“You haven’t heard my proposal. It’s actually quite honorable.”

Aurora pushed her plate away unfinished and looked heavenward. “Okay, hit me with it. Then I’ll tell you exactly what I think of it.”

“I’ll return one of your diaries to you,” Luke told her, “for each date you have with me. Incidentally, I only intend to keep the last five diaries, so our agreement would extend for five dates. After that who knows?”

“And if I don’t agree to this?”

Luke shrugged. “I guess I’ll get to know you through your diaries.”

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A Question of Marriage
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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘FOR crying out loud, Luke,’ Jack Barnard said sotto-voce as he eyed the retreating, ramrod-straight back of one of the most militant women he’d ever met, ‘why the hell do you put up with that…that gorgon? Getting anywhere near you is like trying to break into Fort Knox!’

Luke Kirwan grinned and picked up the list of messages his secretary had just presented him with before departing indoors. ‘Miss Hillier?’ he drawled. ‘Believe me, Jack, she’s invaluable for keeping…’ he paused ‘…students of the female persuasion at bay.’

Jack Barnard stopped looking irritable behind his spectacles and laughed aloud. ‘Don’t tell me they still make a nuisance of themselves? It’s not a problem I would have a problem with, by the way. Herds of sweet young things panting to be in one’s bed. Mind you—’ he looked reflective ‘—with the delectable Leonie Murdoch in one’s life, perhaps not. Is that what this is all about?’ He gestured comprehensively to include the house behind them and the garden around them.

Luke Kirwan rubbed his blue-shadowed jaw and squinted up at the home he had only recently moved into. It was a two-storeyed, attractive, hacienda-style home perched on Manly Hill, a bay-side suburb of Brisbane. From the terrace, where he sat enjoying a beer with his long-time friend Jack Barnard, who was also his solicitor, they had sweeping views out over Moreton Bay towards North Stradbroke Island. ‘Maybe,’ he said pensively and shrugged. ‘Maybe not. I was looking for an investment when it came on the market, then I thought it might be nice to live here.’

Jack Barnard regarded his friend quizzically. It was hard to imagine a more unlikely professor of physics—and one of the youngest to gain his chair at the university he taught at. Because Luke Kirwan was about as far removed in looks from the proverbial absent-minded professor as one could get. Tall, lean and dark with a hint of rapier-like strength, he also possessed a pair of brooding dark eyes that made him look arrogant even when he wasn’t—although there was no doubt he could be arrogant.

Add to this a boundless energy, a fine intellect and the capacity to look through people who bored him with complete indifference—and you had the kind of man women found electrifying, Jack Barnard mused ruefully. He himself, he went on to think also ruefully, was much more the archetypal professor. He was short-sighted and supremely absent-minded.

But it was on his mind as he surveyed Luke Kirwan that a worm of discontent might be niggling away at his friend. One would have thought that, by now, Luke and Leonie Murdoch might have tied the knot—they were a spectacular couple and had been together for a few years. In fact he, Jack, had been quite sure it was about to happen when he’d first heard about the new house. Now, though, he wasn’t at all sure of it.

‘May I point out that you spend very little time at home, Luke, so this could all be quite wasted on you?’ he said, and added delicately, ‘Have you and Leonie fallen out in any way?’

Luke Kirwan gazed expressionlessly out over island-studded Moreton Bay as it danced and glittered beneath a clear blue sky. Then he transferred that enigmatic dark gaze to his friend and said with a quizzical little smile playing on his lips, ‘Jack, what will be, will be.’

‘In other words, mind my own business?’ Jack hazarded wryly.

‘In one word, exactly.’

A week later, Aurora Templeton set her teeth and commanded herself to stop shaking.

True, she was breaking into someone’s house at the dead of night, but only to remove something that rightfully belonged to her. So it wasn’t stealing. It wasn’t really breaking and entering because she had no intention of breaking anything, as for entering—yes, well, that could be a moot point, she conceded as she shaded the torch with her gloved fingers. But if you couldn’t retrieve your property by any other means, what else were you supposed to do?

She’d also thought this out thoroughly over the past week, she reminded herself, and now was no time to get the wobblies.

But the fact was, it was more nerve-racking than she’d anticipated. Despite having lived, not that long ago and for a long time, in this solid, two-storeyed, hacienda-style house set in its lovely garden—which was how she came to have a key and the knowledge that an easement ran behind the house leading to another street—it was impossible not to feel intimidated by the consequences of being caught in the act of what some might consider robbery.

It was also a heavily overcast night, humid and very still but poised eerily, one couldn’t help feeling, for a good storm.

All the more reason to get it over and done with, she told herself briskly, and inserted the key into the deadlock of the laundry door. It opened smoothly and noiselessly. Not that there was anyone home, she’d made sure of that.

The new owner was interstate and she knew that no new burglar alarms, locks or vicious dogs had been installed. Indeed, without a key to the deadlocks, the house was virtually impregnable—all the windows had decorative but effective wrought-iron Spanish grills to protect them, all the doors were thick, solid, hardwood timber.

She slipped silently through the laundry and kitchen into the hall without the aid of her torch after allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and had to smile faintly at how her teenage years came back to her. The laundry door had been her favourite means of entry when arriving home after her curfew had expired.

But she put the torch on, although veiled again by her fingers, for one swift glance around the hall in case the new owner had laid his furniture out differently, to see that there was still the same clear path to the bottom of the stairs. Then she froze and flicked it off at a slight sound. Just a tiny knock really, but it was difficult to establish its source.

And she waited motionless for a few minutes, in her black jeans and polo-neck sweater, with her heart beating uncomfortably.

How she didn’t scream as something furry wrapped itself around her legs, she never knew, but the large cat then sat down beside her, purring quietly.

She swallowed and bent down to stroke it, feeling much less as if she should take flight—the cat had obviously made the noise because there was no one else at home, simple, she told herself. And she flicked the torch on briefly again, before she stealthily made her way to the staircase and began to climb it one carpeted step at a time, counting beneath her breath and avoiding, from sheer habit, the fifteenth step that creaked.

Perhaps it was this that rendered her less cautious, she was to wonder later. Because to be silently enfolded into a pair of strong arms as she reached the top step took her supremely by surprise and paralyzed her for several heart-stopping moments. Then terror got the upper hand and she screamed and pummelled so vigorously, the two of them started to topple over in slow motion.

‘Oh, no, you don’t, lady!’ she heard a masculine voice breathe huskily, but as she twisted like an eel she must have taken him by surprise, because the rest of what he’d been going to say was smothered by an exclamation of pain and she felt him go slack just long enough for her to evade his grasp, jump onto the banister and slide down it. Then she raced across the hall and kitchen, out through the laundry, locking the door with the key that was still in it, and sprinted across the back garden, jumped the fence and raced down the easement as if all the demons from hell were on her heels.

She’d had the foresight to park her car two blocks away. Although the easement led onto a different street from the front entrance to the house, she’d thought it wise in case anything went wrong and it could be identified. But, out of the heavily overcast sky, a clap of thunder at last rent the pregnant night and heavy rain began to fall.

‘Thank you, thank you up there!’ she whispered devoutly, although she was almost instantly soaked to the skin. ‘A good storm has got to muddle my tracks, surely!’

‘And just repeating the local headlines: the storm that ravaged the southern and bay-side suburbs of Brisbane last night is estimated to have caused close to a million dollars’ damage to homes in its path… This is Aurora Templeton for Bay News.’

Aurora pulled off her headphones and steered her chair on its trolley tracks to the other end of the console. Her programme director gave her a thumbs-up sign and she got up stiffly and walked out of the studio. Her morning radio news shift was over and she couldn’t be more grateful, not only because she felt as if she’d been through a wringer, but the consequences of her actions only hours ago had kicked in to plague her conscience with a vengeance.

She couldn’t avoid looking around constantly or expecting a heavy hand to fall on her shoulder. And it had been the stuff nightmares were made of to wonder whether she would have to broadcast a police report of her own misdemeanour—thankfully not, but there was no guaranteeing it wouldn’t be on tomorrow’s news!

Why you never stop and think, Aurora Templeton, is a mystery to me, she castigated herself bitterly and repeatedly on the way home.

Her new town house, in the Brisbane suburb of Manly, was pleasant and comfortable—or would be when she sorted the clutter.

Manly was an eastern suburb of Brisbane, south of the mouth of the Brisbane River on the shores of Moreton Bay. Because of its bay-side position, lovely breezes and views as well as its geographical make-up—a steep cliff running adjacent to the shore atop of which were some wonderful old houses—it had become fashionable again but it was also home to a large boat harbour.

Many of the boaties who enjoyed the waters of Moreton Bay, with its twin guardians of Moreton and North Stradbroke Islands, moored their boats in the Manly harbour so the suburb had a distinctly nautical flavour.

Aurora didn’t have a view of the bay from her new town house although she did have a small garden and a courtyard. But she’d had no idea, when she’d come home a couple of weeks ago from six months overseas, that she’d find the family home sold, that her retired sea-captain father would have taken it into his head to buy a yacht and decide to sail around the world solo.

She’d lost her mother when she was six and been brought up by her father, when he’d been home, at boarding-school otherwise, and by a devoted housekeeper, Mrs Bunnings—known affectionately as ‘Bunny’—in between times. But she’d also spent a lot of time travelling the world with her father and, at twenty-five, she had a Bachelor of Arts degree, she was fluent in several languages, cosmopolitan, well able to take care of herself and had embarked on a career in radio broadcasting.

None of that worldly education had managed to eradicate a daredevil streak in her character, however, which had often seen Bunny despair of her. And it was this that Aurora blamed as she brewed herself a cup of coffee in her new town house, the morning after she’d broken into Professor Luke Kirwan’s home.

Well, not only that, she amended the thought as she inhaled the coffee aroma luxuriously. All sorts of things had gone towards creating the debacle, not the least her father’s sudden decision to sell their home without even consulting her, then go sailing off into the wide blue yonder a bare few days after she’d got home and before she’d remembered her diaries.

She took her coffee to the lounge and curled up in a winged armchair, and thought back down the years.

She’d always been a compulsive scribbler, an inveterate diarist. Not that you would know it from the face she presented to the world but, deprived of her mother at an early age and separated from her father for long periods, an only child with no other close relatives—all of it had created the need in her for some kind of a lifeline, which was what her diaries had become: her companions that never deserted her.

The discovery, when she was about twelve, of a loose brick in the never-used fireplace of her bedroom that revealed a cavity in the wall behind it, had been a wonderful cache for them. She’d used it right up until she’d gone overseas, convinced her dreams, fantasies and innermost thoughts were quite safe from prying eyes.

But it wasn’t until she’d rung Bunny to tell her that she was home and to discuss the turmoil of Ambrose Templeton’s unexpected actions that she’d remembered them.

Bunny had been delighted to hear from her and able to tell her that she had been kept on, three mornings a week, as a cleaner for the new owner of Aurora’s old home. That was when a vision of the fireplace in her old bedroom had floated through Aurora’s mind and her mouth had dropped open…

It hadn’t taken long to occur to her, however, that the normal course of action, simply ringing the new owner and explaining about secret caches and diaries, was, at the same time, inviting extreme curiosity in any normal person who most probably would not be able to resist having a look first for themselves… Just thinking about it made her break out in a cold sweat.

So she’d rung up and tried to make an appointment with Professor Luke Kirwan, Professor of Physics, she now knew, without giving a reason other than saying it was important and personal, and with the thinking that, once she was in the house, she could explain then and retrieve her diaries herself so that no one could get to them first.

Only to discover that the professor himself didn’t take calls at home at all. He had an extremely officious secretary to do it for him during working hours, long working hours at that, and an answering machine he never responded to at other times.

Nor was this secretary—and Bunny had told her what a dragon the woman was, always sneaking up behind her to check what she was doing—at all interested in making an appointment for Aurora with the professor without good reason, saying he was far too busy at the moment unless she could state her case.

Aurora had thought swiftly, then explained that she was the previous owner’s daughter, she’d been away at the time of the sale and she’d just like to check that nothing of hers had been left behind.

‘Definitely not,’ Miss Dragon Hillier had said coldly down the line. ‘I checked the house myself and you can rest assured there was nothing that shouldn’t be here! Good day.’ And she’d put the phone down heavily.

Aurora had taken the receiver from her ear and breathed fierily. But she’d forced herself to calm down and devise Plan B. Of course! She would simply roll up, after office hours, and corner the professor in his den without his dragon lady protector. But this professor of physics had proved to be extremely elusive. She’d rolled up to her old address five times in as many days to find no one home. The fifth time had been when the germ of an idea had started to niggle at the back of her mind.

‘What’s he like?’ she’d asked Bunny, over the phone. It had occurred to her to ask Bunny to get her diaries for her, but she’d discarded the idea immediately on the grounds that she could lose Bunny her job—especially since Miss Hillier was a such a sticky beak. But would a few simple questions do any harm? she’d pondered.

‘Don’t know, I’ve never met him, only the dragon, she hired me on your father’s recommendation,’ Bunny had replied. ‘And he’s always gone by the time I get to work and doesn’t seem to come home during the day. Mind you, it’s only been a few weeks, but I’ll tell you what, love, I think he’s a regular old fuddy-duddy. She’s certainly as fussy as can be and I guess it comes from him!’

‘Has he made any changes, Bunny?’ Aurora had asked a little hesitantly. ‘And has he got a wife or—’

‘Nope, he’s a bachelor. Can’t for the life of me understand why he wants to rattle about in a house that size—he doesn’t even have a dog, although there is a cat. As for changes, none so far although I heard her talking to a builder on the phone to get a quote to brick up the fireplaces in the bedrooms, the ones your dad always used to say were such a waste in a climate like Brisbane.’

Aurora had almost dropped the phone. ‘I see,’ she’d said rather hollowly.

‘You OK, pet?’ Bunny had enquired, then continued without waiting for an answer, ‘Must say the place is beautifully furnished, lots of antiques that take a powerful lot of dusting, mind. You would think he’d have a dog to guard it all, especially as he’s away an awful lot, apparently. I also heard her book him an air ticket to Perth for next weekend, flying out Friday, coming back Monday, but they didn’t even change the locks as new owners often like to do. I guess the old place is pretty hard to get into when you stop to think about it, though.’

‘Yes.’ Aurora had swallowed. ‘Yes.’ And she’d let Bunny ramble on for a few minutes more before ending the conversation. Then she’d up-ended the contents of the suitcases Bunny had packed with her clothes and personal possessions that had come from the house, and fallen on an old wallet to find her laundry door key still sitting snugly in a zip-up compartment…

She came back to the present with a sigh. She still might not have done it if she hadn’t rung once more and tried again to get past Miss Hillier, this time to be told flatly that the professor was busier than ever and would she please stop bothering them! There’d also been a curious innuendo in the other woman’s scathing tones that she’d been unable to pin down but it was almost as if she, Aurora, should be ashamed of herself for some reason—it was this strange insinuation that had added fuel to the flames and made her decide to take things into her own hands.

So what to do now? she wondered. Would the professor and his dragon lady secretary associate her calls with this home invasion? Should she step forward and confess?

The phone rang as she was thinking these thoughts and it was Bunny, deliciously full of news. Believe it or not, the professor had been robbed! Well, Bunny had gone on to explain, he’d come home early from Perth on account of some virulent bug that had laid him low and put himself straight to bed, only to wake around midnight ravaged by a headache and thirst. He’d stepped out of his bedroom, stood for a few minutes wondering where the light switch was as often happened to people in new homes, then, despite feeling extremely groggy and unwell, had noticed a strange light at the bottom of the stairs.

And, when someone had begun to ascend the stairs, between wondering whether he was hallucinating and definitely not feeling well enough to grapple with a burglar, he’d stayed quite silent until the intruder had literally walked into his waiting arms—only to knock himself out briefly in the ensuing mêlée.

‘You don’t…say!’ Aurora commented feebly at this first break in Bunny’s narrative. ‘Is…is he all right? Was anything stolen?’ she forced herself to add.

No, nothing was missing, Bunny reported, but that could have been because the intruder had been disturbed; no, he was back in bed but mainly because of a virus he’d picked up and—here Bunny chuckled—would you believe it? He’d actually left the front door ajar when he’d come home which was, according to the police, tantamount to issuing any stray burglar who happened to be ‘out and about casing joints’ an open invitation!

‘How…bizarre!’

Bunny agreed, still chuckling. ‘Talk about the absent-minded professor! Although, he was pretty crook.’

‘So…so what are the police going to do?’ Aurora asked.

‘Well, love, there’ve been a few burglaries in the area, apparently, and they suspect there’s a bit of a gang at work, must have been them, they reckon, but they didn’t sound too hopeful of pinning them down on this one. In all the chaos of the storm—we got three broken windows and the garden is kind of flattened—they can’t find any evidence of anyone being on the property.’

Aurora swallowed, mainly with relief, as Bunny chatted on about how she’d been given the day off. And when Aurora finally put the phone down, she thought she might have had a very lucky escape; she told herself she would never do anything as foolish again, but there still remained the problem of her diaries…

It took her a week to acknowledge that she would either have to come clean with the professor and resign herself to either he or Miss Hillier reading them before she got to them, or resign herself to having them bricked up for ever, assuming the builder doing the bricking up didn’t find them.

Then, out of the blue, came a ray of light. Her programme director, Neil Baker, asked her if she’d like to accompany him to a house-warming party. They’d actually met overseas and laughed at one of life’s little coincidences that they should be working together back in ‘Oz’, but there’d never been any romantic spark between them.

‘You wouldn’t be between girlfriends, Neil?’ she teased.

He grimaced and confessed that he was, but he’d been invited to bring a partner to this party, to which his ex-girlfriend had also been invited, and… He paused and looked awkward.

‘OK, I get the picture.’ Aurora grinned. ‘Where and when?’

‘Luke Kirwan has got himself a new pad, somewhere up on the hill. Know him?’

Aurora coughed to cover her start of surprise. ‘Er…no. You do, I gather?’

‘Yep. I was at uni with him. Like to come? It’s this Friday night, semi-formal and I’ll take the present.’

‘I…yes.’

The thing was to look as little as possible like a cat burglar, Aurora told herself as she studied her wardrobe early on Friday evening.

Of course, it would be even better if she could persuade herself to come down with a sudden bout of flu and give up the whole idea of going to this party at all, but…

She flicked back her long streaky fair hair and planted her hands on her hips. Who did this professor and his watchdog secretary think they were? Common courtesy alone was entirely absent from their behaviour and if they thought they could brush her aside like a troublesome, somehow rather shameful fly, they could think again. She would go and, if the opportunity presented itself, she would retrieve her diaries.

She chose a flamenco outfit she’d picked up in Spain, a long flounced skirt with pink flowers on a dark background and a white blouse. She pinned a fake pink gardenia into her hair and studied her reflection.

It was almost a boyish little face beneath the glorious hair but redeemed by a pair of thickly lashed, sparkling green eyes that were little short of sensational. At barely five feet two, her figure was neat, compact and very slim.

She started to smile at herself in the long mirror as she kicked the skirt aside and raised her hands above her head—it was a beautiful outfit and she always felt wonderful in it. As if she could dance the flamenco all night but, not only that, even without her mantilla, she always felt as if the clothes and the dance were a sensuous celebration of her femininity.

She lowered her arms abruptly—perhaps those were not the right vibes to be giving off at Professor Luke Kirwan’s house-warming? Perhaps she should dress to be as inconspicuous as possible rather than trying to look the opposite to a cat burglar? She frowned, then shrugged as the doorbell rang—it was too late to change now.

‘Wow!’ Neil Baker looked suitably impressed. ‘You look absolutely stunning, Aurora.’

‘Thanks.’ She got into his car and stowed her fringed shoulder bag at her feet. It was a little bulkier than normal because it contained a green rubbish bag and a length of strong fishing line as well as her lipstick, comb and a hanky. She smiled at Neil as he started the engine for the short drive to her old home. ‘Tell me a bit about this friend of yours?’

‘He’s really brilliant, but he’s a good bloke for all that. There was a rumour that he and a girl called Leonie Murdoch were about to get hitched—maybe this is a surprise engagement party too,’ Neil theorized, ‘because I can’t see why he needs a house otherwise. There’s a hell of a lot of old money in the family, family homes and a sheep station out west—here we are!’

Aurora opened her mouth as she stared at her old family home lit up most attractively tonight, and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell Neil that she was no stranger to this house and why, just in case she met someone she knew, but the moment seemed to pass without her being able to get it out. Then she saw how many people were streaming into this house-warming party, and it didn’t seem to matter—she would only be one insignificant guest in a big crowd.

But once she was inside, she did take the precaution of asking Neil to point Luke Kirwan out to her because she had every intention of avoiding their host as much as was possible. Only Miss Hillier, fortyish, upright, groomed within an inch of life and looking every bit the martinet she sounded, had been at the door to greet guests.

‘Uh…’ Neil looked around the throng as glasses of champagne were pressed upon them—a catering firm had obviously been hired ‘…oh, there he is! Over by the piano. I think I’ll wait until things settle down rather than fight through the crowd to introduce you, if that’s OK with you?’ he added, but rather distractedly as he scanned the throng intently.

‘Fine!’ Aurora said, more enthusiastically than was called for, as she gazed through the crowd at the man beside the piano. Actually there were two, but one of them wore thick glasses, had thinning fair hair, was short and wore an Argyle tie with a mustard corduroy shirt beneath a baggy tweed jacket. He also had a pipe in his hand.

No one could possibly look more ‘donnish’, she decided and smiled inwardly. So that was Professor Luke Kirwan. No wonder he had to employ a dragon lady to run things for him because he literally exuded the kind of fuddy-duddy ineffectualness one associated with an absent-minded professor.

Which was not how you could describe the man standing next to him, she mused as she felt herself relaxing beneath the vastly less than threatening presence of the man she’d grappled with at the top of the stairs on that never-to-be-forgotten night.

No, another kettle of fish altogether, the second man beside the piano. In fact, downright arresting might be a good way to put it, she decided.

Tall with brushed-back dark hair, he had a wide brow, smooth skin, high cheekbones and slight hollows beneath those good bones as his face tapered to a hard mouth and a jaw-line that indicated this was not a man to trifle with. He also had dark, brooding eyes and he was leaning negligently against the baby grand looking cool, slightly bored and capable of a rather damning kind of arrogance if he chose.

From what she could see, he wore indigo designer jeans, a midnight-blue shirt beneath a faultlessly tailored navy jacket and a shot-silk amethyst tie. He also had a glass of something in his hands which he twirled now and then before putting it to his lips, draining it and setting it down decisively. As he straightened and his dark gaze roamed around the crowded room briefly, she saw that he was even taller than she’d suspected with wide shoulders.

Well, well, Aurora found herself thinking as that indifferent gaze failed to be impressed by anything it saw and he turned away—what have we here? A hawk amongst the sparrows? A real man amongst us? I wonder what he does for a living? Could he be a corsair in disguise, a better-looking, more dangerous James Bond than any of them, a modern-day Mr Darcy?

This time an outward smile twisted her lips because it was just that typical flight of fantasy that made it so difficult for her to allow anyone to read her diaries…

Over the next two hours, the party got noisier and merrier. She also got separated from Neil, who still hadn’t got around to introducing her to Luke Kirwan for the simple reason that as soon as he and his ex-girlfriend laid eyes on each other, they were drawn together like a pin to a magnet and determined, it appeared, to have things out with each other despite being in the middle of a party.

‘Look,’ Neil said awkwardly to Aurora as his ex-girlfriend glowered at her over her shoulder, ‘I’m sorry about this but—’

‘Forget about me, Neil.’ Aurora chuckled. ‘If looks could kill I should be six feet under by now, which tells me she’s still very interested in you, so go for it! I can take care of myself.’

Neil looked both grateful and exasperated at the same time, but, five minutes later, neither of them were to be sighted.

Aurora shrugged, still amused but also aware that she was a free agent now, which simplified things considerably. She could put her plan—of wandering upstairs in search of a powder room but nipping into her old bedroom to get her diaries—into action, and she could leave the party whenever it suited her without anyone being the wiser.

Before she got to implement any of it, though, she’d wandered outside onto the terrace to drink in the view she knew so well and loved—the Manly Boat Harbour by night with its millions of dollars’ worth of yachts and all kinds of small crafts tied up to the jetties—when a disco struck up on the terrace and couples drifted out to dance.

And she was actually thinking that this was a livelier kind of party than one would expect of an absent-minded professor when a deep voice behind her drawled, ‘May I have this dance, señorita?’

For some reason the hairs on the nape of her neck stood up as she turned slowly, then she knew why—it was the man who’d been standing beside the professor at the piano.

She took an unexpected breath to be on the receiving end of that dark, worldly gaze, but said lightly, ‘Oh, it’s you.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You were expecting me?’

‘Not at all, señor.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I got the rather strong impression not much about this party was of any interest to you.’

A glint of something like mockery entered his dark eyes. ‘When did you get that impression?’

She shook out her hair and opted for honesty against confusion at being caught in having ‘sized him up’, so to speak. ‘When you were leaning against the piano looking bored,’ she said with a glimmer of mischief curving her lips.

‘That must have been before I caught sight of you,’ he countered, then frowned slightly. ‘Are you—unaccompanied?’

‘I am now, although I didn’t start out that way.’ She looked wry. ‘My escort met his ex-girlfriend and they’ve disappeared. I’m not sure if they’re making up or tearing each other to bits, but something intensely dramatic was going on between them so I decided to withdraw rather than get my eyes scratched out.’

‘Then he wasn’t the love of your life?’

‘No way. I was only filling in because they’d split up!’

‘I think he needs his head read,’ the man remarked thoughtfully. ‘Do you dance, señorita? It would be a pity not to do that gorgeous outfit justice.’ His gaze roamed up and down her figure.

‘That’s what I always think when I’m wearing it,’ Aurora replied simply, although conscious of a tremor running through her, sparked by that heavy-lidded dark gaze on her body. And she knew instinctively that her sensuous pleasure in herself, brought on by this outfit, had communicated itself to this stranger—in other words it had been a mistake to wear it. But how was she to have known she would bump into the one man who would sense that, where others mightn’t?

She also caught herself thinking that this stranger was dynamite, and she should possibly exercise due caution or she might find herself willingly led down the garden path…

That was nonsense, she immediately corrected the thought, another flight of sheer fantasy! All the same, it wouldn’t go astray to take care.

She said, whimsically, ‘I won’t treat you to a full flamenco, though.’

‘Could you?’

‘I took lessons in Spain a few months ago. They called me the pocket señorita.’

He studied her upturned face until she moved restlessly beneath the way his gaze took in her eyes, then rested squarely on her mouth before he said pensively, ‘Why do I get the feeling you could be a pocket dynamo all round, Miss…?’

But Aurora, who found her heart beating abnormally and her senses all at sixes and sevens beneath not only the way this man was looking at her but everything about him, clutched a straw of sanity. ‘I’d rather remain anonymous at the moment,’ she said with a delicious look of fun in her eyes. ‘If you don’t tread on my toes or have sweaty palms I might reconsider, but I’m not promising anything.’

He didn’t reply, only inclined his head, took her in his arms and swung her into the beat of the music. Then he stopped and frowned down at her again, but only for a moment before he rather absently steered her through the dancers.

As for Aurora, she also found herself dancing mechanically for several reasons. A determination not to be overly impressed by this man on such short notice, but also because of a prickling sense of déjà vu. Why, though? she wondered. She was quite sure she’d never met him before—he was not the kind of man you forgot—so it had to be because she was back on the terrace of her old home, only—that didn’t seem to fit.

‘Have I offended some other, unnamed principle of yours, Miss Anonymous? Body odour or bad breath?’ he drawled, breaking her out of her frowning reverie.

Her eyes widened. ‘Uh…no, sorry, nothing like that at all! You smell quite nice in a manly way.’ She inhaled delicately. ‘I’m not partial to overpowering aftershave or cologne on men.’

‘Neither am I,’ he said abruptly. ‘You, on the other hand, use a particularly delicate, floral perfume.’

‘Thank you! It is rather nice, isn’t it? I have it specially made up for me by a friend who is into that kind of thing.’

‘So it’s—uniquely yours?’ There was a rather intent little gleam in his eyes as he asked the question.

‘Yes. Do you have a problem with that?’ she asked curiously.

‘No. Why should I?’

‘I don’t know. You just looked a bit—’ she shrugged ‘—censorious about my perfume.’

He smiled faintly. ‘I think it all goes towards making you rather special.’ He held her away and looked down at her consideringly before raising his eyes to hers. ‘Do you have anyone in your life—when you’re not helping hapless men friends out?’

Aurora, once more clasped in his arms, began to dance again. ‘I don’t think we know each other well enough to go into that. Unless you’d like to set the ball rolling by telling me about your love life?’ She raised an eyebrow delicately at him.

‘In point of fact I happen to be—unattached at the moment,’ he responded gravely.

‘And on the prowl,’ Aurora suggested with an undercurrent of irony.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Could be that my antennae are picking up those vibes about you,’ she replied ingenuously. ‘In fact, I warned myself to be on guard against being led down the garden path not long after we started to dance.’

He laughed, and there was something curiously breathtaking about it despite Aurora’s wish to be unimpressed by him. Because it revealed a vitality that made you want to laugh too, and made you want to get to know this man, who could be so damningly bored at times then respond so fascinatingly to something you’d said—so that you felt absolutely fascinated yourself.

‘I have yet to resort to leading a girl down the garden path,’ he denied, ‘although the opposite may not be true.’

Aurora blinked and wrinkled her brow. ‘You have a problem with girls leading you down the garden path?’

‘Occasionally.’

They danced in silence for a while as Aurora digested this. She wasn’t sure if he was serious, although it was not hard to imagine him cutting a swathe through the female population. She said, eventually, ‘How old are you?’

He looked briefly taken aback. ‘Thirty-seven, why?’

She smiled wisely. ‘Then it’s about time you got yourself a wife, I would think, not only to keep you on the straight and narrow but to discourage women from making fools of themselves over you.’

‘Are you suggesting yourself for the position?’ he came back smoothly and with a mocking little smile playing on his lips.

‘Not at all,’ Aurora replied airily. ‘I plan to have a lot more fun and adventure before I embark on marriage, domesticity and maternity.’

‘And do you think these things work to plan?’ he queried, rather dryly, she thought.

‘For me they do—so far, anyway!’

‘How nice,’ he commented, and said no more for a time.

But it was not long before Aurora realised, as they danced, that it was far easier said than done to remain impervious to this man. He danced well, holding her lightly and certainly not imposing any unwelcome familiarities on her. In fact he was being a very correct partner—but that could be a mockery, she found herself thinking darkly.

There was certainly a quizzical gleam in his eyes from time to time as he so carefully observed the proprieties. Almost as if he knew exactly, damn him, how wonderful he was to dance with even so correctly. How easily his well-knit body moved to the rhythm—how impossible it was not to feel rather stunningly aware of him even held so lightly in his arms.

‘You were thinking?’ he murmured, his dark eyes resting wickedly on her flushed face, after he’d twirled her expertly so that her skirt belled out beautifully, and brought her back safely into his arms.

‘That’s for me to know and you to ponder upon,’ she replied, and was annoyed to hear herself sounding defensive.

‘Then I’ll tell you what I was thinking, Miss Anonymous. That we dance so well together, there are certain other—activities,’ he said, barely audibly, ‘we should be able to lend ourselves to excellently.’

Aurora took a breath and felt her cheeks redden, but she was unable to prevent herself from replying in kind as anger also coursed through her veins. ‘Really?’ she said gently. ‘I should warn you that I don’t take my clothes off on first encounters.’

He took the opportunity to look right through her clothes, then raised a lazy eyebrow at her. ‘A pity, but it might create a riot here and now, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Perhaps I should rephrase,’ Aurora started to say.

He laughed softly. ‘Perhaps. That is cutting to the chase rather rapidly.’

‘You started this,’ she reminded him, trying valiantly to sound cool and unflustered, although she was kicking herself mentally.

‘I may have,’ he agreed, ‘but I was thinking along the lines of extending the pleasure we take in dancing with each other…’ he paused and looked down at her significantly until she had to look away with a mixture of embarrassment and self-directed ire ‘…to another, quite lovely level that wouldn’t, however, require us to undress.’

Aurora missed her step and marvelled bitterly at the ease with which he redirected her to the rhythm. And it was impossible not to silently contemplate another ‘lovely level’ with this man, right there as she was, in his arms, with their bodies touching when the music brought them together.

It should be impossible, she mused. She was not an impressionable girl, she was not particularly naïve, but she had the distinct feeling that this man had somehow got past her defences with his mixture of intriguing looks, his arrogantly bored air and his exquisitely polite handling of her that, at the same time, had activated all sorts of reactions in her. Nor did his approach—guaranteed, one would have thought, to prove she was being ‘toyed’ with—stop her from wondering what it would be like to be somewhere private with him.

What would happen? she even found herself wondering. Would she allow herself to be kissed—the next level he appeared to have in mind? Would she be able to resist if he was as good at it as he was to dance with?

She stopped dancing abruptly and looked at him lethally. ‘All right, you’ve had your bit of fun. I think we should part company now.’

‘Why? Didn’t you tell me you were into “fun” for a good while yet?’ His gaze rested pointedly on the curve of her breasts beneath her blouse, then flicked up to her eyes with a mixture of derision and irony.

Aurora compressed her lips and took hold. Enough of this, she told herself. She’d come here for one reason tonight and it certainly wasn’t to get waylaid by a man, however gorgeous. Make that downright dangerous, she reflected with an inward little shiver. And as the music changed it presented her with the perfect escape.

‘Fun—oh, yes! Let’s see if you can really dance,’ she teased, and whirled herself out of his arms as the rhythm changed and she started to do the twist expertly along with the rest of the dancers.

When it came to an end, everyone was hot and laughing and fanning themselves, but her partner took her hand and said, ‘Well? Do I qualify to get your name now?’

‘Tell you what,’ she suggested, ‘I really need to powder my nose. If you could find me a long, cool drink in the meantime, who knows?’ And she regained her hand and melted away into the crowd. A quick peep over her shoulder once she was inside told her that another woman had claimed him.

All the better, she thought as she found her bag, unobtrusively scanned the staircase and, seeing it deserted, slipped upstairs. No one knew better than she that there was a downstairs powder room for just these occasions, but surely a guest in a supposedly strange house could be forgiven for going upstairs?

And, in the proverbial twinkling of an eye, she’d let herself into her old bedroom. The room was in darkness but she waited for a few minutes, then moved forward cautiously, feeling for the bed and finding a bedside table. She had her hand on what felt like a lamp when the door opened and the overhead light went on. She froze, then swung round to see the man she’d danced with anonymously standing in the doorway.

‘So,’ he said with soft but unmistakable menace, closing the door behind him without turning, ‘I was right.’

‘I…I…’ Aurora stammered ‘…I…was looking for a bathroom. I couldn’t seem to find the light, that’s all.’

He smiled grimly. ‘Again? I’m only surprised you didn’t bring your torch with you, Little Miss Spain, who didn’t want to tell me her name.’

Aurora blinked and licked her lips. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She backed away as he moved towards her, and sat down unexpectedly on the bed. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here either. Please leave, and I’ll find the bathroom on my own.’

‘Give me one good reason for not telling me your name,’ he countered.

She swallowed and thought frantically, then decided that the closer she could stick to the truth, the better. She tossed her hair with more spirit than she actually felt. ‘I don’t believe in being bowled over by men on first encounters.’

‘As in allowing yourself to be attracted to them even when it’s already happened?’ he suggested, with a wealth of satire in his dark gaze. ‘Or wearing provocative outfits,’ he added meaningfully.

Damn, Aurora thought, that hadn’t been such a good idea after all; and could think of nothing to say, so she merely shrugged.

‘But tonight was our second encounter, wasn’t it?’ he drawled then. ‘Aren’t you forgetting the way we…bumped into each other at the top of the stairs the last time you invaded my home?’

Aurora’s mouth fell open and her eyes were suddenly huge. ‘Your home! Who…who are you?’ she said in a strangled kind of croak.

‘Luke Kirwan,’ he replied, looking altogether taller, tougher and much more dangerous than she’d imagined earlier. ‘And you’re not getting out of here until you tell me what you’re so determined to steal from me, señorita.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU can’t be!’ Aurora gasped, absolutely thunderstruck.

He studied her narrowly. ‘Believe me, I am. And this is my house, in case you’ve devised a ploy to confuse things somehow or other.’

‘But…but…who’s the other one, then?’ she stammered.

‘Other what?’

‘The man you were standing with next to the piano—the man who looks just like a prof—’ She broke off and bit her lip.

Luke Kirwan frowned and she saw him concentrate for a moment, then look fleetingly amused. ‘Jack Barnard?’ he suggested. ‘He’s my solicitor, but what has that got to do with any of this, señorita?’ he enquired coldly.

Aurora swallowed painfully and closed her eyes as she grappled not only with the folly of judging people on their appearances, but also having that prickling sense of déjà vu explained to her in this manner. She had been in Luke Kirwan’s arms before—not for long before she’d started to pummel and struggle with him, but long enough, obviously, for it to have imprinted itself on her subconscious.

But, it suddenly occurred to her and she clasped her hands together tightly, if that was all he had to go on, a similar sense of déjà vu, then he didn’t have a leg to stand on…

‘I think I know what’s going through your head, my pretty,’ he drawled as her lashes flew up. ‘How do I know it was you at the top of the stairs the last time you tried to rob me? I’ll tell you. Same height, same petite figure, same…’ he paused and looked wry ‘…athleticism but, above all, same unique—as you told me yourself—perfume.’ His dark eyes glinted sardonically.

Aurora’s lips parted and her eyes widened. Then she closed them again and barely stopped herself from saying caustically that, for a man groggy with some kind of virus, he’d taken in an awful lot about her and no one would buy it anyway!

But he spoke again, and this time there was a grim warning underlying his words that caused her to tremble inwardly. ‘Of course, finding you creeping around my bedroom, when there’s a clear sign downstairs directing people to a downstairs bathroom, adds a lot more weight to my evidence, don’t you agree?’

Aurora looked around properly for the first time. It had never occurred to her that the new owner would not use the master bedroom, but that was exactly what Luke Kirwan appeared to have done. Her old bedroom was now definitely, although luxuriously, furnished for a man.

‘I preferred the view from this room,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts.

Damn, she thought again, and forcibly prevented herself from wiping her face.

‘Well, Mr Kirwan,’ she said after a moment’s thought, ‘I am sorry for inadvertently invading your bedroom but you’re mistaken. I didn’t see the sign downstairs so it couldn’t have been so very clear. As for all the rest of it, whatever it is, I…’ she tilted her chin and gazed at him imperiously ‘…I’m happy to forget about it if you would be so kind as to direct me to a bathroom. I’ll even leave your party then, since you cherish these amazing suspicions about me. In fact, nothing would induce me to stay,’ she finished proudly.

He laughed softly as he took in the hauteur of her expression, the set of her small chin, her very straight back and the outraged bearing of her slender figure—even seated on a bed. ‘You’re a rather brilliant actress, aren’t you?’ he commented. ‘But the only thing that’s going to get you out of here is telling me who you are and why you’re here—’

‘I’ve told you that!’ she interrupted.

‘So you have. It doesn’t wash, though.’ He studied her comprehensively, right through her clothes again, in fact, so that she started to boil beneath that dark, insolently intimate gaze. ‘What is beginning to wash is something a little different,’ he continued leisurely. ‘Could you even be a groupie, señorita, who devised a rather novel way of getting through my secretary’s net?’

Aurora’s mouth fell open. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’

‘No?’ The scepticism in his expression was chilling. ‘Never heard of student groupies? Girls? Believe me, it’s an occupation for some of them; it would appear to be the only reason they’re at university in the first place,’ he said with damning scorn.

Several things suddenly came clear to Aurora, including his secretary’s manner and why he never answered the phone himself, but the shock of it all rendered her speechless.

Giving him the opportunity to continue with lethal satire, ‘Why, yes. Heaven alone knows what bizarre scheme you’d concocted the other night—looking for something to steal from me to blackmail me into bed with you, perhaps?’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘But your actions tonight have been loud and clear—coyly refusing to tell me your name, being a seductively mysterious guest—and so on,’ he finished flatly.

To be thought of as a coy, student groupie throwing herself at his feet in a rather ‘novel’ manner caused Aurora to lose her temper completely. ‘Look here—’ she bounced off the bed ‘—I’ve had enough of this. Will you get out of my way before I scream the place down?’

‘Scream away,’ he invited. ‘The only thing that will achieve is to have me call the police.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘In fact, you have a choice. I’ll leave you here for a period of sober reflection. When I come back, either you tell me the truth or I do get the police.’

‘If you think I have any intention of staying here,’ she spat at him, ‘you’re mistaken!’

‘No, I’m not. I propose to lock you in, you see.’

Aurora flew at him, prepared to scratch his eyes out, only to find herself caught in a grip of steel. ‘Let me go!’ she gasped through pale lips.

‘I’d rather let an enraged tigress go.’ He pinioned her hands behind her back. ‘I’ve also got something of a score to settle with you, Miss Spain. Let’s see if you kiss as well as you do—other things.’

‘I never kiss under these circumstances. I’m perfectly capable of biting, however,’ she warned through her teeth.

He smiled crookedly. ‘What circumstances do you kiss under?’

‘I need to be in love or on the way to it, like any normal girl,’ she replied scathingly. ‘The last thing I can imagine with you, Professor. For one thing, you’re too old for me, for another the mere thought of doing it under duress turns me right off!’ Her green eyes were proud and defiant.

‘OK.’ He released her pinioned hands but transferred his hands to her waist. ‘In exchange for no duress, could I get a promise that you’ll keep your fists to yourself?’

‘I’m not promising anything!’

‘Then how about…’ there was the glint of wicked amusement in his dark eyes although he spoke gravely ‘…proving to me that I am too old for you?’

‘You must think I’m still in my cradle,’ Aurora retorted, ‘to fall for that old line!’

‘On the contrary, before I discovered you sneaking around my bedroom, I thought you were gorgeous, certainly of the age of consent—’ his gaze roamed up and down her figure ‘—and quite stunning.’

Aurora’s lips parted and, before she could think of a suitable rejoinder, he drew her into his arms. She breathed once, jerkily, but, to her horror, the spell of Luke Kirwan once again began to weave itself around her. And no twelve-year age difference was going to save her, she realised—not that she’d said it as anything but a crushing, heat-of-the-moment snub.

To make things worse, she also realized from the smile twisting his lips that her thought processes were about as easy for him to read as an open book. ‘Look,’ she began uneasily, ‘this is insane! You can’t just do it…’

‘I can and I’m going to, so save your breath,’ he recommended. ‘Don’t tell me there isn’t the slightest curiosity on your side?’

He moved his hands on her hips and she went to say something, stopped with her lips parted as all sorts of sensations started to run through her—and not only physical. Knowing that part of the dangerous attraction of this man for her was that she was playing with fire, for example. See if you can be unaffected by this, Little Miss Spain, she mimicked in her mind, because she had no doubt that was the gauntlet Luke Kirwan was throwing down. But it would be madness to take it up…

He did it for her. He took advantage of her confusion to withdraw his hands from her hips and cup her face lightly at the same time as he captured her green gaze so that she was unable to look away. ‘Small, neat and stylish—whatever else it is you are, my would-be robber, and, I suspect, delicious. Let’s see.’ He lowered his head.

Aurora trembled as his lips touched hers, but he said against the corner of her mouth, ‘I was right: sweet as a peach, señorita.’ And started to kiss her properly.

The crazy part about it was that he made her feel as sweet as a peach while he kissed her lingeringly, but not only that. He himself felt so amazingly good it was almost impossible to remain unaffected. How did he do it? she marvelled as he ran his hands down her back and laid a trail of feather-light kisses down her neck. With great restraint, she answered herself. This was no stolen, victory kiss—he was far too clever for that, damn him, she thought.

This was a skilled assault that made her skin feel like silk as those cool, dry lips wandered across it, and the way his hands found the curves of her body made her heartbeat triple. This was a man who made not one blunder while her senses rioted and she began to drink in the feel of him through her pores.

His height, those broad shoulders, the interesting hollows of his face, which she found herself wanting to touch, the crisp cotton of his shirt, the hard, taut length of him that she was now resting against as he stopped kissing her, with not an ounce of defiance left in her but one embarrassingly girlish word on her lips—Wow!

To her everlasting gratitude, she managed to stop herself from actually saying it as he put her away from him and steadied her before releasing her.

‘Well?’ There was sheer devilry in those dark eyes as he posed the question.

Aurora breathed deeply and had to suffer the indignity of him restoring some tendrils of hair behind her ears and straightening the collar of her blouse before she could think of a response. Then she could only fall back on the truth. ‘I’m speechless,’ she said huskily and licked her lips.

He raised an eyebrow at her with a mixture of amusement and mockery. ‘I’ll take it as read, then. And I’ll leave you to—compose yourself.’

‘I didn’t necessarily mean I was bowled over or anything…’ she began to protest not quite truthfully, but stopped with her eyes darkening. ‘You’re not still going to lock me in!’

‘Oh, yes, I am, sweetheart,’ he said coolly, then looked amused. ‘By the way, there’s an en-suite bathroom through there.’ He pointed. ‘Never let it be said I inconvenienced a guest even if they are burglars or groupies—and I’m now quite sure it was you that dark and stormy night.’ He turned on his heel and walked out and Aurora heard the key turn in the lock before she was able to think of a thing to do.

‘I don’t believe this!’ she said through gritted teeth, then sank back onto the bed to drop her face into her hands as she marvelled bitterly on her sheer bad luck and wondered what to do next. Of course, it was obvious, she thought. She had no choice but to come clean, yet it went supremely against the grain to be outwitted by this man and there was no guarantee he wouldn’t insist on reading at least some bits of her diaries…

Several minutes later she got up and went into the bathroom, where she washed her face and had a drink of water. Then she returned to the bedroom and went straight to the fireplace. The brick came out easily; her diaries were still in the cache. She removed them, put them into the plastic bag from her shoulder bag and tied the fishing line to the bag. She turned off the light and went to the window that was so impossible to climb out of because of the wrought-iron bars—apart from being one floor above the ground.

Five minutes of silent, intense scrutiny of the shrubbery and surrounds below yielded nothing, no movement at all. Her old bedroom was not directly above any window on the ground floor, so she felt quite safe as she manoeuvred the rubbish bag awkwardly through the bars, lowered it to the ground to be swallowed up amongst some flourishing hydrangea bushes, and threw the line down after it.

Then she switched on the light again and looked around. Despite the luxuriousness of the bedroom, a thick-pile silvery blue carpet, matching curtains and bed cover, there was only one chair, a wooden antique that matched the marvellous bureau but looked highly uncomfortable.

She shrugged, slipped her shoes off and retired to Luke Kirwan’s bed, where she propped the pillows up behind her and picked up the book on his bedside table—a murder mystery, as it happened. And she’d finished the first chapter when she heard the key in the lock. She made no move to get up and that was his first sight of her as he came into the room—propped against his pillows, looking gravely at him over the top of his book.

Inwardly, Luke Kirwan was amused. This girl had enormous nerve if nothing else. Not that she lacked other qualities, he conceded. A delicate figure, unusual beauty—her hair and eyes alone were stunning—a flair for clothes and the kind of joie de vivre that was infectious. The fact remained, he reminded himself, that discreet enquiries downstairs had shed no light on who she was, and the story of coming with someone who’d deserted her for an ex-girlfriend was most likely another invention.

‘I do hope you’re comfortable—or, after what passed in here before I locked you in, is that an invitation to join you?’ he said with an undercurrent of sarcasm.

‘Not at all.’ Aurora closed the book, got up and slipped on her shoes. She added, as she shook out her beautiful skirt and ran her hands through her hair, ‘It was your idea to lock me in, not mine, so I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t make myself comfortable. How do you do, by the way? I’m Aurora Templeton.’ She held out her hand.

He crossed the room to take it, and felt it tremble briefly in his. It was the only sign of inner nerves he could detect, however. Her back was as straight as ever, her chin elevated and those stunning green eyes proud.

‘Why do I get the feeling this is not to be a—penitent confession—brought on by sober reflection?’ he murmured a little wryly.

Aurora took her hand back. ‘Because you really have only yourself to blame, Mr Kirwan. You and your secretary, that is. This preoccupation with guarding you from “groupies” is what brought this all about. I find it a little hard to believe that any kind of a real man needs to go to those lengths anyway, but, be that as it may—if I could have got in touch with you by any other means, I would not have had to resort to this.’

‘Hang on—resort to robbing me, do you mean?’ he queried quizzically.

‘No. Reclaiming my property,’ she stated.

‘Really, you’re going to have explain better than that, Aurora Templeton.’ He paused and narrowed his eyes. ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’

‘From the number of messages I left on your answering machine that you ignored?’ she suggested with irony. ‘But you also bought this house from my father,’ she explained. ‘This was my bedroom.’

Luke Kirwan blinked.

‘And this,’ Aurora continued, turning towards the fireplace, ‘was my secret cache from the time I discovered it when I was about twelve.’

He followed her across the room and ducked his head to look into the fireplace. He observed the brick and the empty cavity in the wall, put his hand into it and whistled softly. ‘I see,’ he said as he straightened.

‘Good!’ Aurora said briskly. ‘Now, you may or may not have been aware that I was overseas at the time the house was sold—’

‘I had no idea Ambrose Templeton had a daughter,’ he said, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his hands.

‘Well, he does,’ she said flatly, ‘and I can prove it. But I didn’t even know the house had been sold until I got home, just a few days before he took off on his round-the-world voyage. And it was only after he’d left that I remembered the cache and something that was very precious to me in it.’

‘Why the hell didn’t you just say so?’ Luke Kirwan demanded.

‘I would have, if I could have got here first—to make sure no one got to it before I did.’

‘What was this precious something?’ he asked with a frown. ‘A heroin haul or the crown jewels?’

‘Very funny, Mr Kirwan.’ She eyed him sardonically. ‘No, but precious enough to me. And when I couldn’t get past your secretary, not to mention being treated as if I were a piece of rubbish even after telling her who I was; and when I could never find you home, I remembered I still had a laundry key, and I decided to take matters into my own hands. Don’t you think you might have done the same?’ she asked gently.

He blinked. ‘So—you didn’t use the front door?’

‘I didn’t have a front door key,’ she said simply. ‘I’d left all my other keys with my father. As a teenager, the laundry door was my—’ she grimaced ‘—preferred way of coming home when I was late.’

He was silent for a long moment, watching her narrowly. Then he said abruptly, ‘Did you know I was supposed to be away that night?’

Aurora took her time. This was the tricky bit because if she didn’t tread carefully, she could involve Bunny. She frowned at him. ‘Were you? What a pity you weren’t. I was kicking myself for not taking into consideration that you had to be an extraordinarily light sleeper. I swear I didn’t make a sound and, believe me, I’ve had a bit of practice at it, but…’ She shrugged.

‘You didn’t make a sound,’ he said slowly. ‘And I came home early because I was ill. I got up to go downstairs to find an aspirin or something when I saw this strange light at the bottom of the stairs.’

Aurora smiled suddenly. ‘I haven’t had much luck, have I?’

He considered, then gestured with his forefinger. ‘There’s still something that doesn’t quite gel, Aurora Templeton. What was it you thought you left behind in that cache that was so precious you couldn’t tell anyone about it? I really think I need to see it,’ he said pensively, ‘before I can believe this story.’

‘You can’t because it—they—weren’t there after all. My diaries,’ she said simply.

‘Your…diaries?’

She nodded. ‘My innermost thoughts and secrets that I would hate any strange, prying eyes to see.’

He took a long moment to think around this, then said with a frown, ‘If they’re not there now, what’s happened to them?’

‘I think my father must have removed them,’ she replied. ‘Like any conscientious parent, he probably went through a stage of wondering whether I was on drugs or whatever. I did go through a slightly wild stage,’ she confided, ‘although certainly not that wild. But I’m now faced with the lowering thought that he probably knew about the cache all along. And my guess is that he packed the diaries up and forgot to tell me.’ She sighed ruefully. ‘We had so little time together and he was so excited before he left. He’s sailing round the world single-handed. I don’t know if you knew?’

‘I didn’t deal with him personally. Can you check it out with him?’

‘Yes. He’s got a satellite telephone on the boat.’

‘So that explains that,’ he said slowly. ‘You must have confided some pretty intimate thoughts to your diaries to be so paranoid about getting them back unseen by other eyes?’

The slightest tinge of pink entered Aurora’s smooth cheeks. ‘Would you like any old stranger reading your diaries?’ she countered, however.

‘I don’t keep one, so I don’t know,’ he replied with the glimmer of a smile. ‘What do you do for a living, Miss Templeton?’

She told him, adding, ‘I also have an afternoon music programme that I compere three times a week. In between times I volunteer my time as a radio operator for the local Coastguard Association. I’m really quite respectable.’

‘So you say,’ he commented. ‘But, seeing I don’t know you from a bar of soap and neither does anyone else, apparently, just how did you get into this party?’ he enquired.

‘I came with Neil Baker—he’s my programme director and a friend of yours, apparently. It, at the time,’ she confessed with a glint of mischief in her eyes, ‘seemed like divine intervention, when he invited me because he’d broken up with his girlfriend—and I told you the rest of it.’

‘Ah, Neil,’ he murmured, ‘yes, he is a friend.’ But he continued to study her thoughtfully and in a slightly nerve-racking way.

‘Does that set your mind to rest about me, Mr Kirwan?’ she asked. ‘Look, I apologize. The whole thing was rash and misguided—I’m a little prone to that kind of thing but, I can assure you, your secretary did brush me off like a troublesome if not to say somehow shameful fly; I did leave messages for you that you never responded to and I did call to see you at least five times but you were never home.’

‘I’ve been out west a lot lately. So—’ he shrugged ‘—what would you like to do now, Miss Templeton? Go back to the party?’

He took Aurora by surprise. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ she asked incredulously.

He eyed her. ‘What more is there to say?’

‘You could at least apologize for putting me in this awkward position in the first place!’

‘Putting you in an awkward position,’ he marvelled, his dark eyes suddenly full of wicked amusement. ‘You may not recall this, but I did get bitten, scratched and finally knocked out in our first encounter, not to mention made to look a fool.’

‘I did not bite you!’ Aurora denied hotly. ‘Nor did I scratch you—I had gloves on and you must have knocked yourself out.’

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Nevertheless, it was like having an angry kitten, spitting and clawing in my arms. Well,’ he amended, ‘after the first impact of a slim, rather gorgeous little body and, of course—that unique, haunting perfume.’

This time his dark gaze was pointedly intimate again as it stripped away her outfit and dwelt on the curves of her figure beneath it—any doubts she might have had that he was mentally undressing her were embarrassingly laid to rest by the way her body responded to his scrutiny. She could feel herself growing hot and bothered and more than aware of her fluttering pulses.

‘I think I’ll go home now,’ she said unevenly. ‘You didn’t happen to notice whether Neil had surfaced, by any chance? Not that I need him—’ She stopped frustratedly.

‘I saw no sign of Neil.’

She shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter, I can get a cab.’ She picked up her bag.

‘Why don’t you stay?’ he suggested. ‘It’s only eleven o’clock. I’m sure the party has a bit of life left in it yet.’

She returned his dark gaze with as much composure as she could muster. ‘No. No, thank you—’

‘We danced well together,’ he said meditatively, then grinned. ‘I gather it was a case of mistaken identity, your dancing with me at all?’

‘Yes, it was!’ She eyed him with a mixture of frustration and annoyance. ‘Neil pointed out this man who looked exactly like a bumbling, absent-minded professor to me. It never occurred to me it was you he was pointing to.’

‘My apologies,’ he said gravely. ‘I hesitate to point this out to you, but it’s never wise to make snap judgements about people on appearance, although Jack has enough of a sense of humour to see the funny side of it,’ he assured her.

‘Blow Jack,’ she retorted bitterly. ‘And I have no intention of dancing with you again, Mr Kirwan, because I’m now in a position to make an informed judgement on that subject. This meek air you’re assuming is entirely false, you’re laughing at me behind it and it doesn’t blind me to the fact that you’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You even kissed me without one jot of concern for what my preferences in the matter were!’

He smiled satanically. ‘Bravo, Aurora—I like that name, by the way. Your preferences, incidentally, didn’t seem to be so contrary to mine,’ he pointed out.

‘Oh!’ She ground her teeth. ‘I’m off!’ She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

‘Allow me to call a cab for you.’ He reached for the bedside phone and did just that. Then he said, although still looking amused, ‘Please don’t hold this against me but, just to be on the safe side, I’ll come down with you and see you into it.’

‘Be my guest,’ she spat at him, ‘but I’m not a burglar or a groupie!’

‘Yes, well—’ he sobered, and that tough, dangerous side of him was in evidence for a moment ‘—be that as it may, as you remarked to me, Miss Templeton, and while you may be neither, you do have slightly strange notions about breaking into people’s houses and apportioning the blame.’ He strolled to the door and opened it. ‘After you.’

And to Aurora’s extreme indignation, he escorted her downstairs and out onto the porch, and he handed her into the waiting taxi—he even paid for it. But his parting shot was the most humiliating.

‘I would have a little more faith in human nature, if I were you, Aurora. You may find life a little less dangerous—unless that’s how you get your kicks?’

She argued the matter out with herself during the short drive home in the cab. She paced up and down her living room for ten intense minutes and even consulted her goldfish on the matter, but nothing could alter the fact that there was no better time to retrieve her diaries than right now, while a noisy, crowded party was still in progress. And nothing could alter her determination not to be bested by Luke Kirwan. With the net result that half an hour later, dressed all in black, she was cautiously making her way down the easement once again.

The party was audible as she approached the house from the rear. As Luke Kirwan had predicted, it still had plenty of life left in it. But as she flitted through the garden like a soundless shadow, no one accosted her, no one was about. The only problem was, there was absolutely no sign of a green rubbish bag stuffed full of her diaries in the hydrangeas below her old bedroom window.

CHAPTER THREE

‘MISS HILLIER, my name is Aurora Templeton,’ she said down the phone the next morning, a Saturday. ‘I would like to speak to Professor Kirwan and, unless you’d like me to come and lie down on the front doorstep and go on a hunger strike, don’t you dare fob me off!’

‘That won’t be necessary, Miss Templeton,’ Miss Hillier replied smoothly. ‘Professor Kirwan thought you might like to lunch with him today. Would twelve-thirty be suitable?’

Aurora ground her teeth as she felt, this time, rather like the fly who’d walked into the spider web. Consequently, she said coolly, ‘One o’clock would suit me better.’

‘That’s fine,’ Miss Hillier murmured. ‘We’ll see you then.’

‘OK,’ she said as she marched out onto the terrace of her old home at five past one, ‘hand them over, Mr Kirwan. My diaries.’

Luke Kirwan didn’t rise from the cane chair he was lounging in. There was a table for two set for lunch on the terrace and the pool, just beyond, sparkled invitingly beneath a clear blue sky. There was absolutely no sign of a party having been held the night before.

And he summed Aurora up comprehensively, from her tied-back hair, her yellow blouse and white shorts down to her yellow canvas shoes before he said lazily, ‘Good afternoon, Aurora. Isn’t it a beautiful day? By the way, I was wondering about your legs, but they too are quite stunning.’ His gaze returned to them thoughtfully.

Aurora clenched her fists, then swallowed several times to calm herself and negate the effect of his gaze on her legs. ‘I didn’t come here to make chit-chat,’ she stated.

He lifted his eyes to hers and they were amused, but with a glint of irony as a tinge of pink coloured her cheeks at the same time. ‘Why don’t you sit down and have a glass of wine instead?’ he suggested. ‘It might be just what you need after a sleepless night.’ He raised his glass to her.

‘How did you know—?’ She bit her lip.

‘You look a little peaked,’ he drawled, and got to his feet at last to pull out a chair for her. In blue jeans and a grey T-shirt, he looked casual but big and very fit.

Aurora hesitated, then sank down into it. She also took the glass of wine he poured for her, although absently. ‘How did you know,’ she began again, ‘that I’d dropped them out of the window? I assume that is what happened?’

‘You assume correctly.’ He sat down. ‘I just thought,’ he mused, ‘that I should take some precautions. It was, after all, only your word I had to go on last night. So I stopped and asked myself what I would have done with anything I had come by—shall we say illegally?’

‘There was nothing illegal about it at all! At least by now you must know that.’

‘I certainly do.’ His gaze was so amused as it rested on her, she flinched visibly. ‘But at the time, with Neil having done a bunk—’

‘I told you why!’ she interrupted fiercely.

‘Yes,’ he murmured gently. ‘Once again I must point out I had no way of knowing if you were telling me the truth.’

Aurora suddenly took a large swallow of wine as some intuition told her that she was in for a battle of wits on a scale she’d never encountered before. ‘Now we’ve sorted it out, though—OK, I concede it was all my fault and offer my sincere apologies—could I have my diaries back, please?’

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