Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

“Exactly how do you feel, Maggie?”

Slane’s mouth lowered to brush softly against hers, crushing hungrily down as it met with not the slightest resistance.

It was like coming home, she thought incredulously as she lifted her arms and clung to him, her body rejoicing in the swift surge of desire it encountered in his with an abandon that brought a soft groan bursting from him.

Her impassioned reaction brought another groan—almost of pain—as he forced her away and held her at arm’s length.

“No,” he protested hoarsely. “This won’t work! We hardly know any more about one another than we did last time.”

KATE PROCTOR is part Irish and part Welsh, though she spent most of her childhood in England and several years of her adult life in Central Africa. Now divorced, she lives just outside London with her two cats, Florence and Minnie (presented to her by her two daughters who live fairly close by).

Having given up her career as a teacher on her return to England, Kate now devotes most of her time to writing. Her hobbies include crossword puzzles, bridge and, at the moment, learning Spanish.

A Past To Deny
Kate Proctor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

MAGGIE WALLACE sat cross-legged on the bed, haphazardly drying her hair. Cocooned in the luxury of Professor Connor Fitzpatrick’s elegant Dublin home, she gazed through the rain-splattered window into the stormy darkness beyond with cosy contentment.

It was a shame that her stay had to coincide with the Prof’s trip to America, she reflected lazily, before giving a wry grin and deciding that it was probably just as well, given their shared penchant for staying up half the night, chatting.

The smile abruptly left her attractive features as she remembered the state in which she had been when the Prof had rung her, announcing a problem that had cropped up which he’d hoped she would help him solve.

Once again, albeit unknowingly, the Prof had come to her rescue, she mused despondently, then gave an angry shake of her head. No, she didn’t need rescuing any more, she told herself firmly, leaning forward and sweeping her shoulder-length dark blonde hair up over her face. She switched the hair-dryer up a notch and dried off the damp underneath parts, but the unsettling thoughts lingered on.

All right, so it had taken far too long, she argued defensively, but she had already begun looking to the future before Peter had turned up out of the blue and momentarily knocked her tentative reawakening sideways. And the fact was that it had actually proved to be a blessing in disguise in that now she could feel the future beckoning her with added strength.

Maggie switched off the hair-dryer and groaned at the distant sound of the telephone ringing. In a house this size any normal person would have at least a couple of extensions, she grumbled to herself as she flew down the stairs to the study, but not the Prof—with his negative attitude to telephones, it was a wonder he actually had one at all.

‘Connor, I hope your ears are burning!’ she exclaimed when she heard the soft tones of the distinguished Irish academic greet her. ‘I nearly broke my neck getting down the stairs to answer this.’

‘The exercise will do you good, darling,’ he chuckled. ‘So tell me, has the lad arrived?’

‘Lad?’ queried Maggie. ‘If you mean the Fitzpatrick Consolidated chemist, he hasn’t contacted me yet.’

‘No—Slane. I could wring that young devil’s neck,’ complained Connor. ‘The one time I’m in his part of the world he takes off for Dublin.’

‘Slane? I take it we’re talking the Yankee Fitzpatrick Slane?’ Maggie drew the receiver back from her ear as a roar of laughter assaulted it from across the Atlantic.

‘The very one,’ chortled the professor. ‘My late cousin James’s boy, and not simply one of that filthy capitalist lot from the other side of the Atlantic I keep telling you about, but the numero uno Yankee Fitzpatrick.’

‘It would serve you right if they cut you off without a penny, the way you talk about them,’ laughed Maggie. Back when they had first met, and for no reason that she could really explain, she had been surprised to discover just how closely related the professor was to the powerful American family that owned Fitzpatrick Consolidated—one of the wealthiest and most commercially ruthless of the big American corporations.

‘Stop sidetracking me, girl,’ grumbled the professor, his aversion to the telephone beginning to assert itself. ‘The point is there’s been a change of plan—it’s Cousin Slane you’ll be assistant to for the tests and—’

‘Connor, I hope you’re joking!’ exclaimed Maggie, her alarm sensors shrieking into overdrive. ‘You told me this would be an opportunity for me to take a couple of weeks to brush up on my rusty lab technique, not that I’d be involved in something so important that the big boss of Fitzpatrick Con—’

‘Maggie, you’ll be dissecting a few plants, damn it,’ cut in Connor. Then he added with a sigh, ‘I suppose, now that I think on it, I’m not at all surprised young Slane’s decided to get involved…And there’s also the fact that it gives him an excuse to return to Ireland, which—’

‘Why would he need an excuse?’

‘He hasn’t been to Dublin since Marjorie’s funeral,’ he said, his voice catching at the mention of his beloved wife, ‘and, believe me, he worshipped her…Damn it, this will be a doubly hellish trip for him—and here I am stuck on the Yankee side of the Atlantic.’

‘Hellish?’ exclaimed Maggie, wondering what on earth she was about to be let in for.

‘Pay no heed to me, darling,’ he responded, discomfiture ringing in his tone. ‘You might not remember, but James died just six months before Marjorie. Anyway, forget these old man’s ramblings of mine and just rest assured that Slane possesses one of the finest scientific minds there is.

‘Come to think of it, I should be giving thanks he’ll be putting it to its rightful use for a while, even if it is on something this elementary, instead of squandering it on running that damned company.’

‘Are you sure he hasn’t deliberately picked a time to return when you’ll not be here?’ teased Maggie, only too willing to follow his lead in lightening the subject. ‘Excuse me a moment—I thought I heard something.’

It was the sound of a car drawing away, followed by muffled movement in the area of the porticoed porch. ‘I’ve a feeling your illustrious cousin has just arrived. I’d better let him in.’

‘Connor, you old devil, where are you?’ bellowed an American-accented voice from the hallway.

‘Too late—he’s already in, and bellowing for you.’

‘Damn it, I’ll never get off this wretched contraption,’ grumbled Connor. ‘I’d better have a word with him.’

‘Mr Fitzpatrick,’ called Maggie, putting down the receiver and running over to the study door. ‘The professor’s on the phone and would like a word with you.’

It all happened in a blur—the tall, dark-coated figure striding past her to pick up the receiver she had placed on the desktop and the sensation of her world crashing to pieces around her.

It was a trick of the light, a voice inside her shrieked from amidst the chaos breaking out within her—the room was in virtual darkness save for the small desk lamp angled uselessly across the blotter…Then he spoke, not in the raised tones that had issued from the hall and struck no chord in her, but in softly exasperated tones that were her complete undoing.

‘That’s great, Connor—me here and you there… No, I haven’t seen Mom; I just got back in from Australia a couple of days ago and…OK, OK… Right, I am listening.’

His dark-lashed blue eyes rose as he listened and alighted on Maggie, standing immobile a few steps from the doorway.

‘Damn it, Connor, you must have a pretty good idea why I’m here!’ he exploded suddenly, and turned slightly, lowering his voice. ‘And I’m not about to act as surrogate instructor to some student you’ve taken under your wing.’

Although Maggie was no longer able to see his face, her mind’s eye took over and she was able to conjure up every last detail: the blue-blackness of his hair, tousled almost to curliness; eyebrows arching in elegant symmetry above heavy-lidded, lushly lashed eyes; the nose, fine-boned and patrician, in perfect proportion to the rest of those faultless features; the mouth, wide and dramatically defined in its intriguing blend of harshness and sensuality…The face of the stranger whose body, one night long ago, had time after impossible time possessed her own in a mindless frenzy of rapture.

‘OK, Connor, you have me convinced,’ he said, his tone softening with affection. ‘No problem—it’s just that right now I’m jet-lagged and dead on my feet… Yeah, all I need is some of Mrs Morrison’s food in me to restore me—that and a bed to fall into.’

Maggie felt herself sway. Bed…cool linen sheets slipping from glistening, passion-driven bodies to lie rumpled on the floor.

‘Perhaps you should tell her that for yourself.’ The laugher-filled words cut across the madness of Maggie’s wandering thoughts. ‘OK, OK, I’ll do that…And you have yourself a good time—and give Mom my love when you see her…No, she doesn’t know anything about this; I’ll tell her when I get back.’

He put the phone down, then dragged his hands wearily across his face before turning his attention to Maggie, who still stood where he had passed her, her body rooted to the spot by a petrifying mixture of horror and incredulity.

‘Hi, Maggie—I’m Slane. I guess that’s about the only place for us to start,’ he muttered, tiredness hoarsening his voice.

No, thought Maggie dazedly, the deal had been no names…complete anonymity. She wanted to protest, but remained frozen as everything slurred into slow motion and he began walking towards her, his hand outstretched.

She was too busy steeling herself for the impact of his belated recognition to have any consciousness of how her hand came to be briefly enfolded in the cool clasp of his. It was beyond her comprehension that she might have given it freely.

‘Look, whatever you heard me say to Connor,’ he said, the familiarity of his voice washing over her like an intimate caress, seeking out and threatening to expose those secrets whose very existence made her feel that she could more easily die than acknowledge them, ‘ignore it—apart from the fact that I’m dog-tired and jet-lagged.’

A state, in fact, in which his memory would be functioning well below par, reasoned Maggie—the idea that he actually might not have recognised her suddenly proving almost as impossible to accept as that of seeing him again—especially with regard to a woman he had met only once almost three years ago.

‘I can see we need to talk,’ he murmured, his eyes for a split second catching hers, their look momentarily confounding her with the certainty that he had recognised her. ‘I’ve plainly upset you.’

‘And what makes you think that?’ The coolness of that utterance astounded her; there was no way she could accept that it had emerged from her own traumatised person.

‘Come on now, Maggie—even aside from the fact that it’s written all over you, you hadn’t been able to bring yourself to utter a word to me until just now.’

‘I’d have looked a bit of an idiot trying to strike up a conversation wtih you, given that you’ve been on the phone to Connor ever since you walked in here.’ She was about to disintegrate into a gibbering wreck, she thought dazedly, yet once again she had managed to sound the epitome of cool composure. ‘But you’re right about one thing—we need to talk.’

‘Have you any objection to our doing that over coffee?’ he asked, tiredness once more hoarsening his tone.

‘No, of course not!’ she exclaimed, her momentary certainty evaporating. ‘I’ll make some…and I suppose we should do something about finding a room for you, though I’m afraid I haven’t a clue where the Prof keeps bedlinen and things.’

‘Don’t worry, I do,’ he murmured, his mouth quirking with humour. ‘And I still have my own room here, even though it’s a good while since I’ve used it’

Maggie’s legs were shaking beneath her as she led the way to the kitchen and her mind had also started playing horrifying tricks on her which she was ruthlessly suppressing.

‘My God, nothing’s changed,’ he muttered to himself, pausing to gaze around the large, comfortable kitchen before slumping down on one of the chairs, still huddled in his coat.

‘How do you like your coffee?’ asked Maggie, still thrown by how remarkably well her mind was working, seemingly independently of herself.

‘Exactly twice as strong as Connor drinks his,’ he replied, with a chuckle that slid over Maggie like warm silk and made her lose control of the thoughts she had been so frantically suppressing. ‘But you don’t have to wait on me,’ he added, rising. ‘I can make it myself.’

‘You stay where you are—you look exhausted,’ said Maggie. ‘I’ll hang up your coat if you like; you must be sweltering in it.’

It horrified her that she should even have mentioned his taking anything off, given the images she was battling to banish from her mind—of a body, golden and stark naked and as awesomely perfect as that of a Greek god—the body of this man as she had once seen it and now kept seeing it…because her deranged mind kept stripping it of the clothing adorning it.

‘I’ll keep it on a while,’ he muttered. ‘I guess my body’s as out of sync as my head is—I feel a bit cold.’

‘Perhaps you should have a bath,’ she said, sympathy creeping into her voice as she handed him a large mug of coffee. ‘Would you like milk and sugar?’

‘No, this is fine, thank you.’

Maggie poured her own coffee and went to the fridge for milk, her movements slow as she played for time to search for reason amongst the chaos of her thoughts. The sympathy in her tone had irritated her, but really there were no grounds for her to feel antagonism towards him…apart, perhaps, from those of wounded pride. After a night such as they had shared, how could he possibly not remember?

She took her mug and sat down opposite him. ‘We might as well get straight to the point,’ she said. ‘It’s obvious I’m not the right person for the work that—’

‘Connor says you are,’ he cut in coolly. ‘And you must have agreed, otherwise why are you here?’

‘I’m here because the research student Connor had originally lined up had to drop out at the very last moment. Look, I don’t know what Connor said to you, but the truth is I haven’t been anywhere near a lab since I left university, so I’m hardly the person to be assisting someone in your position.’

‘My position? Hell, all we’re talking about here is dissecting a few plants, not who or what I am. And how come you felt able to assist a guy employed by the company I run, but not me?’

‘Forgive me for sounding naïve,’ snapped Maggie, ‘but, if that’s all it is, how is it that the managing director—or whatever it is you are—of a concern as vast as Fitzpatrick Consolidated is dealing with it personally?’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never given in to a whim, Maggie.’

Instead of rounding on him in fury as her every instinct demanded, Maggie raised her mug to her lips. His words had been loaded to the hilt…Yet, on the other hand, his expression had been utterly blank. She took several sips of her coffee as confusion seeped its way into every pore of her being.

‘Well, I didn’t happen to come here on a whim,’ she eventually responded stiffly. ‘I came here because the Prof persuaded me I’d be helping him out of a fix, and that I’d also benefit from the experience.’

‘And you’re happy to help Connor out of a fix but not me—is that what you’re saying?’

‘No, of course not! I…look, I—I don’t care wh-what either you or Connor say,’ stammered Maggie, ‘the mere fact that someone like you would involve himself in the donkey work tells me that this project is a million miles away from anything run-of-the-mill.’

He dragged his hands wearily across his face. ‘I guess a bus ride could be described as pretty run-of-the-mill,’ he sighed. ‘There again, the reason for it being taken could make it anything but.’

Maggie heard his words, but it was the faint hint of Irish brogue that had momentarily slipped into them which caught her attention, striking a chord in her that sent her thoughts careering off at a tangent She hadn’t noticed it at first, all those years ago, and even when she had later it hadn’t consciously struck her as being Irish—that soft lilt interwoven into his husky words of passion…

She gave an almost angry toss of her head. ‘Well, whatever your reasons for being here, I’m sure someone like you won’t have too much difficulty finding a suitably qualified lab assistant,’ she stated firmly, rising.

‘I’d have insurmountable difficulty,’ Slane told her quietly. ‘I don’t have the contacts Connor has here, and even his are pretty sparse, with him having been in England so long. Besides, you were his second choice. If you pull out the project will have to be scrapped until next year.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ protested Maggie, suddenly feeling horribly trapped.

‘There’s nothing ridiculous about it,’ he replied, with a barely perceptible shrug. ‘The only complicated thing about these tests is the time factor involved—and that happens to be crucial…What exactly did Connor tell you about the project?’

Maggie sat back down on her chair, her head swimming. ‘Nothing much,’ she replied, ‘except that the plant involved was on the verge of extinction and a botanist here had managed to reproduce it. He also mentioned that this plant was alleged to contain some miraculous property or other, though he seemed somewhat sceptical about that and didn’t enlarge on what it was.’

‘His scepticism is in no way misplaced,’ muttered Slane, once again dragging his hands wearily across his face. ‘But, if a minor miracle could be the end result, I guess it has to be worth a try.’

His own undisguised scepticism brought a startled look from Maggie, which in turn elicited a wry smile from her companion—a smile which, innocuous thought it was, sent a surge of unequivocally sexual longing blasting through her.

‘Or don’t you agree?’ he persisted, his smile, as it softened into a coaxing one, wreaking further havoc within her.

‘I…O-of course I agree,’ she stammered, hot colour rushing to her cheeks.

‘But?’

‘But nothing,’ she muttered, part of what Connor had said earlier ringing in her head. ‘I’ll stay.’

‘What—you’ll stay and assist me?’ he asked, his eyes wary.

‘Well, I certainly didn’t mean I was going to keep house for you,’ she snapped, appalled that she hadn’t stopped to think twice before committing herself.

To her complete surprise he slumped forward, burying his face in his arms, convulsed with laughter.

‘You might not find it quite so amusing when I tell you that as from today Mrs Morrison is off on a two-week visit to her sister in Galway.’

He groaned as he raised his head. ‘You may not believe this, but I have spent a number of years fantasising about sampling Mrs Morrison’s cooking again,’ he protested. ‘Hell, I’m almost tempted to pack my bags and go back home,’ he added, with a grin.

‘Except that you haven’t unpacked them yet,’ pointed out Maggie, finding it impossible to keep her face straight, and even more impossible to do anything about the mind-blowing effect he had on her every time he smiled.

‘You can’t wait to be rid of me, can you, Maggie?’ His words were teasing, but there was a deeper element of mockery in his eyes…Or was that simply her imagination?

‘I’ve a nasty feeling you’re going to be the one who can’t wait to get rid of me once you’re faced with exactly how rusty my lab skills are,’ she stated woodenly. ‘But as for Mrs Morrison’s cooking—there’s one of her magnificent concoctions in the oven, just waiting to be heated.’

Laughter burst unchecked from her as he clutched at his heart and rolled his eyes theatrically. There had been so many things about him that had attracted her even before the physical element had engulfed her, she thought with dismay—so why should anything be different now?

She rose to her feet. ‘Why don’t you get your things sorted and have a shower?’ she suggested, her own aplomb still a source of amazement to her. ‘And I’ll get the food under way.’

He rose from the table. ‘Maggie, I…Thanks,’ he muttered disjointedly. He hesitated as though about to say more, then turned and walked from the room.

For several seconds Maggie stood there, immobile in body and mind. When her body at last reactivated itself she switched on the oven, then prepared potatoes and carrots. By the time the potatoes were boiling she had cut the carrots into thin strips…and still her mind had not responded. Great, she told herself numbly, my mind’s packed up on me.

Close to tears, she marched over to the cooker, threw a lump of butter, some sugar and a cupful of chicken stock she’d found in the fridge into a shallow pan and added the carrots. Then she gave a dazed shake of her head. What on earth had possessed her to attempt her mother’s glazed carrots, she asked herself incredulously, when she only had the vaguest idea how to do them?

She slammed the lid onto the pan then walked to the back door, opened it and stepped out into the freezing night air.

A couple of months ago, when autumn had already begun yellowing the leaves on the trees that it would soon strip bare, something had begun stirring in her, she reflected, the thought still peculiarly tinged with detachment. It wasn’t simply that circumstances had forced her into taking decisions regarding her life…it was more that the need burgeoning in her had happened to coincide with a change of circumstance in her working life; the effect—or, rather, the ultimate lack of effect—that Peter’s reappearance had had on her was proof enough of that.

But for almost the past three years she might just as well have been asleep for all the living she had done, she concluded bitterly, then took a step back towards the doorway as the wind suddenly changed direction and sent rain whipping against her. She drew a hand down her face, uncertain whether the wetness it encountered was from the rain, her own tears or a mixture of both.

And now what? she asked herself bleakly. She had tried to deny the past out of existence for almost three years, and it hadn’t worked. OK, so she had to face it, but how was the question, when the man who comprised such a large part of it had either forgotten her or was deliberately not facing it himself…And the answer wasn’t exactly leaping out at her.

‘Hey—Maggie!’

She jumped, startled not just by his voice but also by his tone of open censure. She stepped inside and was about to pull the door closed behind her when the acrid smell of burning hit her.

‘Don’t, for God’s sake, close that door,’ ordered Slane irritably as he strode across the kitchen and slung the pan containing the carrots into the sink. ‘And it might have been an idea to turn the darned things off before you started trying to clear the air,’ he muttered, leaning forward and throwing open the window above the sink.

‘I’m sorry, I thought I had turned them off,’ lied Maggie, automatically avoiding the truth and all its accompanying complications…As usual, she noted bitterly as she watched him stride back to the cooker, his tall figure, now clad in jeans and a large sweatshirt, oozing casual elegance. ‘It’s all right, I’ll see to the potatoes,’ she said as he lifted the lid from the pan.

‘There isn’t much in the way of potato left for you to see to,’ he informed her baldly, stepping out of her way as she approached.

Her cheeks burning with mortification, Maggie took the pan to the sink and resignedly watched most of the potatoes disappear down it when she drained them. She returned to the cooker, her eyes studiously avoiding the tall figure now engrossed in laying the table, turned up the heat in an attempt to dry out the mush in the pan, added a lump of butter to it and attacked the lot with the potato masher.

The silence ringing in her ears like pealing bells, she transferred the potatoes to a heated bowl, relieved to find that they were now of a consistency that required a spoon, instead of simply being poured.

By the time she had everything on the table she was feeling light-headed, wobbly-legged and not in the least like facing food, despite the tempting aroma emanating from the casserole…and even less like sharing a meal with the man seated opposite her, who had amusement plastered all over his face as he leaned over and began serving.

‘Did you know Marjorie?’ he startled her by asking.

She shook her head, the Prof’s words about this being a double ordeal for him filling her mind just as they had in the moments before she had recklessly said she would stay. ‘I wish I had. Connor’s told me so much about her—she sounds a very special person.’

‘Oh, Marjorie was special all right,’ he said, his eyes momentarily clouding. ‘In a funny way you reminded me of her just now.’ He glanced up at her with an apologetic grin. ‘Though, to be fair to you, had it been Marjorie in charge of these carrots the house would have been burned to a cinder.’

Maggie felt herself relax slightly; she even managed a smile. ‘I do seem to remember Connor mentioning something about Mrs Morrison trying to ban her from the kitchen soon after they were married. But, I promise you, that was a first for me.’

‘So how did you meet Connor?’ he asked. ‘I notice you sometimes refer to him as “the Prof”, but I’d have thought you were too young to be one of his students.’

‘Actually, I was one of his students in my final year in London,’ she replied, her minding skidding away from other thoughts about that particular year. ‘I was lucky; I was a member of one of his last groups before he retired fully.’

‘Well, now I am impressed,’ murmured Slane, his eyes widening in mock awe. ‘So you made it into one of those crème de la crème groups he now and then indulged himself in before finally sliding into what he inaccurately refers to as “full retirement”.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ said Maggie. ‘He’ll never really retire—that’s the way he is.’

‘Are you trying to change the subject?’ asked Slane, a lazy grin softening any trace of harshness from his features. ‘You know, your being one of Connor’s chosen few really does set you apart from the mob. I guess any errors made in these tests we’re about to do won’t be down to you.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ she muttered, and gave her full attention to her food, appalled by the burning, meltingly erotic sensation now churning inside her.

Shock could do terrible things, she told herself edgily, not certain that the monumental one to which she had been subjected hadn’t destroyed her mental capacities altogether.

‘I guess I should be filling you in about the tests—not that there’s much to tell,’ he said after a while. ‘But I’m not sure I could get my head round it right now.’ He glanced over at Maggie as he spoke, and for one brief moment she was certain that she saw a flash of mocking recognition in those heavy-lidded eyes; then they drooped in unmistakable exhaustion and her certainty yet again evaporated.

‘That’s understandable,’ she said, rising to clear the dishes. ‘You’ve had a lot to contend with today, we’ll leave it until tomorrow.’ Even before the words were fully out she sensed that they were a mistake. ‘There’s fruit if you’d like some,’ she added hastily as the ambiguity of her words belatedly hit her. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’

‘Just the coffee will be fine,’ he said, his handsome face drawn with exhaustion as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes barely focusing as they followed her movements. ‘So, I’ve had a lot to contend with today, have I?’ he enquired.

It was the steely note in his tone that made Maggie freeze with apprehension.

‘It was just that Connor mentioned you hadn’t been back here since his wife died,’ she stated woodenly.

‘And that’s all?’ The note of challenge was undisguised.

Maggie switched on the kettle, playing for time as she fought to control the anger suddenly blazing within her. Perhaps he was only asking if that was all Connor had mentioned…perhaps not. Mortifying in the extreme though the idea was that he might have mentally erased the passion they had once shared, the idea that he was simply playing cat-and-mouse with her made her blood boil.

Unable to contain herself, she spun round to confront him. His head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. It wasn’t the expression of weariness on his face that shrivelled the anger in her, but the anguish with which it was interlaced.

‘He said that you loved her very much,’ she stated quietly, turning away from his pain to attend to the coffee. And Connor had also mentioned his father’s death, she reflected unhappily, feeling the ghosts of what had once been a scarcely bearable anguish stir within her.

It had been six long years since her own beloved father had died, and despite the healing process of time there were still moments when she could be taken unawares and become engulfed by a suffocating sense of loss. The expression she had witnessed on Slane Fitzpatrick’s face was one with which she could not help but empathise.

‘Yes, I loved Marjorie,’ he said, straightening as she brought the coffee to the table. ‘It would have been difficult not to,’ he added, his eyes clouding over.

She had no idea what connection his coming to Ireland could have with his father, but Maggie felt certain that it wasn’t Marjorie alone occupying his bleak thoughts. Because she could think of nothing she could trust herself to say, she picked up her cup and slowly drank from it. When it was empty she rose to her feet.

‘I’ve a couple of letters I have to write,’ she said, walking over to the dishwasher and starting to stack it, ‘so I’ll just get this cleared—’

‘Leave those; I’ll see to them—you’ve waited on me enough as it is.’

‘Of course I haven’t been waiting on you,’ protested Maggie, closing the dishwasher and turning. ‘You look all in—in fact, you don’t look as though you’ll last much longer.’

His eyes met hers, another of those lazy, disturbingly disruptive grins sauntering across his lips. ‘You get off to your letters, Maggie, and don’t be deceived by appearances,’ he murmured. ‘This guy has reserves of stamina you’d never believe.’

His words poleaxed her and it was left to that other, miraculously detached Maggie to take over, mouthing a polite goodnight and urging her leaden limbs from the room.

It was only when she had closed her bedroom door behind her that her real self re-emerged and her violently trembling body sagged against the wall. There was no way that his remark could have been an innocent coincidence…It couldn’t simply be her imagination that he had just reminded her of the stamina which had enabled him to make love to her time after time that night long ago…or could it?

‘This is impossible,’ he had groaned at one stage during that passion-filled night, when insatiable hunger had flamed between them yet again. ‘What have you done to me?’

And, even though she had been sexually innocent until that same night, she had instinctively known that what was happening between her and the beautiful stranger was an impossibility.

She gave a dazed shake of her head as she straightened her still violently trembling body and then stumbled towards the bed.

That night she had needed the magic of something impossible to heal her vicious wounds…but the cure had come close to destroying her.

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN she first awoke Maggie lay immobile, willing herself back to sleep, convinced that it was still the middle of the night. When her body failed to respond she checked the time and gave a disbelieving groan. As far as she was concerned, five-thirty in the morning was practically the middle of the night.

She hadn’t even had to contend with the horrors of the day before seeping slowly back into her waking mind; she had woken with those horrors fully intact And oddly enough it had been memories of her father that had filled her thoughts during the long hours in which sleep had eluded her. But other memories began stirring within her now—ones so long buried away and ruthlessly ignored that now there could be no holding them back.

His ice maiden…That was what Peter had so often called her—with what she had mistakenly read as teasing affection—and her lack of any real feelings of physical desire for him had always troubled her during those months when she had believed herself to be in love with him.

Yet, even without such feelings ever having been aroused in her, she had instinctively known that within her lay a capacity for passion that would one day overwhelm her. Crazy though it seemed to her now, she had actually managed to convince herself that, given time, it would be Peter who would eventually find the key to unlock those untapped passions…

But it had been, quite literally, a tall, dark stranger who had produced that elusive key, effortlessly unleashing in her what the man she had once believed she loved had imagined could be forced from her.

And now her knight, in his tarnished armour, lay sleeping just a few doors away from her, she reminded herself bitterly, and with apparently no recollection of their shared night, let alone any understanding of the powers his body still held over hers.

With a stifled cry of protest she sat up, shaking her head violently. She didn’t want to be a freak! What she wanted was to be able to experience in the arms of a man she loved the same rapture she had known in those of Slane Fitzpatrick. Yet, in the almost three years that had passed, she hadn’t found a man she could love, and those forbidden fires had remained dormant within her…until Slane’s lazy grin had put a torch to them.

She leapt from the bed, threw on her dressing gown and stumbled down the stairs. It was just as she was entering the kitchen that the aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafted to her.

‘Would you care for some coffee?’ asked Slane, glancing up from what he was doing. Clad in a dark velour robe, a shadowy blue-blackness on his unshaven face, he looked drawn and tired and unspeakably attractive. ‘I’ve just fixed it,’ he added, getting out more crockery before Maggie had a chance to respond.

‘Thanks,’ she muttered, sagging down onto a chair. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be up, she thought fuzzily, then decided that that was no wonder, considering what an ungodly hour it was. ‘I’m surprised you’re up,’ she added. ‘I thought you’d be catching up on sleep.’

‘So did I,’ he murmured wryly, passing her a large cup of black coffee, ‘but my body refused to play ball.’ He sat down opposite her, his eyes flickering with amusement over her somewhat dishevelled figure. ‘It’s good to have company, though. I guess you must be one of those people Connor refers to as “larks”—up with the birdies and bright as a button.’

‘Ha, ha,’ muttered Maggie, then took a swig of coffee and nearly choked. ‘God, it’s like treacle!’ she exclaimed with spontaneous candour. ‘I thought you said you only took it twice as strong as Connor.’

‘Stay put—I’ll get the milk,’ he laughed as she made to rise.

When he handed it to her Maggie filled her cup to the brim, and still it looked undrinkably black. She toyed with the idea of making herself some tea, then decided that there was a good chance that the coffee would blast her head clear.

‘I seem to remember Connor saying something about you being the person he got in to run that London shop, Body and Soul, after Marjorie died,’ Slane said, out of the blue.

‘He didn’t get me to run it,’ said Maggie, more than a little thrown. ‘In fact, even when his wife was alive I believe it was never a question of anyone running Body and Soul—they all mucked in together, and with great success. Obviously Connor could hardly step in—even apart from all his other commitments he wouldn’t have had a clue how the company functioned.’

‘Oh, I see-you had?’

‘No, I hadn’t,’ snapped Maggie, now angry. Just who the hell did he think he was, cross-examining her like this? ‘I’d just finished my degree and was still at a loose end. I’m sure it can’t be difficult for you to imagine how shattered the people were who had worked with her and loved her for so many years. All Connor asked me to do was lend a hand, so I did.’

‘What—for two years?’ he enquired with undisguised scepticism.

Shaken by how close she was to losing her temper, Maggie rose and went over to the bread bin. Battling to keep a grip on herself, she cut a couple of slices and put them in the toaster. He did remember, though clearly he wasn’t about to admit it, she told herself angrily, and this snide baiting of her he was indulging in made it plain just how negative and hostile he felt about it all.

‘Amazing though it may seem to a high-powered tycoon such as yourself,’ she heard herself saying, and had swung round to face him before she realised what she was doing, ‘there actually are businesses that operate with everyone happily mucking in and, believe it or not, manage to thrive.

‘Body and Soul might only be a natural pharmacy, but they none the less needed someone with the relevant scientific knowledge, so I suppose in that respect I was taking over from Connor’s wife.’

He was sitting at the table, his chin propped on his hands, gazing at her as though drinking in her every word.

‘My, you sound almost defensive, Maggie,’ he drawled. ‘I was just being sociable and trying to show some interest.’

‘I’m sure you were,’ she retorted from between clenched teeth as she turned back to the toaster. ‘Would you like some of this toast, or what?’

‘I’ll have a rummage through the icebox to see if I can reproduce one of Mrs Morrisons’s famous fry-ups.’

‘There’s only bacon and eggs. If you want that I can cook it for you.’

‘So can I,’ he said, the faint tinge of mockery in his tone setting Maggie’s teeth on edge. ‘I’ll even cook you some too, to prove what a sociable guy I am.’

‘That’s quite all right—I’ll do it,’ she said. The last thing she needed was to be standing around with nothing to occupy her. ‘You must be tired—what with your body clock being all askew,’ she added, just to make sure that he got the message that her cooking him breakfast was not to be the norm. ‘Would you like tomatoes with it?’

‘I’d love tomatoes with it,’ he replied, further irritating her with his mocking stress on her English pronunciation. ‘Do you enjoy cooking, Maggie?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘So, you’re just an old-fashioned girl who likes to take care of a man…I think I’m going to enjoy this stay after all.’

‘My other reason for offering to cook this is simply that I’m not at my best first thing in the morning,’ retorted Maggie, having extreme difficulty in keeping her tone in any way civil. ‘I like to have something to keep me occupied, otherwise I’m quite likely to doze off.’ She unwrapped the bacon, unable to believe the rubbish she had just spouted. ‘And that wouldn’t be very sociable, would it?’

‘I’ll have to take you at your word about how you feel at this hour,’ he murmured, ‘but from where I’m sitting you look great. You haven’t drunk your coffee…I’ll make you some fresh.’

There was absolutely no need for him to lean over and against her as he reached for the kettle, but that was what he did. Her body responded in a way that both startled and horrified her, melting to a liquid state of unequivocal sexual excitement as the heady, newly bathed masculine scent of him engulfed her.

So unnerved was she by the totality of that involuntary response that an equally involuntary shriek exploded from her as, in her panic to escape, she leapt smack into the kettle he had just lifted.

‘Now, that wasn’t very smart, was it?’ he drawled, putting down the kettle and taking her face in his hands.

‘What are you doing?’ she protested, twisting violently in an attempt to escape those hands. ‘Stop it!’

‘For God’s sake, stop being so damned stupid!’ he exclaimed, his hands tightening in a vice-like grip. ‘Your nose is bleeding.’

‘Get your hands off me!’ she cried, a note of hysteria slicing through the words as her hands tugged frantically at his arms.

‘Hell, anyone walking in here and seeing you dripping blood and freaking out all over the place would assume I was trying to kill you!’ he exploded, his eyes blazing fury as he abruptly released her. ‘Just what in hell are you playing at?’

‘What do you mean, what am I playing at?’ shrieked Maggie, unable to exert any control over herself. ‘You’re the one who’s just broken my nose with the kettle!’

‘I don’t believe this,’ he groaned softly to himself, then reached over to a roll of kitchen paper and tore off a couple of sheets. ‘Here—dab your nose with that. And for God’s sake don’t blow it.’

Maggie took the wad of paper and gingerly did as he’d said, the madness at last mercifully subsiding in her. Then she wondered just how much of a mercy it was as she found herself face to face with a blackly scowling man, the angry heave of whose chest had loosened his robe and exposed an expanse of fine, silkily hirsute darkness.

It was when her mind’s eye began casually stripping the entire robe from that magnificent body that she was reduced to considering pinching herself to end what had to be a ghastly nightmare.

‘It doesn’t seem to be bleeding any more,’ he muttered, flashing her a distinctly hostile look before grabbing a teatowel and walking over to the fridge. ‘You’d better pack this around it for a while,’ he said, handing her the towel, now wrapped around a mound of ice-cubes. ‘It might prevent it swelling.’

Now feeling an utter fool, Maggie moved towards the cooker, the lumpy towel clamped to her nose.

‘Now what are you doing?’ he demanded in weary exasperation.

‘Cooking your breakfast’

‘Don’t you think you have enough to occupy you?’ he drawled, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Forget it—we’ll go have a look at the lab facilities, then get ourselves breakfast downtown…assuming, that is, you’re up to it.’

At first Maggie was surprised at how well Slane knew his way around, then she remembered that he had spent quite a bit of time in Dublin.

‘Did you come here on holiday regularly?’ she asked after a silent battle with herself. They had exchanged barely a word since getting into Connor’s car, but a subconscious fatalism in her reasoned that, having committed herself to stay, her best bet was to try to establish at least a veneer of civility between them before she got around to confronting him. The only alternative appeared to be a descent into out-and-out war…

Besides, there was this growing, insistent part of her showing an insatiable need to find out everything there was to know about him…Not that she had any intention of indulging it to the full.

‘Not on holiday, exactly,’ he replied. ‘We did visit quite a bit, but my dad had this thing about me not missing out on the Irish half of me. I went to school here as a kid—though I went through high school in the States. I was also here at Trinity before going on to Yale.’

‘Didn’t you mind?’ exclaimed Maggie involuntarily.

‘What was there to mind?’

‘Surely it must have been disruptive—switching between the Irish and American education system like that? And what about leaving your family and friends?’

‘I was a bright kid, so the differences didn’t bother me,’ he replied. ‘I guess I was also a pretty secure one. It wasn’t as though I was packed off to Ireland against my will; I was given the choice and I couldn’t wait to live here for a while. As for family and friends, I knew they’d still be there when I got back—which was most vacations.’

Bright, well-adjusted and utterly modest, thought Maggie wryly, and that had just been the child!

‘I guess you had a more conventional childhood,’ he murmured as, with the outskirts of Dublin behind them, he speeded up along the coastal road, beside which angry grey seas sent foam-tipped waves hurtling across mile after empty mile of pale gold sand.

‘I guess you could say that,’ responded Maggie drily.

‘Oh, I see,’ he chuckled, the sound sending shock waves of heat rippling through her. ‘This is to be a “tell all” for me and a “tell nothing” for you. Great.’

Maggie bit back an angry retort, reasoning with herself that she could hardly blame him for the effect he was having on her—an effect of which he seemed, thank heavens, mercifully unaware.

‘I’m sorry if you got that impression,’ she said, trying so hard to feign normality that she ended up sounding prissy, ‘but there really is nothing to tell. I went from one school to the next, in the same town, then on to university—there’s hardly anything exotic about that…Where exactly are we heading?’

‘To a place just outside Dun Laoghaire,’ he replied, taking a sudden right turn from the coast road. ‘In fact, we’ll soon be there.’

Maggie frowned in puzzlement as with each turn they took they drove deeper and deeper into what was obviously a most affluent residential area. ‘We are on our way to a laboratory, aren’t we?’ she muttered, peering out through the rain-bleared windows at houses that were getting grander and sparser by the minute.

‘We sure are,’ he replied, with a soft laugh, as they entered what was more of a lane than a road, at the end of which stood huge, wrought-iron gates set into a massive, creeper-clad wall. He stopped the car in front of the gates, released his seat belt and opened his door. ‘Your turn to drive.’

Before Maggie could utter a word he was out and drawing aside the heavy, creaking gates.

He motioned her to remain where she was once she had driven through, and got in beside her, spraying her with droplets of rain as he shook his glossy dark head like a boisterous puppy.

‘Straight on up,’ he directed.

It was like driving through a miniature forest, and then a house loomed into view.

‘This looks more like a minor stately home than a laboratory site!’ exclaimed Maggie as they neared the impressive, ivy-clad building. ‘Who on earth owns it?’

‘Maurice Ryan—an old friend of my father’s,’ replied Slane. ‘Just follow the drive round to the back of the house and on down to that line of trees—you’ll see where to turn once we’re there. Maurice is a character and a half, but unfortunately we won’t see him—he’s off picking daisies at the end of some rainbow or other.’

‘He’s what?’ exclaimed Maggie, following the curve of the drive and bringing the car to a halt in front of a white, single-storey building, hidden from view by the trees behind which it stood.

‘Maurice is a botanist. He eats, sleeps and breaths botany. Fortunately he has vast independent means with which to indulge his passion.’

‘I take it he’s the one who’s grown this plant you’re going to test?’ said Maggie.

Slane nodded. ‘Yes, he—Ah, that must be John,’ he said as a man clad in waterproofs and wellington boots appeared from around the side of the building. ‘You might just as well stay here in the dry while I have a word with him about setting things up for the morning.’

He got out of the car and approached him, and a while later the two of them disappeared inside the building. In less than five minutes they reappeared and stood deep in conversation, the other man every now and then pointing towards a row of greenhouses of varying sizes and shapes and sometimes to the land beyond.

What am I doing here, and with this of all men? Maggie asked herself incredulously as a shiver that was entirely unrelated to the bleakness of the late November weather shuddered through her.

She busied herself for a while, moving back to the passenger seat, but, with that little distraction over, her eyes were drawn back to the taller of the two figures. Whatever it was his shorter companion had said, Slane suddenly threw back his head and laughed, oblivious of the rain now deluging down on them.

That ruinously expensive-looking coat of his would be soaked, thought Maggie; then she found herself smiling at her own innate practicality—after all, what was the odd cashmere coat or two to the seriously wealthy? And Slane Fitzpatrick, apart from everything else he had going for him, was very seriously wealthy.

He slapped the man on the shoulder, then turned and walked back to the car. He was walking to the passenger side, then stopped, gave a lopsided grin, and changed direction.

He’s also a very seriously attractive man, thought Maggie as her heart gave a drunken lurch, and I’ve got to get my act together before I make a complete and utter fool of myself.

‘How can you do this to me, Maggie?’ he groaned, laughing as he got back into the car. ‘I have enough problems with which side of the car to get into in this country without you complicating matters by switching seats on me.’

‘Sorry,’ she said, her pulse rate still chaotic, ‘but it’s better if you drive as I’d never find my way—’ She broke off with a gasp at the sight of him. ‘Have you any idea of the state you’re in? Your coat’s soaking—and as for your hair…!’

He made a soft growling sound in his throat as he turned towards her with a wicked grin, then shook his head vigorously. With a yell of protest Maggie grabbed a box of tissues from the door pocket and flung a handful at him.

‘Any intelligent person would have done his talking inside,’ she protested.

‘Gee, sorry, Mom,’ he replied, with an idiot grin, scrunching up the tissues and rubbing his hair with them. ‘Oh, great!’ he exclaimed in indignant disgust an instant later when the tissues began disintegrating and peppering his hair like soaked confetti. ‘This is all your fault,’ he complained, running tissue-smeared fingers impatiently through his hair and making matters worse, ‘so you can get it out—every last scrap of it!’

‘The intention was that you should dry your face with them, not smear them all over your hair,’ laughed Maggie as he lowered his head and leaned towards her.

She began removing the clumps of sodden tissue, but as her fingers delved into the thickness of his soaked hair her mind hurtled her back to another time, when it had been the exertions of passion that had dampened the hair in which her fingers had feverishly explored—a passion that had dewed their entwined, naked bodies with its own sultry rain. She snatched back her hand as though scalded, her entire body tensing as it shrank towards the door.

‘I—Y-you really ought to get out of that coat,’ she stammered when he lifted his head a little to gaze up at her with coolly mocking eyes.

‘Ought I?’ he drawled, his mouth curving into a smile tinged with mocking malevolence as he straightened. ‘We’ll go find somewhere to eat…I can get out of it there,’ he announced with sudden briskness and started the car.

Maggie gave inordinate attention to fastening her seat belt, racking her brains for something to say that would miraculously clear the air of the almost palpable tension fogging it.

‘I wasn’t exactly needed on this trip, was I?’ she muttered, and realised that those were hardly the words to produce any miracle. ‘I’ll do the gates,’ she offered when, having made no response, he halted the car before them.

‘What, to justify your coming along?’ he drawled, opening his door. ‘There’s no point us both getting wet so I’ll do them. It’s best if I drive through as well—the seat’s probably all messed up too.’

The leather upholstry was wet, Maggie conceded to herself as they went through the tortuous procedure of negotiating the gates, but she could easily have wiped it dry.

‘John’s got it all in hand for us to start tomorrow,’ he said once they were on their way. ‘He’s been with Maurice God knows how many years. Maurice swears John has forgotten more than the average botanist learns in a lifetime about plants—exotic or otherwise.’

‘Does he usually accompany Maurice on field trips?’ asked Maggie, welcoming the distraction of the topic with limp relief.

‘No,’ chuckled Slane. ‘It seems Maurice has never been able to persuade John to set foot on a plane, so John and the team run everything while he’s off gadding about.’

‘You must have been pleased to hear they’d managed to grow this plant. How near to extinction is it?’

‘Extremely near—in its natural habitat, that is,’ he replied as he eased the car into the city’s rush-hour traffic. ‘It grows like a weed just about anywhere. The trouble is it mututes and ends up lacking the vital properties that made it of interest in the first place.’ He swung the car into the entrance of a multi-storey car park. ‘I’ve just realised,’ he muttered, turning to her once they were parked, ‘I don’t have any change on me—how about you?’

Maggie rummaged in her bag. She took out her purse, and a comb which she handed to him.

‘I’ll get a ticket while you get the rest of that tissue out of your hair.’

That she was accompanied by the sort of man who turned heads was made abundantly clear to Maggie as they made their way from the car park towards Grafton Street. She found herself trying to remember what her own reaction had been in that very first instant when she had laid eyes on Slane, but her uncooperative mind kept leaping too far forward, presenting her with images that made her cheeks burn despite the chill of the rain now drizzling lightly against them.

‘We’re going to one of my old haunts—Bewleys,’ he told her, the touch of his hand at her elbow light as he guided her through a sudden swell of people.

‘I’ve never seen so many people!’ exclaimed Maggie. ‘Is it always this crowded?’

‘I guess quite a few of these people are on their way to work,’ he laughed, steering her through a doorway and into a shop heavily scented with the aroma of coffee, ‘but Grafton Street is usually pretty lively.’

Slane at last removed his coat as they entered the famous coffee-house, grinning at Maggie’s reaction of wide-eyed delight as she gazed around the dark wood and marble interior, packed almost to the hilt, and filled with the soft buzz of conversation.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked once they were seated.

‘Starving,’ she replied, a hand rising self-consciously to her damp hair as her eyes met those of a strikingly attractive woman at the next table who had just finished giving Slane a thorough perusal. The woman smiled in sympathy and patted her own hair as much as to say, Mine too, then resumed conversation with her companion.

Just about every woman in their immediate vicinity had done it, observed Maggie without rancour—given Slane an appreciative inspection, followed by a quick appraisal of the woman accompanying such an Adonis. A pretty natural reaction, she thought with a tinge of ruefulness that quickly deteriorated into a pang of alarm as her nose began to throb—with her present luck it was probably shining like a beacon!

‘Shall I just order us the full works?’ asked Slane as a waitress approached.

Maggie nodded, and made the grave error of distracting herself from gloomy speculation regarding her appearance by subjecting Slane to a surreptitious inspection as he spoke to the waitress.

All right, so she was still in a state of shock, she reasoned miserably, feeling as if her mind was operating on badly depleted batteries as her eyes lapped him up. But she had to snap out of it, she told herself angrily. And accepting one minute that her past was a fact that she could no longer avoid facing, then in the next wallowing in the fantasy that she would wake to find it had all been a terrible dream was only a short cut to insanity.

‘You look pensive,’ Slane observed when the waitress had left, his eyes disconcertingly inscrutable as they flickered over her.

‘Do I?’ she exclaimed with a guilty start.

‘Yes.’ He leaned back in his chair, his amused, mocking eyes holding hers.

‘Well, I was thinking,’ she blurted out defensively, and then had to ransack her mind for a topic to back up the claim. ‘I was thinking…about that plant Obviously the aim is to reproduce it intact—but if it grows like a weed why get Maurice to do the trials here? Surely it would have been more practical for you to get someone to grow it in America?’

‘Perhaps—except that I didn’t get anyone to grow it for me anywhere,’ he replied unenlighteningly, then began gazing around him, a look of bored detachment on his face.

Maggie felt anger and confusion doing battle within her. Even if she had only been roped in at the last moment as a lowly lab assistant, it was perfectly natural for her to show an interest in the project…Or perhaps it was simply that he was loath to discuss anything with a woman with whom he had had a one-night stand and whom he was determined not to acknowledge.

‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, his face brightening. ‘Food. What a welcome sight’

What a welcome distraction, thought Maggie, gratefully inhaling the glorious aromas emanating from the huge platters set before them. Whether he remembered her or whether he was simply an uncommunicative boor with a bad memory, for now she didn’t give a toss—she was starving!

They ate in the silence that such hearty, immaculately prepared food warranted. And it was only after her hunger pangs had been well and truly pandered to that Maggie found her thoughts straying back to where they had been before the arrival of the food had rescued her.

‘I feel it’s almost criminal to leave all this,’ she sighed, resisting the tug of those thoughts, ‘but I couldn’t manage another mouthful—there was enough for three on my plate.’

He grinned across at her, then casually speared a juicily glistening sausage from her plate with his fork.

‘It’s just as well Mrs Morrison isn’t around,’ he laughed. ‘I once made the near-fatal error of telling her I’d breakfasted here—boy, did I have to grovel to get back into her good books.’ He demolished the sausage, then returned to her plate to forage further.

It was what lovers did, thought Maggie weakly—ate titbits from one another’s plates…And wasn’t that what they had been so briefly—the most passionate of lovers?

‘So, this Maurice doesn’t actually work for your company,’ she stated, her need for distraction driving her back to the topic he had so abruptly dismissed.

‘Maurice?’ he echoed, one blue-black eyebrow arching superciliously. ‘I thought I’d already explained—Maurice doesn’t work for anyone. He’s just a brilliant botanist who does his own thing.’

It was like pulling teeth, thought Maggie angrily. ‘You haven’t explained anything—despite your intimation last night that you would,’ she snapped. ‘And that’s why I’m still asking.’

‘So what do you want to know?’ he drawled, his eyes like glittering ice.

‘Well, for a start, if this is Maurice’s thing, why can’t he do his own analyses?’

‘It isn’t his thing.’

‘Well, thanks a million,’ hissed Maggie across the table at him. ‘If that’s the way you motivate your staff, all I can say is God help them!’

‘You need motivating to assist with a bit of lab work, do you?’ he enquired, scowling back at her.

‘Forget I ever showed any interest,’ she snapped, picking up her coffee-cup and draining it. ‘And we can do the work in complete silence for all I care.’

His lips were pursed as he picked up the coffee-pot and refilled both their cups. ‘Give me a break, Maggie,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been through so many time zones in the past few days that right now I’m not too sure which way is up.’

He ladled sugar into his coffee and stirred it, a closed, far-away expression on his face. ‘I’ve no idea whether or not Maurice has succeeded in reproducing this plant in its pristine state, but we’ll know soon enough after it’s been tested—’

He broke off to take some coffee, an expression of utter bleakness on his face. ‘Maurice and my father go back a long way…They first met as kids and kept in regular touch, both being prolific letter writers, right up until my father’s death.’

His father, thought Maggie, her heart constricting.

‘Slane, I—I…’ she stammered, guilt flooding her. ‘Look, if you’d rather not talk about it—’

‘Make up your mind,’ he cut in exasperatedly. ‘Do you want to hear about this or not?’

‘I want to hear,’ she replied robotically. She had known from the little that Connor had said that Slane bore wounds with which she was achingly familiar… Now his had been opened up and there was nothing that could be done to spare him.

‘It seems Maurice came across this plant a few years ago and wrote to my father about it. Some forest tribe or other used it medicinally—mainly as an antidote to poisons and allergies. Maurice plainly thought it was worth investigating—’

He broke off to ask a passing waitress for the bill. ‘A while back Maurice got in touch with me. Off and on, since my father’s death, he’d been experimenting with a range of different growing media. And now he’s come up with several plants he feels are worth testing.’

‘He must be so nervous now that they’re about to be tested,’ said Maggie as the waitress returned with the bill.

‘I doubt if he’ll give it too much thought until he gets the results,’ said Slane, his tone amused. ‘Oh, he’ll keep at it if he hasn’t succeeded—but that’s Maurice. Give him a botanical problem to puzzle over and he’ll happily spend the next decade or so solving it—or proving there is no solution.’

‘Do you think there’s a chance he has solved it?’ asked Maggie as they both rose.

He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ His eyes caught hers before sweeping slowly down the length of her body; then they swept back up again to linger finally on her parted lips and take in the hectic warmth that his deliberations had brought to her cheeks.

When his eyes at last returned to hers they were filled with mocking challenge. ‘Who knows what we’re about to discover once we get started?’

CHAPTER THREE

THEIR conversation in the famous coffee-house had unsettled them both.

It had left Maggie in a mood of dark reflection, in which she found herself digging deeper into the store of banished memories already disturbed by Slane’s arrival. Slane it had left edgy and cynical one moment, then mockingly salacious the next, as those heavy-lidded eyes would catch hers and appear to make suggestions that bore no relation to the innocuous words he happened to be uttering.

Whatever the memories it had stirred in him, as far as Maggie was concerned it was having the effect of accentuating every negative quality he possessed.

So far she hadn’t retaliated, restrained by too many memories of how appalling her own behaviour had been as she had struggled to come to terms with the devastation of grief.

‘Connor mentioned that you’d decided to become a teacher,’ stated Slane as the car ground to a halt in yet another hold-up in the traffic. ‘How come?’

Maggie mentally braced herself; he had spoken the words, but there hadn’t been any trace of interest in them.

‘I decided it was time I had a proper career…and my father taught’

‘What subject did he teach?’

‘Chemistry.’

Now they were on decidedly dodgy ground, thought Maggie, her entire body tensing. Just one snide remark from him in relation to her father and that would be it as far as her feelings of empathy were concerned.

‘I hope you hadn’t anything planned for today,’ he muttered as the line of traffic crawled forward a few feet before stopping again. ‘Who knows? We could be stuck here till dark. Now wouldn’t that be fun?’

Maggie made the error of glancing at him and again found herself bathed in what could only be described as a come-to-bed look—albeit a decidedly mocking one.

‘Why do you keep doing that?’ she exploded, goaded beyond restraint.

‘Doing what?’

‘Looking at me like that!’

‘And what way is that?’

Maggie clamped her mouth tightly shut. Well, at least that was her guilt trip over, she told herself angrily, and a totally misplaced one it had been too. The man was probably incapable of the finer feelings with which she had so foolishly been crediting him—he was a complete and utter boor!

‘I guess this disorientation I’m suffering—’

‘Spare me the drivel,’ pleaded Maggie witheringly.

‘Has stripped away my inhibitions,’ he continued unconcernedly. ‘Thank God for that!’ he exclaimed as the traffic at last flowed freely. ‘I can’t be the first guy who’s looked at you appreciatively—you’re a very beautiful woman, Maggie.’

‘I’m a moderately attractive woman,’ she snapped. ‘So I suggest you save your breath.’ Which was exactly what she should be doing, she told herself exasperatedly.

‘They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ he murmured, his tone all sweetness and reason, ‘and mine reckons you’re beautiful. I mean, what is there that could be improved on? You have eyes that—’

‘Shut up!’ howled Maggie, something in her snapping completely. ‘Just stop it!’

‘Now there’s an enigma for you—a woman who throws a fit when a man tells her she’s beautiful. I wonder what your problem is, Maggie?’

‘I’m not throwing a fit!’ Horrified by the hysteria shrilling her tone, she fought to contain herself. ‘And I don’t have a problem—unless it’s that I’ve put up with your snide remarks and…and everything else you’ve been dishing out to me! And, while we’re on the subject of problems, if you have one over working with me just say so and I can get the next flight home.’

‘As you well know, I can’t afford to have a problem with it—you’re all I’ve got.’

‘Forgive me for saying so, but it takes a lot of believing that someone of your reputation would have such a problem replacing me,’ retorted Maggie, his lack of denial about his behaviour stirring up another seething swarm of does-he-or-doesn’t-he-remember-mes in her beleaguered mind.

‘And what do you know of my reputation, Maggie?’ he drawled as he swung the car into the drive of the house. ‘It would be a laboratory assistant I’d be replacing, not someone to warm my bed.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ gasped Maggie, her hands shaking uncontrollably as they fumbled to release her seat belt.

‘Disgusting?’ he enquired softly, his hand covering hers and stilling its frantic scrabbling.

‘You know perfectly well I was referring to your professional reputation, not to you…to your—’ She broke off, praying for a bottomless pit to appear for her to throw herself into.

‘What—are you too prudish even to say it?’ he asked in that same, steely soft voice. ‘My reputation with women?’

‘I’m not a prude!’ she howled, tearing her hand free.

‘So how come you’re giving such a good impression of being one?’ he enquired, releasing her seat belt.

‘And what, exactly, is your definition of one?’ she demanded, fury rampaging through her. ‘Ice maiden’, ‘prude’—Peter had progressed to other synonyms the night they had parted; vicious and vulgarly explicit, he had hurled them all at her fleeing figure. ‘Any woman who doesn’t fling herself into your arms?’ Dear God, what was she saying? ‘Any woman who doesn’t worship at the shrine of your looks and power?’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

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

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