Dangerous Interloper
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

MIRANDA SHEPHERD paused on the pavement, staring up through the scaffolding at the building in front of her. Her heart sank. So it had started, then. What had once been an admittedly shabby but untouched Georgian town house had now fallen victim to the developers’ greedy and uncaring hands.

It had been happening so often lately, especially since their quiet country town had become so easily accessible to London.

Whereas once shoppers had clustered happily and untidily around the small market square and its surrounding warren of narrow cobbled streets, they were now abandoning these old-fashioned local shops for the new hypermarket and enclosed shopping centre which had recently been constructed on the edge of the town, leaving its once thriving centre empty.

As the leases had fallen due for renewal they had been bought up, and slowly, one by one, the shabby Georgian town houses were being redeveloped and sold off to the new breed of businesses taking over the centre of the town; building societies, banks, estate agencies like her father’s, and offices.

This building had been a particular favourite of Miranda’s and to see it fall into the hands of what she privately considered to be one of the town’s least sympathetic and most greedy builders had saddened and outraged her. She wasn’t alone in her resentment and anger either, even though her father might gently point out that people had to make a living and that the rash of newcomers and new businesses to the area was also bringing with it new jobs. A conservation group had sprung up to protect what was left of the town’s heritage, although in the case of this particular house it was already too late.

The building had, she learned from her father, been sold to another newcomer; a businessman from London who wanted to base his computer-software business in the town.

She shuddered inwardly, able to imagine all too easily how the house would look when it was finished, stripped of its faded elegance and ‘improved’ to meet the demands of its new owner.

As she was staring sadly at the yawning windows, now minus their elegant sash frames, she was hailed by a man coming out of the front door.

‘Well, if it isn’t Miranda, and looking as stunning as ever … Looking for me, were you, my lovely? I’m just about to knock off. Fancy coming and having a bite of lunch with me?’ Miranda froze, cursing her own folly in stopping. She might have known that, with her luck, Ralph Charlesworth would be here. It was his building firm which was doing the renovations, and that on its own would have been sufficient to ensure that she was not well-disposed towards him; but added to that was the fact that he was a swaggering, unpleasantly arrogant man, who at thirty-five with a wife and three small children still seemed to think he was free to behave as though they simply did not exist.

For some reason he was at present insisting on pursuing Miranda, although she had made it more than plain to him that she was not only not interested, but she found his heavy-handed flirtatiousness offensive and unwelcome. Even if he had not been married, she would not have found him attractive, either physically or mentally.

He was a big man, rather overweight, with small, rather unpleasantly close-set eyes and a manner of looking at her that made her skin crawl.

Now, as she inwardly cursed the misfortune which had made her stop to look at the house just as he happened to be emerging from it, she told him coldly, ‘No, as a matter of fact I wasn’t looking for you.’

‘No?’

The disbelieving leer he gave her made her face flush with renewed anger.

In her view it was unfortunate that, through her job as a very junior partner in her father’s estate agency business, she was obliged in certain circumstances to come into contact with Ralph.

On these occasions she was always icily and coldly formal with him, making sure she never gave him any reason to believe she was anything other than repulsed by his apparent interest in her.

Her father had sympathetically offered to make sure she came into as little contact with the builder as possible, but she had shaken her head determinedly. After all, she couldn’t hide behind her father’s protection all her life. Ralph Charlesworth and men like him were just one of the more unpleasant aspects of her chosen career.

She was a tall woman, but very slenderly built, with fragile-looking bones, and a delicately heart-shaped face framed by a soft straight bob of silky black hair.

In her own view her eyes were her best feature, being almond shaped and wide apart, and a colour which varied from blue to lavender, depending on her mood.

Right now they were the colour of the storm clouds which lined the horizon on blustery days, tinged almost purple with the weight of her anger and dislike.

Up above her on the scaffolding she could hear some of Ralph’s men calling out jocular comments to him. No doubt his men didn’t mean to be personally offensive to her, she reflected bitterly as she turned away from the building; no doubt, working as they did for a man like Ralph, they took their cue from him and perhaps thought it flattering to call out personal and often offensively personal remarks to any woman foolish or unwary enough to walk past them. She personally found such behaviour unwarranted and unpleasant.

‘Aw, come on … With a figure like yours, you can’t need to worry about calories,’ Ralph leered, openly letting his gaze slide lasciviously over her body.

To her humiliation, Miranda felt her face flushing as guiltily as though she had in some way invited the intrusiveness of his sexual appraisal of her.

Surely her neat pleated skirt, with its complementary tailored jacket over a crisp white blouse, could never be even remotely described as provocative, and as for her manner … she was sure that at no time had she ever given Ralph Charlesworth the slightest reason to believe that she even liked him, never mind …

All too conscious of the attention she was drawing from the watching men above her, Miranda decided there was no point in allowing herself to be drawn into any further change of conversation, so she turned on her heel and walked angrily away, her mind seething with anger and resentment as she turned the corner and headed for the town square.

As she rounded the corner the wind caught her hair, whipping it across her eyes, momentarily blinding her so that she didn’t see the man coming towards her until it was too late and she had walked right into him.

‘Hey, are you all right?’

‘All right …’ The words reverberated dizzily somewhere deep within her, causing the most odd sensations inside her. Or was it the firm pressure of those male arms, the proximity of that hard male chest which rose and fell so … so steadily and somehow comfortingly against her own that was causing her to experience this odd light-headedness?

Shakily she fought to control her peculiar responses, pushing herself away from the warmth of his body, and drawing herself up to her full height as she forced herself to at least try to look businesslike and cool.

‘Yes … yes … I’m fine … so silly of me … I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

She looked at him as she spoke and suffered such a shock of sensation through her entire body that it was as though she had suddenly become completely paralysed.

She was a tall girl, but this man … was taller—six feet two at least. He had broad shoulders, very broad shoulders, she acknowledged weakly as she discovered she was still staring at him.

‘Oh, is that what it was?’ His voice was warm and deep, and laced with something that suggested that he had a good sense of humour. ‘I rather had the impression you were trying to escape from something or someone.’

She couldn’t help it; Miranda knew that her eyes were widening automatically in reaction to his perceptiveness. Instinctively she looked up into his eyes, and then immediately wished she hadn’t. They were warm and grey, and fringed with thick dark lashes. She couldn’t remember the last time a man, any man, had had such an intense physical impact on her. Come on, she warned herself, you’re twenty-eight, not eighteen. You do not walk into a stranger and then stand staring at him as dumbstruck as though you’ve fallen head over heels in love with him, even if he does come packaged six feet-odd, grey eyed, dark-haired and with the most devastating smile you’ve ever seen.

It’s the inner person who matters, not his outward physical appearance, she told herself severely as she tried to pull herself together, and realised that he was still smiling at her as though waiting for a response to his comment.

The very idea of explaining to him about Ralph Charlesworth was far too impossible even to be contemplated and so instead she launched into a breathless rush of semi-truths, explaining to him that it was the sight of the desecration of what had once been a wonderful example of small-town Georgian architecture that had sent her scurrying round the corner without paying attention to what she was doing.

‘Still, I suppose this computer genius who’s bought the place doesn’t know how important it is to preserve buildings like this one; nor if he did, would he care.’

As she came to a breathless full stop, his eyebrows arched. ‘That’s a rather biased criticism, isn’t it?’ he suggested mildly.

Miranda felt her face flush uncomfortably, aware that she had probably sounded more overheated than their very brief acquaintance warranted.

She also realised several other things as well: namely that she was deliberately if unconsciously delaying taking her leave of him; that she could have quite easily stood for hours here on the pavement looking at him; that she was going to be late arriving back at the office; that she was in fact behaving like a complete fool, and should have simply thanked him and apologised to him for bumping into him in a crisp businesslike manner and gone on her way.

‘I … I must go,’ she told him quickly. ‘I’m sorry I delayed you …’

She hesitated, half hoping he would make some kind of gallant comment about it being a pleasure to be delayed by her, and half relieved when he didn’t. If there was one thing that ordinarily she detested, it was heavy-handed compliments, and yet to know that this particular man had found her company pleasurable …

Angry with herself, she stepped hurriedly past him, walking quickly into the square and then across it.

Their office was on the other side of the square in a pretty Queen Anne town house, which her father had bought when he’d originally set up his practice in the town.

She didn’t allow herself to look back, but that didn’t stop her thoughts from wondering busily who he was. Ruefully she told herself that he was very probably married with a family, chiding herself for her interest in him. She hadn’t seen him around before, but that didn’t mean anything. The town was growing, mushrooming almost, and whereas when she’d first joined her father in his estate agency business as his junior partner she could hardly walk across the town square without stopping to acknowledge the greetings of almost everyone she passed, now the opposite was true.

Liz, their receptionist, gave her a sunny smile when she walked in.

‘Dad’s in his office, is he?’ she asked her.

‘Yes. He’s going out in half an hour, though, to show some clients round Frenshaw’s farm.’

Thanking her, Miranda walked through the pleasant, comfortable reception area and into the passage beyond it. Three doors led off the passage, one to her father’s office, one to her own, and one that they used as a general filing and storage space.

As she rapped briefly on her father’s office door before walking in, she found herself thinking about the man again, wondering who he was and where he had been going.

Stop it, she told herself severely. She was a woman of twenty-eight, who had firmly and deliberately avoided what she considered to be the pit-falls of falling in love and committing herself to the kind of marriage she had seen overwhelm so many of her friends.

Maybe in the large cities things were different, but here in this country town—and, she suspected, in others like it—a woman was still expected to be the mainstay of the family in the traditional way.

Oh, perhaps these days a woman had a job as well, but, from what Miranda could see of her friends’ lives, this made things harder for them and not easier. It might give them some financial independence, but in return for that they had to suffer losing the independence of having time to themselves, and to shoulder an extra burden of guilt, especially when they had children.

Most of her friends had married in their early twenties, when the last thing she had wanted had been the constraints of having to put another person’s desires and needs before her own. She liked being free to make her own decisions about how she should spend her life and her time. She knew that in the eyes of many of her friends she was well and truly established as a bachelor girl and a career woman, and originally this hadn’t bothered her, but lately she had begun to undergo some kind of sea change; a totally unexpected sea change, it had to be admitted.

For the first time, she had recently picked up a friend’s new baby, expecting to experience her normal lack of interest but ready to make all the appropriate noises to satisfy the new mother’s pride, and had instead experienced the most peculiar sense of completeness, of wanting to go on holding the small warm body; so much so that when she had handed the baby back to its mother she had actually felt a tiny ache of loss.

She had quickly put the experience behind her, telling herself that it was simply a momentary aberration; something hormonal that was unlikely to happen again. Only she had been wrong.

She hoped she was far too sensible to mistake this unfamiliar yearning for a mate and his offspring for anything other than a probable reaction to too much not-so-subtle pressure from the media to conform to the image of the modern woman, who, according to them, in order to be fulfilled must ‘have it all’. Certainly she had already ruefully decided that the chances of her finding a man with whom she might want to actually spend the rest of her life locally were very small indeed.

She had a large circle of friends, enjoyed their company, both male and female, but none of the men she knew had ever aroused anything more than a mild degree of friendship within her. At least until today …

‘Ah, there you are,’ her father greeted her as she walked into his office. ‘You haven’t forgotten about tonight, have you?’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes, the dinner dance at the golf club. I told you about it,’ he reminded her. ‘I’ve invited Ben Frobisher, the man who bought the house in the High Street.’

‘The computer man?’ Miranda asked grimly. ‘Oh, you know how I feel about what’s happening to the town … to its buildings. I walked past there this morning. Ralph Charlesworth’s got the contract for the work.’ Her face hardened a little. ‘That building ought to have been listed. We’ve been in touch with the Georgian Society and they confirmed—’

‘Look, Miranda, I know how you feel,’ her father interrupted her patiently, ‘but this man’s an important client. He’ll have employees who will be wanting to relocate in the area. He himself is looking for a house. He’s renting the Elshaw place at the moment.’

‘If he’s as high-profile as you say, I can’t understand why he should want to attend the annual golf club hop,’ Miranda told her father drily.

‘I expect he wants to get to know people. After all, he is going to be a part of the community.’

‘Is he? From what I’ve seen, most of the people who’ve moved down here seem to prefer to form their own small smart cliques rather than try to integrate with the locals. Look at what’s happened at the tennis club.

‘This time last year we had four tatty courts that were only used in the summer and a club-house that was falling down; now, thanks to a small high-pressure group of London wives, we’ve got a building fund going and ambitious plans to build two indoor courts, plus all the facilities of an expensive London gym, complete with swimming pool, bar, and everything that goes with it.’

‘So? What’s wrong with that?’

‘Dad, don’t you see? It’s spoiling the character of the place. Another few years and we’ll just be another dormitory town. The locals won’t be able to afford to live here any more, and during the week it will be a town of too rich, too bored women vying with one another.

‘There won’t be any real life to the town; it will be completely sanitised. There’ll be no children—they’ll all be away at boarding school. There won’t be any old people—they’ll all be packed off to exclusive residential homes.’

‘If that means that we’ll no longer have a dozen or more surly-looking youths hanging round the town square all night, then personally I think it would be a good thing.’

‘But, Dad, those kids belong here, and they’re not surly. They’re just … just young,’ Miranda told him helplessly. One of her extramural activities which gave her the most satisfaction was her work with a local youth club. ‘They need an outlet for their energy, that’s all,’ she told her father. ‘And they won’t find it in some expensive exclusive tennis club.’

He laughed, shook his head and smiled ruefully at her.

‘I think you’re over-reacting a little, Miranda. Don’t forget that people like Ben Frobisher are bringing new life to the area, new jobs … new opportunities.’

‘New architecture,’ Miranda murmured under her breath, unable to resist.

Her father looked at her. ‘You don’t know what he intends to do with that house. He struck me as an eminently sensible man. I’m sure that he—’

‘Sensible? And yet he still employed Ralph Charlesworth?’

Her father sighed. ‘All right. I know you don’t like Ralph Charlesworth; admittedly he isn’t the most prepossessing of men, but he does have a good reputation as a builder. He’s tough and he sticks to his contracts.’

Miranda shook her head, knowing that this was a subject on which she and her father would never agree That was what made her job so enjoyable, though: the fact that they were so different … had views which were sometimes so conflicting. Her father admitted that since she had joined the firm their business had improved dramatically, and equally she was the first to concede that without her father’s experience, his ‘know-how’, his tolerance, she would never have been able to branch out into testing ideas which were innovative and new.

They made a good team, she recognised as she smiled at him.

‘Don’t forget,’ he warned her, ‘about tonight; I’ve arranged for Frobisher to meet us at home, and we’ll all set off from there. It will make things easier.’

‘What time do you want me there?’ Miranda asked him, giving in. She didn’t live with her father, but had her own small cottage several miles outside the town.

‘Half-past seven,’ he told her. ‘Helen is arriving at seven.’

Helen Johnson was a widow some five years younger than her father. They had become engaged at Christmas … and were getting married at the end of the month. They were then going on a month’s cruise, leaving Miranda in sole charge of the business.

She liked Helen and was pleased that her father was remarrying. Her mother had always had a weak heart, and after a long period of illness had died several days after Miranda’s twelfth birthday.

Miranda had missed her desperately; had gone through anguish, anger, fear and despair, had hated both her mother for leaving her and her father for letting her, but eventually she had begun to recover, and by the time she was in her late teens had become mature enough to understand that if she missed her mother so desperately then her father must feel even more alone.

She had been twenty-one when her father had offered her her partnership in the business, and it was then that she had decided to find her own home, as much for her father’s sake as her own. He was an attractive man, still only in his mid fifties, and, although he never seemed to be interested in any of the women who pursued him, Miranda had felt that it was only fair to him not to burden him with a live-in grown-up daughter.

He had met Helen three years ago, when she had come into their offices to ask their advice on selling her large house following the death of her husband. What she wanted was to stay in the area, but in something rather smaller, she had told them.

It had originally been Miranda who had dealt with her, and who had convinced her to buy a very pretty Georgian house on the outskirts of the town, convenient for everything, and yet still quiet, with a pleasant garden and pretty views over the river and the surrounding countryside.

Now she and Miranda’s father were getting married and Miranda was delighted for both of them.

What did not delight her quite so much was the fact that Ralph Charlesworth’s wife was Helen’s niece.

Not that she had anything against Susan Charlesworth. In fact she considered her a very pleasant, if somewhat introverted woman. What she did not like was the fact that as Helen’s niece she would be attending the wedding. Which meant that her husband would also be attending the wedding … which meant that she, Miranda, would be forced to endure his company for a number of hours and to be pleasant to him in the interests of family harmony, and yet at the same time reinforce to him her complete rejection of him as a man.

She had no idea why he had decided to make her the object of his pursuit. She had certainly given him no encouragement to do so. She found him detestable and felt thoroughly sorry for Susan Charlesworth. The next time she found herself going all maternal and gooey-eyed over someone’s baby, she might try reminding herself of how much she would loathe being married to a man like Ralph Charlesworth, she told herself wryly as she settled down to work.

She worked steadily all afternoon, reflecting that the influx of people into the area had certainly brought a dramatic increase in the firm’s business, and that if things kept on the way they were going her father would have to consider taking on another partner.

At half-past five her father himself rapped on her office door and opened it.

‘Don’t forget about tonight, will you?’ he asked her.

‘No. I promise I’ll be there.’

Just as he was about to leave she asked, ‘Doesn’t this Ben Frobisher have a wife? He’s in his thirties, isn’t he?’

‘Thirty-four, and no, he doesn’t have a wife. He’s never been married and seems to be quite content with his single state. A bit like you,’ he pointed out slyly, grinning at her when she glowered threateningly at him.

After he’d gone, she tried to concentrate on her work, but for some reason her thoughts kept sliding back to the man she had bumped into earlier and at last, in exasperation, she put down her pen and leaned her chin on her hand, frowning into space.

It was ridiculous to keep thinking about him like this. A stranger … a total stranger, who, for all the thoughtful interest she could have sworn she had seen glinting in his eyes, had made no attempt to make any capital out of the situation fate had thrown them into and suggest extending their acquaintance.

Not that she would have wanted him to come on to her in the manner of the likes of the Ralph Charlesworths of this world, she told herself hastily, but a subtle compliment and the suggestion that he would not have been averse to seeing her again …

For heaven’s sake, she derided herself, trying to dismiss him from her mind. She was a woman, not a teenager, and it wasn’t even as though she didn’t have a hundred better things to occupy her thoughts.

Tomorrow night, for instance, there was a meeting of the newly formed Committee for the Preservation of Local Buildings. She had been asked if she would like to be its president, but she had hastily declined, explaining that her other responsibilities meant that, although she would be an enthusiastic supporter of their work, she could not take charge of it and do it justice.

The others on the committee were all locals; Tim Ford, a local historian and schoolteacher, now retired; the vicar’s wife; Linda Smithson, the doctor’s wife; and a couple of others. Miranda was also due to attend another meeting the following night, to decide how best they could organise something within the town which would prove of sufficient interest to its youth to keep them from loitering boredly in the town square.

Yes, she had more than enough to occupy her time and her thoughts without allowing them to drift helplessly and dangerously in the direction of a man she didn’t really know and whom she was hardly likely to see again.

The trouble was, though … the trouble was that nature had seen fit to bestow her with a rather over-active imagination. Something which on occasions she found to be rather a trial, especially when she was trying to concentrate on promoting a cool and businesslike professional image.

Right now it was rebelliously insisting on coaxing her away from her work, and into an extremely unlikely but very alluring daydream in which, instead of releasing her so promptly and so courteously as he had done, the stranger had held on to her that little bit longer, had gazed deeply and meaningfully into her eyes until her whole body tingled with the sensual message of that look.

Almost without knowing she was doing it, she had closed her eyes and relaxed in her chair.

Of course, she would have tried to pull away, to convey with the cool remoteness of her withdrawal that she was not in the least impressed or flattered by his interest. And of course she would be able to look directly and unmovingly at the sensual curve of that very male mouth without feeling the slightest tremor inside her, even while she was aware that he was still holding on to her and that his gaze was fastened on her mouth in a way that in her daydream made her give a tiny sigh.

Of course he wouldn’t kiss her in broad daylight in the middle of the street. Of course he wouldn’t, couldn’t, but he could release her slowly and regretfully, so that his fingers held on to her arms as though he couldn’t bring himself to break his physical contact with her, and of course before he let her go he had made sure that he knew both her name and where he could get in touch with her.

‘Miranda. Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’

Miranda jolted upright in her chair, opening her eyes as Liz came in.

‘I … I—er—wasn’t asleep,’ she told her guiltily. ‘I … I’ve … got a bit of headache.’

‘Oh, dear, and you’re going out to that golf club do tonight, aren’t you?’ Liz sympathised. ‘I hope it goes before then.’

Tell one lie and you had to tell a round dozen to back it up, Miranda reflected to herself half an hour later as she drove homewards. And what on earth had possessed her anyway? Allowing her mind to drift in that idiotic silly fashion. Good heavens, she had thought she was well past the stage of such idiocy. Daydreams of that kind belonged to one’s very early teens alongside fruitless dreams over thankfully out-of-reach pop stars.

She put her foot down a little harder on her accelerator. Well, tonight should bring her down to earth with a bump. She only hoped that Ben Frobisher didn’t prove to be too boring. No doubt he would talk about computers all night long, which meant she would hardly be able to understand a thing he was saying.

Her cottage was small and rather isolated, its timber frame sunk into the ground as though crumpling under the burden of its heavy stone roof.

When she had originally bought the cottage it had been little more than a shell. It had taken a good deal of work and research to transform it into the home it was now.

The setting sun harmonised with the soft colour of its peachy-pink-washed exterior walls. She had made the lime wash herself, and dyed it, using a traditional recipe and ingredients. That result had only been achieved after several attempts, but it had been well worth the effort she had put in.

Inside she had taken just as much care over the renovation of her small rooms and the purchase of the furniture which clothed them.

The back door opened straight into a square stone-flagged kitchen. The cat curled up on top of the Aga greeted her with a soft purr of pleasure.

‘You don’t fool me. I know it’s only cupboard-love, William,’ she told him as she scratched behind his ears.

There was no point in making a meal, not when she would be eating out later. A quick snack, a cup of coffee and then she would have to go upstairs and get ready to go out.

She made a wry face to herself. There were a dozen things she’d rather be doing tonight than playing the dutiful daughter and partner, but she had promised her father.

CHAPTER TWO

WELL her dress was hardly designer style, Miranda reflected, studying her image critically in her mirror, but then the golf club was not exactly the haunt of the beautiful people. Most of the members were around her father’s age, pleasant enough but inclined to be a little dull. She wondered cynically if their new client realised what he was letting himself in for, and then told herself that she was perhaps being a little unfair.

Biased … that was what he had called her. She stopped looking at herself, her eyes becoming soft and dreamy. Now, if she had been going out with him tonight, she wouldn’t have been satisfied with her simple plain black dress and her mother’s pearls, she reflected, not seeing as others did, that the slender elegance of her body somehow made the simple understatement of her plain dress all the more appealing and eye-catching in a way that would never have occurred to her. If anyone had told her that the silky swing of her hair, the soft sheen of her skin and the plain simplicity of her clothes all added up to a sensuality all the more effective because it was so obviously unstudied, she wouldn’t have believed them, but it was true none the less.

Tartly reminding herself that, since the object of her ridiculous daydreams had not appeared the least bit interested in her, it was pointless wasting her time fretting about the clothes she didn’t have to wear if he asked her out, she clipped on her pearl earrings and picked up her bag.

All through her schooldays her teachers had bemoaned her tendency to daydream. She had thought in the last few years that she had finally outgrown it. Now it seemed she had been over-optimistic.

It took her just over half an hour to drive to her father’s house on the other side of town. Helen’s car was already parked in the drive, and when Miranda went up to the front door it was Helen who opened it to her.

At her father’s insistence she still had a key for her old home, but she only used it when he was away on holiday, just to check that the house and its contents were safe.

Helen kissed her and greeted her warmly. She wasn’t as tall as Miranda, a still-pretty fair-haired woman of fifty, whom Miranda doubted anyone could ever have disliked. She had a natural warmth, a genuine compassion for humanity that Miranda could only describe as a very special kind of motherliness, and that made her wish sometimes that her father had met her earlier and that she could have had the benefit of her compassion and love during her own difficult teenage years, although she was honest enough to admit that, had her father met her then, she would probably not have responded well to her and would have been inclined to be jealous and possessive of her father.

‘Dad not ready yet?’ Miranda queried as she closed the door behind her.

‘You know your father,’ Helen said humourously. ‘He says he can’t find his cufflinks.’

Miranda laughed. ‘It’s just as well you’re organising everything for the wedding. How’s it going by the way? Have you found the outfit yet?’

Helen had complained to her only the week before that she had still not found an outfit she liked enough to wear for the supposedly quiet church wedding organised for the end of the month.

‘No, I haven’t. I’ve decided that I’m going to have to have a day in Bath or maybe even in London.’ Helen pulled a face. ‘I’m dreading it. I loathe city shopping.’

They chatted easily together for a few minutes while they waited for Miranda’s father to come downstairs.

Just as he did so, they heard a car coming up the drive.

‘This will be Ben Frobisher!’ her father exclaimed, hurrying towards the door and opening it.

As she heard the sound of male footsteps crunching over the gravel, Miranda slipped discreetly into the shadows at the rear of the hall so that she would have a good view of her partner for the evening, without his being similarly able to observe her.

She watched as he mounted the steps and came forward into the light, and then her heart turned over with shock, and she stared with open disbelief, closing her eyes and then opening them again; but no, she wasn’t daydreaming; it was the stranger, the man she had bumped into earlier on. He was standing there, calmly returning her father’s handshake, turning to smile warmly at Helen, his dark hair shining cleanly and healthily beneath the light, his tall broad-shouldered body moving easily within the elegant confines of his dinner suit, his eyes as familiarly and perceptively grey as she had remembered as they swept the shadows.

‘Miranda, come and meet Ben,’ her father called out to her, forcing her to move forward, to extend her hand and to force her lips into what she hoped was a sophisticated and cool smile.

‘Actually Mr Frobisher and I have already met.’ His handshake was firm, if brief.

‘Ben, please,’ he corrected her.

‘You two know each other?’ Miranda heard her father saying curiously. ‘But, Miranda, you never—’

‘We met by chance earlier on today. At the time your daughter was escaping from the depressing sight of my desecration of what she informed me had once been a fine old Georgian building.’ His eyebrows lifted humorously as he smiled at Miranda. ‘She was a little—er—angry, and I didn’t think it wise to introduce myself.’

‘Oh, Miranda is one of the leading lights of our newly formed Committee for the Preservation of Local Buildings,’ Miranda heard her father saying while to her own fury she could feel her face flushing.

‘It isn’t quite as bad as you seem to think, you know,’ Ben Frobisher told her, still smiling at her, adding, ‘In fact, why don’t you give me an opportunity to prove it to you? Let me show you the plans I’ve had drawn up.’

‘By Ralph Charlesworth?’ Miranda demanded scornfully, letting her temper and her embarrassment get the better of her.

The whole evening was going to be a complete disaster. She could tell that already … Of all the humiliating things to have happened … had he known who she was when …? But no, he couldn’t have.

‘No, not by Charlesworth, as it happens.’

That made her focus on him and then immediately wish she had not done so, as she was subjected to the fully dizzying effect of meeting that level grey gaze head on.

It was like running full tilt into an immovable object, she reflected, the effect just as instant and even more of a shock to the system. Her heart was beating too fast; she was fighting not to breathe too quickly and shallowly. She felt slightly dizzy and thoroughly bemused. It was totally unfair that he should affect her like this.

‘I’m sure Miranda would be delighted to see them,’ she could hear her father saying heartily at her side. ‘Wouldn’t you, Mirry?’

Wouldn’t she what? she wondered muzzily, somehow or other managing to force herself to respond with a brief inclination of her head and a rather wobbly smile.

‘I’m delighted that you were able to join us tonight, Ben!’ Miranda heard her father exclaiming. ‘They’re a good crowd at the club.’

Behind her father’s back, Miranda grimaced slightly to herself and then flushed wildly as something made her look up and she saw that Ben Frobisher was watching her.

‘And you, Miranda,’ he enquired politely, ‘do you play golf?’

Her father answered for her, chuckling.

‘Not Mirry. She doesn’t have the patience. She plays tennis, though …’

‘Tennis. It’s becoming very fashionable at the moment.’

For some reason the musing comment delivered in Ben Frobisher’s very male voice made her stiffen and look defensively at him. She had the feeling that his comment had been slightly barbed … slightly derogatory.

‘I’ve been playing ever since I left school,’ she told him challengingly, adding pointedly just in case he hadn’t got the message, ‘long before it became fashionable.’

As they walked out to the car, Miranda tried to quell her mixed feelings of irritation and embarrassment and then reflected how very different reality was from her daydreams. In them she had perceived Ben Frobisher as a highly desirable stranger, who also desired her; in reality … In reality he quite plainly did nothing of the kind, and there was an abrasion between them, a covert hostility that was making her feel both uncomfortable and defensive.

It was all because she had made that stupid unguarded comment about the house, of course. And the only reason she had said that had been that she didn’t want to admit to him that he had been right and that she had been escaping from something and someone, namely Ralph Charlesworth and his pursuit of her. Well, it was too late now to wish she had not acted so impulsively. Much too late. But how could she have guessed who he was? She had imagined that the then unknown Ben Frobisher would be a much smaller man, hunch-shouldered and probably bespectacled, as befitted someone who spent long hours staring at a computer screen working out complex programs.

This man looked as though he had spent more time outdoors than in, although she ought to have been warned by the unmistakable intelligence and shrewdness in those grey eyes.

‘I thought we’d all travel together in my car,’ her father suggested, and before she could argue and insist on taking her own car Miranda discovered that Ben Frobisher was politely holding open one of the rear doors of her father’s BMW for her and that she had no option but to get in. When he went round the other side of the car and got in beside her, she could literally feel her muscles tensing.

Not against him, she recognised miserably, but against herself, against her own involuntary reaction to him.

Hell, she swore crossly to herself. This was the last thing she needed … an inconvenient and definitely unwanted sexual reaction to a man whom she had now made up her mind she did not like.

All right, so maybe it wasn’t his fault that she had made such a fool of herself, but somehow, illogically, her emotions refused to accept this. There had been no reason for him to mention what she had said about the house in front of her father and Helen, had there? It was bad enough that he knew how tactless she had been, and as for looking at his precious plans … She tensed again as she realised belatedly that she had already accepted his offer. That would teach her to let her mind wander and not to concentrate on what was going on around her! With good reason had her teachers rebuked her for daydreaming.

Teachers? She wasn’t a schoolgirl now, she was a woman … an independent career woman. An independent career woman who willfully daydreamed about unknown men? She chewed unhappily on her bottom lip, angry with herself as well as with the man sitting silently beside her.

The evening was going to be a total and utter disaster, she knew it.

As her father drove them towards the golf club, she told herself that it served her right and that this was what came of allowing herself to weave idiotic daydreams around a man she didn’t really know.

Had she known who he was when they met … She frowned to herself as she stared out into the darkness of the surrounding landscape.

Would his physical impact on her have been lessened if she had known who he was? She wasn’t a young girl any more, after all; a person’s personality, their beliefs, their sense of humour, their views of life and love—it was important that all these should mesh with and complement her own, and anyone who could employ someone like Ralph Charlesworth to undertake the renovation of a graceful old house like the one Ben Frobisher had bought could not possibly have the same outlook on life as herself. Which was probably just as well. After all, he had not shown any reciprocal awareness of her interest in her—quite the reverse—so the sensible, indeed, the essential thing for her to do was to forget the disruptive physical effect that the first unexpected meeting had had on her and to concentrate instead on the reality of the man he was actually proving to be.

A very sensible and mature decision to come to; so why, at the same time as she was congratulating herself on this sensible mature outlook, was she also angrily wishing that she had dressed with a little more élan, a little more sophistication; that she had perhaps made the effort to take herself off to Bath and buy herself a new dress?

A new dress for the golf club dance—and when she had promised herself that this year she intended to save up and treat herself to a holiday in Hong Kong and the Far East? What on earth was happening to her?

Nothing, she told herself firmly, answering her own question; nothing whatsoever was happening to her, and nothing was going to happen to her.

Even so, when the lights of the club-house came into view she found herself wishing that the evening was already over and that she was safely tucked up in her cosy cottage bedroom.

Something about Ben Frobisher made her feel acutely unsure of herself; acutely aware of him as a man, and of her own reactions to that maleness.

She moved uncomfortably in her seat. She didn’t like this unwanted awareness of him, this sudden and totally unexpected schism in what she had believed her sexuality to be: controlled, tamed and of no real force in her life, and not what she had experienced on first seeing him.

She had gone through all the usual sexually experimental stages in her teens, but had never been promiscuous, either by inclination or peer pressure. After all, when you lived in a small town in which your father was something of a prominent figure, you felt almost honour-bound not to indulge in a variety of involvements and affairs.

In this part of the world respectability was still considered to be important and a virtue. Couples might live together, but in most cases they eventually married.

Since in the years when her peers were settling down and marrying she had had no wish to follow suit, she had chosen to remain celibate rather than indulge in a series of relationships. Rather happily celibate, if she was honest, and when she contemplated the thought of any kind of intimacy with men like Ralph Charlesworth it was revulsion that made her body shudder, not desire.

No, she had never considered herself a highly sexually motivated person, and she didn’t now, which made her illogical reaction to Ben Frobisher all the more unnerving.

Had she actually, really, this afternoon, fantasised about how it would be to have him kissing her?

She did shudder now, horrified to remember just how easily and intensely she had been able to imagine what it would feel like to be taken in his arms and—

‘I’ll drive up to the door so that you can get out, and then I’ll park the car,’ her father was saying, thankfully forcing her to concentrate on the present and the blessedly mundane activity of getting out of the car.

The golf club and its course had been donated to the town in the twenties by a wealthy and benevolent local resident, who had hired an architect to design the club-house after the style of Sir Edwin Lutyens’s designs for small country houses, so that it was vaguely Tudoresque in style. As the three of them went inside to wait for her father while he parked the car, Miranda acknowledged the greetings of several of her father’s cronies, registering as she did so the speculative, curious looks she was getting from their wives. No need to ask herself why; the answer was standing right beside her, all six-feet-odd of manhood of him.

Why, she seethed inwardly, were there still in this day and age women who still believed that no member of their own sex could be complete without a man in her life? It was all nonsense, just the same as suggesting that no woman could be complete without having had a child. Her thoughts floundered to an uncomfortable halt as she recalled her own vulnerability in that particular direction. But then, it was not as though she considered herself incomplete without a child, it was just … just—

‘Aunt Helen … not long now until the wedding, is it?’

Miranda tensed as she heard the soft hesitant voice of Susan Charlesworth, and she knew even before she had heard Ben acknowledging briefly, ‘Charlesworth,’ that Ralph was with her. She had almost been able to feel his presence from the atavistic reaction of her body, from the way the tiny hairs on her skin had risen in physical protest at his nearness.

It galled her unbearably sensing that Ralph was fully aware of her aversion to him and that for some reason this only caused him to increase his pursuit of her.

She didn’t know how on earth poor Susan could tolerate him. In her shoes … but, then, thankfully she would never have allowed herself to be trapped in that kind of situation, married to a man who was flagrantly and frequently unfaithful, who treated her so contemptuously and inconsiderately, who humiliated her in public and, Miranda suspected, in private as well.

She was glad that her father joined them before she could be drawn into the small flood of exchanges passing between the other three as Ralph introduced his wife to Ben, and Helen explained her relationship to Susan.

Miranda excused herself on the pretext of wanting to go to the Ladies, gritting her teeth in rage and revulsion as Ralph leered at her and told her fulsomely, ‘Going to check up on the old makeup, are we, then, Miranda? Shouldn’t worry too much, if I were you. A good-looking woman like you doesn’t need any warpaint, although I must admit there’s something about a woman’s mouth when it’s painted with lipstick that makes a man wonder what it would be like to kiss it off.’

As she turned her back on him, red flags of rage flying in her cheeks, Miranda heard Susan saying uncomfortably, ‘Ralph! Really.’

Horrible, revolting man, Miranda seethed as she walked quickly towards the corridor and the Ladies. The language he used was almost as offensive and demeaning to her sex as the intent behind it.

As she stared at her flushed face in the mirror, she was half tempted to wipe off the discreet touch of lipstick she was wearing, but then she decided that to do so was to give in to his bullying, demeaning tactics and would allow him to see how much his words had affected her, and to a man like Ralph Charlesworth the fact that he had affected her, even if it was with revulsion, would be something he would consider to be a triumph.

No, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much he had disgusted and offended her.

She stayed in the Ladies for as long as she could, praying that when she rejoined the others he and his wife would have left them.

When she eventually walked back into the bar, she was relieved to see that her father was in discussion with the president of the club and his wife; and that there was no sign of Ralph and Susan.

As Miranda rejoined them, Helen murmured sadly to her, ‘Poor Susan; I don’t know how on earth she puts up with that lout Ralph. I’m sorry if he embarrassed you, Miranda.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Miranda told her, adding, ‘I can’t understand why Susan stays with him either, but, then, I suppose with three children …’

‘Well, yes, although she claims that she does love him.’ She gave a faint sigh. ‘Poor girl; I have a horrid feeling that sooner or later he’s going to leave her, and that it will probably be sooner.’

THROUGHOUT THE meal Ben Frobisher conversed mainly with her father. He had made several attempts to draw Miranda into their conversation, but she had resolutely refused to respond with anything more than cool politeness. The man had charm, she had to give him that, she admitted reluctantly to herself, but she wasn’t going to be swayed by it.

Even so, she discovered that she was listening rather more intently than she would have wished when Helen questioned about his background and family.

She was surprised to discover that he was one of four children—somehow she had imagined him being an only one—and that the other three were all married with young families, something which made him the butt of a great deal of family teasing.

‘You don’t approve of marriage, then?’ Helen hazarded, smiling at him.

He laughed. He had a nice laugh, Miranda acknowledged; it was both warm and spontaneous, crinkling his eyes at the corners and doing the most peculiar things to her insides.

‘Quite the contrary,’ he assured Helen, obviously not minding her questions.

‘But I do believe that it’s a lifetime’s commitment and that as such it’s something one needs to be very sure about. A marriage that is going to endure can’t be based on mere sexual attraction, no matter how strong that attraction initially appears,’ he said bluntly. ‘That’s not to say that it isn’t an important part of any marriage, but it can never be the total sum of an enduring relationship. I suppose the truth is that as yet I still haven’t met the woman I know I won’t be able to live without.’

Helen laughed and teased him, ‘I do believe you’re a romantic!’

‘Aren’t most of us at heart?’

A computer expert who claimed to be romantic. Wasn’t that a complete contradiction?

‘Are you a romantic, Miranda?’

She stared at him, and felt her skin starting to flush. His question had caught her off guard. She had been listening to the conversation and yet had considered herself safely outside it. Now she wondered if he hadn’t thrown the question at her because he wanted to embarrass her, rather than through any desire to know what motivated her.

‘Miranda, romantic?’ her father snorted, answering the question for her. ‘Miranda is one of your modern breed of women who scorns such old-fashioned notions. She prides herself on being independent and self-sufficient.’

Miranda knew that her father was really only teasing her, but for some reason his words hurt her, drawing a picture of her which her emotions instantly rejected as she viewed the cold, emotionless creature his words had created. She wasn’t really like that, was she?

It was true that she was independent, but that was because … because … because what? Because she had wanted to give her father his freedom … his right to have a life of his own, the kind of life he might not have felt free to have with an adult daughter still living under his roof.

Well, maybe her motivation hadn’t been quite so altruistic, and certainly she enjoyed her work, but, if she was truly the woman her father seemed to think, wouldn’t she have long ago left this small market town behind her and headed out into a much wider and harsher world?

‘Jeffrey, honestly, that’s not true,’ Helen intervened. ‘Don’t listen to him, Ben,’ she exhorted. ‘Miranda might try to hide it, but in reality she’s one of the most tender-hearted people you could ever wish to meet, although I know she hates admitting it. I suspect she’s rather afraid of letting people see how tender-hearted she actually is in case it makes her too vulnerable.’

Miranda was horrified. Much as she had disliked her father’s jocular misrepresentation of her as a hard-headed determined woman with no room in her life for time-wasting emotions, it had been preferable to Helen’s far too accurate portrait of her.

She knew that Ben Frobisher was looking at her, but she could not bring herself to return his look with anything like the composure that doing so required.

‘No one likes to appear too vulnerable,’ she could hear him saying, but, although the words were addressed to Helen, she could sense that he was still watching her.

Her appetite had deserted her completely. She pushed the food around on her plate, longing for the evening to be over. She had been right; the only thing she had not guessed was the true intensity of the evening’s awfulness.

She was glad when her father started to ask Ben about his plans for relocating his business to the town, and was both surprised and rather chagrined to learn that, while he would be bringing some key people down with him from London, he was hoping to recruit the majority of his employees locally.

‘It’s the kind of business that requires young sharp minds,’ he told them all. ‘At a recent convention, the majority of those attending were under thirty, and a good percentage were under twenty. At the moment we hold a good place in the market because we’ve been able to specialise in a profitable area, but we can only hold on to that advantage if we remain in the forefront of new advances, and in order to do that we need keen, innovative minds.’

‘What will happen to your existing employees?’ Miranda asked him.

‘Most of them have already found new jobs. There’s no shortage of demand for trained people in and around London, and, of course, they’re all getting redundancy payments. In fact, none of them actually wanted to relocate with us. They’re all under thirty, with established lifestyles in London, most of them are unmarried, and the thought of moving out to a quiet market town didn’t have much appeal for them.’

‘But it did for you?’

Miranda had no idea why she was questioning him … talking to him. If she had any sense she would simply sit here in silence, having as little to do with him as possible.

‘I’m not under thirty. The pace of London life doesn’t have much appeal for me any more. I wanted a home … not a glossy London flat that’s antiseptic and arid. I’ve always liked this part of the world. My parents lived near Bath for a while when I was in my teens. They’ve moved north now. My father comes from the Borders and wanted to go back there when he retired.’

‘Which reminds me,’ her father interrupted. ‘I’ve got the details of some houses for you. You did say you’d prefer something outside the town?’

‘Yes, I do.’

While the two men discussed the various properties available, Helen commented to Miranda that she would be glad when all the fuss of the wedding was over.

Everyone had finished eating, coffee had been served, and the moment Miranda had been privately dreading had arrived.

The lights had been dimmed, the small band had started playing and couples were gradually filling the dance floor.

She prayed that Ben would not out of politeness ask her to dance. The very last thing she wanted was to be held in his arms. And yet, what had she to fear? She had already convinced herself that, no matter how physically attractive she had originally found him, that attraction had vanished once she knew who and what he was, and, that being the case, what had she to fear from dancing with him? Nothing; nothing at all, and anyway, why was she inviting problems that might not occur? In all probability he wasn’t even going to invite her to dance with him.

CHAPTER THREE

‘WOULD you like to dance?’

Miranda tensed. How could she refuse?

‘Er—thank you.’

Unsteadily she stood up and allowed Ben Frobisher to guide her towards the dance floor.

‘I’m sorry if this evening has rather lumbered you with me,’ he apologised to her. ‘When your father asked me to join him this evening, I thought it might be a good way of getting to know a few people.’

Miranda tried not to think about the effect his proximity was having on her. Treat him just like any other client you’ve had to entertain, she exhorted herself, but she knew already that that was impossible.

The band was playing a waltz, and her body tensed involuntarily as Ben took her in his arms.

‘It’s hard to believe that the waltz was once banned for being decadent, isn’t it?’ she said breathlessly as she fought to dismiss the sensations invoked by his touch, sensations which were making her feel as nervous and ill at ease as a teenager. Thank goodness it was impossible for him to know just how he was affecting her!

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he responded thoughtfully, ‘when you bear in mind that it was the first time that men and women had actually danced exclusively with one partner and the opportunities it affords for body contact. And even these days it isn’t exactly unknown for couples to take advantage of the intimacy allowed in dancing together to reinforce their desire for one another.’

She couldn’t help it—her skin went hot as her mind treacherously conjured up a mental image of the two of them swaying intimately together, dancing body to body, his arms wrapped around her so that she was aware of every movement of his muscles, every breath he took, every small reaction of his flesh to hers … She trembled uncontrollably, causing him to frown down at her and enquire in concern, ‘Are you cold?’

‘Yes. Just a little,’ she lied. It wasn’t true; if anything she was too hot, but she could hardly admit to him just what had caused that sensual frisson of sensation to galvanise her body.

As she matched her steps to his she had an appalling urge to move nearer to him, to close the gap between their bodies and to …

Desperately she shut her eyes, trying to suppress the illicit wash of sensation that rushed through her, but the darkness only made things worse, only increased her sensual awareness of him to the pitch where she was as intimately aware of the heat and scent of him as though they were in fact established lovers.

That shook her more than anything else—that ready acceptance of her senses to acknowledge her physical responsiveness to him.

That was the trouble with being a daydreamer, with having a far too vivid imagination, she told herself bitterly. It led you into all sorts of dangerous assumptions.

For example, if she hadn’t given in this afternoon to her own idiotic and wanton impulse to tamper with the actual reality of her earlier brief meeting with him, transforming it into some kind of impossible erotic encounter, she would not be suffering the humiliation and discomfort of trying to subdue her body’s physical response to him right now.

Thank God that as yet no one had developed any means of correctly reading the human mind. The very last thing she could have endured would have been the ignominy of knowing that he had guessed what was happening to her.

She tried to convince herself that in these days of equality it was no more shameful to her as a woman that she should be so physically affected by a man she hardly knew, and who had definitely not given her any encouragement to feel that desire, than had their positions been reversed, but it didn’t work.

She was obviously a good deal more gender-orientated than she had supposed, she reflected wryly.

‘Your father was telling me that you live out at Gallows Reach.’

The soft-voiced comment made her stiffen slightly before admitting, ‘Yes, I have a cottage out there.’

‘You don’t find it too remote?’

‘Not really. Perhaps if I weren’t mixing with so many people during the day I might find it too isolated, but as it is …’

‘Mmm. I know what you mean. I must say, I’m enjoying the solitude of the place I’m renting. I thought it would be a good idea to see how I took to living somewhere so remote before I actually took the plunge and bought a property.’

‘And how are you finding it?’ Miranda asked him curiously.

‘Interesting,’ he told her promptly. ‘Something of a voyage of self-discovery, in fact. It’s rather a long time since I’ve spent so much time on my own.’

Miranda tensed again. Did that mean that, despite the fact that he wasn’t married, there was or had been someone important in his life? But his next words disproved this theory, as he added, ‘In London I had an apartment at the top of the building which housed our office. Not an ideal situation because it meant that I was virtually spending twenty-four hours a day with my work. In the beginning when we first set up in business that was necessary, but recently I’ve began to find that my whole life seems to revolve around the company.’

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