“You want me to look after…the baby?” she asked.

“Is it really such a bizarre request to make, then, Angel?” Rory queried softly. “Particularly to someone whose whole livelihood used to be caring for children?”

“But it isn’t just any baby we’re talking about here! Surely you can see that!”

“He’s my nephew—”

“And he’s the son of my ex-husband!” she added acidly. “The son he had with another woman!”

He’s a man of cool sophistication.

He’s got pride, power and wealth.

At the top of his corporate ladder, he’s a ruthless businessman, an expert lover—and he’s 100% committed to staying single.

He’s also responsible for a BABY!

HIS BABY

He’s sexy, he’s successful…and he’s facing up to fatherhood!

Dear Reader,

One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

Love,

Sharon xxx

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

The Baby Bond
Sharon Kendrick

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To Alan Stedman, who is not only the world’s most

brilliant doctor—he also has the irresistible smile of the

true romantic hero!

CONTENTS

Cover

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THE telephone screamed like a banshee and Angel—her dark hair drifting like smoke around her shoulders—walked along the corridor to pick it up.

‘Fitzpatrick Hotel. Hello?’ she said softly.

‘Angel?’

Angel’s heart stilled as she heard her name, the single word spoken in a voice at once so strange and yet so shockingly familiar that it struck her like a blow. Disorientated, she gripped onto the receiver, the white knuckling of her fingers the only outward sign of her distress. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came.

There was a long pause, and then the low, masculine voice growled out the word again, so that it rang deeply in her ear. ‘Angel? Angel? Are you still there?’

‘Y-yes,’ she gasped, her lungs feeling oxygen-deprived, her legs like lead as her memory played tricks on her. ‘That—that isn’t you, is it, Chad?’

‘No. It isn’t Chad.’ The denial was emphatic, but something rather odd coloured the speaker’s reply. ‘It’s Rory.’

Angel swallowed. Of course. Didn’t they say that siblings’ voices always sounded remarkably similar on the telephone?

Rory Mandelson. Chad’s brother. And her brother-in-law. A man she had scarcely known, whose self-contained exterior she had never got close to penetrating, no matter how many times they had met. A man she had felt distinctly uncomfortable with, for reasons she had never quite got round to exploring—other than the fact that he had not approved of her marriage to his only brother. He had made that very plain.

And yet Rory had been the person she had turned to when she’d wanted to track down her missing husband—knowing that if anyone could find Chad then Rory could. She hadn’t wanted to involve the police, unwilling to have her life put under the microscopic scrutiny that a police investigation would entail. Though she was uncertain why she’d had such blind faith in her brother-in-law.

Instinct, perhaps. The older she got the more trust she placed in instinct. And, in her more lucid moments, Angel acknowledged that maybe Rory’s so-called arrogance—which Chad had complained about so often—had in fact been an unshakeable strength of character. Oh, yes—it had been all too easy to feel ambivalent about Rory Mandelson.

But that had been in another age, another life.

Now she needed to know one thing, and one thing only. Then she could go and live out the rest of her life in some kind of peace.

Cases like hers were well documented—her odd feeling of detachment nothing unusual. Why was it, Angel wondered, that those left behind by people who disappeared without trace always seemed to have a huge chunk of their life missing?

‘H-have you found him, Rory?’ she stumbled. ‘Have you found my husband?’

Another pause, but this time a silence so uncomfortable that Angel could almost feel the awkwardness fizzing its way down the telephone wires, and she felt herself swaying with awful premonition.

Rory’s voice was heavy. ‘Yes, I’ve found him—’

‘Where is he?’ she demanded quickly.

There was uncharacteristic hesitation, as though he was momentarily lost for words. ‘Angel, I need to see you, to talk to you—’

‘Tell me!’ she insisted. ‘In the name of God, Rory Mandelson—will you please tell me where my husband is?’

‘Angel—’

Something in the way he said her name this time forewarned her. It was a tone of voice she had heard used before, a tone which conveyed both compassion and condolence. And when someone spoke that way, it could mean only one thing….

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she choked out in disbelief. ‘Chad is dead?’

‘Yes, he is,’ he told her, more gently than she had ever heard him speak. ‘I’m afraid that Chad was killed in a car crash eight days ago. I’m so very sorry, Angel.’

Dead?

The vibrant, crazy Chad Mandelson, snuffed out like a candle?

Angel shook her head frantically from side to side, so that the thick black hair beat heavily against the slender column of her neck. ‘No,’ she whimpered, in shocked and dazed denial. ‘He can’t be dead!’

‘I’m so sorry, Angel,’ he said again.

The part of her which wasn’t frozen in disbelief wondered why Rory Mandelson of all people was offering her sympathy, when she was nothing more than an estranged wife. And a deserted wife to boot. A wife he had never approved of Chad taking in the first place.

She shook her head once more, as if trying to clear the fuzziness which seemed to have descended on her like a dank, oppressive blanket. Surely she should offer some words of kindness to him. His only brother. His last living relation. Shell-shocked, she forced her lips to utter conventionally, ‘I’m sorry, too, Rory.’

‘Yes.’ But he clipped the word out, as though he doubted the sincerity of her condolences.

Angel swallowed, forcing herself to ask the question she knew must be asked. ‘And when…when is the funeral?’

There was another pause. ‘I’ve just come back from the funeral,’ he told her, his words seeming to be drawn out of him reluctantly. ‘It took place earlier today.’

‘You’ve already had the funeral?’ she asked, still shocked and bewildered.

‘Yes.’

So. No time to pray for the repose of his soul. And no opportunity to say goodbye to her husband properly, either. For wouldn’t a funeral have provided the natural and complete cutting of ties, in view of everything that had happened between them?

‘I wasn’t invited, then,’ she observed dully.

‘I honestly didn’t think you would want to come, Angel. I can’t think of another woman in the same situation who would have.’

‘And shouldn’t I have been the one to decide that?’ she cried. ‘Couldn’t you at least have asked me?’

‘Yes, I could.’ His voice seemed to come from a long way away as he answered her accusation slowly. ‘Of course I could, Angel. And you’re right—I should have done. I just presumed that you would find it too—’

‘Too what?’

‘Too distressing. After everything that had happened between you.’

‘You mean that people would have been laughing at me?’

‘That isn’t what I meant at all!’ he growled. ‘I just thought that you had been through enough with Chad, and I couldn’t think of many estranged wives who would have wanted to be there—given the circumstances.’

Angel pressed her nails painfully into the palm of her hand, as if to reassure herself that she was still alive, because she felt as colourless and as transparent as a ghost. ‘What circumstances?’ she intoned. ‘Tell me, Rory!’

‘Not now!’

His words rang out powerfully, broaching no argument, and Angel remembered Chad’s words drifting back to her—that what Rory wanted, Rory usually got.

‘I’m coming over to see you,’ he continued inexorably.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she answered stiffly. ‘I can see little point in that now! And it’s pointless your coming all the way to Ireland, when I can speak to you on the phone. Why don’t you just rejoice that my association with your family has come to an end, that your wish has finally been granted?’

‘I’m coming over to see you,’ he repeated, as if she hadn’t objected at all. ‘I need to talk to you, Angel.’

She opened her mouth to suggest that he said whatever it was he wanted to say right now, but she closed it almost immediately. Something about the way he spoke made her realise that to argue with him would be futile, but then hadn’t Chad always told her that Rory never took no for an answer. ‘When?’ she asked, wishing that she had the strength to put up a fight. And win.

‘On Monday. I’ll be with you on Monday.’

‘Monday?’ she whispered faintly. The day after tomorrow.

So soon?

Too soon, thought Angel as reality drove home with all the gritty force of a hailstorm. Too soon to take everything in.

But Rory had obviously misinterpreted her response. ‘I was going to try and make it tomorrow, but everything is in chaos here. I’ve been busy with…’ He hesitated. Angel thought she heard him swallow. ‘Formalities,’ he finished baldly.

She could imagine. The legal process of death. Angel swallowed too as she tried to take in the momentous news. It was unbelievable. Truly unbelievable.

She closed her eyes and remembered a long, hot summer. An Irish girl alone in London, working as a nanny in a sterile, unfriendly house. Angel had been like a fish out of water, yet unwilling to admit defeat, to return home, to her overworked mother and her six brothers who wouldn’t lift a finger to help themselves.

Then the devil-may-care Chad Mandelson had entered her life like a ray of sunshine. Chad hadn’t believed in problems; he’d shrugged each and every one off with that careless smile which captivated every woman around, Angel included. He’d been the kind of man who in Ireland would have been called a ‘chancer’, but in the hostile world of the big city Angel hadn’t cared. He’d been her rock and she had clung onto him.

He’d been an ex-model and a failed actor, doted on by his ageing mother and so unlike his austere and severe older brother that it had been hard to take in that they were the same flesh and blood. When Angel had met him, he’d been recently bereaved and still grieving for his mother. Afterwards she’d wondered whether that was why he had clung to her, too. But she had answered a need in him, just as he had answered one in her.

And now he was dead.

Dead.

Angel tried to imagine the shocking reality. Dark, unwelcome thoughts began to flood into her shattered mind and she felt the telephone slip from between boneless fingers.

Hundreds of miles away in England, Rory was deafened by the sound of the receiver as it clattered onto the hard, cold slabs of the flagstoned floor.

CHAPTER TWO

THERE was a tap on the door of the old-fashioned parlour, and Mrs Fitzpatrick, the matriarch of the Fitzpatrick Hotel, peered in to see Angel sitting motionless on the sofa.

‘Angel?’

Angel looked up from the photo she had been studying and tried to compose herself, though it wasn’t easy. She had been feeling so emotional since hearing of Chad’s death that her face kept crumpling up with disbelief, and tears were never very far from the surface. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, Mrs Fitzpatrick?’

Mrs Fitzpatrick was looking more agitated than Angel could ever remember seeing her—even more flustered than the time that the goose had flown into the parlour, minutes before the parish priest had arrived to take tea! Her thick Irish accent was very pronounced, the result of never having ventured further afield than twenty miles from the place where she had been born.

‘The gentleman you’re waiting on; he’s here to see you now. He’s just turned up in a fancy-looking motor car!’ she finished, on a note of excitement which she couldn’t quite hide, despite her obvious concern for Angel.

Angel swallowed nervously, and nodded. So Rory had finally arrived, had he? That would explain why Mrs Fitzpatrick was looking so rattled—for how often did tall barristers with heartbreakingly stern faces wander into the Fitzpatrick Hotel? No, men like Rory Mandelson certainly didn’t grow on trees in any part of the world—least of all in this part of Ireland!

‘Would you like me to show him in?’ prompted Mrs Fitzpatrick.

Angel shifted stiffly on the sofa. She hadn’t known when to expect him, so she had risen at six, just to be sure. Still in shock, she had sat as inert as a statue all morning waiting for him, dressed all in black, as was still the local custom. Her thick, dark hair she had scraped back severely with combs, but now she wondered why she had bothered. It was a style she wore every day whilst working, but this morning her fingers had felt useless—had shaken so much while she struggled to put the combs in place that already rogue curls were beginning to unfurl around her neck.

‘Thank you, Molly,’ she answered quietly. ‘Would you mind awfully?’

‘Not at all!’ The older woman narrowed her eyes shrewdly. ‘And how about a drop of brandy for you, Angelica? Bring a bit of colour back into your cheeks?’

But Angel shook her head, suppressing a shudder. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and she didn’t want Rory Mandelson walking in and finding her with a glass raised to her lips. He had never wanted her to marry his brother in the first place, but she had no desire to sink any further in his estimation.

Since his phone call she had barely slept. She had lain awake at night, wondering why he was even bothering to come to see her at all—until she’d remembered that he was a barrister, and that there was a need for him to create some kind of order in his life, a sense of doing the right thing—and the right thing in Rory’s mind was undoubtedly to pay his respects to the widow of his brother. But brandy? No way! Imagine his face! ‘No, I won’t, thanks, Molly.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘Not just at the moment.’

‘Then I’ll bring him along now, shall I?’

‘Would you? Thanks.’

After Molly had bustled out, Angel put the photo back down on the side-table and clasped her hands together, feeling more nervous than she could ever remember feeling in her life. Though why she should be so nervous of coming face to face with Rory after more than eighteen months, she didn’t know.

Grief, probably.

Grief made you do all kinds of things, didn’t it? Made you feel vulnerable and alone, for a start. Made you question what life was all about and wonder what you were doing with that life. And it made you study an old wedding photo with amazement, as if the handsome, laughing green-eyed girl in it was a total stranger, instead of herself.

And, yes, her husband might have fallen out of love with her, and left her without a word of explanation, but that did not stop her heart aching for him and the terrible waste of a young life.

The oval mirror which hung on the plain wall opposite offered her a glimpse of her reflection if she moved her head very slightly.

Angel grimaced. The slim-fitting black dress she wore only emphasised the washed-out pallor of her cheeks, and her eyes were shadowed from a lack of sleep. She looked a mess.

Hardly realising that she was doing it, she patted her dark hair fussily as the door swung open, and there stood Rory, his face darkening as he saw the pose she struck, and her hand fell to her side.

Now why had she been caught looking as though she was preening herself—something she never normally did? Why, he probably thought that all she was concerned about was feminine vanity—even at a dreadful time like this.

She blinked as she looked at him.

Angel had quite forgotten how he could simply seem to fill a room with his presence. She wondered, had he been born with that indefinable something which immediately drew the eye and the interest without any effort on his part? Some characteristic which planted itself so indelibly on your memory that he seemed to still be in the room minutes after he had left it.

Or had he learnt that from his job? As an advocate, he dominated courtrooms with his presence and his eloquence, representing the rights of the underdog. She remembered Chad’s derisive expression, unable to understand why his big brother would pass up the opportunity to earn riches beyond most people’s dreams. Instead, he fought cases for the poor and underprivileged—those who would normally be unable to afford a lawyer of his undoubted calibre.

And in that he could not have been more different from his brother, for Chad had chased every money-making prospect which came his way.

Rory Mandelson was a big man, and a tall man, too—with the same kind of dark, rugged good looks as his younger brother. And yet he had none of Chad’s wildness. Or his unpredictability—you could tell that simply by looking at him. Rory emanated strength and stability, thought Angel, like a great oak tree rooted deeply into the earth.

He stared very hard at her, his mouth flattening into an implacable line, which was understandable, given the circumstances of his visit. But it gave absolutely no hint as to how he might be feeling inside.

There was something very disciplined about Rory Mandelson, Angel realised suddenly. You wouldn’t really have a clue what was going on behind those deep blue eyes of his, with the lush black lashes which curled around them so sinfully.

His black jeans were his only concession to mourning, otherwise—with a sweater as green as the Wicklow Mountains, which rose in verdant splendour outside the window—he looked just as casual as any other tourist. Not that there had been many tourists just lately, Angel acknowledged. It had been an unusually cruel and bleak January in this part of Ireland, with no signs of a change in sight.

‘Hello, Angel,’ he said softly. His navy eyes searched her face, and for the briefest second Angel had the oddest sensation of that blue gaze searing through all her defences, able to read her soul itself.

‘H-hello, Rory,’ she replied shakily. She got up from the sofa slowly, with the exaggerated care of an old woman, and crossed the room until she was standing right in front of him. And only then could she sense the immense sadness which surrounded him like an aura, his grief almost tangible in the brittle silence. His deep blue eyes were dulled with the pain, his features strained with the effort of keeping his face rigidly controlled.

Angel acted on instinct.

Rising up on tiptoe, she put her arms tightly around him in the traditional gesture of condolence, and let her head fall helplessly to his shoulder, expecting him to enfold her in his arms in an answering gesture of comfort.

She would have done the same whoever it had been—man, woman or child. It was an intuitive action, and one prompted by the haunted expression in his blue eyes, but Angel felt his muscular frame stiffen and shift rejectingly beneath her fingertips, and she immediately dropped her hands to her sides, where they hung awkwardly, as if they were not part of her body but someone else’s.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said woodenly as she glimpsed his shuttered expression. He was English, after all. Perhaps the widow of his brother should not have been flinging her arms around his neck with so much familiarity. Perhaps it was not the ‘done thing’.

‘Yes, I know,’ he responded flatly. ‘Everyone is sorry. He was too young—much too young to die.’

Had he deliberately misunderstood her? Angel wondered. Been unwilling to dwell on her action because he was embarrassed by it? Or appalled by it?

Vowing to make amends, and to act as appropriately as the circumstances demanded, she gestured to a chair. ‘Would you like to sit down, Rory?’ she asked him formally. ‘You’ve had a long journey.’

He looked at the chair she had indicated, as if doubtful that it would accommodate his long-legged frame, and shook his head. ‘No. I’ll stand, if you don’t mind. I’ve been sitting in the car for hours.’

‘A drink, then?’

‘No. Not yet.’

Their eyes met.

‘Then are you going to tell me why you’re here?’ asked Angel quietly. ‘Why you came?’

His dark head shook emphatically. ‘Not yet,’ he said again, and Angel decided that she had never met a man who could carry off evasiveness with so much aplomb.

His eyes were distracted by something, and he reached to the side-table and picked up the wedding photograph she had been studying before he arrived. Rory’s mouth twisted as he stared down at the differing expressions of the participants, frozen in time in a group combination which could now never be repeated. ‘So, you were reliving happier times, were you?’ he queried, his voice hard and mocking.

‘Is that so very wrong, then?’ She knew she sounded stung, almost defensive. Was this what he did to witnesses on the stand—backed them into a corner until he had them lashing out, saying things they probably hadn’t meant to say? ‘It’s one of the few photos I have of your brother.’

He shrugged. ‘Forgive me if I sound cynical,’ he observed coolly. ‘But, as you know, I never thought that the wedding should go ahead in the first place—’

‘Oh, yes, I know that!’ she whispered back, with a bleak laugh which was the closest Angel ever got to feeling bitter about the whole affair. ‘You made that quite clear at the time!’

‘And circumstances bore out my initial assessment of the relationship,’ he mused.

She stared at him in horror. ‘You stone-hearted beast!’

He didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I would therefore be an out and out hypocrite if I now professed to approve of the marriage simply because Chad is dead.’

Angel drew in a deep, shuddering breath as he clipped out that cold, final word. ‘Must you put it quite so callously?’ she demanded, wondering whether he had a sympathetic bone in his body.

His lips flattened. ‘How else would you like me to put it? Do you want me to use euphemisms for what was essentially a horrible and violent end to Chad’s young life? He hasn’t “passed on” or “fallen asleep”, you know. He’s dead, Angel—and we both have to accept that.’

‘Are you deliberately being brutal?’ she asked him weakly.

‘Yes,’ he admitted, watching a pulse beat frantically at her throat. ‘But sometimes brutal is best if it makes you face up to facts.’

Facts.

Angel sank down onto the edge of a chair without thinking as she asked the question whose answer she had little desire to hear. ‘So wh-what happened—exactly?’

He seemed to hesitate, the blue eyes narrowing as if he was silently working out a problem. Yet when he spoke he sounded icily calm. ‘His car hit the central reservation, and—’ He stopped when he saw the sugar-whiteness of her skin. If he had thought that she was pale before, well, now she looked positively anaemic. ‘You’re not ready for this,’ he said abruptly. ‘You need a drink.’ ‘No—’ ‘Oh, yes, you do.’ His mouth was grim. ‘And so do I.’

Too weak to object, Angel watched while he located the decanter and two glasses and poured them each a large measure. If she hadn’t been so shell-shocked by the whole sequence of events, then she might have told him that he had picked up the wrong glasses, and that after he had gone Molly Fitzpatrick would crucify her for not giving a man like Rory Mandelson the best Waterford crystal!

‘Here. Drink this,’ he instructed as he handed one to her, in that rather autocratic manner of his which had always used to drive his younger brother nuts.

Angel sipped and fire invaded her mouth as the strong liquor immediately caused her tense limbs to relax. Without realising that she was doing it, she sat back in the chair and closed her eyes. When she opened them again it was to find Rory sitting opposite her, his eyes fixed on her face. He hadn’t touched his brandy, she noted.

‘Are you okay?’ he wanted to know.

Angel nodded. ‘I’m fine now.’

‘You don’t look fine. You’re so pale that you look as though you’re about to pass out. Though that might be due to the fact that you’re clothed from head to foot in black,’ he added critically.

She was sensitive to the unmistakable reproof in his voice. ‘You obviously don’t approve of my wearing black, then, Rory?’

His broad shoulders in the green sweater barely moved, but he managed to convey all the censure of a dismissive shrug. ‘Surely my feelings on the subject are irrelevant,’ he responded quietly. ‘You must wear what you see fit. Indeed you must behave in any way that seems appropriate.’

But it was clear that he considered her mourning clothes to be highly in appropriate! Angel put her glass down with a trembling hand. Just who did he think he was? Coming over to Ireland when she hadn’t even wanted him to! And with a face like thunder! Sitting there in judgement of her as though she were some kind of floozie—when everyone knew that Rory Mandelson had had more women in his thirty-four years than any man had a right to have.

‘Oh, I will,’ she responded, with a defiant little shake of her head. ‘Never you fear about that, Rory—but I want to know just what it is that you object to. Do you think I have no right to mourn my husband?’

His eyes narrowed sharply, so that they appeared like two bright sapphire shards which slanted beneath the ebony-dark brows. ‘But he was your husband in name only, wasn’t he, Angel? He disappeared from your life over a year and a half ago. The marriage vows which you made so enthusiastically ended up not being worth the piece of paper they were written on.’

She lifted her chin. ‘Just as you predicted, in fact.’

His gaze didn’t waver. ‘Yes. Just as I predicted.’

Angel bit her lip. ‘And I suppose it gave you pleasure, knowing that you were right. Knowing that all your gloomy prophecies were fulfilled. That we couldn’t live together and that I drove him away. Did it, Rory?’

His eyebrows knitted together and he gave a small laugh that was totally devoid of humour. ‘Did it give me pleasure? Is that what you think of me then, Angel? That my ego is so insufferably huge that I would enjoy seeing your marriage crumble simply because I had anticipated that it might happen?’

‘You tell me,’ she responded tonelessly.

Shaking his head with exasperation, he turned on his heel and walked across the room to the window, where the beauty of the spectacular backdrop of mountains momentarily took his breath away—something which did not happen to Rory Mandelson very often. He waited for a moment before he turned round and leaned negligently against the windowsill, and the semi-relaxed stance showed off his physique to perfect advantage.

Did he not realise, Angel wondered rather helplessly, that with his long legs stretched out in front of him like that, and his ruffled dark hair and eyes of deepest blue, he looked like most women’s fantasy come to life? You would have thought that he might have the decency to wear something dull or at least something that camouflaged his body. Or was it his intention that the soft cashmere of the jade sweater should cling so lovingly to each hard sinew of his torso?

Angel shook her head slightly, recognising with a shock the path her thoughts had been leading her down. What was she doing, for pity’s sake—drooling over her ex-brother-in-law?

Rory’s mouth tightened as he registered the way she was looking at him. ‘What kind of brute would I be,’ he challenged softly, ‘if I rejoiced in the demise of my only brother’s marriage? God, Angel—is that the type of man you think I am? No, on second thought, please don’t answer that!’ He threw her a look which was tinged with regret. ‘Once I could see that you were both determined to go through with it, then naturally I wanted to see it last.’

‘But then I drove him away?’ she quizzed.

He looked at her with ocean-dark eyes. ‘I don’t know. Did you?’

Angel shook her head violently, and a black corkscrew curl dangled in a glossy spiral by her pale cheek. ‘Oh, what’s the point in discussing it now? Chad is dead! He isn’t coming back!’ Angel’s voice started to crack as she acknowledged for the first time in her life her own mortality.

For, yes, she had grown up in a remote and fairly inaccessible part of Ireland, where the existence of a close-knit and small community meant that death was less feared than in many places—and many had been the time that Angel had been to pay her respects at houses where families sat and mourned, the body lying in the parlour while people laughed and drank and cried around it—but death had never affected her personally. Like it was affecting her now.

Tears began to slide down her white cheeks. ‘It’s as though he never existed,’ she sobbed quietly. ‘As though he was never here!’

Rory frowned at her obvious distress. He had seen Angel cry only once before, when Chad had disappeared without trace and she had come—inexplicably—to him for assistance. At the time he had been resolutely un-impressed by her distress, partly, he suspected, since he had so adamantly warned her off the marriage in the first place.

But this time for some reason he found the sight of her tears unbearably moving. ‘Of course he existed,’ he contradicted softly, and, coming back to perch on the edge of the chair opposite hers, he took one pale, cold hand between his and rubbed at it absently with the pad of his thumb.

As physical consolation went, it was merely a crumb of comfort, and yet Angel derived an extraordinary sensation of calm just from the touch of his hand. She sniffed, and took the handkerchief he silently proffered and blew her nose like a child.

‘You still haven’t told me exactly how it happened,’ she said.

For the first time since his arrival Rory looked uncomfortable. He had rehearsed what he was going to say over and over again in the car—aloud and in his head—and yet now his pat words of explanation seemed curiously inadequate, especially when he was confronted by the sight of Angel’s over-bright eyes.

He decided to try a different approach from the one he had planned. ‘Tell me about the last time you saw Chad,’ he instructed softly.

Angel blinked. ‘But you know all about that! When he just completely disappeared like that, I came to see you.’ Thinking that if anyone would be able to trace Chad, then it would be his dynamic older brother.

‘But at the time you explained very little, Angel—other than the fact that he had gone,’ he reminded her quietly.

Because she had felt raw and humiliated, with her confidence in tatters. Wondering just what sort of person she must be if her husband of less than a year could go off and leave her like that, without a word to anyone.

‘So tell me again, Angel,’ he insisted, in his deep, compelling voice. ‘Only this time tell me everything.’

And, despite any reservations she might have had about discussing something as painful as Chad’s departure, Angel was no exception to anyone else in responding to the force of Rory’s personality. With those blue eyes boring into her like that it was impossible not to answer him. She focused her mind to concentrate on what he had asked her, though, to be perfectly honest, it was a relief to have something else to focus her thoughts on other than the wrenching realisation that Chad was dead.

‘The last time I saw Chad he was leaving for work,’ she began slowly, as she cast her mind back to that morning more than eighteen months earlier. ‘I remember that it was a glorious, golden June day. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and I was going to meet him for a drink after work that night.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing.’ Angel shrugged. ‘That was it.’

Rory’s face became shuttered. ‘Did he show any signs that something could be wrong?’

She frowned at him in confusion. ‘Wrong?’ she echoed. ‘What could be wrong?’

‘With the relationship,’ he elaborated. ‘Anything which might have indicated to you that he was planning to disappear from your life without a word?’

Angel bit her lip. With the benefit of hindsight it was easy to see that there had been plenty wrong with their relationship—but she had been so young. So green. So determined to prove wrong everyone who had prophesied disaster that she had ignored the danger signs looming large on the horizon. But she couldn’t possibly tell Rory about those, now, could she? She couldn’t really start explaining that within mere months of her marriage to his brother their sex life had not merely died down but had petered out all together.

‘We weren’t communicating that well,’ she hedged, which she supposed was one way of saying it.

‘But you hadn’t argued?’

Angel shook her head. ‘No. That was the oddest thing. We hadn’t. Chad just seemed very distracted during those last few months. That’s all.’ She fixed him with an unblinking green stare that dazzled him with its emerald blaze. ‘But that’s all irrelevant, surely? Isn’t it time that you told me exactly what you’ve found out, Rory?’

There was a fractional pause. ‘Do you want me to break it to you gently?’

She cocked her head to one side and looked at him perceptively. ‘Is that possible?’

‘Not really, no,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘He had another woman, you see.’

His words confirmed her unspoken fears. Yes. Of course he had. Some part of her had known that all along. The part that wasn’t affected by her relative youth and lack of experience. The part that was passed on down through the generations and was known as a woman’s instinct. The part that had registered his complete lack of desire for her whenever he had looked at her. Angel swallowed.

‘He had another woman,’ Rory repeated baldly, because her total lack of reaction to his controversial statement made him imagine that she had not heard him the first time.

‘Yes,’ said Angel, and let out a long, low sigh. ‘That figures.’

‘Do you want me to continue?’ he questioned.

She drew her chin up proudly. ‘I hope to God that I’m not the kind of person who runs away from the truth, Rory. So, yes, please continue. Tell me about this woman. Does she have a name?’

Some indefinable emotion briefly escaped from the shuttered confines of his face, hardening his mouth into a forbidding line. ‘Jo-Anne. Jo-Anne Price.’

Angel wrinkled up her nose as the name struck a familiar chord in her memory. ‘And she’s Australian. Am I right? She worked as a temporary at the advertising agency.’

‘That’s right.’

‘She had just finished uni,’ Angel remembered, racking her brain. ‘And she had come to get work experience in England.’ Angel pushed a stray strand of hair off her forehead, finding that actually she seemed to know an awful lot about a woman she had only met once or twice. So how was that? Maybe Chad had spoken about her lots, and she simply hadn’t noticed. ‘Hadn’t she?’

Rory nodded uncomfortably. ‘Yes, that’s right. She had. Chad met her in a pub near the office, found her a temporary job at the agency, and, bingo, suddenly he was in love.’

Angel drew in a deep breath, stunned by his cruel candour, despite all her protestations that she could take whatever he had to tell her. ‘And I was his bride of less than a year,’ she reminded him bitterly. ‘So was he not still in love with me?’

There was a small, uncomfortable pause. ‘I think that Chad thought he loved you, Angel, and that’s why he married you.’ Rory’s face hardened again with the pain of the truth. ‘Only then Jo-Anne appeared on the scene, and…’

‘And?’ prompted Angel acidly, glaring at him, as though it was his fault.

Rory held his palms out in a gesture of apology, realising that he owed her the truth, however painful. ‘He wasn’t quite sure what had hit him. This wasn’t just a fling, you see. It was that once-in-a-lifetime thing—if you believe it exists. I don’t, personally.’ His face darkened. ‘But Chad certainly did.’

Angel winced.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said—’

‘Oh, yes, you should!’ she declared fiercely. ‘I told you that I wanted the truth, and that’s exactly what you’re giving me. And, yes, you are absolutely correct in your assessment, Rory. Chad thought he was in love with me—that’s why he married me. And then…’ But she shook her head, unwilling to pursue it further. What on earth was the point of dissecting her relationship with her husband? Especially now. And especially not with his big brother.

But Rory did not prompt her, or press her to continue. Instead he sat back in his seat and raised the glass of brandy to his mouth to take his first sip, then he put the glass carefully back down on the table.

‘Chad couldn’t face telling you what had happened. Or me, for that matter. He and Jo-Anne just took off for Australia. They wanted to get away from anyone who might cast censure on their perfect relationship. A form of geographical escape, I guess.’

‘Well, not quite—since I presume that she had family living in Australia? And most parents wouldn’t really want their daughter involved with a married man, surely?’

‘No, you’re right. They wouldn’t.’ Rory frowned. ‘But that wasn’t going to be a problem. Not in Jo-Anne’s case, anyway. All her family were dead, you see. She was completely on her own, and I think that fact triggered a protective quality in Chad which he hadn’t realised existed.’ He gave a deep sigh, as though his next words were the hardest of all to say. ‘And it meant, of course, that they had something very big in common. They were both orphans—united against the world.’

Angel’s green eyes narrowed as something in his voice alerted a sixth sense in her. A sense of danger. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there, Rory? Something that you aren’t telling me?’

He gave her the kind of smile which told her she shouldn’t worry her little head about anything, but Angel had grown immune to men with dazzling smiles. Immune to most men generally. Broken marriages tended to have that effect on women.

‘Why don’t we take this one step at a time?’ he suggested silkily, but his eyes had taken on a watchful gleam.

‘Because you’re hiding something from me!’

He expelled the breath he had been holding. Damn the woman, and damn her intuition, too! ‘Okay then, Angel,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. Chad and Jo-Anne went to Australia together and travelled around and were, by all accounts, extremely happy together.’

‘And how did you find all this out?’ she demanded. ‘You can’t have just pieced it together since Chad’s death. You told me that the accident only took place…’ she frowned to remember ‘…twelve days ago.’

This had been one of the questions he had been dreading answering. ‘He wrote to me just before Christmas,’ he admitted quietly.

‘He did what?’ Angel rose to her feet, her face disbelieving. ‘Then why the hell didn’t you tell me then?’

‘Because he asked me specifically not to—’

‘And blood is thicker than water, I suppose?’

‘That wasn’t why I agreed—’

‘And tell me, Rory,’ she cut across his words sarcastically, ‘if Chad hadn’t died, how long would you have kept news of his whereabouts from me?’

‘It wasn’t my decision to make. It was Chad’s. He wanted to speak to you himself. Face to face. Not by letter.’

‘But he decided to wait until after Christmas?’ she questioned frostily. ‘So why put off the moment of truth? For surely once he had seen me then he would be able to ask for a divorce.’

‘He had to. He wasn’t able to travel until then.’

Angel glanced at him suspiciously. ‘Because?’

This was proving a lot more difficult than Rory had imagined it would, but then he had quite forgotten the impact that his sister-in-law could make with those beacon-bright green eyes of hers. God, a man could lose his soul in eyes like that…And yet it wasn’t fair on her to pussyfoot around like this, was it? To search for polite platitudes where none would ever be appropriate.

‘Because Jo-Anne was expecting Chad’s baby,’ he told her bluntly, ignoring Angel’s shocked intake of breath as he ploughed relentlessly on. ‘And she was naturally precluded from flying in the latter stages of her pregnancy. Chad wanted to come and see you in person, to ask your forgiveness for his behaviour and to request an early divorce. And he wanted me to meet my brand-new nephew,’ he finished heavily.

Fragments of what he was saying began to make sense at last, and the picture that they formed in Angel’s brain had connotations which made her blood run cold.

‘You mean that they all came over?’ she demanded in horror. ‘Jo-Anne and Chad and—’

‘And the baby,’ he concluded, only now his words sounded as though they were steeped in something bitter that he wanted to spit as far away from him as possible.

Still standing, Angel gripped onto the arms of the chair, her fists white-knuckled with fear. ‘Wh-what happened?’ she whispered.

‘They were on their way from the airport to my house,’ he told her. ‘We don’t know exactly what caused the accident. The other driver had been drinking, but he was still within the legal limit. Chad was under the limit, too,’ he added quickly, meeting the question in her eyes. ‘He’d changed, Angel, I knew that much from our telephone conversation. He had become a family man, proud of his new baby—nothing would have induced him to wreck all that. He may have been jet lagged. The baby might have been crying. Who knows? No one will ever know. Not now.’ A muscle began to work convulsively in his cheek, but that was the only outward sign of his grief. ‘Anyway, the car hit the central reservation just beyond Heathrow Airport. Chad and Jo-Anne were killed instantly—’

Angel’s heart was in her mouth. ‘And the baby?’

Rory buried his head in his hands so that his face was hidden, and Angel was suddenly filled with an unpalatable fear.

‘Rory!’ she demanded urgently. ‘What happened to the baby?’

As he slowly lifted his head his features looked so ravaged with pain that Angel feared the very worst. Then he suddenly said in a bleak voice, but a voice nevertheless, which held more than a trace of hope in it, ‘Somehow the baby survived. Miraculously. Without a scratch. He’s fine.’

‘Oh, thank God!’ cried Angel, and sank back down onto her chair, not noticing the tears of relief which slid down her cheeks. ‘Thank God!’

He glanced over at her gratefully, incredibly moved by her generosity of spirit. ‘Thank you for that, Angel,’ he said softly. And in a way her reaction justified his reasons for coming to see her. Made what he had to say next a little bit easier…

‘Where is he now?’ she demanded quickly.

His eyes narrowed. He was unsure of whether she meant her husband or his son, and knew that a huge degree of sensitivity would need to be employed if she was referring to Chad.

‘The baby,’ she enlarged. ‘Where is he? And what’s his name?’

‘He’s here with me now,’ Rory told her steadily. ‘I brought him with me.’

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