Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Copyright

“You’ve been very kind.”

“I could hardly leave you to cope. I’ll let myself out.”

Either Tessa’s hearing was faulty, or he sounded husky. She frowned, unable to understand why.

“I’ll come around in the morning,” Guy added.

“No!” she demurred. “I couldn’t possibly let you. You don’t need to—”

“I do.”

To her alarm, he took her hand in both of his and stared earnestly into her rapidly widening eyes. All her hormones were telling her to encourage him. Luckily she found the tag ends of her common sense and drew back, her face set in disapproval. “No!” she muttered sharply, her pulses racing like wildfire from the warm intimacy of his hands.

Guy gave her one of his heart-stopping smiles. “I must,” he said with a helpless shrug. “You know you have something I want very badly. And I think you’d like to give it up.”

Childhood in Portsmouth, England, meant grubby knees, flying pigtails and happiness for SARA WOOD. Poverty drove her from typist and seaside landlady to teacher till writing finally gave her the freedom her Romany blood craved. Happily married, she has two handsome sons: Richard is calm, dependable, drives tankers, Simon is a roamer—silversmith, roofer, welder, always with beautiful girls. Sara lives in the Cornish countryside. Her glamorous writing life alternates with her passion for gardening, which allows her to be carefree and grubby again!

The Seduction Trap
Sara Wood

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

AN ARM, clad in softly tailored linen reached out of the black convertible. A lean, male hand, strong and tanned, traced the letters on the road sign. ‘Turaine.’ Guy savoured the name, almost reverently.

‘Yeah. It’s a lovely sign, as signs go,’ came the sarcastic tones of the woman in the driver’s seat beside him.

He grinned. ‘Heaven forbid that I should commit the sin of sentimentality,’ he said drily in his deep New Orleans drawl. ‘Hell, I’ll be leaping out and kissing the ground next!’

Giselle made a face. ‘Exactly how much ground is yours?’

‘Ours, sweetheart. What’s mine is yours, now my father’s dead. The valley—’ he gave a careless sweep of his arm, which embraced lush pastureland, walnut groves and vast chestnut forests ‘—and the village. Apart from three cottages owned by my father’s mistress. But I’ll have them within the week. Something tells me she’ll be eager to leave when I turn up.’

Bleak shadows from the past changed the colour of his eyes, deepening the dark sable to a hard ebony and giving the lie to his confident, casual tone. It had been nineteen years since he’d set foot in Turaine. He brooded over the enforced exile of himself and his mother because of his father’s obsession for another woman. And now he was thirty-five and the mother he’d protected and cared for was dead.

He’d exchanged his privileged background for poverty, supporting his bewildered mother by taking any job that came along: waiting on tables, working in kitchens and finally marrying into the gourmet food business.

At last it was time to come home. Time—almost—to mellow out and enjoy his financial success. Powerful emotions surged in his heart and he chipped away at them in case he did something stupid, like running Sound of Music-style through the meadow. If he wasn’t careful, he thought in amusement, he’d lose his reputation for being unruffled under stress.

‘Looks a bit tatty,’ observed Giselle, frowning at the village on the small hill ahead.

Guy looked closer. It did. A faint sense of foreboding took the edge off his contentment. ‘A few repairs needed, I think,’ he said, brushing away anything that might blight his homecoming.

Quite calmly he asked Giselle to drive on—over the well-remembered stone bridge where he’d fished as a child, up the winding lane which skirted the medieval walls where he’d kissed his first girl, and through the narrow arch into Turaine itself.

‘Stop here,’ he said laconically on their entering the square.

He felt amused by his own self-control. Who, seeing the languid unfolding of his long legs from the car, the deliberate pause for a minute adjustment to the designer sunglasses and the orderly smoothing of his windswept black hair, would have imagined that he felt ready to break into song with happiness?

It was a pity that no woman had ever given him this sense of joy. Not even, he had to confess, the incomparable Giselle.

With no outward or inward enthusiasm, she gracefully unfolded her long tanned legs from the convertible, crossly checking over the small square. What a dump! Maybe, she thought, the château would be more to her taste.

‘Deserted!’ she observed disdainfully. ‘Not even a bar open? No café? What kind of a French village is this?’

‘Temporarily dry, by the looks of it.’ Guy’s keen eyes noted something else: definite signs of neglect. Well, he’d pull everything together soon enough. ‘No matter. Once we’re indoors, I’ll crack open a bottle of vintage champagne to celebrate.’

A little cheered, she watched Guy saunter with French nonchalance over to a corner of the square, which she knew—since she’d been told ad nauseam—dropped directly to the River Dordogne over a hundred feet below. In that corner would be the gates to the Château Turaine, with its long drive flanked by…

Giselle frowned, halting her internal monologue in astonishment. Guy stood motionless before the massive iron gates, his elegant figure displaying all the signs of severe shock.

He had all but stopped breathing, every scrap of air seemingly punched from his lungs by the impact of the scene in front of him. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he grated, allowing the searing pain to force its way out in a raw fury. ‘No! It’s not possible…’

A red haze came over his eyes, blurring what he saw: the crazy angle of the high gates, the rusting wroughtironwork, the weed-strewn drive and the wilderness beyond. Appalled, he blinked to clear the haze, and focused in impotent rage on the avenue of lime trees, their thin, weak growth reaching feebly upwards for light.

‘Mon Dieu!’ This was a scene of neglect. Desolation! And beyond…Harshly he gulped in a rasping lungful of air. Somewhere in that mass of undergrowth stood—or did it? the Château Turaine. His house. God knew what state it would be in!

‘Damn you, Papa! And damn your scheming, conniving mistress to hell!’ he raged under his breath, inventing instant vile punishments for Estelle Davis.

The woman had dominated his father, blinded him with her beauty and caused him to abandon his wife, his heir, his responsibilities. And therefore it was almost certain that it was the powerful Estelle who was ultimately responsible for this.

Slowly he reached up to grip the barley-sugar twist bars of the gate, as if he’d rend the whole damn thing apart with his bare hands, but his tremendous strength wasn’t sufficient to undo the work of an eighteenth-century craftsman. The gates screeched a rusty complaint yet the heavy chain and the lock held firm.

Giselle’s arm came around his waist. The place was a mess. They could go back to Paris. Hurray! ‘I’m so sorry!’ she cooed.

Guy detached himself, ensuring that his aristocratic face masked every thought, every feeling. It was the way he dealt with crises and he’d coped with worse. It was just the vandalism he couldn’t stomach. ‘I think,’ he observed tightly, blocking his pain with magnificent understatement, ‘I’ll have my work cut out here.’

‘Doing what?’ Giselle wailed. Surely he didn’t intend to roll up his sleeves and start weeding?

The finely shaped mouth took on a ruthless line. ‘Restoring my home,’ he replied in a hard tone. ‘And booting Estelle Davis out of Turaine for allowing the château to get into this state.’

‘What a bore! I want to go home!’ Giselle said sulkily.

‘This is home, sweetheart. I’ve been waiting for this day, dreaming of this moment all my adult life.’ Emotion caught his words, threatening to mangle them. He paused, counted to ten and began again more steadily. ‘You must decide for yourself, but I intend to live here.’

Ignoring Giselle’s cry of protest, he moved away, drawn like a magnet to the derelict entrance of his once beautiful house. He knew that Giselle’s feelings were hurt because he found Turaine more compelling than her. But Turaine had been violated, ignored, abandoned. And he knew how that felt only too well.

He began to climb the gate. For a moment he hovered on the top, balanced precariously between the wicked spear-shaped spikes, then he’d dropped to the ground and was striding away, towards his beloved château.

Giselle felt like stamping up and down in fury. She meant nothing to him at that moment. Turaine had taken over. OK. He wanted revenge. She’d help him get it—fast. Then there would be just the two of them, and she wouldn’t have to share him with anyone or anything.

Two weeks later, Tessa Davis turned her motorbike off the main road and navigated through a series of twisting country lanes, discovering a slower pace of life entirely. The countryside slept beneath the late afternoon sun and in tiny hills a handful of people were lazily turning golden hay with pitchforks, as they must have done centuries ago.

Turaine!

Just as she was about to die of hunger! She pulled over by the sign and switched off the engine in relief. She felt shattered. Over five hundred miles since dawn, and her rear felt as numb as a lump of lead.

Removing her helmet, she flicked down the stand and slid off the bike, easing her seized-up thigh and leg muscles in her close-fitting black leathers by doing a few kneebends and wiggles till she felt more like her supple self again.

She scanned the village on the small hill. Somewhere up there her mother Estelle waited for her.

The sun glowed on the mellow stone, turning it a honeyed gold, softening the cinnamon shade of the steeply pitched roofs. To complete the picture, the wide Dordogne river followed the curve of the base of the hill, offering her a duplicate Turaine on its flat surface. Picture-book stuff. Heaven on a hill.

Excitement took over, bubbling up irrepressibly. The past could be forgotten. The future looked good. No one was around, so she flung up her arms and gave a whoop of joy.

‘It’s me, Mum!’ she yelled. ‘I’m on my way! Break out the fatted calf!’

A delighted grin lit her face. She conjured up the image of the laughing woman in the photo that her unhappy father kept by his bedside. He waited at home, ready to forgive his runaway wife after an absence of twenty years. Tessa hugged herself with happiness. Nothing could please her more.

Pleasure spilled from her jade-green eyes. Their striking colour gave her quite a shock when she caught a glimpse of them in the side mirror of the bike and she laughed at her reaction. Two weeks ago she’d been a kind of wishywashy, blue-eyed mouse, wearing spectacles which looked as if they’d been cut from the bottom of a beer glass! May heaven smile on whoever had invented coloured contact lenses! she thought.

A blissful silence washed the landscape. All she could hear was the river lapping at the grassy bank, the reedy chatter of swallows overhead and the hum of bees. And then the deep throb of a powerful car.

It drew up behind her—a head-turning Citroën convertible so sleek that it looked as if it might fly to the moon. It boasted French numberplates and the regulation hunk inside, who sported a bone-structure and designer sunglasses to die for.

Tessa watched his graceful emergence from the car: elegance oozing wealth, with the usual paraphernalia associated with money—gold watch and cuff-links, mobile phone attached to a Gucci belt and an expensive-looking tan which made him glow with smooth health.

This exotic vision tucked the sunglasses into the breast pocket of his eau-de-nil jacket, gave her road-bike the once-over and then settled a now-what-have-we-here gaze on her. Which she promptly returned with interest.

‘Evening,’ he drawled lazily.

‘Hello!’ she said, happy enough to embrace the world at that moment. ‘Bonsoir!’ she added, recklessly using up one of the five French words she knew.

Tessa leaned against her bike and pondered idly over his accent while he began the boringly obligatory male examination of her body: a studied and frank appraisal, which ranged from her expensively cut bob to the skintight leathers and neat boots and wandered slowly over the curves between.

Men! she thought scathingly, doing precisely the same to him. She found it rather pleasurable. He was something of a dish.

Their eyes met as they both finished their tours, both smiling in mocking acknowledgement of their insolence. But she hugged a secret to herself. It had been only eight months since misery had made her thin and she’d lost four stones in weight. He wouldn’t have given her the time of day back then!

But whatever her weight loss, she was still the same person. No, she amended. That wasn’t true. She was warier because of old humiliations—and one in particular. Her eyes flickered with the painful memory, attracting a more intense concentration of the stranger’s keen gaze. And as he stared deeply into her eyes she wondered if he saw beneath the recent make-over and her apparent confidence and could tell that once upon a time she’d been unloved and unhappy.

Apparently not. ‘You must be extremely hot in those leathers,’ was all he said. But the deep drawl reached into her bones like the slow ooze of warm sunshine, surprising her with its liquid sexiness.

‘Only when I get off my bike and let the heat catch up with me,’ she answered drily, thinking that it would be heavenly to take off her leather jacket. But what, she thought with a giggle, would Bedroom Voice make of her cropped cotton top and bare midriff?

And now she’d identified his accent. A Deep South drawl. An American. So much for the French numberplates, his Mediterranean colouring and the stylish clothes!

‘You seem to have met those conditions. So why don’t you remove your jacket?’ he enquired with an unnervingly warm interest in his eyes.

Her eyebrow arched to convey what she thought of complying with that idea with a wolfish male around. Too many zips. It’s not worth it. I’m only pausing for a short break and to admire the view.’

He gave a lazy grin of regret and a last, lingering appreciation of her firmly toned thighs, then dismissed her with a suddenness that left her slightly disconcerted. She felt she should go, but she needed a few moment’s rest—and something about the man intrigued her.

His languid manner had subtly changed, becoming businesslike and brisk. He’d removed an impressive-looking camera from the car and was focusing it on the slumbering village, firing off a series of shots.

A camera buff? she wondered idly. Somehow he didn’t look the type to be interested in such an amiable pursuit. This was a go-getter, a four-scalps-before-breakfast man. So…why act like a tourist?

Tessa’s curiosity got the better of her and she put her much used people-watching technique into serious operation.

Suave. Mid-thirties. Achingly handsome, with intelligent eyes. Gym-enhanced body—shoulders you could sit encyclopedias on—but which looked rather tense. His jaw showed signs of strain too, as though his teeth were tightly clenched. In concentration, perhaps? Or did he have a badly placed toffee? Her eyes danced with fun.

He—let alone the camera, she thought in amusement—was totally focused, photographing the village with an absorbed intensity. Oddly enough, what he saw didn’t please him. His tanned forehead bore the merest hint of a scowl which angled his black brows together a little. And was that potentially sultry mouth a fraction grimmer than before?

Perhaps he’d brought the wrong lens. Or perhaps he was on his last toffee!

Fascinated beyond caution, she said provokingly, ‘Smashing place, isn’t it?’ His head jerked around in surprise, as if he’d forgotten her presence. ‘Picturesque,’ she added, and drew a wilting chocolate bar from her pocket, peeling back the wrapper and nibbling at the dark chocolate with enthusiasm. ‘It would look good in a tourist brochure,’ she said encouragingly, hoping to glean some information.

‘From where I’m standing it looks in a dire state of repair,’ he replied, laconically lifting the camera for another shot.

‘So would you be if you were that old,’ she retorted cheerfully, appropriating her mother’s village and defending it loyally. ‘It’s obviously medieval—’

‘I am aware of that. I hope you’re not implying I’m a moron,’ he said in faint horror, and she shook her head in mock-solemn denial. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he went on, and the sexy mouth twitched in private amusement. ‘The medieval period is a particular interest of mine.’

‘Then aren’t you being unreasonable in expecting the village to be in pristine condition?’ she said logically. ‘Personally, I think that slightly faded look is part of its charm—’

‘Charm is all very well,’ he returned, interrupting her again, and the offending buildings were given another faintly sour once-over, ‘but it doesn’t keep the rain out. I imagine you’d be desperate to leave if you had to live through the winter in one of those houses.’

Tessa’s eyes sparkled with anticipation. It was her intention to live in one of those houses! Though maybe not through the winter. She wondered sentimentally which one belonged to her mother.

‘You’re wrong. I’d love it,’ she declared fervently, thinking of the cramped flat she shared with her father. ‘Much nicer than being stuck in a characterless modern lump of concrete.’

‘You think so?’ he murmured. ‘Look harder.’

She did. ‘I see a quaint village with eagles flying over it’

‘Black kites,’ he corrected her. ‘If you had better eyesight,’ he went on, unaware that her eyesight had been beautifully corrected and she could see for miles, ‘you’d notice that the buildings are crumbling.’

‘Oh!’ she cried, a little embarrassed that she hadn’t seen anything of the sort, especially as she’d spent five years learning restoration skills. How easily her romanticism could blind her to reality!

‘Characterless or not, something modern would be welcomed by the people up there. Probably,’ the man said sardonically, ‘with open arms and shouts of unmitigated joy.’

‘Oh, surely not!’ she protested. ‘Exchange that setting? Those fabulous views of the river, the—?’

‘The poor sanitation, unreliable water and electricity supplies and incipient damp? You bet your life they would!’

‘You’ve shattered my illusions,’ she said, deflated.

Shading her eyes, she once more studied the buildings advancing up the hill. Or were they tumbling down it? She felt a pang of worry about the state of her mother’s house.

‘We see what we wish to see—and you wanted to see only the postcard-picturesque,’ he said drily, his thick lashes fanning further down on his gilded cheekbones than was strictly fair in a man.

Tessa sighed. ‘I did. It’s still in a wonderful position above the river,’ she said wistfully, stuffing the empty chocolate wrapper in the hip pocket of her skintight leathers and finding that the man’s speculative eyes were noting with very masculine interest what a struggle it was. Hastily she grabbed at something else to say. ‘I envy the people who live with such a view.’

‘Don’t.’ Half turning, he scowled at the hillside, lost in thought.

Tessa wrapped herself in her own troubles. She ought to prepare herself for the fact that her mother might be poor and living in some dump of a building. That had never crossed her mind up to now and she fidgeted uncertainly, wondering if she could break in on the man’s deep absorption in the scene ahead, into whatever thoughts were going on in that handsome head.

Nothing ventured…‘Do you know the village very well?’ she asked, her eyes soft with anxiety.

He turned and looked at her thoughtfully. Suddenly he seemed to be pinning her in place with the intensity of his stare, frowning as though something about her reminded him of someone. ‘What’s your interest?’ he enquired guardedly.

Some inner alarm made her cautious. ‘It’s pretty,’ she replied lamely, earning herself a scornful curl of his autocratic mouth. She sought to expand her remark. ‘You can’t deny that, crumbling walls or not! All those roses clambering up walls, orange-blossom heaving over hedges, geraniums dotted about on balconies…’ She hesitated, then asked, ‘Is—is all of it run down?’ And she found herself praying for his reassurance.

‘Virtually all, I regret to say,’ he replied, bringing the worry lines to her forehead again. ‘The landlord didn’t give a damn.’

That last sentence had been said softly—and not to her. Only the faint breeze had carried his half-audible words to her sharp ears. Yet his icy anger had been unmistakable. Alarmed by his words, she wondered why he cared so much. Because he obviously did, and she struggled to understand why his eyes were so cold and his mouth had set in such deep and bitter lines.

She shivered. Something was wrong about the village. And suddenly she felt afraid of what she might find when she reached her mother’s house.

‘I must go,’ she said hoarsely.

‘So you know what happened?’

‘N-no.’

‘I think you should.’

His tone made her whole body tense. What was he trying to tell her, with those knowing, sardonic eyes? Did he know her mother? Was he trying to prepare her for something?

CHAPTER TWO

TRYING to sound unconcerned, Tessa said, ‘OK, tell me.’

The man squared his shoulders. ‘It’s a well-known scandal. Go into any village or town for fifty miles and mention Turaine and you’ll get several lurid versions.’ His gaze homed in on her as if watching for her reaction. She stared back with wide, apprehensive eyes. ‘The landlord, Lucien de Turaine, had a mistress who held complete sway over his every move. She led him such a dance around the fleshpots of the world that he neglected the village he owned and it gradually fell into disrepair.’

‘How awful!’ she exclaimed.

‘Criminal,’ he agreed. ‘But she was totally self-centred and de Turaine only too willing to be her slave.’

‘Amazing that any woman could influence a man that strongly,’ marvelled Tessa.

‘She was beautiful. And irresistible. One of those born flirts who are utterly confident about their looks and who use men to their own ends,’ he said cynically.

Despising the woman, Tessa probed for more information. ‘Lucien de Turaine…If he’s the landlord, does that mean he owns the whole village?’

He nodded, the bright sunlight catching the glitter in his eyes. ‘The family has owned the village for seven hundred years.’

‘Then I’m appalled that he doesn’t have a better sense of duty! It’s dreadful that he can’t be bothered to look after his tenants!’ she declared indignantly, ready to do battle on her mother’s behalf.

‘Couldn’t,’ came the languid correction. ‘The man is dead. His son has taken over.’

‘Is he more caring? Will he do the repairs, do you think?’ she asked anxiously, caught up now in the welfare of Turaine.

‘The village is bankrupt. The estate coffers are empty. The mistress drained his father dry. Every last damn penny.’

Tessa’s face showed her shocked disapproval. ‘That’s outrageous!’ she declared. ‘I’m so sorry. What a dreadful situation.’

‘She’s a money-grabbing monster and deserves to be hanged, drawn and quartered.’ He sounded grim and she shot him a curious look, but his expression was neutral.

‘The damage is done,’ she mused soberly. ‘What’s going to happen if there’s no money for restoration? Will the son sell some of the houses and use the proceeds for repairs?’

‘I think,’ he said, in a casual tone that belied the disdainful curl of his nostrils, ‘the current seigneur would rather sell his soul.’

A cloud crossed the sun, throwing the two of them into sudden shadow. Though a light remained in the stranger’s eyes which must have come from within. The air grew chill without the sun’s warmth, reminding Tessa that it was still the treacherous month of May. She gave a little shiver. However intriguing this might be, she was anxious to drive on and find out her mother’s situation for herself.

‘It doesn’t offer much hope for the village if he’s strapped for cash, does it?’ she commented quietly.

Her poor mother. What conditions would she be living in? More than a little apprehensive now, Tessa unthinkingly bent and vigorously massaged her aching thighs and calves. When she straightened, throwing back the wings of pale blonde hair which had fallen across her face, she found herself the subject of a languid appraisal.

Time to withdraw gracefully, she thought, recognising that maybe she’d chatted for too long and had been over-friendly. In the old days before her transformation, it wouldn’t have mattered.

‘That’s the trouble with long journeys on a road-bike,’ she said briskly, thinking she ought to explain away her massage. ‘Muscles begin to seize up.’

‘Yes.’

He said no more. But somehow he imbued that one word and the expression in his suddenly velvety eyes with more sensuality than she would have believed possible.

Tessa lifted a hand to her lips in a hasty defensive movement, wondering why he was staring at them so intently. The reason became clear when she felt her mouth. It seemed soft…and her lips had parted in a definite pout! Startled, she made sure her wayward mouth behaved itself by giving it something ordinary to say.

‘I’ve driven miles,’ she said. And she felt more than a little disconcerted by her staccato delivery. ‘From Roscoff. This morning,’ she added, hoping to redeem herself by sounding perfectly normal.

Astonished, she registered that his entire body had seemed to contract a fraction, as if she’d said something of significance. ‘You came over on the Plymouth-Roscoff ferry?’ he enquired sharply.

She hesitated, puzzled by his interest. ‘That’s right. Why?’

‘I’ve been to Plymouth. You live in an interesting place.’ He offered this banal piece of information with a show of great charm. But his eyes bored into hers disconcertingly.

‘Plymouth’s in Devon. It’s my nearest ferry point, but I actually live in Cornwall,’ she corrected him, with the pride of the Cornish. ‘Just…’ Her voice faded. What was it about the tenseness of his body that made her want to clamp her mouth shut? Reluctantly Tessa finished her sentence. ‘Just across the river from Plymouth.’

‘The town of Saltash?’ he asked. She nodded warily. ‘An attractive part of the world,’ he purred. ‘The river there has some of the qualities of the Dordogne, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, yes. Absolutely.’ Tessa pointedly drew her driving gloves from her pocket. She couldn’t help a grin. ‘They’re both wet.’

He chuckled, as if amused by her evasion. ‘Are you here on holiday?’

Caution put her on her guard again, though she couldn’t have explained why. ‘Kind of.’

‘There’s a lot to see and do, if you’re staying near here.’ And he zapped her with a disarming grin of encouragement.

Dragging her eyes away from the dazzling white teeth, she firmly transferred her gaze to the clay-tiled roofs of the apparently deserted village and drew on her leather gauntlets.

He was making conversation. He was bored—perhaps without a female companion for the evening.

Even while she tried to explain away his keen interest she sensed something else behind the plausible charm. Perhaps she was being over-sensitive, but his manner made her feel uneasy. After all, they were alone in a fairly isolated place, with no one in sight, and she’d be an idiot to prolong this conversation.

Determined to tell him nothing more, she produced a polite but cool smile. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said, and added with finality, ‘Well, I’d better be going. Someone’s expecting me. Goodbye.’

‘Safe journey,’ he called softly after her. ‘Be careful, driving in the dark.’

She’d be at her mother’s house before long. Tessa turned her head briefly to say so. ‘Oh, I won’t be—’

She saw the keen flash of triumph in his eyes and stopped herself in mid-sentence. Devious man! She’d as good as admitted that she wouldn’t be driving in the dark. He’d goaded her deliberately! Though what he’d do with the knowledge that she didn’t have far to go, she couldn’t imagine.

‘I won’t be frightened of the dark,’ she finished innocently, and couldn’t resist adding, ‘I brought a night-light and my teddy bear.’

His laughter accompanied her as she prepared to get back on her bike. Somehow she couldn’t move naturally. Even though her back was to him, she knew she was under close scrutiny because her spine tingled.

With a casual movement she swung onto the bike and flung back her hair, ready to hook on her helmet. A vital awareness of her own slender throat and the faintly abandoned tilt of her head made her jam the helmet on quickly and slam down the visor.

One neatly booted foot released the stand and her slim body dipped in a supple movement as she lifted the choke. Then she punched the ignition, leaned forward and waited edgily for the revs to pick up.

A furtive glance in her side mirror told her that he was copying down her numberplate. Glory be! What for? As she watched in amazement he reached for his mobile phone. Calling up the gang? Tessa laughed at the idea but gave a little shiver of apprehension nevertheless, and drove off in a flurry of dust without another backward look.

The encounter had disturbed her and made her edgy. She sighed. His behaviour would have to remain a mystery— unless he deliberately tracked her down! Unaccountably her hand faltered on the throttle and she hastily made a correction.

It had been a strange meeting—one she would remember for a while. And because of it she was almost dreading the reunion with her mother. In addition to the initial awkwardness she was expecting, now she felt really worried about her mother’s present circumstances.

Tessa drove up the hill to the village at a slower speed than necessary, deep in thought. Whenever she’d shown resentment or anger in the past, and hinted that her mother had been selfish, her father had denied it. He’d explained that it had been his fault, that his inadequacy had driven Estelle away. Over the years, his insistence had made her believe him.

She crested the hill. Ahead of her was a small medieval arch leading into the village. It occurred to her that her mother might have contacted them only because she was in trouble.

Tessa tried to feel generous. Her father was willing to forgive. So would she. Whatever her mother’s financial state—or her living conditions—it wouldn’t matter. They’d be together. And they’d natter till the small hours then go out to buy boxes of throat lozenges and natter some more. There would be someone to confide in at last. A woman, with a woman’s sensitivities and emotional experience.

It would be wonderful to unburden herself. Eventually she’d tell her mother about her problem with her weight— though she wouldn’t say that she’d ballooned from the age of five, when her mother had left home, because she had found comfort in cakes and sweets. That would be tactless.

Nor would she say that she’d felt deprived of love, since her father had been too wrapped up in his own loss to realise that his daughter was suffering too.

But she’d be able to talk about how the kids at school had called her names and made her cry till she’d learnt a few defensive measures—mostly an ability to joke about herself. But it hadn’t taken away the misery of always being the last to be chosen for a team, or of spending most of her break-times hanging around the teacher on duty.

As an adolescent she’d apparently been invisible to boys, and she had never felt more alone than when she’d met her classmates out walking with their boyfriends. Boyfriends had been unattainable for her, and so she’d wanted one desperately. Now that her trim figure drew men like a magnet and she could have her pick of them, she wasn’t particularly interested!

She smiled wryly. Her face softened, the lines in her forehead ironing out as she remembered the gaiety in her mother’s voice.

‘After you’ve been here a few days,’ her mother had said during her surprise telephone call the previous week, ‘perhaps you’d keep an eye on my house and holiday lets for a couple of weeks while I pop over to England. I can’t leave my holiday cottages, you see, but I’d love to see your father again.’

Once she’d got over the shock, Tessa had been thrilled speechless. And there had been tears of joy in her father’s eyes when she’d relayed the message.

She tried to recapture that happiness she’d felt for her father as she drove into the deserted village square. Battling with confused emotions, she parked her bike against the massive stone base of a pillar supporting the roof of an open-sided market hall with fascinating medieval rafters.

Off she went in search of the Rue Boulangerie, half expecting to see her mother beckoning from a window.

Tessa’s excitement and nervousness mounted.

Half an hour later she was trudging disconsolately back down a narrow, stepped street, her leather jacket slung over one shoulder. She’d explored the whole village in vain. Tiredness flowed over her in dizzying waves as she came in sight of the square. Her cropped top clung to her sweating body. Her feet hurt, her neck ached and her stomach rumbled. An irrational dread nagged at her mind that she’d come on a wild-goose chase.

And, to cap it all, there was the dreaded Citroën convertible parked in the square—as large as life and twice as unwelcome!

‘Blow it!’ she muttered in dismay, hastily flattening herself against a wall.

The man she’d met earlier was walking beside a high wall in the direction of a pair of ornate wrought-iron gates. No, not walking. He was striding, with an oddly grim and angry expression, as though he’d snarl at anyone who stood in his way and kick them aside.

What a change in his manner! she thought. No longer suave, elegant and charming, but a totally different man altogether. And therefore not the sort to be trusted.

He held a large iron key in his hand and she realised he must live—or lodge—here, in this very village. She perked up. He’d know where The Old Bakery was. She’d have to ask, like it or not.

‘Beggars and women who can’t speak French can’t be choosers,’ she told herself firmly out loud, dismissing the little flurry of nerves which skimmed around her stomach. ‘Hey! Hang on there!’ she shouted, striding quickly towards him before she lost her courage.

The broad shoulders seemed to square before he turned. ‘You again. What a surprise!’ he declared calmly, as if her appearance wasn’t at all unexpected.

‘Isn’t it?’ she replied with a little jut of her chin, trying to steer an even course between being downright discouraging and yet nice enough to enlist his help. Aware of his eyes on her silky bare midriff, she hastily tried to reclaim his attention. ‘Do you live here?’ she asked politely.

Slowly his gaze travelled upwards to her hopeful face. ‘Kind of.’

Touché! she thought tiredly, seeing the small smile playing around his mouth. She found a smile from somewhere too. A cool one. Nothing too friendly. ‘I’m looking for The Old Bakery…’

‘Yes.’

She blinked. Judging by the expression on his face, he was playing with her, making her work for information. Hadn’t he anything better to do? she thought crossly. She drew in a deep breath. ‘It’s in—’

‘Rue Boulangerie,’ he provided, much to her relief. Yet he made no move to say where it was.

‘I know. Where is that, exactly? I’ve been everywhere looking for it,’ she explained, with a patience she didn’t feel. ‘I’ve tramped up and down every street. It doesn’t exist, as far as I can see.’

Her long fingers pushed damp strands of flopping pale blonde hair back behind her ears as she stood dispiritedly before him.

The enigmatic smile spread into a grin of clear delight. ‘Do you mean that no one would tell you where it is?’ he asked cheerfully.

‘I haven’t asked yet,’ she admitted, puzzled. What was going on here? Her heart began to thump. This was creepy. ‘The place is deserted. There was no one to ask. Anyway, I don’t speak French and I wouldn’t have understood what was said. I thought I could find it on my own.’

‘The Old Bakery is where the owner of the holiday lets lives,’ he murmured. ‘You’re staying in one of her cottages?’

‘No, I’m staying with her,’ Tessa corrected him. ‘She’s my mother.’

‘Ah.’ He nodded, as though that explained everything.

Tessa paused, wondering if he’d seen some resemblance earlier and had been trying to place her. ‘She’s expecting me,’ she went on. ‘And she’ll be getting rather worried by now—’

He interrupted her with an involuntary snort of disbelief. ‘Estelle Davis? Worried about another person?’

Tessa bridled at his tone. ‘Yes! Of course! Why not?’

‘She’s not the sort.’

A cold fear ran down Tessa’s back. What did he know of her mother? ‘You’re being extremely rude—’

‘It would be difficult to be otherwise,’ he agreed, quite unfazed.

Tessa felt crushed by his contempt. And increasingly worried. All her life she’d done her best to ignore her doubts, her private belief that her mother had behaved selfishly. This stranger was bringing them back. ‘If you know her—’

‘I know of her. It’s not quite the same thing.’ His gaze held hers with a suddenly chilling intensity that she found rather frightening. ‘And you are?’

She gulped, pierced by the icy black eyes and his expression of frank hostility. It upset her that someone should loathe her mother so much, and through her head went the same question, over and over again. Why?

‘Tessa Davis.’

‘Guy.’

‘Guy,’ she repeated. ‘It sounds French, the way you say it.’

‘It is.’

Not a man who gave much away unless he wanted to. New Orleans French? She gave up trying to work that one out and returned to the worrying connection between her mother and this Guy.

‘You don’t have a very high opinion of my mother,’ she observed flatly.

‘Got it in one.’

Now the dislike was right out in the open, with every line of Guy’s face showing a frank contempt that scared her. Unexpectedly, a film of unshed tears washed over her limpid green eyes. This wasn’t the situation she’d expected at the end of her journey. She’d worked so hard to sweep away all her uncertainties about this reunion, building it up in her mind into a moment of joy and laughter. Suddenly everything was going wrong.

‘I’m sorry if there’s bad feeling between you—’ she began, clasping her shaking hands.

‘That’s too mild a description. I’d call it hostility,’ he said coldly.

Tessa flushed, and concentrated on stopping her mouth from describing a downward droop, angry with her quickly aroused emotions which made her laugh and cry too easily.

She felt so tired. Near to breaking-point, she stood in a pose of utter dejection, furious that a huge teardrop was trickling from the corner of one eye and burning a hot, wet path down her peachy cheek. What a drip she was!

‘Emotional, aren’t you?’ he observed thoughtfully, as if that was an interesting and useful piece of information.

With a quick gesture, she brushed the treacherous tear away and sprang to her own defence. ‘I’m dead beat and I’m hungry, and I’m worried about finding my mother before it’s too pitch-black to see further than my nose!’

‘You have a night-light and a teddy bear for comfort,’ he reminded her, his mouth curved in mocking lines.

Callous brute! She planted her hands on her slender hips in challenge.

‘And you know where her house is. Whatever your feelings for my mother, you might show some courtesy to me, since I’ve done nothing to earn your disapproval, have I? So I’d appreciate it if you’d give me directions,’ she finished assertively.

He appeared to be giving that some thought. ‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you there,’ he said at last. And the gleam in his eye as he studied her flat stomach and sensually sheathed thighs suggested that he welcomed the opportunity to prolong their acquaintance.

Tessa took a wary step back. It didn’t seem a good idea to go off with this arrogant male to heaven knew where. ‘Directions will do. Left, right, straight on—that’s fine by me.’

‘The route is too complicated,’ he said blandly. ‘You’d get lost. I’d worry that your teddy bear might lose out on his seven hours of shut-eye.’

‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ she muttered crossly. ‘I’m too ready for a comfortable armchair and a bath to start trudging around and doing mimes on foreign doorsteps. I’ll get my bags.’

He came with her to her bike, insisting on helping her to remove the panniers. There was a silly, polite tug-of-war, then she gave up and allowed him to sling them on his shoulder. She debated whether to put her jacket on, but she felt so hot and flustered, and she decided that she wasn’t going to be intimidated into doing something against her will.

Then, feeling rather like a submissive chattel, she followed in his tracks, blanking out everything but putting one foot in front of the other, each step mercifully one closer to her mother’s house.

CHAPTER THREE

A SILENCE fell between them as they wound their way up a narrow, stepped street she didn’t remember seeing before. They passed a couple of large townhouses with mullioned windows and then a half-timbered cottage, whose walls were bright with highly scented climbing roses and honeysuckle. Tessa’s nostrils were swamped with the heady perfume and she couldn’t resist pausing to stick her nose in the velvety petals of a dark red rose.

When she straightened and looked around, she had the unnerving impression that they were the only two people for miles. Not even a dog barked. The rays of the late evening sun burned with a final, merciless intensity on the deserted street and she could feel the heat rising from the stone steps and walls, enveloping her in a suffocating blanket. Scary.

‘Where is everyone?’ she asked in a hushed voice, scanning the shuttered houses.

‘Finishing their evening meal. Then they’ll go to bed.’ Guy frowned slightly. ‘Most of the young people have moved away because of the lack of opportunities. There isn’t much activity here of an evening.’

‘You can say that again! Is it far?’ She sighed, sure that her legs would give up at any moment. ‘These steps are murdering my calves. I’m just about done in. And starving. I think I should have eaten about four hours ago,’ she added mournfully, quite forgetting the chocolate snack.

‘It’s only around the corner. Allow me,’ he said, with a show of great courtesy.

One large male hand moved firmly around her waist, supporting her. Or that was presumably its intention. In fact it made her feel even more unsteady, because his fingers lay on her bare skin beneath the cropped top—oh, what a mistake that had been!—and seemed to have made connections somehow with her entire nervous system.

The pressure on her spine increased. She could feel the warmth of his palm heating through to her very bones. A strange squiggle raced unheeded through a previously unknown route which ran from her breasts to her toes and made an embarrassing stop on the way, warming her loins with an alarming insistency. Tessa blushed, because she knew perfectly well what that squiggle meant.

She’d spent five years yearning for the unreachable David. Years of dreams and longings and imagined kisses which had built up in her mind till she’d felt delirious if he so much as looked at her—which he rarely had, because then she had held no attractions for a handsome man.

But this—this was a revelation. A total stranger was walking her to her mother’s door, and fire was coursing through her entire body as if she were hell-bent on imminent surrender!

Despite her tiredness, her eyes burned with that fire. Her skin tingled. Parts of her which ought to have known better were alert and ready for action. It was too awful! Had she lost her inhibitions along with her weight? More to the point, did the unnervingly sexy Guy know that her body was responding to some wayward call of nature?

She stole a nervous glance in his direction, found his warm, contemplative eyes on her, felt unable to look away because of a sudden dizziness—and stumbled on a broken step. In a purely reflex action he caught her up in his strong arms. And it was harder than it should have been to drag herself free.

Unhappily, she lifted the thick fringe of lashes which shaded her anxious forest-dark eyes. They asked him the unspoken question. What’s happening?

‘Sorry,’ she whispered distractedly, and even more stupidly said, ‘I’m so tired. I tripped.’

‘Did you?’

That wasn’t really a question at all. It sounded horribly like the cool carelessness of a man who was so used to women throwing themselves at him that he treated them all with scant respect. She flushed again, indignant with herself—and with him for making assumptions.

Desperate to prove her sublime indifference to his insidious charms, she said stiffly, ‘Look, you don’t need to come any further. Just point in the general direction. I’ll find it on my own.’

‘No. I’ll take you to the door.’ There was no room for argument in that tone. ‘You’re almost asleep on your feet.’

‘That’s why I tripped,’ she persisted stubbornly, squirming with mortification when he neglected to agree with her.

Looking ahead, she saw nothing but the steep rise of steps as they twisted and turned up the hill. It occurred to her that surely, no bakery would ever have set up shop this far from the centre. Suddenly suspicious of his motives, she bit her lip, wondering where he was taking her.

‘Rue Boulangerie,’ he announced, and pointed to a lane half-hidden on her left.

‘Oh!’ She’d misjudged him. They’d arrived! Tessa’s whole body slumped against the wall in sheer relief. ‘That’s wonderful! You’ve no idea how grateful I am! Thank you. Thank you!’

Her beatific smile apparently startled him. For a breathless moment he stared down at her, his expression puzzled. Then, ‘Let’s make sure your mother is in,’ he suggested with silky smoothness.

‘Of course she’ll be in!’ she said in surprise. ‘It’s been arranged. Which house is it?’

‘The one at the end.’

It was quite small, part of a short terrace of crumbling buildings. The evidence that it once had been a shop was apparent in the large window and faded sign above the door. The house looked uncared-for, and Tessa swallowed back the lump in her throat.

‘It needs a lot of work done to it,’ she said in a small voice, her heart sinking as she ran an expert eye over the building.

‘Aren’t you going to knock?’ asked Guy, when she hesitated.

‘I’m…’ Her hands fluttered in the air helplessly. She flung a panic-stricken glance up at him, confused by the turmoil of her emotions. ‘I’m nervous. It’s a long time since I’ve seen my mother,’ she confided huskily. ‘Twenty years ago. I was five.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘All I remember is a mass of blonde hair and the smell of jasmine. I—I wonder what she’ll make of me? I’ve heard so much about her.’

‘Have you?’ For several seconds he studied her face, his expression unreadable. ‘Then,’ he said eventually, ‘the sooner you get the next few minutes over with the better.’ And he reached up to rap on the door with a fist so hard that it would have summoned the dead.

Tessa swallowed to calm her nerves and hastily tidied her silky hair with her fingers. No one came. He knocked again, with the same result. Bewildered, she exchanged glances with Guy, her stomach lurching sickeningly.

‘This is the right house?’ she asked. He nodded. Pityingly. And her hands went clammy. ‘She must be in!’ she cried, her voice wavering.

‘Must she?’ He was frowning at the peeling paint on the door, his fingers lifting off one or two of the flakes. His thumb investigated the inadequate pointing of the stone faade. ‘Perhaps—as I suspected—there’s another reason she’s not answering.’

There was a sudden silence. Tessa’s eyes rounded in alarm. ‘You’re deliberately trying to frighten me!’ she accused him.

He looked as if he felt genuinely sorry for her. Caught by an urge to grab him and shake him for upsetting her, she flicked her tongue around her dry mouth and tried to stay rational. There would be an ordinary explanation. Her mother had run out of milk. Lost a cat. Run out of petrol somewhere. Everything would be fine.

‘I have a key,’ she said shakily. ‘Mother sent it in case I arrived early. We didn’t know how long it would take me to get here. Perhaps I should let myself in and wait.’

He gave a shrug. ‘Let yourself in by all means. But don’t raise your hopes.’

‘What do you mean?’ she demanded, tension holding her body rigid. ‘And who the devil are you to know so much?’

The sardonic eyes chilled her bones. ‘My name is de Turaine,’ he answered quietly. ‘And this is my village. Or, rather, most of it is mine.’

Tessa’s mouth fell open. ‘You’re the new landlord! The son of the man who didn’t care about his own village!’

‘Correct. I flew over from New Orleans two weeks ago. My father died two weeks before that,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone. And, because he showed no sign of regret or sorrow, the flustered Tessa didn’t offer her sympathies. What kind of man was he, she thought, to dismiss his father’s death so casually? ‘In case you’re wondering, the neglect here came as a total shock to me,’ he went on tightly. ‘I hadn’t been near Turaine for half my lifetime.’

While she digested that information he took the key from her trembling fingers, thrust the door open and waved her in.

Astonished, she obeyed his imperious gesture, finding herself in a chilly room which was so dark that she couldn’t see anything clearly. It smelt of damp, decaying timber and saturated stone. It was the same smell she’d encountered when working with the team of restorers on Kernow House, a run-down stately home in the Lynher Valley.

The cottage must be in as bad a state as she’d feared. It was a depressing arrival, and awful to think of her mother living in dark, dank conditions like these. A concrete monstrosity would have been better!

‘Mum?’ she called desperately. ‘Mum! Where are you?’ The house lay as silent and as cold as a grave. She found a light switch and flicked it on, only to stand stock-still in dismay. ‘This place is awful!’ she exclaimed, her horrified eyes taking in the chaos. ‘And it’s been vandalised—!’

‘No. I think not. Mon Dieu! What a mess!’ muttered Guy, dumping the bike panniers on the floor and looking around at the tumbled furniture and scattered belongings, his mouth grim with disapproval.

‘How could your father let it get into this mess?’ she raged. ‘When I think of my mother struggling to manage—’

‘Your mother’s responsible for the state of this house. She owns it,’ he broke in tightly. ‘Though I expect to regain possession of it soon—and the two cottages next door, which are also hers.’

‘I don’t believe you. No one would willingly live like this!’ cried Tessa loyally. ‘She’d slap on a coat of paint and wash the curtains—’

‘How the hell do you know?’

That made her stop in her tracks. She didn’t. ‘There’s something odd about this,’ she insisted, though less confidently. ‘No one would leave furniture overturned.’ Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘Something awful’s happened.’

He fixed her with a piercing stare. ‘Damn right it has!’ he answered grimly. ‘Which makes me as keen as you to find her.’

‘Find her?’ Tessa looked at him blankly. ‘You think… she’s…missing?’

‘No.’ The sculpted mouth took on a contemptuous curve. ‘She’s not missing—I’d bet my life on that. I believe she’s disappeared.’

Tessa gulped. ‘Disappeared?’ she squeaked.

‘Of her own free will,’ he said tightly, and all the air rushed out of Tessa’s lungs in a soft ‘oh’. ‘When you said you’d come to meet her, I did hope that the rumours I’d heard last night were untrue. She and I have some unfinished business—the sale of her properties. But I’m afraid that her neighbours’ suspicions are correct.’ He fixed her with a knife-edge stare. ‘I believe your mother has run away.’

Tessa glared. How dared he? ‘Don’t be ridiculous! She rang me. She said she’d be here—’ Furious that Guy was ignoring her, and had wandered over to a table covered by a dirty lace cloth, she raised her voice a decibel or two. ‘Look, this is meant to be our reunion! She rang me! She wanted it! She wouldn’t run out on me!’

He gave an elegantly derisive snort. ‘She’d do anything if it suited her!’ he said cynically.

Suddenly Tessa’s face crumpled. She thought of all the years she’d longed for a mother to confide in, a mother who would have helped her to cope with the bullying and teasing, who might have loved her and prevented her from seeking love from the heartless David. Her expression became forlorn.

‘I’m her daughter!’ she cried, pushing back the treacherous thought that her mother hadn’t ever been concerned about that fact before. ‘I—I’ve come all this way—’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’

She hoped so. Tessa scowled at his back, torn between screeching hysterically and bawling her eyes out. He seemed more interested in the things on the table than the fact that she’d been abandoned.

‘What is it?’ she asked irritably.

He was smiling with satisfaction when he turned around, and clutched a piece of paper. But when his gaze fell on Tessa’s quivering lower lip the smile faded and an almost gentle light touched his eyes. She watched him with wary suspicion. Why had he suddenly become all sweetness and light? she wondered apprehensively.

‘I found this propped up against that pile of books,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sorry. You don’t deserve to be hurt.’

Her hand flew to her throat as she looked at the piece of paper. ‘Hurt? Why…why should I be hurt?’ She thought of several reasons why people left notes. And she licked her lips, backing away from the offered paper. ‘I—I don’t want to read it!’ she husked.

‘Relax. Your mother’s safe,’ he soothed. ‘But she has gone. This explains why.’

She tried to concentrate, finding it hard to take in what the words said.

Sorry, darling. Creditors pressing. I’ve given you the houses. They’re a bit of a millstone around my neck! My present to you—the documents are around somewhere…

‘The houses?’ she cried in astonishment. ‘She’s given me the houses? Why? I don’t believe it—’

‘I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you,’ Guy said sardonically. ‘They’re more of a liability than an asset.’

‘But…I don’t understand! She can’t mean it. What will I do with them? And where will she live?’

‘Anywhere but here, I imagine,’ he replied drily.

She’d run away because of creditors. Tessa felt the familiar hollow sensation in her stomach. Her own experience of debt had been hideous. It had been a nightmare catching up with the back payments on the furniture her father had bought on hire purchase just before he’d lost his last job.

Only too well she remembered the burly men who’d accompanied the debt collector, the menacing way they’d looked at her and inflated their chests under their beerstained vests to the size of barn doors. Once, when she hadn’t been able to pay, they’d walked in and taken her portable radio and told her she’d save more money if she ate less.

Feeling the nausea crawl up to her throat, she closed her eyes tightly. This wasn’t happening. She’d wake up and it would all be a dream.

A hand touched her shoulder, making her jump. ‘Are you all right?’

‘No! I’m not!’ she snapped, her eyes opening and flicking green fire at him. ‘I come here, find my mother’s gone, that some hulking great brutes have frightened her away…’

She bit her lip. Shaking off the supposedly soothing hand, she bent her head and read the rest of the note. ‘Had to go. Didn’t fancy being beaten up! Love, Estelle.’ Almost as an afterthought, she’d crossed out ‘Estelle’ and substituted ‘Mother’.

Guy had been right. She’d done a runner. Tessa felt herself trembling. No mother to greet her. No heart-to-hearts, no hugs or happy reconciliations…

Miserably she looked up, her dark lashes blinking furiously as she struggled to hold back the hot tears. ‘She knew I was coming…’ Her voice turned into a husky croak. ‘And—and what it meant to me and Dad…’

Suddenly weak, she stumbled to an armchair. It collapsed under her slight weight and she was left trapped in the midst of the wreckage, howling with surprise and disappointment. Guy came over to extricate her but her arms windmilled in a gesture of furious and stubborn rejection. He shrugged and left the room. And she felt very alone.

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW could her mother do this to her? Tessa thought, despairing. And then she groaned guiltily for being so selfish. Clearly her mother had been given no choice. She knuckled her eyes quickly, till she could see better.

Over and above the disruption in the room, it was clear that very little had been originally spent on the cottage or its furnishings. The carpet was threadbare and stained, with ill-fitting edges, and dust filled the rucks. Two of the cheap lamps in the chainstore chandelier dangled drunkenly, hanging only by the electric wiring. The furniture looked either second-hand or as if it had belonged to some longdead occupier. Doors were missing from cupboards and the glass in the china cabinet had been badly cracked.

And her beautiful, vivacious mother had lived here.

‘Oh, Mum!’ she mumbled, racked with compassion and despair.

‘I’ve made some tea.’

Her head jerked around. Guy looked sympathetic, and for a moment her mouth wobbled in a yearning for comfort. ‘She was forced to run!’ she complained miserably. ‘And— and I imagine the creditors caused all this mess, flinging things around, shouting at her…’ She swallowed, picturing the scene only too clearly. ‘They scared her! If I ever find out who did this,’ she added fiercely, ‘I’ll sue them for the damage; I swear I will!’

‘Come into the kitchen,’ he murmured in a coaxing tone. ‘It’s not so depressing in there.’

‘I can’t get up!’ she wailed. ‘I’m stuck!’

Solemn-faced, but obviously trying hard not to smile at her predicament, he came to offer his hand. There was a dreadful tearing sound and she let go hastily, sinking back with a thud. In horror, Tessa explored the long gash which a rogue nail had made in her leathers at the top of her thigh.

‘That’s it! That’s it!’ she cried angrily. ‘Everything’s gone horribly wrong! I’m exhausted, starving, upset and worried—and now, look, I’ve torn my one and only pair of leathers!’

‘I’m sure they can be—’

‘Don’t you mollify me with talk of bike repair kits! I don’t want to look patched up!’ she said crossly, not wanting to be pacified either. ‘And I can’t afford another pair.’

‘Can’t you?’ He looked surprised. ‘That’s an expensive bike you’re riding—’

‘Don’t let appearances fool you,’ she said in a small, jerky voice. ‘I splashed out with my savings and upgraded my moped so I could come here.’

‘A little reckless?’ he suggested coolly.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! I’d been saving for years because I didn’t spend my money on much.’ She gave a wry smile. Other than on concealing dresses to wear, books for her solitary evenings and boxes of chocolates ditto! ‘This was a chance in a lifetime for me to be with my mother,’ she explained. ‘I’d have done anything to get here. I thought it was well worth the expense.’

‘And the classy haircut?’

She touched the beautifully silken strands and sighed. ‘Sheer necessity. I looked a total mess. I wanted Mum to like what she saw so I had a make-over,’ she explained wearily.

‘A…make-over!’ His eyebrows rose in astonishment. ‘What on earth for?’

‘If you’d seen the “before” picture, you wouldn’t ask,’ she answered with a sigh. ‘Mum looked so beautiful in the photos we have. I knew I’d disappoint her—’

‘If she was any kind of a mother at all, she’d love you no matter how you looked,’ Guy declared.

‘I know that. I’m sure she would. But I wanted her to be really proud of me.’

She didn’t voice her fear of rejection, the thought that her mother would have been appalled to discover that her daughter was a myopic and ugly woman with thick spectacles and straggly hair.

Tessa sighed. ‘Now I’ll have to go about looking tatty… And these trousers were going to last me for years!’

‘Here.’

A large handkerchief muffled her wet face and was passed efficiently over it. Too miserable to protest, she closed her eyes and let him dab at them, dutifully lifting her chin up so that he could do it properly. Gently his fingers spanned the curve of her jaw while he took infinite care in wiping the corners of her pouting mouth.

Which tingled. Her wet-lashed eyes snapped wide open and looked directly into his in surprise. For a moment she held her breath, mesmerised by the depth of compassion in their liquid darkness. Then he frowned and briskly attended to drying her cheeks, before stuffing his handkerchief firmly in his breast pocket. She came back to earth.

‘I must look pretty stupid.’ And she waved a deprecating hand at the broken wood imprisoning her.

There was a very long pause. ‘No. You don’t.’ Avoiding her eyes, he began carefully to clear away the debris. His strong hands snapped off the piece of wood containing the offending nail and he threw it into the huge stone hearth. ‘Time for tea,’ he said neutrally.

Before she knew it, he had put his hands under her armpits and lifted her bodily from the wreckage, setting her gently on her feet in front of him. He held her arms in support and she welcomed that.

Her huge, swimming eyes met his. ‘Sorry to howl. It’s the disappointment. I’ve been building this up in my mind, worrying, feeling excited and apprehensive at the same time…It’s such a let-down to come all this way and find she’s not here after all. Dad was so thrilled she’d contacted us.’

‘You were five when she left,’ he recalled gently, somehow knowing she wanted to talk about it.

‘I remember it as if it were yesterday. I’d never seen my father crying before,’ she said, Guy’s strong hands making her feel secure. ‘I shan’t ever forget it.’ She looked up at him helplessly. ‘He cried for days. Can you imagine what that was like?’

‘I think I can,’ he said softly.

‘It seemed like for ever to me. The neighbours fed me. I think I might have gone hungry otherwise.’

And she’d barely stopped eating from that moment on. Anxious to placate her, the neighbours had pushed sweets and food at her while her father had cried and poured bottles of whisky into himself. Scared of this odd behaviour, his strange sour smell, she’d curled up in a corner, wideeyed, and silently demolished bag after bag of sweets.

She licked her dry lips and cleared the lump in her throat The memories still sent a dagger through her heart. Her father had looked small and hurt, like a child. And she, a child herself, had run to comfort him and been pushed away. Pain lashed her heart.

‘It must have been tough for you,’ he said, his rich voice warm with sincerity.

‘Worse for Dad. Mum meant everything to him. She was his world, the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him,’ she said sadly. ‘Poor Dad. He was a different man after she left.’

Guy’s eyes flashed with recognition. ‘There are women who have the ability to make a very strong impact on men.’

‘Like your father’s mistress,’ she said sympathetically.

‘Yes.’ And then he said, ‘Some women love to wield power. They fill a man’s heart and mind and take a hold on him, smothering him as ivy twines around a tree. And in the end they kill him, one way or another. I pity your father,’ he added in a low voice. ‘I imagine he found it hard without his wife.’

‘It’s no secret. He hit the bottle a bit,’ she confessed, ‘and I’m afraid he couldn’t keep a job after Mum left. You can’t turn up on a building site all hung-over and morose—people won’t stand for it. He built crooked walls,’ she explained. And found her emotions getting the better of her again. So she repeated what her father had told her at the time. ‘One or two of the walls fell over once too often and so did he.’ But the forced humour hadn’t helped and she still felt miserable.

‘But it wasn’t a joke, was it?’ Guy said quietly, his whole demeanour encouraging her to unburden herself.

She was amazed that he should be interested. But in this cold, unwelcoming house she felt a warm swell of sympathy emanating from Guy which was very comforting, and it eased the sense of loneliness a little.

‘We muddled through. Friends helped to start with, but Dad was a bit difficult,’ she said, glossing over the Technicolor rows. ‘I suppose we must have lived in chaos for a while, till I was old enough to get things more organised. Shopping and cooking were easy.’ She managed a smile, recalling her careful budgeting. ‘I didn’t need the greatest brain on earth, thank goodness.’

Guy frowned. ‘His responsibility was to you. A father should never put his own needs before his child’s—’

She stopped him in mid-flow by jerking up her head angrily. ‘It wasn’t his fault!’ she declared hotly. ‘He was clinically depressed! He had a lot of bad luck. When I was fourteen, he had an accident on a building site. He’s in a wheelchair now. Paralysed. He hasn’t worked since. It’s made him understandably bitter about life.’

‘I’m not surprised. I apologise.’

Mollified, she nodded. ‘He adored my mother. Worshipped her. It was our one point of contact, all he ever wanted to talk about,’ she reminisced. ‘We’d sit together in the evenings and he’d tell me about the parties they’d had, how she was a magnet to people—witty, captivating, breathtakingly beautiful.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Why am I telling you this? You’ve met her. You know what she’s like.’

He looked at her helplessly, as if he wanted to tell her something. But it seemed he thought better of it, because he merely nodded. ‘I know,’ he said at last. ‘But it was your mother who broke your father’s will and catapulted him into his depression.’

‘No! No!’ She shook her head so vigorously that her hair flew everywhere. Impatiently pushing it back from her impassioned face, and trying not to acknowledge that what he’d said was partly true, she said, ‘He told me it was love that destroyed him. But it’s given him wonderful memories—memories he feeds on now he’s paralysed. Personally, I think that a man who can love that deeply is to be admired.’

‘I think your loyalty is to be admired. Or perhaps I deplore your blindness. I’m not sure,’ he said quietly. ‘But if love destroys people then it’s the wrong kind. Love should nourish, empower, allow couples to grow and reach out to others.’ In a gesture which she interpreted as compassion, his hand briefly touched her hot cheek, which was still a little sticky with tears. ‘Your mother swallowed your father whole—and he allowed that to happen. It’s clear that you think you should do your best to love your parents unreservedly, but you really should try to see them for what they are—’

‘This is none of your business!’ Angry with him for resurrecting some of the feelings and thoughts she’d suppressed in herself, Tessa marched into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of tea. There was no milk so she put in a hefty dose of sugar to take the bitterness away. When he appeared in the doorway, she flung him a resentful look. ‘You’re not to criticise my parents again!’ she declared heatedly.

He strolled into the room, pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I won’t make promises I can’t keep.’

Annoyed, she slid into a chair opposite and stiffly poured him some tea. After a moment, she saw that he was watching the way her fingers twisted and fidgeted together where they lay on the food-stained oilcloth. Quickly she put her hands on her lap, where they couldn’t be seen.

Deprived of any diverting activity, she found her gaze roaming the kitchen, noting the dirt and disarray, the old-fashioned stone sink, the unwashed dishes with congealing food and the evidence of her mother’s last meal strewn over the table in front of them.

‘She certainly left in a hurry,’ Guy observed, a curl of distaste to his mouth.

‘Poor Mum. It must have been horrid.’

Tessa felt a huge lump swelling up in her throat and couldn’t speak any more. Her shoulders slumped with weariness. She ached with hurt—for her mother, for herself and for her father. Oh, dear God, how was she ever going to tell him that there would be no reunion? Tears trickled down her face again and she angrily swept them away. Stupid reaction. First things first. Food, before she fainted dead away.

‘I don’t suppose there’s anything to eat, is there?’ she asked hopefully.

Guy abandoned his thoughtful study of her expressive face, rose and searched the cupboards. ‘Not a lot here… Unless you fancy cereal with tinned tomatoes. Or I could do pasta with anchovy sauce,’ he offered casually.

He could do it? He looked too masculine to know one end of a saucepan from the other! But Tessa felt too tired to argue. ‘OK by me. The pasta, I mean. Thanks. I couldn’t lift a finger, let alone an anchovy.’

Two dark eyes twinkled at her in amusement. ‘Where are you going to sleep tonight?’

Listlessly she watched him lighting the gas beneath a saucepan of water. ‘Here. Where else?’

‘In that case, I’ll see what it’s like upstairs when I’ve done the sauce. You’re exhausted, aren’t you?’ he said softly, suddenly crouching down beside her chair.

Tessa found herself inches away from his compelling face. Overwhelmed by the urge to hurl herself in his arms and seek solace, she merely nodded and said, ‘Whacked. I could sleep for a whole week. It’s the longest journey I’ve ever made. In more ways than one.’

Her limpid green eyes met his. She wondered if she was swaying. It felt like it. Her mouth opened to ask him something but she forgot what it was because his eyes kindled with a gentle warmth which she found irresistible. And which set her off again. ‘Oh, Guy!’ she cried tremulously.

‘It’s OK,’ he said into her hair.

Tessa’s dazed mind tried to work out how she’d landed up in his comforting arms and if it was all right that his mouth seemed to be warming her scalp. I’m in the arms of a stranger, she thought in surprise. A stranger who hates my mother!

Yet she didn’t care. The way he stroked her was so soothing. Someone was offering her sympathy, and boy, did she need it at that moment!

‘I’m not usually so tearful. In fact it’s quite out of character for me,’ she mumbled snuffily into the softness of his pale green jacket. ‘I don’t usually fling myself boldly at strangers.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ he murmured. ‘But you’ve been badly let down. I understand your reaction.’

The velvet voice flowed into her mind and body, relaxing it and liquefying her exhausted muscles. She sighed. ‘I feel flattened.’

‘Sure. We’ll sort everything out in the morning, eh? Right now,’ he whispered, ‘we’ll stick to priorities. Food, then sleep.’

‘Mmm,’ she said muzzily. ‘Thanks.’

She lifted her head and gave him a wobbly smile, which faded rapidly, turning into horror. Her mascara—a beauty aid she’d only just started using—had made dreadful splodges on the shoulder of his expensive jacket!

‘Look!’ she screeched. ‘I’m sorry! I’ve made a mess—I don’t usually wear make-up; it was for Mum, because Dad always told me she was so beautiful—what are you grinning at?’ she fumed.

In answer, Guy went to the sink and wet his handkerchief. ‘You have mascara all down your face. It looks like a map of the Nile Delta,’ he said in strangled tones. His back was to her but she could see that his shoulders were shaking. Tessa looked at him suspiciously when he returned, but his mouth seemed under control. ‘Lift,’ he ordered, indicating her chin.

Sitting there, her huge eyes dewy with tears, sure that her face was as unattractive as it could be, she contemplated the command, the wet handkerchief, and cringed. Something hurt inside her her own willingness to be soothed by yet another good-looking guy with suspicious motives. First he’d been obstructive, now he was doing a Mother Teresa act. Odd.

He took the decision out of her hands, tipping up her chin with one finger and carefully rubbing her face dry. Again. She vowed silently that it was to be the last time, positively the last time. Being soothed by Guy could become habit-forming.

‘You amaze me,’ he commented. ‘When I told you your face was dripping mascara, you didn’t whimper, “Oh! Is it? I must look a sight!” nor did you cover your face coyly with your hands.’

‘No point,’ Her eyes, green like wet grass, twinkled at his falsetto imitation of a coquette. ‘I obviously look ridiculous. Funny enough to make you laugh. I saw your shoulders joggling about.’

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