave a sudden unsteady lurch against her ribs and her breathing quickened idiotically.

As though—impossibly, surely—he was somehow aware of her attention, he turned his head, seemingly focusing fiercely on her.

Kelly’s heart gave another and even sharper lurch. He had the most intensely dark blue eyes, and such a penetrating gaze that she felt almost as though he could see right into her soul.

Now she was being ridiculous, she told herself stoutly, firmly assuring herself that there was no way that either he or anyone else could have guessed what was going through her mind as she looked at him. And anyway, she reminded herself as she determinedly looked away from him, she was not here to start fantasising about the admittedly very interesting sensual allure of an unknown man; she was here for a very specific purpose, and that did not include allowing herself to be side-tracked by anyone or anything—not even her own still very disturbed heartbeat.

Even so, she managed to sneak a second brief glance at him, and she wished she had not done so as she saw the tender and protective way in which he was bending towards the soft-featured blonde girl who was standing close to Julian. Was she, as Kelly had first assumed, the new woman in Julian’s life, or was the other man her partner? Had those magnetic blue eyes that had focused on her so directly and so immediately been giving a stern warning that he was not available to any other woman, rather than conveying a virile, masculine awareness of her female curiosity?

Well, no doubt before the evening was over she was going to find out, she reminded herself. Julian had not seen her yet, but … She took a deep breath and started to move discreetly into his line of vision.

‘Are you okay?’ she heard Harry asking her in concern. ‘You look a bit flushed. It’s pretty crowded in here and hot …’

Rather guiltily Kelly gave him a reassuring smile. Any heat flushing her face had rather more to do with her emotional and physical reaction to the sexily masculine good looks of the man standing with Julian Cox than with the heat of the room.

Irritatingly, Julian had now turned away to talk to someone so that she was out of his line of vision. Boldly she deliberately changed direction, plunging through the crowd in order to bring herself back into it and, in the process, losing Harry, who became separated from her by the busy throng.

Julian might not be aware of her presence, she recognised after a discreet glance in the trio’s direction, but he, whoever he was, most certainly was. Slightly breathlessly she instinctively curled her toes, and a delicious thrill of feminine reaction ran through her as she realised just how intently she was being studied. Sternly she reminded herself of just why she was here and the role she had to play. The temptation to abandon it and to revert to her normal self beckoned treacherously. She had never been a flirt, never been the kind of woman to go all out deliberately to attract a man’s attention—she had never needed to and she had certainly never wanted to!

But, almost as though it was fate, just as she was wavering, a direct pathway opened up between her and Julian. Sternly she made herself take it.

‘Julian … How lovely to see you …’

Had she got the note of flirtatious invitation in her voice pitched correctly? Anxiously she held her breath as Julian turned his head to look at her, wariness giving way to a look of lustful male appreciation as she continued to smile at him.

‘Kelly! What a surprise …’

‘A pleasant one, I hope.’ Kelly pouted, deliberately stepping closer to him, angling her body so that she was placing herself with her back to the blonde girl standing silently at Julian’s side and thereby excluding her from their conversation.

‘I thought for a moment that you’d forgotten me …’

‘Impossible,’ Julian assured her with heavy flirtatiousness, his glance deliberately and meaningfully lingering on her body.

Really, he was a total creep, Kelly decided.

‘Here on your own?’ Julian quizzed her.

Throwing back her head, Kelly gave a small, sexy laugh.

‘Of course not,’ she chided him, her voice and the look she gave him emphasising that she was the type of woman who would never be without a male escort.

‘You’re looking very well,’ she praised him, adding purringly, ‘Very well …’

‘Then that makes two of us,’ Julian told her smoothly.

‘Julian, I think it’s time we started to make our way to the table.’

The cool, authoritative male voice intruding on their conversation caused Kelly to turn her head to look at its owner.

Close up he was even more sizzlingly sensual than she had first imagined. It must be the new persona she had assumed that was making her aware of him in such a very intimate and sexual way, she decided dizzily as her glance slid helplessly from the dark watchfulness of his eyes to his very sensual mouth. Certainly she could never remember an occasion previously when she had been so immediately and so shockingly physically aware of a man’s sexuality.

‘Oh, must you go so soon?’ She pouted again, a little disconcerted to recognise how easily both the pout and the teasing but deliberately flirtatious glance she had given Julian’s companion came to her. ‘We haven’t even been introduced …’

She could sense Julian’s surprise at the way she was behaving, and managed to hide her own reservation at her unfamiliar behaviour. Kelly could sense Julian’s reluctance to comply with her request, but his companion was already saying with a steely, not to say with a grim note in his voice, ‘Yes, Julian, do introduce us to your friend …’

‘Er … Eve, Brough, may I introduce you to an old friend—Kelly? Kelly, please meet Eve and her brother, Brough Frobisher.’

While Kelly waited for him to expand a little more on the relationship between the other couple and himself she could see from the look in Brough Frobisher’s eyes that he was decidedly unimpressed by her flirtatious manner.

At least she had had one of her questions answered, she acknowledged as Harry finally arrived at her side just as Brough was determinedly turning away from her.

Eve and her brother, Julian had said.

Ridiculous to feel that dizzying surge of excitement and relief just because Brough Frobisher appeared to be unattached.

‘We’re on table twelve,’ Harry was informing her as he manfully forged a pathway for them both through the press of people making their way towards the banqueting room.

Table twelve was well positioned, with a good view of the top table and close enough to the long row of French windows which opened out onto the terrace to offer the comfort of a cool walk along it should one wish to avail oneself of such a facility.

Curiously, though, as they approached the table a small altercation appeared to be taking place there between a harassed-looking couple, the man red-faced and plainly angry whilst his wife looked flushed and embarrassed.

‘You told me we were on table twelve,’ he was saying to her as Harry and Kelly approached.

‘And so we were … At least, that was what Sophie said …’ his wife was responding, adding helplessly, ‘She must have got it wrong. You’ll have to go back and check the table plan.’

As she watched the hapless couple making their way back to the entrance to the room, Kelly couldn’t help feeling a little bit guilty. Was she being overly suspicious in suspecting Dee’s magical sleight of hand might somehow be responsible for their missing seats, especially when she could quite plainly see from where she stood that the place cards the couple had been studying with such bewilderment bore hers and Harry’s name?

A middle-aged couple and their daughter, the Fortescues, Kelly realised, were taking their places at the table, and another couple were taking their seats opposite Harry’s and Kelly’s own, which left three spare seats to Kelly’s left. Discreetly she leaned across to study the place cards, her heart thumping just a little bit too fast as she read, ‘Mr Julian Cox, Miss Eve Frobisher, Mr Brough Frobisher.’ She had no idea just how Dee had managed to get them seated next to Julian, nor did she wish to be enlightened. Dee was turning out to be a master tactician, an expert in the art of gamesmanship and subterfuge.

‘Kelly, you’re on our table! What a coincidence!’ Julian was exclaiming with very evident pleasure as he walked up.

Demurely Kelly said nothing, instead simply smiling at him from beneath down-swept lashes.

Half an hour later, when they had all been served with their main courses, Kelly acknowledged that Julian was even less likeable than she had previously guessed. Ignoring his girlfriend to flirt with her, he had progressed from blatantly sexually motivated compliments to the kind of sensual innuendo which Kelly found teethgrittingly unwelcome.

Her conscience overcoming her sense of duty, she leaned across the table to ask Eve gently how long she had been living in the town and if she liked it.

‘It’s very pretty,’ was her slightly hesitant response, and Kelly didn’t miss the way she looked first at her brother before replying to her, as though seeking either his support or his approval.

Kelly felt distinctly sorry for her. She was no match for a man of Julian’s unwholesome calibre, that much was more than evident to her, and Kelly hadn’t missed the way she had bitten her lip once or twice when Julian’s compliments to herself had pointedly underlined just how sexually attractive he found her.

‘What do you do?’ Kelly asked her, trying to draw her out a little, but it seemed she had asked the wrong question because immediately the younger woman flushed and looked helplessly at her brother before replying.

‘Oh, nothing … I’m afraid my art degree isn’t … doesn’t …’

Her voice trailed away and Julian cut in boastfully, ‘Eve doesn’t need to work, do you, my sweet? She has her own income … a trust fund …’

As he spoke he reached for her hand and squeezed it, lifting it to his lips to kiss her fingers in what Kelly considered to be an excessively exaggerated and insincere manner, but to judge from the pretty pink blush that coloured Eve’s pale skin she didn’t seem to find anything wrong with his manner towards her.

What would she say, Kelly wondered grimly, if she knew that whilst he was kissing her fingers his other hand was resting meaningfully on Kelly’s chiffon-clad knee, and she had in fact just had to edge determinedly away from him to stop him from rubbing his leg potentially even more intimately against hers?

He really was totally repulsive, Kelly acknowledged with repugnance as she started to turn towards Harry, stopping when unexpectedly Brough Frobisher entered the conversation, telling her coolly, ‘As a matter of fact, Eve works for me. What about you? What do you do?’

Before Kelly could answer him, the Master of Ceremonies called on them for silence whilst their host made a speech.

Gratefully Kelly got to her feet, glad to have the opportunity to shake off Julian’s wandering hand. Her dislike of him was growing by the minute—and not just on her own behalf. The minute Julian had mentioned Eve’s trust fund Kelly had immediately been aware from his avaricious expression just where the other girl’s attraction for him lay. Poor thing, like Beth before her she was obviously too unworldly and naive to see through him, but surely her brother must be able to recognise just what Julian was like.

Although he had listened in silence to Julian’s conversation throughout the meal, more of an observer than a participator, Kelly had been keenly aware of the intensity of his silent scrutiny of them all. Was she being over-sensitive in thinking that he had been particularly watchful where she was concerned? At one point, just before the Master of Ceremonies had provided his welcome diversion, Kelly had actually felt as though Brough Frobisher’s gaze was somehow burning a laser-like beam right through the table to where Julian’s hand was resting on her leg. Not that she had wanted it to be there. She gave a small shudder. He repulsed her now even more than he had done before.

‘I can’t encourage him. I don’t like him. He’s loathsome,’ she had protested despairingly to Dee last night.

‘All you have to do is let him think that you’re interested in him,’ Dee had soothed her. ‘All we need is for him to show himself in his true colours so that we can …’

‘So that we can what?’ Kelly had pounced, but Dee had simply given her a mysterious smile.

The speeches were almost over; the Master of Ceremonies had announced that there would be dancing in the ballroom. Hopefully then she would be able to escape Julian’s unwelcome attentions, since he would be duty-bound to dance with Eve.

‘Your lipstick’s all gone and your hair needs brushing,’ she heard Julian saying critically to Eve as the speaker sat down.

‘I’m afraid Eve doesn’t really have much idea about how to dress properly. She isn’t into designer clothes. I dare say you didn’t have much change out of a thousand pounds when you bought yours?’ he questioned, and Kelly knew from the look in his eyes that the news of her supposed inheritance had already reached him via that mysterious ‘grapevine’ Dee seemed to know so much about. As he spoke Julian’s glance slid from Kelly’s eyes to her mouth, and he murmured in a much lower voice, ‘Mind you, one has to admit the poor darling doesn’t exactly have the right kind of raw material … unlike you … Has anyone ever told you that you have the most amazingly sexy eyes … and mouth …?’

Kelly had to fight to suppress the dark tide of colour threatening to betray her feelings. It wasn’t embarrassment that was driving the hot blood up under her skin, but anger. How dared he behave so insultingly towards his girlfriend? No wonder she was looking so unhappy. But that was no reason for her brother to give her, Kelly, such a contemptuously angry look. She wasn’t the one who was responsible for Eve’s humiliation.

‘I was just going to go to the Ladies to tidy up myself,’ she fibbed, smiling warmly at Eve. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

‘Oh, yes …’

Smiling with relief, Eve got up to accompany her.

‘Have you known Julian long?’ she asked Kelly shyly as they stood side by side in the elegantly decorated cloakroom, studying their reflections in the mirrors in front of them.

‘Mmm … quite a while,’ Kelly responded.

‘He’s a very special person, isn’t he?’ Eve enthused, her eyes shining with emotion, her expression betraying just how deeply involved with him she was.

Kelly’s tender heart ached for her, and she only just managed to resist the impulse to tell her exactly what she thought of Julian Cox and why. Instead she asked, ‘What about you? Have you known him long?’

‘Er, no … not really … That is …’ She paused and then said in a breathless rush, ‘He’s asked me to marry him. Everything’s happened so quickly between us that I still can’t quite … It’s quite a frightening feeling when you fall in love, isn’t it?’ she asked Kelly with a small, poignant smile. ‘This is the first time that I … Brough thinks it’s too soon … Julian gets quite cross with me sometimes because he thinks I rely too much on Brough, but he’s taken care of me ever since our parents died and …

‘I haven’t met many of Julian’s friends yet,’ she confided, changing the subject slightly. ‘Julian says that he wants to keep me … us … to himself for a little while …’ She smiled and blushed. ‘He’s so very romantic and loving.’

Oh, yes, Kelly wanted to agree sarcastically. So very romantic and loving that he broke my best friend’s heart, just the same way he is probably going to break yours. But caution made her hold her tongue.

How much did Eve know about Julian’s relationship with Beth?

Along with the revulsion and dislike Julian had aroused within her was a growing sense of anger and an unexpected surge of desire to protect Eve from suffering the same fate as Beth. Perhaps she herself was a rather stronger and more determined character than she had previously realised, Kelly acknowledged. With every word that Eve spoke she could feel an increasing awareness of how right Dee was to want to have Julian exposed in his true colours, and an increasing desire to help achieve that goal, even if it meant putting herself in an unpleasant, but thankfully temporary, position. Much as it went against the grain with her to subtly encourage Julian’s amorous advances, much as she disliked the role she was being called upon to play, there was a real purpose to it.

Checking her own freshly applied lipstick, she gave Eve a warm smile.

‘Don’t let Julian bully you,’ she advised her.

The younger girl’s face went scarlet.

‘Oh, he doesn’t. He isn’t … It’s just that he’s used to women who are so very much more glamorous than me and of course he wants … expects …’

‘If he loves you then he must love you just the way you are,’ Kelly pointed out, but she could see from Eve’s expression that she did not want to hear what Kelly was trying to say.

Perhaps when she saw exactly what kind of man Julian really was she’d realise just how unworthy of her love he was. Kelly certainly hoped so.

Brough frowned thoughtfully as he watched his sister and Kelly weaving their way back through the crowd to their table. Kelly puzzled him and, yes, if he was honest, intrigued him as well.

Having watched the way she behaved towards Julian, subtly encouraging his advances, it would be easy to assume that she was an extremely sophisticated and worldly young woman who was used to using her undeniable feminine sensuality and attractiveness to get whatever she wanted from life—whoever she wanted from life, regardless of whether or not the man in question was attached to someone else. But Brough had also observed the way she behaved towards her escort, Harry, and to his own sister, and there was no denying that with them she displayed a warmth, a consideration, an awareness and respect for their feelings that couldn’t possibly be anything other than genuine.

One woman, two diametrically opposite types of behaviour. Which of them revealed the real Kelly, and why should it be so important to him to find out? Not, surely, just because the man she was making a play for was the same man her sister claimed to be in love with? After all, there was nothing he wanted more than for something, someone, to make his sister see just how unworthy of her Julian Cox actually was.

Discreetly he studied Kelly. Her dress was expensive, and fitted her as though it had been made for her, but something, some experienced male instinct, told him that she was not quite so comfortable and at home in it as she wanted others to believe. Every now and again she gave a betraying glance down at herself, rather in the manner of a little girl uncertain of the wisdom of wearing her mother’s borrowed clothes. As Julian had so admiringly pointed out, she was immaculately groomed, but personally Brough would have rather liked to see her dressed casually in jeans, her skin free of make-up, her wonderful hair soft and tousled and her even more wonderful eyes and mouth …

His eyebrows snapped grimly together as he recognised the direction his thoughts were taking. It was a long time since a woman had attracted him as powerfully or as immediately as Kelly—or as dangerously. On two counts. If she was the type of woman she was portraying to attract Julian Cox’s attention, then she was most decidedly not his type. And if she wasn’t … if that unexpected and alluringly enticing chink of vulnerability and uncertainty he had so briefly glimpsed beneath the sophisticated image she was trying to portray was the real Kelly … then that would make it even more imperative that he didn’t involve himself in any way with her. His life was already complicated enough as it was, with Eve. One day he would marry, settle down, with a nice, calm, sensible girl—a woman who did not pretend to be something she wasn’t.

Of course, there was one way he could probably find out just what sort of woman Kelly really was. The way a woman responded, reacted, to a man’s first kiss could say an awful lot about just what kind of person she was, Brough mused.

His frown deepened. What on earth was he thinking? There was no way he could justify that kind of behaviour—or those kinds of thoughts.

His last serious relationship had been when he was in his very early twenties. He had thought himself in love—had thought that she loved him. They had met at university and then she had taken a year out to travel while Brough had stayed at home to be near Eve. When they had met up again both of them had been forced to acknowledge that whatever they’d had had gone.

Since then he had dated … there had been women … but by the time he had reached thirty he had decided that he must be the kind of man in whom logic and responsibility always won out over passion and impetuosity. And so he was … wasn’t he?

‘I want to dance with you.’ Kelly’s heart sank as she saw from the loaded, explicitly sexual way that Julian was regarding her as he spoke to her just how successful Dee’s plan had been. There was no doubt just what was on Julian’s mind, even without the heavy, lingering glance he gave her breasts.

He was being too obvious, too potentially hurtful to Eve and insulting towards her, Kelly decided as she shook her head and reminded him, ‘You haven’t danced with Eve yet …’

‘I don’t want to dance with her; I want to dance with you,’ Julian insisted as he reached out to raise her from her seat.

Unhappily Kelly fought her conscience. This was too much, and inexcusable. Just how much wine had Julian had to drink? she wondered uneasily, wishing that Harry hadn’t chosen just that moment to disappear.

‘Kelly has already promised this dance to me.’

The interruption from Brough Frobisher was just as unexpected as his coolly uttered, authoritative fib.

Without allowing Julian the opportunity either to protest or argue, Brough came over to her, holding out his hand. Shakily Kelly stood up. She didn’t particularly want to dance with him, but dancing with him was infinitely preferable to having to dance with Julian.

Good manners suggested that she ought to thank Brough Frobisher for rescuing her, but to do so would surely be to step out of the role Dee had cast for her and, perhaps even worse, to give him the opportunity to point out that she herself had been actively encouraging Julian to believe that she was interested in him.

‘Your sister is very sweet,’ she commented awkwardly as Brough led her onto the floor.

‘Sweet?’ His dark eyebrows lifted as he gave her an appraising look. ‘An excess of sweetness can be unpleasantly cloying. I don’t consider her to be sweet, rather a little too naive and vulnerable. How long have you known Cox?’

His abrupt question caught her off guard.

‘Er … a while … He … we’re old friends,’ she stammered, boldly remembering her role.

‘Old friends,’ he repeated, stressing the word as he looked hard at her. ‘I see.’

Kelly hoped devoutly that he did no such thing.

As they reached the dance floor he touched her lightly on the arm, turning her expertly towards him. The band was playing a slow, intimate dance number, and immediately she felt his arm go round her Kelly tensed.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to dancing in close proximity to a man, it was just that somehow it was unnerving with this man—

‘Enlighten me,’ he was saying to her. ‘What exactly is it about Cox that quite patently makes him so attractive to your sex?’

Kelly glanced warily up at him. He was immaculately dressed and she could just catch the scent of the very masculine cologne he was wearing, she noted approvingly. Julian’s apparent addiction to very strong and no doubt trendy aftershave was not to her personal taste at all. But despite Brough’s elegant grooming she suspected that without the shave he must have had before coming out this evening his very thick and very dark hair must mean that most evenings his jaw must be shadowed and slightly rough to the touch, adding a delicious extra frisson of sensuality to being kissed by him, especially if you were a woman who, like her, possessed slightly sensitive skin.

Appalled by the direction of her own unruly thoughts, Kelly realised that she had still not answered his question.

‘Er … Julian likes women,’ she told him lamely.

Immediately his eyebrows rose.

‘He certainly does,’ he agreed silkily. ‘Doesn’t that bother you? In my experience, most women prize loyalty and exclusivity in a relationship …’

‘Julian is simply a friend,’ Kelly reminded him sharply.

‘A very intimate friend?’ Brough pressed.

He was digging too deep, questioning her too closely, Kelly recognised, and in order to answer him she was either going to have to commit herself to more lies or risk betraying the fiction she was creating.

‘It’s hot in here,’ she complained, pulling free of him. ‘I need some fresh air.’

It wasn’t entirely untrue; she was hot and the terrace she could see beyond the ballroom’s open French windows did offer a much needed escape from the cause of that heat—which was not so much the air in the ballroom as the presence of the man beside her and her own feelings of trepidation and guilt.

As she headed for the terrace, it didn’t occur to Kelly that he would follow her. She could guess from the way he had been questioning her just what he thought of her, and she knew that in refusing to answer him she had equally plainly confirmed those suspicions.

It was a relief to reach the cool shadows of the terrace, and, avoiding the other couples strolling its length, Kelly turned instead to descend the flight of stone steps that led into the garden.

She was almost at the bottom when a sharp stone underfoot caused her to stumble, but instead of experiencing the ignominy of falling to her knees on the gravel pathway she was scooped up in a pair of hard male arms and she heard Brough’s voice against her ear telling her calmly, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got you …’

He certainly had, and it seemed he had no intention of letting her go, either. Against her body she could feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat as he helped her to her feet but still continued to hold onto her. Disconcertingly her own heart suddenly started to race, and she discovered that she was finding it hard to breathe.

‘Did you twist your ankle? Can you put your weight on it?’

‘My ankle …’ Dizzily Kelly looked up into his eyes, and then at his mouth, and then foolishly she did exactly the same thing again. The effect on her nervous system was like a shock wave of mega-force, a subterranean uprising of such intensity that it blew every fuse on her internal alarm system—and then some.

Unwisely she licked her inexplicably dry lips. What had he said about her ankle? What ankle? Helplessly her gaze clung to his. Surely no man should have such ridiculously long lashes, such darkly intense eyes. She felt as though … as though …

‘Kelly. Kelly …’

‘Yes,’ she whispered in tacit acknowledgement of what she knew was going to happen.

A kiss was simply a kiss … wasn’t it? How could she be so foolish, so unaware … so naive as to think that? This was certainly no mere kiss, this meeting, caressing of her mouth by and with his. But even as she tried to analyse what was happening, to hold onto some protective shred of sanity, the thread holding her, it snapped beneath the weight of what she was feeling. Blissfully she gave herself up to sensation—to the smooth, rough, hot, sweet feel of his mouth against hers, to the swift ascent from careful, hesitant exploration to the dizzying heights of a complete and passionate explosion of need she could feel shaking her body.

‘Kelly!’ As he whispered her name Brough’s hand reached out to touch her face, to stroke tenderly along her jaw, to support her head as his tongue-tip parted her sensuously swollen lips.

‘Brough!’

Was that really her whispering his name in a sigh that was all soft yearning and longing, exposing dangerously the tender, vulnerable heart of herself which she normally kept so carefully guarded?

Unable to stop herself, Kelly reached out and touched his jaw with her fingertips. His skin felt cool and strong. Hard, masculine. Shivering in pleasure, she stood still beneath his kiss. His arms tightened around her almost as though he wanted to guard and protect her.

Shyly Kelly opened her eyes, unable to resist the temptation to look at him whilst he was caressing her mouth with the most unbelievably erotic brush of his lips against hers, but to her shock his own eyes were open and he was looking right back at her.

The sensation of looking so deeply into his eyes whilst he kissed her felt like the most intimate experience she had ever had. Her earlier shivers had become deep tremors of intense emotion, and when he stopped kissing her and raised his mouth from hers to look searchingly at her Kelly made a small sound of distress, her fingertips touching his lips in a gesture of silent longing.

This time it was his turn to shudder, racked by a surge of male desire so strong and so open that Kelly felt her own body start to respond to it—to it and to him.

This time, when they kissed, she couldn’t remain passive beneath his mouth, but returned each caress, mirroring every touch, every sound as they kissed and broke apart, only to kiss again.

‘Kelly, are you out there?’

The sound of Harry’s worried voice from the terrace above them brought Kelly back to reality. Hot-faced, she stepped back from Brough, not sure whether to be pleased or insulted that he had released her immediately.

His own face was turned away from her as he looked up towards the terrace, and so she couldn’t see his expression nor guess what he was thinking until he said coldly to her, ‘You’re a very popular woman. First Julian and now Harry—but you’ll forgive me, I know, if I decline to join the queue; enticing though what you have to offer undoubtedly is, I’m afraid my tastes run to a woman less practised and more genuine …’

Before Kelly could answer him he had gone, plunging past her into the darkness of the garden.

Shakily she turned towards the steps.

‘Thank goodness I’ve found you,’ Harry told her as he saw her. ‘Dee would have had my guts for garters if I’d let anything happen to you. I’m under strict instructions to take care of you …’ He started to frown, and then told her a little uncomfortably, ‘It’s none of my business, I know, and Dee’s not told me what’s going on, but Cox isn’t a man I’d want any sister of mine to get involved with, and …’

‘You’re right,’ Kelly agreed in gentle warning. ‘It isn’t any of your business, Harry.’

When they returned to their table they were just in time to see Brough leaving; giving Harry and Kelly a curt nod, he ignored Eve’s protests that it was too early for him to leave.

‘I’ve got a meeting at nine in the morning,’ Kelly heard him telling his sister.

‘Oh, but you haven’t forgotten that you promised to talk with Julian? He has something special to ask you, and there’s his new venture, too,’ Eve reminded her brother anxiously.

Immediately Kelly’s ears pricked up. If Julian was looking for someone to finance a new business venture then Dee would certainly want to know about it. But as though he had somehow sensed her curiosity Brough touched his sister lightly on the arm and told her, ‘I’m sure that Harry and Kelly aren’t interested in our private family affairs. Cox …’ He nodded briefly in Julian’s direction before telling him, ‘I’ll arrange for a taxi to collect Eve—if I were you I’d leave your car behind and organise one for yourself.’

Was she imagining it or had he actually emphasised the word ‘private’, underlining its significance by giving her a cool, distancing look as he did so?

Whatever the case, Kelly could feel her face starting to burn slightly.

There was no point in her trying to deceive herself. From his demeanour towards his sister, she suspected that he was normally a man who regarded her sex with respect and genuine appreciation, even if at times he did allow his natural male instinct to protect anyone whom he might consider to be vulnerable to surface through his otherwise very politically correct manners. But where she was concerned he had displayed the kind of behaviour that was very far from treating her with respect. That kiss they had exchanged, which for her had been an act of heart-shakingly emotional and physical sensual significance, a complete one-off in her life and totally different from anything she had done or experienced before, had for him simply been an endorsement of the fact that her deliberately flirtatious behaviour with Julian meant that she was open to all manner of unpleasant male behaviour.

The kiss, which had seemed so deeply meaningful and intimate to her, had quite obviously for him merely been a reinforcement of his contempt for her, an emotionally barren male reaction to what he must have seen as some kind of casual, careless open invitation from her.

This kind of situation was so alien to her that Kelly had no knowledge of how to deal with it, and her instinctive desire to confront him and challenge his attitude towards her was further complicated and hampered by the role she was having to play.

Anyway, she decided firmly half an hour later as Harry was driving her home, why was she bothering wasting so much time worrying about what Brough Frobisher may or may not think about her? Why indeed! Julian, though, certainly seemed to have taken the bait, as Dee had planned he would. Kelly gave a small shudder of disgust—the heel.

She grimaced a little, remembering the open interest Julian had shown in the pearl earrings and solitaire ring she had been wearing—an inspired addition to her outfit on her own part; unlike her couture gown and earrings, the ring was anything but genuine, but Julian had certainly been taken in by it—just as his unworldly naive victims had been taken in by him. Dee was right—it was time someone turned the tables on him—but, much as she wanted to help her friend, Kelly had to admit to wishing there might be some other way she could do so.

‘You, Kelly are suddenly going to become an extremely rich young woman,’ Dee had told her. ‘All you have to do is let him believe that you’re prepared to commit yourself and, more importantly, your future to him. His own ego and his greed will do the rest.’

Kelly hoped that she was right, because there was certainly no way she was going to be able to give Julian any physical, sexual confirmation of her supposed desire for him. No way at all!

CHAPTER FOUR

KELLY looked up as she heard the shop doorbell go. She was expecting Dee. They had spoken on the phone earlier when Dee had announced that she intended to come round to collect the ballgown accessories which had, in fact, been hired from an exclusive dress shop and to discuss what had happened at the ball.

Kelly had had a pleasingly busy morning with several customers. She hoped that Beth was going to be able to source a supplier of high-quality glass in the Czech Republic as this morning alone she had promised three potentially interested customers that they were hopefully going to be able to provide them with the sets of stemware they wanted.

‘Something different … something pretty … something not too expensive …’ had been the heartfelt pleas of their potential customers. Fingers crossed that if Beth’s quest was successful they would be able to meet all three requirements.

‘Right,’ Dee commanded briskly as she walked up to the counter. ‘How did the ball go? Tell me everything …’

‘Julian was there with his new girlfriend,’ Kelly began, pausing before she added quietly, ‘I felt so sorry for her, Dee. She’s plainly very much in love with him and so young and naive … I hate the thought of doing anything that might hurt her …’

‘She’ll be hurt much, much more if Julian succeeds in persuading her to marry him, which he’s going to go all out to do. His finances are in a complete mess and getting worse by the day. He’s desperately in need of money. She’s quite wealthy in her own right and then, when you add on the financial benefits which could accrue to him through her brother … But from what Harry has told me Julian was making a very definite play for you …’

‘Yes, he was,’ Kelly agreed, tracing an abstract design with the tip of her finger on the polished glass counter before saying hesitantly, ‘Dee, I’m not sure if I can go on with what we planned. I don’t like Julian, and, whilst I like even less what he’s done to Beth and what he’s doing to Eve Frobisher, I …’

‘Would it help if I gave you my solemn promise that on no account and on no occasion would I ever allow a situation to arise where you would have to be on your own with him?’ Dee asked her.

Kelly stared at her. How on earth had Dee guessed what was troubling her?

‘You’re quite right,’ Dee told her, answering the question Kelly still had to ask. ‘I wouldn’t want to be on my own with him either, especially if I thought that there was any risk that he might guess what we’re up to … Harry is quite aggrieved with me, you know,’ she added with a chuckle. ‘He not only feels that as your friend and landlady I ought to put you wise to Julian’s real character, he also shares your concern on behalf of Eve Frobisher.

‘In fact,’ she told Kelly ruefully, ‘I’m afraid he’s rather taken me to task over the whole thing.’

‘Does he now know what we’re doing, then?’ Kelly asked her in some surprise. Instinctively she had felt that Dee was a woman who exercised her own judgement, made her own decisions and played her cards very close to her chest.

‘Not entirely,’ Dee admitted, confirming Kelly’s private thoughts. ‘Harry is a sweetie, as solid and dependable as they come. He wouldn’t recognise a lie if he met one walking down the street; subterfuge and everything that goes with it is very much alien territory to him, which does have its advantages, of course. He’s wonderful potential husband and father material …’ She cocked a thoughtful eye at Kelly. ‘He’s comfortably off, and I know for a fact that his mother is dying for him to settle down and produce children. If you were interested …’

‘He’s a honey,’ Kelly told her hastily, ‘but not, I’m afraid, my type.’

Nor, she suspected, was she his, but she rather thought she knew someone who might be. She hadn’t missed the anxious and protective looks Harry had been giving Eve over dinner the previous night.

‘Mmm … Pity … Look, I’ve got to dash,’ Dee told her. ‘When Julian rings you—which he will—I want to know about it …’

‘Dee,’ Kelly said, but it was too late; the other woman was already heading for the door, ignoring her half-panicky protests.

What was Dee saying? Julian wouldn’t ring her. He wouldn’t dare. Flirting with her last night was one thing, but …

In her heart of hearts Kelly knew that despite her desire to do the right thing by Beth and the rest of her sex she was secretly reluctant to have anything more to do with Julian. Not because she feared him. She didn’t. No. Contempt, dislike, anger … those were the emotions he aroused within her.

Admit it, she told herself sternly ten minutes later as she locked the shop and disappeared into the small back room to have her lunch, ‘you just hate the thought of anyone thinking you could possibly be attracted to him. Anyone … or a specific someone … a very specific someone.

Pushing aside her half-eaten sandwich, Kelly started to frown. Don’t start that again, she warned herself. He’s not much better than Julian … Look at the way he treated you. Kissing you like that.

Kissing her … Abruptly she sat down, her insides starting to melt and then ache.

Watch it, she warned herself, deriding herself fiercely. It isn’t just your insides he’s turning to mush, it’s your brain as well.

Her frown deepened as she heard someone ringing the shop doorbell. Couldn’t they read? They were closed. The ringing persisted. Irritably Kelly got up. There was no way she could finish her lunch with that row going on.

Opening the communicating door, she marched into the shop and then stopped abruptly as she saw Brough Frobisher standing on the other side of the plate-glass window.

Her hand went to her throat in an instinctive gesture of shock as she breathed in disbelief, ‘You.’

Shakily she went to unlock the shop door. Brough was frowning as he stepped inside.

‘I’m looking for Kay Harris,’ he told her abruptly. The sense of shock that hit her was so strong that for a moment Kelly was unable to reply.

‘She does work here, doesn’t she?’ Brough was demanding curtly, looking at her, Kelly realised, as though he doubted her ability to answer him competently.

‘Yes. Yes, she does … I do … It’s Kelly, not Kay,’ Kelly corrected him shakily. ‘K is just my initial.’

‘You!’

Sensing his reluctance to believe her, Kelly drew herself up to her full height and told him in her most businesslike voice, ‘My partner and I run this shop.’

‘You paint china?’ His disbelief was palpable and insulting.

Kelly could feel her temper starting to ignite. There were many things she was not, and she had her fair share of human faults and frailties, but there was one thing that she was sure of and that was that she was extremely good at her chosen work—and that wasn’t merely her own opinion.

‘Yes, I do. Perhaps you’d like to see my credentials?’ she suggested bitingly.

‘I thought I just did—last night.’ The long, slow, arrogantly male look he gave her made her face burn and her temper heat to simmering point.

‘What is it exactly that you want?’ she demanded angrily, adding before she could stop herself, ‘If it’s simply because you’re some sort of weirdo who gets off on insulting women, I should have thought your behaviour towards me last night would have more than satisfied you.’

Kelly knew that she had overstepped the mark. She could hardly believe what she had just heard herself say, but it was too late to withdraw her remarks. Retaliation couldn’t be long in coming, she recognised, and she was right.

‘If you’re referring to the fact that I kissed you …’ he began silkily, and then paused whilst he looked straight into her eyes. ‘Allow me to say that you have a rather … unusual … way of expressing your … displeasure …’

He didn’t say anything more—he didn’t need to, Kelly acknowledged; the expression in his eyes and the tone of his voice along with the masterly understatement of his silky words was more than enough to leave her covered in confusion and angry, self-inflicted humiliation.

‘I … You … It was a mistake,’ was all she could think of to say.

‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed dulcetly. ‘It certainly was. Now, I’m afraid that I am rather short of time. I have a commission I would like to discuss with you.’

Kelly blinked. All that and he still wanted to talk business with her.

Her thoughts must have shown in her face because he explained gently, ‘You’re my last resort. You have, or so I am told, a very particular and rare skill. It will soon be my grandmother’s eightieth birthday. She has a Rockingham-style teaset, a much cherished family heirloom, but some pieces are missing, broken many years ago. The set has no particular material value; its value to her is in the fact that it was a wedding gift from her grandparents. I have managed to find out that Hartwell China bought out the original manufacturers many, many years ago and, whilst they still produce china in the same shape, they no longer produce the same pattern.

‘To have one of their own artists copy such an intricate floral design would, they say, prove far too costly—the work would have to be done by one of the top workers, which would mean taking him or her off work they already have in hand. They recommended that I got in touch with you. Apparently there is no one else they would allow, never mind recommend, to do such work.’

‘I … I worked for them whilst I was at university,’ Kelly explained huskily. ‘That was when I discovered that I had some talent for … for china-painting. I would have to see the design … It wouldn’t be easy … or cheap …’ she warned him.

Against her will she had been touched by the story he had told her, but she knew, even if he didn’t, just how intricate and time-consuming the kind of work he was describing could be.

‘I’ve managed to cadge one of the tea plates from Nan, and Hartwell have very kindly said that I can use their archive records.’

‘Do you have the plate with you?’ Kelly asked him.

He shook his head, unexpectedly looking oddly boyish as he admitted, ‘I’m terrified of breaking it. I’ve got it at home. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to call there to see it.’

Kelly wanted to refuse, but her professional pride and curiosity proved too strong for her.

‘I could,’ she agreed cautiously, ‘but it would have to be when the shop is closed. My partner, Beth, is away at the moment.’

‘Could you manage this evening?’

‘I …’

‘I don’t have very much time left. Nan’s birthday isn’t very far away,’ he told her.

Kelly sighed. There was no reason why she shouldn’t look at the plate this evening.

‘I suppose so,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘Where do you live? I—’ She broke off as the phone began to ring, automatically going to answer it, saying, ‘Excuse me a moment …’ as she picked up the receiver.

‘Hi, Kelly, it’s Julian. How are you, you delicious, hot, sexy thing …?’

Kelly almost dropped the receiver as Julian’s loud voice seemed to fill the shop. Her face burning with embarrassment, she turned her back on Brough even though she knew that he could well have heard what Julian had said.

‘Julian. I … I’m busy …’ she protested. ‘I …’

‘I understand, babe. What you and I have to say to one another needs to be said in private, right?’ Julian responded. ‘God, but you turned me on last night, doll … I can’t wait for us to get together …’

‘Julian.’ Kelly closed her eyes, as revolted by Julian’s conversation as she was by his person. ‘Julian, please—’ she began. But he wouldn’t let her finish, interrupting her to say thickly, ‘I’ll ring you later at the flat. I’ve still got the number …’

He had hung up before Kelly could object or protest, leaving her pink cheeked both with anger and chagrin—anger because of Julian’s assumption that she, or any other woman for that matter, would be willing to see him when he was supposedly already involved with someone else, and chagrin because Brough could have overheard some of the conversation.

It was to be expected, of course, that he wouldn’t let the matter go without comment, especially when the girl whom Julian was supposed to be on the point of becoming engaged to was his own sister.

‘I appreciate that custom has it that there’s supposedly safety in numbers, but don’t you think you could be interpreting its validity just a little too generously?’ he asked her smoothly.

‘Julian is an old friend,’ Kelly reminded him.

The look he gave her could have stopped Linford Christie in his tracks, Kelly felt sure.

‘Really? Then I feel extremely sorry for you, not only in your unfortunate choice of friends but your misplaced and, no doubt, regularly abused loyalty.’

‘Julian is dating your sister,’ Kelly felt compelled to remind him defensively.

He had turned to walk towards the door, but now, abruptly, he stopped and turned back to Kelly, and said quietly but with grim force, ‘Yes, he is, isn’t he?’ And then, almost without pausing, he added coolly, ‘Shall we say eight tonight? This is the address …’

Kelly was still looking bemusedly at the business card he had placed down on the counter as he closed the shop door behind him.

Why on earth hadn’t she said something, objected to his high-handed assumption that she would not merely be free this evening but that, additionally, she would fall in with his plans, agree to his request, especially in view of the way he had spoken to her?

Reluctantly she picked up the card. Kelly had a vague idea where the house was since it was on the same road as a customer who had ordered a special commission from her.

Ten minutes before she was due to re-open the shop, the phone rang again. This time the caller was Beth, ringing from Prague.

‘Hi … How are things going?’ Kelly asked her eagerly.

‘Not too bad, in fact really quite promisingly. I’ve been given several contact numbers, and I’m due to drive out of the city tomorrow to visit a crystal factory.’

‘And you’re managing okay, despite the language barrier?’ Kelly asked her. This had been one of Beth’s main concerns about her trip and Kelly was anxious to know how her friend was coping.

‘Oh, I’ve got an interpreter,’ Beth told her.

Kelly frowned. The offhand tone of Beth’s voice was both unfamiliar and slightly worrying.

‘And she’s helping you, visiting factories with you …?’

‘She is a he,’ Beth told her shortly. ‘And as for helping me …’ There was a small pause. ‘Honestly, Kelly, men. I’m totally off all of them. Just because a person has a fancy degree and a whole string of letters after his name, that does not give him the right to try to tell me what to do. And as for trying to force me to visit factories that he’s chosen, with tales of theft and gypsies—’

‘Beth.’ Kelly interrupted her in bewilderment. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.’

‘Oh, it’s all right, I’m just letting off steam. It’s Alex, the interpreter. He’s half-English, as it turns out, and his grandparents left Prague for political asylum in the west when his mother was a child. Alex returned after the revolution to search for his family and he’s stayed on here.’

‘Sounds like he’s been confiding rather a lot of personal history to you for someone you don’t get on with,’ Kelly told her wryly.

‘Oh, he tells me what he wants me to know. He’s insisting that I visit a glass factory run by his cousins, but I’m not inclined to go. He obviously has a vested interest in anything I might buy. I’ve managed to track down somewhere that produces this most wonderful design I’ve seen, and he’s acting all high and mighty and trying to tell me that it’s all a con and that the stallholder saw me coming a mile off. He says there isn’t any factory where they’ve told me to go and the glass I wanted to buy couldn’t have been genuine. He says it’s a well-known ploy to get hold of foreign currency that is often worked against naive people like me …

‘Oh, but Kelly, you should have seen this glass. It was wonderful, pure Venetian baroque, you know the kind of thing, and it would lend itself beautifully to being gilded for the Christmas market. I even thought that if the price was reasonable enough we could commission some special sets, hand-painted and gilded for special celebrations—weddings, anniversarie’s … you know the kind of thing …’

Kelly laughed as she listened to her friend’s excited enthusiasm. It was wonderful to hear that note back in Beth’s voice again, and even more wonderful that she hadn’t even asked once about Julian Cox.

‘Anyway,’ Beth was continuing determinedly, ‘somehow I’m going out to this factory by myself. I’m planning to give my guide, and for that you can read jailer, the slip. It’s obvious what he’s up to,’ she told Kelly scornfully. ‘He just wants to secure our business for his cousins. He claims that their factory could probably reproduce the glass if they had a copy of it …’

‘Mmm … Well, if that’s the case, it might be worthwhile sketching the glass and seeing if they can reproduce it.’

‘Never,’ Beth asserted fiercely. ‘There’s no way I’m going to have Alex dictating to me … No. I’ve seen the glass I want and I know where to get it, and I’m determined to get an exclusive supply of it and at the right price. After all, if we did commission Alex’s cousins, what’s to stop them selling our design elsewhere, putting up the price to us because they know we want it? Look, I must go; Alex is picking me up in half an hour. He’s insisting on making me walk over the Charles Bridge, and since it’s raining today he says it should be relatively free of other tourists.’

‘Sounds fun,’ Kelly teased her, smiling as she said goodbye and hung up. The others would be so pleased to hear that Beth seemed to be getting over Julian Cox.

CHAPTER FIVE

AS HE let himself into the hallway of their rented house and blinked at the teeth-jarring hard yellow paint of the room, Brough reflected that he would be glad when they could finally move into the large Georgian farmhouse he had bought several miles outside the town and which was presently undergoing some much needed renovation work. It had been empty for three years before Brough had managed to persuade the trustees of the estate of the late owner that there was no way anyone was ever going to pay the exorbitant price they were asking for it.

‘If they don’t sell it soon, they’ll be lucky to have anything there worth selling,’ he had told the agent crisply. ‘It’s already been empty and unheated for three winters, and if the government gives the go-ahead for the new bypass the area will be swarming with protestors just looking for an empty house to take over and make themselves comfortable in.’

Buying the house, though, had simply been the beginning of a whole spate of difficult negotiations. The property was listed, and every detail of his planning applications had to be scanned by what had felt like a never-ending chain of committees, but now at last the approved builder had started work on the property, and, with any luck, he should be able to move into it within the year, the builder had assured him cheerfully on his last site inspection.

For now, he would have to live with the last owner of his present house’s headache-inducing choice of colours.

‘Brough, is that you?’

He grimaced wryly as Eve came rushing into the hallway, her face pink with excitement as she told him breathlessly, ‘Guess what? Julian rang; he’s going to be free this evening after all, so he’s taking me out to dinner. Oh, Brough, I was so afraid he was going to be angry with me when you insisted that you couldn’t help him with his new venture.’

As he listened to her Brough could feel himself starting to grind his teeth. There was no point in wishing that his sister had a more worldly and less naive outlook, nor in blaming his grandmother and the old-fashioned girls’ school she had insisted he send her to for the part they had played in her upbringing. He might just as well blame their parents for dying—and himself for not being able to take on the full responsibility for bringing her up without his grandmother’s help.

He knew how upset his grandmother would be if she knew how ill-prepared the select, protective girls’ school she had chosen so carefully for her had left Eve for the modern world, and some day in the not too distant future Brough was afraid that his sister was going to have her eyes opened to reality in a way that was going to hurt her very badly.

As he’d thought a number of times before, there was no point in him trying to warn Eve about Julian Cox. She had a surprisingly strong, stubborn streak to her make-up, and was very sensitive about both her own independence and her judgement. To imply that Julian was deceiving her, that she was totally and completely wrong about him in every single way, was almost guaranteed to send her running into his arms, and not away from them, which would have been bad enough if what she stood to lose from such an event was her emotional and physical innocence—more than bad enough. But Eve stood to inherit a very sizeable sum of money from their parents’ estate when she reached her twenty-fifth birthday, and Brough was convinced that Julian Cox would have no compunction whatsoever about marrying her simply for that reason alone.

Brough had had Julian’s financial affairs thoroughly investigated. To describe them as in total disarray and bordering on the legally fraudulent was no exaggeration, nor was his emotional history any less murky. But, of course, Eve wouldn’t hear a word against him. She considered herself to be in love.

‘Oh, I’m so pleased. He was awfully upset this morning after you told him you really couldn’t help him … That was mean of you,’ she reproached Brough.

‘On the contrary, it was simply good business sense,’ Brough told her dryly. ‘I know how you feel about him, Eve but …’

‘Oh, Brough, please don’t start lecturing me,’ she begged him. ‘Just because you don’t want to fall in love … because you don’t have someone to share your life with … someone special … that doesn’t mean … I love him, Brough,’ she said simply.

Brough sighed as she went upstairs. He wished he could find some way to protect her from the ultimate inevitability of having her heart broken, but he suspected that even if he were to confront her with incontrovertible evidence of Cox’s real nature she would simply close her eyes to it.

Women! There was no way of understanding how their minds and, even more, their emotions worked. Look at Kelly. A bright, intelligent, beautiful young woman who was apparently as oblivious to Cox’s faults as his own sister. Not that he thought that Kelly’s other choice of male was any better—but for very different reasons. Harry was quite obviously an extremely estimable young man, the kind of man whom he would have been only too pleased to see dating his sister, but, as a partner for a woman of Kelly’s obviously feisty and quicksilver personality, surely a totally wrong choice. She needed a man who could match the quickness of her brain … who could appreciate the intelligence and artistry of her work … who could share the passion that he could sense ran so strongly through her at the very deepest level of her personality … A man who …

Abruptly he caught himself up.

Nothing he had experienced in his admittedly brief contact with Kelly had indicated that she had the kind of insecure, needy personality that would make her a natural victim for a man like Cox.

Eve, on the other hand, if he was honest, desperately needed to feel loved and secure, to have a partner who would incorporate into their adult relationship the kind of protective, emotional padding she had missed from the loss of their father and experienced in a different way at school. Eve needed a man who would treat her gently, a man with whom she could have the kind of relationship which he privately would find too unequal. The woman he loved would have to be his equal, his true partner in every aspect of their lives. There would have to be complete and total honesty and commitment between them, a deep, inner knowledge that they would be there for one another through their whole lives—he too had suffered from their parents’ death, he acknowledged wryly.

And Eve was wrong about him not wanting to fall in love … to marry. At the end of his present decade lay the watershed birthday of forty, comfortably in the distance as yet, but still there on the horizon. When he thought of himself as forty, it was not particularly pleasant to visualise himself still alone, uncommitted … childless … But the woman he married, the woman he loved …

Unbidden, the memory of how Kelly’s lips had felt beneath his flooded his body, sharply reminding him that if a male’s sexual responses were at their fastest and peak in his teens, then they could still react with a pretty forceful and demanding potent speed in his thirties—disconcertingly so.

The dichotomy he had sensed within Kelly at the ball which had so intrigued him had turned to a more personal sense of irritation this afternoon. Did she really think he was so lacking in intelligence … in awareness … that he couldn’t see how alien to her personality her relationship with Julian was? What the hell was it about the man that led a woman like her to …? It was almost as though he held some kind of compulsive attraction for her or had some kind of hold over her.

In another age it might almost have been said that he had cast some kind of spell over her—as she was beginning to do over him?

Kelly paused in the act of picking up her keys. In the close confines of the flat’s small entrance hall she could smell the scent of her own perfume. Defensively she told herself that wearing it was simply second nature to her and meant nothing, had no dark, deep, psychological significance, that the fact that she was wearing it to, and for, a meeting with Brough Frobisher meant absolutely nothing at all.

She wasn’t a woman who was overly fond of striking make-up, nor strictly styled hair, but she did like the femininity of wearing her own special signature scent, even if normally she wore it in conjunction with jeans and a casual top.

Tonight, though, those jeans had been exchanged for a well-cut trouser suit—not for any other reason than the fact that wearing it automatically made her feel more businesslike. And that was, after all, exactly what this evening’s meeting was all about—business. And as for that small spurt of sweet, sharp excitement she could feel dancing over her vulnerable nerve-endings, well, that was nothing more than the arousal of her professional curiosity.

Hartwell china always evoked special memories for her. It had been the Hartwell china she had seen on a visit to a stately home as a girl which had first awoken her interest in the design and manufacture of porcelain, and it had been the Hartwell factory where she had first had her actual hands-on experience of working on the physical aspect of copying the designer’s artistry onto the china itself. And so it was only natural that she should feel this surge of excitement at the thought of seeing a piece which sounded as though it was extremely rare.

It didn’t take her very long to drive to the address Brough had given her. Rye-on-Averton was only a relatively small and compact town, virtually untouched by any effects of the Industrial Revolution and still surrounded by the farmland which had surrounded it way, way back in the Middle Ages.

Parking her own car and getting out, Kelly carefully skirted the expensive gleaming Mercedes saloon car parked in the drive and climbed the three steps which led to the front door. Brough opened it for her virtually as soon as she rang the bell.

Unlike her, he was unexpectedly casually dressed in jeans and a soft cotton checked shirt.

The jeans, Kelly noticed as she responded to his nonverbal invitation to come into the house, somehow or other emphasised the lean length of his legs and the powerful strength of his thigh muscles.

As a part of her studies at university she had, for a term, attended a series of lectures and drawing classes on the human body, and whilst there had been required to sketch nudes, both male and female, but that experience was still no protection against either the images which inexplicably filled her thoughts or the guilty burn of colour which accompanied them.

What on earth was she doing, mentally envisaging Brough posing, modelling for a classical Greek statue? That kind of behaviour, those kinds of thoughts, simply were not her.

‘It’s this way,’ Brough informed her, the cool, clipped sound of his voice breaking into the dangerous heat of her thoughts as he indicated one of the doorways off the hall.

The yellow paint in which the hallway was decorated made Kelly do a slight double-take, a fact which Brough obviously noticed because he commented dryly, ‘Bilious, isn’t it? Unfortunately its shock effect doesn’t lessen with time.’

‘You could always redecorate,’ Kelly pointed out austerely, refusing to allow herself to feel any sympathy with him, even in the unfortunate colour of his walls.

‘Not really. This house is only rented. I’m only living here until the one I’ve bought has been renovated.’

‘Oh, so you’ve moved into the area permanently, then?’

Kelly berated herself furiously as the question slipped out, her curiosity getting the better of her, but to her relief Brough made totally the wrong connection between her question and its motivation as he responded even more dryly, ‘Yes, we have, so I’m afraid you can’t look to our removal from town as an easy way of removing my sister from your lover’s life.’

‘It isn’t necessary for me to do any such thing,’ Kelly denied furiously through gritted teeth, momentarily forgetting her allotted role.

‘Eve believes he intends to marry her. How do you feel about that?’ he challenged her.

‘How do you feel about it?’ Kelly sidetracked.

‘He’s a liar and a cheat and most probably guilty of financial fraud as well,’ Brough told her bitingly. ‘How the hell do you think I feel about it?’

‘She’s your sister.’

‘Strange,’ he continued softly, ‘you don’t look particularly surprised—or shocked. Perhaps you like the idea of having a married lover, especially one whose wife is both extremely rich and extremely in love.’

‘No. That’s not …’

Immediately she realised what she was saying, Kelly stopped.

‘That’s not what?’ Brough goaded her. ‘Not what you want? He’s your lover …’

‘And Eve is your sister,’ Kelly pointed out again quickly. ‘My relationship with Julian is no one’s business other than our own. If you dislike him so much, disapprove of him so much, why haven’t you told Eve so?’

‘She’s too much in love to listen to me or to anyone else. What is it you see in him? What possible attraction can he have for any woman when he …?’

‘Why don’t you ask Eve?’ Kelly suggested.

Ridiculously, dangerously, she was actually starting to feel sorry for him. It was plain how worried he was about his sister, and with good reason, and it was equally plain that he felt helpless to do anything to alter the situation. Even so, she couldn’t resist punishing him just a little, both for what he thought about her and what he had said … and done …

‘It’s obviously hard for a man to see just what it is about Julian that appeals to our sex. Perhaps you feel jealous of him.’

‘Jealous …? Look, just because last night I kissed you, that doesn’t mean—’

‘I mean jealous because Eve loves him,’ Kelly interrupted him shakily.

‘You wanted me to look at this plate,’ she reminded him, anxious to return their conversation to a much more businesslike footing.

‘Yes. It’s in here,’ he told her, ushering her into a large, high-ceilinged room which was painted a particularly unpleasant shade of dull green.

‘Hideous, isn’t it?’ he agreed, correctly interpreting her thoughts. ‘The owner must be colour blind—or worse. You should see the bedrooms; the one I’m occupying is painted a particularly repulsive shade of puce.’

‘Puce …? I don’t believe you,’ Kelly protested. ‘No one would paint a bedroom that colour.’

‘If you want to see for yourself I’ll show you afterwards …’ Brough started to say, and then stopped to study Kelly’s bright pink face with interest.

‘Now there’s an interesting conundrum,’ he mused sardonically. ‘Why should a woman who openly admits that she is sleeping with another woman’s boyfriend blush at the mere mention of a completely altruistic visit to another man’s bedroom? It was my bedroom I was suggesting you view,’ he added gently, ‘not my bed …’

‘I was not blushing,’ Kelly protested. ‘It’s just … it’s just … it’s very warm in here …’

‘Is it?’ Brough asked, adding, ‘Then what, may I ask, are these?’

Before she could stop him he was running a hard fingertip down the full length of her bare arm, right over the rash of goose bumps which had lifted beneath her skin when they’d entered the room’s unheated atmosphere. And what made it worse was that the brief and totally sexless stroke of his finger had made the goose bumps even more prominent—and not just her goose bumps, she acknowledged, mortified by the unwanted discovery that her nipples were inexplicably pressing very hard, tightly aroused, against the constraining fabric of her bra.

Instinctively she turned away from him, lifting her arm in what she hoped was a natural and subtle gesture which he wouldn’t guess was designed to conceal the evidence of her body’s extraordinary behaviour from him.

He had seen it, though, seen it and been both disgusted and angered by it, she recognised, if the look she could see in his eyes was anything to go by.

My God, but she had got it badly if even the mere fact of talking about Cox could arouse her body like that, Brough fumed as Kelly turned her flushed face and aroused breasts out of his eye-line.

It had been bad enough when he had simply wanted to protect and rescue his sister from the man, but now …

‘The plate’s over here,’ he told Kelly curtly.

Silently she followed him, keeping her distance from him as he unlocked the small corner cupboard and removed the plate, but as he walked over to her and she saw it she couldn’t resist giving a small cry of pleasure, closing the distance between them so that she could take the plate from him and study it more closely.

‘Oh, it’s beautiful,’ she enthused as she traced the design lovingly with her fingertip. ‘Almost Sèvres in style and execution …’

‘Yes, that’s what they said at the factory. They suspect that the whole set might have been a showpiece set made by a particularly gifted apprentice. Apparently, when they finished their time in apprenticeship the artists were often given the opportunity to do something to act as a showcase for their skills.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Kelly agreed absently, barely able to take her glance off the plate. ‘Oh, it’s lovely—so detailed and intricate.’

She stopped and shook her head.

‘What’s wrong? Don’t you think you can copy it?’ Brough asked her.

Kelly paused.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It’s very complex, and the gold leaf work alone would be so expensive in materials … I … Can’t Hartwell recommend anyone else to do it for you, someone more experienced?’

Brough gave her a level look.

‘According to them there isn’t anyone more experienced,’ he told her quietly.

To her annoyance Kelly knew that she was blushing again.

‘I … I … It’s very kind of them to say so, but …’

‘They also told me that you turned down a very lucrative and secure contract with them to go into business by yourself.’

‘I … I like being my own boss,’ Kelly told him quietly.

‘Even though it doesn’t pay you anything like as well as working for them would have done …?’

‘Money isn’t that important to me,’ Kelly admitted after a small pause. There followed a very stiff, very pregnant silence during which Kelly recognised that she had said something wrong, but was not sure what.

‘I suppose you don’t agree with that kind of outlook at all,’ she challenged him when the silence had made her skin start to prickle. ‘I expect you feel that when a person doesn’t exploit their … talents to the best possible financial advantage, then—’

‘On the contrary,’ Brough interrupted her firmly. ‘I feel extremely sorry for anyone who feels obliged to accept a way of life, a means of living, that doesn’t make them happy.’

‘But you can’t believe that earning money isn’t of prime importance to me,’ Kelly insisted.

‘What I can’t believe is that a woman holding the views you’ve just expressed would in any way consider a man like Julian Cox to be a good partner for her,’ Brough corrected her.

‘I … I didn’t come here to discuss my relationship with Julian,’ Kelly told him tautly, handing the plate back to him as she did so, giving it a last lingering look of regret. There was nothing she would have loved more than to copy the design and replace the missing pieces of the teaset, especially under the circumstances Brough had outlined to her. But she couldn’t do anything that would bring her into closer contact with him. There was too much risk involved in far too many different ways.

But before she could vocalise her decision, Brough himself was speaking, telling her coolly, ‘We don’t have much time left before my grandmother’s birthday, so I’ve arranged for us to visit the factory on Wednesday. They told me when I was there that you’d need to collect the unpainted china from them and get supplies of paint.’

‘Wednesday? But it’s Monday today; I can’t possibly …’ Kelly began.

But he was already overruling her, telling her, ‘I know what you’re going to say and I’ve asked Eve if she will stand in at the shop for you for the day. She’s agreed. And before you say anything you needn’t worry—she did a stint at Harvey Nicks during her last year at school.’

‘Harvey Nicks?’ Kelly exploded, adding pointedly, ‘This isn’t Knightsbridge …’

‘No, it isn’t,’ he agreed. ‘We’ll need to get a pretty early start, so if I pick you up at, say, eight I can drop Eve off at the same time.’

‘Just a minute,’ Kelly objected. ‘I haven’t agreed that I’m going—’

‘What’s wrong? Are you afraid that Cox might object to you spending the day with me?’

‘This has nothing to do with Julian,’ Kelly told him angrily.

‘Good. So I’ll pick you up at eight on Wednesday, then,’ Brough repeated cordially as he walked over to the door and held it open for her.

There was no way she was going to be able to make him understand that she wasn’t going to Staffordshire with him, Kelly recognised, irritably marching straight past him and heading for the front door, where he caught up with her and commented dulcetly, ‘I take it you’ve decided to accept my word about the colour of my bedroom walls …’

Kelly shot him a fulminating look. ‘The colour of your bedroom walls, be they puce, chartreuse or vermilion, is totally and absolutely of no interest to me,’ she told him.

‘Vermilion,’ Brough mused. ‘The colour of passion. Interesting that you should suggest it …’

‘Suggest it? I did no such thing.’ Kelly seethed. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded as, instead of opening the front door, he very gently and totally unexpectedly placed his hands on her upper arms and turned her round.

‘I’m going to make you a cup of cocoa before you go home,’ he told her, adding suavely, ‘It warms the blood and soothes the passions. The Aztecs used to believe it had aphrodisiac powers, as did the Regency bucks. There’s no point in you rushing back. Julian is out with Eve.’

‘What’s that got to do with me? I’ve got a deskful of paperwork needing attention, and anyway, I loathe cocoa,’ she told him pettishly.

‘A glass of wine perhaps, then,’ he suggested.

Kelly started to shake her head, and then for some reason found that she was nodding it slowly instead.

‘This way,’ he told her, directing her further down the hallway and into another room, which was a cross between an office and a study, comfortably furnished with a couple of deep armchairs and a huge desk which dominated the space in front of the window.

‘For Christmas the year before last, Eve rented for me a row of vines in France. The idea is that you get the wine from your own vines and you can, if you wish, take part in some of the preparation of the wine. Surprisingly, it’s rather good …’

‘So you’ll what?’ Kelly asked him. ‘Buy the vineyard?’

An unexpected smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

‘Not this particular one,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s certainly an idea. I wouldn’t have an objection to a life of viticulture and semi-retirement … Tuscany, perhaps, close to one of those unbelievably visually breathtaking medieval towns …’

‘It sounds idyllic,’ Kelly responded enviously, without thinking, and then bit her lip, telling him curtly, ‘Look, I really can’t stay. Paperwork isn’t really my strong suit and …’

‘I understand,’ Brough accepted. His face was in the shadows but there was no mistaking the stiffness in his voice. Quite patently he was angry with her again, Kelly decided, suppressing a soft sigh. So why should she care either what he thought or what he felt? This time, as she headed for the front door, he made no attempt to persuade her to stay, simply opening it for her and formally thanking her for her time.

As he watched her until she was safely inside the car, Brough wondered what on earth had possessed him to reveal that long-held dream of his to her. What possible interest could it be to her, and, more disturbingly, why should he want it to be?

She was an enigma, a puzzle of unfathomable proportions, and he was a fool for even beginning to think what he was thinking about her.

As he went upstairs and switched on the light in his puce-walled bedroom, his glance rested on the neat white line of his bed. He had been lying when he had told her that it was his bedroom he had been inviting her to see and not his bed. Already, with remarkably little effort at all, he could picture her lying there in it, tucked securely beneath its protective sheets as they outlined the warm curves of her body, holding out an invitation which she mirrored as she held out her arms to welcome him.

Eve hadn’t had a good night. She and Julian had had an argument, a small altercation which had blown up out of virtually nothing, simply her innocent comment that Kelly was a very attractive and vivacious woman and that she and Julian were obviously very good friends. But Julian had reacted as though she had accused him of some crime, exploding into a rage so intense that he had actually frightened her.

Shocked and in tears, she had run from his flat, ignoring his demands to her to come back as she’d fired the engine of her car, and here she was now, her car parked in the town centre as she walked unhappily along the riverbank, desperately trying to avoid looking at the entwined pairs of lovers enjoying a romantic stroll along the river path.

‘Eve … Eve …’

Instinctively, she stopped as she heard the male voice calling her name, her breath catching in her throat as she recognised Harry hurrying towards her.

‘I saw you as I walked over the bridge,’ Harry told her with a warm beam as he indicated the bridge she had just passed, his smile fading as he saw her miserable expression. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Eve fibbed, but his concern, his sympathy and most of all his sturdy male warmth and reassurance were too much for her already shaky composure, and as she spoke she gave a small hiccuping sob and a tear ran betrayingly down her face.

‘It’s Cox, isn’t it?’ Harry guessed, revealing an intuition which would have surprised his relatives, who considered him to be good hearted enough but a trifle lacking in anything requiring mental agility and speed.

‘We’ve had a row,’ Eve admitted, immediately adding protectively, ‘It was my fault. I … I mentioned Kelly and that made him angry … I shouldn’t have brought up the subject. Of course he’s entitled to his past and to …’

She stopped as Harry gave a fierce snort of disapproval.

‘Of course you’re upset,’ he comforted her. ‘You’ve every right to be, especially after the way …’

‘He was flirting a little with Kelly at the ball,’ Eve agreed, guessing what he was going to say. ‘But I know that they’re old friends and Julian is such an attractive man …’

Harry gave another snort.

‘Oh, I know that you probably don’t like him. After all, Kelly is your girlfriend.’

‘No, she isn’t,’ Harry told her promptly. ‘I don’t have a girlfriend … haven’t ever really wanted one until … I escorted Kelly because my cousin asked me to …’

‘Oh, I see. So you aren’t actually going out with Kelly, then?’ Eve asked him ingenuously.

Harry shook his head. ‘Nice girl but not my type,’ he told her.

Inexplicably, as they walked, Eve discovered that she had moved so close to Harry that when they had to pass another couple it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to shield her protectively by placing his arm around her.

It was very pleasant to be treated as though she was so fragile, so vulnerable and valuable, Eve acknowledged. It made her feel very safe and very protected … It made her feel happy. Nothing like as happy as she was with Julian, of course, she decided loyally as Harry gently drew her into the protection of a small grove of trees just off the river path.

‘Now look,’ he told her firmly, ‘you mustn’t let Cox upset you. He’s damn lucky to have a lovely girl like you … damn lucky …’

‘Oh, Harry, I’m the one who’s lucky,’ Eve corrected him. ‘I’m just plain and ordinary, but Julian …’

‘You’re no such thing’ Harry contradicted her immediately. ‘You’re beautiful, Eve,’ he told her huskily as he looked at her mouth. ‘Thought so the moment I saw you …’

An odd quiver of sensation ran right through her body as she recognised the way Harry was looking at her mouth. She might be naive, as she was constantly being told, but she wasn’t that naive. She was woman enough to know when a man wanted her all right … and when one didn’t.

Julian hadn’t wanted her tonight. He had pushed her away when she had tried to snuggle into his arms.

‘Harry,’ she whispered huskily.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Eve,’ he groaned, adding gruffly, ‘I want to kiss you so damn much … In fact, I’m going to kiss you,’ he announced boldly.

Going into Harry’s arms was like going home, Eve decided blissfully, all warm and cosy and safe. Happily she turned her face up to his and waited.

She didn’t have to wait very long.

His kiss was everything she had known it would be—gentle, reverential, asking, not taking; and it was something more as well, something entirely unexpected and exciting, she recognised as the tiny quivers darting through her body began to grow and gather strength.

‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ Harry told her harshly as he suddenly pushed her away. ‘In fact …’

Without saying anything more he turned his back on her and started to walk very quickly away from her.

Feeling as though she had been completely abandoned, Eve stared after him. Why had he left her like that? Had he lied to her about not being involved with Kelly? She knew instinctively that Julian had done so when he had told her that Kelly meant absolutely nothing to him. She wasn’t completely blind. She had seen the way Julian had been watching Kelly at the ball, but she loved Julian so much … far too much to give him up … Far, far too much to enjoy kissing another man … Hot-cheeked, she pressed her hands to her face. What on earth had she been doing? And why?

It was no wonder, really, that Julian had been so out of sorts and cross, she decided compassionately as she made her way back to her car. It had been a big disappointment for him, poor darling, when Brough had refused to finance his new venture.

She had tried to tell him tonight that she had absolutely no influence at all over Brough’s decision, and then he had started to ask her about her own inheritance and she had had to tell him that she couldn’t touch a penny of it until she was twenty-five.

‘That’s four years away,’ he had exploded irritably. ‘What happens if we get married and you need some money to buy a house?’

If they got married …

‘I don’t know,’ she had confessed, adding brightly, ‘Maybe the bank would lend me some money against it … I’d have to check with Brough …’

‘No! No, don’t do that,’ Julian had told her hastily.

‘Yes, because when we get married I shall move in here with you, won’t I?’ she had agreed, blissfully trying to snuggle up against him.

‘Yeah …’ he had said so unenthusiastically that she had started to frown.

It was then that she had made her first mistake, asking him uncertainly, ‘You do want to marry me, don’t you, Julian? Only I couldn’t help noticing at the ball that you seemed awfully interested in Kelly …’

‘Kelly’s an old friend,’ he had told her angrily. ‘Not that it’s any business of yours …’

Poor darling, of course he was irritable and on edge with all the money worries he was having. It really was too bad of Brough to refuse to help him. Eve’s brow creased. She knew, of course, that her brother didn’t really like or approve of Julian, but he didn’t know him the way she did.

CHAPTER SIX

‘HI, KELLY, it’s Dee.’

Kelly smiled as she recognised their landlady’s voice. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and Kelly had just served her third customer and put on the kettle to make herself a cup of coffee.

‘Anything to report?’ Dee asked her. ‘Has Julian been in touch?’

‘He rang yesterday,’ Kelly told her, ‘but I couldn’t really talk to him; I had someone here in the shop. You know that Julian is hoping to persuade his girlfriend’s brother to finance some new venture he’s getting started?’

‘Was hoping,’ Dee corrected her wryly. ‘Brough has turned him down.’

How did Dee know that? Kelly wondered curiously.

‘Look, we could do with having a meeting,’ Dee told her. ‘How about lunch tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow? No, I’m afraid I can’t,’ Kelly told her. ‘I’m going to Staffordshire.’

‘Staffordshire?’ Dee queried sharply. ‘On a buying trip? But I thought …’

‘No, not that. Actually I’m going with Brough; he’s asked me to undertake a private commission for him.’

‘And you’ve agreed?’ Dee asked her. ‘Be very careful, Kelly. Don’t forget his sister is dating Julian and hopes to marry him and he’s bound to be extremely suspicious of your role in Julian’s life. You haven’t told him the truth, have you?’ Dee demanded.

‘No, of course I haven’t,’ Kelly reassured her immediately.

‘Well, you mustn’t. It would ruin everything.’

‘I’m not a complete fool, you know, Dee,’ Kelly informed her a little irritably. She liked Dee, but sometimes her autocratic attitude irritated her a bit. She wasn’t like Beth, who accepted Dee’s slight bossiness with placid gentleness even whilst she accepted that the older girl’s heart was in the right place and her motives good.

‘No, not a complete fool,’ Dee agreed dryly, ‘but certainly foolish enough to agree to go to Staffordshire with Brough. I understand he’s a very attractive man,’ she added slyly.

‘Not so far as I’m concerned,’ Kelly responded immediately, ‘but the china he wants me to copy certainly is and, not only that, it’s extremely rare and may even be unique. It’s a wonderful opportunity, Dee,’ she added, warming to her theme, her enthusiasm for the project colouring her voice. ‘An almost once-in-a-lifetime chance to work on something very different and very special.

‘Oh, Beth rang, by the way,’ Kelly informed Dee. ‘She’s having problems with her interpreter, apparently, but she never said a word about Julian, thank goodness.’

‘That is good news,’ Dee agreed.

‘I do feel worried for Eve Frobisher,’ Kelly told her.

‘You must concentrate on the business in hand,’ Dee advised her. ‘Eve Frobisher has her brother to protect her interests. Has he said anything about Julian to you, by the way?’

‘He’s certainly made it plain that he doesn’t approve of my relationship with him,’ Kelly informed her.

‘Mmm … You know, I’ve been thinking … It could work to our advantage if you let him think that he might be able to persuade you to have second thoughts about Julian. Men love that—feeling that they’re taking charge, doling out advice to some poor, helpless little female. It feeds their egos, and it wouldn’t do any harm to get Brough Frobisher on our side.’

‘He isn’t going to fall for any ‘‘helpless little me’ act from me, Dee,’ Kelly informed her.

‘You don’t know until you try it,’ Dee told her persuasively. ‘There’s no saying what helpful information we could pick up about Julian’s business affairs via him if he—’

‘I don’t know, because there’s no way I am going to try it.’ Kelly cut across her comment swiftly. ‘Tricking Julian into believing I find him attractive is one thing, lying to Brough is quite another …’

‘It is? Why?’ Dee asked her interestedly.

‘Because I don’t like lying to anyone,’ Kelly told her sharply. ‘The only reason I’ve agreed to deceive Julian is because of what he did to Beth and to stop him from doing it to anyone else. Persuading Brough to believe that I’m some kind of helpless little creature who needs protecting and rescuing from her own emotions, who can’t take responsibility for her own life or her own actions, is just so gross that there’s no way I would even contemplate it. Besides, he wouldn’t believe me. He’d see through what I was trying to do immediately.’

‘He knows you that well after spending … how long … a few hours or so with you, does he?’ Dee mused. ‘Amazing …’

‘He believes that I’m intent on trying to take Julian away from his sister. Let’s just leave it at that whilst we’re ahead of the game, shall we?’ Kelly told her curtly, ignoring her gentle jibe.

‘Okay,’ Dee soothed her, adding, ‘Look, I need to have a word with Anna about her making contact with Julian to offer to lend him the money he needs for this new venture. Now that Brough has turned him down he’s going to be too urgently in need of financial backing to question Anna’s motivation too deeply, which suits us very nicely. Brough has unwittingly done us a very big favour in turning Julian down.’

‘I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear that,’ Kelly told her sotto voce.

‘Oh, by the way, Harry sends his best love,’ Dee told her teasingly. Kelly grimaced into the receiver.

‘He does?’ she questioned, unable to resist the temptation to tell Dee dryly, ‘That’s odd; he seemed far more interested in Eve at the ball than he was in me. Now there’s a match. The pair of them are so well suited they might have been made for one another.’

‘Eve loves Julian,’ Dee pointed out to her.

‘No, what she loves is the man she believes that Julian is,’ Kelly corrected her soberly. ‘Poor girl, he’s going to break her heart.’

‘Well, if you’re right, Harry will be more than willing to help her to mend it,’ Dee told her practically. ‘Remember, Kelly, you’ve got to convince Julian that you want him; that way when you drop him as publicly as he dropped Beth he’ll never even guess what’s going to happen until it does and …’

‘I’m not sure that he’ll leave Eve for me,’ Kelly warned her. ‘Eve believes that he’s going to marry her …’

‘So did Beth and look what happened to her,’ Dee pointed out. ‘He’s going to be furious when he finds out how we’ve tricked him, furious and totally and completely humiliated,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving man.’

‘You really hate him, don’t you?’ Kelly recognised.

‘Yes. I really hate him,’ Dee agreed, and she put the receiver down. Kelly thought she heard her saying, But nowhere near as much as I hate myself, but she couldn’t be sure, and anyway it was too late to question Dee any further since she had hung up.

Wednesday morning came round too soon. Kelly was awake early—too early, she decided as she watched the sun rise.

It still wasn’t too late to refuse to go to Staffordshire but what excuse could she realistically give?

Impossible to tell Brough the truth—that she was afraid of going with him, afraid of what she might say, of what he might guess … of what she might feel … But if she didn’t go …

Julian had rung her again last night. Reluctantly she had agreed to meet him for a drink at a local wine bar this evening.

‘Julian, you’re dating someone else,’ she had reminded him coldly, ‘and so am I …’

‘Harry,’ he had scoffed. ‘He’s no match, no man for a woman like you, Kelly.’

‘And I suppose that you are,’ she had taunted him, holding her breath at the recklessness of what she was doing.

‘Try me,’ he had told her, sniggering suggestively. ‘I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.’

Kelly had been glad that the telephone meant he couldn’t see the shudder of revulsion she gave.

‘You and I are two of a kind, Kelly,’ he had told her thickly. ‘We take what we want from life. We’re both adventurers, exciting … passionate … I knew that the first time I saw you. I knew then how good we’d be together …’

‘When you were dating Beth, you mean,’ Kelly had reminded him coldly.

‘Beth is history,’ he’d told her dismissively. ‘But you and I … you and I are now, Kelly …’

‘You and I are nothing,’ she had told him.

‘Tomorrow night,’ Julian had countered. ‘Be there, Kelly … You know you want me and I sure as hell want you …’

Want him? Completely revolted both by his conversation and his tone of voice, Kelly had replaced the receiver.

She could just imagine what Brough would have to say.

Brough.

Now why on earth was she thinking about him? she asked herself pointedly as her alarm started to ring. He was almost as bad as Julian Cox, although in a completely different way, of course. He had, after all, misjudged her just as badly.

Eve smiled tentatively at Kelly as Kelly opened the door to her and Brough and they stepped into the shop.

‘I’ll just run through a few things with you before we leave,’ Kelly told her reassuringly. ‘Wednesday isn’t normally a very busy day so you should be okay, but if you do have any problems—’

‘You’ve got my mobile number, haven’t you, Eve?’ Brough interrupted Kelly. ‘Any problems and you can get in touch with Kelly on that.’

‘Thank you, but I have my own mobile, Brough,’ Kelly told him frostily.

‘What I was going to say, Eve, is that I’ve left you the number of our landlady, Dee. She knows that you’ll be working here and she may very well call in to check if everything’s okay. She can be a bit daunting, but she’s really very kind … She’s Harry’s cousin,’ she added, and then stopped as Eve suddenly went bright red.

‘I … I saw him—Harry—the other day when I was walking along the river,’ Eve blurted out. ‘I … I don’t know if he mentioned it, but …’

‘No. No, he didn’t,’ Kelly told her, before adding gently, ‘But then, there’s really no reason why he should …’

‘No. No, of course not,’ Eve told her quickly. ‘I just meant … Well, I just thought …’

‘We really ought to leave,’ Brough informed Kelly, frowning slightly as he glanced at his watch. ‘The motorway is bound to be busy.’

‘I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing,’ Eve told Kelly admiringly. ‘I’d love to have that kind of talent,’ she added wistfully.

‘It’s more of a learned skill than a natural talent,’ Kelly told her wryly. ‘I was just lucky enough to be in the right place to learn it at the right time, and besides, I haven’t actually done anything yet.’

‘No, but Brough says …’ Eve stopped and glanced anxiously at her brother.

What had Brough said? Kelly wondered curiously ten minutes later as he opened the passenger door of his car for her and helped her inside.

She could always ask him, of course. Perhaps later on she would.

The Potteries where the factory was based wasn’t too far up the motorway, but Kelly was still feeling extremely apprehensive about the journey. What if Brough used it as an opportunity to take her to task about her relationship with Julian? If he did, then she would just have to remind him—again—that it was none of his business, she told herself firmly as she leaned back in her seat and very deliberately closed her eyes, hoping that he would correctly interpret this as a sign that she didn’t wish to talk.

Unfortunately, though, the subtleties of her body language appeared to be lost on him because almost immediately he asked her, ‘Tired? I’m sorry we had to have such an early start. We should be able to stop for a short break and a cup of coffee before too long, though.’

He made it sound as though he was taking his ancient maiden aunt out for a Sunday drive, Kelly decided wrathfully, immediately sitting bolt upright in her seat and denying fiercely, ‘No, I am not tired, and neither am I unable to travel a distance of less than a couple of hundred miles without the necessity of a comfort stop.’

She used the American phrase very deliberately and pointedly, underlining her comment by adding, ‘I’m twenty-four, not seventy-four …’

‘I, on the other hand, am thirty-four,’ he told her gently, ‘and I prefer to take life at a reasonably relaxed pace.’

Kelly gave him a surprised look. This was not the sort of comment she expected to hear from a man who had built up a business as successful as Brough’s was.

‘My parents died in their late thirties,’ he told her tersely. ‘They were killed in a plane crash. My father had been trying to get to Switzerland for an urgent business meeting and, being unable to get a scheduled flight in time, he’d hired a private plane. They got caught in a bad storm—and that was that.

‘Afterwards, I made a vow to myself, a promise that I’d never forget that there was far more to life than meetings, deadlines, and making money. I was nineteen when they were killed, just an adult. Eve was six.’

Only nineteen. Kelly swallowed hard on the large knot of compassion which had lodged in her throat.

‘What about you? Do you have any family?’ he asked her.

‘A brother who lives in South Africa with his wife and their three children. My father took early retirement and my parents normally spend the winter months in South Africa with Jamie and his family and summer at home in Scotland.’

‘You’re not from Rye-on-Averton? What brought you there?’

‘Beth, my partner. Her godmother lives in the town and she suggested to Beth that there was an excellent business opportunity for us there. She was quite right. The shop is beginning to pick up well, and I’ve had several commissions, but, best of all, the way we divide things between us leaves me enough time to work on my own designs and to accept freelance stuff as well.’

‘All in all, a good partnership.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Kelly agreed tersely. She didn’t want Brough to start asking her too many questions about Beth. She had no idea whether or not he knew that Julian had been on the point of getting engaged to Beth when Eve had come into his life, and she could well imagine just what kind of assumptions Brough would make.

Unnervingly, though, he seemed to follow the direction of her thoughts because he suddenly said, ‘You’ve said that Cox is an old friend of yours, but I get the impression from what you’ve just told me that your business hasn’t been established very long.’

‘Our accountant told us when we first started that it took three years to establish whether or not a business was going to succeed,’ Kelly responded cagily.

She hated having to behave like this, she admitted. According to her family, one of her faults was that she was, at times, almost painfully honest. Prevarication of any kind was anathema to her. So why on earth had she ever allowed Dee to persuade her to adopt a role which even one minute’s reflection would have told her was going to be so alien to her that it would be almost impossible to sustain? Because Dee had caught her at a weak and emotional moment, that was why.

Dee, as Kelly was fast coming to appreciate, possessed the dual gift of a very shrewd insight into people’s weak points plus an ability to turn them to her own advantage. Not that she could help liking the other woman. She was, intrinsically, a very nice person. Kelly was well aware of the fact that the rent they were being charged was far less than the going amount Dee could have asked for for such a prime site, and then there had been all those little extras she had thrown in. Her concern for them had been almost sisterly and protective in many ways, and Kelly knew that they would never have made the progress they had made without Dee’s help, both overt and covert. She had lost count, for instance, of the number of people who had come into the shop commenting that Dee had recommended it to them.

But that still didn’t absolve her from the fact that she had deliberately used a moment of weakness to persuade Kelly into a deceit which was becoming, hourly, more stressful to maintain.

Desperate to change the subject, she asked Brough, ‘Do you manage to see much of your grandmother?’

‘Not as much as I’d like,’ Brough admitted. ‘Either Eve or I try to get down to see her at least once a month. As it happens, we’re going down the weekend after next; if you’d care to come with us you’d be more than welcome. In fact, it might actually be a good idea; that way you could see the teaset in situ, so to speak.’

Go with them … on a family visit … to see his grandmother?

Kelly opened her mouth and then closed it again.

‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ she protested finally. ‘There’s …’

‘The shop; I know,’ Brough responded for her.

Had she imagined it or had that really been a note of almost cynical irony in his voice as he shot her a brief sideways glance?

It was impossible … Anna would always stand in for you … Hurriedly she closed her mind to the tempting little voice that was reminding her that Anna had made a point of telling her that she was more than willing to take charge of the shop during Beth’s absence should Kelly want some time off.

And Brough was right in saying that it would be helpful for her to see the whole of the teaset—when she would already have had the benefit of the archivist’s records.

No. No. It was completely impossible, and besides, Brough was quite obviously relieved that she hadn’t accepted his invitation, because he had made no attempt to press the matter or persuade her to re-think her decision.

‘The last time I drove up here I found a decent pub in a village just off the motorway at the next turn-off. Unlike you, I’m afraid I do need the odd ‘‘comfort stop’’,’ he informed her dryly as he swung the car over from the fast lane of the motorway.

Rural Warwickshire was a part of the country with which Kelly was relatively unfamiliar, and she couldn’t quite suppress a small gasp of pleasure as they left the motorway access roundabout and Brough took an exit onto a pretty country road. Farmland stretched to either side of them, and in the distance Kelly could see the gleam of water where a river made its way between tree-lined banks.

The village, which lay concealed just beyond the brow of the hill, was reached via a meandering road which wound down to a cluster of cottages, some of which were thatched, set around a tranquil duck pond.

‘Good heavens,’ Kelly marvelled as Brough drove in under an archway to the rear of a pub which could quite easily have featured in a film set for a Dickens novel. ‘Why on earth isn’t this place swamped with tourists? It’s almost too perfect …’

‘It’s an estate village,’ Brough explained. ‘Originally all the houses, like the land, were owned by the same family, but apparently when the last Earl died the new one, his grandson, decided to sell off the houses, but only to tenants who had family connections with the village.’

The pub was as quaint inside as it looked outside, and there was even a large marmalade cat sitting on an armchair in front of the empty fire.

The coffee room was cosy and prettily furnished, with windows overlooking a paved patio area filled with tubs of flowers.

When the coffee came, it arrived in a large cafetière with, Kelly noted with approval, a choice of both milk and cream—proper milk and proper cream in jugs, not fiddly little plastic containers—and there were even crisp, deliciously scented cinnamon biscuits to go with it.

As she poured herself a cup, Kelly couldn’t help but notice how pleasantly Brough spoke to the waitress who had brought in the coffee for them, his manner exactly right, and she was not surprised when the girl gave him a genuinely warm smile before she left.

Kelly had only eaten out with Julian once when, by accident, she had bumped into him and Beth at a local wine bar and he had insisted on her joining them. His attitude then towards the young boy serving them had made her cringe with embarrassment and anger, and she had been unable to look Beth in the eye as she’d wondered how on earth she managed to put up with Julian’s arrogant, overbearing attitude.

Kelly might be a thoroughly modern woman, but she still believed that there was a place and a need in her modern world for good manners from both sexes, and she couldn’t help feeling not just a warm sense of approval for Brough’s behaviour but, far more alarmingly, an additional feeling of pleasure and female pride at being with him and guessing that the waitress thought she was fortunate to be accompanied by him.

‘More coffee?’ Brough asked her ten minutes later when she had finished her first cup. Regretfully, Kelly shook her head. From the window she could see the river and the pathway that lay enticingly alongside it and, as though he had guessed what she was thinking, Brough commented, ‘I thought we could stop here on the way back, perhaps have a bite to eat and a walk round the village, if that appeals to you.’

What could Kelly say? After his earlier display of good manners, the last thing she wanted to do was to appear gauche and ill-mannered by refusing such a pleasantly phrased invitation. It surprised her a little to discover how much she was enjoying this unexpected state of harmony which had arisen between them. When he was not cross-questioning her about Julian Cox, Brough could be very relaxing to be with.

Relaxing …? Who on earth was she kidding? Kelly asked herself a little grimly five minutes later as she checked her appearance in the ladies’ cloakroom and reapplied her lipstick. If she was so relaxed then what, pray, were those goose feathers, those distinctive flutters of sensation she could feel giddying around inside her? Those sharp little darts of sensation, of reaction and warning, which kept zipping along her nervous system. If this was relaxed then she would hate to know how it felt to be really on edge in the presence of the man, she derided herself mockingly.

Admit it, she cautioned herself as she replaced the top on her lipstick, he’s one very sexy man! So what? She had met sexy men before.

Met them, yes, but reacted to them in the way she was reacting to Brough, no! This was crazy, she told herself sternly. She didn’t even like him. Look at how angry he had made her … Look at the things he had said to her … done to her … That kiss for instance …

Hastily Kelly looked away from the mirror and the sudden unexpected pout of her freshly lipsticked mouth.

‘Okay?’ Brough asked her when she rejoined him in the coffee room. The smile he gave her did uncomfortable things to her heart, causing it to somersault upwards, forwards and then backwards, leaving her breathless and slightly flushed.

‘Fine,’ she told him crisply, adding in a voice that was designed to show him that so far as she was concerned this was simply a business exercise and that the only thing on her mind was business, ‘How long will it take us to get there?’

‘Not much longer now,’ Brough answered her as they made their way back to the car.

Their destination was familiar to Kelly from the time she had worked there, and as the factory gates came in sight a small, slightly rueful half-tender smile curled her mouth as she reflected on the nervous excitement of the girl she had been when she had first walked through that entrance.

‘Nothing ever quite approximates the feeling of earning one’s first wage packet, does it?’ Brough asked her softly as they drove through the gates. ‘I can remember just exactly how it felt to hold my first paper-round money in my hand …’

As they shared a look of mutually amused laughter his expression suddenly changed, sobering and clouding slightly.

‘It concerns and grieves me that so many of our young people today will never experience the sense of self-esteem earning one’s own money brings. We’re in danger of creating a society of ‘‘haves’’ and ‘‘have nots’’, not merely in the material sense but in the sense of owning one’s self-respect and self-worth which, so far as I am concerned, is almost as basic a human need as our need for air to breathe and food to eat. Like love, a strong sense of self cannot be quantified, analysed or bought, but without it our lives are empty and unfulfilled.’

His thoughts, so in tune with her own, made Kelly shiver a little as his words touched a chord within her.

It left her feeling dizzy, disorientated, as though she had somehow strayed off her normal familiar terrain, the feeling both exhilarating and frightening. The thought of what might have been had things been different trembled through her mind. That kind of bond was so rare, so precious, so … so unthinkable and impossible, she warned herself as Brough parked the car and told her mundanely, ‘We’re here.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘YOU’RE very quiet. Not having second thoughts, I hope.’

They were on their way back to Rye-on-Averton, the original late-morning meeting with the archivist having turned into a full tour of the factory in addition to an inspection of its archive records, followed by an early dinner as the archivist, delighted to find a fellow enthusiast, had insisted on showing them both some examples of some of the company’s rarest pieces as well as advising Kelly on just how she might best mix and colour her paints to achieve an authentic antique tone.

‘Not second thoughts about wanting to do the work, just worrying about getting the paint right,’ Kelly told him ruefully.

‘Mmm … I must admit I hadn’t realised that modern paint colours wouldn’t be suitable,’ Brough acknowledged. ‘It’s certainly a fascinating and complex business.’

‘Yes,’ Kelly agreed. ‘I thought I knew most of what there was to know about the history of British porcelain, but listening to Frank today I realise just how wrong I was and how little I do know.’

‘Mmm … I could see how thrilled he was to be able to talk with you.’

‘Well, he certainly couldn’t have been more helpful. But, as he says, there really isn’t any substitute for seeing the rest of the teaset at first hand for ensuring that I get the colour matches right.’

‘It isn’t too late to change your mind about coming with us on our next visit,’ Brough said.

‘I … I’ll have to think about it …’ Kelly told him.

The evening was already turning to dusk. They had left Staffordshire just before eight o’clock. Frank Bowers had insisted on taking them out to dinner and Brough had taken her to one side after Frank had delivered his half-hesitant invitation, to say quietly to her, ‘If it doesn’t conflict with any other plans you may have made, I think we should accept. He’s plainly enjoyed the opportunity to talk about his work—and I know we did talk about stopping off at the Lion and Swan for a meal and a walk along the river on the way back, but I should hate to disappoint Frank …’

‘I agree,’ Kelly had responded instantly, and they’d both returned to where Frank was putting away the company records.

‘Yes, I understand you’ll need to think about the weekend visit,’ Brough was telling her cordially now as he swung the car out into the fast lane of the motorway. ‘I should hate to interfere with any private plans you might have.’

It was the emphasis on the word ‘private’ that made Kelly glance warily at him. Was he trying to insinuate that he suspected her of hesitating in accepting the invitation to visit his grandmother because she was either planning to see Julian Cox or hoping to see him? It seemed that, with their return to Rye-on-Averton imminent, the cessation of hostilities between them was over.

Very well, if that was the way he wanted things, she decided hardly, suppressing the unwanted quiver of disappointment that sharpened almost to an actual pang of pain.

‘I’m not sure just what you’re trying to suggest,’ she told him frostily, ‘but the main reason I can’t give you a yes or a no at this stage is because I need to find someone to take charge of the shop for me. You may be able to walk away from your business commitments for a whole weekend—I’m afraid that I can’t.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Brough returned equally formally and coolly. ‘Forgive me, but I had assumed that since this commission was business …’

Immediately hot colour burned a mortified flush up her throat and over her face.

‘I realise that,’ she retorted stiffly, and of course she did, even if very briefly earlier in the day she had momentarily forgotten.

But, in truth, hadn’t there been a few brief but oh, so telling occasions during the day when the sharp line that in the past had always divided her professional life from her personal one had become dangerously blurred—when she had looked at Brough, compelled to do so by something he had said, only to find that it was not the client she was seeing but the man?

And what a man!

Kelly groaned in dismay, lashed by a delicate shiver of sexual awareness. This wasn’t what she wanted, what she needed in her life right now.

Her reaction to Brough would have unnerved her even without the added complication of the situation with Julian Cox. When she added to that the already highly combustible mixture of anger and attraction she felt towards Brough, the dangerous extra ingredient of emotional awareness and longing she was confronted with became a potentially lethal cocktail which she knew could destroy her if she wasn’t careful. After all, put together all those ingredients and the result was as dangerous as some magical, mystical sorcerer’s potion, because the result was quite simply love. And Brough was the last person she could ever allow herself to love. He didn’t like her now, so what on earth was he going to feel about her when he discovered—as discover he surely must—that she was deliberately trying to take Julian away from his sister?

She could try telling him, of course, that her motives were truly altruistic, but somehow she doubted that he would believe her, that he would even want to believe her.

‘Tired?’

The unexpected concern in his voice brought a small, anguished lump to her throat. Unable to reply without betraying her emotion, she shook her head.

‘It’s been a long day,’ Brough told her, adding ruefully, ‘I must admit I had no idea of the complexity of the task I was asking you to take on when I first approached you.’

‘It will be a challenge,’ Kelly admitted, relieved to be back on a safer subject. ‘But I am looking forward to it. My biggest worry is that your grandmother is going to be disappointed. The teaset must mean so much to her … When Frank showed us those jugs this afternoon, which had been in the same family for six generations, and he told us how much each generation had to reinsure them at, it really brought it home to me that it isn’t the material value that means so much but the fact that they represent a part of a family no longer there in person, a piece of very personal history … memories …’

‘Yes,’ Brough agreed soberly. ‘I can see from the look in Nan’s eyes when she touches her teaset that it’s Gramps she’s thinking about.’

A little enviously Kelly wondered what it must be like to have experienced such love, and to still be able to warm oneself by its embers.

What was Brough’s grandmother like? What had his grandfather been like? Brough? Her heart gave a small, uneven thump. In thirty years from now Brough could be a grandfather himself. Her heart gave another, even more uneven thud, and then a series of short, frantic, accelerating mini-beats as she contemplated her own future. In thirty years from now how would she feel when she looked back on today? Would the sharp ache of newly discovered love for Brough she had recognised today have dulled to nothing more than a dim memory, or would she be looking back in sadness and regret for what had never been?

They were almost home now, the lights of the town shining in the valley ahead of them as Brough turned off the motorway. Kelly sat in silence beside him as he drove through the quiet streets towards the shop. Rye-on-Averton was a genteel town, its residents either middle-aged or retired in the main. Its wine bars and restaurants, though, were well patronised, as were the shows put on by the excellent local amateur dramatic and operatic societies.

‘I’ll come up with you,’ Kelly heard Brough saying as he parked his car outside the shop.

Immediately she shook her head, but Brough was already climbing out of the car.

‘It really isn’t necessary,’ she said as he opened her car door for her.

The flat had its own entrance, and she had already removed the keys in readiness from her bag and was holding them in her hand, but to her chagrin Brough quietly removed them from her grasp.

‘I know this is a relatively crime-free and safe area, but I’m afraid my grandmother’s influence means that I would feel I had failed in my male duty if I didn’t see you safely inside.’

So he was only acting out of duty. What had she imagined? she derided herself as she walked silently towards the rear entrance of the flat. That he was insisting on seeing her inside because he wanted to delay the moment when he parted from her for as long as he could? How utterly ridiculous. He probably couldn’t wait to see the back of her.

‘It’s this way,’ she told him unnecessarily, indicating the rear ground-floor door.

Stepping past her, Brough inserted the key in the lock and then opened the door for her.

‘Thank you …’ Kelly started to say as she stepped past him, but it seemed he still did not consider his duty to be fully done, because he shook his head and stepped into the small hallway with her, glancing towards the stairs as he did so.

‘Would you like me to come up with you and look around?’ he asked her politely.

Immediately, Kelly shook her head.

In the hallway on a small console table was one of the first pieces of china she had painted. She saw Brough looking at it.

‘One of your pieces?’ he asked her.

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘The inspiration for it came to me when I was on holiday in South Africa with my family.’

The piece, all greens and blues and surf-whites, always made her think of the magnificence of the Cape’s beaches. Such a dramatically beautiful country with such a horrifically cruel history. She touched the curving contours of the piece of china with gentle fingers. It held many happy memories—days when she had played with her brother’s children, running in and out of the surf with them, evenings when she had strolled along the beach with her parents and her brother and his wife. Very happy memories. She shuddered a little to imagine what they would think of her current involvement with Julian Cox.

‘Are you cold?’ Brough asked her, frowning slightly and taking a step towards her just as Kelly, too, stepped forward, away from the table.

Automatically, she put her hand out to prevent them bumping into one another as she shook her head in response to his question, but unwisely, as she did so, her gaze was drawn to his face and then his mouth.

The shape of it had been tantalising her all day—the sharp masculine cut of it, the sensual fullness of his lower lip, the dangerous and somehow illicit knowledge she had of just how it felt to have it moving on her own.

Now, just when she knew she needed to be at her coolest and most in control, her breathing had become erratic, her pulses racing, her pupils betraying the surge of feminine longing that was overpowering her.

Her brain begged her body to behave sensibly, her eyes to break contact, her breathing to slow down and become properly measured, but her senses had become flagrantly disobedient.

Very slowly Kelly lifted her gaze from Brough’s mouth to his eyes. It was like gazing into deep waters, so cool that they made her body tremble as though she had touched ice, and yet so hot that her bones felt as though they were going to melt. Every sense she possessed, every centimetre of flesh covering her body, suddenly seemed to have become a thousand times more sensitive than normal, a thousand times more receptive.

She could hear Brough breathing, feel the heat of each breath he drew against her skin, sensing even the tension that coiled like fine wire through his body, feeling just what was burning through him as she gave herself up to the dark blaze of passion she could see in his eyes.

Her body swayed towards him, seeking his strength and offering in return the promise of her own pliant responsiveness, the instinctive age-old body language of woman to man, yielding and promising, whilst at the same time demanding that he show that he had the strength, the manhood, to take up the challenge she was offering and to protect her weakness.

‘Brough.’ She whispered his name, her eyes heavy-lidded, mysterious, luminous with passion as she turned her face up to his, an enchantress, powerful and strong. Irresistible.

And yet she still placed her hands flat against his chest, as though to deny the promise in her eyes and the desire running through her body, heavy and hot as molten gold.

She could feel his arms wrapping around her, enfolding her, as he drew her close, so close that her hand could feel the wild, fierce, heady drumming of his heartbeat, fast and furious as a cheetah during the chase. Boldly Kelly kept her eyes open. His were hot, dark, deep, glittering with male arousal.

Once again she looked at his mouth, a wild thrill of elation gripping her body. Now she was the hunter, her body tight, coiled, waiting … hungry.

Their mouths met, hers wanton, responsive, and yet at the same time soft and waiting. Brough was kissing her, sliding his hands up over her back, caressing her over and over again, his body hard and powerful against hers. Her own body felt molten and plain, reminding her of glass before it was shaped and blown, liquid running free, waiting to be formed and shaped, a wild natural element that could be coaxed but never forced.

Brough’s hands were on her shoulders, gripping them hard as his tongue searched her lips for an opening. Eagerly she gave it to him, her own nails digging into the long muscles of his back.

She was experiencing a wildness within herself, a sensuality she had never encountered before, and it both exhilarated and terrified her. Beneath her clothes her breasts ached and peaked. No need for Brough to even lightly caress them to arouse her need for him, but when he did—!

Was that really her making that low, hungry, almost semi-tortured sound deep down in her throat? Was that Brough growling in fierce exultation beneath his own breath as his thumb-pad returned demandingly to caress and probe the taut peak of her nipple?

She wanted him. Wanted him … wanted him so badly. Wanted to feel his body, his skin, next to hers, his touch, his love …

Kelly made an urgent keening noise deep in her throat, her body arching against Brough’s in a sexual mixture of longing and pleasure.

Somehow all the barriers there had been between them, all her doubts and fears, her refusal to believe that it was possible for her to feel like this, for her to love like this, so immediately, so intensely, so unexpectedly were banished, vaporised by the sheer force of her feelings.

Now, here in his arms, she was all feeling, yearning, loving woman, her natural female instincts overturning the conditioning of modern society and its demands. As boldly as some long-ago ancestor might have done, she was recognising and claiming for her own her man and her right to love him.

‘Brough.’ She whispered his name throatily, a husky purr of aroused pleasure, heavy with sensuous promise shot through with love.

‘You feel so good. I want you so much …’ Was that her saying that, or was it Brough? Was she the one reaching for him or was he the initiator of their increasingly passionate caresses? The shadowy confines of the hallway, normally surely the last place she would have ever thought of as romantic, now seemed as private and protected as the most secret of sanctuaries. And it was a dizzying, tantalising thought to know that not so very far beyond its closed door lay her bedroom—her bed.

Her whole body shuddered as it wantonly followed where her thoughts were leading, where she already ached for Brough to lead her. A feeling of the most incandescent joy filled her; a sense of throwing off the past and turning to welcome the future and their love made her feel as though suddenly something unacknowledged deep within her had sprung to life, as though the person she had been before the wonderful, miraculous discovery that she loved Brough had been someone who was only half alive, someone who had been deprived of the true pleasures and meaning of life.

‘I don’t want you to go …’

As she murmured the words against Brough’s mouth she could feel him start to tense; his mouth left her throat, which he had been kissing and nibbling, sending a cascade of tiny erotic shivers all the way from the top of her head to her toes.

‘I don’t want to either,’ he whispered back as his thumb caressed her throat and then her jaw, slowly moving towards her mouth. ‘But I must. I’m expecting a call from Hong Kong—I had some business dealings there, which I’ve sold out of, but there are still some legal ends I need to tie up. And tomorrow I have to go to London to see my accountants. But when I come back …’

As he turned away he paused and then turned back, taking hold of her hand and urging her gently towards him.

‘Thank you …’ he told her softly.

‘For what?’ she managed to ask him in a shaky voice.

‘For today … and this … and you …’ he told her throatily as he bent to place a soft kiss on her half-parted lips.

For her … For a moment Kelly felt close to tears. There was so much more about her that he still didn’t know. So much that she still had to tell him—especially … But now, when he was on the point of leaving, wasn’t the time to start explaining about Julian and Beth.

‘I know you’re only being like this because you’re worried about how much I’m going to charge you for the teaset,’ she told him teasingly and a little chokily.

‘Aha … so you’ve seen through my dastardly plot, then,’ Brough responded in the same vein.

Suddenly anxious, she clung to him and whispered, ‘Oh, Brough, it’s all so new, so unexpected. I don’t …’

‘It’s perfect … you’re perfect,’ Brough assured her as he tightened his arms around her and cradled her head against his shoulder. ‘We are going to be perfect … together … Right now, there’s nothing I want more than to stay here with you.’

He looked betrayingly towards the inner doorway to the flat and, guessing what he was thinking, Kelly quickly reassured him. ‘I know and I understand. You’ve got your responsibilities, and anyway, perhaps … Everything’s happened so quickly, so …’

‘I’ll call you the moment I get back from London,’ Brough promised her huskily.

‘There’s so much I haven’t told you,’ Kelly protested as he started to release her.

‘Such as?’ Brough grinned. ‘I’ve already discovered for myself all that I need to know, and what I have discovered, what I do know … I love …’

‘Oh, Brough …’

It was impossible not to throw herself back into his arms and share another passionate kiss with him, and then he was gone, leaving her to touch her fingertips to a mouth that still tingled from the passion of his kiss and to acknowledge with a small, cold shiver that he was wrong, that there were things that he still had to learn.

Would it change what he thought, what he felt, when he learned of her deceit, or would he understand and accept that her deliberate pursuit of Julian had been prompted by loyalty to Beth?

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