Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Injured Innocent
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS IN a very dark, very smoky, very crowded room, crammed with unfamiliar faces, most of them contorted into frighteningly threatening grimaces. Panic surged through her in waves. She wanted to turn and run and yet for some reason her feet remained locked to the floor. Alien sounds and scents filled the air; she was overwhelmed by the despairing conviction that she could never, ever escape from the place of torment her inner consciousness told her her surroundings were, and then miraculously a door opened; light flooded the room and a man stood there his arms open wide to encourage her to run to him, his face in the shadows, but she knew without seeing his features who he was, and his name was torn from her lips on a glad cry as she ran for the haven of his arms.

‘Daddy …’ She cried his name again, her relief suddenly, horrifyingly turning to terror as he stepped into the light and she saw that he was not her father at all but someone else—a stranger—dark and forbidding, unknown to her and yet somehow recognised by her inner senses … recognised and feared. She screamed, and screamed again, and it was the sound of her own pain and fear that eventually jolted her out of the fantasy world of her nightmare and back to reality.

The nightmare. Lissa shuddered deeply, touching her damp skin with trembling fingers. It was years since she had been tormented by it—well three years at least, she amended mentally … since she had made the break from home and come to live in London. Sighing faintly she glanced at her watch. Six-thirty … There was no point in trying to get back to sleep now. She would have to get up in another hour anyway.

She padded through the bedroom of her small flat and into the kitchen busying herself making a mug of coffee. The fragrant scent of the beans soothed her sensitive nerve endings, the warmth of the drink stealing into her chilled fingers as they closed round the mug. It was still only January and the central heating hadn’t come on yet. She shivered violently in her nightdress and pattered back to her room, sliding under the duvet; snuggling its comforting warmth all around her. Amanda would have laughed and said something silly, like the best way to keep warm in bed was to share it with a man. When Amanda said things like that everyone laughed. Her sister had a way of saying the most outrageously suggestive things with an innocence that robbed them of their sting. Even after three years of marriage and two children Amanda still looked like a little girl, with her mop of blonde curls and her large blue eyes. Or at least she had done. Deep shudders of mingled guilt and pain racked her as she sat huddled beneath the bedclothes. Dear God even now she could hardly believe it was true; that that midnight call three days ago had actually happened … That her sister, her brother-in-law and both sets of parents had been killed outright when a freak thunder-storm had struck the light aircraft her brother-in-law had been piloting.

She had not seen much of her sister since her marriage—nor of her parents. There had been duty visits of course, but there had always been an air of uncomfortable restraint about them. She knew her parents had never forgotten, nor really forgiven her for what she had done. It was useless for her aching heart to protest that she was innocent. They would never have believed her. Tears formed in her eyes and fell unheeded rolling down her cheeks. Was she crying for her sister, or for herself Lissa asked herself cynically. She and Amanda had never been particularly close. There were four years between them, Amanda being the elder, and to Lissa as a child it had often seemed that whilst some Fairy Godmother must have looked down into her sister’s cradle and given her the gift of a happy life; hers had been blighted by the machinations of some mischievous spirit who had ensured that she was destined always to be in trouble.

It had taken her years of exhaustive self analysis to understand that she was not to blame; that those things which she saw in herself as hopeless inadequacies because they did not mirror her sister’s virtues, were not necessarily that. It was stupid to have the nightmare now, after so long had passed … Why had she had it? Why? Did she really need to ask herself that question, Lissa mocked herself. Of course not. She knew exactly why she had dreamed so horrifically of that party, of that long ago night, of Joel Hargreaves, her sister’s brother-in-law, and now, with her, co-guardian of the two little girls who had been orphaned in the plane crash that had robbed Lissa herself of parents and sister … just as it had robbed Joel of brother and parents.

She had not been able to believe it when she received the phone call from Amanda’s and John’s solicitors. She had gone to see them immediately, taking time off work to do so, and had been stunned to hear of the tragic accident that had taken place while Amanda and John were visiting John’s parents in Miami.

If Joel hadn’t been looking after the children that weekend; they too would have been killed. Lissa shuddered deeply again. Even now she could barely take it in. She had had no idea until the solicitors told her that Amanda had appointed her joint guardian of the girls, along with John’s brother, but it was not a responsibility she had any intention of shirking, no matter what the solicitors might think. Her mouth tightened slightly as she remembered the carefully worded comments of the solicitor, and his cool surprise that she should not want to extricate herself immediately from any responsibility towards the children. When she had taxed him about it he had coughed in vague embarrassment and then said half apologetically that Mr Hargreaves … Mr Joel Hargreaves, that was, had given him to understand that she would not wish to accept any responsibility for her nieces.

Lissa, who suspected she knew Joel Hargreaves and the way his mind worked far better than Mr Lawson, had seethed inwardly, knowing that what Joel had been intimating was not so much that she should not wish to take on the children, but that he considered her an unfit person to do so.

But she did wish to take on her share of the responsibility. She owed it to her sister and her parents—not to mention little Emma and Louise—but it was not just that, she admitted to herself. There still burned inside a deep seated sense of injustice, an intense need to show Joel Hargreaves just how wrong all his assessments of her were. To prove that the great Joel Hargreaves was not as infallible as he and apparently everyone else liked to believe. And that was why she had had the nightmare … That was why she had dreamed so painfully of events which had happened more than six years ago. That was why she could not forget the humiliation she had suffered at his hands.

She sipped her coffee, refusing to allow her thoughts to slide backwards into the past. She had taught herself now to ignore the past … All right so she could not erase it … could not entirely put it behind her and close a door on it, but she could refuse to allow herself to dwell obsessively on it.

When she had come to London she had vowed to put the past behind her. She had fought valiantly against her own inner sense of inadequacy. She had found herself a good job, which she thoroughly enjoyed, working as a secretary cum P.A. to an up-and-coming young architect, Simon Greaves. She had bought her small one bedroomed flat, albeit with the aid of what sometimes seemed to be an extremely onerous mortgage. She owned a little car … took regular holidays. Had a pleasant circle of friends … never lacked dates. All in all, to the casual observer, her life was a very comfortable and modestly successful one. She had come out from behind the shadow of her elder sister, or so she had told herself … but did one ever wholly recover from the traumas of childhood. Wasn’t it true that somewhere deep inside herself she still considered herself unworthy; inferior; judging herself as her parents had judged her, simply because she was not a carbon copy of Amanda.

Stop that! She abjured herself, pushing aside the duvet and padding towards the bathroom. She was wide-awake now and might as well get up. She had a very busy morning ahead of her, with a meeting with her parents’ solicitors sandwiched in at lunchtime. She had already seen them twice and not been wholly surprised to discover that despite her parents, pleasant life-style they had left behind them few assets. The house had been mortgaged very recently to provide her parents with an annuity, which of course had ceased with their death, but it was not to discuss her parents’ few assets that Lissa wanted to see their solicitors. It was to discuss her legal position with regard to her nieces. She didn’t need sixth sense to guess that Joel Hargreaves would do everything in his power to have her guardianship of the girls set aside, but Amanda had stipulated that she wanted her as guardian to her daughters, and it was an act of faith and love that Lissa wasn’t going to turn her back on.

Despite the fact that Amanda had always been their parents’ favourite she and Lissa had always got on reasonably well. They had never been close, but they had always loved one another. In fact Lissa could only remember her sister being angry with her on one occasion. Stop it, she cautioned herself again. Stop thinking about that.

But it was easier said than done, which accounted for the fact that the past still haunted her in the shape of tormenting nightmares, even after all this time. At seventeen she had been so innocent … so naive and trusting, but she had been judged as being wanton and wild, and the scars of that judgment still haunted her.

After she had showered, she rubbed herself dry briskly, grimacing ruefully at her mane of red-brown hair and her tall, slender body. Amanda had been small and cuddly, entrancingly feminine, whereas she as a teenager had been gawky and awkward to the point of being plain. Now when Simon called her elegant and classy, she was tempted to deny his compliments, to make him see that whatever elegance she now had was simply a disguise; armour behind which she could hide all her deficiencies. She herself saw very little to admire in her height, or in the classic bone structure of her face. Her hair which she wore long was probably her best feature, if one overlooked the fact that it was not blonde, just as her eyes were a cool hazel green and not blue. But then hadn’t she realised long ago that she was not and never could be another Amanda. She was herself, warts and all. Sighing faintly she made up her face with practiced skill. The grooming course she had invested in when she first came to London at the suggestion of her first employer had taught her to re-assess herself as the person she was, not as a shadow of her sister, but she had stood in Amanda’s shadow for too long to be able to wholly accept that she was capable of taking the limelight in her own right. The classic coolness of her demeanour was in direct contrast to her own inner insecurity, but few people guessed that. Not even Simon who was her boyfriend as well as her employer really knew what she hid away from public view.

Simon! Unwittingly Lissa bit her lower lip, marring its fullness with the sharp bite of her teeth. She had worked for him for eighteen months and for the last six they had been dating. She liked and admired Simon; physically he was a very attractive male, tall and blond with a ready smile and easy charm, but when it came to the crunch; when it came to the point of giving herself to him as a woman … of taking him as her lover, she held back. She knew that he found her sexual coldness towards him hurtful, but how could she explain to him that every time she came close to allowing a man to touch her … any man … she was instantly confronted by a mental image of Joel Hargreaves’ darkly contemptuous features; and that the image was powerful enough to instantly quench whatever desire she might previously have felt. Joel as the mental guardian of her morals exerted a far more powerful veto on her ability to respond sexually to anyone than the most vigilant of parents. And it was all so ridiculous and unnecessary. The real Joel didn’t give a damn what she did with her life; and anyway she was way, way past the age of consent at twenty-three. It was stupid and unnecessary that she was still a virgin. She heartily wished herself rid of the burden of her unwanted innocence, but every time she met a man she felt she could respond to, Joel came between them. She knew quite well why of course. But it was one thing to know, it was another to overcome the mental barriers created by the past.

‘Stop thinking about that now,’ she ordered herself. She would need all her powers of concentration today when she saw her parents’ solicitors. She knew quite well that Joel would try to take the children away from her, to stop her from taking up her role as co-guardian. He had already flown out to Miami to arrange the funerals of Amanda and John and both sets of parents and he had taken the children back with him, all before Lissa had even been informed of the accident. The children were now living with him, and Lissa knew she would have to fight to preserve her own rights towards them. Quite why she was so determined to take up those rights, she found it difficult to say. It was true that she was fond of both her nieces; they were her sister’s children of course, but she loved them in their own right. However, if Joel had not been her co-guardian … If John’s brother had been a different man … a married man perhaps whom she liked and approved of, wouldn’t she have been quite happy to hand the children into the care of he and his wife? Wasn’t it partially because it was Joel who was her co-guardian; Joel her bitter enemy that she was summoning all her forces, all her rights under the law to oppose his high-handed decision to make himself solely responsible for the girls, by the simple expedient of arrogantly ignoring her co-guardianship?

What if it was? Legally she had every right to share his guardianship. Amanda must have wanted her to do so otherwise she would never have appointed her in the first place. But then Amanda would never have expected to die at twenty-seven. Neither would John, Lissa argued mentally with herself. No … she had every right to take legal advice and discover what steps she could take in the law to force Joel to recognise her rights.

What about the children? an inner voice argued. Was it fair on them to subject them to legal quarrels between their guardians so shortly after they had lost their parents? But if she didn’t do so she would be cut completely out of their lives. Joel was ruthless enough to do that, she knew it. He was not married either, so there would be no feminine influence in their lives, if one discounted the string of glamorous girlfriends who seemed to slip in and out of his life, not to say his bed. No, the girls needed her, she was convinced of it … just as they needed Joel. Unlike him she didn’t deny that he had his rights.

Simon knew all about her hopes and fears in connection with her nieces and had generously told her to take off all the time she needed to visit her solicitors. This morning she had managed to arrange an early appointment, which meant that she should not arrive at the office too much later than Simon himself, who didn’t normally put in an appearance until ten.

The night before last Simon had taken her out for dinner and they had spent most of the evening talking about the children. Sighing faintly, Lissa finished her coffee and collected her outdoor things. Simon was intrigued by her she knew; he found her sexual coldness a challenge he was not used to facing; he couldn’t see that her refusal to go to bed with him wasn’t just a manoeuvre in a clever game, but a genuine abhorrence of the sexual act. She had tried to tell him … to explain to him why it was she found it so difficult to let him touch her even in the most general way, but as always, guided by some inner caution she had withheld the real truth. That was something she found it impossible to talk to anyone about, and a thin film of sweat broke out on her skin as her mind kaleidoscoped back and she was fifteen again. Clenching her hands together Lissa willed the memories away, but they refused to listen. How ungainly and insecure she had been at fifteen; how conscious of being the family’s ugly duckling; of being unloved in the way that Amanda was loved. Her father had wanted a son and not a second daughter; she knew that, but even so, if she had been another blonde moppet like her elder sister she felt reasonably sure that he would have come to terms with his disappointment. As it was her dark red hair and tall uncoordinated frame were so much the antithesis of what her father thought was feminine that he had never been able to reconcile himself to his disappointment. Her mother, like Amanda, was a delicate, fluffy blonde, and Lissa had lost count of the number of times she had heard her mother explaining half apologetically to her friends that she had no idea where her second daughter got her plainness from. ‘Not from my side of the family, I’m sure …’ Lissa’s mouth tightened, and she counselled herself sternly not to blame her parents. A more self-reliant and less intensely emotional child would soon have learned to come to terms with being second best. Her parents were not responsible for the flaws in her personality, any more than she was herself. Over the years she had taught herself to accept that and to make the best of what Nature had given her. There had been many men who if asked would have quite openly chosen her tall, red-headed elegance over her sister’s blonde prettiness, but she had never allowed them to do so. Picking up her bag and keys, Lissa made for her front door.

Three quarters of an hour later she was seated in her solicitor’s office, listening to his careful, judicial speech.

The question she had asked him was whether Joel Hargreaves could legally deny her access to her nieces.

‘Not legally,’ her solicitor told her, frowning slightly as he leaned his elbows on his desk and studied her. Her parents had been clients of his for many years, and he felt intensely sympathetic to this quite, beautiful girl who he remembered as a rather plain and very frightened teenager. ‘But of course, we can’t overlook the fact that materially he can give them much more than you can. He owns a large house in the country, unless I’m mistaken?’

Lissa nodded. ‘Yes, and he’s rich enough to be able to afford a nanny for them … something I couldn’t possibly manage … I know I can’t have them to live with me on a permanent basis—at least not yet, but visiting rights … weekends …’

Her solicitor pursed his lips. ‘Yes … yes … After all it was your sister’s wish that you be appointed co-guardian of the girls. You’re their godmother as well, aren’t you?’

Lissa confirmed that this was so.

‘It’s just a pity that you aren’t married, or at least engaged,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Judges are often a trifle old-fashioned in their attitude towards minors. If they can see a ready-made family unit they look upon it very favourably.’

Lissa wanted to point out that Joel wasn’t married either, but she did not. After all, unlike her, Joel could afford to buy all the help needed. Joel and John had both received all the benefits of being rich man’s sons. Both had gone to a famous public school; Joel had taken over running the family estate when his father retired, while John had run the components factory from which they derived their wealth. The estate was a large one, encompassing several farms, woods, a shoot in Scotland, and Winterly House itself, a Queen Anne gem of a building which Lissa had only visited twice, but had fallen instantly in love with. She had never been able to understand how John and Amanda could prefer to live in the extremely modern house John had had built for them, but then Amanda, unlike herself, had been a thoroughly modern young woman. Painfully, Lissa dragged her thoughts back to the present, in time to hear her solicitor saying that while there was no doubt about her legal rights to the children, he suspected that Joel Hargreaves intended to make it extremely hard for her to take them up.

He frowned slightly as he studied the papers in front of him, a faint tinge of embarrassed colour darkening his skin as he said hesitantly, ‘And then of course there is the matter of … well, reputation … from the court’s point of view …’

He got no further, because Lissa had stood up, pushing her chair back unsteadily, her eyes darkening to brilliant emerald as she interrupted bitterly. ‘Are you trying to say that a court might not consider me a fit person to have charge of the girls? And how will they prove that I wonder?’ Temper had her in its coils now, burning fever bright, pushing through the barriers of pride and reserve, words boiling up inside her and spilling volcanic-like from the place deep inside her where all her pain was buried. ‘By checking through my life? By questioning my friends? By delving into my private life, searching diligently for every little grub of dirt they can find?’ Two angry spots of colour burned high on her cheeks as she added finally, ‘Perhaps they might even want to subject me to a physical examination … just to find out how promiscuous I am … What a pity they can’t apply the same rules and standards to Mr Hargreaves … but then of course, his lifestyle isn’t important is it? After all he’s rich and important, and I’m neither … Isn’t that what you’re trying to tell me.’

‘My dear …’ The solicitor looked and felt embarrassed. What she had said held a faint shadow of truth, although of course there could be no question of any examination of her … physical or otherwise … In the face of her bitter anger he felt unable to defend or even explain the workings of the law … nor could he entirely refute her allegations concerning the court’s possible view of Joel Hargreaves. It was wrong and unfair he knew that.

‘I won’t give them up … I won’t …’

Lissa turned round and almost ran from his office, still so angry that she never even noticed the speculative stares of his secretary who had caught her raised voice from inside her boss’s office. No wonder she had lost her temper, with a mane of hair like that, she reflected half enviously. Her own hair was a soft mousy brown, and in her fantasy daydreams she had often imagined herself as a passionate redhead.

Lissa was still shaking when she reached her own office. Simon was there already, checking through the post. He smiled warmly at her, checking when he saw her expression. ‘Heavens, what’s happened?’ he questioned her, guiding her into a chair and perching on the edge of his desk. ‘You look as if you’re about to explode.’

‘So would you if you’d just been told that you aren’t a fit person to have charge of your nieces because you aren’t rich enough to sway the opinion of the Judge.’

She was so overwrought that she was barely aware what she was saying, and unacknowledged, but at the bottom of her, agony was the memory of past hurts and humiliations and of one in particular so painful to call to mind even now that the thought of it seared her mind, making her shiver convulsively and grip her hands together.

Gradually Simon got the full story out of her, and then eventually said lightly, ‘Well it seems to me that there’s only one solution, and that’s for you to get engaged to me.’ He saw her face; and before she could utter her denial said coaxingly, ‘Lissa, you know how much I want you … how I feel about you. Just give us a chance … If we were engaged I’m sure the court would be bound to view you in a more favourable light. Solid, respectable background for the kids and all that.’

He was offering her an engagement ring in exchange for the use of her body, Lissa thought sadly, and who was she to blame him for that? She had made it more than clear that she would never willingly give herself to him physically.

‘No, Simon it wouldn’t work out.’

Just for a second the mingled anger and frustration in his eyes frightened her. It showed her a Simon she had never seen before. She ought to have remembered that the powerful sexual drive that was in men to possess and dominate her sex could change even the mildest of them into a frightening stranger. She of all people ought to have known that.

‘Because you damn well won’t give it a chance to work out,’ he swore at her. ‘Christ Lissa, what is it with you? Anyone would think you were still a timid little virgin.’ He saw her face and his expression changed, frightening her again as she saw the male satisfaction and victory in it, Exultation crept into his voice as he said softly. ‘That’s it isn’t it? You are still a virgin? Oh darling …’ He was smiling at her now, coming towards her. Any moment now he would be touching her. Lissa stood up shakily and edged away from him. ‘No, don’t run away …’ He was practically crooning with delight and she felt sickness stab through her. She couldn’t move … couldn’t do anything to stop his arms coming round her, pulling her against his body. She went rigid at the intimacy of it, loathing him and loathing herself because she felt the way she did.

‘Don’t be frightened … there’s nothing to be frightened of … I’ll make it good for you, wait and see … it will be so good … so …’

He wasn’t really talking to her, Lissa thought with frigid distaste; he was thinking of his own pleasure; his own satisfaction. Held fast in his arms she felt as though she were two people; the frightened, terrified creature who couldn’t break free of his hold; and then another, immeasurably older person who stood outside of her body and watched; censorious and cold, reminding her that she had no one but herself to blame for feeling the way she did. She shuddered with revulsion as she felt his hot mouth pressing against her throat. The outer office door opened and she was dimly aware of someone coming in, and then behind her a familiar and loathed voice drawled softly, ‘Well, well … so this is how you spend your time these days is it Lissa … Nothing’s changed then.’

Simon released her immediately, pushing his fingers through his hair in a way he had when he was caught at a disadvantage. Tall though he was, the newcomer towered over him. Few men could compete with Joel Hargreaves when it came to sheer masculinity, Lissa thought bitterly, turning round to face her tormentor.

‘Joel?’ She smiled thinly at him, grateful for the fact that she had somehow recovered her poise. ‘As you say nothing’s changed … You, I see still have the habit of bursting in on people unannounced. What were you hoping to find this time? Evidence to prove that I’m not a fit person to have charge of the girls?’

The wide male mouth slashed into an open curl of contempt. ‘I don’t need to go looking for that Lissa. It’s all there, documented and collated and I don’t even need to look for a witness do I? I saw the whole thing for myself.’

She wanted to cry out a denial, to hide away from the merciless scrutiny of his hard gold eyes, but she wasn’t fifteen anymore and so she tilted her chin and said coldly, ‘Your own personal life wouldn’t bear too much close scrutiny Joel. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones should they?’

He had a trick of looking at someone beneath those heavy lidded eyes that had always made her heart pound with a mixture of fear and apprehension. He did it now, making her feel as though he could see through her forehead and into the farther-most recesses of her brain.

‘I want to talk to you,’ he said calmly. ‘I’ve got a busy morning but I could see you at lunch time.’

‘And deny yourself the opportunity of lunching with your latest ladyfriend whoever she might be?’ Lissa snapped. ‘Don’t bother. I’ve only one thing to say to you Joel and that is that I’m not giving up my rights to the girls, no matter what you say or do. Amanda appointed me as their guardian …’

‘Silly, loyal Amanda,’ Joel derided her sister. ‘I’ll bet when she did it, she never thought you might actually have to have charge of them. Your mother wouldn’t have approved.’

It hurt because it was the truth, but Lissa refused to give in to the pain. She had enough experience of Joel’s methods of waging warfare to know that he always aimed for his opponents’ most vounerable spots, and he knew hers to a nicety.

‘I’m not giving them up Joel,’ she repeated coolly, ‘And this is a private office. If you want to communicate with me, please do so through my solicitor.’ As she finished speaking she walked past him and into her own office, firmly closing the door behind her. Two minutes later she heard the outer door slam and then Simon walked into her office.

‘Phew,’ he commented theatrically, raising his eyebrows. ‘So that’s the fabled Joel Hargreaves.’

Joel was constantly appearing in the gossip press. He had fingers in many financial pies and was known as much for being a highly successful entrepreneur as he was for his womanising. ‘Quite a man,’ Simon murmured.

‘If you like the type.’ Lissa managed a thin smile. ‘Personally I don’t.’

‘No, I could see that.’

Lissa had a small smile at the smug satisfaction in Simon’s tone. Physically, they couldn’t be more dissimilar. Simon although tall was slim and boyish with his shock of sunbleached fair hair and his easy smile. Joel in contrast, was taller, broader, the epitome of everything that was intensely male. His skin was olive coloured, his eyes a glinting rich gold, his hair dark and thick. Once, rather fancifully before she had really known him Lissa had imagined that he might have posed for a statue of Achilles. She had always had an overromantic imagination she thought wryly. Joel was no story-book hero. Far from it. Women fell for him like ninepins and he made full use of the power he seemed to have over her sex. Lissa had watched a procession of women come and go through his life, and if he had ever felt anything more than sexual desire for any of them, she had never noticed it.

‘Dinner tonight?’

She dragged her mind back to the present and Simon. Over his anger now, he was a cajoling, eager boy again, but how long would it be before he reverted to type … before he tried to force her into an intimacy she didn’t want to share. She sighed faintly. She liked her job and she liked Simon … but if he was going to be difficult … But how could she give up her job now, when she might need to prove that financially she was able to care for the girls, at least on a part-time basis. She knew there was no possibility of them coming to live with her full time at least not now. For one thing her flat had only one bedroom but in a few year’s time … If, however, she let Joel bludgeon her into giving up her rights to them now, she would have no chance of re-establishing any relationship with them in the future. She knew that.

CHAPTER TWO

LISSA STARED at the letter, tapping her nails absently on her kitchen counter as she studied its contents for the umpteenth time. It had arrived three days ago; a coolly worded, imperative demand from Joel that she present herself at Winterly so that they could discuss the girls’ future.

Trust Joel to make sure he had the advantage of being on his home ground, Lissa thought wryly. The letter had surprised her; taken her rather aback. After the way they had parted in Simon’s office she had expected only to hear from him via his solicitor, but instead had come this command, because that was what it was, to go down to Winterly so that they could talk. She was tempted to refuse, but if she did might that count against her in an eventual court hearing? Her solicitor seemed to think so. She pressed the heel of one hand to her aching temple. Perhaps she ought to take Simon up on his offer and hope that her status as an engaged woman might persuade the court to settle in her favour. But Simon wasn’t really interested in the girls; all he wanted was to get her into his bed. She glanced at her watch. Ten o’clock. She had been up since seven, prowling round her small flat, knowing that she must go to Winterly but desperately searching for excuses not to do so.

Chiding herself for her weakness she went into her bedroom, hastily packing enough clothes to last the weekend, and then before she could change her mind, she pulled on a jacket, collected her car keys and carrying her overnight bag marched towards her front door.

There was a freezing wind blowing, driving needle sharp flurries of icy snow into her face, and Lissa huddled deeper into her jacket as she made for the lock-up garage block where she kept her car.

The traffic through the centre of London was bad enough to need all her concentration. Once on the M4 though she turned on her radio, and listened with grim foreboding to the weather forecast. A drop in temperature and snow, but not until late evening. Well she should be safely at Winterly by then.

Once off the M4 she drove carefully along the familiar country roads. She had spent all her childhood living in Dorset, the names of the villages she drove through composed a familiar litany. Her parents’ old home lay only fifteen miles from Winterly. Amanda and John had met at the home of mutual friends, and the tiny village five miles east of Winterly she was now approaching was also the nearest village to her parents’ old home. Nothing had changed, she thought with a hard pang of nostalgia as she negotiated the sharp bend in the centre of the town where the Tudor building now housing a bank jutted dangerously into the centre of the road. A sign outside a shop, fluttering in the cold wind caught her eye and she drew up outside it. A cup of coffee was just what she needed right now. Coward, an inner voice chided her as she climbed out of the Mini and locked it. She didn’t really want a drink, she simply wanted to put off facing Joel.

The small town was busy with Saturday shoppers, but she was lucky enough to find a small corner table still free. A smiling waitress came to take her order, the familiarity of her soft Dorset burr taking Lissa back in time.

She had just received her order when she heard someone call her name in an incredulous voice.

‘Lissa, it is you isn’t it?’ the feminine voice exclaimed, a pretty plump brunette of about her own age hurrying over to her table, a wriggling toddler tucked securely under one arm.

‘Helen … Helen Martin,’ Lissa exclaimed in turn, recognising an old school friend.’

‘Helen Turner now,’ the latter laughed. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

‘No, please do …’

Aware that Helen was studying her, Lissa strove to appear calm and friendly. At one time she and Helen had been ‘best friends’, but after … but after she was fifteen they had drifted apart.

‘I was sorry to hear about Amanda and John,’ Helen said quietly at last. ‘It must have been a dreadful shock for you. Joel has got the children hasn’t he? Poor little things. They must miss their parents dreadfully.’ She pulled a face. ‘Somehow I can’t see Joel in the role of doting uncle. Has he changed at all or is he still as masterful and macho as ever.’

‘I don’t see much of him these days,’ Lissa said assuming a fake casualness. ‘In fact I’m on my way to Winterly now. We’re joint guardians of the girls.’ She might as well let it be known that Joel wasn’t solely responsible for her nieces’ welfare.

‘Yes, you’re godmother to both of them aren’t you.’ Helen broke off as her son reached for his glass of orange juice, almost tipping it over.

‘Are you married yourself?’ she asked when she had rescued the glass. ‘I remember I always used to think you would marry young and have a brood of children.’

‘No, I’m still single,’ Lissa told her calmly. It was true that when they were teenagers she had yearned for the security of a loving husband and children, but in those days she had been so ridiculously innocent, wanting without realising it to compensate herself for the lack of love in her own home.

‘Umm … Well it can only be by choice,’ Helen said frankly, wrinkling her nose as she studied Lissa’s smoothly made-up face and immaculate hair. ‘You look very lovely and elegant Lissa, I hardly recognised you at first. What have you been doing with yourself? I know your parents sent you away to school …’ She grimaced faintly. ‘And it was all my fault really wasn’t it? If I hadn’t persuaded you to go to that party with me. My parents gave me hell for that, I can tell you. What exactly happened?’ she asked curiously.

‘Oh nothing much.’ Lissa was proud of her cool offhand tone. ‘It was all very much a storm in a teacup.’

‘Yes, that’s what my parents thought,’ Helen agreed. ‘I remember them discussing it at the time. My father always thought your people were too strict with you.’ She giggled lightly. ‘All I can remember is you disappearing upstairs with Gordon Salter and then the next minute your folks storming in with Joel Hargreaves, demanding to know where you were.’ She rolled her eyes and grinned. ‘Funny how seeing someone you haven’t seen in a while brings back old memories. You didn’t come back to school with the rest of us after that summer holiday did you? Your folks sent you off to boarding school didn’t they?’

‘Yes.’

Lissa looked down at her coffee cup, gripping her hands together under the table to stop them from shaking.

Helen was looking at her watch. ‘Heavens I must fly,’ she exclaimed. ‘I promised Bill I’d meet him in the DIY centre at one, and it’s nearly that now. Come on poppet,’ she commanded, picking up her son. ‘Nice to see you again Lissa … Bye.’

She had been gone five minutes before Lissa felt relaxed enough to pick up her coffee cup and drink what was left of her coffee, and then when that was done she simply sat staring into space, unable to drag herself back to the present … too caught up in the memories of the past Helen had unleashed. What Helen remembered as merely an awkward incident had had such far reaching effects on her own life that even now still affected her.

Sighing faintly Lissa leaned back in her chair, willing her body to relax. She had been so excited about that party. Her parents had forbidden her to go, because they didn’t approve of her crowd of friends. Why couldn’t she have ‘nice’ friends like Amanda, her mother had constantly harped? Not that there was anything wrong with the crowd she went around with; they simply did not have the sort of moneyed background her parents approved of. This particular Saturday her parents had been dining with John’s family. John and Amanda had been on the point of announcing their engagement, and Lissa had spent the afternoon at Helen’s bewailing the fact that she was forbidden to attend Gordon’s birthday party. Gordon Salter was something of a local Romeo, and Lissa had had a mammoth crush on him for several weeks. ‘Why not go to the party anyway,’ Helen had urged her. Her parents need never know. She could leave early and be back before they even knew she had been out. Even though she knew it was wrong, Lissa had agreed. After all what did her parents really care about her, she had argued rebelliously with herself. Amanda was the one they loved not her.

It had been surprisingly easy to deceive her parents. They had left home with Amanda a good hour before the party was due to start, leaving Lissa plenty of time to get ready. She didn’t have many ‘going out’ clothes of her own, and on a reckless impulse she had raided her sister’s wardrobe, ‘borrowing’ a mini dress which was rather shorter than short on her much taller frame. Make-up had come next. Some of Amanda’s eyeshadow, and thick black liner applied with a rather unsteady hand. Lissa had thought the effect rather daring.

She had arranged to meet Helen at Gordon’s house, but when she arrived there her friend had been busy talking to several people she did not know, and feeling suddenly shy she had felt reluctant to intrude. Gordon himself had materialised from the kitchen, and had greeted her with a brief kiss on the cheek. She had been so thrilled and excited that later she could barely remember accepting the drink he had given her, or drinking it. She must have done so though; and she had compounded her folly by drinking two more glasses of Gordon’s special punch. That was why she had agreed to go upstairs with him, thrilled out of her mind that he should actually fine her desirable. She hadn’t been drunk, but what she had had to drink had been sufficient to rid her of her normally stifling inhibitions. She could remember quite vividly the thrills of excitement that had run up and down her spine when Gordon kissed her—boyish, quite inexperienced kisses really. They had been lying together on his bed, doing nothing more than exchanging explorative kisses when the door had suddenly been thrust open and a man Lissa didn’t recognise had appeared framed darkly against the light behind him. Even now she shuddered slightly remembering the sickness and fear that had then crawled down her spine. Before she could even move her father was in the room, dragging her off the bed, saying things to her, calling her names … that had numbed her senses and her tongue.

What had followed had all the trappings of the very worst kind of nightmares. Her parents had dragged her home in a thick silence, but once there, the real torment had started. What had she been doing with that boy? her mother demanded. They had questioned her in her father’s study with Joel Hargreaves standing impassively by, listening to every single word. Lissa thought now she had never hated anyone in all her life as she had hated him that night. Send him away, she had demanded tearfully of her parents, but her father had refused. ‘No Lissa. I want Joel to know what sort of girl his brother is going to get for a sister-in-law. Had you no thought for your sister when you disobeyed us?’ he demanded, adding, ‘do you think it fair that she should be tarred with the same brush as you?’

They had questioned her about what she had been doing with Gordon and in vain she had told them they had simply been kissing, blushing bright painful red to admit as much, but they had refused to believe her, saying why should they when she had already deceived them once by attending the party in the first place, and all the time Joel Hargreaves’ watchful eyes had been on her, deriding … scorning … making her feel dirty and humiliated.

And her humiliation had not ended there. There had been a visit to their doctor; an examination which had left her racked with anguish and mental agony; and then she had been sent away to school. So that Amanda wouldn’t have to bear the disgrace of a promiscuous younger sister, her parents had said.

It had taken years for Lissa to accept that she was not what her parents had called her; but the events of that night and the days which had followed had left her permanently scarred. To allow a man to so much as touch her was to relive again all that anguish; to endure the biting contempt in Joel Hargreaves’ eyes when he looked down at her lying on the narrow bed with Gordon, her brief dress exposing all the long length of her legs, her mouth swollen from Gordon’s kisses, all her tender, vulnerable adolescent emotions exposed to the cruel scrutiny of his worldliness.

‘If you’ve finished with the table …’

It was several seconds before Lissa realised the waitress was speaking to her and that people were waiting for her to vacate her table. Almost stumbling she got to her feet and hurried out into the bitter February afternoon. Strange how fate worked. If she hadn’t been such a coward about facing Joel she would never have come into the café, and then she would never have bumped into Helen; never have revived all those memories she had sought so firmly to conceal. She was literally shaking with reaction as she unlocked her car and a small moan broke from her mouth. Would it never end? Would she ever be able to put the past fully behind her and enter into a normal relationship with a man? Would she ever be able to take and give physical pleasure without the ever-present crushing guilt and self-disgust she now suffered from.

Why it was Joel Hargreaves whose face she saw every time another man touched her and not her father’s she wasn’t really sure. Her father had been the one to condemn her; to insist that she was lying … but it was the memory of Joel Hargreaves that brought her out in a cold sweat and turned her sleep into horrendous nightmares. Simon had been exultant when he accidentally hit on the fact that she was still a virgin, but he wouldn’t be exultant if he knew why. He thought she was clinging to some silly outmoded convention of purity, whereas she knew the truth … that those cataclysmic events during her fifteenth summer had frozen and destroyed some essential female part of her; the pain of her humiliation so intense that it prevented her from allowing herself to feel anything sexual for any man.

By the time she drove through the gates of Winterly, Lissa had regained control of herself. As she stepped out of her Mini and walked towards the main door with long-legged grace no one could guess at the torment of emotional agony she had just endured, least of all the man watching her.

Joel’s mouth twisted sardonically as he looked at her. She reminded him of a glossy, elegant chestnut filly he had once owned. There was pride and beauty in every movement of her graceful body, and also a wariness that warned him that she had come prepared to do battle if necessary.

Joel Hargreaves wasn’t used to women keeping him at a distance; very much the opposite. What would have intrigued him in another woman, in Lissa grated on his nerves. He had known her since she was a teenager, and throughout all the years since she had treated him as though he were some vilely contaminated life-form.

He had once tried to talk to Amanda about it, but his sister-in-law had simply shrugged and said that Lissa was an odd girl.

Odd maybe … beautiful and extremely desirable, yes. In the past she had never allowed him to get close enough to know her, but now, dramatically the situation had changed. Telling himself that he was a fool for even thinking of resurrecting what should have been no more than a passing whim he went to let her in.

‘Lissa. You decided to come then.’

Lissa inclined her head coolly, praying that she had herself well under control. She was consumed by a wholly unfamiliar and extremely dangerous desire to give vent to the turmoil of feelings bubbling up inside her; to rave and scream at him that he and he alone was solely responsible for the destruction of her femininity … that she hated … hated and loathed him and that nothing … nothing would induce her to stay in his house.

As she followed him inside Joel caught the brilliant gleam of her eyes, and wondered if her anger was because she had had to leave her boyfriend for a weekend. Joel knew all about Simon Greaves. A very personable and persuasive young man.

‘I think we’ll talk in my study.’

Trust Joel to choose to do battle on his own home ground Lissa thought bitterly as he held the door open for her to precede him. She had visited Winterly on several occasions both when his parents lived there and since they had left, but this was the first time she had been in this particular room. The austerity of its furnishings were initially deceptive until one became aware of the intrinsic beauty of the antique desk and the silken beauty of the Aubusson rug covering the floor. A small display cabinet caught her eye and she held her breath for a moment awed by the collection of jade inside it.

‘You like jade?’

Joel was watching her, and for once she saw no reason to conceal the truth from him.

‘I love it,’ she admitted.

‘So do I. I started collecting it several years ago on a trip to Hong Kong.’ He moved towards the case and then stopped abruptly as the study door opened and a harassed looking middle-aged woman burst in.

‘Mr Hargreaves,’ she began without preamble. ‘I simply cannot have those children in my kitchen. The moment my back’s turned they’re into my cupboards, upsetting everything …’

She paused to take a break and Joel inserted smoothly, ‘Don’t worry about it, Mrs Johnson. I’ll soon have everything sorted out.’

‘Well I certainly hope so.’ Mrs Johnson seemed far from mollified and Lissa fought hard not to burst into impetuous speech and remind the older woman that if the children were being naughty it might possibly be remembered that they had only recently lost their parents and both sets of grandparents.

‘If you’ll just keep an eye on them for me while Miss Grant and I finish talking,’ Joel continued, to his housekeeper. ‘I promise you I’ll take them off your hands.’

She withdrew but with bad grace, muttering something under her breath about not being paid to look after children. When she had gone Lissa raised her eyebrows and said coolly, ‘That is what you consider doing the best you can for the girls is it?’

She was surprised by the faint flush of colour staining his skin. ‘In the past few days I’ve been trying to get a nanny. I haven’t had much success.’ He drummed impatiently on his desk for several seconds and then turned to face her, admitting, ‘All the more reputable agencies are rather dubious about the fact that I’m a single man, and as for the rest.’ His grim expression startled her a little. ‘Well let’s just say I’m not too keen on the idea of adding an eighteen year old au pair to my other problems.’

Lissa knew she should have felt triumphant, but the emotion uppermost in her heart was pity and concern for the children. She had experienced too much trauma and heartache during her own childhood, to treat the miseries of any other child’s lightly.

‘When can I see the girls, Joel?’ she asked huskily.

‘Soon … When we’ve finished talking.’

‘How are they?’

How she hated having to ask him for anything, even something so mundane as information about her nieces, and she knew it showed in her voice from the twisted smile he gave her, his eyes glinting dark gold as he turned to look at her.

‘Poor Lissa,’ he mocked watching her. ‘Forced to actually ask me for something. How that must hurt. Why are you so frightened of me Lissa?’

‘I’m not.’ Her chin firmed and she stared back at him. ‘I simply don’t like you very much that’s all.’

He laughed then, the warm rich sound startling her. What could she possibly have said to make him laugh. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to tell, so she insisted coolly, ‘The girls, Joel. How are they coping?’

‘On the surface, quite well,’ he told her. ‘Louise of course being older is finding it harder to accept that they’re gone. Emma … well I can barely understand a word she says as it is. Louise seems to be able to interpret her chatter all right though. They’ve been asking for you,’ he added abruptly. ‘I didn’t realise they knew you so well.’

‘I’ve spent quite a lot of time with them.’ It was true. She had looked after them for the odd weekend for her sister. Amanda knowing how much she loved children, and not being overly maternal herself had been delighted to leave them in her care.

‘You really care about them don’t you?’ he said curtly, further surprising her.

Instantly she was defensive, glaring at him from angry emerald eyes as she responded bitterly, ‘Why should that be so surprising? I happen to like children … I always have done.’

‘And yet you’ve never given any indication that you’d like to get married and have your own,’ Joel put in softly, ‘I wonder why?’

Lissa had to turn away from him so that he couldn’t read her expression. Her heart was thumping frantically, her pulse beat rocketing way out of control.

‘Perhaps I just haven’t met the right man yet,’ she told him flippantly, hoping he wouldn’t guess at her emotional turmoil. How could she ever have children of her own, feeling as she did about sex? It wasn’t only the ability to love as a woman he had robbed her of, she thought, hating him, it was also the ability to mother children … And now he even wanted to take her nieces away from her.

‘I’m not prepared to give up the girls, Joel,’ she told him, pivoting round to face him. ‘Amanda left them in my care … and I don’t care what you say,’ she cried out passionately, ‘I can’t really believe that any caring judge would rule that the care of strangers—because that’s what your nanny will be—will be more beneficial, even with all the material advantages you can give them, than my love. You don’t love them Joel … not the way I do.’ She was close to tears and had to blink them away, horrified when she opened her eyes again to find that he was looming over her, the gold speckles in his eyes igniting with fierce heat.

‘Like hell I don’t,’ he told her thickly. ‘You seem to have conveniently forgotten that their father was my brother … I only want what is best for them Lissa …’

‘No, you don’t. You just want to take them away from me.’

Her voice was high and strained, hysteria edging in under her self-control. She could see Joel looking at her, and she could feel his anger.

‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ he flung at her. ‘You seem to be developing a persecution complex where I’m concerned, Lissa. Oh yes,’ he gritted grimly watching her with cold eyes. ‘I’m well aware of the extraordinary lengths you go to avoid my company. I know quite well that Amanda had strict instructions never to invite you to the house when there was any chance that I might be around. Just what have I ever done to warrant such antipathy Lissa. Tell me?’

She shrugged lightly, struggling for self-control. It seemed impossible that the events that were burned so painfully into her memory should not exist for him. But perhaps it was safer for her that he did not remember, she told herself, her nerve endings jumping tensely when the next minute, he said with silky softness, ‘Or can I guess? Does all this haughty disdain you exhibit towards me spring from the fact that I once caught you in bed with your boyfriend?’

The brilliant wave of scarlet flooding her skin gave her away, and she watched his mouth twist in wry mockery, hating him with all the intense passion of her nature when he drawled tauntingly, ‘You should be grateful that you were stopped when you were. A teenage pregnancy is no fun …’

God, how she hated him, Lissa thought feeling the nauseous loathing rise up inside her. She wanted to scream and cry … to tear that smooth smile from his face with her nails. She hated him … hated him … Her attention was deflected from her own inner turmoil when she heard Joel saying calmly, ‘No Lissa, I don’t think the best thing for the girls is for them to be constantly shuttled between us, as though we were divorced parents. Children, especially children such as Louise and Emma who had already suffered the loss of their parents, need security and stability, and in an attempt to give them both, I’ve decided that what I need is not a nanny, but a wife.’

Lissa could only stare at him, but hard on the heels of her shock came the knowledge that if he did marry, she would lose her nieces, because surely a judge was bound to favour the suit of a man who had not only wealth but also a wife, above the claims of a girl, struggling alone on a little more than adequate salary.

‘No comment?’ she heard Joel saying, the words reaching her through a fog of thoughts. ‘You don’t want to know the identity of my wife-to-be?’

‘Why should I?’ Lissa managed to croak the denial. ‘It’s nothing to do with me?’

‘On the contrary,’ Joel assured her with smooth silkiness. ‘It has everything to do with you my dear. You see, I’ve decided that the very best solution to Louise and Emma’s problem would be for you and I to marry thus uniting both their guardians and providing them with a stable background.’

Lissa barely heard his last words. ‘You and I …?’ She stared at him, the colour leaving her face on an ebb tide of shock. ‘No, I …’

‘Lissa, neither of us are foolish teenagers any longer.’

‘We don’t love one another … we don’t even like one another,’ Lissa interrupted harshly. ‘How can you even think of a marriage between us?’

‘Oh quite easily.’ He was smiling at her in a way that told her that little though he might like her, he found the shape of her sexually desirable. Shock hit her on a tidal wave, swamping her. Joel desired her.

‘You see,’ he mocked her softly, ‘we could have a lot more in common than you think. There is no need for our marriage to be a sterile one Lissa. On the contrary …’

Lissa felt as though she were drowning in some whirlpool far too frenzied for her to fight. ‘But you’ve always avoided marriage,’ she whispered huskily, ‘I remember Amanda once saying that she thought you’d never marry.’

‘At one time I thought that myself,’ he agreed laconically, ‘but that was before John died.’

‘And if I refuse …?’ What did she mean ‘if’. Of course she was going to refuse … but a thought had taken possession of her brain … the seed of an idea, that at last she might have found a way to make Joel pay for all the agony and shame he had caused her.

‘Then I’ll have to look around for someone else,’ he told her calmly. ‘Make no mistake about it Lissa. For the girls’ sake I intend to marry. I should prefer that my wife is you, but if you refuse, then I shall simply marry someone else.’

‘And I’ll lose the girls.’ She breathed the words softly, but he heard them and shrugged.

‘The choice is yours. I’m not, after all, asking you to make any sacrifice I’m not prepared to make myself. We’ll both be giving up our freedom … and one thing more Lissa.’ He came towards her standing only feet away, but making no move to reach out and touch her. She felt almost suffocated by his proximity but refused to step back, making herself endure it. ‘Our marriage will not be an empty legal bond only, but very real, in every sense of the word.’

‘But I don’t want you.’ She said it through stiff lips forcing them to frame the words, half of her praying that he would take back his proposal; and the other half, the bitter, angry half hoping that he would not.

‘How can you know that,’ he taunted softly. ‘We haven’t been lovers yet.’

Nor ever will be, the bitter half of her exulted. Let him marry her … let him think he was going to have it all his own way, but when she lay in his bed and in his arms she would be as cold as ice; as devoid of the ability to give and take pleasure as she had always been, since he had destroyed the feminine core of her. Ignoring all the urgings of common sense Lissa faced him, praying that he wouldn’t see the bitterness in her eyes, and that he wouldn’t guess exactly why she was marrying him. He was using her affection for the girls to force her into this marriage … a marriage she was sure that would not stop him continuing with his many affairs, but what he did not know was that she was also going to use him … as the instrument of her revenge.

‘Very well Joel … I agree to marry you.’

She was surprised to see the heated flicker of triumph burn dark gold in his eyes. He took a step towards her and she backed away, but before either of them could speak the door burst open and the elder of their nieces came rushing in.

‘Auntie Lissa … Auntie Lissa … I heard you talking.’ The petite four year old ran up to Lissa, clinging tightly to her legs, the blonde head buried in her skirt. ‘Are you going to stay here for ever,’ Louise demanded when Lissa bent down to pick her up. ‘I want you to … so does Emma …’

‘Yes, Louise, she’s going to stay here for ever,’ Lissa heard Joel saying from a distance, and just for a moment she felt a twinge of apprehension at the deep note of triumph in his voice, but then she banished it, telling herself she was imagining things. She was the one who should be feeling triumphant. She had got her nieces, and she had also got the means of repaying Joel for all the years of anguish and pain he had caused her. He might think their marriage was going to be a ‘normal’ one, but she knew different.

CHAPTER THREE

LISSA WOKE UP the next morning feeling totally disorientated; initially by the strangeness of her room, and then by the huge weight of depression which seemed to have descended upon her out of nowhere. And then she remembered.

She had agreed to marry Joel! She closed her eyes and groaned, her head falling back against her pillow. How could she have been so stupid? She would have to tell him she had changed her mind. It was her own silly temper and pride that had led into folly; the old burning anger cum anguish she always experienced whenever she was with him. Why oh why after all these years, should Joel still be the one whose contempt and rejection of her hurt so badly? Was it because he had been the one to thrust open that bedroom door and see her? Was it because somehow in her innermost mind she had because of that confused him in some way with her father? They were questions Lissa could not answer; all she did know was that whenever she came in contact with him she was reminded of the way he had looked at her that night … and how for one weak minute she had longed to cry out to him to understand and forgive her … Shivering faintly despite the centrally heated warmth of her bedroom, she was just contemplating how best to tell him that she had changed her mind and that she was certainly not prepared to marry him; even for the sake of her nieces when the door burst open and the two little girls rushed in, both still in their nightdresses.

Louise reached her first, flinging herself on to the bed and cuddling up next to her. Emma, still very much a toddler needed a helping hand, but there was no mistaking the enthusiasm in her hug when she was finally on the bed with Lissa and her sister.

‘You’re going to marry Uncle Joel and then you’ll be our new mummy and daddy,’ Louise announced importantly.

Lissa’s heart sank. She felt trapped and desperate. How could she have been so crazy as to allow those old hurts to trap her into her present position. It seemed mediaeval and archaic now, in the cold clear light of a February morning that she should actually have contemplated marrying Joel, simply to even punish him for the pain he had once caused her. That was all over and done with now. But Joel … why did he want to marry her?

That was simple Lissa told herself; he wanted someone to look after the children who was not going to walk out on him. If she backed out she would lose the girls, Lissa reminded herself, looking at the two blonde heads, nestled together against her warmth. As she watched them, a melting, aching wave of love for them suffused her. If she didn’t marry Joel, he would find someone who would and the girls would be lost to her for ever. Could she endure that? Looking at them Lissa knew she could not. This deeply maternal feeling she felt towards them was something she had always kept well hidden from others. Only Amanda had been aware of it, wryly amused by her sister’s passionate love for her daughters, warning Lissa that when she married she would soon discover the drawbacks to being a mother. ‘You want them because this way you can satisfy your mothering instincts without having to endure someone’s lovemaking’, an inner voice warned her, but Lissa refused to listen, her fingers curling slightly into the bedclothes as she tried to deny the thoughts. Whose fault was it that she froze every time a man touched her she asked herself, trying to whip up some of the anger she had that had consumed her last night. Not hers!

Her bedroom door opened again, and she blinked in stunned disbelief as Joel strolled in carrying a breakfast tray, which he put down on the table by the bed.

‘Who said you two could come in here?’ he demanded of the girls, ruffling the blonde curls and drawing stifled giggles form Louise.

‘You and Lissa are going to be our new mummy and daddy, aren’t you?’ Louise demanded importantly of him, and yet Lissa could see that beyond the child’s self-importance was a shadow of uncertainty and fear, and all her inner arguments against what they were doing melted. If for no other reason surely the sacrifice demanded of her was not too great when she thought of what it would mean to the girls. Joel was right; they needed the security and stability of a proper family unit, and if she didn’t marry him, Joel would stand by his threat to find someone who would. She loved them too much to let someone else take her place with them, Lissa knew, and as she raised stormy hazel eyes to meet the mocking gold of Joel’s, she knew that he had faithfully monitored each and every single thought that had passed through her head since he walked in the room.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

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

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