is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Tempestuous Reunion

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘MARRY you?’ Luc echoed, his brilliant dark gaze rampant with incredulity as he abruptly cast aside the financial report he had been studying. ‘Why would I want to marry you?’

Catherine’s slender hand was shaking. Hurriedly she set down her coffee-cup, her courage sinking fast. ‘I just wondered if you had ever thought of it.’ Her restless fingers made a minute adjustment to the siting of the sugar bowl. She was afraid to meet his eyes. ‘It was just an idea.’

‘Whose idea?’ he prompted softly. ‘You are perfectly content as you are.’

She didn’t want to think about what Luc had made of her. But certainly contentment had rarely featured in her responses. From the beginning she had loved him wildly, recklessly, and with that edge of desperation which prevented her from ever standing as his equal.

Over the past two years, she had swung between ecstasy and despair more times than he would ever have believed. Or cared to believe. This beautiful, luxurious apartment was her prison. Not his. She was a pretty songbird in a gilded cage for Luc’s exclusive enjoyment. But it wasn’t bars that kept her imprisoned, it was love.

She stole a nervous glance at him. His light intonation had been deceptive. Luc was silently seething. But not at her. His ire was directed at some imaginary scapegoat, who had dared to contaminate her with ideas, quite embarrassing ideas above her station.

‘Catherine,’ he pressed impatiently.

Under the table the fingernails of her other hand grooved sharp crescents into her damp palm. Skating on thin ice wasn’t a habit of hers with Luc. ‘It was my own idea and…I’d appreciate an answer,’ she dared in an ironic lie, for she didn’t really want that answer; she didn’t want to hear it.

Had the Santini electronics empire crashed overnight, Luc could not have looked more grim than he did now, pierced by a thorn from a normally very well-trained source. ‘You have neither the background nor the education that I would require in my wife. There, it is said,’ he delivered with the decisive speed and the ruthlessness which had made his name as much feared as respected in the business world. ‘Now you need wonder no longer.’

Every scrap of colour slowly drained from her cheeks. She recoiled from the brutal candour she had invited, ashamed to discover that she had, after all, nurtured a tiny, fragile hope that deep down inside he might feel differently. Her soft blue eyes flinched from his, her head bowing. ‘No, I won’t need to wonder,’ she managed half under her breath.

Having devastated her, he relented infinitesimally. ‘This isn’t what I would term breakfast conversation,’ he murmured with a teasing harshness that she easily translated into a rebuke for her presumption in daring to raise the subject. ‘Why should you aspire to a relationship within which you would not be at ease…hmm? As a lover, I imagine, I am far less demanding than I would be as a husband.’

In the midst of what she deemed to be the most agonising d;aaenouement of her life, an hysterical giggle feathered dangerously in her convulsed throat. A blunt, sun-browned finger languorously played over the knuckles showing white beneath the skin of her clenched hand. Even though she was conscious that Luc was using his customary methods of distraction, the electricity of a powerful sexual chemistry tautened her every sinew and the fleeting desire to laugh away the ashes of painful disillusionment vanished.

With a faint sigh, he shrugged back a pristine silk shirt cuff to consult the rapier-thin Cartier watch on his wrist and frowned.

‘You’ll be late for your meeting.’ She said it for him as she stood up, for the very first time fiercely glad to see the approach of the departure which usually tore her apart.

Luc rose fluidly upright to regard her narrowly. ‘You’re jumpy this morning. Is there something wrong?’

The other matter, she registered in disbelief, was already forgotten, written off as some impulsive and foolishly feminine piece of nonsense. It wouldn’t occur to Luc that she had deliberately saved that question until he was about to leave. She hadn’t wanted to spoil the last few hours they would ever spend together.

‘No…what could be wrong?’ Turning aside, she reddened. But he had taught her the art of lies and evasions, could only blame himself when he realised what a monster he had created.

‘I don’t believe that. You didn’t sleep last night.’

She froze into shocked stillness. He strolled back across the room to link confident arms round her small, slim figure, easing her round to face him. ‘Perhaps it is your security that you are concerned about.’

The hard bones and musculature of the lean, superbly fit body against hers melted her with a languor she couldn’t fight. And, arrogantly acquainted with that shivery weakness, Luc was satisfied and soothed. A long finger traced the tremulous fullness of her lower lip. ‘Some day our paths will separate,’ he forecast in a roughened undertone. ‘But that day is still far from my mind.’

Dear God, did he know what he did to her when he said things like that? If he did, why should he care? In probably much the same fashion he cracked the whip over key executives to keep them on their toes. He was murmuring something smooth about stocks and shares that she refused to listen to. You can’t buy love, Luc. You can’t pay for it either. When are you going to find that out?

While his hunger for her remained undiminished, she understood that she was safe. She took no compliment from the desire she had once naïvely believed was based on emotion. For the several days a month which Luc allotted cool-headedly to the pursuit of light entertainment, she had every attention. But that Luc had not even guessed that the past weeks had been unadulterated hell for her proved the shallowness of the bond on his side. She had emerged from the soap-bubble fantasy she had started building against reality two years ago. He didn’t love her. He hadn’t suddenly woken up one day to realise that he couldn’t live without her…and he never would.

‘You’ll be late,’ she whispered tautly, disconcerted by the glitter of gold now burnishing the night-dark scrutiny skimming her upturned face. When Luc decided to leave, he didn’t usually linger.

The supple fingers resting against her spine pressed her closer, his other hand lifting to wind with cool possessiveness into the curling golden hair tumbling down her back. ‘Bella mia,’ he rhymed in husky Italian, bending his dark head to taste her moistly parted lips with the inherent sensuality and the tormenting expertise which all along had proved her downfall.

Stabbed by her guilty conscience, she dragged herself fearfully free before he could taste the strange, unresponsive chill that was spreading through her. ‘I’m not feeling well,’ she muttered in jerky excuse, terrified that she was giving herself away.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that sooner? You ought to lie down.’ He swept her up easily in his arms, started to kiss her again, and then, with an almost imperceptible darkening of colour, abstained long enough to carry her into the bedroom and settle her down on the tossed bed.

He hovered, betraying a rare discomfiture. Scrutinising her wan cheeks and the pared-down fragility of her bone-structure, he expelled his breath in a sudden sound of derision. ‘If this is another result of one of those asinine diets of yours, I’m likely to lose my temper. When are you going to get it through your head that I like you as you are? Do you want to make yourself ill? I don’t have any patience with this foolishness, Catherine.’

‘No,’ she agreed, beyond seeing any humour in his misapprehension.

‘See your doctor today,’ he instructed. ‘And if you don’t, I’ll know about it. I’ll mention it to Stevens on my way out.’

At the reference to the security guard, supposedly there for her protection but more often than not, she suspected, there to police her every move, she curved her cheek into the pillow. She didn’t like Stevens. His deadpan detachment and extreme formality intimidated her.

‘How are you getting on with him, by the way?’

‘I understood that I wasn’t supposed to get on with your security men. Isn’t that why you transferred Sam Halston?’ she muttered, grateful for the change of subject, no matter how incendiary it might be.

‘He was too busy flirting with you to be effective,’ Luc parried with icy emphasis.

‘That’s not true. He was only being friendly,’ she protested.

‘He wasn’t hired to be friendly. If you’d treated him like an employee he’d still be here,’ Luc underlined with honeyed dismissal. ‘And now I really have to leave. I’ll call you from Milan.’

He made it sound as if he were dispensing a very special favour. In fact, he called her every day no matter where he was in the world. And now he was gone.

When that phone did ring tomorrow, it would ring and ring through empty rooms. For tortured minutes she just lay and stared at the space where he had been. Dark and dynamic, he was hell on wheels for a vulnerable woman. In their entire association she had never had an argument with Luc. By fair means or foul, Luc always got his own way. Her feeble attempts to assert herself had long since sunk without trace against the tide of an infinitely more forceful personality.

He was now reputedly one of the top ten richest men in the world. At twenty-nine that was a wildly impressive achievement. He had started out with nothing but formidable intelligence in the streets of New York’s Little Italy. And he would keep on climbing. Luc was always number one and never more so than in his own self-image. Power was the greatest aphrodisiac known to humanity. What Luc wanted he reached out and took, and to hell with the damage he caused as long as the backlash did not affect his comfort. And, having fought for everything he had ever got, what came easy had no intrinsic value for him.

‘The lone wolf,’ Time magazine had dubbed him in a recent article, endeavouring to penetrate the mystique of a rogue among the more conventional herd of the hugely successful.

A shark was a killing machine, superbly efficient within its own restricted field. And wolves mated for life, not for leisure-time amusement. But Luc was indeed a land-based animal and far from cold-blooded. As such he was all the more dangerous to the unwary, the innocent and the over-confident.

Technical brilliance alone hadn’t built his empire. It was the energy source of one man’s drive combined with a volatile degree of unpredictability which kept competitors at bay in a cut-throat market. She could have told that journalist exactly what Luc Santini was like. And that was hard, cruelly hard with the cynicism, the self-interest and the ruthless ambition that was bred into his very bones. Only a fool got in Luc’s path…only a very foolish woman could have given her heart into his keeping.

Her eyes squeezed shut on a shuddering spasm of anguish. It was over now. She would never see Luc again. No miracle had astounded her at the eleventh hour. Marriage was not, nor would it ever be, a possibility. Her small hand spread protectively over her no longer concave stomach. Luc had begun to lose her one hundred per cent loyalty and devotion from the very hour she suspected that she was carrying his child.

Instinct had warned her that the news would be greeted as a calculated betrayal and, no doubt, the conviction that she had somehow achieved the condition all on her own. Again and again she had put off telling him. In fear of discovery, she had learnt to be afraid of Luc. When he married a bride with a social pedigree, a bride bred to the lofty heights that were already his, he wouldn’t want any skeletons in the cupboard. Ice-cold and sick with apprehensions that she had refused to face head on, she wiped clumsily at her swollen eyes and got up.

He would never know now and that was how it had to be. Thank God, she had persuaded Sam to show her how to work the alarm system. She would leave by the rear entrance. That would take care of Stevens. Would Luc miss her? A choked sob of pain escaped her. He would be outraged that she could leave him and he had not foreseen the event. But he wouldn’t have any trouble replacing her. She was not so special and she wasn’t beautiful. She never had grasped what it was about her which had drawn Luc. Unless it was the cold intuition of a predator scenting good doormat material downwind, she conceded shamefacedly.

How could she be sorry to leave this half-life behind? She had no friends. When discretion was demanded, friends were impossible. Luc had slowly but surely isolated her so that her entire existence revolved round him. Sometimes she was so lonely that she talked out loud to herself. Love was a fearsome emotion, she thought with a convulsive shudder. At eighteen she had been green as grass. Two years on, she didn’t feel she was much brighter but she didn’t build castles in the air any more.

‘Arrivederci, Luc, grazie tanto,’ she scrawled in lipstick across the mirror. A theatrical gesture, the ubiquitous note. He could do without the ego boost of five tear-stained pages telling him pointlessly that nobody was ever likely to love him as much as she did.

Luc, she had learnt by destructive degrees, didn’t rate love any too highly. But he had not been above using her love as a weapon against her, twisting her emotions with cruel expertise until they had become the bars of her prison cell.

* * *

‘What are you doing with my books?’

Catherine straightened from the cardboard box and clashed with stormy dark eyes. ‘I’m packing them. Do you want to help?’ she prompted hopefully. ‘We could talk.’

Daniel kicked at a chair leg, his small body stiff and defensive. ‘I don’t want to talk about moving.’

‘Ignoring it isn’t going to stop it happening,’ Catherine warned.

Daniel kicked moodily at the chair leg again, hands stuck in his pockets, miniature-tough style. Slowly Catherine counted to ten. Much more of this and she would scream until the little men in the white coats came to take her away. How much longer was her son going to treat her as the wickedest and worst mother in the world? With a determined smile, she said, ‘Things aren’t half as bad as you seem to think they are.’

Daniel looked at her dubiously. ‘Have we got any money?’

Taken aback by the demand, Catherine coloured and shifted uncomfortably. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘I heard John’s mum telling Mrs Withers that we had no money ’cos if we had we would’ve bought this house and stayed here.’

Catherine could happily have strangled the woman for speaking so freely in Daniel’s presence. He might be only four but he was precociously bright for his age. Daniel already understood far too much of what went on around him.

‘It’s not fair that someone can take our house off us and sell it to someone else when we want to live here forever!’ he burst out without warning.

The pain she glimpsed in his over-bright eyes tore cruelly at her. Unfortunately there was little that she could do to assuage that pain. ‘Greyfriars has never been ours,’ she reminded him tautly. ‘You know that, Daniel. It belonged to Harriet, and on her death she gave it to charity. Now the people who run that charity want to sell and use the money to—’

Daniel threw her a sudden seething glance. ‘I don’t care about those people starving in Africa! This is our house! Where are we going to live?’

‘Drew has found us a flat in London,’ she told him yet again.

‘You can’t keep a donkey in London!’ Daniel launched at her fierily. ‘Why can’t we live with Peggy? She said we could.’

Catherine sighed. ‘Peggy really doesn’t have enough room for us.’

‘I’ll run away and you can live in London all on your own because I’m not going without Clover!’ Daniel shouted at her in a tempestuous surge of fury and distress. ‘It’s all your fault. If I’d had a daddy, he could’ve bought us this house like everybody else’s daddy does! I bet he could even have made Harriet well again…I hate you ’cos you can’t do anything!’

With that bitter condemnation, Daniel hurtled out of the back door. He would take refuge in one of his hiding places in the garden. There he would sit, brooding and struggling to cope with harsh adult realities that entailed the loss of all he held dear. She touched the solicitor’s letter on the table. She would be even more popular when he realised that their holiday on Peggy’s family farm was no longer possible either.

Sometimes—such as now—Catherine had this engulfing sense of total inadequacy in Daniel’s radius. Daniel was not quite like other children. At two he had taken apart a radio and put it back together again, repairing it in the process. At three he had taught himself German by listening to a language programme on television. But he was still too young to accept necessary sacrifices. Harriet’s death had hit him hard, and now he was losing his home, a much-loved pet donkey, the friends he played with…in short, all the remaining security that had bounded his life to date. Was it any wonder that he was frightened? How could she reassure him when she too was afraid of the future?

The conviction that catastrophe was only waiting to pounce round the next blind corner had never really left Catherine. Harriet’s sudden death had fulfilled her worst imaginings. With one savage blow, the tranquil and happy security of their lives had been shattered. And right now it felt as though she’d been cruelly catapulted back to where she had started out over four years ago…

Her life had been in a mess, heading downhill at a seemingly breakneck pace. She had had the promising future of a kamikaze pilot. And then Harriet had come along. Harriet, so undervalued by those who knew her best. Harriet…in his exasperation, Drew had once called her a ‘charming mental deficient’. Yet Harriet had picked Catherine up, dusted her down and set her back on the rails again. In the process, Harriet had also become the closest thing to a mother that Catherine had ever known.

They had met on a train. That journey and that meeting had forever altered Catherine’s future. While they had shared the same compartment, Harriet had tried repeatedly to strike up a conversation. When you were locked up tight and terrified of breaking down in public, you didn’t want to talk. But Harriet’s persistence had forced her out of her self-absorption, and before very long her over-taxed emotions had betrayed her and somehow she had ended up telling Harriet her life-story.

Afterwards she had been embarrassed, frankly eager to escape the older woman’s company. They had left the train at the same station. Nothing poor Harriet had said about her ‘having made the right decision’ had penetrated. Like an addict, sick for a long-overdue fix, Catherine had been unbelievably desperate just to hear the sound of a man’s voice on the phone. Throwing Harriet a guilty goodbye, she had raced off towards the phone-box she could see across the busy car park.

What would have happened had she made that call? That call that would have been a crowning and unforgivable mistake in a relationship which had been a disaster from start to finish?

She would never know now. In her mad haste to reach that phone, she had run in front of a car. It had taken total physical incapacitation to finally bring her to her senses. She had spent the following three months recovering from her injuries in hospital. Days had passed before she had been strong enough to recognise the soothing voice that drifted in and out of her haze of pain and disorientation. It had belonged to Harriet. Knowing that she had no family, Harriet had sat by her in Intensive Care, talking back the dark for her. If Harriet hadn’t been there, Catherine didn’t believe she would ever have emerged from the dark again.

Even before his premature birth, Daniel had had to fight for survival. Coming into the world, he had screeched for attention, tiny and weak but indomitably strong-willed. From his incubator he had charmed the entire medical staff by surmounting every set-back within record time. Catherine had begun to appreciate then that, with the genes her son carried to such an unmistakably marked degree, a ten-ton truck couldn’t have deprived him of existence, never mind his careless mother’s collision with a mere car.

‘He’s a splendid little fighter,’ Harriet had proclaimed proudly, relishing the role of surrogate granny as only an intensely lonely woman could. Drew had been sincerely fond of his older sister but her eccentricities had infuriated him, and his sophisticated French wife, Annette, and their teenage children had had no time for Harriet at all. Greyfriars was situated on the outskirts of an Oxfordshire village, a dilapidated old house, surrounded by untamed acres of wilderness garden. Harriet and Drew had been born here and Harriet had vociferously withstood her brother’s every attempt to refurbish the house for her. Surroundings had been supremely unimportant to Harriet. Lame ducks had been Harriet’s speciality.

Catherine’s shadowed gaze roamed over the homely kitchen. She had made the gingham curtains fluttering at the window, painted the battered cupboards a cheerful fire-engine red sold off cheap at the church f;afete. This was their home. In every sense of the word. How could she persuade Daniel that he would be as happy in a tiny city flat when she didn’t believe it herself? But, dear God, that flat was their one and only option.

A light knock sounded on the back door. Without awaiting an answer, her friend Peggy Downes breezed in. A tall woman in her thirties with geometrically cut red hair, she dropped down on to the sagging settee by the range with the ease of a regular visitor. She stared in surprise at the cardboard box. ‘Aren’t you being a little premature with your packing? You’ve still got a fortnight to go.’

‘We haven’t.’ Catherine passed over the solicitor’s letter. ‘It’s just as well that Drew said we could use his apartment if we were stuck. We can’t stay here until the end of the month and the flat won’t be vacant before then.’

‘Hell’s teeth! They wouldn’t give you that extra week?’ Peggy exclaimed incredulously.

As Peggy’s mobile features set into depressingly familiar lines of annoyance, Catherine turned back to the breakfast dishes, hoping that her friend wasn’t about to climb back on her soap-box to decry the terms of Harriet’s will and their imminent move to city life. In recent days, while exuding the best of good intentions, Peggy had been very trying and very impractical.

‘We have no legal right to be here at all,’ Catherine pointed out.

‘But morally you have every right and I would’ve expected a charitable organisation to be more generous towards a single parent.’ Peggy’s ready temper was rising on Catherine’s behalf. ‘Mind you, I don’t know why I’m blaming them. This whole mess is your precious Harriet’s fault!’

‘Peggy—’

‘Sorry, but I believe in calling a spade a spade.’ That was an unnecessary reminder to anyone acquainted with Peggy’s caustic tongue. ‘Honestly, Catherine…sometimes I think you must have been put on this earth purely to be exploited! You don’t even seem to realise when people are using you! What thanks did you get for wasting four years of your life running after Harriet?’

‘Harriet gave us a home when we had nowhere else to go. She had nothing to thank me for.’

‘You kept this house, waited on her hand and foot and slaved over all her pet charity schemes,’ Peggy condemned heatedly. ‘And for all that you received board and lodging and first pick of the jumble-sale clothes! So much for charity’s beginning at home!’

‘Harriet was the kindest and most sincere person I’ve ever known,’ Catherine parried tightly.

And crazy as a coot, Peggy wanted to shriek in frustration. Admittedly Harriet’s many eccentricities had not appeared to grate on Catherine as they had on other, less tolerant souls. Catherine hadn’t seemed to notice when Harriet talked out loud to herself and her conscience, or noisily emptied the entire contents of her purse into the church collection plate. Catherine hadn’t batted an eyelash when Harriet brought dirty, smelly tramps home to tea and offered them the freedom of her home.

The trouble with Catherine was…It was a sentence Peggy often began and never managed to finish to her satisfaction. Catherine was the best friend she had ever had. She was also unfailingly kind, generous and unselfish, and that was quite an accolade from a female who thought of herself as a hardened cynic. How did you criticise someone for such sterling qualities? Unfortunately it was exactly those qualities which had put Catherine in her present predicament.

Catherine drifted along on another mental plane. Meeting those misty blue eyes in that arrestingly lovely face, Peggy was helplessly put in mind of a child cast adrift in a bewildering adult world. There was something so terrifyingly innocent about Catherine’s penchant for seeing only the best in people and taking them on trust. There was something so horribly defenceless about her invariably optimistic view of the world.

She was a sucker for every sob-story that came her way and a wonderful listener. She didn’t know how to say no when people asked for favours. This kitchen was rarely empty of callers, mothers in need of temporary childminders or someone to look after the cat or the dog or the dormouse while they were away. Catherine was very popular locally. If you were in a fix, she would always lend a hand. But how many returned those favours? Precious few, in Peggy’s experience.

‘At the very least, Harriet ought to have left you a share of her estate,’ Peggy censured.

Catherine put the kettle on to boil. ‘And how do you think Drew and his family would have felt about that?’

‘Drew isn’t short of money.’

‘Huntingdon’s is a small firm. He isn’t a wealthy man.’

‘He has a big house in Kent and an apartment in central London. If that isn’t wealthy, what is?’ Peggy demanded drily.

Catherine suppressed a groan. ‘Business hasn’t been too brisk for the firm recently. Drew has already had to sell some property he owned, and though he wouldn’t admit it, he must have been disappointed by Harriet’s will. As building land this place will fetch a small fortune. He could have done with a windfall.’

‘And by the time the divorce comes through Annette will probably have stripped him of every remaining movable asset,’ Peggy mused.

‘She didn’t want the divorce,’ Catherine murmured.

Peggy pulled a face. ‘What difference does that make? She had the affair. She was the guilty partner.’

Catherine made the tea, reflecting that it was no use looking to Peggy for tolerance on the subject of marital infidelity. Her friend was still raw from the break-up of her own marriage. But Peggy’s husband had been a womaniser. Annette was scarcely a comparable case. Business worries and a pair of difficult teenagers had put the Huntingdon marriage under strain. Annette had had an affair and Drew had been devastated. Resisting her stricken pleas for a reconciliation, Drew had moved out and headed straight for his solicitor. Funny how people rarely reacted as you thought they would in a personal crisis. Catherine had believed he would forgive and forget. She had been wrong.

‘I still hope they sort out their problems before it’s too late,’ she replied quietly.

‘Why should he want to? He’s only fifty…an attractive man, still in his prime…’

‘I suppose he is,’ Catherine allowed uncertainly. She was very fond of Harriet’s brother, but she wasn’t accustomed to thinking of him on those terms.

‘A man who somehow can’t find anything better to do than drive down here at weekends to play with Daniel,’ Peggy commented with studied casualness.

Unconscious of her intent scrutiny, Catherine laughed. ‘He’s at a loose end without his family.’

Peggy cleared her throat. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that Drew might have a more personal interest at stake here?’

Catherine surveyed her blankly.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Peggy groaned. ‘Do I have to spell it out? His behaviour at the funeral raised more brows than mine. If you lifted anything heavier than a teacup, he was across the room like young Lochinvar! I think he’s in love with you.’

‘In love with me?’ Catherine parroted, aghast. ‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous!’

‘I could be wrong.’ Peggy sounded doubtful.

‘Of course you’re wrong!’ Catherine told her with unusual vehemence, her cheeks hot with discomfiture.

‘All right, calm down,’ Peggy sighed. ‘But I did have this little chat with him at the funeral. I asked him why he’d dug up another old lady for you to run after—’

‘Mrs Anstey is his godmother!’ Catherine gasped.

‘And she’ll see out another generation of downtrodden home-helps,’ Peggy forecast grimly. ‘When I ran you up to see the flat, that frozen face of hers was enough for me. I told Drew that.’

‘Peggy, how could you? I only have to do her shopping and supply her with a main meal every evening. That isn’t much in exchange for a flat at a peppercorn rent.’

‘That’s why I smell a big fat rat. However…’ Peggy paused smugly for effect ‘…Drew told me that I didn’t need to worry because he didn’t expect you to be there for long. Now why do you think he said that?’

‘Maybe he doesn’t think I’ll suit her.’ Thank you, Peggy for giving me something else to worry about, she thought wearily.

Peggy was fingering the solicitor’s letter, a crease suddenly forming between her brows. ‘If you have to move this week, you can’t possibly come up home with me, can you?’ she gathered frustratedly. ‘And I was absolutely depending on you, Catherine. My mother and you get on like a house on fire and it takes the heat off me.’

‘The news isn’t going to make me Daniel’s favourite person either,’ Catherine muttered.

Unexpectedly, Peggy grinned. ‘Why don’t I take him anyway?’

‘On his own?’

‘Why not? My parents adore him. He’ll be spoilt to death. And by the time we come back you’ll have the flat organised and looking more like home. I’ve felt so guilty about not being able to do anything to help out,’ Peggy confided. ‘This is perfect.’

‘I couldn’t possibly let you—’

‘We’re friends, aren’t we? It would make the move less traumatic for him. Poor little beggar, he doesn’t half take things to heart,’ Peggy said persuasively. ‘He won’t be here when you hand Clover over to the animal sanctuary and he won’t have to camp out en route in Drew’s apartment either. I seem to recall he doesn’t get on too well with that housekeeper.’

Daniel didn’t get on too terribly well with anyone who crossed him, Catherine reflected ruefully. He especially didn’t like being babied and being told that he was cute, which, regrettably for him, he was. All black curly hair and long eyelashes and huge dark eyes. He was extremely affectionate with her, but not with anyone else.

‘You do trust me with him?’ Peggy shot at her abruptly.

‘Of course I do—’

‘Well, then, it’s settled,’ Peggy decided with her usual impatience.

The comment that she had never been apart from Daniel before, even for a night, died on Catherine’s lips. Daniel loved the farm. They had spent several weekends there with Peggy in recent years. At least this way he wouldn’t miss out on his holiday.

Six days later, Daniel gave her an enthusiastic hug and raced into Peggy’s car. Catherine hovered. ‘If he’s homesick, phone me,’ she urged Peggy.

‘We haven’t got a home any more,’ Daniel reminded her. ‘Africa’s getting it.’

Within minutes they were gone. Catherine retreated indoors to stare at a set of suitcases and a handful of boxes through a haze of tears. Not much to show for four years. The boxes were to go into Peggy’s garage. A neighbour had promised to drop them off at Drew’s apartment next week. She wiped at her overflowing eyes in vexation. Daniel was only going to be away for ten days, not six months!

* * *

Drew met her off the train and steered her out to his car. He was a broadly built man with pleasant features and a quiet air of self-command. ‘We’ll drop your cases off at the apartment first.’

‘First?’ she queried.

He smiled. ‘I’ve booked a table at the Savoy for lunch.’

‘Are you celebrating something?’ Catherine had lunched with Drew a dozen times in Harriet’s company, but he had always taken them to his club.

‘The firm’s on the brink of winning a very large contract,’ he divulged, not without pride. ‘Unofficially, it’s in the bag. I’m flying to Germany this evening. The day after tomorrow we sign on the dotted line.’

Catherine grinned. ‘That’s marvellous news.’

‘To be frank, it’s come in the nick of time. Lately, Huntingdon’s has been cruising too close to the wind. But that’s not all we’ll be celebrating,’ he told her. ‘What about your move to London?’

‘When will you be back from Germany?’ she asked as they left his apartment again.

‘Within a couple of days, but I’ll check into a hotel.’

Catherine frowned. ‘Why?’

Faint colour mottled his cheeks. ‘When you’re in the middle of a divorce you can’t be too careful, Catherine. Thank God, it’ll all be over next month. No doubt you think I’m being over-cautious, but I don’t want anyone pointing fingers at you or associating you with the divorce.’

Catherine was squirming with embarrassment. She had gratefully accepted his offer of a temporary roof without thought of the position she might be putting him in. ‘I feel terrible, Drew. I never even thought—’

‘Of course you didn’t. Your mind doesn’t work like that.’ Drew squeezed her hand comfortingly. ‘Once this court business is over, we won’t need to consider clacking tongues.’

She found that remark more unsettling than reassuring, implying as it did a degree of intimacy that had never been a part of their friendship. Then she scolded herself and blamed Peggy for making her read double meanings where no doubt none existed. She had inevitably grown closer to Drew since he had separated from Annette. He had become a frequent visitor to his sister’s home.

In the bar they received their menus. Catherine made an elaborate play of studying hers, although she did have great difficulty with words on a printed page. The difficulty was because she was dyslexic, but she was practised at concealing the handicap.

‘Steak, I think.’ Steak was safe. It was on every menu.

‘You’re a creature of habit,’ Drew complained, but he smiled at her. He was the sort of man who liked things to stay the same. ‘And to start?’

She played the same game with prawns.

‘I might as well have ordered for you,’ he teased.

Her wandering scrutiny glanced off the rear-view of a tall black-haired male passing through the foyer beyond the doorway. At accelerated speed her eyes swept back again in a double-take, only he was out of sight. Bemusedly she blinked and then told herself off for that fearful lurch of recognition, that chilled sensation enclosing her flesh.

‘Take one day at a time,’ Harriet had once told her. Harriet had been a great one for clichés, and four years ago she had made it sound so easy. But a day was twenty-four hours and each of them broken up into sixty minutes. How long had it been before she could go even five minutes without remembering? How long had it been since she had lain sleepless in bed, tortured by the raw strength of the emotions she was forcing herself to deny? In the end she had built a wall inside her head. Behind it she had buried two years of her life. Beyond it sometimes she still felt only half-alive…

‘Something wrong?’

Meeting Drew’s puzzled gaze, she gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘Someone walked over my grave,’ she joked, veiling her too-expressive eyes.

‘Now that you’re in London, we’ll be able to see each other more often,’ Drew remarked tensely and reached for her hand. ‘What I’m trying to say, not very well, perhaps, is…I believe I’m in love with you.’

Her hand jerked, bathing them both in sherry. With a muttered apology she fumbled into her bag for a tissue, but a waiter moved forward and deftly mopped up the table. Catherine sat, frozen, wishing that she were anywhere but where she was now, with Drew looking at her expectantly.

He sighed, ‘I wanted you to know how I felt.’

‘I…I didn’t know. I had no idea.’ It was all she could think to say, hopelessly inadequate as it was.

‘I thought you might have worked it out for yourself.’ There was a glimmer of wry humour in his level scrutiny. ‘Apparently I haven’t been as obvious as I thought I was being. Catherine, don’t look so stricken. I don’t expect anything from you. I don’t believe there is an appropriate response for an occasion like this. I’ve been clumsy and impatient and I’m sorry.’

‘I feel that I’ve come between you and Annette,’ she whispered guiltily.

He frowned. ‘That’s nonsense. It’s only since I left her that I began to realise just how much I enjoyed being with you.’

‘But if I hadn’t been around, maybe you would have gone back to her,’ she reasoned tautly. ‘You’re a very good friend, but I’m…’

He covered her hand again with his. ‘I’m not trying to rush you, Catherine. We’ve got all the time in the world,’ he assured her evenly, and deftly flipped the subject, clearly registering that further discussion at that moment would be unproductive.

They were in the River Room Restaurant when she heard the voice. Dark-timbred, slightly accented, like honey drifting down her spine. Instantly her head spun on a chord of response rooted too deep even to require consideration. Her eyes widened in shock, her every sinew jerked tight. The blood pounded dizzily in her eardrums. With a trembling hand she set down her wine glass.

Luc.

Oh, God…Luc. It had been him earlier. It was him. His carved profile, golden and vibrant as a gypsy’s, was etched in bold relief against the light flooding through the window behind him. One brown hand was moving to illustrate some point to his two male companions. That terrible compulsion to stare was uncontrollable. The lean, arrogant nose, the hard slant of his high cheekbones and the piercing intensity of deep-set dark eyes, all welded into one staggeringly handsome whole.

His gleaming dark head turned slightly. He looked straight at her. No expression. No reaction. Eyes golden as the burning heart of a flame. Her ability to breathe seized up. A clock had stopped ticking somewhere. She was sentenced to immobility while every primitive sense she possessed screamed for her to get up and run and keep on running until the threat was far behind. For a moment her poise almost deserted her. For a moment she forgot that he was very unlikely to acknowledge her. For a moment she was paralysed by sheer gut-wrenching fear.

Luc broke the connection first. He signalled with a hand to one of his companions, who immediately rose from his seat with the speed of a trained lackey, inclining his head down for his master’s voice.

‘I’ve upset you,’ Drew murmured. ‘I should have kept quiet.’

Her lashes dropped down like a camera shutter. The clink of cutlery and the buzz of voices swam back to her again. One thing hadn’t changed, she acknowledged numbly; when she looked at Luc there was nothing and nobody else in the world capable of stealing her attention. Perspiration was beading her upper lip. Luc was less than fifteen feet away. They said that when you drowned your whole life flashed before you. Oh, for the deep concealment of a pool.

‘Catherine—’

Belatedly she recalled the man she had been lunching with. ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache,’ she mumbled. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get something for it.’

Up she got, on jellied knees, undyingly grateful that she didn’t have to pass Luc’s table. Even so, leaving the restaurant was like walking the plank above a gathering of sharks. An unreasoning part of her was expecting a hand to fall on her shoulder at any second. Feeling physically sick, she escaped into the nearest cloakroom and ran cold water over her wrists.

Drying her hands, she touched the slender gold band on her wedding finger. Harriet’s gift, Harriet’s invention. Everyone but Peggy thought she was a widow. Harriet had coined and told the lie before Catherine had even left hospital. She could not have publicly branded Harriet a liar. Even so, it had gone against the grain to pose as something she wasn’t, although she was ruefully aware that, without Harriet’s respectable cover-story, she would not have been accepted into the community in the same way.

Her stomach was still heaving. Calm down, breathe in. Why give way to panic? With Luc in the vicinity, panic made sense, she reasoned feverishly. Luc was very unpredictable. He threw wild cards without conscience. But she couldn’t stay in here forever, could she?

‘I think there must be a storm in the air,’ she told Drew on her return, her eyes carefully skimming neither left nor right. ‘I often get a headache when the weather’s about to break.’

She talked incessantly through the main course. If Drew was a little overwhelmed by her loquacity, at least he wasn’t noticing that her appetite had vanished. Luc was watching her. She could feel it. She could feel the hypnotic beat of tawny gold on her profile. And she couldn’t stand it. It was like Chinese water-torture. Incessant, remorseless. Anger began to gain ground on her nerves.

Luc was untouched. It was against nature that he should be untouched after the scars he had inflicted on her. There was no justice in a world where Luc continued to flourish like a particularly invasive tropical plant. Hack it down and it leapt up again, twice as big and threatening.

And yet some day…somehow…some woman had to slice beneath that armour-plating of his. It had to happen. He had to learn what it was to feel pain from somebody. That belief was all that had protected Catherine from burning up with bitterness. She would picture Luc driven to his knees, Luc humanised by suffering, and then she would filter back to reality again, unable to sustain the fantasy.

Religiously she stirred her coffee. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, clockwise again, belatedly adding sugar. Her mind was in turmoil, lost somewhere between the past and the present. She was merely one more statistic on the long Santini casualty list. It galled her to acknowledge that demeaning truth.

‘I’ve been cut dead.’ Drew planted the observation flatly into the flow of her inconsequential chatter.

‘Sorry?’ she said, all at sea.

‘Luc Santini. He looked right through me on the way out.’

She was floored by the casual revelation that Drew actually knew Luc. Yet why was she so surprised? Even if he was in a much smaller category, Drew was in the same field as Luc. Huntingdon’s manufactured computer components. ‘Is th-that important?’ she stammered.

‘It’ll teach me not to get too big for my boots,’ Drew replied wryly. ‘I did do some business with him once, but that was years ago. I’m not in the Santini league these days. Possibly he didn’t remember me.’

Luc had a memory like a steel trap. He never forgot a face. She was guiltily conscious that Luc had cut Drew because of her presence and for no other reason. And she wasn’t foolish enough to pretend that she didn’t know who Luc was. The individual who hadn’t heard of Luc Santini was either illiterate or living in a grass hut on a desert island.

Drew sipped at his coffee, clearly satisfied that he had simply been forgotten. ‘He’s a fascinating character. Think of the risks he must have taken to get where he is today.’

‘Think of the body-count he must have left behind him.’

‘That’s a point,’ Drew mused. ‘To my knowledge, he’s only slipped once. Let me see, it was about four…five years ago now. I don’t know what happened, but he damned near lost the shirt off his back.’

Obviously he had snatched his shirt back again and, knowing Luc, he had snatched someone else’s simultaneously. On that level, Luc was unashamedly basic. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and perhaps interest into the bargain. In remembrance she stilled a shudder.

As they left the hotel, Drew said in a driven undertone, ‘I’ve made a bloody fool of myself, haven’t I?’

‘Of course you haven’t,’ she hastened to assure him.

‘Do you want a taxi?’ he asked stiffly. ‘I’d better get back to the office.’

‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’ She was ashamed that she hadn’t handled the situation with greater tact, but the combination of his confession and Luc, hovering on the horizon like a pirate ship, had bereft her of her wits.

‘Catherine?’ Before she could turn away, Drew bent down in an almost involuntary motion and crushed her parted lips briefly with his own. ‘Some day soon I’m going to ask you to marry me, whether you like it or not,’ he promised with recovering confidence. ‘It’s nearly five years since you lost your husband. You can’t bury yourself with his memory forever. And I’m a persistent man.’

A second later he was gone, walking quickly in the other direction. Tears lashed her eyes fiercely. Waves of delayed reaction were rolling over her, reducing her self-control to rubble. He was such a kind man, the essence of an old-fashioned gentleman, proposing along with the first kiss. And she was a fraud, a complete fraud. She was not the woman he thought she was, still grieving for some youthful husband and a tragically short-lived marriage. Drew had her on a pedestal.

The truth would shatter him. In retrospect, it even shattered her. For two years she had been nothing better than Luc Santini’s whore, in her own mind. Kept and clothed in return for her eagerness to please in his bed. Luc hadn’t once confused sex with love. That mistake had been hers alone. The polite term was ‘mistress’. Only rich men’s mistresses tended to share the limelight. Luc had ensured that she’d remained strictly off stage. He had never succumbed to an urge to take her out and show her off. She hadn’t had the poise or the glitter, never mind the background or the education. Even now, the memories were like acid burns on her flesh, wounding and hurting wherever they touched.

Choices. Life was all about choices. Sometimes the tiniest choice could raise Cain at a later date. At eighteen Catherine had made a series of choices. At least, she had thought she was making them; in reality, they had most of them been made for her. Love was a terrifying leveller of pride and intelligence when a woman was an insecure girl. Before she had met Luc, she wouldn’t have believed that it could be a mistake to love somebody. But it could be, oh, yes, it could be. If that person turned your love into a weapon against you, it could be a mistake you would regret for the rest of your days.

From no age at all, Catherine had been desperate to be loved. With hindsight she could only equate herself with a walking time-bomb, programmed to self-destruct. Within hours of her birth, she had been abandoned by her mother and her reluctant parent had never been traced. Nor had anybody ever come forward with any information.

She had grown up in a children’s home where she had been one of many. She had been a dreamer, weaving fantasies for years about the unknown mother who might eventually come to claim her. When that hope had worn thin in her teens, she had dreamt of a towering passion instead.

Leaving school at sixteen, she had worked as a helper in the home until it had closed down two years later. The Goulds had been related to the matron. A young, sophisticated couple, they had owned a small art gallery in London. Giving her a job as a receptionist, the Goulds had paid her barely enough to live on and had taken gross advantage of her willingness to work long hours. Business had been poor at the gallery and it had been kept open late most nights, Catherine left in charge on the many evenings that her employers went out.

Luc had strolled in one wet winter’s night when she’d been about to lock up. His hotel had been near by. He had walked in off the street on impulse, an off-white trenchcoat carelessly draped round his shoulders, crystalline raindrops glistening in his luxuriant black hair and that aura of immense energy and self-assurance splintering from him in waves. She had made her first choice then, bedazzled and bemused by a fleeting smile…she had stopped locking up.

A silver limousine purred into the kerb several yards ahead of her now, penetrating her reverie. She hadn’t even noticed where she’d been walking. Looking up, she found herself in a quiet side-street. The rear door of the car swung open and Luc stepped out on to the pavement, blocking her path. ‘May I offer you a lift?’

CHAPTER TWO

CATHERINE focused on him in unconcealed horror, eyes wide above her pale cheeks. ‘I’m…I’m not going anywhere—’

‘You’re simply loitering?’ Luc gibed.

‘That I would need a lift,’ she completed jerkily. ‘How did you know where I was?’

A beautifully shaped brown hand moved deprecatingly.

‘How?’ she persisted.

‘I had you followed from the hotel.’

Oxygen locked in her throat. Had she really thought this second meeting a further coincidence? Had she really thought he would let her go without a single question? A car pulled up behind the limousine, two security men speedily emerging. Like efficient watchdogs, one of them took up a stance to Luc’s rear, the other backing across the street for a better vantage point. For Catherine, there was an unreality to the scene. She was reminded of how vastly different a world she had inhabited over the past four years.

‘Why would you want to do that?’ she whispered tautly.

Black spiky lashes lowered over glittering dark eyes. ‘Perhaps I wanted to catch up on old times. I don’t know. You tell me,’ he invited softly. ‘Impulse? Do you think that is a possibility?’

Involuntarily she backed towards the railings behind her. ‘You’re not an impulsive person.’

‘Why are you trembling?’ He moved soundlessly closer, and her shoulders met wrought iron in an effort to keep the space between them intact.

‘You come up out of nowhere? You gave me one heck of a fright!’

‘You used to have the love of a child for surprises.’

‘You might not have noticed, but I’m not a child any more!’ It took courage to hurl the retort, but it was a mistake. Luc ran a raking, insolent appraisal over her, taking in the purple bullclip doing a haphazard task of holding up her silky hair, the lace-collared blouse and the tiered floral skirt cinched at her tiny waist with a belt. Modestly covered as she was, she still felt stripped.

‘I see Laura Ashley is still doing a roaring trade,’ he said drily.

He was so close now that she could have touched him. But she wouldn’t raise her eyes above the level of his blue silk tie. He wore a dove-grey suit with an elegance few men could emulate. Superb tailoring outlined his lean length in the cloth of a civilised society. However, what she sensed in the atmosphere was far from civilised. It was nameless, frightening. A silent intimidation that clawed cruelly at her nerve-endings.

‘We don’t have anything to talk about after all this time.’ The assurance left her bloodless lips in a rush, an answer to an unvoiced but understood demand.

Negligently he raised a hand and a fingertip roamed with taunting slowness from her delicate collarbone where a tiny pulse was flickering wildly up to the taut curve of her full lower lip. Her skin was on fire, her entire body suddenly consumed by a heatwave.

‘Relax,’ he cajoled, carelessly withdrawing his hand a split second before she jerked her head back in violent repudiation of the intimacy. Flames danced momentarily in his dark eyes and then a slow, brilliant smile curved his hard mouth. ‘I didn’t intend to frighten you. Come…are we enemies?’

‘I’m in r…rather a hurry,’ she stammered.

‘And you still don’t want a lift? Fine. I’ll walk along with you,’ he responded smoothly. ‘Or we could get into the car and just drive around for a while…even sit in a traffic jam. Believe me, I’m in an unusually accommodating mood.’

‘Why?’ Valiantly moving away from the hard embrace of the railings, Catherine straightened her shoulders. ‘What do you want?’

‘Well, I don’t expect you to do what we used to do in traffic jams.’ Slumbrous dark eyes rested unrepentantly on the tide of hot colour spreading beneath her fair skin. ‘What do you think I might want? Surely, it’s understandable that I should wish to satisfy a little natural curiosity?’

‘What about?’

‘About you. What else?’ An ebony brow quirked. ‘Do you think I am standing here in the street for my own pleasure?’

Catherine chewed indecisively at her lower lip. She could feel his temper rising. Time was when Luc would have said ‘get in the car’ and she would have leapt. He was smiling, but you couldn’t trust Luc’s smiles. Luc could smile while he broke you in two with a handful of well-chosen words. Without speaking, she reached her decision and bypassed him. Luc was exceptionally newsworthy and she could not afford to be seen with him, lest her past catch up with the present that Harriet had so carefully reconstructed for her.

A security man materialised at her elbow and opened the door of the limousine. Ducking her head, she slid along the cream leather upholstery to the far corner. The door slammed on them, sealing them into claustrophobic privacy.

‘Really, Catherine…was that so difficult?’ Luc murmured silkily. ‘Would you like a drink?’

Her throat was parched. She fought for her vanished poise. ‘Why not?’

Her palms smoothed nervously down over her skirt, rearranging the folds. Her skin prickled at his proximity as he bent forward to press open the built-in bar. For the longest moment of her existence, the black springy depths of his hair were within reach of her fingers. The mingled aroma of some elusive lotion and that indefinable but oh, so familiar scent that was purely him assailed her defensively flared nostrils. As he straightened again, she was disturbingly conscious of the clean movement of rippling muscles beneath the expensive fabric that sheathed his broad shoulders. And an ache and an agony were reborn treacherously within her.

Her hands laced tightly together. In the unrelenting silence, she believed she could hear her own heartbeat, speeding and pounding out the evidence of her own betrayal. She was horrified by the sensual imagery that had briefly driven every other thought from her mind. If her memory was playing tricks on her, her body was no less eager to follow suit.

Luc extended her glass, retaining hold of it long enough to force her to look at him. It was a power-play, a very minor one on Luc’s terms but it made her feel controlled. She took several fast swallows of her drink. It hurt her tight throat and she hated the taste, but once she had been naïve enough to drink something she detested because she believed that was sophistication.

‘Feel better now?’ Luc enquired lazily, lounging back with his brandy in an intrinsically graceful movement. ‘Do you live in London?’

‘No,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’m only here for the day. I live in…in Peterborough.’

‘And you’re married. That must be a source of great satisfaction to you.’

The ring on her wedding finger began to feel like a rope tightening round her vocal chords. She decided to overlook the sarcasm.

‘When did you get married?’

‘About four years ago.’ She took another slug of her drink to fortify herself for the next round of whoppers.

‘Shortly after—’

Her brain had already registered her error. ‘It was a whirlwind romance,’ she proffered in a rush.

‘It must have been,’ he drawled. ‘Tell me about him.’

‘It’s all very pedestrian,’ she muttered. ‘I’m sure you can’t really be interested.’

‘On the contrary,’ Luc contradicted softly. ‘I am fascinated. Does your husband have a name?’

‘Luc, I—’

‘So, you remember mine? An unsought compliment…’

She stared down into her glass. ‘Paul. He’s called Paul.’ Fighting the rigid tension threatening her, she managed a small laugh. ‘Honestly, you can’t want to hear all this!’

‘Indulge me,’ Luc advised. ‘Are you happy living in…where was it? Peterhaven?’

‘Yes, of course I am.’

‘You don’t look very happy.’

‘It doesn’t always show,’ she retorted in desperation.

‘Children?’ he prompted casually.

Catherine froze, icicles sliding down her spine, and she could not prevent a sudden, darting, upward glance. ‘No, not yet.’

Luc was very still. Even in the grip of her own turmoil, she noticed that. And then without warning he smiled. ‘What were you doing with Huntingdon?’

The question thrown at her out of context shook her. ‘I…I ran into him while I was shopping,’ she hesitated and, with a stroke of what seemed to her absolute brilliance, added, ‘My husband works for him.’

‘You do seem to have enjoyed a day excessively full of coincidences.’ Stunning golden eyes whipped over her flushed, heart-shaped face. ‘The unexpected is invariably the most entertaining, isn’t it?’

She set down her glass. ‘I r…really have to be going. It’s been…lovely meeting you again.’

‘I’m flattered you should think so,’ Luc murmured expressionlessly. ‘What are you afraid of?’

‘Afraid of?’ she echoed unsteadily. ‘I’m not afraid of anything!’ She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘We have nothing to talk about.’

‘I foresee a long day ahead of us,’ Luc commented.

Catherine bent her head. ‘I don’t have to answer your questions,’ she said tightly, struggling to keep a dismaying tremor out of her voice. Fight fire with fire. That was the only stance to take with Luc.

‘Think of it as a small and somewhat belated piece of civility,’ Luc advised. ‘Four and a half years ago, you vanished into thin air. Without a word, a letter or a hint of explanation. I would like that explanation now.’

Stains of pink had burnished her cheeks. ‘In a nutshell, getting involved with you was the stupidest thing I ever did,’ she condemned.

‘And telling me that may well prove to be your second.’ Dark hooded eyes rested on her. ‘You slept with me the night before you disappeared. You lay in my arms and you made love with me, knowing that you planned to leave…’

‘H-habit,’ she stammered.

Hard fingers bit into her wrist, trailing her closer without her volition. ‘Habit?’ he ground out roughly, incredulously.

Her tongue was glued to the dry roof of her mouth. Mutely she nodded, and recoiled from the raw fury and revulsion she read in his unusually expressive eyes. ‘You’re hurting me,’ she mumbled.

He dropped her wrist contemptuously. ‘My compliments, then, on an award-winning performance. Habit inspired you with extraordinary enthusiasm.’

She reddened to the roots of her hair, attacked by the sort of memories she never let out of her subconscious even on temporary parole. To remember was to hate herself. And that night she had known in her heart of hearts that she would never be with Luc again. With uncharacteristic daring, she had woken him up around dawn, charged with a passionate despair that could only find a vent in physical expression. Loving someone who did not love you was the cruellest kind of suffering.

‘I don’t remember,’ she lied weakly, loathing him so much that she hurt with the force of her suppressed emotions. He made her a stranger to herself. He had done that in the past and he was doing it now. She was not the Catherine who understood and forgave other people’s foibles at this moment. She had paid too high a price for loving Luc.

‘Habit.’ He said it again, but so softly; yet she was chilled.

Quite by accident, she registered, she had stung his ego, stirring the primitive depths of a masculinity that was rarely, if ever, challenged by her sex. She wasn’t the only woman to make a fool of herself over Luc. Women went to the most embarrassing lengths to attract his attention. They went to even greater lengths to hold him. The reflection was of cold comfort to her.

Women were leisure-time toys for Luc Santini. Easily lifted, just as easily cast aside and dismissed. On the rise to the top, Luc had never allowed himself to waste an ounce of his single-minded energy on a woman. Women had their place in his life…of course they did. He was a very highly sexed male animal. But a woman never held the foreground in his mind, never came between him and his cold, analytical intelligence.

‘I have to be going,’ she said again and yet, when she collided with that gleaming gaze, she was strangely reluctant to move.

‘As you wish.’ With disorientating cool, he watched her gather up her bag and climb out of the car on rubbery legs, teetering dangerously for an instant on the very high heels she always wore.

Dragging wayward eyes from his dark, virile features, she closed the door and crossed the street. She felt dizzy, shell-shocked. All those lies, she thought guiltily; all those lies to protect Daniel. Not that Luc could be a threat to Daniel now, but she felt safer with Luc in ignorance. Luc didn’t like complications or potential embarrassments. An illegitimate son would qualify as both.

A little dazedly, she shook her head. Apart from that one moment of danger, Luc had been so…so cool. She couldn’t say what she had expected, only somehow it hadn’t been that. In the Savoy, she could have sworn that Luc was blazingly angry. Obviously that had been her imagination. After all, why should he be angry? Four years was a long time, she reminded herself. And he hadn’t cared about her. You didn’t constantly remind someone you cared about that they were living on borrowed time. At least, not in Catherine’s opinion you didn’t.

Her mind drifted helplessly back to their first meeting. She had rewarded his mere presence at the gallery with a guided tour par excellence. She had never been that close to a male that gorgeous, that sophisticated and that exciting. Luc, bored with his own company and in no mood to entertain a woman, had consented to be entertained.

He had smiled at her and her wits had gone a-begging, making her forget what she was saying. It hadn’t meant anything to him. He had left without even advancing his name but, before he had gone, he said, ‘You shouldn’t be up here on your own. You shouldn’t be so friendly with strangers either. A lot of men would take that as a come-on and you really wouldn’t know how to handle that.’

As he’d started down the stairs, glittering golden eyes had glided over her one last time. What had he seen? A pretty, rounded teenager as awkward and as easily read as a child in her hurt disappointment.

In those days, though, she had been a sunny optimist. If he had happened in once, he might happen in again. However, it had been two months before Luc reappeared. He had walked in late on and alone, just as he had before. Scarcely speaking, he had strolled round the new pictures with patent uninterest while she’d chattered with all the impulsive friendliness he had censured on his earlier visit. Three-quarters of the way back to the exit, he had swung round abruptly and looked back at her.

‘I’ll wait for you to close up. I feel like some company,’ he had drawled.

The longed-for invitation had been careless and last-minute, and the assumption of her acceptance one of unapologetic arrogance. Had she cared? Had she heck!

‘I’ve been shut in all day. I’d enjoy a walk,’ he had murmured when she’d pelted breathlessly back to his side.

‘I don’t mind,’ she had said. He could have suggested a winter dip in the Thames and she would have shown willing. Taking her coat from her, he had deftly assisted her into it, and she had been impressed to death by his instinctive good manners.

As first dates went, it had been…different. He had walked her off her feet and treated her to a coffee in an all-night café in Piccadilly. She hadn’t had a clue who he was and he had enjoyed that. He had told her about growing up in New York, about his family, the father, mother and sister who had died in a plane crash the previous year. In return she had opened her heart about her own background, contriving to joke as she invariably did about her unknown ancestry.

‘Maybe I’ll call you.’ He had tucked her, alone and unkissed, into a cab to go home.

He hadn’t called. Six, nearly seven agonising weeks had crawled past. Her misery had been overpowering. Only when she had abandoned all hope had Luc shown up again. Without advance warning. She had wept all over him with relief and he had kissed her to stop her crying.

He could have turned out to be a gangster after that kiss…it wouldn’t have mattered; it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference to her feelings. She was in love, hopelessly, crazily in love, and somewhere in the back of her mind she had dizzily assumed that he had to be too. How romantic, she had thought, when he presented her with a single white rose. Later she had bought a flower press to conserve that perfect bloom for posterity…

What utterly repellent things memories could be! Luc didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. He had simply set about acquiring the perfect mistress with the same cool, tactical manoeuvres he employed in business. Step one, keep her off balance. Step two, convince her she can’t live without you. Step three, move in for the kill. She had been seduced with so much style and expertise that she hadn’t realised what was happening to her.

Pick an ordinary girl and run rings round her. That was what Luc had done to her. She might as well have tied herself to the tracks in front of an express train. Every card had been stacked against her from the start.

Glancing at her watch in a crowded street, she was stunned to realise how late it was. Lost in her thoughts she had wandered aimlessly through the afternoon. Without further ado, she headed for the bus-stop.

Drew’s housekeeper, Mrs Bugle, was putting on her coat to go home when Catherine let herself into the apartment. ‘I’m afraid I was too busy to leave dinner prepared for you, Mrs Parrish,’ she said stiffly.

‘Oh, that’s fine. I’m used to looking after myself.’ But Catherine was taken aback by the formerly friendly woman’s cold, disapproving stare.

‘I want you to know that Mrs Huntingdon is taking this divorce very hard,’ Mrs Bugle told her accusingly. ‘And I’ll be looking for another position if Mr Huntingdon remarries.’

The penny dropped too late for Catherine to speak up in her own defence. With that parting shot, Mrs Bugle slammed the front door in her wake. A prey to a weary mix of anger, embarrassment and frustration, Catherine reflected that the housekeeper’s attack was the finishing touch to a truly ghastly day.

So now she was a marriage-wrecker, was she? The other woman. Mrs Bugle would not be the last to make that assumption. Annette Huntingdon’s affair was a well-kept secret, known to precious few. Dear God, how could she have been so blind to Drew’s feelings?

Harriet had been very much against her brother’s desire for a divorce. She had lectured Drew rather tactlessly, making him more angry and defensive than ever at a time when he was already hurt and humiliated by his wife’s betrayal.

Had she herself been too sympathetic in an effort to balance Harriet’s well-meant insensitivity? When Drew chose to talk to her instead, had she listened rather too well? She had felt desperately sorry for him but she hadn’t really wanted to be involved in his marital problems. All she had done was listen, for goodness’ sake…and evidently Drew had read that as encouragement.

What she ought to be doing now was walking right back out of this apartment again! But how could she? After paying Mrs Anstey a month’s rent in advance, she had less than thirty pounds to her name. Peggy had raged at her frequently for not demanding some sort of a wage for looking after Harriet, whose housekeeper had retired shortly after Catherine had moved in. However, Harriet, always ready to give her last penny away to someone more needy than herself and, let’s face it, Catherine acknowledged guiltily, increasingly silly with what little money she did have, could not have afforded to pay her a salary.

And it hadn’t mattered, it really hadn’t mattered until Harriet had died. With neither accommodation nor food to worry about, Catherine had contrived to make ends meet in a variety of ways. She had registered as a child-minder, although, between Harriet’s demands and Daniel’s, that had provided only an intermittent income for occasional extras. She had grown vegetables, done sewing alterations, boarded pets…somehow they had always managed. But the uncertainties of their future now loomed over her like a giant black cloud.

As she unpacked, she faced the fact that she would have to apply to the Social Services for assistance until she got on her feet again. And when Drew returned from Germany, she decided, she would tell him about her past. If what he felt for her was the infatuation she suspected it was, he would quickly recover. Either way, she would lose a friendship she had come to value. When she fell off her pedestal with a resounding crash, Drew would feel, quite understandably, that he had been deceived.

The doorbell went at half-past six. She was tempted to ignore it, lest it be someone else eager to misinterpret her presence in the apartment. Unfortunately, whoever was pressing the bell was persistent, and her nerves wouldn’t sit through a third shrill burst.

It was Luc. For a count of ten nail-biting seconds, she believed she was hallucinating. As she fell back, her hand slid weakly from the door. ‘Luc…?’ she whispered.

‘I see you haven’t made it back to Peterborough yet. Or was it Peterhaven?’ Magnificent golden eyes clashed with startled blue. ‘You didn’t seem too sure where you lived. And you’re a lousy liar, cara. In fact, you’re so poor a liar, I marvel that you even attempted to deceive me. Yet you sat in that car and you lied and lied and lied…’

‘Did I?’ she gasped, in no state to put her brain into more agile gear.

‘Do you know why I let you go this afternoon?’ He sent the door crashing shut with one impatient thrust of his hand.

‘N-no.’

‘If you had told me one more lie in the mood I was in, I would have strangled you,’ Luc spelt out. ‘Where do you get the courage to lie to me?’

It was nowhere in evidence now. Helplessly she stared at him. He was so very tall and, in the confines of a hall barely big enough to swing the proverbial cat in, he was overpowering. He had all the dark splendour of a Renaissance prince in his arrogant bearing. And he was just as lethally dangerous. As he slid a sun-bronzed hand into the pocket of his well-cut trousers, pulling the fabric taut across lean, hard thighs, she shut her eyes tight on the vibrantly sensual lure of him.

But her mouth ran dry and her stomach clenched in spite of the precaution. Had she really expected to be quite indifferent? To feel nothing whatsoever for this man she had once loved, whose child she had once borne in fearful isolation? Now she knew why she had fled his car in such a state, both defying and denying the existence of responses she had fondly believed she had outgrown with maturity.

A woman met a male of Luc Santini’s calibre only once in a lifetime if she was lucky. And forever after, whether she liked it or not, he would be the standard by which she judged other men. She was suddenly frighteningly aware that, in all the years since she had walked out of that Manhattan apartment, no other man had stirred her physically. It had been no sacrifice to ignore the sensuality which had in the past so badly betrayed her. Now she was recognising that facing Luc again had to be the ultimate challenge.

The silence went on and on and on.

‘Cristo, cara!’ The intervention was disturbingly low-pitched. ‘What is it that you think of? You look as though you’re about to fall down on your knees and pray for deliverance…’

Her lashes flew up. ‘Do I?’ It was called playing for time by playing dumb. What was he doing here? What did he want from her? Which lies had he identified as lies? Dear God, did he suspect that she had a child? How could he suspect? she asked herself. Even so, she turned white at the very thought of that threat.

Without troubling to reply, he strode past her to push open the kitchen door and glance in. In complete bewilderment, she watched him repeat the action with each of the remaining doors, executing what appeared to be an ordered search of the premises. What was he looking for? Potential witnesses? Her mythical husband? Or a child? Her flesh grew clammy with fear. In the economic market, Luc was famed for his uncanny omniscience. He noticed what other people didn’t notice. He could interpret what was hidden. If he had ever taken the time to focus that powerful intelligence on her disappearance, he would have grasped within minutes that there was a strong possibility that she was pregnant.

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