“Claudia and I have something to tell you, don’t we, my love?” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE Copyright

“Claudia and I have something to tell you, don’t we, my love?”

Adam slid a possessive arm around her waist, his hand warm against her silk-clad flesh, making it tingle with unwanted awareness.

“I know it’s early days after the loss of her first husband, but when we met again we realized that what we felt for each other, all those years ago, was still there, and important to us. So we plan to marry just as soon as it can be arranged and we hope, sir, that you will understand, give us your blessing and be happy for us.”

Claudia felt her father’s questioning eyes on her and flinched. The silence wrapped her like a shroud. She shivered with tension. What could she possibly do or say? Adam’s bombshell had left her shell-shocked.

DIANA HAMILTON

is a true romantic and fell in love with her husband at first sight. They still live in the fairy-tale Tudor house where they raised their three children. Now the idyll is shared with eight rescued cats and a puppy. But despite an often chaotic life-style, ever since she learned to read and write Diana has had her nose in a book—either reading or writing one—and plans to go on doing just that for a very long time to come.

A Husband’s Price

Diana Hamilton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CLAUDIA passed an uncertain hand over the photograph album. She hadn’t looked at it in years; hadn’t wanted to set eyes on it even. She tried to walk away and out of the room but somehow couldn’t, then, her teeth biting into the warm flesh of her full lower lip, she gave into temptation and knew she’d regret it.

Sitting abruptly at the table beneath the library’s stone mullioned window, she hooked a strand of soft brown, deadly straight, shoulder-length hair behind one ear and tentatively opened the album. Here they all were. All the people; all the memories. All the shattered dreams and broken trust.

Her fingertips shakily grazed the glossy surface of the prints. She had put the album away on the top shelf out of sight a long time ago. Her father must have glanced through it then abandoned it here on the library table. Had he, in his grief, been searching for that lost summer, desperately straining to catch an echo of vanished, happier times?

And here he was. Guy Sullivan, her father. Six years ago, he would have been fifty-two, a big man, in his prime then, his arm around his blonde and beautiful bride of three months. Her stepmother, Helen.

Twenty years her father’s junior, recently divorced, the sizzling blonde could have turned into the stepmother from hell, but hadn’t. From the day Helen had applied for the position as a relief receptionist here at Farthings Hall, Claudia had seen how attracted her father was. Guy Sullivan had been a widower for eight years, Claudia’s mother dying of a rare viral infection when her only child was ten years old.

Three months after their first meeting, Guy and Helen had married. Claudia had been happy for them both; her initial fears that Helen might resent her, or that she might resent the woman who had taken her mother’s place in her father’s affections, had been unfounded. Helen couldn’t have tried harder to charm her new stepdaughter.

And here she herself was: the Claudia of six years ago. Hair much longer then—almost reaching down to her waist—her curves lusher, her smile wide, open, untouched in those long-gone innocent days by the betrayal that was to come later.

Her eyes misted as she looked at the photograph. She’d been eighteen years old and happy to be spending the summer at home before going to teacher training college. She’d been glad to help out around Farthings Hall, the exclusive country house hotel and restaurant that was both home and livelihood not only for her father now, but for his father before him.

And there in the background, prophetically perhaps, Tony Favel had been caught by the camera leaning against the stone parapet that bordered the terrace that ran along the west façade of the wonderful old Tudor house.

Tony Favel, her father’s accountant, the man who had brought Helen into their lives, introducing her as some kind of distant cousin, keen to make a new life for herself after a messy divorce. Even now she could hear the echo of his following words. ‘And haven’t you said, Guy, you’re looking for a part-time receptionist for when Sandy packs it in to have that baby she’s expecting?’

Tony Favel. At the time the photograph had been taken, he would have been thirty. Even then, his lint-blond hair was beginning to recede, his waistline to thicken. Claudia swallowed hard, her vivid blue eyes clouding as they rested on the grainy, slightly out-of-focus image of her husband. Tony Favel, whom she had married at the end of that summer six years ago.

Slowly, not wanting to, yet driven by something too dark for her to understand, Claudia turned the page and found what she had known she would find. And feared. All those pictures of Adam.

At the end of that summer, she’d vowed to destroy every last one of them, to rip them to shreds and burn them. But, when it had come down to it, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to touch them. Or, at least, that was what she had told herself at the time. Love and hate: different sides of the same coin. She had told herself she hated him but obviously she must have still been in love with him. Why else would she have found it impossible to destroy his likenesses?

She had taken all but one of the photographs of Adam herself and, looking at them now, she couldn’t deny that fatal male beauty. Or deny that those smoky grey eyes, that rumpled, over-long black hair, those pagan-god good looks and body to match hid a black, black heart.

The odd picture out was the one of her and Adam together. Adam’s arm was placed possessively around her waist, pulling her close into the side of his lithely powerful body, and she was gazing adoringly up into his face. So there they were, the two of them, eternally smiling, caught for posterity looking as if they were walking confidently through the best, the most blissfully happy, the most wonderful summer of their lives...

She never looked back into the past because it hurt too much, but now she couldn’t seem to help herself and the memories came crowding in. She could clearly see her younger self running lightly down the service stairs on that sunny, early summer day six years ago.

She’d spent the best part of the morning helping the housekeeper, Amy, to ready the guest suites. There were only four of them; by country house hotel standards Farthings Hall was small. But very, very exclusive. There was a waiting list as long as your arm both for accommodation and for the restaurant tables.

And, after all that hoovering, polishing and dusting, she’d been good and ready for a dose of that glorious sunshine she’d only so far yearned for through the spotless, glittering upstairs windows. She’d been just eighteen years old, was at the very beginning of the long summer holiday, had done her duty by helping Amy and now smelt freedom.

‘Oops!’ She skidded to an abrupt halt before she knocked her new stepmother to kingdom come. ‘Sorry—didn’t see you!’

Small and willowy with hair like spun sunlight, Helen always made Claudia feel large and clumsy and, just recently, awkward and a bit in the way. Oh, Helen had never, ever, given her an unkind word or look either before her marriage to Guy or after, but for the past few days there’d been an edginess about her, a brittleness that went hand in hand with discontent.

But thankfully not today. Claudia felt her muscles relax as Helen’s narrow green eyes gleamed at her. ‘Such energy! Oh, to be young and full of bounce again!’

‘You’re not old.’ Claudia grinned, falling in step beside her stepmother who was heading down the passage to the courtyard entrance. At eighteen, just, she regarded the thirties—even the early thirties as she knew Helen to be—as knocking on the door of middle age. But there was something timeless about Helen’s sexy little body, golden hair and perfect features.

‘Thanks.’ Helen’s voice was dry. She reached the door first and pushed it open. The sunlight streamed through and made her a dazzling, glittering figure in her lemon-yellow sheath dress and all that chunky gold jewellery she seemed to favour. ‘Coming?’

Claudia had promised herself a walk to the rocky little cove that could only be reached via the deep valley that bisected the Hall’s extensive grounds, but if Helen wanted her company she would gladly tag along. She usually fell in with other people’s wishes because she liked those around her to be happy and, perhaps just as importantly, she liked people to be pleased with her.

Like a big, exuberant puppy, she thought with wry, self-mocking humour. She could almost hear herself panting, feel her tongue hanging out!

‘Sure. Where to?’

‘To find Old Ron. He hasn’t sent the fruit and veg up to the kitchens yet. Chef’s furious. Lunches will be starting in an hour. I said I’d chase him up. Besides—’ green eyes gleamed up into the speedwell-blue of Claudia’s ‘—Guy hired a dogsbody to help Ron through the summer.’ Her sudden giggle was infectious. ‘He may be some kind of a drop-out of no fixed abode, but he sure is gorgeous! Worth the trek down to the kitchen gardens any time of the day!’ She paused significantly. ‘Or night!’

Claudia giggled right back. She knew Helen didn’t mean it; she had been married only for a couple of months or so, and she wouldn’t have eyes for any other man. ‘I didn’t know Dad had been hiring,’ she commented, striding along the raked gravel path.

She wasn’t surprised that this was the first she’d heard of a new employee. Recently she’d overheard her father and his new wife tersely arguing over Helen’s apparently sudden decision to give up her post. She had seemed to be saying that now she was married to the owner she shouldn’t have to work like a hired skivvy—though she would be happy to continue to do the flowers. Claudia had kept well out of the way of both of them, waiting until they’d sorted out their differences. She could imagine only one thing more embarrassing than overhearing them squabbling and that would be overhearing them making love.

Firmly squashing that thought, she asked, ‘So when did Adonis join the crew? Is he really a homeless drop-out?’ Claudia knew she was very lucky to have somewhere like Farthings Hall to call home. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have nowhere.

Helen shrugged slim, lightly tanned shoulders. ‘Goodness knows. He turned up on a clapped-out old motorbike a couple of days ago, looking for work. He admitted he was “just drifting” and apparently seemed happy enough to have the use of that old caravan at the back of the glasshouses for the summer, plus his food and pin money, in exchange for helping Old Rob around the grounds. His name’s Adam, by the way. Adam Weston.’

But Claudia wasn’t really listening as she followed Helen through into the walled kitchen garden, her thoughts exclusively for Old Ron now. The ancient groundsman couldn’t cope. Everyone knew it except him, which was obviously why her father had decided to hire someone to help out for the summer. How would Old Ron feel when he had to make way permanently for someone fit and young, someone who could actually walk faster than a snail?

Old Ron had worked here forever. Her grandfather had hired him initially, before Farthings Hall had been converted into the now exclusive country house hotel with what was reputed to be the best restaurant in Cornwall. He’d been here ever since, never marrying, inhabiting a flat conversion above the old stable block. Of course, Dad would never ask him to vacate his home, or pay rent, and, knowing her father, he would probably find him a token something or other to do, just so the old man wouldn’t feel entirely useless...

Then, for the second time in thirty minutes, Claudia almost ran her stepmother down. Helen had stopped without warning in the centre of the path, just inside the arched doorway in the high, ivy-clad, red-brick wall—the heated summer air was suddenly and unexpectedly thrumming with a tension so sharply intense that Claudia found herself instinctively holding her breath.

She expelled it slowly when she saw what Helen was staring at, her stepmother’s green eyes laughing, maybe even teasing just a little.

The new hired help was enough to bring a smile of glowing pleasure to any woman’s eyes.

Adam Weston was just as magnificent as Helen had implied, only more so. Leaning against a garden fork, dressed only in frayed denim cut-offs and scuffed working boots, he blew Claudia’s mind.

The breadth of his rangy shoulders was, she admitted admiringly, deeply impressive, accentuating the narrowness of his hips, the length of his leanly muscular legs. The tan of his skin was slicked with sweat and his forehead, beneath the soft fall of rumpled dark hair, was beaded with it. And his eyes, an intriguing smoky grey, narrowed now in overt male appraisal, were firmly fixed on the slender, golden figure of her stepmother.

Claudia shivered. It was a brilliant day, the hottest this summer so far. Yet she shivered right down to the soles of her grungy canvas shoes. She stepped forward, out of the shadows, uselessly regretting her faded, a-bit-baggy old jeans, the washed-out old shirt she wore for house-cleaning.

Her movement broke the spell. Whatever had been here, shimmering and stinging in the scented summer air, had gone. Helen said, her musical voice low and quite definitely husky, ‘Adam, meet your employer’s solitary offspring and pride of his life—Claudia. Dearest, say hello to Adam. And then, perhaps, he can run along and find Old Ron before Chef arrives with his cleaver!’

‘Hi there—’ Adam Weston brushed the wayward hank of soft dark hair out of his eyes and stepped forward, extending a strong, long-boned hand. And smiled.

And Claudia, for the first, and very probably the last, time in her life, fell deeply, shatteringly and quite, quite helplessly in love...

‘So there you are.’ The mesmeric spell of the past was broken as Guy Sullivan walked slowly into the book-lined room leaning on his ebony-handled cane, a little of the strain leaving his eyes when he saw his daughter. ‘Amy’s just got back from collecting Rosie from school. They were looking for you.’ His eyes fell on the album and he shook his head slightly, admitting, ‘I can’t think why I wanted to look at that. No good looking into the past—you can’t bring it back. Neither of us can.’

Claudia got to her feet and resolutely stuffed the album back in its former hiding place, aware of her father’s eyes on her, the rough compassion in his voice. Six weeks ago, his wife and her husband had been killed when the car they were in was mown down on a blind bend on a steep hill by an articulated lorry that had lost its brakes.

Just over a week later, they had discovered that Helen and Tony had been lovers. Their affair had been on and off, but mostly on, since before Tony had introduced the glamorous divorcée and suggested that Guy consider her for the post of relief receptionist.

Her father had made that discovery when he had been going through his dead wife’s effects and had happened across diaries and some highly explicit love letters. It had devastated him. Coming on top of the shock of the fatal accident, it had brought about his third heart attack in six years.

It hadn’t been anything like as severe as the one he’d had, right out of the blue, at the end of the summer six years ago but, nevertheless, it had weakened him still further and it would be a long time before she could stop worrying about him.

And how she was going to be able to break the other piece of shattering news she couldn’t imagine. The thought of what it could do to him terrified her.

‘Did you mention the possibility of the loan we need to refurbish the guest suites?’ Guy sat on the chair Claudia had vacated and leaned his cane against the table.

His once strong features were now gaunt and grey and Claudia would have done anything to spare him from this final horror. But the best she could do was prevaricate, just for now, delay the inevitable for as long as she possibly could.

Ask the bank manager for a loan? As if!

Her discussion with the manager this afternoon had been on a different topic entirely. Their business was as good as bankrupt, their financial difficulties severe—so severe that selling up was the only option. It was something her father was going to have to be told about. But not now.

Now she asked, changing the subject, ‘Where’s Rosie?’ As a rule she collected her small daughter from school every day, but because of her appointment at the bank she’d had to ask Amy to do it. She didn’t know what they would do without the grey-haired, rosy-cheeked dumpling who had been at Farthings Hall as long as Claudia could remember. Amy had done her best to do what she could to fill the gap when Claudia, as a ten-year-old, had been left motherless.

‘Amy took her through to the kitchens for some juice. Oh, I forgot to mention it, but Jenny can’t come in this evening—summer flu, or some such excuse.’ Guy Sullivan got slowly to his feet. ‘Look, I can help Amy out round the kitchens—we can take the trickier stuff off the menu—and free you up to take Jenny’s place, wait on tables.’

‘No, Dad.’ Claudia automatically declined the offer. Her father was physically and emotionally frail, and still in need of all the rest he could get. ‘Amy and I can manage.’

Ever since Tony had had a falling-out with Chef six months ago—and Claudia had never got to find out what it had been about—she and Amy, with Jenny’s help, had been keeping the restaurant going on a reduced and simplified menu. Tony had been reluctant to hire a replacement chef and now Claudia knew why. Tomonow she would have to cancel the advertisements for the new and experienced staff she’d decided had to be hired if the hotel and restaurant were to continue. There was no point now. The business, their home, was to be sold over their heads.

‘Why don’t you sit outside, Dad? It’s a glorious day; let’s make the most of it.’ She almost added, While we can, but managed to stop herself in time. ‘I’ll fetch Rosie and we’ll all have tea on the terrace.’

Ten days later, Amy asked rhetorically, ‘I guess you can’t have told your father the bad news yet?’ She filled a mug with strong black coffee and held it out. ‘He looked happy, almost back to his old self, when his friend collected him this morning, so he can’t know that his home’s about to be sold from over his head.’

‘I’m a coward,’ Claudia admitted wearily, taking the mug of steaming coffee. ‘But every day he gets that little bit stronger. And the stronger he gets, the more able he’ll be to cope with yet another blow.’

‘And what about you?’ Amy demanded. ‘The blows fell on your head, too. Your husband died; he’d been playing around with that madam, Helen, his own stepmother-in-law, would you believe? And yes—’ her round face went scarlet ‘—I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead—but really! So you’ve had blows, just the same, so why should you have to carry this other load on your own?’

‘Because I haven’t had three heart attacks in half a dozen years and because I didn’t love Tony, and Dad adored Helen.’ Claudia looked at the mug in her hands, and frowned just slightly. ‘I really haven’t got time to drink this.’

‘Of course you have,’ Amy asserted firmly. ‘This Hallam man won’t be looking under beds for fluff or running his fingers round picture frames looking for dust. You’ve been running around like a scalded cat ever since you got back from taking Rosie to school. So drink your coffee and try to relax. You’ve got time for that before you need to get changed. And, no matter what anyone else believed, where you’re concerned, nobody can pull the wool over my eyes. Like my own daughter, you are. I knew your marriage to Tony Favel wasn’t a love match. When you married him you were still hankering after Adam—and don’t pop your eyes at me—I knew how you were feeling when he just upped and disappeared. But, like I said, you and Tony rubbed along; you didn’t hate him, so what happened must still have been a dreadful shock.’

Claudia eyed her old friend over the rim of her mug as she sipped the hot liquid. What else did Amy suspect? Know?

She didn’t want to think about that. She put her mug down on the work surface, changing the subject. ‘How many tables are booked for this evening?’

‘All of them.’ Amy collected the used mugs and up-ended them in the commercial-size dishwasher. ‘I dare say we do have to keep going as best we can so it can be sold as a going concern. But thank heaven we’re at the end of the season, that’s all I can say.’

Casting her eyes over the spotlessly gleaming kitchen, Claudia nodded her heartfelt agreement. It was early October now and hotel bookings ceased at the end of September, so they didn’t have that aspect to worry about. They didn’t do lunches, either—they wouldn’t start up again until Easter—but evening meals went on right through the year. So yes, that was something they could give thanks for.

And there were other things, too, she admitted as she lay in the warm bath water ten minutes later. Life wasn’t all bad; there were tiny glimmers of good luck if you looked hard enough.

The bank manager wasn’t exactly an ogre. He had shown considerable if understated compassion at that meeting she’d had with him ten days ago. After painting his pitch-black picture and explaining that Farthings Hall would have to be sold, and preferably as a going concern, to cover those terrifying debts, he had advised, ‘Before you have to advertise the property for sale I suggest you contact the Hallam Group—you’ve heard of them?’

Claudia had nodded. Who hadn’t? No one remotely connected to the hotel and leisure industry could be ignorant of that huge and exclusive outfit.

She’d felt suddenly nauseous. One shock too many, she supposed. The bank manager had used the intercom to ask someone called Joyce to bring through a tray of tea, leaning back in his chair then, steepling his fingers as he had continued—just as if she’d denied any knowledge of the Hallam Group—‘Quality hotels and leisure complexes; they don’t touch anything that’s run-of-the-mill or even marginally second-rate. It’s mainly a family-run company, as you probably know, and Harold Hallam was the majority shareholder. He died, oh, it must be a good twelve months ago and rumour has it his heir is about to expand, acquire new properties.’

He had paused when the tea was brought through and poured, then had suggested, ‘If you could interest them in Farthings Hall and effect a quick sale, it would be better all round—a quick takeover by the Hallam Group would mean less time for the type of speculation that could agitate your father. I suggest you ask your solicitor to get in touch with them.’

Useful advice, because only yesterday her solicitor had phoned to say that someone from the Hallam Group would be coming out to Farthings Hall to meet her this morning to discuss the possibility of a private sale.

‘Don’t commit yourself to anything. This new chief executive might be trying to show his board of directors what a smart operator he is. Remember, this will be an exploratory meeting only. The legal people can be brought in after the initial informal discussion between the principles. That’s the general idea, I believe.’

That suited Claudia. And what suited her even more was David Ingram’s invitation to her father. They were near neighbours, had been friends since boyhood, and David had wanted to know how Guy felt about being picked up the next morning. After lunch, they could have a game of chess.

Claudia had breathed a huge sigh of cowardly relief when her father had accepted the invitation. She could have her meeting with the Hallam man with her father none the wiser. Every day that passed without him having to learn the miserable truth was a bonus.

And Rosie was out of the way, too, safely at school. Had she been at home, she would have wanted to be with her mummy, even though she loved Amy to pieces. Serious conversation with a bubbly, demanding five-and-a-bit-year-old was problematical to say the least.

The trouble was, since the death of her daddy and Steppie—as Helen, her stepgrandmother, had preferred to be called—Rosie had become very clingy. Not that either of them had spent much time with the little girl, and both of them had developed the habit of absenting themselves if Rosie had been ill or just plain tiresome.

Their deaths must have left a hole in the little girl’s life; one day they’d been around—in the background, but around—and the next they’d been blown away. But possibly the most traumatic thing had been her beloved grandpa’s illness and his subsequent need for lots of rest and quiet. Rosie probably couldn’t understand why her grandpa could no longer play those boisterous games she enjoyed or read to her for hours on end.

Claudia sighed and heaved herself out of the bath. The Hallam man would be arriving in half an hour. She couldn’t remember if the solicitor had actually said his name. But it would be Mr Hallam. She definitely recalled him saying that her visitor was the deceased Harold Hallam’s heir. It would be his son. Her solicitor would surely have said, had the new chief executive gone under a name other than the family one.

And what to wear? A simple grey linen suit with a cream silk blouse. Cool, businesslike, entirely suitable for a young widow.

Her soft brown hair caught back into the nape of her neck with a mock-tortoiseshell clip, and with the merest suggestion of make-up, her mind played truant, sliding back to those photographs she’d been looking at on her return from her traumatic meeting with her bank manager. Particularly, the one of her.

How she had changed. Still five feet seven inches, of course, but she’d lost all those lavish curves. After Rosie’s birth she’d fined down but now, since the traumas of the last few weeks, she looked positively scrawny. The Claudia in that old photograph had been a cheerful optimist, with laughing eyes and a beaming, open smile.

The mirror image she scrutinised now was older, wiser, a bit of a cynic with an overlay of composure, a strength of will that practically defied anyone to mess with her. She was through with being anyone’s eager little doormat. She was twenty-four years old, the age Adam Weston had been when they’d first met. She looked and felt a great deal older.

And another difference: the woman in the mirror was as good as bankrupt. The girl in the photograph had been quite a considerable heiress.

And therein had lain the attraction, of course.

She remembered with absolute and still painful clarity exactly how, over six years ago now, she had discovered that particular home truth.

Helen had told her. Helen had been sitting on the edge of her bed, clad in brief scarlet satin panties and bra, looking absolutely furious, yet finding compassion as she grabbed Claudia’s hand and squeezed it.

‘And you know what that slimeball Adam Toerag Weston had the gall to say? I can still hardly believe it! He actually told me not to be miffed because he’d been messing about—as he so chivalrously put it—with you! Miffed—I ask you! As if I’d be interested in a loser like him! As if I’d have some furtive, sleazy affair with a jobless, homeless, penniless layabout when I’m married to a lovely, lovely man like your father! But this is the point, dearest—’

Helen had released her hand with a final squeeze, reached for a scarlet satin robe and wrapped it around her body. ‘He actually said that he’d played up to you because you were quite an heiress. You’d agreed to marry him, or so he claimed, and, as his darling daughter’s husband, Guy wouldn’t object to keeping him in the manner to which he had always wanted to become accustomed—not if he didn’t want to alienate his darling daughter. I only hope, dearest, that you haven’t let him go too far with you, that you haven’t actually fallen for him, or anything stupid like that...’

Claudia had closed her eyes to stop the hurt from showing. She had wanted to scream that it wasn’t true, that Adam loved her, loved her for herself, that he didn’t care about her father’s wealth, Farthings Hall, the land, all that stuff. But she had never lied to herself. And if the evidence of her own eyes hadn’t been enough there had been that conversation on the first date they’d ever had.

It hadn’t been an accident that had found her in the vicinity of the old caravan at the back of the glasshouses about seven hours after she’d first been introduced to Adam. Or an accident that she had been wearing a pair of very brief shorts and her best sleeveless T-shirt. The crisp white garments had shown off her long and shapely legs and accentuated the honey-gold tan she’d managed to acquire.

Her heart had been fluttering wildly as she’d approached the open caravan door, but she’d told herself not to be stupid. She, as his employer’s daughter, had the perfect excuse for being here.

She could hear him moving about, whistling tunelessly beneath his breath, and before she could knock or call out he had appeared in the doorway, still wearing nothing but those threadbare cut-offs, a towel slung over one shoulder. Instead of the heavy working boots, he’d been sporting a pair of beat-up trainers.

‘Hello again.’ He’d smiled that smile. For several seconds Claudia hadn’t been able to speak. She’d felt her face go fiery red and had hoped quite desperately that he’d put it down to the heat, to the sun glinting off the roofs of the glasshouses, boiling down from a cloudless blue sky.

‘I...’ Agitatedly, she had pulled in a deep, deep breath. A huge mistake. Just looking at him, being on the receiving end of that deeply sexy smile, had made her legs go weak, made her breasts feel hot and full and tingly. And dragging air into her lungs that way had made them push against the soft white cloth of her top, and she’d known he’d noticed because his gaze had dropped, fastened there, right there, his lids heavy, thick dark lashes veiling his expression.

So she had begun again, gabbling now. ‘I wondered if you have everything you need? The caravan hasn’t been used in ages, not since—’

‘It’s fine. That nice housekeeper of yours—Amy?—supplied me with a bundle of bed- and bathroom linen, food supplies—and the place is clean, sweet as a nut.’

He had loped down the steps, pulling the van door to behind him. Claudia had swallowed a huge lump of disappointment. She’d hoped he’d invite her inside to see for herself. But what he had said was even better, more than she’d hoped for. ‘I’m told there’s a path through the valley leading down to a cove. I fancied a swim. Coming?’

Was she ever! She’d gone back to the house to get her swimming costume and met him back at the caravan. And it had been lovely, that walk. They’d talked a lot; well, he had, mostly. She’d asked him questions about himself but he’d skirted them, telling her to talk about herself, but she hadn’t been able to; there hadn’t been much to say. So it had ended up with him asking questions, making comments.

“This is a fantastic place. Magical. How does it make you feel, knowing it will all be yours one day? Not yet, of course, but some time in the future. Will you keep it on? Does the responsibility worry you? Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown—and all that.’

They’d been sitting in the soft golden sand by then, the sun dipping down towards the sea. He hadn’t seemed to need an answer; he could almost have been talking to himself. He’d leaned forward, softly tracing the outline of her mouth with the tip of a forefinger. ‘You are very lovely.’

And after that everything else had been simple. He’d gone out of his way to confirm his deductions that the land, the house, the business would all be hers in the fullness of time, and had gone ahead and trapped her with the honey-sweet bait of great sex and her own foolish notions of undying romantic love...

Claudia blinked, shaking her head, annoyed with herself, pushing the unwanted memories away. She couldn’t remember now what had made her think back to all of that. Adam. Betrayal. Loss.

She pulled herself together and swiftly left the room, heading down the stairs for the library. She’d asked Amy to bring Mr Hallam there when he arrived at eleven-thirty. Then bring coffee through.

She glanced at her watch and groaned. Eleven thirty-five. He might already be here. Unforgivable of her to have gone off into that backward-looking trance, wasting time.

‘He’s arrived!’ Amy appeared at the foot of the stairs, her voice low and urgent. ‘I put him in the library and said you wouldn’t be a minute. I was on my way to warn you.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry to be late.’ Claudia gave Amy a reassuring smile. She should have been there to greet the man, of course, but she was only late by a few minutes, not long enough to warrant Amy’s obvious anxiety.

‘Wait.’ Amy caught her arm before she could hurry through. ‘You don’t understand. It’s not a Mr Hallam, like you said. It’s—’

‘Remember me?’

The library door now stood open, framing the impressive, immaculately suited figure of Adam Weston.

‘Because I remember you.’ He moved forward, eyes fixed on Claudia’s speechless lips, then they lifted to clash with hers. ‘How could I possibly forget?’

He smiled, a sensual movement of that wickedly crafted mouth. It was sexier than ever. But his eyes didn’t smile; didn’t come near it. ‘Might I ask you to bring us some coffee, Amy?’ he asked the stunned-seeming housekeeper. ‘Mrs Favel and I have a great deal to talk through.’

CHAPTER TWO

SILENCE. Shock clamped Claudia into a small, dark, very tight corn. Clamped her in so tightly she could barely breathe, let alone speak.

How dared he show his face here? Oh, how dared he?

Then the thick silence eased just a little, slowly nudged away by the inevitable impingement of ordinary, everyday sounds. The sonorous, echoey ticking of the longcase clock; the stutter and grumble of machinery from directly outside as Bill, the new groundsman, tried to start the ride-on mower; Amy’s voice—the sound of the words she spoke as they fell on the still air, but not the sense of them—and the sound of the housekeeper’s feet on the polished wood floor blocks as she walked away; the thump of her own, wild heartbeats.

He’d changed, and yet he hadn’t. That was the first coherent thought she had. Though how a thought could be coherent and contradictory was a total mystery.

At thirty, Adam Weston was a spectacularly attractive man. The once over-long, soft black hair was expertly cut and those pagan-god features were tougher now, more forceful than they’d been six years ago. That superbly fit body was clothed in a silky dark grey suit, crafted by a master tailor, instead of the scruffy cut-offs and washed-out T-shirts that had been his habitual wear during that long, hot summer when she had loved him so.

A man with those looks, that kind of honed physique, would always land on his feet, especially if he still possessed that laid-back, lazy charm, the charm that had had her swooning at his feet from that first unforgettable smile.

Obviously, he’d finally married an heiress. Well, bully for him! she thought cynically, wondering if he’d come here to gloat because he’d done very well, thank you, for himself and she was practically bankrupt.

‘What do you want, Adam?’ Her voice was tight, quaky, like an old woman’s. And she knew she didn’t look anything like the lushly curvaceous, fresh-faced and dewy-eyed eighteen-year-old he’d sweet-talked into his bed all those years ago. She didn’t need that look of distaste he was giving her to tell her that, while he’d been able to bring himself to the point of actually making love to her six years ago, he found her a total turn-off now.

Claudia lifted her chin and told herself she didn’t care, in either event. ‘I’m expecting someone. Can you see yourself out?’

She knew she sounded like a snob of the first water, the lady of the manor ordering the boot boy out of her rarefied presence, and saw his eyes narrow and harden. Those smoky grey eyes that didn’t smile any more.

‘You’re expecting me, Mrs Favel.’ His voice was clipped. Hard. As hard as his eyes. ‘The Hallam Group,’ he reminded her, as if, Claudia thought resentfully, he thought she was completely stupid.

But hadn’t he always thought that? That she had rampaging hormones where other people had brains. That she’d be a pushover, blindly and ecstatically rushing into marriage with a drifter who was only interested in getting his hands on her assets, which, in those days, had been considerable.

Within a few short weeks he’d had her besotted, head over heels in love and so eager to accept his proposal of marriage she’d practically fallen over herself. And the only thing that had stopped her dragging him down the aisle had been the evidence of her own eyes...

Adam walking out of Helen’s bedroom, his face tight and furious. He’d been so furious he hadn’t seen her at the top of the service stairs, her arms full of freshly laundered bed-linen.

Helen. Helen sitting on the edge of her bed, clad only in those wisps of underwear. Furious, too, spitting out that poison about him only being interested in her, Claudia’s future financial prospects, ramming home the final nail in the coffin of her love for him with, ‘He must have seen me come up here—he knows your father’s out I was getting ready to have a shower before changing. He just walked in and started on about the way he’d always fancied me. He said we could have fun—adult fun. He was sick of playing with a child, only the child, as it happened, would one day come into a fortune. He meant you, my poor sweet! And then...heaven help me...I told him to pack his bags and get off Farthings Hall property. I said if he was still around when your father got back he’d regret it.’

‘I was told to expect the late Mr Hallam’s heir,’ she said now, her voice stiff with remembered outrage and pain. Then added insultingly, ‘Not the tea boy.’

His smile was wintry. ‘And I always thought you had such lovely manners.’ He turned, walked away, moving over the huge, raftered hall back towards the library. ‘Harold Hallam was my mother’s brother. He didn’t marry and, as far as anyone knows, he had no issue. I inherited his holding in the Group. Perhaps now we might begin our discussions, provided you’re satisfied with my credentials. Unless, of course, you’re no longer interested in any offer my company might be prepared to come up with.’

Disorientated, Claudia stared at his retreating back. Such wide, spare shoulders tapering down to that narrow, flat waist, such long, long legs, and all of him so elegantly packaged in a suit so beautifully cut it could only have come from Savile Row.

‘So you finally fell on your feet.’ She truly hadn’t realised she’d spoken the thought aloud until he turned at the door to the library, grey eyes chilling, that utterly sensual, boldly defined mouth contemptuous.

‘So it would seem.’

She tilted her chin in challenging defiance, her blue eyes cool. After what he’d done to her, did he really expect to make her feel ashamed of her lack of manners? Did he seriously expect her to apologise?

It would give her enormous satisfaction to ask him to leave.

But he’d disappeared into the library—as if he already owned the place—and she pulled in a deep breath, drew back her shoulders and followed.

She found Amy practically on her heels, the delicate china coffee cups rattling companionably on the tray she carried.

Claudia stepped aside at the doorway to allow the housekeeper passage, wincing as the older woman put the tray down on the long, polished table, a huge smile splitting her rosy face as she marvelled, ‘Well, and isn’t this a turn up for the books, young Adam? Who’d have thought—?’

‘Thank you, Amy,’ Claudia interrupted smoothly. Amy had had a soft spot for the young Adam Weston all those years ago, making sure he was lavishly supplied from the kitchens, that the old caravan he was living in was packed with creature comforts. He’d had the useful ability to charm just about anyone who could do him any good!

Pointedly, she began to pour coffee, both cups black and sugarless because that was the way she liked it and he could do what the heck he wanted with his. Amy suggested, ‘Should I put a match to the fire? It’s a bit nippy, don’t you think?’

She was already bustling towards the wide stone hearth, but Adam’s smile stopped her. His smile, Claudia remembered, could stop a runaway train. No problem. ‘We’re fine, Amy. Truly. Besides, after we’ve had coffee, Mrs Favel and I will be going to find a quiet pub for lunch, but thank you for the offer.’

This man had acquired authority, Claudia decided acidly as Amy melted away. Lashings of it. But nothing would induce her to have lunch with him. As soon as Amy had closed the door she said, ‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time, but I’ve decided not to do business with your company after all.’

‘Cutting your nose off to spite your face?’ The slight smile he gave her as he picked up his coffee was a patronising insult. Claudia felt her entire body seizing up, every bone, every muscle going rigid with tension.

Over the past six years she’d really believed she had come to terms with what he had done, with his wickedly cruel betrayal. If anyone had told her that seeing him again would affect her like this—as if he still had the power to give her pain, to make her go weak and boneless with one look from those smoke-grey eyes—then she would have laughed until her ribs cracked.

He drained his cup, his eyes assessing her over the rim. ‘I’ve had a shock, too, Claudia. You were the last person I expected to see this morning.’ He put the cup back on its saucer with a tiny click and suggested, ‘So why don’t we both take a deep breath, put on our business hats, and start again?’ He made a small gesture with one lean, strong-boned hand. ‘Won’t you, perhaps, sit down?’

She ignored the seamless way he was taking over, her brows frowning above her thickly lashed eyes as she picked up her cup and carried it over to one of the deeply recessed window embrasures—because her legs felt distinctly shaky, and for no other reason at all. Sitting down on the padded cushion, she tilted one interrogative brow.

‘Who else would you expect to see? Widow Twanky? You can’t have forgotten who owns Farthings Hall.’

‘Six years ago Guy Sullivan, your father, owned the property. I hadn’t given the place a thought until the impending sale was brought to my attention. The name Favel meant nothing to me. Your father...’ For the first time he looked unsure of himself, as if he had only just realised that the change of ownership might mean Guy Sullivan was no longer living. ‘Your father always treated me fairly,’ be said quietly.

Sarcastic swine! He’d been long gone, on that rattletrap old motorbike of his, well before her father had returned that day, so he had no way of knowing what Guy Sullivan would have said and done had he been told—as Helen had threatened—what had been happening in his absence.

He’d got the treatment he deserved from her and from Helen. Had it given him pleasure to hammer home the fact that he hadn’t given her a moment’s thought in six long years?

But she put him out of his misery in one respect. ‘Dad’s visiting a friend for the day.’ She saw the slight tension drain from his face and knew with a small shock of surprise that he was actually relieved.

‘But you are the present owner?’ He was leaning back against the table, half sitting, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes narrowed as if he was weighing up everything she said.

‘Yes.’ She didn’t have to tell him any more.

‘Sole owner?’

She dipped her head in acknowledgement and he drawled, as if the prospect didn’t much appeal, ‘Then you and I do business. At this stage, there’s no need for me to view the property; I remember as much as I need to right now.’

Claudia forced herself not to flinch at that callously casual reminder. He might have been able to wipe her from his memory banks with no trouble at all but during his time here he’d surveyed every inch of the property, so no, he wouldn’t have forgotten what he’d seen, and decided to have.

They’d roamed every inch of the acreage together, the formal gardens, the paddocks, the headlands and the lovely unspoilt valley that led down to the cove, following the well-trodden path meandering beside the clear, sparkly waters of the stream, hand in hand, blissfully happy. Or so she’d thought.

And he’d obviously known enough about the interior of the house to go straight to Helen’s bedroom the moment a suitable opportunity arose. He had never troubled himself to find out where her, Claudia’s, room was. He’d made love to her in many places: the soft, moonlit grass of the headlands, the silky sand of the cove, even in the caravan on that claustrophobic bunk bed; but never here in the house.

Had he had too much respect for Helen, been too overawed by her golden, sizzling sexiness, to believe he had any hope of seducing her at all in the great outdoors or the mouldering old caravan? Had he decided his chances would be greater in the comfort of her own suite of rooms, between the luxury of satin sheets?

‘So, since the restaurant here is closed at lunchtime during the off season, I suggest we find a quiet pub and discuss generalities over lunch.’

Claudia blinked herself back to the here and now. He seemed able to operate as if there had never been anything between them in the past, or as if what had happened between them was not worth remembering, she thought resentfully, beginning to burn with a slow, deep anger. Perhaps the only way a person could live with the memory of their own despicable behaviour was to ignore it, as he seemed to be doing with great success.

Claudia rose and returned her cup and saucer to the tray. Her face was calm, icily controlled, hiding the raging inner turmoil. She was about to repeat forcefully her earlier statement that no way would she do business with him but, before she could get the words out, he stated coolly, ‘You’re married.’

That had to be obvious, of course, from her change of surname and, of course, he looked and sounded utterly detached. Why should he look anything other? His emotions had never been engaged where she was concerned, only his greed.

‘So?’ Her mouth was trembling. She thinned her lips to make it stop. ‘Are you?’

‘No. But that’s hardly relevant. Your husband isn’t a joint owner of the property?’ The grey of his eyes was, if anything, even more austere, his mouth twisting in a parody of a smile. ‘Don’t look so defensive, Mrs Favel. My interest in you and your husband isn’t personal. On a professional basis I need to know exactly who I have to deal with.’

He was astute, she had to give him that, Claudia acknowledged shakily. He could tell she felt threatened—her body language must have given her away. And, truth to tell, she had been threatened ever since she’d walked into the kitchen gardens six years ago and feasted her eyes on the stunning perfection of him.

He had threatened her happiness, her innocence, her unquestioning belief in the intrinsic goodness of human nature. Threatened and destroyed. So she had every right to look defensive.

‘I’m the sole owner.’ She could see no reason to tell him of Tony’s death, to tell him anything other than, ‘However, it’s entirely academic. Maybe you weren’t listening, but I distinctly remember telling you I’d decided not to deal with your company.’

She swung round on the low heels of her court shoes, facing the empty hearth rather than see him watching her with those chilling, empty eyes.

‘And I said you’d be cutting off your nose to spite your face,’ he reminded her dryly. ‘However, if you prefer to take your chances on the open market, and keep your fingers crossed that whoever fancies taking this place on has got the necessary financial backing to deliver the asking price, rather than consider the obvious advantages of dealing privately with a successful outfit like the Hallam Group, then that, of course, is your prerogative.’

He’d followed her. He was standing right behind her. She could smell the cool, lemony scent of his aftershave, the rugged undertone of dominant male. It flummoxed her, made her feel disorientated. She despised him totally yet could understand completely why her younger self had fallen for him, had gladly given all she had of herself, would have unhesitatingly given her life for him had it been required of her...

Claudia swallowed roughly, her movements jerky as she put distance between them. She really hated to admit it, but he was right. A private deal between her and the Hallam Group would save a lot of grief. A company as secure as his wouldn’t haggle over a fair price. She needed the best deal she could get to pay off those massive debts.

A quick, private sale would be easier on her father, too. He wouldn’t have to suffer the local speculation that would precede a public auction. Having to sell up at all would affect him badly—he could do without the added stress of having to explain why to anyone who felt inclined to ask.

The book she’d been reading recently was lying on a side table. She hadn’t been enjoying it. She picked it up because it was something to do, and hopefully it would make him think she was perfectly composed, unaffected by having to share room space with him.

But her fingers were agitated, clumsy, as she tried to slot it into a vacant space on the packed bookshelves. It fell, spine up, to the floor, the snapshot of her and Rosie, taken earlier this year, the one she’d been using as a bookmark, landing on the soft, jewel-coloured Persian carpet.

He had picked the book up before she had time to think, handing it to her but keeping the snapshot. Claudia felt physically sick, her hand going up to cover her mouth. A dull flush mounted his jutting cheekbones, his eyes glittering hotly as he raised them to meet hers.

‘You have a daughter?’ he asked harshly, glancing down again at the two grinning images and swiftly back up at her, forcing her to nod the affirmative.

‘Look—about lunch. I agree. We can discuss business in neutral surroundings. I might as well hear what you have to offer.’ She would have said anything—anything at all—to change the subject, to take his mind off that photograph. She swept past him, plucking it from his fingers with a murmured, ‘Thank you,’ as she went. She felt his eyes boring into her back, right between her rigid shoulder blades, as she made for the door. ‘I’ll collect my handbag and let Amy know I’ll be out. I won’t keep you waiting more than a minute or two.’

Back in her bedroom, she pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temples. If the past six weeks had been a nightmare, then Adam Weston’s appearance put the tin lid on it! After her meeting with the bank manager she had foolishly imagined that nothing very much worse could happen.

How wrong she had been!

Stifling a groan, she surveyed her image in the dressing-table mirror. She looked haggard, middle-aged, careworn. She shrugged, turning away, taking her bag from the top of the chest of drawers where she’d left it earlier and tucking the photograph safely inside.

So what did it matter if she looked like death warmed up? He wasn’t interested in her, in the way she looked. He never had been. All he’d been interested in was her prospects.

Nor did she want him to be interested in her. Of course she didn’t. She was no longer a silly teenager who thought the world a beautiful place and the people in it perfect angels. She knew better now. And she could hack it; she could face having lunch with that snake. For the sake of her father and her child, she could endure it and would, she determined grimly, stick out for the best price she could possibly get.

Business, it seemed, wasn’t on his mind. And it had fled from hers as soon as they’d realised where they were.

The Unicorn. A mythical beast, which was fitting because it had been here that he had declared his mythical love all those years ago, she thought bitterly as she eyed the tiny, stone-built pub from the side window of Adam’s Jaguar.

‘Remember it?’ he asked now, removing the key from the ignition, and she gave him a blank-eyed stare.

‘Should I?’ She exited the car.

Of course she remembered it. The tiny pub, tucked away in a narrow, wooded valley, well off the beaten track. She hadn’t been back in all this time, but she could have given him an inventory. However, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing she’d ever thought about the place after that night.

They’d ridden here on his motorbike one glorious evening, scraping enough money up between them to buy a glass of cider each and an enormous, bursting-with-flavour Cornish pasty, which they’d shared.

After they’d eaten, they’d sat outside on one of the picnic benches, slowly drinking the cider, and he’d reached over the table and wiped a bead of moisture from her mouth with his thumb, rubbing softly, slowly, his eyes heavy, his voice low and warm, so warm. ‘I love you, Claudia. I want you. Always. So now you know.’ His eyes had lingered on her mouth and she had known he wanted to kiss her. ‘You’ve got the rest of the summer to get used to the idea of having me around, loving you, wanting you.’

She hadn’t needed the rest of the summer to get used to that. She’d gloried in the idea of him loving her and wanting her. She’d felt exactly the same and had been ecstatic about it.

He’d touched her before, of course, the slide of a hand over her hip, a kiss—nothing heavy—stroking her breasts very, very lightly, as if he wasn’t sure of himself, or of her, making her hold her breath with the wonder of the sensations, of what was happening to her body. After his declaration of love she’d known there would be more; known that neither of them would be willing or capable of holding back.

Neither of them had spoken much about that. They’d ridden back to Farthings Hall, her arms clasped tightly around his body, and she’d known what it felt like to be in a trance. The moon had been up by then and after he’d parked the bike he’d drawn her away from the caravan when she would have gone inside to make coffee, as she always did after one of their evening excursions.

She hadn’t asked where they were going. She hadn’t had to. Somehow she’d known that the moonlit cove would be where she would give herself for the first time to the man she would love for all time.

Only she didn’t love him for all time, of course, she reminded herself staunchly as she trod firmly over the cobbled car park ahead of him. Her love had died the moment she’d learned the truth from Helen. And she’d die herself before she allowed him to know that she remembered anything about this place or had anything but the very haziest of memories about that lost summer.

Small though it was, the Unicorn had a reputation for good, unpretentious, home-cooked food. At a table in a quiet window alcove, Adam handed her the menu. Claudia put it down, unopened. ‘I’ll have a green salad and coffee.’ Her mouth compressed. It would be foolish and wasteful to order anything more when she had the feeling her stomach would reject whatever she tried to feed it.

A sable brow quirked with sardonic intent. ‘Is that how you’ve lost so much weight? Living on a lettuce leaf washed down with black coffee?’

So he hadn’t totally forgotten. He remembered enough about her to be able to compare the gaunt woman opposite with the eighteen-year-old who’d been blessed with all those lush curves. Hearing him as good as admit it gave her a spurt of savage pleasure. He’d tried to give the impression that he hadn’t given the Hall, or her, a second’s thought in all these years, and had just now proved himself wrong.

But then, he was an expert liar. He probably had a first-class degree in the twisted art!

‘We’re here on business,’ she reminded him, unfolding the large linen napkin and shaking it out over her knees as their food arrived. ‘I suggest we stick to that, rather than descend to the personal.’

‘Descend?’ He almost smiled. ‘In the past, when talk reached a personal level, things tended to go up, not down.’ He forked up some of the seafood pie he’d ordered but didn’t eat it, she noticed as she ignored his unsubtle innuendo, applying herself to her salad. She managed to swallow some but gave up altogether when he leaned back in his chair and asked, ‘Your daughter... What do you call her?’

‘Rosie.’ She hated having to tell him, but she could hardly refuse. She didn’t want to discuss her beloved, infinitely precious child with him at all. Ever.

‘Pretty.’ His unsmiling eyes bored into hers. ‘Rosie Favel. It rings a faint bell. Favel? Should I know your husband?’ he persisted.

Claudia sighed. It was none of his business. She would have told him just that, but practicalities had to come before pride. She had the future welfare of her father and her child to consider. She needed to get the best deal she could out of this man and continued rudeness wouldn’t do anything to help in that respect.

She stirred her sugarless black coffee slowly, gathering patience. ‘Perhaps,’ she granted, then took a heartening sip of the hot and excellent brew. He was not to be fobbed off with that, however. His intent, unblinking expression told her that much.

‘You probably saw him around at odd times during the summer you worked here.’ She refused to elevate the couple of months he was at Farthings Hall higher than that, give it more importance. ‘Tony was my father’s accountant. He came around fairly regularly.’

‘That fair-haired guy who always seemed to be hanging around your stepmother.’ His mouth curled derisively and his voice was bitter. Because Helen had shown the young and sexy part-time gardener off the premises, preferring the more experienced attentions of her so-called distant cousin?

Had he seen what she and her father had signally failed to recognise—the ongoing affair between those two? She felt her face go red. The idea was hurtful and somehow very degrading.

‘He has to be twenty years your senior.’ His eyes were cold, as if he despised everything about her.

Claudia corrected him hotly, ‘Twelve, actually. Not that it mattered. He was kind.’

Whatever else Tony had been, or hadn’t been, he had always shown her kindness. It was ironic, really, that she hadn’t discovered how cruelly he’d treated her until after his death.

‘How nice for you.’ Adam showed his teeth. As an attempted smile it wouldn’t rate one out of ten, and his subsequent, ‘So when did you marry your well-healed, ageing Lothario?’ made her grind her teeth.

‘October. Exactly six years ago. Satisfied?’ He hadn’t picked up on her earlier use of the past tense and she frowned, wondering, just for a moment, why she didn’t come right out with it and tell him Tony was dead. And knew the answer: because she couldn’t afford to have him know too much about her situation. ‘Maybe now we can change the subject and talk about why we are here at all.’

‘Gladly.’ He drained his coffee cup. ‘How old is Rosie?’

Her blue eyes clouded with anger. Why the heck couldn’t he leave it? ‘What my daughter’s age has to do with the sale of Farthings Hall escapes me.’ She bunched up her napkin and dropped it on her largely untouched salad, gathered her handbag and swept to her feet. ‘I can only imagine you have no intention whatsoever of making an offer, that you brought me here with the sole objective of causing me as much aggravation as possible because, six years ago, I had the temerity to dump you!’

Claudia stalked out, leaving him to settle the bill, and she was waiting impatiently by the Jaguar when he finally strolled out after what seemed to her to be an inordinate length of time.

‘I liked the outraged dignity act.’ He was actually smiling for the first time that day. Claudia looked quickly away. That smile of his had always been lethal and nothing had changed in that respect except he used it a lot less often. Round her, at least.

‘I hate wasting time, Mr Weston.’ She glanced at her wristwatch. They should be back at Farthings Hall in time for her to collect Rosie from the village primary school. She prayed that he wouldn’t hang around. There wasn’t going to be a deal. This morning had been a painful waste of time.

‘So, Mrs Favel, do I.’ He opened the passenger door. ‘Though I wouldn’t agree our time has been wasted—even though more questions have been raised than answered.’ He ushered her into the passenger seat and closed the door. While he walked round to the driver’s side she wondered what he was talking about and decided she definitely didn’t want to know.

One thing she was sure of was the unlikelihood of him making any offer for her home on behalf of his company. That, she reasoned, would have been ruled out of the question the moment he’d realised who she was. He probably still felt bitter about the way he’d been ordered off the property six years ago when he’d been just the hired help.

He wouldn’t be inclined to do her any favours. She breathed out raggedly, shifting in her seat as the powerful car tucked neatly into the side of the narrow lane on a particularly tight bend.

‘Relax,’ he said coolly. ‘I’ll have our surveyor go over your property. One day next week, perhaps. Our formal offer will depend on his report.’

Claudia did as she was told. She relaxed. Well, as much as she could, given the company she was keeping. He hadn’t written off the possibility of a sale, so she could keep the harmful truth from her father for another few days—until she was forced to tell him everything by the imminent arrival of the surveyor. Every day he got a little stronger, so the longer she could keep the dreadful news from him, the better.

A few more minutes and they would be back at the Hall. After Adam dropped her off he’d drive away, she consoled herself, and she would never have to see him again because all further business could be handled through their solicitors. And she could begin again the process of forgetting how very much she had once loved him, and how very much she had hated him for the first few years, and—

‘That is Rosie?’

The car had swept up the gravelled driveway and she hadn’t noticed. His query brought her out of her bitter ruminations. Her daughter was careering down the flight of stone steps from the open main entrance door, dressed in cotton dungarees, her soft black hair flying around her face, Amy red-faced and puffing in hot pursuit.

Adam braked, the action controlled and smooth, and Claudia practically fell out of the door, reaching out and catching her squealing and giggling offspring and lifting her protectively into her arms.

‘Mummeee! Amy said to watch for the car—I saw you come!’ That wide, heart-stopping smile lit up the gorgeous little face, the wide, smoke-grey eyes. ‘The roof of the school fell down,’ she exaggerated wildly. ‘The whole school nearly fell down!’

‘Just the ceiling in the cloakroom, and only part of it at that,’ Amy explained breathlessly. ‘But Miss Possinger phoned at lunchtime to say could one of us collect her because all the children were being sent home early. They’re getting the plasterers in to fix it this evening.’

Claudia unwound her daughter’s arms from their stranglehold around her neck, her poor heart pounding. ‘Run along in with Amy, darling. I won’t be a moment.’ She wouldn’t have been that long even if, in her haste to stop her exuberant little girl hurtling off down the drive, she hadn’t left her handbag behind in the car. ‘Then I’ll get changed and maybe we’ll take a picnic down to the cove.’

She didn’t want her daughter around Adam Weston for one split second longer than necessary and she cursed the fates that had made it necessary at all, and held her breath as, the promise of a picnic as bait, Rosie slid to the ground, took Amy’s hand and trotted willingly back to the house.

Everything was OK. Claudia let out a relieved sigh of pent-up breath, then broke out in a cold sweat and felt the ground tilt beneath her feet as Adam said, his voice very cold, very precise, ‘That child is mine.’

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