Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About The Author

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Epilogue

Copyright

“None of this drama is necessary, Luke.”

His rejection scored across her heart like the cruelest of whips. All she could see of his face was the angular line of his jaw, as obdurate as his character. She should have expected this; she, of all people, knew how hard he could be.

“You can’t stop me. There’s no way you can run me out of town this time.”

Then he kissed her.

ROBYN DONALD has always lived in Northland, New Zealand, initially on her father’s stud farm at Warkworth, then in the Bay of Islands, an area of great natural beauty where she lives today with her husband and ebullient and mostly Labrador dog. She resigned her teaching position when she found she enjoyed writing romances more, and now spends any time not writing in reading, gardening, traveling, and writing letters to keep up with her two adult children and her friends.

Element Of Risk
Robyn Donald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Mandy, who owns the real crystal

PROLOGUE

PERDITA GLADSTONE smoothed moisturiser on to her famous translucent skin, then glanced at her watch. Twenty minutes until the taxi came. In five more months this high-pressure life would be over, and oh, how glad she’d be! Modelling had been good to her, but only ever as a means to an end.

She stared with dispassionate interest at the face that had looked out from a million magazines, been admired on the world’s most noted catwalks, a face almost universally heralded as her generation’s most mesmerising.

Not that Perdita had ever succumbed to the extravagant ravings of the hype machine. During the last ten years she’d developed a healthy cynicism. When she began she’d been the trendsetter; her dramatic bone-structure, height of six feet and translucent Celtic skin were touted as the look of the decade, the eight or nine pale golden freckles across her nose providing a piquant contrast to the starkly sculptured, sensuous spareness of her face.

It was the right look at the right time and she owed it to the photographer in Auckland who had taken the first shots for her portfolio.

He’d insisted she pose for a full-face profile wearing the high headdress of Nefertiti, wife of the Pharaoh of Egypt. The contrast between her heavy-lidded, oriental air of serene mystery and her warm northern European colouring had created an enormous stir. That photograph had taken her all the way from New Zealand to the heights of international fame. And she’d achieved ‘the Perdita look’ as a very nervous seventeen-year-old wearing jeans, a towel around her breasts, and a headdress co-opted from a fancy-dress hire business!

However, her decade was over. Elfin waifs were set to conquer the fashionable world during the next twelve months, and Perdita was going to take her hefty investment portfolio and substantial bank balance and retire thankfully to the obscurity from which she’d come.

Brushing back the flood of barely waving, silky amber hair that was her trademark, she pulled a face at her reflection. Obscurity couldn’t come soon enough.

Outside, the New York traffic thundered past in a hail of tooting, jostling, urgent taxi cabs. And the telephone rang.

‘Damn,’ she muttered in a voice that still held faint traces of a New Zealand accent. It had to be someone she trusted; her number was unlisted. And that meant it was reasonably important. Picking up the receiver, she said crisply, ‘Hello?’

‘Perdita Gladstone?’ There was more than a trace of New Zealand in this masculine voice. It was pure NewZild, broad and unashamed.

The breath died in Perdita’s throat. Staring blindly out over Fifth Avenue to the green, interloper’s glory of Central Park, she swallowed as one hand curved protectively around the antique “Victorian locket—another trademark—which she wore on a thin gold chain around her neck.

‘Yes, it is I,’ she said hoarsely, giving the simple code she had worked out with him.

For ten years she had been waiting for this, for half that time searching actively. The last occasion Frank had rung he’d said the name she wanted was very close.

‘I’ve got them.’ He always tried to sound deadpan as a good private detective should, but there was no hiding the jubilant note in his voice. ‘Natalie and Luke Dennison. They live at a little place called Manley up in Northland.’

Shock dimmed the green trees in the park, banished the ever-present throb and hum of the city to a faint, gasping echo. Perdita looked back, down ten years to a place so far removed from this that they might well be on different planets.

She’d known there was an element of risk in what she was doing; she’d had no idea that it would jeopardise everything she had made of her life.

‘Are you there? Miss Gladstone? Perdita?’ Frank’s voice registered a sudden alarm.

‘Dennison?’ The voice wasn’t hers. It croaked rather than breathed, and the cool control was lost to a shaky tremor. ‘I’m all right. Dennison,’ she repeated on a long, ragged sigh. ‘Luke Dennison.’

‘Yup. He’s a big man in the north—owns a huge cattle and sheep station called Pigeon Hill. He’s fairly well known—old money, family came over on the first ships, mixes with the elite, that sort of thing. Prime ministers consult him, and he belongs to a lot of very powerful organisations.’

‘I know,’ she said, outrage beginning to surface through the numbness.

‘You know him?’ Frank was curious but she couldn’t have answered him then, not if her sanity had depended on it. ‘He married Natalie Bennet—another family with old money. She died about eighteen months ago. Cancer.’

Perdita groped desperately for a chair. Shivering, she collapsed into it, clutching the receiver with white-knuckled fingers.

‘Died?’ she managed to repeat.

‘Yup, tough, poor woman. She was only thirty-seven. Luke Dennison was a couple of years younger. They were married when he was twenty-one. His parents were both dead and I suppose he needed a wife.’

‘Probably,’ Perdita agreed tonelessly. ‘I have to go, Frank. Can you send me the details?’

‘Yeah. It’ll be a big bill, I hope you realise. Usually I don’t have much difficulty with these cases even when there’s a veto, but this was a humdinger. I had a hell of a time tracking down the information. Files were missing or lost, people didn’t know or wouldn’t talk, and it turned out to be a real challenge. I’d say that someone did their best to make sure no one was able to trace anything. Still, we got there.’ He sounded professionally pleased with himself. ‘OK, I’ll courier everything off straight away, if you’re still sure you trust couriers.’

She would have trusted the mail, or copies of the documents on the fax, but Frank had his idiosyncrasies, and one of them was a passion for security and a vast mistrust of agencies that moved information.

Perhaps he was right; when she had first contacted him he had told her that he didn’t do anything illegal and she believed him, but she had a feeling that her ideas of illegal and Frank’s possibly didn’t coincide. She didn’t know how he had got this information, and she wasn’t going to ask.

‘Thank you,’ she said levelly.

‘That’s OK. Glad to get it done. It was starting to take over my life.’ He hung up.

Take over his life? Perdita had been waiting for those names for ten years. And now that she had them, the beginning she had anticipated was turning into something else, a nightmare she didn’t know how to deal with.

Eventually, when the dialling tone impinged, she set the receiver down and looked at her watch.

‘Oh, panic!’ she muttered, leaping to her feet. She had no time to think, none to dwell on this news, or even to sort out her emotions. But mingled with the grief and the anger and the bewilderment there was another, one she had never expected to feel: a keen, almost brutal sense of betrayal.

For ten years she had been alone and lost, and for those years Natalie and Luke had been happy. Her hand lingered for a moment on the thin gold locket. Whether they’d known it or not, their happiness had been built on her misery.

Setting her mouth, she forced herself to pick up her bag, weighed down by the usual assortment of necessities and the ever-present book on landscape gardening. Perdita had always prided herself on her professional outlook, and she wasn’t going to let the complete upheaval of her life make her late.

Five more months! They stretched out like an eternity.

‘What have I done?’ she muttered as she opened the door. ‘Oh, what have I done?’

CHAPTER ONE

ELEVEN years—a lifetime ago, the last time she had been to Pigeon Hill—she had walked this road beneath a boiling Antipodean sun, tattered shorts and a T-shirt clinging to coltish limbs, her hair shaded by a Huck Finn hat, jandals on her narrow feet. Then the road had been metalled, and her legs had been white with dust by the time she got to Pigeon Hill, the station named after the looming, bush-clad hill where the large, slow-flying native pigeon flourished.

She certainly had never imagined returning to Pigeon Hill in a car that cost more money than she could have visualised at seventeen; then her sights had been set on a job in a shop, and eventually marriage and children.

If a hotel in Wellington hadn’t failed to give Luke Dennison a message, that was probably exactly what would have happened.

Because the hotel staff had failed she was a mature, worldly woman with a famous face and body, and a secure future. She should, Perdita supposed, her full lips compressing with the irony of it, thank that unknown person who hadn’t done his or her job properly.

Suddenly realising that she was veering towards the wrong side of the road, she twisted the steering-wheel a little too impatiently. She hadn’t driven on the left for some years; it would pay to concentrate on her driving, not what had happened so long ago.

Five letterboxes loomed ahead like a cluster of ragged beehives. Suspended from the top bar of the gate was a neat sign that said Pigeon Hill. Beneath it in smaller letters was painted L.D.E. Dennison. Perdita’s stomach clenched.

Breathing deeply, she braked. The car rattled over the cattle stop and along the road winding across a wide green paddock towards a cluster of roofs. The three farm cottages belied their name; sheltered from the southerly winds by the blue, forested hill that was Pukekukupa, they were substantial houses, built for families.

A couple of hundred metres before the first one, the well-kept track divided. Perdita took the fork that led to the homestead. Nestled behind its plantations of trees, all that could be seen of it was the pale orange bulk of the roof.

Her mouth dried with anticipatory dread; she had to fight the temptation to turn around and drive down the road, the three and a half hours back to Auckland, then get on to a jet to take her as far from New Zealand as possible. The seatbelt tightened across her chest as her foot hit the brake.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ she muttered fiercely, easing it off.

A tunnel of greenery led into a wide, gravelled forecourt in front of a gracious, two-storeyed wooden house built in the colonial Georgian style that had been fashionable seventy years before. As she pulled up and stopped the engine, moisture trickled disgustingly down Perdita’s spine and dampened her palms. Surreptitiously wiping her hands on a handkerchief before she got out, she forced air into her deflated lungs.

She knew who waited for her inside the homestead. Over Frank’s objections she had written to Luke Dennison a week ago to tell him that she was coming, and why.

‘He’ll run,’ Frank warned.

‘Not Luke Dennison.’ The idea was laughable.

The private investigator had given her a sharp look, but he hadn’t asked the question that was so clearly hovering on his tongue. Instead, he’d grunted and said pessimistically, ‘Then he’ll be waiting at the door with a battery of high-powered solicitors waving writs and a couple of policemen.’

‘I’ll take that chance.’

Now, looking at the perfectly proportioned house, after all these years still intimidated by its air of formal classicism, she wondered whether Frank had been right. Perhaps she should have simply arrived unannounced.

Sheer, cold willpower got her across to the path, and between low box hedges to the panelled front door with its graceful fanlights. Licking parched lips, she rang the doorbell.

To her astonishment Luke Dennison himself opened the door. Her great, gold-speckled green eyes skidded across his face, recreating the countenance of the man who had haunted her for the last eleven years, ever since that last visit to Pigeon Hill.

Four inches taller than Perdita, lean and lithe, perfectly proportioned, his rangy frame was made impressive by the hard muscles of physical labour. He blocked the doorway, watching her with a predator’s frightening, disciplined concentration. Neither the eyes that searched her face, eyes the colour and consistency of aquamarines, nor a beautifully cut mouth, softened the angles of his striking, unhandsome face. A straight blade of a nose gave him an air of patrician arrogance.

Dennisons had lived in this place for over a hundred years, lords of all they surveyed, and it showed.

‘Hello, Luke,’ Perdita said, her tone remote and rigidly controlled.

‘Perdita.’ Deep and textured to the edge of roughness, he had the kind of voice that could stroke indolently through a woman’s defences. However, there was no note of lazy sensuality in it now. Like hers, it was totally lacking in expression, as invulnerable as the compellingly hewn bone-structure of his face, as devoid of emotion as the icy, crystalline eyes. ‘Come in.’

Comprehension hit her like a blow as soon as she stepped through the door. The house was empty.

The mixture of fear and anticipation that had boosted her for the last five months drained away, leaving her limp with sour reaction, but unsurprised. After all, she hadn’t expected it to be easy. Long lashes veiled her eyes, giving her a sultry, enigmatic look.

‘The office, I think,’ he said, standing back so that she could precede him down the passage and into an expansive room where the latest in computer technology blended in odd harmony with kauri bookshelves and the rich colours, muted by time, of a Persian carpet.

Just inside the door Perdita stopped, regarding the man in front of her with relentless eyes. ‘Where are they?’ she said with sudden, betraying anxiety.

‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked, walking across to a cabinet. Instead of the careful gait of most big men he moved with an economical, animal grace that was peculiarly his.

‘No, thank you. Where are they?’ In spite of herself her voice trembled.

‘Sit down.’

She lowered herself into the wing chair, the last traces of nervousness replaced by a resentment that heated her skin and eyes. Although she expected him to loom over her, try to intimidate her with height and the blunt threat of his male strength and power, he too sat down, his pale eyes fixed on her face in a scrutiny that was controlled and ironic.

‘I’ve seen your photograph hundreds of times,’ he remarked, an undernote of sarcasm permeating the words, ‘and imagined that it was all done with make-up, but I was wrong. You are exquisitely beautiful.’

‘My looks are not important,’ she said, her voice held level by willpower. He was trying to make her angry— and succeeding only too well. But a fit of temper would compromise her self-command, and he’d take advantage of any weakness. She met his gaze with her own. ‘Where are the children?’

His hands were clasped on the desk in the traditional attitude of power. ‘Did you really believe they’d be here?’ he asked deliberately. ‘You must think I’m extraordinarily trusting.’

‘It seems that I’m the trusting one.’ As she spoke she got to her feet and headed for the door.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘Where does it look as though I’m going? I’m leaving,’ she said, relieved that she could sound so unemotional. ‘I don’t want to socialise. The only reason I’m here was to see the children.’

‘Come back and sit down,’ he ordered.

Shoulders stiff, she turned reluctantly. ‘Why?’

‘Because we need to talk.’ When she didn’t move he leaned back in the chair, narrowed eyes holding hers. ‘Common sense should tell you that I’m not going to let you just burst into their life.’

He was right. They did need to talk. She nodded slowly, and walked to the chair, sitting down with a guarded expression that gave, she hoped, nothing away.

‘First of all,’ he said without inflection, ‘why did you suddenly decide after all this time that you want to meet them?’

‘It was no sudden decision.’ She hid a swift flare of anger with precisely chosen words. Did he think she’d come back on a whim? ‘I’ve always wanted to know how they are, but until a few months ago I couldn’t find out who had adopted them.’ She smiled humourlessly, repressing memories of the outrage she had experienced then, the pain and the strange, weakening exultation. ‘Now that I know, I want to see them.’

‘If you can convince me that you won’t upset them,’ he said collectedly, ‘then you may see them.’

Her green glance mocked him. ‘Really? You’ll excuse the faint note of disbelief, I’m sure. Somehow I got the distinct impression that you’d have been more than happy if your children’s birth mother had never turned up. You certainly covered your tracks well. In spite of the new laws, it’s taken me five years to find out who adopted my daughters. You have a lot of power, Luke.’

‘And I’ll use it,’ he said with a soft menace that dragged the hairs on her skin upright in a primitive, involuntary reaction, ‘to stop anyone from hurting my children.’

‘I don’t want to hurt them.’ If she wanted to hurt anyone it was him. ‘I just need to see that they’re happy.’

Dark brows snapped together. ‘Why shouldn’t they be happy?’ he demanded. ‘They’re loved and cared for.’

‘I need to be sure of that.’ She closed her eyes for a second. ‘They are my daughters as well as yours. I didn’t abandon them, you know. I’d have kept them if I could.’

He didn’t move, didn’t react in any way, yet somehow she sensed that her frank plea had struck home. She leaned forward. ‘It doesn’t have to be here,’ she said quietly. ‘We could meet somewhere in a park. I just want to talk to them. I won’t tell them who I am.’

‘And if you think they’re unhappy?’ he asked with disbelieving curtness. ‘What will you do then?’

‘I don’t know. But—I’m not unreasonable, Luke. You’re their father, you’ve had them since they were a week old, and I’m not going to interfere unless I think the situation warrants it.’ An aching smile curved her wide, lush mouth. ‘I don’t expect it to. I just want to see them.’

He said heavily, ‘I suppose your private detective told you that Natalie is dead.’

Perdita’s lashes quivered. ‘Yes.’

She knew how much Luke had loved his wife, knew that her death must have been shattering to them all. As it had been to her.

In the older woman, her mother’s cousin, the young, emotionally neglected Perdita had found the love and consideration she had never been able to elicit from her own mother. Luke’s wife had loved her and valued her, and because Natalie was gracious and charming and affectionate, Perdita had responded with a child’s unquestioning gratitude. At eleven, newly come to Pigeon Hill, she had been struck up by Natalie’s conviction that life was perfectible—it merely needed work—and vowed to grow up as much like Natalie as she could. It still struck her as an excellent ambition, although she had long given up believing that she could ever resemble her cousin. Such people were born, not made.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said now, her voice uneven in spite of her attempt to steady it. ‘Oh, Luke, I am so sorry.’

He looked at her. ‘I really believe you are,’ he said harshly.

‘Of course I am! I loved her.’ Perdita swallowed, but nervous tension had her well and truly in its grip. Tears pearled through her fingers as she pressed them to her eyes, slid down her hands. She sniffed, and groped in her bag.

‘Here,’ Luke said, his voice strained.

A soft handkerchief was thrust into her hand. Turning away from him she blew her nose and swallowed hard. She couldn’t afford to give in to her emotions, it made her too vulnerable.

Wiping her eyes, she said thickly, ‘How did the girls take it?’

‘As you’d expect.’ He spoke with barely caged impatience. “They were shattered, but they’ve come through it fairly well. However, there’s been enough turmoil in their lives. I don’t want them upset again.’

‘All I’m interested in is their happiness. Do they know they’re adopted?’

‘Of course they do.’ He shrugged. ‘Natalie insisted.’

Being Natalie, she would have done everything right. Everything but stay alive.

‘Did Natalie know they were my daughters?’ she asked, unable to stop herself. Ever since she had read in Frank’s dossier that her daughters’ names were Olivia and Rosalind she had wondered whether Natalie and Luke had somehow discovered that she was their mother.

However, common sense told her it was just that Natalie liked Shakespearian names; she had always admired Perdita, saying once that when she had daughters she could do worse than search through his plays.

Now Perdita waited, holding her breath, shadowed eyes searching Luke’s hard-boned, uncompromising face with something like anguish, but his studied composure was so absolute that nothing could have broken through it.

‘No,’ he said deliberately, ‘and neither did I. All details of their parentage were kept quiet, although we were given character traits and intelligence, a few physical characteristics, things like that.’ In a voice that held derision he finished, ‘I was pleased the father was so like me.’

Her relief startled her, lowering her guard enough for her to blurt, ‘Didn’t you even wonder?’

His mouth twisted. ‘I didn’t know you were pregnant. Your mother certainly wasn’t telling anyone.’

Perdita opened her mouth to tell him that Natalie had known, she had visited her in the nursing home, but he forestalled her ruthlessly. ‘Not that it matters. Even if you can prove that you are their birth mother, Perdita, you have no legal claim to the children.’

‘I know that. I accept it. Is it so difficult to believe that I simply want to see them, to reassure myself that they’re happy?’

He said forcefully, ‘I don’t think you’d be a good influence.’

Perdita’s head lifted sharply, the bell of heavy hair falling across her neck in a silken swathe. For a moment she was speechless, scanning his face to see whether he could possibly be joking. He wasn’t. He meant every word he said. Evenly, almost lightly, she asked, ‘Why is that?’

‘The life you’ve led these past ten years.’ He waited for her answer, and when she didn’t speak said with cold-blooded austerity, ‘My daughters are only ten, Perdita. You’ve spent those ten years in the fast lane, living with a variety of lovers, leading an infinitely more sophisticated life than anything New Zealand can offer. I’d be at fault as a father if I allowed you the chance to impose your demi-mondaine manners and morals on them.’

Her face a mask of scorn, she got to her feet and confronted him fearlessly. ‘What a smug, sanctimonious prig you are, Luke. I don’t understand how Natalie could love you. Listen to me, and don’t forget it, because I’m not going to say it again. I intend to see my children. If necessary I’ll stay in Manley until they come back from wherever you’ve hidden them, and then sneak around to see them. I gave you the chance of doing it properly, but I will see them, whether you want me to or not.’

Ignoring his sharply indrawn breath, she turned towards the door, but before she had reached it he was barring the way, his face set in lines of contempt and anger, aquamarine eyes blazing with frigid fire.

‘Let me past,’ she said between her teeth.

‘Not until I’ve had my say,’ he returned dangerously. ‘Listen to me, Perdita, and for once think of someone other than yourself. Those girls have just come through a traumatic time. They don’t need any more pain. I swear, if you hurt them, confuse them or upset them, I’ll make you suffer so much that you’ll wish to God you’d never been born.’

She had to tilt her head back to look up into his face. Sheer fury turned her eyes to smoky pools, her voice to a molten purr. ‘Then you’d better come with them when I see them,’ she said softly, ‘so that you can monitor my behaviour. Because I am going to see them.’

He swore. Perdita had learned to ignore swearing, but she flinched at the naked hatred in his voice. ‘You little bitch,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought I was rid of you—why the hell did you have to come back?’

An emotion Perdita thought had died forever struggled in painful rebirth deep in some walled-off portion of her heart.

‘You must have known I would, as soon as I found out where the girls were.’

‘I didn’t know you were their mother until I got your letter three days ago.’ His eyes were opaque and hard and lethal. ‘We were told their mother had gone overseas and wouldn’t be coming back.’

‘Whoever told you that was wrong. I’m like Nemesis,’ she said silkily. ‘I never give up. Now, get out of my way.’

He stepped back as though the mere touch of her would contaminate him. ‘I’ll serve you with a non-molestation order,’ he threatened.

‘I’ll go to the media,’ she countered sweetly. ‘It would make good headlines, wouldn’t it? Especially if the British tabloids got hold of it. I’m quite famous, you know—they’d enjoy a good juicy scandal like that.’

He seemed to grow a further six inches. The implacable resistance she sensed in him was converted into a cold, concentrated fury. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he said in an almost soundless voice.

She couldn’t allow herself to be intimidated so completely. ‘Are you prepared to bet on that?’ she asked. ‘After all, anyone with my morals and manners has to be untrustworthy by definition.’

His hands slid around her throat. Fear slithered on evil cats’ feet through Perdita’s body, throbbed in the pulse beneath his fingers, chilled the anger in her veins to elemental ice. She saw pitiless determination in the gaze that fixed on to her mouth, smelt the faint, unmistakable scent of male, aroused and relentless.

Once before Luke Dennison had slipped the leash of his control to reveal the primal male to her. Now she saw it again, and as had happened that last time, an elemental terror turned her bones to liquid.

‘I’ve already warned you,’ he said quietly, a thumb coming to rest over the busy betrayer in her throat. ‘You’ve pushed as far as you’re going to, Perdita. Any more, and you’d better be ready for retaliation.’

Common sense told her that there was nothing he could do to her. This was New Zealand, after all.

Instinct knew otherwise.

Yet she didn’t flinch, even though she felt the colour drain from her skin. ‘Stop trying to frighten me,’ she said, green eyes as cold as his, and every bit as determined. ‘None of this drama is necessary, Luke. If you let me meet the children I’ll go on my way, and you won’t need to be bothered by me any more.’

‘I don’t want you anywhere near them,’ he said, levering her chin upwards to an unnatural angle that stretched her throat towards the frail boundary between discomfort and pain.

His immediate, total rejection scored across her heart like the cruellest of whips. She lowered her lashes so that all she could see of his face was the angular line of his jaw, as obdurate as his character, tough and uncompromising. She should have expected this; she, of all people, knew how hard he could be.

‘You can’t stop me,’ she said, hating the tremor in her voice, trying to summon courage from some deep inner reserve. ‘Be sensible, Luke. You can’t keep them imprisoned forever, and there’s no way you can run me out of town this time.’

‘Go on,’ he said when she fell silent.

‘That’s all. I’m going to see them.’

‘Damn you,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been haunted by you for bloody years—you must have known that coming back here would put us all in an intolerable situation!’

Then he kissed her.

The fierce possession of his mouth summoned a fire that marked her soul. Searing through the debris and accretions of the past eleven years, it stripped every bit of studied worldliness from her to cast her back into the adolescent turmoil of her first crush, the year she had turned seventeen.

Natalie had given her a watch and a new wardrobe to mark her status as an adult, and, dressed in the clothes his wife had bought for her, Perdita had fallen in love with Luke, helpless in the grip of a blind, unrequited passion.

That same passion, so newly reawakened, thrummed through her now with an intensity she didn’t even try to resist. She melted, her mouth softening, yielding, opening to his like a flower to the sun. Drumbeats pulsed through her in a rhythm of desire. Shivering, she was suffused with heat.

Luke ground his mouth on to hers, but almost immediately the quality of the kiss changed, transformed into seduction pure and simple, as nakedly sexual as the embrace that clamped her hips against his, as the utterly masculine promise that fitted so snugly between the notch in her legs.

Perdita drowned in sensation, sanity and reason wrecked by a flood of carnality.

And then he thrust her from him and said jaggedly, ‘Get the hell out of here, you lying, promiscuous little slut. I don’t ever want to see you again.’

Perdita stared at him from beneath weighted eyelids. Her mouth was tender, slightly too big for its contours, and she was drunk on the taste of him, the scent of him, the feel of him.

Half her brain was shrieking foul, and the other half was cursing because she’d allowed herself to trip into the oldest snare in the world, but below these manifestations of logic lurked a consuming, primitive satisfaction.

‘You’re not going to get rid of me so easily,’ she said, her voice husky and sensual. ‘Like it or not, Luke, you can’t bludgeon me with your money and your power. I mean to see those girls, and there is no way you can watch them so strictly that I won’t.’

His hands were shaking. She watched with awed fascination as he reimposed control, a fascination that had a basis of fear, because she knew what he wanted to do with them.

‘Yes,’ he said when he saw her glance at them, ‘you should be afraid. Get out of here, Perdita, before I do something you might regret.’

‘I’m staying at the Dunromin motel in Manley,’ she told him, and turned and walked away from him through the big, gracious, empty house, out into the sunlight. Constrained by the silk scarf bound around her head, her temples throbbed painfully. She put up a long-fingered hand to draw it off, and with a slow movement shook the flood of hair back.

Tension still ached through her, but she wasn’t going to stretch herself free of it here, where he might be watching. She knew why he had kissed her; it was an unsubtle punishment because she was alive and Natalie was dead. He hadn’t been able to hit back at fate, or cry his despair at the moon, so he had done what men had done to women ever since the world began: used his superior strength and turned anger into sexuality.

She was, she realised with a strange sort of detachment, still shuddering inside, but at least the worst was over. She had seen him. Now all she had to do was find the children.

This voyage into the past had assumed all the qualities of a search for the holy grail. When she saw the children she would know, she was sure, whether they were happy or not.

And if they were happy, that would be it. She’d get into the car and drive away…

Although, sooner or later natural curiosity would drive them to search for their birth mother. Surely, some tempter whispered, that discovery would be less traumatic if she were not a complete stranger. Of course she would never be a substitute for Natalie, but she might make some small place for herself in her children’s lives.

Luke had no right to keep her away from her children. Apart from anything else, he’d behaved very badly, insulting her, manhandling her, kissing her…

The idea was far too enticing. Even as she reminded herself sternly that she had promised Luke she wouldn’t interfere, she knew she was going to consult a lawyer.

Back at the motel she made herself a cup of tea and sat down. Her hand came to rest on the locket around her neck. With a sudden, swift movement she flicked through her purse and found the one photograph she had of her children, a coloured snap one of the nurses had taken of them when they were a week old.

The young Perdita sat stiffly, holding the two babies with such care that she looked terrified, staring straight at the camera. They were both girls, one thirty minutes older than the other, but even then it had been obvious that they were not identical. She had called them Tara and Melissa.

They were asleep; she had crept into the nursery and taken them outside for the photograph. Her eyes looked glazed because she had been fighting back tears. The next day she had left the nursing home, and the couple who had adopted her children had come and taken them away.

How would she have felt if she had known they were Natalie, whom she loved with the hero-worship of a neglected child, and Luke?

It was better that she hadn’t known. It would never have worked. She’d been far too young to cope with the situation.

She wasn’t, she thought wryly, coping too well with it now, and it was five months since Frank’s call.

The colours in the photograph had faded, but she could remember everything about her children, even their faint scent of baby powder and milk and innocence. A resurgence of the old pain gnawed at her. She had never forgotten, not a thing.

And Luke Dennison was not going to stand in her way. He had money and power, but she had money too, and the power of her threat. Although she hadn’t any intention of contacting the media—she knew how badly hurt its victims could be—it was a threat she could hold over his head.

She was going to see her daughters.

Refusing to think of the way he had kissed her, the angry manifestation of his power used to intimidate her, she drank the cup of tea before ringing an Auckland number.

Frank whistled when she told him what she wanted him to do. ‘I told you not to tell him. You can’t trust people when it comes to children. Any ideas?’

‘Try Mrs Bennet, Mrs Philip Bennet. She used to live in Epsom—I’m almost certain it was Owens Road. She’s the grandmother. Oh, and can you give me the name and address of that solicitor you were recommending— the one who specialises in family law.’

‘Yup.’ He didn’t say again that he’d told her so, but she heard it in the monosyllable.

She scribbled down the name and address he gave her, said goodbye and hung up, then turned to look around her. The room was small and sparsely furnished in motel style, with furniture that didn’t fit her long legs and body. The rush of adrenalin that had sustained her so far faded slowly, leaving her melancholy and thoughtful.

Setting her mouth, she went out into the street and called into the florist’s shop. They weren’t busy so the woman made her a posy of cottage flowers while she waited, looking at her curiously when she thought she was unobserved.

After Perdita had paid for them she said in a rush, ‘You know, you look awfully like that model—the Adventurous Woman.’

Perdita gave her a warm smile. ‘I’m retired, now,’ she said.

The woman’s eyes widened. ‘You came from around here, didn’t you?’

‘I used to spend holidays here with my cousin.’

‘Mrs Dennison at Pigeon Hill.’ She sighed. ‘That was a tragedy. She was a lovely lady.’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, well, you must be noticing quite a few changes in the last ten years.’

Perdita smiled again. ‘Quite a few. The place has grown.’

‘Are you planning on living here?’

Until that moment the thought had never occurred to Perdita. She said vaguely, ‘No, I don’t think so,’ but as she walked out of the shop the idea took root and on the way down the hill to the cemetery it flourished. Nothing would give her greater pleasure than to live close to her daughters.

But would it be fair to them?

And how would Luke deal with that? At the thought of his reaction her skin prickled. He was a bad enemy.

The little graveyard had served the district well for over a hundred years. Perdita walked across newly mown grass sheltered by the huge old puriri and totara trees that made a dense barrier around the perimeter. It was very quiet and still.

Natalie’s headstone was plain and austere. With wet eyes Perdita read that she was the beloved wife of Luke, loved mother of Olivia and Rosalind, aged thirty-seven years.

Stooping, Perdita put her flowers with the others there. Death was so final, so impersonally unfair, when it carried off those who were young and good and happy.

She turned away, only then seeing through the sparkle of tears the tall, powerful figure of the man who had made Natalie so happy. Damn, she thought, suddenly exhausted by emotion. Why did he have to come here now?

Head held high, chin tilted, she waited beside the grave. He’d see the results of her grief, but she wasn’t ashamed of it.

His face was set in lines of harsh restraint. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

She said, ‘I brought flowers.’

He closed his eyes as though she couldn’t have said anything more painful. On a note of bitterness she finished, ‘I loved her too, Luke.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he said heavily, looking down at the bunch of cottagey flowers, bright cornflowers and spray carnations in a froth of white gypsophila.

‘She was so kind to me,’ Perdita said.

He jerked his head away but she saw the flash of naked emotion in his pale eyes. Gripped by compassion, she touched his arm. He had rolled up his sleeves, so her fingers were pale and slender against the tanned forearm with its light dusting of hair. The heat of his skin burned through barriers she hadn’t been aware of. Something moved deeply inside her. Snatching her fingers away, she had to resist the temptation to cool them in her mouth.

Hastily she went on, ‘She taught me how to dress and how to behave, that I wasn’t strange because I liked to read. In a funny sort of way she gave me my career. If she hadn’t taken me to Clive’s that Christmas to buy my clothes he wouldn’t have recommended me to the model agency. My life would have been as narrow and circumscribed as my mother’s. Natalie gave me everything, and she did it with such grace and empathy. She never made me feel that I was a gawky nothing.’

‘She groomed you to take her place,’ Luke said bitterly. ‘I wonder what she’d have thought of that.’

His words drove every vestige of colour from her face. Instinctively she stepped back, casting a swift, horrified glance at the mute grave.

His mouth curled into a mirthless, wolfish smile. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘She can’t hear you. She’ll never know that you betrayed her love by seducing her husband. She’ll never know that the children she adopted and loved so much were yours and mine. She’s dead, Perdita, and you and I are left to wonder just what would have happened if she hadn’t died. Because you’d have come back just the same, wouldn’t you?’

Perdita’s lips trembled. ‘Yes.’

‘And created even more damage than you did when you crawled into my bed that night.’

She shook her head, but he went on relentlessly, ‘Why did you do it?’

‘I told you. I was asleep when you came to bed. I didn’t expect you home that night,’ she said indistinctly.

The sun summoned auburn fire from his hair. His eyes were as cold as his laugh, as completely lacking in amusement.

‘Even though it was the bed Natalie and I slept in every night?’ He let the pause linger for endless moments, then brought it to an end by saying smoothly, ‘I find that very difficult to believe.’

She had slept in their bed because Luke was due back from three days spent in Wellington, and Natalie had decided to go halfway to Auckland to meet him at the house of friends.

‘He’ll be tired after three days’ arguing with the government,’ she’d said. ‘I’ll meet him at the Gardiners’, and we’ll stay there, then come back tomorrow after he’s had a good night’s rest. You won’t mind staying here, will you?’

Of course Perdita didn’t mind.

‘Just in case you’re nervous, why don’t you sleep in our room?’ Natalie suggested. ‘The phone’s right by the bed. Oh, and if you find it difficult to sleep in a strange bed my sleeping pills will be in the drawer. They’re quite harmless. They don’t knock you out, they’re more like calming pills than sleeping pills, really.’

‘I won’t need them,’ Perdita said.

Natalie hugged her. ‘What it is to be young and able to sleep on the head of a pin! I’ll leave one there just the same. Right, now that that’s organised, I’ll go and ring the hotel so he knows about the change of plans.’

But the anonymous someone in Luke’s hotel in Wellington hadn’t handed on the message, and Luke had driven all the way home, to find Perdita, slightly drugged with the pill because lying in Luke’s bed had given her too much of a secret, forbidden thrill, asleep in the innocent abandon of childhood. She hadn’t heard him come in, hadn’t realised until she woke in his arms that he had thought she was Natalie. And by then she had been unable to think…

But she couldn’t tell him that now. After it happened she had tried to explain, and he had refused to believe her, cursing her for stealing something that had been Natalie’s, exiling her to Auckland and her mother, who didn’t want her and had never forgiven her for driving her father away.

‘It’s a bit late to be putting flowers on her grave,’ Luke said curtly. ‘You repaid Natalie by betraying her.’

The words were like fiery arrows, tearing Perdita’s composure to shreds. Stung, still racked by guilt, she flung back, ‘As you did!’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said quietly. ‘You don’t have to try to make me feel guilty, Perdita. I’ve never been free of it since that night.’

‘It wasn’t your fault you thought I was Natalie,’ she said. It had been Natalie he’d held in his arms, Natalie who was the recipient of his savage tenderness, Natalie…

“That’s no excuse,’ he returned with raw self-contempt.

There was no answer to that. It was no excuse, and neither was the fact that she hadn’t been intent on seduction that night. She could have kicked and screamed and forced him to realise that she wasn’t Natalie, but when she woke it was too late—her sleeping body had been seduced by his practised caresses, and she had yielded without protest, without making a sound.

He said abruptly, ‘You can see the children.’

She turned a radiant face to him, but before she could speak he went on, ‘On one condition. I want you to sign a document saying that you won’t tell them who you are, and that you have no claim to them.’

Perdita hesitated and he said evenly, ‘No document, no visit.’

She understood his caution. Nodding, she agreed, ‘Yes, all right.’

‘Right. Be at the solicitor’s office at four this afternoon.’

CHAPTER TWO

PRECISELY at that time Perdita presented herself at the solicitor’s office. She had already contacted the expert in family law in Auckland, and been warned to sign nothing that might prejudice her chances of access to the girls.

Actually, he had suggested very strongly that she forward any documents to him for scrutiny, but Perdita had almost made up her mind to sign. She didn’t want to take her daughters away from the only home they had known; she merely wanted to make sure that they were happy.

And perhaps when Luke realised that she wasn’t a bad influence he would allow her to get to know them properly. Although his accusation still rankled, there was, she had to admit, some cause for it. Gossip columnists had had a field day with one or two of her supposed lovers.

The legal document, short and to the point, was waiting for her. She agreed not to tell the children that she was their birth mother, and she agreed that this meeting constituted no claim to further access or custody.

That seemed fair enough. Ignoring the elderly solicitor’s somewhat censorious attitude, she signed, then got gracefully to her feet.

He said, ‘I would urge you to think of the welfare of these children, Ms Gladstone.’

She gave him a cool, remote glance. He had come out to Pigeon Hill occasionally to parties, seeming older then to a teenaged girl than he did now. Their slight acquaintanceship gave him no right to imagine that he could influence her. He, and everyone else who had known her then, would have to realise that the child who used to stay at Pigeon Hill during the holidays, the recipient of her cousin’s charity, had grown up.

‘I don’t think this is any of your business. Goodbye,’ she said calmly, and walked across the room, ignoring the faint sputtering from behind her.

She had just reached the door when the telephone rang. Stepping through, she closed the door behind her, only to re-open it swiftly when her name was called from inside the room.

‘Yes?’ she asked aloofly.

He put the receiver down. “That was Luke,’ he said with stiff precision. ‘He wants to see you out at Pigeon Hill. Now.’

Her brows shot up. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

As she turned to go once more he said, ‘Take some advice from an old man, Perdita. Luke can be ruthless, especially where those children are concerned. They were all that kept him sane when Natalie died. He is intensely protective of them.’

A tight smile barely moved her mouth. ‘Thank you,’ she said sweetly, and left.

Whether or not he meant it kindly, she preferred to treat it as such. Not that he needed to tell her anything about Luke Dennison. She knew all about him, including the fact that he was a superbly tender lover.

But she, too, could be ruthless. First Natalie, then her life as a model, had taught her that she had to stand up for herself, fight for what she wanted and believed in.

And there was nothing she wanted more than to see her children.

What did his summons to the station mean? Were the girls there? Her heart thudded as she got into her car and set it in motion, concentrating on keeping to the left. Where there was other traffic it was simple, but once she got on to the no-exit road to Pigeon Hill she found her attention wavering, and a couple of times had to head back on to the correct side.

As before, Luke met her at the door, his angular face without expression. ‘They’re in the morning-room,’ he said.

Now that the ambition that had sustained her for ten long years was about to be realised, Perdita found she didn’t dare move. Instead, she stared at him as though she had never seen a man before. His image wavered and blurred. Colour leached from her skin as the floor tilted beneath her feet.

‘Perdital’ he said sharply.

Shivering, she was swept up in his arms and carried across the hall and into another room. He put her down on a sofa and ordered, ‘Don’t move. I’ll get you some brandy.’

Perdita closed her eyes. Almost immediately she heard whispering, and lifted heavy lashes to see the two girls coming across the room to her.

She’d always known they weren’t identical; what she hadn’t expected was for them to be quite so different.

One was a willowy creature with long limbs and a face whose bones had come straight from her mother, whereas her sister was small and sleek and—seeking the right word to describe her, Perdita could only find merry. Her eyes twinkled, she smiled with heart-lifting brightness, and her expression was alert and alive and vital, a contrast to the grave thoughtfulness of the other girl. The taller of the two had blue eyes whereas the other’s, Perdita was shaken to see, were the same green as hers; both had hair that was gloriously, unashamedly red, but the taller had straight, shoulder-length locks and the shorter’s curled around her piquant face.

‘Hello,’ Perdita said, smiling at them. Her heart clattered noisily, almost suffocating her. The last time she had seen them they had been seven days old, and she had been numb with despair, her throat raw from weeping. Something of the same agony of spirit racked her now, desolation and a sense of bitter deprivation, of loneliness so intense she’d had to repress it to be able to bear it.

‘Hello,’ they chorused, then looked at each other, said, ‘Tennyson,’ and linked little fingers, shutting their eyes as they made a wish.

The age-old ritual soothed something in Perdita’s heart. She said, ‘I hope your wish comes true.’

‘So do we,’ the shorter one said cheekily. She looked Perdita over with open interest and said, ‘Don’t you feel well?’

‘No, I—’

‘She almost fell at my feet.’ Luke appeared with a small glass of brandy. ‘Here, drink it down,’ he said.

‘I feel much better already.’

‘Drink it.’

She opened her mouth and the girls giggled. ‘You’d better do what he says,’ the shorter advised. ‘Mummy used to say when he gets that note in his voice he means to be obeyed.’

Perdita knew their names, even knew that the taller one was Olivia and the shorter Rosalind, but until Luke introduced them with the same austere courtesy he used for adult women she had always thought of them as Tara and Melissa. By the time she had adjusted to this they were all sitting down and the girls were looking at her with interest and a certain astonishment.

‘I know who you are,’ Rosalind said eagerly. ‘You’re a model, aren’t you? You’re the Adventurous Woman.’

A famous, old-established firm of cosmetic makers had rejuvenated its rather stuffy image with an advertising campaign that had aroused an enormous amount of interest. The Adventurous Woman concept had boosted sales to delirious, unexpected heights, doing wonders for the bank balances of the company, the advertising agency and Perdita.

‘I used to be,’ she said, setting the barely tasted brandy down on the small side table. “Not any more. I’m retired.’

She didn’t look at Luke but she felt his keen attention; her skin tightened.

Rosalind laughed. ‘You look too young to be retired. Didn’t you like being a model?’

‘Some of it was fun,’ Perdita admitted. ‘But a lot of it is pretty boring, just flicking your head around for photographers. And it was very hard work. Still, I didn’t go to university and get qualifications, so I had to take what I could get.’

They had Natalie’s exquisite manners. They talked freely and pleasantly, of their grandmother, of school, they asked questions about places she had been to, and Perdita found herself telling funny little anecdotes, absurdly thrilled when they laughed and commented. Occasionally she had to prompt them, but they were infinitely more confident than she had been at the same age.

Although afraid to let any emotions other than the most superficial pleasure in their company show through, Perdita gave herself up to an exquisite heartache.

After an hour Luke intervened smoothly, and she found herself being escorted to the door. The girls wanted to come too, but when Luke refused they gave in without demur, saying their farewells with a poised charm that was so like their dead mother that Perdita had to look away in case they saw the tears in her eyes.

He walked down the path with her, waiting until they got to the car before saying abruptly, ‘I hope you’re satisfied.’

Nodding, face averted, she put out a hand to open the door.

‘And I have your promise that you won’t contact them in any way?’

Again her head moved.

He said on a steely note, ‘Look at me, Perdita,’ and his hand caught her chin and tilted her face.

Through the mist of her tears the forceful, uncompromising contours of his face were indistinct, only the pale glitter of his eyes burning clear and brilliant.

For a moment time froze. Then she gave a great sob, and he said furiously, ‘God, Perdita, don’t—’

‘I’m sorry,’ she wept. ‘It’s nothing. I’ll be all right soon.’

‘I can’t let you go like that.’ But he released her.

His reluctance enveloped her, palpable and disabling. Shivering, she tried to open the door of the car.

‘You can’t drive in that state,’ he said curtly.

She let the handle go to scrabble for a handkerchief, finally found the one that lurked in the bottom of her bag, and blew her nose. Fresh tears welled up, but she fought them back. She had to get out of here before she really lost control and started to bellow like a kid with a lost toy.

‘Goodbye,’ she said thickly, and this time she managed to drag the door open and get in. Luke said something but she shook her head and started the engine and took off along the drive, her hands gripping the wheel as though it was the only stable thing in her life. Just before the trees cut off the house her eyes flicked to the rear vision mirror; she registered that he hadn’t moved, and was still looking after her like a tall, angry god of olden times.

She held out until she got back to the motel and there, casting herself on to the green and brown and orange sunflowers of the duvet, she wept. Eventually, when her head was aching and her throat raw, the preceding almost sleepless weeks finally caught up with her; from tears she slid straight to unconsciousness.

Some time later she woke with a jolt to the sound of knocking and a voice calling her name with an urgency that had her on her feet and running across to the door.

Luke stood outside; she realised with a shock that it was getting dark, so she must have been asleep for several hours.

‘What is it?’ she demanded, her voice shaky, clutching the arm that was lifted to knock again on the door. ‘The girls—?’

‘No, they’re fine. I came to make sure you were all right.’

Slowly her hands relaxed and fell to her side. ‘Of course I’m all right,’ she said in a voice still husky from weeping.

Someone came to the motel office door and peered out at them. Instantly Luke pushed her inside and followed, looking around the room with something like distaste.

‘No, don’t put the light on,’ he commanded as her hand went towards the switch.

She understood immediately. ‘Guarding your reputation?’ she asked huskily, and went over to the windows to pull the curtains. ‘Won’t they recognise your car?’

He said shortly, ‘I’m sorry, it was a stupid thing to say.’

She knew why he’d said it. Small towns were a hotbed of gossip, especially if you were Luke Dennison, and he hadn’t wanted word to get back to the wife who had been dead for eighteen months. Like Perdita, he suffered from a guilt that could never be absolved because it could never be confessed.

If anything was needed to convince her that his heart was buried with Natalie, it was that swift, unconscious remark.

‘It’s probably wisest,’ she said, trying not to let anything but self-possession appear in her tone. Carefully avoiding his eyes, she flicked the light switch down. “The Manley gossips would have a field day.’

‘What are your plans now?’ he asked. He stood still in the middle of the small, unmemorable room, taking up most of the space.

She looked at him with studied composure. ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. The florist’s remark flashed into her mind, followed by an imp of malice that persuaded her to add, ‘I might decide to settle here.’

Although he was so big, the lean muscle on his frame stopped him from being bulky, so the swift, overwhelming sensation of being loomed over was sharp and intimidating. He wasn’t blocking any light from her, yet the room was suddenly darker and colder.

Then a straight black brow rose and something like derision glinted through his lashes. ‘Here? Out of your milieu, isn’t it? You’re too expensive, too sophisticated to settle in a one-horse town like Manley. There’s no Gerard Defarge, no Kurt Maxwell, no Whoever-he-was Albemarle here, no nightclubs or casinos or chic, expensive fashion boutiques. You’d die of boredom.’

She froze, lifting incredulous eyes to meet his sardonic gaze.

‘Somehow,’ she said, hiding the quick, unbidden flicker of fear with her most dismissive voice, ‘I didn’t see you as an avid reader of gossip columns.’

‘Natalie used to read them out to me,’ he said. ‘She thought I’d be interested.’

Natalie would have been interested. It was part of her charm, that absorption in everyone she met. When Natalie spoke to you, it was as though for her you were the only person in the world at that moment.

‘But you weren’t,’ Perdita said coolly.

His mouth hardened. ‘I wondered whether it was your abrupt introduction to sex that had set you on that path.’

She looked warily at him. For years, until Frank’s revelations of five months ago, she had thought of him as a Sir Galahad, a man who had made a mistake and would spend the rest of his life paying for it, a noble man who loved his wife beyond all reckoning.

Now she didn’t know. The missing files and great gaps in the adoption record had made her suspicious.

That first, keenly anticipated meeting with her daughters over, she could think of other things. Someone had tried to make sure she never found her children. Luke was capable of doing such a thing if he considered that it would protect his children or his wife.

Of course, that would mean that he had known all along that the girls were his. Had the biographical details of the parents made him wonder? Had he lived a lie for ten years?

‘I really don’t remember much of that first time; I was asleep during most of it.’ With the memory of his kiss still imprinted in her cells, she let her anger with herself for falling prey once more to her adolescent desires lead her into continuing acidly, ‘Sorry, I’m sure you’re an expert lover, but you didn’t register. And don’t worry about ruining my young life and directing me onto the primrose path. I didn’t blame you then, and I don’t now. I’m a perfectly normal woman with perfectly normal needs, and I satisfy them in perfectly normal ways.’

And put that in your pipe and smoke it, she thought fiercely, ashamed because she was lying to him. Oh, there had been one other man, but their affair had faded because she couldn’t return his passion.

The skin over Luke’s jaw tightened. Something savage and untamed leapt into his eyes, was almost brought under control.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said brusquely. ‘But you won’t find glamorous, rich men here in Manley.’

‘And you don’t want me anywhere near the children,’ she said, not trying to hide the irony in her smile.

He shrugged. ‘Do you blame me for looking after their interests?’ Astonishingly, he put up a hand and touched the dried tear track on her cheek.

Mesmerised by the gentleness of his touch, Perdita stared at him. His eyes gleamed, slivers of pure colour beneath half-closed lids, and his mouth was set in a thin, straight line. Her heartbeat suddenly increased speed. She had to force herself to step backwards, away from the swift, sharp lance of sensation.

‘Of course I don’t,’ she said, aware that he was manipulating her, yet unable to resent it. She too would protect her children to the utmost of her ability. ‘But I don’t want to hurt them, or upset them, or even make them wonder who I am. I gather that Natalie didn’t mention me to them?’

He didn’t try to spare her feelings. ‘Not that I know of. Why should she?’

Why, indeed? Because Natalie had known of her pregnancy, it didn’t mean that her cousin had even considered the possibility of her being the girls’ mother. Perdita hadn’t told her she was expecting twins. ‘In that case, I can just be their mother’s distant cousin. At least they don’t look like either of us.’

‘Not too obviously, anyway. Just remember the document you signed this afternoon,’ he said with harsh insistence.

She didn’t need to be reminded. ‘Oh, I do,’ she said tonelessly.

‘When are you going?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ she returned, ‘but don’t worry, I’ll keep in contact.’

She knew it sounded like a threat and she was pleased until she saw the expression on his face. Stark and potent, he looked at her with such a formidable impression of force and power that she was almost cowed.

For the first time she realised that her childhood impressions of Luke had not necessarily been correct. She had been infatuated with this man, made love with him, borne his children, and although he had cruelly driven her away she had understood his reaction— indeed, she had felt much the same as he had. But she had always thought of him as a gentleman.

Now, beneath the aristocratic bones and the polished veneer she recognised the authentic, chilling tang of the barbarian. Luke was fighting for his children, and if she met him head-on it would be a bloody, vicious, no-holds-barred battle.

He would use whatever means he needed to keep his daughters safe. If he thought she presented any danger to them at all, she’d find herself banished again. It seemed ridiculous to believe such a thing could happen in New Zealand, but she had no doubt that he’d find some way.

She said quietly, ‘I want only what’s best for the girls, Luke. I always have. If I hadn’t, I’d have kept them, and they’d have grown up as I did, without stability. I knew I was too young. I learn from my experiences; I wasn’t having my children go through that sort of childhood.’ Looking away from him down the passage of the years, she said half to herself, ‘Do you know that my father went back to his old life? Apparently, after a probationary period no one—least of all he and his wife—was in the least worried that he had seduced and abandoned my mother after making her pregnant. He kept his position, whereas my mother was subjected to the most appalling pressure to have me adopted, and when she wouldn’t, was literally thrown out on to the street.’

Luke said relentlessly, ‘Your mother was spoiled and headstrong and completely selfish. Think about it, Perdita. What sort of mother was she to you? The only reason she kept you was to make everyone suffer, you especially.’

He was cruelly perceptive, but what he didn’t know was that her mother had truly loved Perdita’s father; his defection had killed something in her. There had never been another man for Katherine Gladstone. Ill-equipped to earn her living, she had struggled for years, and because there hadn’t been the support systems there were now for solo mothers she had been forced to leave her daughter with childminders while she worked at a succession of low-paying jobs. It didn’t exactly make for good bonding.

Although not physically cruel, she had never made any attempt to love or understand the child she saw as the source of all her problems. Perdita had grown up knowing that her father had left her mother because she had been conceived, that she was to blame for her mother’s unhappiness and their poverty.

Those bitter memories had led Perdita to give up her twins.

‘She suffered too,’ she said now. ‘Not that it matters— it’s all over and done with.’ She hesitated, until some dark compulsion made her ask, ‘When you got my letter did you believe it?’

His eyes were hooded. ‘That you were their mother? Yes, after I’d made enquiries.’

‘And that they were yours?’ For some reason she had to know.

A muscle flicked in his jaw. ‘Yes.’ He paused, then went on dispassionately, ‘You’d been a virgin. They were born eight and half months after that night. I knew they had to be mine.’

What had he felt when he realised that the children he’d adopted were his own daughters? One look at the stark, impassive features revealed that she’d never know.

Besides, she wasn’t sure she believed his version of events. More than five years ago, well before she had started seriously searching, someone had tried to make sure that no one would ever be able to discover the twins’ identity. If it wasn’t Luke, who had it been, and for what reason?

She was never likely to know that, either, and now was not the time to pursue it. So she nodded as though the subject wasn’t very interesting and said, ‘I’ve done what I wanted to. I’ve seen the twins and satisfied myself that they’re happy.’ Casting a fleeting look at his implacable face, she touched her tongue to suddenly dry lips and said more forcefully than she’d intended, ‘I want to keep in touch.’

‘You are not to write—’

She said levelly, ‘I want to keep in touch, Luke.’ Resentment at his high-handedness broke through the guard she’d set on her emotions. Without volition, her hand stole up to touch the locket at her throat. ‘I think you owe me that, don’t you? You’ve enjoyed them all their lives while I’ve spent untold hours wondering how they are, whether they’ve been loved as I’d have loved them, worrying that they might be mistreated, unhappy.’

He said harshly, ‘You make it sound as though Natalie and I stole them. You gave them up.’

Her smile was the celebrated bittersweet one that had made her face hauntingly famous. ‘It worked out very well for you, didn’t it? I assume that it was Natalie who couldn’t have children, but you got your own.’

‘What the hell are you insinuating? That I deliberately set out to—?’

‘Impregnate me, is that the term you’re looking for?’ Reining in her temper, she said more moderately, ‘No, I know you didn’t. I’m sorry, I’m behaving stupidly, but can’t you see my point of view? Is it so strange that I want to keep in touch? You may not think I’m a very worthwhile character, but I swear to you that I would not willingly hurt them for anything in the world.’

‘When you look at me like that I’d believe anything you say,’ he said in a controlled voice that almost hid the hard-edged anger beneath the austere facade, ‘and I have to remind myself that you’ve made a very good living these past years producing whatever looks you were asked for.’

Humiliation washed through her. Turning her head sharply so that he couldn’t see what his brutal words had done to her, she fought it back. She wasn’t ashamed of being a model. He was muddying the waters, diverting her attention from the point under discussion. She set her jaw. Excellent tactics, but they were going to fail because she had no intention of losing her children again. She didn’t want to interfere in their lives—no, that was a lie.

Of course she wanted to be there for them, to see them all the time, but she accepted that it was impossible. When she had surrendered them for adoption she had given up her rights to mother them.

However, she hadn’t given up her natural instincts, and she wanted to learn to understand her daughters, to be able to fathom the lights and shades of their personalities, to be someone to them. Losing Natalie must have wrenched them from happiness to insecurity, and Perdita wouldn’t do anything to add to that. But she was going to be a part of their lives in some way.

She looked him square in the face and said collectedly, ‘I mean it, Luke. Unless they ask me I won’t tell them who II am, but sooner or later they’ll want to know, and it would be easier for them if their birth mother is not a total stranger.’

‘All right,’ he said slowly. ‘Give me your address.’

She could feel his reluctance, taste it on her tongue, and she knew how much effort it had cost him to say that. It was a major victory, but she was careful not to let him see her relief.

‘I don’t have one. I’ll contact you when I get settled.’

They had been standing like antagonists, facing each other, ©yes locked, searching for weaknesses, the air bristling with tension. Now Perdita felt awkward, the tension somehow metamorphosed into unease and embarrassment.

Her eyes slid away from the pale, cold intensity of his. ‘Well,’ she said awkwardly, ‘thanks for coming to see whether I was all right. As you can see, I am.’

‘You’d better wash the tearstains from your face,’ he said curtly.

She put a hand to her cheek, felt the faint encrustations and pulled a face. ‘Ugh.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said caustically, ‘you could probably roll in mud and still come up looking like Helen of Troy and Eve mingled in one glorious woman. Tearstains merely add another dimension to that maddening smile. It’s a wonder the advertising agency who dreamed up the Adventurous Woman project didn’t think of them— they certainly thought of everything else.’

She said calmly, ‘If they’d believed tears would sell more cosmetics they’d have done it. However, I was supposed to be an adventurous woman, not a wimp.’

‘Why did you give modelling up? There isn’t a flaw in that perfect face—I imagine you could have gone on for another five years yet. Ten, with filters.’

Perdita had spent years hearing her face and body discussed in the most clinical of terms, and would have said that she had no false vanity, no emotion but gratitude for the quirk of heredity that had given her looks and a body that matched the ideal for this decade. But something about the way Luke spoke sent a tiny whisper of foreboding through her.

He sounded every bit as blase as her agent, as the photographers who’d called forth hundreds of incarnations of her. His gaze as it measured her high cheekbones and satiny, full mouth was cool and dispassionate. Yet she detected an oblique anger, all the more intense for being so tightly leashed.

Many men had looked at her with desire. She was accustomed to it, knew how to deal with it. There was nothing in Luke’s demeanour to indicate anything but a rigidly disciplined self-possession, but the air sparkled and quivered between them, and deep in her body a flicker of white-hot response flamed treacherously into life.

It had to be because she’d never had a chance to get over her crush on him. Most adolescents fell in and out of love until slowly they built up a pattern of understanding, so that when real love arrived they recognised the differences. Pitchforked into an early maturity before she’d been ready to say goodbye to childhood, it was no wonder she was still in thrall to a purely physical response.

Caution steadied her voice, made her voice offhand as she shrugged. ‘I’m not greedy. I’ve earned enough to make me secure for the rest of my life, and apart from interesting things like the Adventurous Woman promotion, modelling was just sheer hard work after a couple of years. I didn’t enjoy being treated like a commodity.’

Now why had she told him that? Her lashes covered a momentarily uncertain gaze. Normally she wouldn’t have said that to anyone but a trusted friend. She didn’t trust Luke Dennison. She couldn’t afford to. In many ways he was the enemy, and, like all the most dangerous ones, he had the ability to infiltrate her defences. Which meant she was going to have to stop unbuttoning her lip whenever he asked a simple question.

‘Even though you conspired with a whole industry to do exactly that? So we aren’t going to see that lovely face in any more magazines?’

‘For a year or so,’ she said, ‘and then no.’

‘What are you going to do?’

She shrugged again. ‘I’ll find something. I might go to university.’

His hard mouth suddenly twisted into an enigmatic smile. ‘You’d cause a riot,’ he said softly.

Perdita’s breath caught in her throat. No, she thought. No! She had to remember that this was just a hangover from adolescence.

‘As you see,’ she said with unhurried self-possession, ‘I don’t look the way I do in the magazines.’

His brows lifted, but he said merely, ‘Modest as well as famous.’

A sudden weariness fogged her brain. She managed to contrive a yawn and an enquiring look. He understood and his smile became even more sardonic. ‘I’d better go. Goodbye, Perdita.’

‘Goodbye,’ she said, trying to sound businesslike and dismissive, but courteous nevertheless. An unnerving glint in his eyes told her she hadn’t succeeded.

She watched him go, her eyes unconsciously straying to the breadth of his shoulders, the lean hips and taut buttocks, the long, powerfully muscled legs. Closing the door behind him with a sudden vicious jerk, she turned and leaned back, her hands spread against the smooth, cool wood, her breath locked in her chest. She had lied when she said she didn’t remember his lovemaking.

He had been tender, his hands slow and skilful as he caressed her into wakefulness. Bemused, her whole being singing with delight, she hadn’t even thought of Natalie; she was lost to everything but the wonderful sensations that were rippling through her at the behest of those clever, experienced hands.

Darkness had hidden him, yet she hadn’t been afraid. She’d known who he was. His scent, she thought now, trying to be objective. He had a particular male scent that still had the power to liquefy her bones. That night it had been spiked with the flavour of wine.

Her slow awakening had been something spun out of the fantasies she’d indulged in during the warm, welcoming nights of that summer. Still dreaming, her heart thudding like a piston in her chest, her mind drugged by the lazy tide of desire his touch summoned, she’d been gathered into his arms while his mouth searched for and finally, after a series of kisses, found the frantic pulse in her throat.

He hadn’t spoken. If he had, she thought now, she’d probably have woken up to her danger, realised what was happening to her. She’d always loved him with the uncritical adoration of a child, but those holidays her serene, unashamed affection had altered into something deeper, forbidden. During the slow, heated days she had watched him, knowing that he never saw her, yet longing for him with a growing woman’s intense passion, her ripening body aching with hidden, unfulfilled needs.

And each night just before she had dropped off to sleep she had called up images in her mind, telling herself guiltily that she was hurting nobody because nobody knew; nobody, especially Natalie, would ever know. Young and inexperienced though she was, she’d understood that such feverish emotions couldn’t last, but when she’d woken in his arms she had had no defences from needs she had only just recognised.

His mouth seduced her into acquiesecence, his hands stroked a feverish response from her body; the fumes of her hunger hazed her brain to banish any moral restrictions she might have felt. Enslaved by the passion that shimmered through her like molten silver, the first love that until then had been so rigorously disciplined, she surrendered mindlessly.

His mouth on her breast set her shuddering, not with fear but with an awed delight at the exquisite pangs her body was capable of. She writhed voluptuously, seeking more, seeking something to ease the throbbing ache between her legs, pressing herself against the lean, heated body so close to hers. The unfamiliar pressure of his erection didn’t shock her; instinct produced a swift, provoking answer from her hips, setting off chills through every nerve cell.

‘Darling,’ he’d said, ‘such enthusiasm…’

Thinking about it made her heart weep. There had been such love, such lazy, amused tenderness in his tone.

Looking back with the awareness of experience she understood now that he had been immensely gentle, using his practised expertise to ready her until finally he had moved over her, and taken her in one slow, compulsive thrust, measuring the length of himself in her.

It hadn’t hurt at all. Instead, everything within her had tightened in anticipation, sensations intensifying into a white-hot explosion, and she had gasped and opened herself to him, hips rotating, enclosing him with the force of her strong young body.

He had hesitated, his body rigid, but when she moved beneath him and around him he had groaned, and settled into a driving rhythm.

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