Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

Copyright

“Don’t look at me. Go

away. Please go away.” He laid her down on the bed and went over to the wall-to-wall fitted wardrobe. He pulled out a warm blue wool dressing gown and brought it back to her…. She was far too thin, but she was hauntingly lovely.

“How can you do such stupid things to yourself?” he asked her. “You don’t need to diet, you have a beautiful body. Why are you trying to destroy it for the sake of vanity?”

Dear Reader,

The Seven Deadly Sins are those sins that most of us are in danger of committing every day: very ordinary failings, very human weaknesses, which can cause pain both to ourselves and others. Over the ages they have been defined as: Anger, Covetousness, Envy, Greed, Lust, Pride and Sloth.

In this book I deal with the sin of Greed. Sometimes what appears to be greed can, in fact, be an unbearable need that has run out of control. You can forgive someone who is only harming themselves; it is different when someone’s greed to possess turns to crime and hurts other people.

Charlotte Lamb

This is the fourth story in Charlotte Lamb’s gripping series. Watch out for three more romances—all complete stories in themselves—in which this exceptionally talented writer proves that love can conquer the deadliest of sins!

Coming next month: DARK FEVER (Harlequin Presents #1840)…the sin of Lust.

Wild Hunger
Charlotte Lame

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

GERARD FINDLAY was watching his fax machine roll out another irritated message from his news editor when he heard the screaming.

The noise took him back nearly three months, to the moments that haunted his sleep every night. He began to shake, waiting for the machine-gun fire, the deafening thud of rockets landing on their target, the smell of burning, the clouds of brick dust rising in the air, then his mind cleared and he remembered where he was, realised what he was hearing.

The noise came from the house next door and he was safe in London.

‘Those girls! Those damned girls!’ he said through his teeth, angrily aware of the perspiration trickling down his back. ‘One day I’ll wring their necks!’

From the day, six months ago, that he’d moved into a little mews cottage a stone’s throw from Chelsea Bridge he had been driven mad by the girls who lived next door. They were either having a party, playing loud pop music or yelling at each other from room to room. He had banged on the wall, gone next door to complain, and got nowhere. In the end, he had complained to the agent who had rented him his cottage.

‘One of them is the owner’s stepdaughter,’ the agent wryly told him. ‘The redhead.’

‘Oh, her,’ Gerard had said, remembering a girl who walked like a dancer, tall, slender, amazingly graceful, with a mop of vivid red hair and green eyes that reminded him of the slanting stare of an angry cat.

The agent had grinned at him. ‘Easy on the eye, isn’t she? Mind you, so is her friend, with the long black hair. They’re both models, you know.’

Incredulously, he had said, ‘You mean there are only two of them? There always seems to be a whole mob in the place!’

The agent had laughed indulgently. ‘You know what young people are like! Partying day and night. Look, I’ll report your complaint, but I can’t promise anything will come of it.’

Gerard had no idea how the landlord had taken his complaint. He had been unexpectedly dispatched next day, with a camera team, to cover a civil war in what had once been a peaceful little country, when the team who had been out there for some time showed signs of battle fatigue. It was unwise to leave them under strain of that kind for too long; their reports always deteriorated. Gerard himself had felt the strain before long, although he had only been in the war zone for a matter of weeks.

When he’d got back home from the hospital he’d noticed that the only tenant of the tiny cottage next door was now the owner’s stepdaughter, the redhead who moved as if she danced every step she took. Every time they saw each other, coming or going, she ignored him in a very pointed, icy fashion.

It was obvious that she knew he had complained to the agent about her and her friend, and she resented it. Had her stepfather blamed the other girl, the dark-haired one? And asked her to leave? Gerard felt guilty about that; he had rather liked the dark girl. When he’d first moved in, she had come round with sandwiches and a pot of good coffee while his removal firm was shifting furniture around. The removal men had been wide-eyed and fascinated. When she had gone they had wolfwhistled and said, ‘You lucky man, you! We’ll move in with you, with neighbours like that. Did you see her legs? Wow.’

Gerard might have been more interested, himself, if he hadn’t just quarrelled with a girl he had been dating for months. He had discovered that while he was abroad for weeks Judy usually dated other men, and Gerard resented it.

‘You mean you never stray while you’re away?’ Judy had been cynically incredulous and when he’d insisted that he didn’t she just wouldn’t believe him. It had been the end of the affair. He had been badly hurt, jealous every time he imagined her with another man. It had left Gerard too sore to want to get involved with anyone else just yet.

The dark girl had invited him to one of their parties, the following weekend, but he had been busy and had forgotten all about it. The next time they bumped into each other coming or going from the mews she had softly reproached him. He had made his excuses, and she had relented gracefully. ‘Well, I forgive you this time! Look, we’re having another party next Saturday—try and come this time!’

‘I’m sorry, I’m just off to Brazil,’ he had said, smiling wryly back.

‘For TV?’ she had asked, admitting tacitly that she knew who he was—and Gerard had stiffened up. Were they inviting him because he was a celebrity, his face on TV every night, in the news? Gerard didn’t enjoy celebrity. He was a reporter, not an entertainer. He hated it when people were friendly to him simply because his face came into their homes every night. When he’d worked on a newspaper he had never got that sort of reaction. Newspaper reporters were anonymous, faceless people, on the whole. Nobody recognised you; when they found out what you did they were usually indifferent, unless they had an axe to grind about some report you had filed on them or their relatives.

‘That’s right.’ Irritated, he added, ‘By the way, can you and your friend keep the noise down in the evenings? I have to get to bed early and you seem to be up half the night playing rock music. It’s giving me a headache.’

She had looked at him sweetly. ‘Sure.’

They hadn’t, of course. In fact, he had a strong impression that they had turned up the volume after that, and they had stopped inviting him to their parties. If Gerard banged on the wall the volume went up even higher. If he went round to remonstrate with them the redhead looked at him as if he were a slug which was eating her lettuce.

A sudden hammering on his own front door made him jump. For a moment he couldn’t move, paralysed by shock. Oh, pull yourself together! he told himself contemptuously. This isn’t the Civil War; you’re back home again, in London, safe. Aren’t you the lucky one? What if you were still there?

His doorbell was ringing, loudly and persistently; someone had their finger pressed down on it. ‘Hello?’ someone called through the letter-box. ‘Oh, please be in, please…help me!’

Gerard made it to the door, pulled it open, his black brows jerking together in a scowl which made the girl outside back away instinctively for a second.

Gerard was a formidable sight: a big man, lean and sinewy, muscular but light on his feet when he had to move fast. He was a squash player, swam every day, when he had time he worked out at the gym near his newspaper office and quite often walked a good deal of the way to work, unless he was in a tearing hurry.

‘I’m—I’m sorry to bother you,’ stammered the girl on his doorstep.

‘You’re the girl who moved out!’ he said, recognising her.

‘Sara Ounissi,’ she said, nodding, but she was too upset for polite chat. ‘Please, I need your help,’ she added pleadingly. Her accent was foreign, although her English was very good. The name sounded Arabic. She had told him her name before—he was sure it hadn’t been Ounissi, though.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, resisting when she tried to pull him out of his home by the hand. He suspected a fight between the two girls and didn’t want to get involved.

‘I have to get into the cottage; she won’t let me in, but I know she’s there—I heard her moaning. I’m afraid she’ll die this time.’

‘Die?’ he repeated, taken aback. What had the two girls been fighting over? A man? This one looked so gentle: slightly built, although like her friend she was tall, with elegantly long-fingered hands and slender feet, hair the colour of jet, smooth skin, with a soft, golden sheen, her great, dark eyes like a doe’s, liquid and sweet.

‘Please come; don’t waste time asking questions,’ she wailed. ‘I’ve been trying to get her to answer, but she won’t.’

‘Maybe she isn’t in?’

‘Oh, yes, she is in there; I tell you I have heard her.’

‘You’ve quarrelled with her?’

‘No, no, you don’t understand…she’s very upset. She lost her TV contract this morning, a big advertising campaign, for Rexel, the cosmetics firm. Keira has been their “face” for the past year; you must have seen her on TV, putting on their makeup?’

His mouth twisted. ‘I rarely have time to watch TV.’ For the past three years he had been out of the country more often than he had been in it, and when he was at home the only programmes he watched were news and current affairs programmes.

‘But you are on TV every night!’ The dark eyes reproached him, accused him of hypocrisy, double standards. ‘TV is your business!’

‘Only the news!’ People increasingly confused news and entertainment, and it annoyed Gerard. He and his colleagues spilt their blood getting the news back to this country from war-torn parts of the world, and people watched as if it were all another adventure film, the blood just make-up. ‘And if I do catch a programme I never watch the advertisements,’ he said impatiently. ‘While they’re on I get myself a drink.’

The dark girl shrugged. ‘Well, Rexel is a big cosmetics firm and the contract was worth a lot of money. Her contract was up for renewal this week-and without warning they dropped her.’

‘That’s tough luck. I suppose she’ll miss the money? But aren’t her family wealthy? She won’t starve, surely? It can’t be a matter of life and death—’

Sara Ounissi interrupted fiercely, ‘That isn’t the point.’ She made a frustrated gesture with those long, delicate hands. ‘Keira takes rejections hard; they can trigger a violent mood swing. Her agent rang me to warn me she was devastated about suddenly being dropped by Rexel. Benny was my agent too; that’s why he rang me—I used to model. Fashion mostly—for magazines.’ She gave him an instinctive, faintly flirtatious look through her long, dark lashes. ‘Maybe you noticed me in one some time? But I gave it up when I got married last month. My husband doesn’t want me to go on modelling.’

Gerard’s brows rose; the women he worked with wouldn’t take kindly to being told to give up work by their husbands. ‘And you don’t mind that?’

She gave him a cool, dignified glance which resented the question. ‘His lifestyle will mean that I have a great deal to do at home; I wouldn’t have time to model as well. We travel a good deal; he has homes in Switzerland, the Gulf and Sussex. Luckily that was where I was this week. It took me ages to get up to London, and now she won’t let me in. I’ve been banging and calling for ages. I must get into the cottage—I suppose your key wouldn’t fit her front door?’

‘I hope not,’ Gerard said curtly. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want her letting herself in here whenever I’m away.’

The dark girl made an angry, spitting noise. ‘Oh, for the love of heaven! Don’t you get it? This is an emergency!’

He considered her, frowning. ‘What are you afraid of? Losing a job may be a bad blow, but it won’t make her suicidal unless she’s neurotic.’

‘You don’t understand. Keira…has a problem…’

Gerard’s mouth twisted contemptuously. ‘I see. Drugs.’ His tone was scathing now. ‘You’re afraid she’s taken an overdose?’

‘No!’ the girl said explosively. ‘She’s ill; she has bulimia…Now do you see?’

He looked blank. ‘Bulimia? That isn’t life-threatening. It’s just the opposite of anorexia, isn’t it?’

‘I thought you were a journalist?’ It was Sara’s turn to be scornful. ‘You should know about bulimia; it can be just as serious as anorexia. She eats and eats, and then deliberately makes herself sick. Eventually that can cause internal bleeding; she could be unconscious in there, could have choked to death. Since I moved out I haven’t been able to keep an eye on her; I don’t know what’s been going on.’ The girl stared at him, her face angry and desperate. ‘Look, if you won’t help, can I use your phone to call the police? There isn’t time to argue with you. I have to get to her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Gerard said. ‘OK, then, why don’t we ring the owner? Isn’t he her stepfather?’

Sara’s face tightened. Gerard got the feeling she didn’t like the owner of the cottage. ‘He’s in Tangier.’

‘Hasn’t she got any other family?’

‘Not in this country.’

‘Oh. Well, we could ring the agent and ask if he has a key.’

The dark girl’s face lit up. ‘I should have thought of that! He’s just around the corner. I’ll go right away.’

‘Hang on, we should ring first—I’ll find his number.’ Gerard went back into his own cottage, with the dark girl on his heels, looked up the number, rang the agent’s office and spoke to his secretary.

‘He’s out at present. We do have a key, of course. Did you say Sara was there? Could she come here to pick it up?’

The dark-haired girl had been listening. ‘I’ll go,’ she said, and was gone, running.

He told the secretary she was coming and rang off. The fax machine was chattering again; he let the latest screed from his editor drop into the tray awaiting it, glanced at it, sighing. It was another refusal to send him abroad on a story. ‘Come into the office. I need to talk to you,’ it ended.

Gerard screwed it up and threw it across the room, then went out into the cobbled mews.

A hundred years ago horses had been stabled in these little gabled buildings which had been built at the back of gardens belonging to the big Victorian houses lining the streets on either side of the alley. After the Second World War the stables had all been converted into dwellings. They were highly sought after; painted in bright colours, each one had a window-box for a garden. Gerard’s house had a scarlet-enamelled front door with a brass lion’s head knocker. The brick walls had been painted cream, and he had planted geraniums in the window-box.

It was a warm afternoon in early summer. The mews was drowsy with heat, the scent of flowers and trees in the gardens behind. Most of the other occupants of the tiny cottages were at work; there were no families here—the houses weren’t suitable. Tenants were either single or couples without children.

Gerard climbed on to the windowsill of the ground-floor front room of the cottage next door and peered in at a pretty sitting-room, furnished in spring-like pale green and white. It was empty, and immaculate.

He hoped he wasn’t being made a fool—Sara Ounissi might have got the whole thing out of proportion…On the other hand, what if she hadn’t? What if the redhead was seriously ill?

Just for once he could actually do something, save someone. He had been helpless when he was covering the civil war; he could observe, report what was happening, but do nothing useful. That was one reason for the nightmares he had had ever since he got back. He was ridden with guilt.

He had barely spoken to the redhead—what had Sara Ounissi called her? Keira, he thought—unusual name; it suited her.

He had noticed her, though; who could help it? That lovely face, the mane of wild red hair, the grace of her body made her unforgettable.

He jumped down, banged on her front door. ‘Keira? Keira, are you there? Open the door.’

There was no reply, just an echoing silence, but he was beginning to have a weird feeling, a gut instinct that there really was something wrong. His instincts had been honed by his job. Constantly being around sudden death made you quicker to pick up on danger.

It didn’t always work, of course. Sometimes you got caught out. The villagers he had been with that last night before he was shot were now either dead or homeless. It had been a pretty, white-walled, redroofed little village with apple blossom on the trees in the gardens when he’d first arrived there. He had been enchanted by it, had thought of it as an oasis of peace in the midst of turmoil.

Perhaps the very arrival of him and his camera team had drawn the enemy’s attention to the village. They had only been there a short time before the first shells had hit. Within days it was just a mass of smoking rubble, a hole in the ground, and there had been nothing he could do to stop the destruction, to help the people, except to tell the world what was happening to them, and to do that he had had to risk his own life, and that of his team, by staying with them.

The others had survived intact—the cameraman, the sound man, the young director with them on his first war coverage. Only Gerard had been wounded. He had been got out finally by some British soldiers serving there with the United Nations force, flown back to London by his newspaper, given the best possible treatment. His head wound was healing well. It had been a scalp injury, nothing serious; a bullet had ploughed a path across his head, a bloody parting in his hair. The wound in his leg had left him with a limp, most noticable when he was tired. He had been assured that it would gradually pass off altogether. The injuries to his mind were longer-lasting and made him sensitive to atmosphere.

He was sure he wasn’t imagining the sense of disaster he was getting now.

‘Keira! Open the door or I’m coming in!’ he shouted. The builders who had converted this small cottage had used pretty flimsy materials; he was sure he could kick this door in without trouble.

But he hesitated—maybe he shouldn’t risk a physical assault on the door in his present condition? His leg wasn’t yet fully recovered. He wouldn’t want to undo the work of his doctors.

He could try a little light burglary, though. He had once interviewed a professional criminal who had cheerfully demonstrated his own skill at opening hotel doors with a credit card. Gerard had never yet got around to testing what he had learnt. Now was his chance to do so.

He got out his credit-card wallet, extracted a card; a photograph fell out and he picked it up, frowning down at the image of himself in diving equipment against a background of blue sea and sky. It had been taken on his first visit to the country which, unknown to him, was about to be dragged down into civil war. He had spent several holidays there before the conflict began. Gerard had loved the place, gone diving, lazed in the sun, visited the beauty spots, admired the archaeological sites, drunk the local wine, eaten peasant food, strongly flavoured garlic sausages, fish caught on the day you ate it. He had made friends with local people, picked up something of the language, as he always did wherever he went. He had felt no warning of what was to come so soon afterwards.

It had been a painful shock to go back and find the countryside he remembered as peaceful and sundrenched being torn apart by civil war, the worst of all wars. He had felt so helpless, so useless, faced with such terrible suffering. He couldn’t get over what he had seen; he had had nightmares ever since he got back—had woken up screaming in the hospital ward, fought with his nurses, been half crazy with rage and horror.

That was why he was still on sick leave, although he had been pestering the news editor to put him back in the game. He had been ordered to rest and recover mentally before they sent him abroad again.

They thought he was off his trolley, of course. Damn them! Didn’t they realise he needed to bury those memories under a heap of others? He needed to be busy, to have things to do to stop himself remembering.

Impatiently Gerard pushed the photo back into his wallet and turned his attention to the front door; he slid his credit card slowly and carefully into position. He heard a click and gently pushed; the door magically slid open.

‘Well, well, aren’t you clever?’ he said to himself, grinning, before he looked around.

The cottage was an exact replica of his own in terms of structure. The front door opened out into a tiny passage at the base of the stairs. Ahead of him he saw a kitchen, to his right the open door of the sitting-room.

‘Keira!’ he called, walking towards the kitchen door. Then he stopped, shaken by what he saw. It had been expensively furnished in high-tech style with every modern gadget and piece of equipment—but at the moment it looked as if it had been raided by vandals. The fridge door hung open, food spilled out on the floor next to it; there was partly eaten food on the table, on the tops of the cabinets, everywhere.

Otherwise, though, the room was empty. The girl must be upstairs. What sort of state was she in? He began to run, taking the stairs two at a time.

She wasn’t in either of the small bedrooms; both were feminine, delicately furnished, immaculate. The excessive neatness of the rooms compared to the disarray in the kitchen sent a shiver down his spine.

The bathroom door was shut. He tentatively turned the handle; the door wasn’t locked, but he didn’t like to walk in—first he tapped on it, called her name again.

‘Keira? This is your next-door neighbour, Gerard Findlay. Are you OK? Your friend Sara is worried about you. Open the door, Keira.’

There was a faint movement inside, then a low, smothered groan. It was enough to make Gerard forget social conventions. He burst into the room, flinched in shock at what he saw. She lay on the floor just inside the door, curled in a foetal position. As he stopped beside her she lifted her head as if it was heavy, turned her wet-lashed green eyes towards him, made a sound, like a terrified kitten.

‘Go away!’

She swallowed visibly; he could see that the convulsive movement hurt, saw her wince. No doubt her throat was raw. She must have been throwing up for a long time. She was as white as paper and her mouth was puffy and looked bruised.

Gerard was essentially a very practical man; his common sense took over.

‘Have you stopped vomiting?’ he quietly asked.

She closed her eyes, sobbed, put a hand to her mouth to stifle the sound, turning her head away from him as if to shut out the sight of him.

‘Go away!’ she gasped. ‘Please…just leave me alone.’

He took no notice. Bending, he lifted her bodily, putting one hand under her knees, another under her back. It was no problem to him—he was a very strong man; his muscles took her weight easily. She was as light as a feather anyway; she seemed to have no bones; he almost believed that if he dropped her she wouldn’t fall, she would float.

‘No,’ she wailed, but he ignored the protest, carrying her through into the bedroom. He lowered her gently on to the bed, sat her on the edge of it, still holding her with one hand while he pulled her thin blue silky tunic dress up over her head with the other.

She tried to fight him off, to stop him. ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped in panic.

He got the dress off, however, and threw it into a corner of the room. Under it she was wearing a one-piece garment, white silk, the top of it held up by fine thin straps over her bare shoulders, the deep white lace frothing over her breasts, matching lace ending at the pale thighs.

‘Bastard,’ she spat out, the green eyes flashing as she saw him looking down at her body curiously. ‘Get your hands off me. I’m not in such a bad way that I can’t stop you raping me.’ Her fingers curled into claws; she had long, pale, pearl-vanished nails which looked lethal. ‘I’ll have your eyes out if you try it!’

‘You must be joking!’ snapped Gerard, suddenly angry with her for what she was doing to herself. ‘You don’t think any man could find you sexy, looking like this?’

Her green eyes widened; she gave him a stricken look.

He grimaced, wishing he hadn’t said that. More gently, he told her, ‘I took your dress off because I thought you’d feel better in something clean.’

She took that on board and flinched as she realised what he meant. ‘Oh, God,’ she groaned, covering her face with her hands. ‘What do I look like? Don’t look at me. Go away; please go away.’

He laid her down on the bed and went over to the wall-to-wall fitted wardrobe. He pulled out a warm blue wool dressing-gown and brought it back to her.

She was lying on the bed with closed eyes, curled into the foetal position again as if wishing to retreat back into a time before birth, back to the safety of the womb. The wild red hair spilled over the pillow; her skin was like buttermilk; the small breasts with their dark pink nipples had the budlike look of a very young girl’s. Her bra was clearly padded. But those legs…His eyes followed the graceful length of them down to those thin, highinstepped feet. She was far too thin, but she was hauntingly lovely. A faery child, he thought; not quite of this world.

How old was she? he wondered, guessing her to be not much past twenty. Maybe twenty-one or two? A good ten years younger than himself.

‘You’d better put this on,’ he told her, and her eyes snapped open. She sat up and he held the dressing-gown for her while she weakly pushed her arms into it; Gerard knelt down to tie the wide blue belt around her tiny waist. She was so fragile it made him almost afraid to touch her, and he grew angry again.

‘How can you do such stupid things to yourself?’ he asked her, looking up into her face. ‘You don’t need to diet, you have a beautiful body; why are you trying to destroy it for the sake of vanity?’

‘Vanity?’ She laughed with a rising edge that made him frown. He didn’t think he could cope with female hysteria. ‘You think I like myself?’ she asked him wildly. ‘Don’t tell me I have a beautiful body; I know how fat I am. I have eyes; I can see myself in a mirror.’

He looked his amazement, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping. ‘Fat? You aren’t fat! You can’t honestly believe that. If anything, you’re too skinny.’

‘Don’t lie to me! Oh, I know you mean well, but there’s no point in pretending. I’m not a fool.’

‘You may not be a fool but you’re definitely crazy,’ said Gerard grimly. ‘I’m going to ring your doctor, get you some help.’

‘No!’ She gripped his arm with fingers that dug into him. ‘I won’t see him!’ Her voice was hoarse but insistent.

Gerard had no idea what to do in this situation; he didn’t really know what he was dealing with. Sara Ounissi had been so urgent, so scared. And his first reaction when he’d seen Keira had been one of shock and dismay. Yet now he wasn’t sure how serious this was—she was very pale, admittedly, and everything she said disturbed him, yet he didn’t get the feeling that this was a silly girl, a butterfly with nothing much in her head. Her green eyes were far too intelligent, her mouth full and warm, yet determined.

He had better wait for Sara to get back; she would know what to do.

As if picking up his thoughts and echoing them, Keira moistened her bruised mouth with the tip of her tongue and said huskily, ‘You said…Sara was here? Where…?’

‘She went to get a key from the agent; I can’t think what’s taking her so long. Would you like a glass of water? Or is there any medication you take?’

‘Water would be wonderful, please,’ she whispered.

There was a sound of running feet on the stairs at that instant and Sara Ounissi appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. She stopped dead, her long black hair tumbled around her white face, and looked at her friend hurriedly.

‘Oh, Keira…are you OK?’

Keira’s white mouth trembled into a faint smile. ‘I’m just fine,’ she said, and tried to get up. A second later she fainted. Gerard was just too late to catch her. She lay face down on the floor while he was still leaping to interrupt her fall.

‘Call her doctor!’ he ordered Sara before he picked Keira up again and put her back on the bed.

Sara didn’t argue. She hurried out without a word. Gerard thought wryly, Her husband must be a very happy man; I hope he knows how lucky he is! Why don’t I ever meet girls like her? Well, I did meet her, of course, and never tried to get to know her. How was I to know she was perfect wife material? But then I wasn’t looking for a wife. I’m still not, in fact.

Marriage was not part of Gerard’s game plan.

He turned back to look at the other girl, his brows dark, his eyes smouldering. He was desperately sorry for her, and yet he was affronted by her too. When he thought of the desperate struggle to survive in spite of everything which he had seen in other places it made him deeply angry to think that this stupid girl, with everything to live for, in a safe, sheltered country, was busy trying to kill herself over silly vanity.

What was her family doing, allowing her to get into this state? He glanced around the room as if looking for clues and saw some photographs on a chest by the window. He went over to look hard at them.

One was of Keira and a woman in a bikini who from a distance looked young, not much older than Keira herself—until you looked more closely, and saw that the tanned skin was faintly wrinkled on the neck, and the face too tight. A face-lift? he thought. Was this her mother? Red hair, green eyes, a tall, very slim woman—who else could it be? He saw the same woman in another photo, again with Keira, but a lot of other people gathered around them, in a luxuriously furnished reception-room with marble floors and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

This time they were with a much older man-grey-haired, heavily tanned, wearing a tropical lightweight suit in a pale colour. He had his arm around the red-headed woman and was smiling into the camera.

I know him! thought Gerard. The face was very familiar. But he couldn’t remember where he had seen it before. He closely examined the room in the photo—people in Britain didn’t go in for marble floors in their homes. That usually meant a Mediterranean setting, which fitted with the blue skies you saw through the open French windows, and the sunlight flooding the room, but the furniture had an Arab look to it.

Tangier? Wasn’t that where Keira’s stepfather was supposed to be at the moment? Perhaps he had a villa there?

There were pictures crowded together on the walls of the room in the photo. He looked closer, curious, and was impressed as he recognised some well-known, contemporary artists. Gerard was something of an expert on twentieth-century art. He had an art degree and had chosen the artists of post Second World War Europe as the subject of his degree thesis.

These paintings could be copies, of course, but somehow he didn’t think it likely. The home in which they hung was far too luxurious. If they were originals, the owner of the villa must either be very wealthy or knowledgeable enough to pick up young artists before their work was highly priced.

Why on earth weren’t Keira’s parents doing something about her illness? They obviously had money. Didn’t they care what happened to her? Or didn’t they know? Had she managed to keep her bulimia a secret from them?

Keira stirred a moment later, black lashes flickering against pale cheeks, a little sigh escaping.

He quickly went back to her. ‘Just lie still; don’t move again,’ Gerard told her quite gently as the lashes rose and he found himself looking into those slanting green eyes. His finger and thumb gripped her wrist, taking her pulse. It was faint and faraway; her skin felt icy.

‘Where’s Sara?’ she whispered. Her gaze moved from his downbent face, flicked around the rest of the room.

‘She’s gone to call your doctor.’

‘No!’ She tried to sit up but he pushed her back against the pillows, holding her shoulders down, leaning over.

‘Be sensible. For God’s sake, girl, do you want to die?’

If it was possible, she turned whiter, her lips quivering, then she tried to laugh.

‘Don’t be so melodramatic! Oh, will you stop interfering? You may think you’re trying to help me but you’re only making things ten times worse.’

‘You don’t know what’s best for you,’ Gerard said obstinately.

She gave him a sarcastic look. ‘And you do, of course! You men are all the same. Sara has married one who treats her like a cross between a doll and a slave. I can’t believe she actually seems to enjoy it; I think she’s temporarily insane. Well, I’m not letting you run my life for me, so get out of my home and mind your own business.’

He hadn’t been able to do anything to stop the death and misery he had seen during the civil war, but he wasn’t going to stand aside and let this girl destroy herself without trying to stop her.

‘You’ll see a doctor if I have to tie you to that bed,’ he insisted.

Sara came back into the room with a glass of water. Gerard lifted Keira and she took the glass, sipped some of the water very slowly, as if allowing it to trickle down her sore throat.

‘Dr Patel will be here any minute,’ Sara told them.

Keira looked at her furiously. ‘You shouldn’t have rung him. You know what he’ll say. He’ll only go through the old routine again, trying to persuade me to go into that stupid clinic, and I’m not going, so you will both have wasted your time. The attack’s over, OK? I’m fine; I just had a little hiccup, nothing serious.’

‘It looked damned serious to me!’ exploded Gerard. ‘Your kitchen looks like a bomb’s hit it! You need help.’

She flinched, gave him that stricken look again, then turned crossly on her friend. ‘What’s he doing here? You didn’t ask him in, did you? Come to that, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you back home with Rashid? How did you both get in here?’

‘Benny rang me,’ Sara said uneasily. ‘He was worried about you.’

‘Benny!’ The green eyes glittered. ‘I might have known! Wait till I get hold of him!’

‘He cares about you.’ Sara looked pleadingly at her. ‘So do I, Keira. I’m sorry you lost the contract.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it!’ She threw Gerard a hostile look. ‘And you still haven’t told me why he’s here—what on earth possessed you to involve him?’

‘I couldn’t get in, but I knew you were in there; I heard you at one point. I was desperate, Keira; I thought his front door key might fit your door.’

‘You can be so daft!’ muttered Keira, scowling.

‘Sorry,’ Sara said softly. ‘I was upset. Gerard was very helpful; he suggested I got another key from the agent—that hadn’t occurred to me; I was too upset to think properly. Men always seem to be able to think clearly, however upset they get.’ She gave Gerard an admiring smile.

Keira snorted. ‘Don’t butter him up! He’ll be purring in a minute.’

‘It was clever of him,’ Sara said. ‘I drove round to the agent’s, but when I got back Gerard had already managed to open the door and was up here with you.’

Keira turned her eyes back to Gerard. ‘How…?’

‘I slipped the lock with a credit card,’ he admitted coolly.

She was outraged. ‘I could call the police and have you arrested for that! That’s burglary.’

‘I thought I might be saving your life! Your friend gave me the impression you could be dying.’

A voice called from downstairs and Sara said with relief, ‘Dr Patel!’ She went out, called, ‘Come up, please, Doctor.’

Keira looked coldly at Gerard. ‘Thank you for all your help,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Goodbye. Shut the front door behind you and if you ever burgle my house again I really will call the police, however good an excuse you think up!’

He got up. ‘Thanks for the gratitude. Next time you try to kill yourself I’ll just let you go ahead, don’t worry.’

He passed the doctor on the landing. ‘The best of luck; you’ll need it, with her,’ he told him, and the startled man gave him a stare, then a sudden, amused grin.

‘Oh, don’t worry, I know what to expect. She is a very stubborn young lady.’

Gerard headed for work ten minutes later, to have his interview with the news editor, but as he drove through heavy traffic he couldn’t get her image out of his head—the wild tangle of red curls around that delicate white face, the bud-like breasts and long, long legs. She haunted him for the rest of the day.

CHAPTER TWO

KEIRA was thinking about him too, hardly listening to the doctor as he examined her, sighing.

‘You’ve stopped putting on weight, haven’t you? Have you lost some more? You were doing so well, too. You must not let yourself slide backwards, my dear girl.’ His sing-song voice was gently sad; he never became angry, he just got sadder and sadder. Trying to make me feel guilty, thought Keira. And succeeding a lot of the time! Dr Patel was a great psychologist.

‘It just happened,’ was all Keira could say to him. She felt like death, and knew she must look it. She had seen the distaste in Gerard Findlay’s eyes and felt sick herself. He was the very last man in the world she would have wanted to see her in that condition. It had been a deep shock to find herself looking into his eyes. For a second she had almost thought she was imagining him, and then she had realised he was not a figment of her imagination, he was really there, and she had been shaken to her depths.

‘Just happened?’ the doctor repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Oh, please, Keira! We both know there is more to it than that!’

Keira looked at him helplessly, her face white, her eyes smudged and shadowy in that whiteness. ‘All right! I couldn’t cope. When I knew I’d lost that contract I felt so bad. I didn’t mean to let it happen. I came home and I was hungry; I started to eat, and the next minute…’

‘It triggered an attack.’ Dr Patel nodded. ‘It is insidious. Something makes you unhappy, you need the comfort of food, you start to eat and you can’t stop, but you are afraid of putting on weight, so you make yourself throw up. It is an endless circle. The only way out of it is understanding yourself and why it happens. As soon as you feel yourself losing control you must stop, go for a walk, go to see a film, ring up friends, visit people, do anything to distract yourself.’

‘I know, I know. Oh, and I tried so hard this last year; it hasn’t happened for months and months; I kept it under tight control, put on lots of weight.’

‘You needed to,’ the doctor said quickly, frowning at her. ‘Don’t start telling yourself you’re fat! You know that’s another trigger. The truth is, you’re still underweight for your height.’

He saw the evasion in her face and knew she didn’t really believe him; that was the problem with all bulimia sufferers—they couldn’t trust in what they saw in the mirror. They saw a very different reflection and they never believed what other people told them, either. Their obsession was too deep, as deep as their need for love and reassurance.

‘Keira, Keira,’ he said, shaking his head at her. ‘Believe me, you are too thin. My wife is a very sexy woman, most beautiful, and she would make two of you!’

That made her laugh and her face relaxed a little. ‘She wouldn’t thank you for that if she could hear you!’

Dr Patel’s eyes twinkled. ‘Oh, she would be flattered—in my culture being thin is not so prized as it is in yours. I like women to have round hips and breasts like watermelons. I don’t want to go to bed with someone with the figure of a boy. That doesn’t excite me at all.’ He grinned at her. ‘I am sorry, Keira, but you would have to put on a lot of weight before I would think you were as beautiful as my wife!’

Keira giggled, then said wryly, ‘But I’m a model, Doctor. I have to stay slim or I won’t get work. The camera puts pounds on you. That’s why I lost that Rexel contract—they thought I had put on too much weight.’

He looked irritated. ‘Then they are very silly people. You are much more beautiful now than you were a year ago! A little weight has improved you.’

‘Tell that to Rexel’s ad men,’ Keira said bitterly.

The doctor watched her shadowed face and sighed.

‘I wish I could have the chance! I would box their ears for them. Believe me, you have been looking much better lately. It is a great pity to ruin it now; you don’t want to have to go back to the clinic, do you?’

She shook her head, grimacing, remembering the regime in the private clinic to which her stepfather had sent her when her weight had got down so far that it had shocked her mother when she’d seen Keira again after a gap of eighteen months.

Keira had agreed to have medical help only because her mother was so distraught. Keira hadn’t really believed she was ill. The first month in the clinic had been a long struggle between her and the medical staff. It had taken some time before she had begun to listen to them, begun to understand what she had been doing to herself. Since then she had been through a bitter battle to start living a very different life, and she was angry with herself for having fallen back again.

‘That’s the last thing I want! I couldn’t stand going through that again!’ she assured the doctor, who smiled.

‘Good girl. Then what you must do now is break this pattern before it starts. I think you should take a holiday, get away from the problems that have caused the recurrence.’

‘But now I’ve lost Rexel I’ll have to get other work, which means I must be in London.’

‘That can wait, my dear, believe me. The most important thing at the moment is for you to get back to the position you were in a year ago, feeling strong and sure of yourself. Going away will help you see things more clearly; from a distance everything will look different. Go somewhere sunny. Just relax and have fun, forget everything else. Eat three meals a day, never eat alone, don’t eat in between meals, but above all if you feel an attack threatening do something. Get a friend to go with you, stop you going near food. That little girl out thereSara, is it? Get her to go with you. And while you’re there go out all the time, keep busy, surround yourself with lots of people.’ He smiled at her. ‘You have broken the cycle once, my dear. Don’t let it re-establish itself.’

‘I won’t. Thank you, Dr Patel.’ Keira smiled at him. His soothing manner and understanding had made her feel more human.

When he had gone Sara came into the bedroom and sat on her bed. ‘What did he say?’

Keira told her and Sara nodded. ‘I think that’s very good advice. You haven’t had a holiday for ages, you’ve been working so hard.’

‘Rexel kept me busy,’ Keira said, her mouth turning down at the corners as she was reminded of the lost contract. She had hoped for so much from it—the constant appearance on TV had been making her face instantly recognisable everywhere she went. Being seen on magazine covers, or inside magazines, never had that sort of impact. Of course, she had known it couldn’t last forever, but she had hoped for another year, at least.

Sara gave her a sympathetic look. ‘I’m sorry, Keira—it must have been a terrible blow. But at least now you’re free to take other work, and after you’ve been the Rexel girl and on TV all the time for a year your face is famous—you’re bound to be offered lots of jobs.’

‘For a while, maybe. But I’m getting too old! You know how young you have to be in this business. In a few years the place will be overrun with girls of seventeen who’ll get all the jobs, and I’ll be out, finished. I’ll be lucky to get a job modelling clothes for home-shopping catalogues.’

‘You’re just depressed. You’ve got plenty of time to make it into the big league; you’re only twentytwo.’

‘I feel a lot older.’ Keira grimaced, her mouth turning down at the edges, then shot Sara an accusing look. ‘By the way, I’ve got a bone to pick with you.’

‘A bone?’ For once Sara’s brilliant grasp of English failed her; she stared blankly.

‘Gerard Findlay!’

‘Oh…’ Sara put one of her elegant little hands up to her mouth, giggling helplessly.

‘It isn’t funny! You know I hate the man—I certainly didn’t want him to see me looking like that! I could kill you!’

Sara looked apologetically at her. ‘Sorry, I was in a panic. I just needed…’

‘A man to tell you what to do!’ Keira finished for her, eyeing her with half-impatient amusement. ‘I know you; when a problem comes up you always scream for a man.’

‘They are so useful! I wasn’t brought up to break down doors; think what it would do to my nails!’

Keira looked at Sara’s long, beautiful manicured fingernails and laughed. Sara was smart, lively, very shrewd and down-to-earth, when she was with her own sex; but let a man walk into the room and she threw a switch, started fluttering her lashes, using a soft, sweet voice, acting dumb and helpless. And the really maddening thing, thought Keira, was that it always seemed to work; men loved it. Had Gerard Findlay liked it?

Sara added triumphantly, ‘And I was right: he got in here, didn’t he? And without having to break the door down. He is clever…’ She grinned. ‘As well as very sexy.’

Keira wished she could deny it, but much as she might dislike Gerard Findlay she couldn’t ignore his smouldering sexuality. The first time she’d seen him he had made an indelible impact with his black hair and angry grey eyes, that lean and powerful body. He was intensely male, and he made Keira deeply aware of her own sexuality. Everything female in her vibrated in response, as if buried deep inside her was a magnetic needle which quivered and swung towards the north pole of his masculinity.

‘I hate the man,’ she repeated, and Sara gave her a glinting, teasing smile.

‘That’s what you say.’

To her own fury, Keira felt her skin colour, glow hot. At that second the telephone rang. Deeply relieved to be able to change the subject, she said, ‘Could you answer that? Ask whoever it is to leave a name and number and I’ll call them back later.’

‘OK,’ Sara said, then, with a mocking flick of her lashes added, ‘Saved by the bell!’

Keira did not ask her what she meant. Sara was intensely intuitive, unfortunately. She picked up feelings and thoughts Keira did not want her to guess at; it was part of Sara’s strongly developed femininity, which was half instinctive, half learnt at her mother’s knee.

It was the merest accident that Sara came to be in London, let alone working as a model. Her Arab parents had brought her to London when she was four because her father got a job with an Arab bank in Mayfair. When Sara was six, he had died, and her ravishing, still very young mother had stayed on in London because her brother worked in the same bank and was at hand to take care of his sister and her child.

Sara’s mother was young and beautiful; within a year she had married again, a client of the bank with an enormous fortune. Sara had lived in England ever since. At seventeen she had become a model and had been very successful. Her family made sure she never took her clothes off in front of a man, never modelled underclothes or swimwear, but that had not hindered her career. She had begun by working with one of her cousins, a talented young designer who modelled his clothes on her: Arab-inspired caftans and evening dresses, hooded cloaks that swirled around you as you walked, filmy loose white gauze trousers tied at the ankles. His clothes were romantic, visually exciting; he had helped make Sara’s reputation, she had begun to appear on magazine covers and was soon in great demand. When she’d retired from the profession to get married, aged twenty-one, a wail of regrets had gone up from the photographers and designers who liked to have her work for them.

Sara had been blithely indifferent. Oh, she had enjoyed modelling, but now she was eager to be a wife and mother. Sara always threw herself wholeheartedly into whatever she was doing, and loved variety, excitement, novelty—she got bored doing the same thing every day. What she wanted was constant change.

Keira frowned at the ceiling, her face as cold and white as the plasterwork above her. I wish I did, she thought, but change of any kind, in her work, in her private life, made her tense and nervous and there was nothing she could do to stop that kneejerk reaction.

While she was staying at the clinic she had undergone therapy which tried to get at the root of her eating disorder and made her aware that the various problems she had all stemmed from the same source, her childhood and the breakdown of the family which had changed her world forever at exactly the worst age, on the verge of puberty. It was one thing to realise something like that, quite another to be able to deal with it. You could re-train yourself where learned behaviour was concerned, but when you were dealing with the unconscious you could not use reason or persuasion; you were helpless to reach that submerged part of the mind.

She started, hearing Sara’s running feet on the stairs. The other girl came back into the room, flushed and smiling. ‘It was your mother.’

Keira tensed. ‘You didn’t tell her I’d had an attack?’

‘No. Although I know I ought to have—she’ll be furious when she knows I didn’t tell her.’

‘She’ll tell Ivo, and he’ll just use it as a stick to beat her with!’

Sara gave her a curious look. ‘You hate him, don’t you?’

‘He isn’t my man of the year, I’ll admit.’

‘Well, I told your mother you were out and would ring her back when you got in; don’t forget to do that when you feel up to it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll have to go; we’re having a dinner party tonight. I’ll ring you later to check how you are. If you need me, you know where I am.’

‘Yes,’ Keira said, then added quietly, ‘Thanks, Sara—for coming so quickly and…’ She made a wordless little gesture with her hands and Sara shook her head at her.

‘What are friends for? Be seeing you soon.’

* * *

In the newsroom of the TV company he worked for Gerard was arguing with the news editor, a large, shaggy-haired man with heavy eyebrows and a permanently harassed look.

‘I tell you there’s nothing wrong with me now; I’m as fit as you are.’ He gave the other man a furious look from head to toe, scowling. ‘Fitter, come to that!’

The other man, who was stones overweight, drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney, laughed.

‘Sure, you are, but I’m not a foreign correspondent, I’m a desk jockey, and I don’t need a doctor’s certificate before I come to work. I have to abide by the company doctor’s decision and he says you shouldn’t be sent into a war zone again, or put under any strain, because you’re still suffering from…’ He searched among the piled papers on his desk and pulled out one, pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and peered at the document. ‘Here it is…post-traumatic shock. That’s what you’ve got, Gerry, old son. You’re in post-traumatic shock and the company won’t be responsible for you if you go abroad. They don’t want to have to pay out huge sums of money in compensation if you crack up permanently next time.’

‘Damn fools!’ growled Gerard, but recognised that he had no hope of persuading the company to change their mind. Money was the bottom line with these people.

‘Listen, didn’t you do an art degree? Todd’s on to an interesting art story—it may develop into a full programme for current affairs, or just turn out to be a stock item for one of those nights when there’s no news. He could do with some help; why not work with him for a week and then have another check-up?’

Gerard gave a furious shrug. ‘Oh, very well. Where will I find him?’

‘He’s working out of Annexe Three—you’ll need a pass; security is pretty tight at the moment. Hang on; I’ll ring him and warn him you’re on your way and he’ll alert Security.’

Todd Knight was a short, ginger-haired man in his early thirties; he was the news team’s art and antiques expert but doubled up by reporting on certain crime stories when they touched on his specialist subject.

He welcomed Gerard with open arms. ‘Good to have you aboard, man! I could do with some help with this stuff; I’m absolutely swamped with leads and I can’t follow them all up personally. You’re a godsend.’

Gerard grinned at him, accepting the mug of black coffee Todd offered him. ‘Glad to be of some use for a change. So, what’s it all about?’

‘The underground trade in stolen art and antiques.’ Todd gestured to the walls of the office on which hung photographs and drawings. ‘All these disappeared during the past two years. They’re important works, most of them—worth millions. None of them resurfaced, so where are they? Who took them, and who bought them from the thieves?’

Gerard frowned, wandering around the room, peering at the snapshots. ‘This is police work, surely—they have a squad which specialises in following up these cases.’

‘Of course they do, and they are, but I’m working on an idea for a programme; I believe international collectors are involved in a crime ring, employing criminals who are given exact orders—told what to snatch and how much will be paid when the painting is delivered. It’s being organised on a huge scale, Gerard, and it’s a worldwide scam.’

Gerard whistled. ‘That could make some programme! Hey, I know this painting…it was hanging in a gallery in the South of France; it’s a Cézanne.’

‘Right—it vanished a year ago, hasn’t been seen since. There’s a strong lead over in France, in Provence; I was thinking of going over there soon to see what I can dig up.’

‘You can count me in for that—a few days in Provence sounds great; I think I’m going to enjoy this job!’ grinned Gerard. ‘Oddly enough, I was going to ring you today anyway—I wanted to ask you a few questions.’

Keira half slept, half daydreamed for several hours and then got up and showered, got dressed. It was twilight by then, early evening. She forced herself to think about supper, and decided to have a little scrambled egg, followed by a banana. Her stomach still felt queasy but she knew she had to re-establish a light eating pattern at once.

She went downstairs, almost jumping out of her skin when her doorbell rang loudly just as she reached the tiny hallway.

She hesitated, but she couldn’t pretend not to be in because she had only just switched on the hall light.

‘Who is it?’ she asked, close to the door.

‘Gerard Findlay,’ said the deep, familiar voice, and she closed her eyes. It would be him, wouldn’t it?

‘What do you want?’

‘To talk to you. Open this door; I don’t like talking through it with half the street listening. Of course, if you don’t mind everyone hearing what I say to you…’ He paused significantly, and she bit her lip, flushed with anger. He knew very well that she wouldn’t want anyone eavesdropping, especially if he meant to talk about what had happened earlier that day.

Reluctantly, she slipped the catch and opened the door, very tense as she faced him. He looked her up and down with those hard grey eyes, taking in everything about her, from her faintly damp red hair, tied up with a black ribbon at her nape, down over her slender figure to her pale bare feet. She had not bothered to put on make-up and was wearing a black sweater and jeans. She looked, thought Gerard, like a boy, and yet there was something so intensely feminine about her mouth, naturally full and pink, as velvety as a hedgerow rose, so that he couldn’t help wondering what it would taste like, how it would feel if he kissed it. His gaze wandered to that wild, tumbling hair; she had tried to tame it by tying it back but it suited her better free—he was tempted to catch hold of it, pull off the ribbon and let the hair fall around her face, before running his fingers through it, burying his face in the curling strands.

Keira stared back at him angrily—how dared he look her over like that?

‘Well?’ she demanded, her chin lifted in a defiant movement.

‘Feeling better?’ he asked casually.

She nodded without a smile, her expression offhand, which, if he had known her better, he would have known meant that she was ill at ease and desperately trying to hide it.

‘I’m fine. You said you had something to say. Could you be quick? I’m very busy.’

His lids half lowered at that, a sardonic gleam in his eyes as he surveyed her.

‘Going out?’

She hesitated. ‘I might.’

‘Dressed like that?’ His glance ran over her again with open amusement, but underneath that he was reacting very differently. He kept telling himself she was too skinny for his taste, but the truth was he found those small, high breasts sexy, even though the baggy sweater half hid her body—the body he had been remembering all day, the body he had carried in his arms and found as light as a child’s yet with considerable sensual impact.

‘I shall change if I go out,’ she coldly told him. ‘You still haven’t told me what you wanted to say.’

He shrugged. ‘I just wanted to check you were OK.’

‘I’m fine, thank you, as I just told you.’ Her tone was curt, rejecting his interest.

He was undeterred; Gerard Findlay had spent his entire working life persisting in the face of angry resistance to his questioning. ‘What did the doctor say?’

She gave him a furious look at that, green eyes sparking fire. ‘Why on earth should I tell you that? I know you’re a reporter but that doesn’t give you the right to go around asking people about their private lives! If I told you I might find the story in a gossip column tomorrow!’

‘I’m a foreign correspondent on TV, not a gossip columnist with a tabloid!’ he retorted. ‘And I’ve no intention of selling your story to either the newspapers or TV. I saw your light on as I was parking my car, so I thought I’d check that you were OK. I wish I hadn’t bothered now.’

He turned on his heel and went out, banging the door behind him with a violence that made her nerves shiver. She knew she had been rude and hostile and he had only been showing neighbourly concern, she knew she ought to go after him to apologise but she couldn’t. She had to keep him at arm’s length. She had known that from the minute she first saw him.

She remembered that afternoon with crystalclarity. It had been a cool November Saturday, the last bronze leaves blowing off the trees and rustling in the gutters, the sky almost entirely colourless.

Because it was the weekend neither she nor Sara had been working. Normally they did their housework and shopping on a Saturday, and they had just finished tidying the cottage when the removal van had arrived next door.

‘This must be our new neighbour,’ Sara had said, leaning out of the window to watch the arrival. The cottage next door had been empty for several weeks and they had known that a new tenant would shortly be taking over.

The van had parked, the removal men had climbed down and undone the tailboard, at which point Gerard had arrived, roaring up at speed in his little red sports car.

‘Nice car!’ Sara commented approvingly, then whistled as the driver got out to unlock the front door of the cottage so that the men could carry his furniture inside.

‘Look at those long legs; I do love men with long, long legs.’

‘You love men, full stop,’ Keira told her drily.

‘True.’ Sara curled up on the window-seat, like a curious little cat, to watch everything that was going on next door. ‘I’m sure I know him. I’ve seen him before somewhere, I just can’t remember where.’

Keira went off to make coffee for them both. When she got back Sara told her excitedly, ‘I’ve got it! He’s on the news, on TV…not an announcer, a reporter—oh, you know, he was on the other night doing a story from Jordan. He must have just flown home. I’m trying to remember his name…Jeremy? Geoffrey?’

‘Gerard,’ said Keira who had recognised him at once. ‘Gerard Findlay.’

‘That’s it! I knew I was close.’ Sara stared in fascination as he moved about below in the mews, that lean, powerful body, in jeans and a leather jacket, as graceful as a wild animal’s, a big cat, a leopard or a jaguar. There was that aura of danger about him, the threat of the predator.

‘He is simply gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Sara sighed. ‘If I wasn’t madly in love with Rashid I would flip over him.’

Keira didn’t say anything. She was too busy feeling sick. Her skin was prickling, her stomach clenching; even the hairs on her head had seemed to react to the man moving about between the cottage next door and the street.

She had always liked him on TV, but in real life he was far sexier. The small screen diminished him. When you saw him crouching down behind ruined houses, or talking against a background of such devastation that it overwhelmed the man doing the commentary, you didn’t realise how tall he was, how powerfully built. He was more intensely coloured too, his hair a midnight-black, with the sheen of a raven’s wing, his skin tanned to a smooth gold, his eyes a dark, glittering grey. Staring at him that first morning, she felt an attraction so strong she was terrified.

She had been in love only once before; she never wanted to feel like that again. She had fallen too hard, become desperate with love; he had been frightened off. She had known it was happening but been unable to stop the need welling up inside her, or even hide it. All her life she had been looking for love, and she’d thought she had finally found it, but she had picked the wrong man to love that much. He had not been an all-or-nothing type. He’d found her need alarming. He’d stopped asking her out and started dating someone else; Keira had gone through a hell of pain and humiliation, because everyone knew, all their friends, and she had been so distressed that she hadn’t done a very good job of hiding how she felt.

Two years had gone by since it happened, but it still had the power to sting her when she remembered it.

If she ever fell in love again she was going to do so slowly, and let the man fall in love first, make sure she was safe before she let herself care.

‘Let’s go round and invite him in for a cup of tea,’ Sara said.

Keira shook her head and said, ‘You would have to invite all those removal men too, and I’m not in the mood to talk to a lot of strangers.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Sara said, but in the end she took a tray of tea and hastily made sandwiches next door, and came back after being there for ages, laughing and pink, well pleased with herself. She had found out all she could about Gerard, no doubt asked endless questions.

‘He’s not married, not even divorced; he just broke up with his latest girlfriend…’

‘I don’t care; stop talking about him!’

‘I took a lot of trouble checking him out for you!’ teased Sara, her eyes dancing. ‘He’s your type, more so than mine.’

Keira reacted furiously, giving her a glare. ‘I don’t want any of your matchmaking. If I want a man I’ll find my own.’

But Sara persisted in trying to bring them together. ‘You’ll change your mind when you meet him,’ she said, and went round to invite him to their next party. Keira fought to stay indifferent, but by the time the party began she was in a very hyper state. She kept busy pouring drinks, handing around food, but she looked round every time someone arrived, her heart skipping a beat.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

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

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