Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

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

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

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 one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

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

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-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.

A Time To Dream
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN the telephone started to ring, Melanie was poised precariously on the narrow platform of a pair of heavy wooden stepladders. The tip of her tongue was curled determinedly between her lips as she concentrated on trying to successfully hang the all important, first piece of wallpaper on walls which fell woefully short of being anything remotely like flat and straight.

Firmly ignoring the insistent clamour of the phone, she carefully pressed the pasted paper to the wall, but already her concentration was wavering.

The trouble was that—much as she had looked forward to the isolation of these next few months, telling herself that a spring and summer spent in the peaceful depths of the country, gently and leisurely bringing into reasonable decorative order the cottage she had been so unexpectedly left; much as she knew she needed this period of valuable recuperation to recover not just from a very nasty bout of flu, but also from the anguish of discovering that Paul had not loved her after all, and had simply been amusing himself with her while all the time intending to marry Sarah Jefferies and thus amalgamate the two businesses owned and run by their respective fathers—she was still beginning to feel rather alone.

She had been warned about Paul, of course. The older, wiser eyes of Louise Jenkins, her boss and the head of Carmichael’s PR department, had seen what was happening and had gently warned her not to place too much reliance on Paul and the attention he was paying her.

Fortunately her pride had probably been more hurt than her heart, especially when she had discovered that the very weekend she had firmly refused to go away with Paul he had then spent with Sarah.

When Louise had gently and sorrowfully broken this news to her, warning her of the impending engagement, she had hidden the pain she felt and had tossed her head defiantly, stating that she did not care, and that Paul Carmichael meant nothing to her.

She was very wise, Louise had remarked calmly, because she suspected that Paul was too shallow, too vain and self-obsessed to make any woman truly happy, and that, once she was married to him and her father’s business empire was secured for Carmichael’s, Sarah would find that Paul’s present pseudo-adoration of her would very quickly turn to indifference.

Melanie had listened and mechanically agreed with Louise’s pronouncement, but inside the shock of what she had learned was making her feel sick and desperately unhappy.

Now Melanie was only glad that the flu which had then struck her down had not manifested itself until after the engagement party, which all the staff had been commanded to attend, and that, even though she had felt as though she were being wrenched apart inside, she had managed to put in an appearance at the table reserved for her colleagues, a bright false smile pinned to her face as she joined in the celebrations.

It didn’t matter how much she told herself that she had had a lucky escape; that it was plain that Paul had never intended her to be anything other than a brief diversion in his life: the pain of discovering how poor her judgement had been, how foolish her heart, was not easy to dismiss.

And then had come the extraordinary letter from a hitherto unknown firm of solicitors, informing her that she was the sole beneficiary under the will of a certain John William Burrows, who had left her not only the entire contents of his bank account, which amounted to some fifty thousand pounds, but also a comfortably sized but very dilapidated cottage, together with its large overgrown garden and several acres of land on the outskirts of a tiny Cheshire village.

She should, the solicitors informed her when she presented herself at their offices, have no difficulty in selling the property; a course which they had recommended since Mr Burrows had been rather eccentric in the latter years of his life and the property had become extremely run-down.

‘Were there no blood relatives, no family to whom Mr Burrows could have left his estate?’ Melanie had asked anxiously, totally unable to understand why her unknown benefactor had chosen to leave everything to her.

‘Only one,’ she had been informed. ‘A second cousin with whom Mr Burrows had not apparently seen eye to eye.’

When she had asked with further anxiety if the estate ought not more properly have gone to this man, the solicitor had patiently advised her that Mr Burrows had been free to dispose of his assets to whomever he chose and that he had chosen her. His cousin, moreover, was a successful and wealthy businessman to whom, or so the solicitor seemed to imply, the inheritance of such a paltry sum as fifty thousand pounds and a very run-down property, would be more of a nuisance than an advantage.

If it had not been for the fact that she had been feeling so run down herself, so depressed with life in general and her own circumstances in particular, if the bright spring sunshine had not so deplorably highlighted the deficiencies of her small Manchester bedsit…if she had not been overwhelmed by a sharp surge of curiosity about not merely the cottage but John Burrows himself, she suspected that she would have accepted the solicitor’s advice and instructed them to sell the house and land immediately.

It had been Louise who had persuaded her that the cottage was almost heaven sent and that six months or so spent living in the country was just what she needed right now.

‘But I don’t know anything about living in the country,’ she had protested, and Louise had laughed at her, pointing out that Cheshire was hardly the deepest South American jungle.

‘If you like, Simon and I will drive you out there this weekend and you can take a look at the place.’

Since Simon, Louise’s husband, was a qualified surveyor and would be able to tell her just how dilapidated the property actually was, Melanie had gratefully accepted this suggestion.

Which was how she now came to be perched so precariously on top of this ladder, trying desperately to follow Louise’s and Simon’s advice that, since the cottage was basically sound, it would pay her to spend some time and money on redecorating it before putting it up for sale.

‘Although if you do decide to sell you must hold on to the land,’ Simon had warned her. ‘There’s some talk of a new motorway extension in the area, which could send the price of any local land soaring.’

The phone had thankfully now stopped ringing, and very gingerly she climbed back down the ladder to survey the results of her handiwork.

When she had explained to the man in the wallpaper shop the condition of the cottage walls, explaining that she wanted to do something to brighten up the dull dinginess, she had been thrilled when he had suggested this pretty floral paper with its soft pinks and blues on a gentle cream background. Since there was no formal pattern to the paper it would not matter so much that the walls were not completely straight, he had explained to her; and the fact that the paper was ready-pasted and needed only to be moistened in the specially provided water-tray would greatly assist her in this her first venture as a wallpaper-hanger.

And then if all else failed he did just happen to have the name and address of an excellent local decorator, he had added with a kind smile, correctly interpreting her uncertain look at what seemed to be a vast amount of rolls of paper.

The trouble was that she had lived so long in rented accommodation in the confines of one tiny cluttered room that she was completely inexperienced in this sort of thing.

Before that her home had been the shabby institutionalised atmosphere of the children’s home where she had grown up.

When Melanie was orphaned when just three years old, there had been no one to take her into their charge. As she had grown up and realised how alone in the world she was, she had learned to cover the loneliness and aching sense of loss this brought her with a bright smile and an insouciant air of cheerfulness, while inwardly giving in to the compulsion to daydream on what her life might have been if her parents had not been killed in that car crash.

Perhaps it had been that inner loneliness, that need she had always tried to keep so firmly under control which had made her so susceptible to Paul’s false declaration of love.

Louise had been right about one thing. Living here in this cottage was giving her a new perspective on life.

Always fiercely independent, fiercely determined not to rely on anyone for anything, she was beginning to discover that needing the companionship, the friendship of others was not perhaps a weakness after all, but simply an acceptable fact of being human.

She had been surprised to discover how curious people were about her, and how ready they were to express that curiosity. The cottage was situated almost two miles outside the village, but already Melanie had had several callers, no doubt curious to see the young woman to whom old Mr Burrows had left his property.

Melanie still had no idea why on earth John Burrows had left his estate to her, and the solicitors had been as baffled as she was herself.

She frowned, worried as she studied her wallpaper, wondering if it was straight enough.

She wasn’t a very tall girl, barely five feet three with fine delicate bones that made her look far more fragile than she actually was. Her debilitating attack of flu had left her looking more finely drawn than ever, leaving shadows beneath her dark blue eyes and a listlessness to her normally energetic way of moving.

Today her long dark hair was tied back off her face and plaited, making her look much younger than her twenty-four years.

Twenty-four. Paul had laughed at her when she had turned down his suggestion that they spend the weekend together. She couldn’t possibly still be a virgin, he had mocked her. Not at her age and with her background.

That had hurt her; as though somehow the fact that she had no family to support and protect her meant that she must somehow be promiscuous. She had immediately denied such a suggestion, ignoring the unkind way he was laughing at her.

As a child she had loved reading; had found in her books an escape from the loneliness of her life, and perhaps it was because she had absorbed so many fairy-tales that she had clung so tenaciously during her late teens to the fantasy that one day she would meet someone; that they would fall in love and that not until that happened would she have any desire for the kind of sexual intimacy that seemed so casually taken for granted by others.

Perhaps Paul was right and she was being naı¨ve and idiotic; perhaps it was true that the majority of men would deplore and mock her inexperience; perhaps it was also true that at her age she ought to finally be abandoning her ridiculous notions of falling in love and living happily ever after.

Certainly, now that her eyes had been opened to Paul’s true character, she would not want to change places with Sarah.

Very carefully she cut the next strip of wallpaper, equally carefully rolling it up and placing it in the water-filled tray.

It had been Louise who had suggested that she tried her hand at doing some of her own decorating, taking Melanie home with her to show her what she and Simon had achieved in their own elegant detached house.

Some ten years her senior, Louise was proving to be a good friend, the first real friend she had ever had. She and Simon had been very kind to her and they were the only people she had ever admitted into her life and her trust.

Quite why, when she was eighteen years old, she had decided to take a course of driving lessons and ultimately her driving test she had never really known, but now she was thoroughly glad she had done so. Although Melanie was reluctant at first to touch any of her savings, Louise and Simon had firmly told her that when living in such an isolated area a car was an absolute necessity, and then when she had seen the fire-engine red VW Beetle she had fallen so immediately in love with it that Louise had chided her teasingly about being a salesman’s dream.

She did not intend to touch a penny of her inheritance—she had other plans for that!

Wealth, luxuries, life in what was popularly termed ‘the fast lane’—these had no appeal whatsoever for Melanie, but what she had always secretly hankered for was a home of her own, preferably in a country setting.

Of course in her daydreams this home was peopled with the family she had never had, but perhaps that was why she had given in so easily to Louise’s urgings that she move into the cottage if only for a little while.

Perhaps there had also been another reason; perhaps she had hoped that in living in the cottage she might somehow discover more about her unknown benefactor.

Melanie didn’t know very much about men, as the lamentable way in which she had almost fallen for Paul’s deceit had shown. She had no idea why a man, a total stranger, should choose to make her the beneficiary of his will. The solicitors had suggested that perhaps there was a blood connection, but she had shaken her head, knowing already that she had no blood relatives whatsoever.

Perhaps, then, he had known her parents. Again she had shaken her head, forced to admit that she had no idea whether or not this might have been the case, but privately she doubted it. If he had, surely he would have come forward to make himself known to her while he was still alive.

Apart from his cousin, it seemed that John Burrows had had no other family. He had lived in the area all his life and so had his family before him, although in the latter years of his life he had apparently become something of a recluse.

Carefully Melanie mounted the ladder again, gingerly carrying the second piece of wallpaper.

This proved harder to stick on to the wall than the first piece. Even harder was trying to align the edges of the two pieces so that the random pattern matched. The damp paper tore, causing her to make a small verbal protest at her own lack of skill as she hastily tried to stop the paper ripping even further.

Perhaps if she hadn’t been concentrating so hard on what she was doing it would not have been such a shock when the bedroom door opened abruptly and a totally unfamiliar male voice called out cheerfully, ‘Sorry to barge in like this. I tried ringing the bell but couldn’t get any response and, since your back door was open…’

Automatically Melanie let go of the sticky paper and turned round, forgetting her precarious position on top of the ladder.

The man’s reactions were fast. As the ladder started to topple and she with it, he seemed to virtually leap forward across the room, grabbing her around the waist and swinging her free of the heavy ladders just as they crashed down on to the floor.

It must be the shock of both his totally unexpected appearance and nearly having a painful fall that was making her feel so weak, she decided shakily, unable to do a thing other than simply cling to the hard muscles of his arms while he held her firmly suspended quite some distance from the floor, his black-lashed grey eyes subjecting her to a very thorough and slow appraisal.

As the colour rose up under her skin, her body language betraying immediately that she was both unused to and not entirely comfortable with such intimacy, his expression changed, a tiny frown appearing between his dark eyebrows as he studied her again.

What was it about her that was bringing that almost irritated frown to those otherwise rather carefully blank grey eyes? Melanie wondered when she found the courage to shyly look into them.

He was still holding on to her, as effortlessly as though she were a small child, she realised rather indignantly as she struggled uncomfortably within his grasp, trying to remind him that he was still holding her some dozen or more inches off the floor.

When this gave no response, she demanded rather breathlessly, ‘Could you please put me down?’

He had stopped looking at her, thankfully, and seemed to be studying the wall behind her with a rather arrested and bemused look on his face. The wall she had just been papering, she realised defensively; but now he looked at her again, and her whole body seemed to receive a shocking jolt of sensation that made her feel literally as though her bones had turned to fluid and that if he put her down now she would simply dissolve into a small heap at his feet.

The trouble was that she wasn’t used to being so physically close to a man; and certainly not a man like this one. He might not be handsome in the way that Paul had been. Paul, with his blond good looks, his carefully groomed hair, his hard, compelling bone-structure and his equally hard muscles; but this man had something about him, something which she dimly recognised was far more potent and dangerously male than Paul’s rather effeminate and weak good looks.

‘Not yet, I think,’ the stranger told her easily. ‘First I demand my forfeit…’

‘Your forfeit…’ Melanie was unaware of saying the words aloud in a stupefied almost drugged voice until he smiled at her. She had often read of smiles being described as wolfish, but this was the first time she had ever seen one. It made her skin go cold and then hot, and a tiny, forbidden pulse of excitement beat into life deep within her body; a sensation so unfamiliar and shocking that she could only stare at him with her bewilderment openly betrayed in her eyes.

His own narrowed fractionally, their blankness suddenly sharpening into an expression that made her heart jump frantically, but thankfully he seemed to mistake the cause of her shock because he explained patiently as though speaking to a child, ‘Yes, the forfeit you owe me for so speedily saving you from misfortune. That’s the way it goes in all the best fairy-tales, isn’t it?’

Her heart jumped again. She averted her head, but couldn’t resist giving him a nervous sideways look. She licked her lips anxiously. He had said that almost as though he knew her; as though he knew of her childhood absorption and belief in such things.

But she wasn’t a child any more. She was a twenty-four-year-old woman, and he was a strange man who had no right to walk into her home even if she had misguidedly left the back door open.

However, before she could say as much he was speaking again, his voice soft, mesmeric almost. ‘You have such a warm, irresistible mouth that there’s really only one forfeit I can ask you for, isn’t there? A mouth like yours was surely fashioned deliberately to entice a man’s kisses.’

Her head was whirling. What on earth was happening to her? Things like this simply did not take place. Men such as this one simply did not walk into her life and demand forfeits from her…kisses…And as for what he had said about her mouth…

Unconsciously she traced its shape with her tongue tip, her eyes unwittingly darkening in reaction to the potency of what he had whispered to her, her naı¨vety and lack of experience so openly obvious that for a moment he hesitated.

What if his assumptions should be wrong? She looked so fragile…so lost…so vulnerable somehow; and then he reminded himself that he could not afford to make mistakes or allowances; that he had come here for one express purpose; that he…He tensed as she focused on him, her eyes so dark that they looked almost purple, so dilated that…

He felt his own heartbeat quicken, his body tensing in reaction to the scent and the warmth of her…the womanliness…Because she was a woman, despite the fragility of her body and the innocence in her eyes.

He lowered his head, sternly reminding himself why he was doing this.

Held fast in his arms, Melanie quivered nervously. He was going to kiss her; she knew it. She also knew she ought to stop him, but how could she? What was her puny strength against the hard bulk of his body?

The grey glance still held her own, inducing an almost trance-like state of stillness within her body.

She felt the warmth of his breath caress her cheek, and a rush of goose-pimples raced down her body.

She quivered once as his mouth touched hers, her body stiffening as her mind summoned all its feminine defences, desperately sensing an enemy more dangerous than any it had yet known, but her body was deaf to all the warnings of her brain.

He kissed her slowly and lingeringly, bemusing her so thoroughly that she wasn’t even aware of him gradually lowering her so that her feet could once more touch the floor, thus freeing his hands to cup her face and her arms to instinctively and betrayingly creep round his neck, her heart pounding suffocatingly, as his tongue tip stroked her trembling lips. The hand cupping her jaw held her still beneath his sensual assault, while its partner slid down her back, firmly moulding her against body.

Paul had kissed her. Several times and very passionately, or so she had thought, and there had been other kisses before that, but none like this; and for all the fact that there was none of the urgency, the greed of Paul’s kisses in this man’s almost detached possession of her mouth, she was still aware of a reaction within herself that was far, far more intense and dangerous that any emotion Paul had ever made her feel.

In fact, when he eventually started to release her mouth, her lips actually seemed to cling to his. And she knew that he was aware of it too because he made a sound beneath his breath which might have been irritation or which might have been amusement.

Thankfully whatever it was it brought her sharply back to reality in time to remove her arms from around his neck before he had to forcibly do it for her. However, when he stepped back from her, to her consternation she discovered that her body seemed to actively miss the hard pressure of his.

While she was still trying to come to terms with what had happened he stepped past her to examine her wallpapering, commenting almost brusquely, ‘You know, these ladders aren’t really safe. Some lightweight aluminium ones would be far better. Think what could have happened if you had fallen and I hadn’t been here to catch you.’

If he hadn’t been there she wouldn’t have fallen off the ladders in the first place, Melanie told herself sturdily. Now that he wasn’t touching her any more she was rapidly returning to sanity, to the awareness that he was a stranger who had invaded the privacy of her home, uninvited, and that, for all that her feminine awareness of him urged her to think differently, he could be dangerous.

‘Umm…’ he added, moving closer to the wall on which she was working. ‘It looks to me as though you could do with a plumb-line!’

‘A plumb-line?’ She stared at him.

‘Mm. If you’ve got a piece of string and some chalk I’ll show you what I mean.’

He turned round then and smiled at her, a warm gentle smile that made her heart turn over.

‘I am sorry,’ he apologised. ‘You must be wondering who on earth I am and what I’m doing barging in on you like this. I’ve just moved into the cottage at the bottom of the lane, only to discover that none of the services seem to have been switched on. I was hoping I could use your phone to make a couple of calls. My name’s Luke, by the way.’

‘Luke,’ Melanie repeated, automatically reaching out to shake the hand he had extended to her.

His grip was firm without being painful, the palm of his hand slightly callused as though he worked outside, and yet, for all the casualness of his jeans and shirt, there was an air about him which suggested that he was a man used more to giving orders than following them. But then, what did she know about men? Melanie derided herself a little forlornly.

‘Luke?’ she queried a little more firmly, determined to let him know that she wasn’t a complete fool.

‘Luke Chalmers,’ he told her easily, adding softly, ‘I hope you aren’t too angry with me for taking advantage of the opportunity that fate so generously gave me.’

Angry! Her heart skipped a beat. Anger wasn’t exactly how she would describe her confused and chaotic emotions, but from somewhere she found the presence of mind to respond drily, ‘Do you make a habit of going round demanding forfeits from women you don’t know?’

‘Only when they’re as beautiful and tempting as you,’ he told her gravely. ‘And that, fortunately, is very rare. So rare in fact that I’ve never known it to happen before.’

Her heart was thumping frantically again. She felt as though she was suddenly caught up in a new game—a game that was both wildly exciting and frighteningly dangerous.

‘You wanted to use the phone,’ she reminded him breathlessly. ‘It’s downstairs. I’ll show you.’

As she walked past him he caught hold of her arm, his fingers sliding almost caressingly over the softness of its inner flesh so that she quivered. His fingers encircled her wrist, holding her in bondage while his free hand moved up to her face.

He wasn’t going to kiss her again was he? He wasn’t going to repeat that mind-blowing, devastating caress? No, he wasn’t, it seemed. He reached out and removed something from her face, causing her to gasp a little as she felt a sharp sting of pain. She looked at him in surprise as he held a small snippet of her wallpaper between his fingers.

‘I believe that in the eighteenth century ladies used to stick false beauty-spots to their faces in order to draw attention to their eyes and mouth, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen wallpaper being used for the same purpose.

‘What a pity it was so close to your cheekbone and not your mouth,’ he added sultrily, ‘otherwise I might have been tempted to demand another forfeit.’

Melanie thought of all the sensible and authoritative things she ought to have said in response to this outrageous piece of male flirtation, but oddly all she could do was to gaze mutely at him, while inside she prayed desperately that he wouldn’t read into her silence the compliant eagerness of her body that he should adopt just such a course.

What on earth was happening to her? After Paul she had surely learned her lesson; had surely realised that it was idiotic to trust men so quickly, that it was dangerous to continue to believe in her childhood dreams and fantasies of finding love and living happily ever after.

‘The phone,’ she reminded him weakly. ‘It’s downstairs.’

‘Ah, yes, the phone,’ he agreed gravely. So gravely that she half suspected that he might be laughing at her. The thought made her face sting with embarrassed colour. Well, if he was she surely deserved it, allowing him to take advantage of her like that…allowing him to kiss her…to…to what?

Her bruised heart ached in panicky reaction to her susceptibility to him, reminding her of her vulnerability…reminding her of the close escape she had had from Paul’s deceit.

The telephone was in the sitting-room. She escorted him to it and then left him alone, retreating to the kitchen. When he rejoined her she would show him by her dignified silence, by her cool remoteness that whatever might have happened upstairs she was not the kind of woman to be easily influenced by his outrageous brand of flattery and flirtation.

He was a man who was obviously well versed in the ways of her sex, in its vanities and vulnerabilities, and it would be as well to ensure that he was aware right from the start that, close neighbours though they might be, she was simply not interested in the kind of flirtatious, meaningless affair in which he no doubt specialised and that he might just as well save his flattery and his kisses for someone more appreciative of them.

However, when he did eventually return he was looking so grave that she felt compelled to ask him anxiously, ‘Is something wrong?’

‘In a sense.’ There was no flirtatiousness in his manner now. ‘It seems that it’s going to be some weeks before the telephone people can put in a phone. Luckily the electricity supply should be on within the next couple of days. Unfortunately, however, my work does mean that I need a telephone.’

‘Your work?’

‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘I’m a private detective.’

Melanie stared at him. ‘A…a what?’

‘A private detective,’ he repeated casually. ‘I’m working on a case in this area. Naturally I can’t disclose any details. I rented the cottage, thinking it would give me a good base from which to work. It’s secluded enough to ensure that I don’t get too many people wanting to know what I’m doing here. That’s the trouble with country areas—people are curious about their neighbours in a way they aren’t in the city.’

‘Yes, they are, aren’t they?’ Melanie agreed. She too had discovered that, and it had thrown her a little at first, until she had sensibly realised that behind their curiosity was a very warm neighbourly concern for her well-being.

‘You’re not local, then?’ he asked her almost in surprise.

‘Well, no…actually I’m not.’

He paused as though inviting her to go on, and when she did not said softly, ‘Then it seems that we have something in common. Two strangers in a foreign land.’

For some reason his words conjured up a warmth within her, a sense of shared intimacy with him that made her react against it, to say primly, ‘I should hardly consider Cheshire a foreign land—’

‘You think not? The countryside is always a foreign land to a city dweller,’ he told her with a grin, adding, before she could respond, ‘Look, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’d better go.’

To her horror, Melanie discovered that she was almost on the verge of protesting that she didn’t want him to leave; that she had to literally bite on the inside of her mouth to stop herself from uttering the betraying words.

Silently she accompanied him to the back door, only able to incline her head in assent when he told her smoothly, ‘You really should get that lock seen to, you know. I’m surprised a streetwise city girl like you hasn’t had that attended to already.’

The way he said the word ‘streetwise’ made her tense as though sustaining a blow, as though somehow the words had held an insult, a gibe; and yet when she looked at him the grey eyes were still smiling, the relaxed bulk of the male body carelessly at ease, so that she knew she must have imagined the toughness, the threat which she had momentarily felt lay beneath the words.

Melanie closed the door as soon as he had driven off, bolting it from the inside. He was right about one thing. She must get that lock seen to.

Although she went back upstairs, somehow wallpapering had lost its appeal and she discovered that she was wandering restlessly from room to room of her new domain, her thoughts not on the house and all that she had planned to do to it, but on the man who had just left.

She raised her hand to her lips, touching them questingly as though in search of the physical imprint of his. Even without closing her eyes she could recall every detail of those moments in his arms, every nuance of the sensuality of his unexpected kiss.

Stop it, she told herself shakily. Stop it at once. You know how stupid it is to daydream. It’s time you grew up…faced reality…accepted life for what it really is.

CHAPTER TWO

EASY enough to say, but far, far harder to do, as Melanie discovered that evening as she tried to concentrate on the gardening books she had borrowed from the local library with the praiseworthy intention of doing what she could to restore order to the wilderness that lay beyond the house.

As she closed her book she was aware of a deep, welling sense of pity and sadness for the man who had willed her this house. How lonely he must have been, and how alone. The house and its environs bore testimony to that solitude; and although it had been a chosen solitude it had not been a happy solitude, she was sure of that. A happy hermit would never have allowed the garden to become so overgrown, or uncared for; a happy hermit would never have turned his back on the comforts his modest wealth could have afforded him to live virtually in the kitchen and his bedroom, as the village gossip had informed her her benefactor had. No; these were the habits of a man whose aloneness, while chosen, was a burden to him, a burden chosen out of bitterness perhaps, out of misery and pain. And yet, why? Why choose to live in the way that he had? Why turn his back on humanity? Why leave his estate to her, a stranger? How had he chosen her—from a list of names which closed eyes and a pin? she wondered unhappily. She had no way of knowing. The solicitors denied any knowledge of how or why he had made his choice, informing her only that it was perfectly legal and his will completely unbreakable.

But what about John Burrows’s cousin? she had asked uncertainly. Surely he must have expected to inherit the estate?

Not necessarily, the solicitor had assured her, adding that the two men had quarrelled some years before, and that, besides, the cousin—or, more properly, second cousin—was wealthy enough in his own right not to need to concern himself with his relative’s small estate.

Even so, Melanie had not been able to shake off the feeling that somehow a mistake had been made; that she was going to wake up one morning to discover that there had been a mistake; that it was another Melanie Foden to whom John Burrows had intended to leave her inheritance.

Although as yet she had not told anyone so, not even Louise, she had decided that at the end of the summer when the cottage was put up for sale whatever monies it brought in she would donate to charity, along with her benefactor’s contribution to her substantial bank balance.

The reason why she had not mentioned this plan either to Louise or to the solicitors was that she suspected that they would try to persuade her out of such a decision, but her mind was made up.

Much as she was enjoying her occupation of the cottage, she intended to treat these next few months as a complete break from reality, a voyage of discovery and exploration; a time of healing and rejuvenation, but something apart from her real life to which she fully intended to return once autumn came.

Right now, though, autumn was a long time away and she had a good deal of work to do. Work that involved a careful study of the books piled at her feet and not daydreaming about Luke Chalmers.

Face it, she warned herself as her thoughts traitorously refused to respond to her exhortations. He probably treats every woman the way he did you. It meant nothing…nothing at all. By rights she ought to have stopped him the moment she’d realised he intended to kiss her, instead of standing there like a fool, practically inviting his embrace. And not just inviting it, but enjoying it as well, she acknowledged guiltily as her thoughts and her memories reactivated that wanton throbbing deep within her body which had shocked her so much when she’d been in his arms.

Such feelings were completely unfamiliar to her. Her upbringing in the children’s home had never allowed her to give full rein to her burgeoning sexuality, and oddly, although Paul had touched her emotions, kindling the same yearning need for commitment and sharing, for someone with whom she could share her love, which she had experienced so much during her growing years, he had never aroused within her the sensations she had experienced in Luke Chalmers’s arms.

Disturbed by the train of her own thoughts, she got up, pacing the sitting-room restlessly.

The cottage was old, its walls irregular and bumpy, its ceilings low and darkened by the heavy beams which supported it.

Like Melanie, it was desperately crying out for love and tenderness, she acknowledged, shivering a little. It worried her constantly, this need she sensed within herself, because she knew how vulnerable it made her, how much in danger she was of mistaking the reactions and responses of others.

Look how she had deceived herself into believing that Paul genuinely cared about her! No wonder that hand in hand with her need had always gone caution and wariness, her mind’s defences against the vulnerability of her heart.

She gave another, deeper shiver, wrapping her arms around her slim body as though trying to ward off the danger her mind warned her was waiting for her.

This was ridiculous, she told herself irritably. So Luke Chalmers had kissed her. So what?

So what? She knew quite well what, her mind jeered, while her heart trembled and her body was flooded with the echoes of the sensations he had made her feel.

It was almost as though, like the heroine of a fairytale, she was the victim of a powerful spell.

Nonsense, her brain denied acidly. Just because she had reacted sexually to the man, that was no reason to go investing him with magical powers.

Sex. A sad smile curled her mouth. Paul had accused her of being almost completely lacking in sexuality. She was cold and frigid, he had complained when she had refused to go away with him. Didn’t she realise how much he wanted her? Well, now she knew the true depth of that wanting, and it had been a very shallow need indeed. A need which, she suspected, would have been quickly quenched if she had given way to him.

Hopefully her response to Luke Chalmers was the same; something which would quickly fade if she ignored it and refused to give in to its insidious demand. A fire which would die down as quickly as it had arisen if she smothered it with common sense and hard reality.

And if she didn’t? She stood still, gazing blindly towards the empty fireplace, her heart thudding erratically, her whole body suddenly bathed in a fierce heat.

This was all nonsense, she told herself firmly. She would probably not even see the man again.

When he only lived less than half a mile away at the end of the lane?

He was here to work…just as she was herself. There was no real need for their paths to cross again, and, after all, wouldn’t it be better if they did not? The last thing she needed right now was the kind of highly charged sexual affair she was pretty sure was all he had to offer her.

The most sensible thing she could do was to forget she had ever met him and concentrate on all the work that lay in front of her, beginning right now by returning to those gardening books.

Louise had expressed doubt when Melanie had told her that she intended to tackle the wilderness that was the garden by herself, demurring that she felt that Melanie ought to ask around to see if there wasn’t someone in the village who could give her some help

‘The lawn will have to be scythed,’ she had warned Melanie, ‘and that’s no job for an amateur. And if you do intend to try and grow some salad stuff and soft fruits you’ll need someone to dig over the vegetable beds for you.’

‘I’m not sure if I can afford to employ someone to do that.’ Melanie had hesitated, not wanting to explain to Louise her reluctance to touch a penny of the capital she had inherited, wanting to donate it in its entirety to some deserving charity, which was why she had insisted on paying for her small car out of her own savings.

She wasn’t too worried about finding a new job once the summer was over. Without being vain, she knew she was a good secretary with excellent qualifications, and if the worst came to the worst she could always do some temping for a few months until the right job turned up.

In the meantime…in the meantime…She took a deep breath. In the meantime she had better get down to reading her way through that very large pile of books.

MELANIE DIDN’T go to bed until very late, determined to exorcise the memory of Luke Chalmers by forcing herself to concentrate on her reading. Eventually it had worked, after a fashion, although unfortunately it hadn’t been the chapters on vegetable growing which had caught her attention, but those on the flower borders traditional to cottage gardens, and she hadn’t been able to stop herself from daydreaming about how her own garden might look, transformed into such a vision of delight, its lawns smooth and green, its borders filled with silky-petalled poppies, the tall spires of dark blue delphiniums, the sturdiness of lupins and monkshood and the delicacy of the old-fashioned single-coloured ‘granny’s bonnets’ growing against a background of climbing roses and everlasting sweet peas. There would be a lavender hedge edging the path down to the front gate, mingling their scent with the rich clove-like perfume of the pinks that grew between them.

Dizzy with the headiness of her thoughts and plans, she went upstairs, and yet ironically, instead of dreaming of the perfection of the garden she wanted to create, she dreamed instead of Luke Chalmers.

SHE WOKE UP LATE, heavy-eyed with an aching head and a dull sense of bewilderment and confusion. Her dreams had disturbed her, leaving her feeling edgy and insecure.

Her bout of flu had robbed her of her appetite, making her lose weight so that Louise had clucked her tongue and warned her that she needed to eat more.

Melanie knew it was true, but she had no appetite for the toast she had made for herself, pushing the plate away with the bread barely touched. She was just sipping her coffee when the phone rang.

Her heart jolted to a standstill and then started to race so much that she was actually trembling as she went to answer it.

Why on earth she should think it might be Luke Chalmers she had no idea, but when she recognised that the male voice on the other end of the line belonged to a stranger, it wasn’t relief she felt, but something paralysingly close to disappointment.

‘Miss Foden?’ the caller enquired a second time, causing her to swallow hard and reply in the affirmative. ‘You don’t know me. My name is Hewitson, David Hewitson. Shortly before his death, John Burrows and I were having discussions about the sale of the cottage and the land to me. John had, in actual fact, accepted my offer, sensibly realising that he had reached an age at which it was no longer wise for him to live in such isolation. In fact, if it hadn’t been for his death, the sale would have gone through.’

Listening to him, Melanie frowned. For some reason, despite his calm, almost gentle voice, she felt as though David Hewitson was almost issuing a subtle threat against her; perhaps even suggesting that by rights he ought to be the owner of the cottage. Her frown deepened. The solicitors had said nothing to her about any such sale, which surely they would have done had it been so advanced that the actual paying over of the money was virtually only a final formality.

What they had said was that there had been several offers of purchase, which might or might not have been motivated by the fact that a proposed new motorway, if approved, could add dramatically to the cottage’s land value.

‘What I should like to do,’ David Hewitson was continuing smoothly, ‘is to call round to see you. I’m sure a girl such as yourself would much rather have a few hundred thousand in the bank than a decaying old cottage.’

It was said carelessly, arrogantly, contemptuously almost, so that Melanie felt an atavistic reaction to his suggestion so sharp and intense that it was almost as though she already knew and disliked the man. And yet she had never met him; knew nothing whatsoever about him, and for all she knew her benefactor might genuinely have come to some kind of gentleman’s agreement with him concerning the sale of the cottage prior to his death. In which case, surely she ought to honour it?

‘Yes, with that kind of capital behind you, a girl as clever as you could go a long way.’ There was a brief soft laugh. ‘After all, a girl clever enough to get an old skinflint like Burrows to leave her every penny he possessed must surely be wasting her talents in an out of the way village like Charnford.’

Melanie froze, unable to believe what she was hearing, what he was implying. Her body went cold and then hot as her skin crawled with revulsion and disgust. Her hand started to shake as she wondered sickly how many other people had jumped to that same horrible conclusion.

Summoning up every ounce of self-control she could, she said shakily, ‘I don’t think there’s any point whatsoever in your calling, Mr Hewitson. You see, I have no intention of selling either the cottage or the land.’

‘But Burrows and I had an agreement—’

‘Which, being merely verbal, is not legally binding,’ Melanie told him with what she hoped was conviction. Not for the world was she going to lower herself to deny the horrible untrue allegations he had made about her relationship with John Burrows, who had been only a few days short of his eightieth birthday when he died. Instead she said quietly, ‘Goodbye, Mr Hewitson.’

She was just on the point of replacing the receiver when the mask of cordiality was stripped from his voice to reveal its true acid venom as he told her savagely, ‘You think you’re being very clever, don’t you, trying to push up the price? Well, let me tell you, you’re playing a very dangerous game, little lady. A very dangerous game.’

She slammed down the receiver again without speaking to him again. She was shaking all over, as much with revulsion as anything else. His threat had barely sunk into her awareness. She was far too sickened by his earlier imputation about the reason why she had inherited John Burrows’s estate to be aware of anything else.

It was well over an hour before she felt calm enough to pick up the receiver and dial the number of the solicitors.

When she got through to the partner who had dealt with John Burrows’s affairs, she asked him without ceremony, almost brusquely, if he knew anything about an agreement John Burrows might have made to sell the cottage to David Hewitson.

When the solicitor confirmed that he had no knowledge of any such agreement, she discovered that she had actually been holding her breath. Had his reply been the opposite, she would have felt that she had no alternative but to allow the sale to go through, since it would have been what her benefactor had intended.

‘Why do you ask?’ the solicitor enquired.

Briefly she told him, leaving out David Hewitson’s imputations about her relationship with John Burrows.

‘Mm. David Hewitson is a very well-known local builder with a somewhat unsavoury reputation for the methods his company sometimes uses to acquire building land. It hasn’t been unknown for the company to buy property with a preservation order on it and for that property to be accidentally destroyed, thus freeing the land for redevelopment.

‘From what I know of Mr Burrows, he would not have taken kindly to a man of David Hewitson’s stamp, but of course if you decide to sell out to him…’

‘No; no, I won’t,’ Melanie assured him, adding fiercely, ‘I’d rather keep the cottage myself than do that.’

‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t advise you to rush into any hasty decision to sell,’ the solicitor warned her. ‘Should this proposed new motorway be approved, the value of your land will rise dramatically which is, no doubt, why David Hewitson is so eager to acquire it now.’

After she had replaced the receiver, Melanie stared out into the garden, shivering as she realised that where she had envisaged her green lawns and colourful borders David Hewitson probably planned destruction.

She had become ridiculously attached to the cottage, protective of it almost. It was as though they were kindred spirits in their need for love and care, and as she looked round the dirty cream walls of her sitting-room she had a mental vision of how the room could look, its walls repainted, its beams cleaned and polished, its floor covered, not in the grimy oilcloth that covered it now, but in a rough-textured plain cream carpet, its plainness broken up by the richness of warm oriental rugs, its shabby furniture recovered, crisp curtains hanging at the windows and perhaps a pretty antique table set in front of the window seat, with a large jug of flowers on it…flowers from her garden.

A faint sigh escaped her lips. What she was imagining was a daydream, nothing more. She was not here to turn the cottage into her dream home—the kind of home that cried out for a family, her family—but simply to make it saleable as a home for someone else.

She had walked across to the window, and now she touched one of the heavy glass panes, rubbing the dirt away from it as she tried to banish the sore place in her heart.

What was she doing, allowing herself to fall into such foolish daydreams? Daydreams which not only included the cottage, but also a man and his children; and not just any man. Her whole body trembled as she tried to deny her mental vision of Luke Chalmers…of the two children which were miniature replicas of the man.

Beyond the leaded windows fitful beams of spring sunshine highlighted the tangled overgrown garden. Louise was right; she could never tackle that wilderness outside on her own. She would have to make enquiries in the village to see if she could find someone to help her. And as for the cost…

She had always been thrifty with her money, a habit instilled in her during her days in the children’s home. With no one to depend on other than herself, she had soon learned to be sensible with her money.

Her small savings were her only precious security, and yet she felt within her, far more powerful and strong than her desire to protect that security, a deep-seated need to give the cottage every chance she could to prove to the world that it was worthy of being loved…of being cared for…of being preserved.

There was a small dull ache in Melanie’s heart. Wasn’t she really trying to prove to the world that she was worthy of being loved…of being wanted?

She pushed the thought away. It was pointless, giving in to that kind of introspection. She had work to do; but as she walked upstairs she paused, her heart suddenly sinking as she wondered how many other people shared David Hewitson’s view of her…how many of the villagers who had outwardly been so pleasant to her were actually inwardly thinking…

Stop that, she warned herself. Stop it at once.

Upstairs in the bedroom, she surveyed the wall and its two strips of wallpaper. Something was definitely wrong—even she could see that—but what? She needed a plumb-line as Luke Chalmers had said. She frowned a little, trying to remember what exactly he had said to her. She had done the best she could, scrupulously and meticulously fitting her first piece of paper into the exact angle of the wall, but even she could see that in doing so she had made a mistake.

The wallpaper would have to come off. It was just as well that she had bought a couple of extra rolls to allow for mistakes.

She had just started work when she heard the doorbell. Frowning, she stood still. What if David Hewitson had ignored her rejection and had after all come round in an attempt to persuade her to sell out to him?

Well, if he had, he would very soon learn his mistake, she decided angrily as she marched downstairs.

But when she opened the front door the man standing there was instantly recognisable, her heart rocketing about inside her chest as he smiled down at her and said softly, ‘Hello, again. Can I come in?’

Luke. Luke was here. Her heart was ricocheting around inside her chest like a rubber ball; she felt sick and giddy, light-headed and ridiculously, impossibly happy.

‘Er—yes…Is it the phone again?’ she asked him breathlessly as she turned back into the hallway and he followed her.

‘Actually, no. I’m at a bit of a loose end this morning, and I thought I’d come over and give you a hand with that decorating.’

Melanie gaped at him. ‘But that’s—’

‘Very neighbourly of me,’ he supplied for her.

She had been about to say that it was totally unnecessary, but now she stared uncertainly at him and said hesitantly, ‘It’s very kind of you, but there’s really no need—’

‘Oh, yes, there is,’ he contradicted her, adding teasingly, ‘I can see you aren’t used to decorating. The way you were doing it, anyone sleeping in that room would wake up seasick. Always lived at home up until now, have you?’ he suggested casually, heading for the stairs. ‘I’m surprised your family has let you come and live in such an isolated spot all on your own.’

Her heart was thumping frantically. As always she felt a mixture of panic and shame fill her at the thought of having to admit that she had no family. A feeling of guilt, as though she were somehow to blame…as though her lack of family somehow made her a second-class citizen.

The years of institutionalised living had left their mark, and a very deep sense of loss and pain that no amount of mature logic could entirely overcome.

‘There really is no need for you to do this,’ she repeated huskily, ignoring his question about her family.

If he was aware that her avoidance was deliberate he gave no sign of it, telling her cheerfully, ‘None at all, other than the fact that it gives me the opportunity to be with you.’

Before she could react to such a blatant piece of flattery he added thoughtfully, ‘In fact, I’d have thought you’d have preferred to hire a decorator.’

‘I wanted to do it myself,’ Melanie told him, unwilling to admit that it was necessity as much as anything else that forced her to tackle the redecoration herself.

‘Really? Personally I’ve always found that when it comes to wallpapering two pairs of hands are always better than one.’

He had reached the top of her stairs and, even though he had only been in the house once before and then only briefly, he seemed to know instinctively which door to open.

But, then, in his job Melanie imagined that he must need to have a good eye for details and the memory to go with it. She wondered what had made him choose such a career. A private detective. She had always imagined such men as small, anonymous characters who could slip unnoticed about their business. He was anything but unnoticeable.

‘Mm,’ was all he said as he surveyed her attempts to remove the crooked pieces of wallpaper. ‘If I could make a suggestion?’

Melanie waited, realising that he was going to do so whether or not she gave him her permission.

‘Because of the slope of the ceiling and the dormer windows, it might be an idea to take the paper right up over the wall, along the ceiling and down the other side. A room like this would probably at one time have had a dado rail at chair height. We could, if you like, break up the busyness of the floral paper by fixing a new rail and taking the patterned paper down to that level, and then putting a toning plain paper on the lower half of the walls.’

We…Was there any sweeter or more emotive word in the English language, especially when it encapsulated the two of them in a small private circle of intimacy, when it seemed to bond him to her almost, when it seemed to suggest that he—?

With a tiny gasp of shock, Melanie shook herself free of the insidious pull of her own weakness, and said breathlessly, ‘I don’t think I could tackle that kind of thing…and…’

‘No need. I wasn’t suggesting you should,’ he told her drily. When she made no response, he told her casually, ‘Look, this case I’m working on down here has gone off the boil a bit, so to speak, and I’m likely to have some time on my hands. How would it be if I took over as your decorator?’

‘Oh, but I couldn’t let you do that,’ Melanie objected, but her heart was racing with frantic excitement as she acknowledged how much she already wanted the dangerous intimacy he was promising her.

‘At least not without…not without paying you.’

‘Paying me?’ Suddenly he was frowning at her, his eyes curiously cold where they had been warm. The way he was looking at her made her shiver as she reacted automatically to the sharpness of his voice by stepping back from him.

It seemed he had read the meaning of her body language because immediately his expression changed, his eyes softening back to their original warmth. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that…well, the kind of relationship I had in mind for us wasn’t exactly one of business. However, if you really feel you have to offer me some form of repayment, how about payment in kind?’

She couldn’t help it. She looked immediately and betrayingly at his mouth, blushing vividly as she remembered how it had felt against her own. It was a very masculine mouth. Looking at it made her tremble inside and dig her teeth quite sharply into her own bottom lip, as she fought to banish the dangerous images tormenting her senses.

‘If you would agree to allow me to use your phone until my own is installed, that would be more than payment enough,’ she heard Luke saying, and instantly her fair skin flamed with guilty heat as she prayed that he hadn’t realised what she had been thinking.

Desperate to distract his attention, as if she were a vulnerable creature of the wild seeking sanctuary, she said quickly, ‘That’s…that’s fine by me. But this dado rail; do you really think—?’

‘I’m sure of it,’ he interrupted her. ‘Come over here and look at these marks on the wall.’

In order to do as he suggested she would have to stand so close to him that their bodies would be touching. A small shudder of sensation burned through her and she knew that if she did as he suggested, if she felt the heat and strength of his flesh against her own, she would be helpless to control the foolish response of her own flesh.

‘Yes, I can see them from here,’ she fibbed, adding nervously, ‘What do you suppose happened to it—the rails?’

‘Who knows? The old boy who used to live here probably ripped them out and used them as firewood,’ he told her wryly.

Melanie frowned. How had he known about John Burrows? Almost instantly she chided herself. Why shouldn’t he know? But did that mean that he knew about her, about how she had inherited the cottage? But no, he couldn’t do so, otherwise he would not have asked her about her family.

‘Right, then, let’s get started, shall we?’

AT ONE O’CLOCK, with three strips of immaculately aligned paper adorning the ceiling, Melanie suggested hesitantly, ‘Would you care for some lunch? It’s only salad and cold meat.’

‘Sounds like a great idea, but I’ve got a better one. Why don’t you let me drive you into Chester? There’s a good DIY place there where we can get the rail, and we could stop somewhere on the way for something to eat to save you doing anything.’

Melanie opened her mouth to ask him how he knew about the DIY centre and then closed it again, telling herself that she of all people ought to know better than to pry into someone else’s life, and, taking her silence as acceptance of his suggestion, Luke said warmly, ‘Good, that’s all settled, then. If I could just use your bathroom to clean up a bit?’

‘Er—yes, of course.’

The bathroom was shabby and uncomfortable like the rest of the house. It was also cluttered with her personal toiletries, her make-up and her hairbrush, since it was the only room in the house with a decent mirror in it.

Perhaps she was being foolish and naı¨ve to be embarrassed as she thought of him seeing such intimate possessions, and she had no doubt at all that he would be openly amused if he could read her mind; but the idea of any man—but especially this man—using the room which she considered to be her most personal domain brought a tingle of dangerous sensation racing down her spine.

As he washed his hands free of the sticky wallpaper paste, would he visualise her in the small confines of the bathroom, stepping out of the large old-fashioned bath, her body slick and wet?

The shock of her own thoughts was mirrored in her eyes as she turned quickly away from him.

What on earth was happening to her? She had never had these kinds of thoughts before. Never. They both shocked and excited her, opening secret doors within herself which she had never even known existed.

‘The bathroom,’ Luke reminded her quietly.

‘Oh, yes.’ She told him where it was, and then hurried into her own bedroom. It had a narrow single bed, a small chest of drawers and a wardrobe that wobbled because it was missing one foot. It also had a tarnished mirror into which she peered rather desperately after she had changed her jeans and top for a more formal pleated skirt and a toning jumper.

She didn’t have a lot of clothes, and most of those she did own had been chosen with her job in mind rather than for attracting admiring males’ glances.

Luckily she had washed her hair that morning and it hung in a clean, sweet-swelling, shiny fall on to her shoulders. She frowned as she stared at herself, wishing despairingly that she was taller and prettier, that her hair was curly and her nose straight.

Then she heard the bathroom door open and she grabbed the jacket she had put on the bed and hurried out to meet Luke on the landing.

Was it her imagination, or did his glance linger for just a split second longer than necessary on the soft swell of her breasts? Was that why they seemed so oddly tender as though they had actually been caressed and aroused by the firmness of a man’s hands?

‘If you’re ready,’ Luke was saying politely beside her as she battled against the shocking wantonness of her thoughts.

‘Er—yes…yes…I am.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘TELL me something about yourself.’

She was sitting in the passenger seat of Luke’s car while he drove them towards Chester. His question unnerved her, tightening her defences. She remembered how, over the years, she had been subject to a great many unkind comments because of her orphaned state, especially when she was at school. They had hurt, those comments, leaving tender scars.

‘There isn’t very much to tell.’ She hesitated, her mouth dry as she fought with her reluctance to reveal her own vulnerabilities to him.

There was a small silence during which he gave her a discomfitingly sharp look before saying, ‘Or not much you want to tell.’

He was shrewd, she had to give him that, but then his job would of course incline him to look beneath the surface, to probe and go on probing, to query and question.

She was starting to feel uncomfortably conscious of how little she would want to be the subject of his enquiries. Not that she had ever done anything in her life that would make her of any interest to a private detective.

‘I hope that one of those things you don’t want to tell me isn’t that you’ve got a husband and half a dozen offspring hidden away somewhere.’

His voice sounded lighter, teasing, but even so the shock of his charge caused her to turn automatically towards him, denying, ‘No, of course it isn’t.’

‘So you’re not married then, or otherwise involved?’

The look he gave her made her heart turn over. Even though she warned herself that she was being a fool, exposing herself to heaven alone knew what potential danger and unhappiness, she heard herself saying huskily, ‘No. No, I’m not.’

‘That’s something else we share in common, then,’ he told her, but before she could question him, could ask exactly what else it was they shared, he was adding more briskly, ‘This looks like the turn-off coming up for the DIY place.’

It was, and the next ten minutes were mundanely occupied with following the steady stream of traffic, all of which apparently was heading for the same destination, and then turning into the huge flat wasteland of tarmac dotted with the multi-coloured metal shapes of the many already parked cars.

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