“Don’t try to sugarcoat the facts, Sebastian. We had a one-night stand!”

“Stop it, Lily!”

“Why, am I speaking the truth too plainly?”

“It’s not the truth and you know it.”

“No?” A lone tear trembled on her lashes.

“You want to know something?” he muttered. “I wish we could have met under different circumstances. Perhaps if we had…”

“We might have fallen in love? I don’t think so, Sebastian. Love doesn’t come calling only when it’s convenient. Please let me go. I can’t bear your being kind to me like this.”

“It’s not kindness. God help me, I want you, Lily. More than ever. And I think you want me, too.”

CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin romances. Within two months she changed careers and sold her first book to Harlequin in 1984. She moved to Canada from England more than thirty years ago and lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons—plus three dogs and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.

Mistress on His Terms
Catherine Spencer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

“I’LL be waiting by the baggage claim carousel,” Hugo Preston had told her, when they’d spoken by phone the night before. “You’ll know me by my gray hair and the bouquet of roses I’ll have brought for you—red roses, because tomorrow’s a red-letter day for me. I’m counting the hours until we meet, Lily.”

But the other passengers had already collected their belongings and gone, leaving Lily standing alone with her two suitcases and carry-on bags stowed in a luggage cart. Although there’d been a number of older men with gray hair waiting to meet the Vancouver flight when it landed on time in Toronto, none had been carrying roses, nor had any come forward to identify himself as her biological father.

Caught between a sense of letdown and resentment—so much for his anxiety to connect with the daughter he’d always known about but never met!—Lily took out the map tucked in the side pocket of her purse.

Stentonbridge, the small town where Hugo maintained a year-round residence, lay some hundred and fifty miles northeast of Toronto, so she supposed that, because of the heavy rains in the area, it was conceivable that the drive had taken longer than he’d expected.

But then, another scenario rose up to haunt her. What if, even as she stood there silently berating him for his apparent parental disregard, a car crushed beyond recognition was being hauled out of a ravine, and the man she’d come so far to meet lay covered by a sheet in an ambulance bound for the nearest morgue?

Refusing to allow the thought to take root, she stuffed the map back into her bag. Tragedy like that didn’t strike twice in a row; it was the terrible exception, not the rule. There was some other perfectly plausible reason for Hugo’s tardiness, and quite possibly a message explaining it waiting to be picked up at the airline information desk. If not, he’d given her a number where he could be reached.

Wheeling around, she scanned the arrivals terminal again. A lull between incoming flights left the immediate area relatively uncrowded. Apart from a family of four trying to pack a baby as well as their overflowing bags into one cart, a group of students gathered around their tour leader, and a man forging a purposeful path between the lot of them, she remained in conspicuous isolation.

The man was imposingly tall and the crowd, small though it was, fell back to allow him passage in much the same way, Lily thought with dry amusement, that Moses might have parted the Red Sea. Craning her neck, she peered past him, searching for the familiar Air Canada logo.

He, however, appeared determined not only to obstruct her view but also to occupy the one spot in the whole vast place to which she’d laid claim. In fact, the way he was zeroing in on her, he might have intended running her clean into the ground.

“You’re looking for me,” he announced tersely, coming to a stop so close that she had to tilt her head back to look into his face and the most arrestingly cold blue eyes she’d ever seen.

But gray-haired, elderly and kindly hardly fit his description. “Oh, no, I’m not!” she informed him with equal brevity and attempted to push past him.

He had a hold of her buggy, though, and it wasn’t going anywhere without his permission. “You’re Lily Talbot,” he said, and it occurred to Lily that any other man would have couched the words as a question. But this modern-day Moses wasn’t subject to the limitations of the rest of humanity. Preferential treatment from on high had blessed him with special powers. No doubt he could have told her what brand of toothpaste she used, if she’d been of a mind to inquire!

Instead she said stiffly, “More to the point, who are you?”

“Sebastian Caine.”

He introduced himself as if the mere mention of his name should be enough to start bells of recognition clanging in the mind of even the most dim-witted person. Not about to cater to such a monumental ego, Lily said, “How nice!” and gave her buggy a determined shove. “Unhand my cart, please. I’d like to make a phone call and find out what happened to the person I’m supposed to meet.”

“No need,” he said, not budging an inch. “I’m your chauffeur.”

Clearly he no more relished the idea of driving her to Stentonbridge than she did. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t climb into cars with strange men.”

A flicker of what might have been a smile twitched the corners of his mouth before he wrestled it back into its former severe line. “You haven’t known me long enough to label me ‘strange,’ Miss Talbot.”

“It’s ‘Ms.,’” she said. “And regardless of whatever label you care to hang around your neck, I’m not getting into a car with you. I’ll wait until Mr. Preston gets here.”

“Hugo isn’t coming.”

She’d been afraid of that. “Why not?”

“Because I persuaded him to stay at home.”

“And he always does as you tell him, does he?”

“Not as often as he should,” Sebastian Caine said bitterly. “If he did, you wouldn’t be here now and I wouldn’t be wasting my time carrying on this inane conversation. Let go of the damned luggage cart, for pity’s sake! I’m not about to abscond with it—or you, come to that. But I would like to load up and be out of here before the rush hour gets any worse.”

He’d referred to Hugo by his first name without any prompting from her. He’d known who she was. He wore a look of unimpeachable propriety. His clothes, his watch, even his haircut were expensive, and he no more resembled a kidnapper than she did a call girl. But appearances could be deceiving, as she’d learned to her considerable cost. “I’m not going anywhere with you until I’ve verified your identity with my father,” she said.

He stiffened and a grimace of aversion rolled over his face, as if her referring to Hugo as her father was an affront to decent society. Lips compressed in annoyance, he produced a cell phone from the inside pocket of his jacket, punched in a two-digit code and thrust the instrument at her. “Be my guest.”

She accepted it warily, still not entirely sure she ought to trust him. But a glance at the illuminated screen showed Hugo’s name and number.

“Will you for pity’s sake hit Send and get on with it,” Sebastian Caine snapped, noting her reluctance. “It’s a phone, not a bomb. It won’t explode in your hand.”

Hugo answered on the third ring. “I’m so glad you called, Lily,” he said. “There’s been a slight change in plan—an old back injury’s flared up to give me grief, so my stepson Sebastian’s meeting your flight and driving you up here. He’s about six foot three, dark haired, good-looking so the women tell me, and hard to miss even in a crowd.”

Add rude, arrogant and condescending, and the description would be complete, Lily thought. “We’ve met,” she said, glaring at Sebastian Caine and itching to wipe the smug expression off his face. “He’s standing in front of me, even as we speak.” Not to mention practically stealing the air I breathe!

“Excellent! Ask him if we should hold dinner for you.”

She did so, and could have been forgiven for thinking, from the way Sebastian commandeered the phone and hunched one shoulder away from her, that his answer conveyed information pertinent to national security. His voice carried loud and clear, though, as he said, “Hugo? Better not wait dinner for us. This afternoon’s meeting ran late and I’ve got one more call to make before I head back.”

Whatever Hugo replied had Sebastian casting her another of his disapproving looks. “I suppose so, if you like that sort of thing,” he eventually said, “but I can’t say I see any startling family resemblance. She could be anybody from anywhere.”

He made it sound as if she were something unwholesome he’d scraped off the sidewalk! If it weren’t that she had no more sense of direction than a drunken field mouse, she’d have dearly loved to rent her own car and tell him to stick his offer to drive her where it would lodge most uncomfortably. Instead she swallowed her pride and allowed him to hustle her and her baggage out to the parking area.

Practically sprinting to keep up with him as he plowed his way to where he’d left his car, she asked, “How long will it take to drive to Stentonbridge?”

“Normally around three hours. Today, because of the weather and delays, more like four or five.”

To say he sounded ticked off gave grim new meaning to the word understatement. “I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced on my account. I’d have been just as happy to take a train or bus.”

“None run from here to Stentonbridge and even if one did, Hugo wouldn’t hear of it.” His voice took on a derisive edge. “You’re the long-lost daughter returning to the fold, and he wants you welcomed in style.”

“It’s rather obvious you don’t share his enthusiasm.”

He spared her a brief, dismissive glance. “Why should I? Even if you’re who you claim you are—”

“There’s no even if about it,” she said. “I have documented proof.”

“Which has yet to be verified as authentic.” He swung the luggage cart to a halt behind a sports car as long, dark and sleekly handsome as its owner, popped open the trunk and started piling her bags inside. “You want any of this stuff in the front with you?”

“No.”

“Then since the door’s unlocked, climb in and get settled. I’m in a hurry.”

“Well, silly me!” she said sweetly. “Here I thought you were merely in training for a decathlon!”

He raised one winged brow and cast her a look that might have turned a more prudent woman to stone. “Don’t push your luck, Ms. Talbot. You’ve already tried my patience to the limit.”

“And how have I done that, Sebastian?”

His pinched nostrils told her exactly what he thought of such untoward familiarity. “You’re here, aren’t you?” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”

“But I’m not here to see you. In fact, crushing though it might be for you to hear this, I didn’t even know of your existence until ten minutes ago.”

“You raise an interesting question nonetheless,” he said, slamming closed the trunk and ushering her into the passenger seat with more haste than gallantry before sliding his rangy frame behind the steering wheel. “Why, after all this time, do you want to see Hugo?”

“He’s my father. What better reason is there?”

“But why now? If you’re telling the truth, he’s been your father all your life.”

“I didn’t know that until recently.”

“Precisely my point, Ms. Talbot. You’ve managed without him for the better part of twenty-six years. You’re well past the point where you need a guardian. There’s no emotional tie between you. So what’s the real reason you’re suddenly sniffing around?”

He made her sound like an ill-bred bloodhound. “It’s highly personal and not something I choose to share with a total stranger.”

“There are no secrets between Hugo and me.”

“Apparently there are,” she said smugly. “Judging by your reaction to my sudden appearance, he never confided to you that he had a daughter waiting in the wings.”

“Maybe,” Sebastian replied, giving back as good as he got, “because he never missed you. The daughter he does know and love more than compensated for your absence.”

“I have a…sister?” The concept struck a strangely unsettling, though not unpleasant note. She had been an only child who’d always wanted to be part of a big family, but there hadn’t even been cousins she could be close to. No aunts or uncles, and no grandparents. Just her mother and the man she’d known as her father. “We don’t need anyone else,” he’d often said. “The three of us have each other.”

Three, that was, until the September day ten months before, when a police officer showed up at her door and told her her parents were among the fatalities of a multivehicle accident on a foggy highway in North Carolina.

“Half sister,” Sebastian Caine said. “Natalie is Hugo’s child by his second marriage to my mother.”

“So what does that make you and me?” she asked, aiming to introduce a more cordial tone to the conversation. “Half stepbrother and sister?”

He cut her off in a voice as cold and sharp as the blade of an ax. “It makes us nothing.”

“Well, praise heaven!” she replied, stung.

“Indeed.”

They’d cleared the airport by then and joined the stream of traffic headed through the pouring rain for downtown Toronto. He was probably a very skilled driver, but the memory of her parents as they’d looked when she’d gone to make a positive identification remained too fresh in her mind, and the way Sebastian Caine zipped around slower vehicles left her bracing herself for disaster.

“Keep pumping an imaginary brake like that, and you’ll wind up putting your foot through the floor,” he observed, zooming up behind another car with what struck her as cavalier disregard for safety.

“I don’t fancy ending up in someone else’s trunk, that’s all.”

He sort of smiled. At least, she supposed that was what the movement of his lips amounted to. “Do I make you nervous, Ms. Talbot?”

She closed her eyes as he changed lanes and zipped past a moving truck. “Yes.”

“Then you’re wiser than I expected.”

Her eyes flew open again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don’t trust you or your motives. It means I’ll be watching every move you make while you’re here. Put a foot wrong, and I’ll be all over you.”

“How exciting. Be still my heart!”

“I’m serious.”

“I can see that you are. What puzzles me is why I’m such a threat to your peace of mind. I assure you I don’t plan to run off with the family silver or murder people in their beds. I have questions that only Hugo Preston can answer, that’s all.”

“You didn’t have to come halfway across the country for that. The telephone was invented a long time ago.”

“I’m curious to meet my father face-to-face.”

“I just bet you are!” he sneered.

She shrugged. “So sue me.”

“Give me reason to, and I will.”

She stared at him, unable to fathom his hostility, but his expression gave nothing away and she wasn’t about to beg for an explanation. “I’m afraid you’re in for a terrible disappointment,” she said instead. “I have no hidden agenda in coming here.”

His mouth tightened.

“There’s nothing unnatural in a person wanting to meet her biological parent.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror, stepped on the accelerator and raced past a stretch limo. Prickles of sweat broke out along her spine as he took an off-ramp at alarming speed.

Thrusting both palms flat against the dashboard, she asked, “How many auto accidents have you had?”

The question was ill-advised, to say the least. He speared her with a chilly sideways glare, which glimmered with evil amusement. “None. But there’s a first time for everything.”

“Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer you postpone the premiere performance until I’m not your passenger.”

“Your preferences don’t rank high on my list of priorities, Ms. Talbot. In fact, it’s safe to say they don’t register at all. As for your perceived sense of danger, let me assure you I don’t intend risking either life or limb on your account.”

They’d turned onto a street lined with elegant town houses by then. Braking to a stop next to a van, he shifted into reverse and began backing into a parking space so tight, it invited disaster. She opened her mouth to tell him so, then snapped it closed again as, without a moment’s hesitation or a single false move, he angled the car into place and brought it to rest parallel to the curb.

He reached behind her seat, leaning close enough that she got a pleasant whiff of his aftershave, and hauled out a briefcase. “Wait here,” he ordered, climbing out of the car. “I won’t be long.”

Lily watched as he loped across the street and up the steps to a door three houses down. Before he had the chance to ring the bell, a woman appeared. She was very pleased to see him, if the smile and hug she bestowed were anything to go by, and she was also very pregnant. He slung an arm around her shoulders and the two of them disappeared inside the house.

Ten minutes passed, then twenty. The clouds, which had been dense enough to start with, grew even darker. Not long after, a light came on at an upstairs window of the house into which Sebastian Caine had disappeared.

“Oh, fine thing!” Lily muttered resentfully. “I’m left cooling my heels in here while he has an assignation with his mistress. No wonder he told Hugo not to hold dinner!”

She twisted around and craned her neck, searching the narrow area behind the two front seats in the hope of finding something to wile away the time—a newspaper or magazine, even a map of the area. But the only item of interest was Sebastian’s passport lying open and facedown on the floor.

She prided herself on being an essentially decent person, the kind who returned her library books on time, held open doors for the elderly, and told little white lies only when absolutely necessary. She definitely did not consider herself to be the sort who snooped through other people’s medicine cabinets or read their mail. But that darned passport drew her like a magnet and before the full import of what she was doing could properly register, she found herself picking it up and sneaking a look inside.

In line with those of most other people she knew, her own passport picture made her look as if she belonged on North America’s Ten Most Wanted list, but Sebastian Andrew Caine might have commissioned a portrait photographer to produce his. His face stared back at her in all its direct-gazed, firm-jawed glory.

He’d been blessed with impeccable cheekbones, thick black hair, eyelashes to draw the envy of every woman alive and a disarming cleft in his chin. On top of that, as she knew from firsthand observation, he stood well over six feet and probably sent his tailor into raptures over his trim, perfectly proportioned physique.

Too bad he’d been at the end of the receiving line when God dispensed charm!

Though now a Canadian citizen, he’d been born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on April 23, thirty-four years ago. He traveled often and mostly to exotic places like Turkey, Russia, The Far East, Morocco and Greece.

She thumbed through the pages. His most recent port of call had been Cairo; his most far-flung Rarotonga. He’d visited Rio de Janeiro twice in the last three years and the southern Baja four times. What with jaunts all over the world and house calls to his current ladylove, it was a wonder he found time to work!

Annoyed at being kept waiting, Lily slapped the passport closed and turned to glare across the street at the house he’d entered, only to find her view blocked by Sebastian Caine’s tall figure. Completely unmindful of the rain pelting down, he stood beside her window, glaring right back at her.

At the realization that she’d been caught blatantly prying into something that was absolutely none of her business, her whole body blushed, starting at her toes and spreading in waves until the blood suffused her face and left it burning. Even her throat and eyeballs felt parched. She could neither swallow nor blink. She simply sat in paralyzed horror and prayed he was a mirage created by the rain weaving patterns down the glass.

At best, it was an unlikely alternative and one he soon disabused her of by striding around the back of the car and wrenching open the driver’s door.

Of course, there was no justifying what she’d been caught doing. Still, she felt compelled to try. “It was lying on the floor,” she blustered, the minute he climbed into the car.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. His raised eyebrows told her plainly enough what he thought of that as an excuse.

“So I picked it up. A passport’s not something to be left lying around, you know.”

He leaned back in his seat and continued his frigid, unblinking regard.

Self-preservation told her she was merely digging herself in deeper with every word and that her best bet was to keep quiet. But his silence, charged with unspoken accusation as it was, unnerved her. “I mean, it could just as easily have fallen out on the road without your noticing, and I’m sure you know what a hassle it is trying to get a replacement…. Particularly if you needed to travel overseas in a hurry… Not to mention the ramifications of some underworld figure getting hold of it and putting it to criminal use…and…well…”

“Are you quite done?” he asked, when she finally ran out of steam.

She looked down, realized she was still clutching the passport and hurriedly dropped it into his lap. “Yes.”

“Thank God!”

He tossed the passport over his shoulder, and eased the car out of its parking spot. The rush hour was in full swing by then, which made it a bit easier for her to tolerate his aloof silence since she had no wish to distract him from the job of negotiating the heavy traffic. But when the city limits lay far behind them and the only sound to break the twilight hush was the frenzied swipe of the windshield wipers, she decided they’d both sulked long enough.

“I’m afraid,” she said, slewing a glance at him, “that we got off to a rocky start and I’d like to apologize for my part in that.”

His shrug of acknowledgment could hardly be construed as encouraging.

Still, she persevered. “I really don’t make a habit of going through other people’s private possessions, you know. But you were gone longer than you led me to expect and I was just looking for something to read.”

He favored her with a scathing glance. “In that case, I suppose I should count myself lucky that you stopped with my passport. There must be at least a dozen legal files back there, which would have provided you with much juicier entertainment and after you’d read your fill, you could have blackmailed me for breaching lawyer-client confidentiality.”

“I didn’t know you’re a lawyer.”

“And I didn’t know you’re a meddlesome busybody, so that makes us even.”

She shifted in her seat, the better to observe him. He really was quite outstandingly good-looking. “Why are you so determined to dislike me, Sebastian?”

“I have no feelings toward you, one way or the other, Ms. Talbot. I already told you, you’re an inconvenience, but I’ll get over that as soon as I’ve deposited you on Hugo’s doorstep.” He punctuated his statement with a telling pause before continuing, “Provided you don’t hurt him or anyone else I care about.”

“It’s obvious you think I’ll do exactly that.”

He swung his head and pinioned her in his cold blue stare, and she almost cringed at the expression she saw in their depths. “Let’s just say that, in my experience, the apple seldom falls far from the tree.”

She stared at him, more perplexed by the second. “Meaning?”

“Meaning if you’re anything like your mother—!”

But then, as if he’d given away more than he intended, he clamped his mouth shut and returned his attention to the road.

Lily, though, wasn’t so inclined to let the subject drop. “What do you know about my mother?”

“More than I care to.”

“Because of things Hugo’s told you?”

“Hugo had no contact with her for more than twenty-six years.”

“Exactly! Which make his opinions less than reliable.”

“Then for once we’re in agreement.” He flicked on the right turn indicator and slowed the car as they approached the neon-lit entrance to a restaurant set back about fifty yards from the road. “On which fortuitous note, I propose we stop for something to eat. Stentonbridge is still a good two hours’ drive away.”

Part of her wanted to tell him she was more interested in having him explain his cryptic remarks than she was in food. But another, more cautious part urged her not to pursue the topic. That he knew more than he was telling was plain enough, but although she’d come here looking for answers, she didn’t want them from him. Whether or not he’d admit it, there was too much anger seething beneath his surface, and she didn’t relish the idea of it bursting loose on some dark country road miles from anywhere.

She’d waited this long to find out the truth. She could wait a few hours longer.

She wasn’t what he’d anticipated. Watching her covertly as she studied the menu, he had trouble reconciling the woman sitting opposite him in the booth with his expectations of a vulgar, money-grubbing fortune hunter. He’d been prepared for flashy good looks, provocative necklines, big hair, fake fingernails and too much cheap jewelry. They fit the image. Lily Talbot did not.

Oh, he supposed she was pretty enough, in an ordinary sort of way. More than pretty, some might say. But the cheapness wasn’t there, no matter how hard he searched for it. She had narrow, elegant feet. Her hands were delicate, the nails well-cared for and buffed to a soft shine. Her features were small and regular. Patrician, almost. Her dark brown hair lay smooth and shining against her cheek. She looked out at the world from wide, candid eyes and she smiled a lot. Her mouth was permanently upturned at the corners, her lips soft and full.

Apart from a watch, her only other jewelry was a pair of small gold earrings. She wore a blue denim skirt, which came to just below her knees, a short-sleeved white blouse buttoned to a vee at the front and sandals. Her legs were bare and, he hadn’t been able to help noticing, extremely long and shapely. Her skin was lightly tanned and she’d painted her toenails pink. They reminded him of dainty little shells.

Ticked off, he glowered at her, knowing Hugo would love her, that he’d accept her immediately and not once question her motives for suddenly wanting to make contact with him. But the fact remained that her mother’s betrayal, over a quarter of a century before, had nearly killed him, and it was Sebastian’s self-appointed job to make sure the daughter didn’t finish the job now.

Unaware of his scrutiny, she tapped her fingernail against her front teeth and continued to peruse the menu. She had lovely teeth, a lovely smile. “For Pete’s sake, I invited you here to eat, not spend the night,” he practically barked. “Make up your mind what you want to order.”

“I like looking at menus,” she said, rewarding him with a look of pained reproach from her big brown eyes.

“Then you must be a very slow reader. I could have memorized the entire thing in half the time you’re taking to get through it.”

“Well, I’m not like you.”

Hell, no! She was pure woman, and the fact that he couldn’t stop taking inventory of her assets was beginning to irk him more than a little! “In case it’s slipped your mind, Hugo’s been waiting a long time to meet you. If it’s all the same to you, I’d as soon not prolong his agony.”

She slapped the menu closed and leaned back in the booth. “I’ll have a large order of fries and a vanilla milk shake.”

“You took all this time to decide on a milkshake and fries?” he asked incredulously.

“With ketchup.”

“If that’s all you want, we could have stopped at a fast-food drive-in and saved ourselves some time.”

She collected her bag and the sweater she’d heaped on the bench. “Okay. Let’s go find one.”

“Stay where you are!”

He must have raised his voice more than he realized because the next thing he knew, the waitress had come barging over to their booth to inquire, “Your boyfriend giving you trouble, honey?”

Lily Talbot exploded into warm, infectious laughter, as if the woman had said something hilariously amusing. “Heavens, he’s not my boyfriend!”

“And I’m not giving her trouble.”

The waitress eyed him darkly. “You’d better not be.” She fished out her notepad and waited with pen poised. “So what’ll you have?”

He relayed Lily’s request and ordered a steak sandwich and coffee for himself. “I thought women like you existed on salad and tofu,” he said, while they waited for their food.

“Women like me?” She regarded him pertly. “And what kind of woman is that, Sebastian?”

“Under thirty and in thrall to the latest trend, no matter how outlandish it might be.”

“You don’t know much about women, do you?”

Enough to know you’re bad for my concentration, he could have told her.

She leaned forward and he couldn’t help noticing the graceful curve of her breasts beneath her blouse. He even found himself wondering if she was wearing a bra. Damn her!

“Real women aren’t slaves to fashion, Sebastian,” she informed him, her tone suggesting she found him singularly lacking in intelligence. “We make up our own rules.”

“What happens if your rules don’t coincide with men’s?”

“Then we compromise, the way we have since the beginning of time.”

“Sounds to me like a convenient excuse to do whatever you want, whenever you want, and not be held accountable for your actions.”

She looked at him pityingly. “Don’t you know that if you always go looking for the worst in people, you’ll eventually find it?”

She was either a complete innocent or a contemptible schemer, and until he determined which, he wasn’t about to let down his guard. “I don’t have to go looking, Ms. Talbot. I live by the credo Give a person enough rope and she’ll eventually hang herself.” He paused meaningfully. “You’d do well to remember that.”

CHAPTER TWO

LILY shook her head in bewilderment, floored by his unremitting hostility. “Well, so much for striking up pleasant dinner conversation!”

“I’m sorry if the truth offends you. We can change the subject if you like, and talk about the weather instead.”

“I’d prefer not to talk to you at all. You’ve been nothing but disagreeable from the minute you set eyes on me and I’m tired of trying to figure out why. I’m beginning to suspect you don’t have to have a reason because you’re the kind who makes a career out of being miserable.”

“At least we’re not harboring any illusions about what each of us thinks of the other.”

There was no getting past that steely reserve of his, no hint of humanity or warmth in his makeup. He might be handsome as sin on the outside, but inside he was as dry as the law books he probably considered riveting bedtime reading. “Oh, go soak your head!” she snapped.

He looked mildly astonished, as if he thought he had a corner on the insult market. “Now who’s being offensive?”

“I am,” she allowed, “because trying to be pleasant about anything is a lost cause with you, Sebastian Caine. You’re fixated on being as insufferable as possible, whether or not you have just cause.”

Their meal arrived then, so she poured a dollop of ketchup on her plate and stabbed a fork into her French fries.

“No need to take out your frustrations on your food, Ms. Talbot. That’s not my heart you’re impaling.”

More’s the pity! “Oh, shut up!” she said, wondering why she’d ever thought coming here was a good idea in the first place. Hugo Preston might have sounded eager to meet her, but he hadn’t cared enough to pursue the connection until she’d approached him. Given her other troubles, she didn’t need the aggravation of having his obnoxious stepson enter the mix! “Just shut up and eat, and let’s get this whole miserable evening over with as soon as possible.”

But it was not to be. When at last they were ready to leave, the waitress brought more than their bill. “Hope you folks aren’t planning to go far tonight. Just got word of flash floods right through the area. Police are asking people to stay off the roads.”

“Oh, brother, just what I need to make the day complete!” Sebastian threw down a fistful of money and glowered at Lily as if she were in cahoots with God and had personally orchestrated the storm. “Grab your stuff and let’s get moving.”

“But if the police are warning people to stay put—?”

He took her elbow and hustled her out to the porch. “We don’t have a whole lot of choice, unless you want to spend the night here.”

“Perish the thought!”

A small river was running through the parking lot, a fact Lily discovered when she inadvertently stepped in it and felt water splashing up past her ankles. Not that it really mattered; by the time she flung herself into the car, she was soaked to the skin all over.

Sebastian hadn’t fared much better. Great patches of rain darkened the shoulders of his pale gray suit jacket, the cuffs of his trousers were dripping, and his hair, like hers, was plastered to his head.

Muttering words unfit to be repeated in decent company, he fired up the engine, started the windshield wipers slapping and inched the car over the rutted ground toward the road. Before they’d even cleared the parking lot, the side windows had misted over and the air was filled with the smell of wet clothes and warm damp skin. In fact, Lily was pretty sure she could see steam rising from her skirt.

To describe the driving conditions as poor didn’t approach reality. In fact, they were ghastly. The road ahead resembled a dark tunnel into which they were hurtling with no clear idea of where it might curve to the right or left.

Fists clenched so tight her fingernails gouged the palms of her hands, Lily huddled in her seat and prayed they’d reach Stentonbridge without incident. But they’d covered only about forty miles of the remaining distance when Sebastian brought the car to a sudden, screeching halt.

There was no sign of human habitation; no lights in farmhouses, no illuminated storefronts, no street lamps. Nothing but the driving rain pounding on the car roof like urgent jungle drums, and the dark shapes of trees twisting in the wind.

“Why are we stopping here?” she said. “Or aren’t I allowed to ask?”

And then she saw. Where earlier in the day there’d been a bridge over a ravine, there now was a torrent of muddy water cascading down the hillside and taking with it everything that stood in its path. Another twenty feet, and the car would have careened into empty space, then plunged into the swirling rapids.

“Precisely,” Sebastian said, hearing her shocked gasp.

It was late July. High summer in that part of Ontario. Even the nights were warm. But suddenly she was freezingly cold and shivering so hard that her teeth rattled.

This was how it happened: one minute people were alive, with the blood flowing through their veins, and their minds full of plans for the next day, the next year…and then, in less time than it took to blink, it was all over. That’s how it had been for her parents, and how it had almost been for her.

Tragedy wasn’t selective in its choice of victims; it could strike twice.

She tried to breathe and could not. The air inside the car was too close, too drenched, and she was suffocating. With a strangled moan, she released the buckle of her seat belt and fumbled for the door handle.

Her lungs were bursting. She had to get out—out into the open air. With a mighty shove, she sent the door flying wide and half-fell, half-crawled from her seat. Never mind the rain pelting down, or the wind whipping wet strands of hair across her face. Anything was better than being locked in the close confines of that long, low-slung burgundy car, which all at once looked and felt too much like a mahogany coffin.

Blind with panic, she set off through the wild night with one thought uppermost in her mind: to find her way back to the brightly lit safety of the roadside café. She’d covered no more than a few feet, however, before she blundered full tilt into a solid wall of resistance and felt her arms pinioned in an iron hold.

“Have you lost your tiny mind?” Sebastian Caine bellowed, raising his voice above the din of the waterfall. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“We were almost killed!”

“And almost isn’t good enough? You want to finish off the job?”

“I w-want…” But the irrational, superstitious terror that had propelled her out of the car and sent her stumbling away in the dark refused to translate into words. She tasted salt and was astonished to find tears mingling with the rain on her face. To her shame, a great ugly sob broke loose from her throat.

“Stop that!” he ordered. “Nothing’s happened yet. At least have the decency to wait until real calamity strikes before you decide to fall apart.” He gave her a little shake, but the hint of sympathy texturing his next remark showed he wasn’t as blind to the cause of her distress as he’d first appeared. “Look, I appreciate that your parents’ accident must still be pretty vivid in your mind, but letting your imagination run wild isn’t helping. Get a grip, Lily, and go back to the car.”

“I don’t think I can,” she wailed.

Even though the night was black as the inside of a cave, she sensed his frustration. “Then let me make it easy for you!”

Before she knew what was happening, he bent down, grabbed her behind her knees and flung her, firefighter-fashion, over his shoulder. Oblivious to her shriek of outrage or her hands clawing at his back, he marched back to the car and tossed her into the passenger seat as if she were a sack of potatoes.

“You’ve taxed my patience enough for one day,” he informed her savagely, yanking her seat belt into place, “so don’t even think about pulling another stunt like the last one, or you will wind up alone on the side of the road and let me tell you, it won’t be an experience you’ll want to talk about—always assuming, of course, that you survive the night.” Then, as a further inducement to comply with his orders, “You do know, of course, that this whole area’s swarming with cougars and snakes. And vampire bats.”

He slammed her door, raced back to the driver’s side and climbed in.

“You’re lying,” she said shakily. “Especially about the bats.”

In the glow from the dashboard, his grin and the whites of his eyes gleamed demonically. “Prove it.”

Unable to drum up an answering smile she huddled down in the seat, listless with defeat. The day, which had started out so full of anticipation, had sunk too far in disappointment to be redeemed with humor and she was beyond fighting to save it. She just wanted it to be over.

As he swung the car around, the headlights sliced across the landscape, turning the rain to long silver darning needles spearing the night. “We passed a motel about ten miles back. Let’s hope the road hasn’t washed out between here and there, and that they still have vacancies.”

Luck was with them, but barely. The motel had been built in the fifties and hadn’t seen a dollar spent on it since. A bare bulb hung above the desk in the office. Tears in the vinyl padding on the one chair were held together with duct tape. The manager, Lily noticed with a shudder, reeked of tobacco and had tufts of hair growing out of his ears, which left him looking like a troll.

“Busy night tonight, what with the weather and all,” he told them. “Only got the one room left. Take it or leave it, folks. You don’t want it, someone else will.”

“We’ll take it,” Sebastian said, slapping down a credit card and filling out the registration card.

“I’m not spending the night in the same room with you,” Lily informed him, trailing behind as he marched to their assigned unit.

“You’d rather sleep in the car?”

“No!”

He unlocked door number nineteen and flung it open. “Well, I’m not offering to, if that’s what you’re hoping, so step inside and make yourself at home while I unload our stuff.”

“Sebastian,” she exclaimed, still hovering on the threshold when he returned with her luggage, a zippered nylon sports bag, and a newspaper, “this place is a flea pit!”

He reined in a sigh. “So sorry it isn’t up to the five-star standards you were probably hoping for, but it’s warm and dry, isn’t it? There’s a shower and a bed.”

Exactly. One bed! Not a bed and a pull-out sofa, not even an armchair. Just a double mattress that sagged in the middle and was covered by an ugly green bedspread, which had seen better days. The only other furniture consisted of a nightstand holding a fake wood reading lamp, a ratty chest of drawers with a TV on top, and a straight-back chair that matched the one in the office, even down to the duct tape patching.

“I’m not sleeping on that bed!”

He shrugged. “Sack out on the floor then.”

Not an inviting prospect, either. There were suspicious stains on the threadbare carpet. “You’re the most insensitive creature I’ve ever met!”

“And you’re a spoiled brat.” Kicking the door closed, he dumped her suitcases next to it, tossed the sports bag and newspaper on the bed, and shrugged out of his jacket. His shoes and socks came off next, followed by his tie.

She watched in sly fascination as he proceeded to peel off his shirt, thereby displaying an expanse of muscular, well-tanned chest and proof positive that his width of shoulder owed nothing to clever tailoring. Well, if he thought flexing his pecs would impress her, he was in for a disappointment! It would take more than that to get a rise out of her.

Just how little more she soon found out. “What do you think you’re doing?” she squeaked in horror, when he casually began unbuckling the belt holding up his pants.

“I’d have thought it was obvious. I’m getting out of these wet clothes, and then I’m taking a shower. Close your mouth and stop gaping, Ms. Talbot.”

“I don’t believe…what I’m seeing!”

“Then don’t look.”

The belt was off, the zipper of his fly sliding down. The next second, he was shucking his trousers as unselfconsciously as if he were completely alone. And for the life of her, she couldn’t look away.

He glanced up and caught her staring. “You’re blushing, Ms. Talbot.”

Any fool could see that! “Well, one of us certainly should be, and it clearly isn’t going to be you.”

He had great legs. Wonderful thighs. Lean, muscular, tanned. Long, strong, powerful. And he preferred briefs to boxers. Plain white cotton to silk stripes and fancy colors.

“Don’t you dare remove anything else!” she said hoarsely. “I’m not interested in seeing you in the altogether.”

“Just as well,” he said, folding his trousers over the back of the chair. “I don’t show my altogether to just anyone.”

He draped his jacket over a wire hanger in the curtained recess that passed for a closet then did the same for his shirt. And she, ninny that she was, followed his every move and wondered how it was that God had seen fit to bless men with such trim, taut hips, even if the rest of them was oversized!

“Sure you don’t want to use the bathroom?”

“Quite sure, thank you. There’s probably an inch of mold growing in the tub.”

“No tub,” he said, almost gleefully, poking his head around the door to inspect. “Just a shower stall.”

“I wish you the joy of it.”

“I’m sure you do.” He flung a glance over his shoulder and she could have sworn he was biting back a snicker. “No peeking, Ms. Talbot, and no funny business.”

“Funny business?”

“There isn’t room for two in here. If you change your mind about taking a shower, wait your turn.”

“Oh, dream on!” she gasped, flabbergasted by his gall. “Heaven only knows what might come crawling up the drain.”

But the truth was, her clothes were sticking to her most uncomfortably, her skin felt unpleasantly clammy and the idea of standing under a hot shower didn’t seem such a bad idea, after all. She had fresh underwear and a nightshirt in her suitcase; dry clothes she could pull out for tomorrow. Who was she really punishing by stubbornly refusing to make the best of the situation?

Sebastian reappeared ten minutes later, wearing a skimpy towel draped perilously around his hips and nothing else. His black hair stood up in spikes, drops of water gleamed on his skin, and he smelled of clean, warm man. “The place might be a flea pit, but at least there’s plenty of hot water. Sure you don’t want to take advantage of it?”

She cleared her throat. “I might.” She eyed his makeshift loincloth, then hastily glanced away again.

“There’s another towel in there, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he said snidely.

“Good,” she croaked and fled with the toiletry bag, nightshirt and panties she’d taken from her suitcase.

In keeping with the rest of the place, the bathroom was basic: a washbasin, a toilet and a fiberglass shower stall with a mottled glass door. An unused towel the same size as the one barely covering the delectable Sebastian Caine lay folded on a shelf, and the management had kindly provided a minuscule bar of soap, a tiny bottle of shampoo, most of which he’d used, and two paper cups.

Fortunately she came fully equipped with hand-milled French soap, body lotion, salon formula shampoo and conditioner and, praise heaven, toothbrush and paste. She wasted no time putting them all to good use.

From the feel of them, the pillows were stuffed with peanut shells, and the mattress wasn’t a whole lot better. But it beat a marble slab in the nearest morgue, which was where they’d almost certainly have wound up if he hadn’t spotted the washed-out bridge when he did.

He’d been rattled, and he didn’t mind admitting it. But her reaction had been over the top! Jumping out of the car like that and racing off without the first idea where she was headed pretty much proved his first impression had been right: the woman spelled nothing but trouble. Still, he hadn’t been able to help feeling sorry for her. She’d been trembling like a leaf when he finally caught up with her, and the way she’d felt when he’d picked her up…

Best not to dwell too long on how she felt—or looked. His mandate was to deliver the goods, not sample them! Which reminded him Hugo would be expecting them to show up at the house anytime now.

Jamming a pillow behind his head, he stretched out on the mattress, pulled the top sheet up to his waist and reached for the phone.

Hugo picked up on the first ring. “Sebastian?”

“How’d you guess?”

“I saw the weather report on television. The whole county’s under siege with this rain. You’ll never make it up here tonight.”

“I’m way ahead of you, Hugo. We checked into a motel about an hour ago.”

“Thank God! So both you and Lily are safe?”

No point in regaling him with their close call. No point, either, in entering into a debate about the dubious wisdom of daughter and stepson spending the night together. “We’re safe.”

“So tell me, how do you like her, now that you know her a bit better?”

“She’s…” Nosy. Annoying. Too smart-mouthed for her own good. And, he was beginning to realize, sexy as all get-out! “Hell, you know me, Hugo. I don’t jump to conclusions until I’ve got all the facts.”

Hugo laughed. “Just once in your life, could you try not to behave so much like a lawyer?”

And do what? Take advantage of the situation and put the moves on her? Better stick to being a lawyer! “It’s who I am, you know that.”

“I want the two of you to get along. We’re all family here, Sebastian.”

“Which is precisely why I’m being cautious. You’ve always been like a father to me, Hugo. Now it’s my turn to act like a son and protect your interests.”

“You’re worrying about nothing. Lily doesn’t have any ulterior motives for seeking me out.”

“Uh-huh.” No point in stating the obvious: that she was her mother’s daughter. Even if genetics weren’t a factor, her role model had been a woman without conscience or moral rectitude. All that being so, who could say what motivated her actions? Only time would reveal that.

“Is she as pretty as she looks in the photo she sent?”

Just then, the bathroom door opened and Lily emerged on a cloud of steamy, flower-scented air. Her skin was flushed—and he ought to know. Enough of it was showing.

“Sebastian?” Hugo’s voice came from a great distance. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and dragged his gaze away from the hem of the pale blue nightshirt, which barely covered her backside. How come she didn’t smell of cheap motel soap, the way he did? How come she looked as if she’d been polished with moon dust? Why was her damp hair so lush and lustrous-looking that he wanted to take handfuls of it and let it slide through his fingers?

“Well? Is she?”

Dry-mouthed, he said, “Is who what?”

“Is Lily as pretty as her picture?”

She came to the foot of the bed and stood with her hands behind her back, looking for all the world about fifteen years old. Well below the age of consent! “Shall I wait in the bathroom until you’ve finished your call?” she whispered.

“No,” he said, answering them both at once. The photo Hugo was referring to had been a snapshot taken at a distance and had revealed only sketchy details. Addressing his stepfather again, he added, “I’d say ‘different.’”

“Better?”

“Different,” he said firmly. “Look, Hugo, I’ll call you in the morning, once I’ve checked the road report. Sleep well and don’t worry about us. One way or another, we’ll make it home tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t you say it was Hugo on the line?” she started in, the minute he hung up. “I’d have liked to speak to him.”

“He knew I was calling from a motel room.”

“So?”

“I didn’t think you’d want him to know you were sharing it with me.”

“Why not if, as you claim, it’s an unavoidable and perfectly innocent arrangement?”

“Because I’m not so sure it is innocent. If it were, you wouldn’t be parading around half-naked.”

Her pupils flared and she heaved a breath that set her breasts to bouncing gently beneath her nightshirt. “You’ve got some nerve! What about you flaunting nothing but a towel?”

He jerked aside the sheet and rather enjoyed the way she reared back in alarm. “You’ll notice I’ve exchanged it for a perfectly decent pair of swimming trunks.”

Which fit snugly enough to discourage untoward activity in his nether regions!

“I wondered what you had hidden in that sports bag,” she said, recovering quickly.

“Now you know.”

“And are swimming trunks all you’re planning to wear to bed?”

“Afraid so. I forgot to bring a top hat.”

“Very funny, I’m sure!”

He shrugged. “I aim to please.”

She gave a huffing little sniff, which told him exactly what she thought of his pathetic sense of humor. “Move over to your own side. You’re on my half of the bed.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t sully your body by laying it on this mattress?”

“Upon consideration, I’ve decided the bed’s safer than the floor.”

She wouldn’t want to bet money on it, if she knew the direction his thoughts kept taking!

She turned back the top sheet, using only the tips of her fingers as if she expected something to leap out and bite her. “This isn’t exactly the kind of place I expected to be spending the night.”

“Relax,” he said. “I already chased away the bed bugs.”

Her eyes, large and luminous to begin with, widened to saucer size. “Is that another of your feeble jokes?”

“Hell, no! They were marching heel to toe over the pillow, big as fighter jets, some of them—but they didn’t hold a candle to the cockroaches tap dancing on the floor.”

She yelped and leaped onto the mattress. It creaked ominously, formed an even more pronounced sag in the middle and sent her rolling toward him. One minute, he was lying there keeping his distance, and the next, she was pressed up against him with nothing but her abbreviated nightshirt coming between them.

She smelled even better, up close. As for the way she felt…! Silky, smooth as cream, soft. The way nature intended a woman to feel, with just enough meat on her bones to turn her angles into sweet, alluring curves.

Intending to shove her back where she belonged, he closed his hands over her shoulders and managed to choke out, “You’re trespassing.”

But that’s as far as he got because he made the mistake of looking at her face. Her features were delicate as porcelain, her brows finely shaped, her lashes so long and thick they looked artificial. And her eyes…

He fought to breathe normally and tried to look away. A man could lose his soul staring into those eyes.

“If you don’t like it—” she began, sounding as if she, too, had just run a marathon.

“I don’t!”

“Then let me go.”

Easier said than done! He didn’t trust her and he didn’t like her, but underneath his lawyerly facade he was still only a man and there were some things beyond his control. Such as his hands, one of which slid from her shoulder to her jaw and from there to her hair, while the other stroked over her bare arm. And his mouth, which suddenly itched to taste hers. And not to be outperformed, an uprising from that singular component of the male anatomy which most definitely sported a mind of its own.

Show a little decency and move away, for crying out loud! his mind commanded.

But beneath the drooping veil of her lashes, her eyes had turned dreamy. Her lips had fallen softly apart. The hard points of her nipples pressed against his chest. Her thighs nested warmly against his.

We’re all family, Sebastian…I want you to get along….

But not quite this well!

She was the one to break the spell, if that’s what it could be called. “I told you this wasn’t a good idea,” she said faintly.

“So you did.”

“Perhaps now, you’ll believe me.”

Masking his reluctance, he let go of her and rolled onto his back. “I never disputed the fact. But neither did I expect you’d fling yourself at me the way you just did.”

“That was a regrettable accident.”

“The way I see it,” he said, glaring at her, “the entire business of your being here at all is regrettable.”

He thought himself well-armed against her, that nothing she might say or do would breach his defenses, but the sudden hurt in her eyes stirred him to dangerous compassion. Damn her for invading his part of the world! Why couldn’t she have stayed where she belonged?

Gritting his teeth, he snapped off the lamp, folded his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He’d hoped for utter darkness, something to erase his awareness of the shape of her lying beside him, but a floodlight on top of a pole in the parking area shone directly at the window, spearing the thin fabric of the curtains and filling the room with a dim glow.

A silence descended, oppressive with unspoken tension. Time trickled past—fifteen minutes, half an hour.

She lay ramrod straight, arms by her sides, legs held primly together. Only her breasts moved, rising faintly with her every breath, but she wasn’t sleeping. Slewing his gaze, he caught the gleam of her open eyes in the murky light, and then, to his horror, saw a tear slip down her cheek.

He pretended not to notice. No more anxious to acknowledge her distress than he was, she turned her face away and he thought the danger had passed. But then a faint sniff pierced the silence, followed by a smothered gulp.

Finally he could stand it no longer. “Why are you crying?”

“Because,” she said, after a wrenching pause, “I miss my mother and dad. Just when I think I’ve come to terms with losing them, it hits me all over again. I guess I must be overtired or something, because I seem to be doing a lot of crying lately.”

Was it her referring to her mother’s second husband as “dad” that softened him, or was he just a pushover when it came to women in distress? Whatever the reason, he found himself wanting to comfort her. “I’m sorry if I came across as an unfeeling lout earlier. I know how hard it is to lose a parent,” he admitted. “My father died when I was eight.”

Slowly she wriggled onto her back again. “It hurts, doesn’t it, no matter how old a person is?”

“Yes,” he said, not sure he liked the near-intimacy of skin touching skin the sagging mattress enforced, but not exactly objecting to it, either. “At first, I refused to believe I’d never see him again. I used to look for him in crowds. Every time there was a knock at the door or the phone rang, I’d expect it to be him. I remember the first Christmas without him, the first birthday, the first vacation, and how much I envied those kids who had both parents around to take them places and do things with.”

“Were you an only child?”

“Yes,” he said, and went on to tell her how he’d gradually come to terms with his loss.

After a while, though, it occurred to him that he was the one doing all the talking when he should be taking advantage of such a heaven-sent opportunity to learn more about her. “I gather you were a pretty close-knit family,” he said. “Were you still living at home when you lost your parents?”

He waited for her to reply and when she didn’t, he raised his head a fraction to look at her and saw that she’d fallen asleep with her cheek lightly brushing his shoulder. She looked young and innocent and totally at peace.

He wished he could drift off as easily, but his thoughts were too chaotic. Facts on which he’d based all his assumptions about her suddenly appeared less well-founded and he hated the uncertainty it produced.

Part of him wanted her to be exactly as she appeared: a young woman with nothing in mind but coping with personal tragedy and getting to know the man who’d fathered her. But another, greater part clung to the legal training in which it was so well versed and warned him not to be lulled into a false sense of security.

So she’d shed a tear or two and shown a more vulnerable side. What did that prove except that there was more to her than initially met the eye? Underneath, she was still the same unknown quantity; a woman with a questionable agenda.

I’d love to come and stay with you, she’d told Hugo, latching on to his invitation with unsettling alacrity. There’s nothing to keep me in Vancouver right now, nothing at all. Discovering you couldn’t have come at a better time.

Better for whom, and why? Not for Hugo, who’d been put through enough by her money-grubbing mother, and who’d fought hard for the good life he now enjoyed. No prodigal daughter showing up on the doorstep was going to spoil that, not as long as Sebastian Caine was around to monitor events!

She sighed in her sleep and kicked at the sheet so that it slipped down to expose the top of her thighs and the pale line of the panties she was wearing under her nightshirt.

Carefully he lifted his wrist and pressed the button to illuminate the face of his watch. Not yet eleven o’clock. Another six hours before daylight and the chance to assess the storm’s damage. Another six hours of lying next to her and feeling her perfumed warmth reach out to touch him.

There was a hell, and the devil ruled!

CHAPTER THREE

THEY reached Stentonbridge shortly before lunch the next day. A small town nestled on the banks of a wide river, it boasted quiet residential streets shaded by old maples and lined with elegant nineteenth-century houses. But nothing quite prepared Lily for the opulence of the Preston estate.

Situated on several acres of riverfront property, the house sat in majestic Georgian splendor on a low rise, amid manicured lawns and lush flower beds. “Why, it’s beautiful!” she exclaimed, taking in the spectacle as the car swept up to the front entrance.

“As you very well knew it would be,” Sebastian said dryly. “You received photos, I’m sure.”

“But they didn’t do the place justice. Nothing could. It’s…palatial! It must cost Hugo a fortune to maintain these gardens.” She shook her head ruefully. “I wish I was the one supplying his stock.”

“Try to control the dollar signs dancing in your eyes, Ms. Talbot, and remember why you’re supposed to be here. The welcoming committee will descend any minute now, and I’ll be seriously ticked off if the first words out of your mouth imply the only thing you’re interested in is how much Hugo’s worth.”

She’d woken that morning feeling well rested and optimistic, with the emotional overload of the past night behind her. Foolishly she’d hoped she and Sebastian had reached some sort of truce and his sly insinuations were at an end. But for all that the new day had brought clear skies, from the moment he’d opened his eyes his disposition had been anything but sunny. Perhaps, she’d thought at the time, he just wasn’t a morning person and his mood would eventually improve.

If anything, though, it worsened. When she’d thanked him for his sympathetic understanding of the night before, he’d shrugged her off with a succinctness that bordered on surly. He’d reacted with near contempt to her enthusiasm for the charming old towns they passed through. Refusing to let him dampen her spirits, she’d remained doggedly cheerful. This latest attack, though, was not something she felt inclined to let pass.

“I resent that remark, Sebastian. It’s completely un-called for.”

“Is it? When I woke up this morning, you were pawing through the money I’d left lying on the dresser in that motel room.”

“I was not! I was looking for your keys so that I could load my luggage in the trunk of your car and be ready to leave the second you decreed we should, as you very well know because I explained it the minute you started leveling accusations at me. And if you’d got up at a reasonable hour, instead of lying around in bed half the morning, I wouldn’t have had occasion to paw through anything belonging to you!”

“I hardly call getting up at eight o’clock and being on the road by nine ‘lying around in bed half the morning.’”

“I was up at six.”

“I didn’t get to sleep until nearly four.”

“Well, don’t take your insomnia out on me!” she snapped, so exasperated she was ready to crown him with her purse. “It’s not my fault.”

“Lower your voice and stop waving your arms around like that,” he said. “In case you haven’t noticed, we have an audience.”

She saw then that the front door of the house stood open and, suddenly, all the silly bickering didn’t matter anymore. “Is that Hugo?” she whispered, her gaze glued to the white-haired man coming down the steps with a silky English setter dancing at his heels.

“Afraid so,” Sebastian said. “Disappointed it’s not the butler?”

“No,” she cooed sweetly. “But I wish the dog was a rottweiler and you were its lunch.”

“Nice,” he said. “Very nice, Ms. Talbot. You’re finally showing your true colors.”

Smiling determinedly, she hissed, “Why don’t you go jump in the river, Sebastian?” and without waiting for him to hurl something equally rude back at her, climbed out of the car and walked toward the man waiting at the foot of the steps.

Hugo Preston was almost seventy but didn’t look a day over sixty. Tall and erect, with an enviable head of silver hair and clear blue eyes, he cut a handsome figure. “Well, Lily,” he said warmly as she approached, “we meet at last!”

“Yes,” she said, all at once awash with conflicting emotions. How did a woman greet the man whose blood ran in her veins but who, for reasons he’d yet to disclose, had chosen to remain incognito until recently? With a kiss, a handshake, a hug?

What did she call him, now that they were meeting face-to-face? Given his dignified bearing, Hugo suddenly seemed too familiar, and Mr. Preston absurdly formal…but Dad? Neil Talbot had been the man who’d filled that role, and her ties to him were too strong to be so easily severed in favor of this smiling stranger.

Seeming to sense her uncertainty, Hugo took her hands and kissed her lightly on both cheeks. “My dear daughter, you have no idea what today means to me. I would be deeply honored if, in time, you could bring yourself to call me Father. Until then, I’m Hugo…and this,” he continued, turning to the slender blond woman who’d come out to join him, “is Cynthia, my wife.”

Cynthia Preston did not fit the image of The Other Woman. Even less did she look or act the part of resentful stepmother. Tall and elegant in a pale bronze two-piece ensemble with gold accessories, she was, quite simply, beautiful. More than that, she was kind. It showed in her smile, and in her sky-blue eyes.

“I’m so happy to meet you, Lily,” she said, enveloping her in a warm hug. “Hugo has hoped for a long time that this day would come. We both have. And we’re so grateful to you for making it possible. Welcome to our home and please forgive our dog for pawing you like that. She considers herself one of the family.”

Such total acceptance, following on the heels of Sebastian’s trenchant disapproval, completely undid Lily and, to her embarrassment, she burst into tears. “Thank you,” she wailed, dripping all over Cynthia’s fine silk shirt. “I’m really…very h-happy to be here.”

“No more than we are to have you.” Slipping an arm around her waist, Cynthia guided her up the steps. “What a dreadful time you had of it yesterday. We were so worried when we heard the news. Let’s go inside and I’ll show you where you can freshen up, then we’ll have lunch and start to get properly acquainted. Sebastian, bring in Lily’s luggage, will you, and take it up to the Rose Room?”

If she hadn’t found herself such an emotional mess, Lily would have enjoyed watching the almighty Sebastian Caine reduced to the role of porter. But she was too busy mopping up her tears on the linen handkerchief Hugo had produced and trying not to smudge her mascara in the process. She’d taken great pains with her appearance that morning just so that she’d make a good first impression, and here she was, all red-nosed and puffy-eyed within minutes of arriving!

“I’m not normally like this,” she said apologetically.

“Nor are we,” Cynthia replied. “But look, Hugo and I are both misty-eyed, too. Family reunions tend to have this effect on people.”

Unless your name happened to be Sebastian Caine! Lily felt his glare on the back of her neck as he tramped up the stairs with her suitcases, and wondered how he’d manage to sit through the meal and not let fly with one of his barbed remarks.

As it happened, she worried needlessly. He had someone else to occupy his attention. When Lily joined the rest of the family on the terrace after splashing cold water on her face and running a comb through her hair in the guest powder room, she found another woman had joined the party, and that she considered Sebastian her personal property became immediately apparent.

“Hello, I’m Penny Stanford,” she said, subjecting Lily to a somewhat clinical inspection. “I wanted to be on hand to meet the long-lost daughter who stole my man away last night.”

Oh, please, you’re welcome to every miserable inch of him! Lily wanted to say. Oh, and by the way, did you know he has another girlfriend stashed away in the city, and she looks ready to give birth any day now?

Instead she confined her reply to a noncommittal “How nice to meet you.”

“I think we could all use a little sherry before we sit down to eat,” Hugo decided. “You and Penny will join us, won’t you, Sebastian?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’ve got a load of paperwork to take care of at the office and Penny’s working the night shift tonight so she needs to get some sleep.”

“I’m head nurse on the surgical floor at our local hospital,” she informed Lily grandly.

“I sell flowers,” Lily said.

“How nice.” Nurse Penny swatted at the English setter. “Do stop sniffing at me like that, Katie! It’s so unhygienic. Well, Sebastian, since I left my car at the stables, I’ll hop a ride over there with you. Shall we go?”

“Sure.” His glance skimmed over Lily. “Enjoy lunch.”

Cynthia looked up from her chaise. “You’ll be here for dinner, won’t you, Sebastian?”

“I hadn’t planned on it.”

“But it’s Lily’s first evening here and I’d like the whole family on hand to make it special.” She paused and sent him a sly little smile. “I had fresh lobster brought in, and Clara’s making your favorite dessert.”

“That’s shameless bribery,” Hugo chuckled, pouring the sherry. “The man has his own life, Cynthia, and there’ll be other nights.”

“And he’s already done more than his share to make me feel welcome,” Lily put in blandly. “Please, Sebastian, don’t feel you have to show up on my account. I’ll be perfectly happy without you, so consider yourself excused.”

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