A Forbidden Desire

“Jacinta, I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you.” Letter to Reader Title Page PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“Jacinta, I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you.”

Paul continued. “I couldn’t sleep for wondering what your pretty mouth would feel like under mine....”

Dazzled, she sighed, and he took what he wanted, filling her with his taste—mate, dark and mysterious—overwhelming her with expertise, summoning her hidden wildness in response to his passionate mastery.

When at last the kiss ended, they were both breathing erratically, and he surveyed her tender mouth with eyes that were narrowed and lit from within, purposeful and determined on conquest.

Desire clutched at her heart. In a soft, tentative voice she said his name, loving the sound of it on her lips, shaping her mouth to his liking, to her need. “Paul,” she breathed....

Dear Reader,

It is the happiest of omens that the publication of my fiftieth book, A Forbidden Desire, should coincide with Harlequin’s fiftieth anniversary. It’s been a long and pleasant association, and I wish everyone at Harlequin and all our readers a very special celebration.

Because so many readers have asked over the years, “But what about Paul?” I’ve given this happy ending to the man who lost Aura to Flint in Dark Fire. Although red-headed, too, Jacinta is quite different from Paul’s lost love, just as he has altered in the years since Aura married his best friend. A Forbidden Desire brings their stories to a conclusion, although there is always a chance that you might catch glimpses of them in future books!

Thank you all very much for your support. I hope you enjoy the books that are still on their way as much as I have enjoyed writing them for you. If you’d like to contact me, write to:

Robyn Donald

P.O. Box 18240 Glen Innes

Auckland, New Zealand

A Forbidden Desire

Robyn Donald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

HE REFUSED to look across the crowd of people dancing beneath the intense, dark Fijian sky, but a frown half hid his hard blue eyes. He resented this awareness, this almost psychic summons, mainly because he was accustomed to thinking of himself as a restrained man, easily able to control the emotions that prowled in the cage he’d fashioned for them five years ago.

For some reason, tall, slim Jacinta Lyttelton rattled the bars of that cage. It didn’t help that she was completely unaware of her power, or that he didn’t know why the hell she possessed it.

Ignoring a woman who’d been trying to catch his eye for the past four days, he let his gaze roam to the pillars on the edge of the dance floor.

Heat gathered inside him. Yes, there she was, clad in one of the neat, not quite fashionable dresses she wore in the evening. She was standing alone and watching the dancers, looking interested rather than wistful.

The day before, as he’d sat talking to her mother in the shade of the leaning coconut palms, the same insistent tug at his senses had pulled his gaze away from the older woman’s thin, lined face and along the hot white coral sand.

‘There’s Jacinta,’ Mrs Lyttelton had said, smiling, her face alight with pleasure.

To his dazzled, suddenly feral eyes Jacinta had appeared as an embodiment of the fecund extravagance of the tropics, a glowing, sumptuous creature whose hair collected and intensified the sun’s rays, a woman gleaming in the soft, humid air like a spirit of fire and desire.

An urgent hunger had slowed and thickened his blood. Although he’d tried to summon his usual ironic detachment to combat it, the violent physical reaction swamped both will-power and discipline.

He’d been disappointed and relieved when she got closer and the fiery goddess turned into an almost plain woman, tall, too thin, her breasts hidden by a large, faded cotton shirt, only her long, lightly tanned legs hinting at that promise of hidden passion.

Watching her now, he felt his gut clench and his body spring to painful life as he was gripped by the unmistakable burgeoning of desire. Thank God the torches that flamed around the dance floor cast enough shadows to hide his response.

The flaring light touched her pale skin with fire and licked with adoring incandescence across the aureole of her hair. The previous day she’d worn the thick, tumbling curls pulled back in a practical ponytail, but tonight she’d left it unharnessed, and the bright abundance shouted an invitation.

Dragging his eyes away, he concentrated his blue gaze on his hand on the table, saw with astonishment the rigid curl of his fingers as he fought for control. Within inches of those dark fingers flowers lay in artful, casual glory—vivid scarlet hibiscus, frilled and suggestive, and the cool, smooth stars of frangipani, their creamy restraint belied by the sweetly pervasive, erotic perfume. He wanted to crush them in his hands—he wanted to pick them up and heap them on a bed for her and take her on it for long, passionate hours until she surrendered completely and eagerly to his will.

A couple of hundred years ago he’d have believed that Jacinta Lyttelton had bewitched him. Oh, he’d always been susceptible to brilliant colouring, but the women he desired had invariably been beautiful, with a certain mysterious allure that excited the explorer in him.

Jacinta possessed neither. Skin of translucent ivory and big hazel eyes—even a soft, red, inviting mouth—were dominated by a straight, high-bridged nose and subdued by a round chin. Good legs and delicate ankles and wrists didn’t compensate for the hollows at her collarbone, the angular body. Apart from that astonishing colouring, he thought, trying to be coolly dispassionate, she had no presence.

His bizarre reaction—the urge to carry her off to the nearest bedroom and stamp his imprint on her so starkly that she never looked at another man—was a sexual aberration, a primitive, freakish eccentricity caused by some delusion.

Which was just as well, because she had enough to deal with at the moment. One glance had told him that her wheelchair-bound mother was dying. He had no idea why mother and daughter had chosen to stay at this expensive resort hotel in Fiji at the hottest time of the year, but Mrs Lyttelton was enjoying it and the affection between mother and daughter was obvious.

His eyes narrowed as one of the hotel guests, a tall, brawny Australian with shoulders as wide as a barn door, approached the woman in the shadows.

A primal jealousy fogged his brain; he was on his feet and halfway across the room before he realised he’d moved. Even as he told himself that he was behaving like a fool he felt an unusual aggression tighten his muscles and fill him with unrepentant hostility.

The Australian didn’t even see him, grinning, he said something that brought a smile to that soft red mouth, and turned to go out onto the beach.

Jacinta waved a hand and turned back to her survey of the dancers.

Relaxing his headlong pace, he watched the man go out into the dark night, but his skin was tight and the heavy, hungry need that prowled though him snarled softly, thwarted of legitimate prey. Noiselessly he walked up to her, some savage part of him enjoying the little jump she gave when she became conscious of his presence.

‘Would you like to dance?’ he asked, masking his emotions with the smile he knew was one of his greatest assets.

She looked startled, but after a moment said, ‘Yes. Thank you.’

He wanted her to stumble, be heavy on her feet, not know the steps. But she was like the wind in his arms, a fragrant, spice-scented wind, swaying seductively through the languid flowers of the tropics, warm, flowing silkily against him

Every cell in his body shouted in triumphal recognition. Anger at his helpless response cooled his voice. ‘Is your mother not well enough to come tonight?’

‘She’s just tired’

The faint huskiness beneath her voice smoothed across his skin like silk velvet. ‘Is she enjoying the holiday?’

She looked swiftly at him, and then away again. The thick curls moved slightly as she nodded. ‘She’s having a wonderful time,’ she said quietly. ‘Everyone’s been so kind.’

Because he couldn’t trust himself to say anything that wouldn’t increase her distress, he remained silent. Unfortunately that meant his mind could concentrate on the multitude of signals his rioting senses relayed—like the fact that her eyes were actually green, and that the hazel effect came from little gold flecks embedded in the cool depths...

Like the curve of her brows, slightly darker than her hair, and the deeper colour of her lashes as they lay on her skin, casting mysterious little shadows...

Like the tiny creases at the corners of her mouth that gave it an upward tilt...

Like the faint scent of her skin—pure essence of enchantment, he thought grimly.

Like the brush of her breasts across his chest, and the sleek strength of her long legs as they negotiated an elderly couple enjoying themselves enormously doing what looked like a forties jitterbug.

Anger—sheer and hot and potent—only fuelled his runaway response. Of all things, he despised being at the mercy of his emotions; it had been five years since he’d felt such an elemental hunger, and even then he hadn’t been tormented by this intense immediacy, this compulsion.

Thank God he was leaving tomorrow. Once back in New Zealand and deprived of nourishment, this obsession would starve and he’d be his own man again.

CHAPTER ONE

‘MY COUSIN Paul,’ Gerard said in his pedantic way, ‘is the only man I’ve ever known to decide that if he couldn’t have the woman he loved he’d have no other.’

To hide her astonishment Jacinta Lyttelton gazed around Auckland’s busy airport lounge. ‘Really?’

Gerard sighed. ‘Yes. Aura was exquisite, and utterly charming. They were the perfect match but she ran away with his best friend only days before the wedding.’

‘Then they couldn’t have been a perfect match,’ Jacinta pointed out, smiling a little to show she was joking. During the nine months she’d known Gerard she’d learned that he needed such clues. He was a dear, kind man, but he didn’t have much of a sense of humour.

‘I don’t know what she saw in Flint Jansen,’ Gerard pursued, surprising her because he didn’t normally gossip. Perhaps he thought some background information might smooth her way with his cousin. ‘He was—I suppose he still is—a big, tough, dangerous man, bulldozing his way through life, hard-bitten enough to deal with anything that came his way. He was some sort of troubleshooter for one of the big corporations. Yet he was Paul’s best friend right from school, and Paul is a very urbane man, worldly and cosmopolitan—a lawyer.’

Jacinta nodded politely. Perhaps Aura Whoever-she’d-been liked rough trade. ‘Friendship can be just as mysterious as love. Your cousin and Flint must have had something in common for it to last so long.’

The same taste in women, to start with!

Her eyes followed a small Japanese child, fragile and solemn but clearly at home in such surroundings, her hand lost in that of her mother.

My biological clock, Jacinta thought wryly, must be ticking away. Twenty-nine wasn’t over the hill, but occasionally she was oppressed by a feeling of being shunted quietly out of the mainstream, banished to float peacefully and dully in a backwater.

‘I could never understand it,’ Gerard said, for the fourth time turning the label on his cabin bag to check that he’d addressed it. ‘She and Paul looked wonderful together and he worshipped her, whereas Flint—oh, well, it doesn’t matter, but the whole sordid episode was incredibly hard on Paul.’

Being jilted would be incredibly hard on anyone. Jacinta nodded sympathetically

Gerard frowned. ‘He had to pick up the pieces of his life with everyone knowing and pitying him—and Paul is a proud man. He sold the house he and Aura were going to live in and bought Waitapu as a refuge—I suppose he thought he’d get some peace half an hour’s drive north of Auckland—but then Flint and Aura settled only about twenty minutes away! In a vineyard!’

Jacinta composed her face into a sympathetic expression. Gerard’s loyalty did him credit, and this wasn’t the time to tell him that things had changed. Nowadays guilty couples didn’t retreat to some far-flung part of the world and live in abject, if happy, retirement

‘When did this all happen?’ she asked.

‘Almost six years ago,’ Gerard said in a mournful tone, fiddling with his boarding pass and passport.

Almost six years! Jacinta said mischievously, ‘What about that exquisitely beautiful woman you pointed out to me in Ponsonby a couple of months ago? You didn’t exactly say so, but you implied that she and Paul are very good friends.’

Gerard blinked and stood up. ‘He’s a normal man,’ he said austerely, ‘but I doubt very much whether Paul intends to marry her. She’s an actress.’

As well as being kind, loyal and pedantic, it appeared that Gerard was a snob.

A voice on the communications system announced that passengers for Air New Zealand’s flight from Auckland to Los Angeles should make their way through the departure gate.

Gerard bent down and picked up his bag. ‘So don’t go falling in love with him,’ he directed half seriously. ‘Women do, and although he doesn’t like hurting people he’s broken hearts these last five years. Aura’s defection killed some essential compassion in him, I think.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Jacinta said dryly. ‘I’m not planning to fall in love.’

‘Not until you’ve finished your Masters,’ he said, and to her astonishment bestowed a swift peck on her cheek. ‘I’d better go.’

She hoped she’d concealed her startled response. ‘Have a great trip, and I hope your research goes well.’

‘It will, but thank you. Enjoy the summer,’ he said, ‘and work out exactly what you want to do for your thesis. Have you got the books?’

‘Yes, and your list of suggestions to mull over.’

He nodded and turned away, tall, slightly stooped, his fair hair shining in the lights. Watching as he made his way through the people, Jacinta thought he always seemed out of place except when he was lecturing. Anyone looking at him would immediately pick him as an academic. If his projected book was a success he might turn out to be one of the youngest history professors in the country.

At the gate he turned and waved. Smiling, she waved back, waiting until he’d disappeared before turning to go down the escalator to the car park.

An hour and a half later she opened the car door just a hundred metres from a glorious beach, and unfurled her long, thin body and legs.

Sun-warmed, salt-tanged, the air slid into her lungs—smooth as wine and just as heady. The big grey roof of a house loomed above the dark barrier of a high, clipped hedge—Cape honeysuckle, she noted, eyeing the orange flowers—and the lazy mew of a gull smoothed across the mellow sky.

New Zealand in summer; for the first time in years, anticipation coiled indolently through her. Not that it was officially summer—November was the last month of spring—but it had been a weary, wet, grinding winter and she was eager for the sun.

A half-smile lifted the corners of her controlled mouth as she unlatched the gate and walked up the white shell path, amused at how pale her narrow feet looked. Ah, well, a few walks along that sweep of sand she’d seen from the hill would soon give them some colour. Although she turned sallow in winter her skin loved summer, gilding slowly under layers of sunscreen.

The house was huge, a white Victorian villa superbly settled in a bower of lawns and flowery borders, sheltered from the small breeze off the sea. The scents of the garden and newly mown lawns were concentrated into an erotic, drugging perfume.

She hoped that the man who owned all this appreciated it.

‘My cousin Paul,’ Gerard had told her when he’d suggested she spend the summer at Waitapu, ‘was born into old money, and because he’s both hard-headed and very intelligent he’s added considerably to the paternal legacy.’

Obviously. The house and the gardens bore the unmistakable sheen of affluence.

A bead of sweat gathered on each of Jacinta’s temples. Before leaving town she’d clipped back the hair that reached halfway down her back, but during the drive the curly, slippery tresses had oozed free. Tucking a bright ginger strand behind one ear, she walked up three steps onto a wide, grey-painted wooden verandah and knocked at the door before turning to admire the gardens more closely.

She must look madly out of place here, Jacinta thought wryly, dressed in clothes without a vestige of style. And although she was tall enough to be a model she hadn’t been granted a model’s grace.

Her green-gold gaze roamed across the felicitous mixture of trees and shrubs, lingering on the slim grey trunks of a giant cabbage tree, each smooth branch topped by a sunburst of thin leaves. At its feet nasturtiums and Californian poppies struck sparks off each other.

The soft wind of the door opening dragged her smiling attention away from a gaudy orange and black monarch butterfly. With the smile still lingering, she turned. ‘Hello, I’m Jacinta Lyttelton...’

The words dried on her tongue. She knew that handsome face—the strong jaw and arrogant cheekbones—as well as her own. The intervening months hadn’t dimmed the brilliance of those eyes, a blue so intense they blazed with the colour and fire of sapphires. Yet in spite of that clarity they were oddly difficult to read.

Suddenly aware that the trousers she wore were five years old and had been cheap to start with, and that her tee-shirt had faded to a washed-out blue that did nothing for her, Jacinta realised she was standing with her jaw dangling. Clamping it shut, she swallowed, and tried to repulse a sudden, insistent warning of fate advancing inexorably, mercilessly on its way, crushing everything in its path.

‘Welcome to Waitapu, Jacinta.’ His deep, flexible voice wove magic, conjured darkly enchanted dreams that had dazzled her nights for months.

Fortunately her numbed brain jolted into action long enough to provide her with the location of their previous meeting.

Fiji.

The lazy, glorious week she and her mother had spent on a tiny, palm-shadowed resort island. One night he’d asked her to dance, and she’d been horrified by her fierce, runaway response to the nearness of his lean, big body. When the music had stopped he’d thanked her gravely and taken her to the room she had shared with her mother before, no doubt, rejoining the seriously glamorous woman he was on holiday with.

And for too many weeks afterwards Jacinta had let herself drift off to sleep on the memory of how it had felt to be held in those strong arms, and the faint, evocative fragrance that had owed nothing to aftershave—the essence of masculinity...

An embarrassing flash of colour stained her high cheekbones.

Damn, she thought helplessly. How unfair that this man was Paul McAlpine, her landlord for the next three months.

Hoping desperately that her weak smile showed nothing of her chagrin, she said, ‘I didn’t know you were Gerard’s cousin.’ She tried to sound mildly amused, but each word emerged tinged with her discomfiture.

‘Whereas I,’ he said, ‘had a pretty good idea that the Jacinta I met in Fiji and Gerard’s Jacinta had to be the same person. He mentioned your height and was rather poetic about your hair. It didn’t seem likely there’d be two of you about.’

He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life, the impact of his strong, regular features emphasised by his startling colouring. Not many men of his age had hair the warm ash blond of childhood, so close to gold, and blue eyes without a trace of green or grey, and those who did were usually afflicted with pale brows and lashes that made them look pallid and juiceless. Paul McAlpine’s were a brown so dark they were almost black.

On that hot, enchanted Fijian atoll he’d smiled—a smile both utterly compelling and completely trustworthy. It had been almost too good to be true, that smile.

No sign of it now. The chiselled mouth was straight and the narrowed eyes aloof.

Jacinta’s face set. Gerard’s Jacinta? He’d merely repeated her sentence construction; of course he wasn’t implying that she and Gerard had some sort of relationship. Nevertheless she felt she should make it very clear that Gerard was simply a good friend.

Before she could do that, Gerard’s cousin said smoothly, ‘Unfortunately there’s been a hitch in plans. You can’t stay in the bach because penguins have moved in.’

Wondering whether she’d heard correctly, she stared at him. ‘Sorry,’ she said inanely, wishing her brain hadn’t fogged up. ‘Penguins?’

‘Little blue penguins are quite common around the coast. Normally they nest in caves, but sometimes they find a convenient building and nest under the floors.’

Surely he couldn’t be serious? One glance at those eyes—so cool they were almost cold, limpid and unshadowed—told her he was.

‘I see,’ she said numbly. Until that moment she hadn’t realised how much she wanted to get away from Auckland. A kind of desperation sharpened her voice. ‘Can’t they be removed?’

‘They have young.’

Something about his glance bothered her, and she stopped chewing her bottom lip.

He added, ‘And they’re protected.’

‘Oh, then I suppose... No, they can’t be disturbed.’

‘They make gruesome noises when they return to their den at night—like a demented donkey being slaughtered. They also smell of decaying fish.’ He met her suspicious glance with unwavering self-possession. ‘Would you like to go and smell them?’ he asked.

Unable to think of a sensible reply, Jacinta shook her head.

‘You’d better come inside,’ Paul McAlpine said.

Within seconds Jacinta found herself walking down a wide hall and into a beautifully decorated sitting room. Windows opening out onto an expansive roofed terrace looked over a lush lawn bordered with flowers and shrubs, with glimpses of the sea through sentinel pohutukawa trees.

Jacinta thought fiercely, I am not going back to town.

It would be like returning to prison.

And where had that thought come from?

‘Sit down and I’ll get you some tea,’ Paul McAlpine said with remote courtesy, and went through another door.

Reluctantly Jacinta lowered herself into a very comfortable armchair and contemplated her legs, almost as ungraceful as her too-thin arms. Why on earth had she chosen to wear trousers of such a depressing shade of brown?

Because they were the best she had and she couldn’t afford new ones. What did it matter? She didn’t care what he or anybody else thought, she told herself sturdily, and knew that she lied.

‘Tea’ll be ready soon,’ Paul McAlpine said, startling her with his swift reappearance.

Averting her eyes from his broad shoulders, and the way his well-cut trousers hugged muscular thighs, Jacinta swallowed. She even thought she could smell the elusive male fragrance that still infiltrated the occasional dream.

With a shock strong enough to be physical, she braved the icy brilliance of his eyes.

‘Don’t look so tragic, Jacinta. I have a suggestion to make.’ There was a faint, barely discernible undertone to the words, a hint of cynical amusement that startled her.

Especially as she hadn’t realised she was looking tragic. Taken aback, certainly, but ‘tragic’ was altogether overstating the case. Her hackles rose as he sat in the chair opposite her, so completely, uncompromisingly self-sufficient that her spine stiffened and she angled her chin in mute resistance.

Jacinta had no illusions about her looks; she knew that her height and thinness and the clearly defined, high-bridged nose that dominated her face were not redeemed by thick, violently ginger hair, or green eyes hazed with gold and set beneath straight, dark copper brows. Accustomed to feeling out of place amongst the chic women she saw everywhere, she was nevertheless outraged that Paul McAlpine should make her feel the same.

‘Yes?’ she said, aware that she sounded curt but unable to alter the tone to her usual confidence.

‘I have several spare bedrooms,’ Paul McAlpine told her. ‘You’re more than welcome to use one. My housekeeper lives in a flat at the back, so you won’t be alone in the house with me.’

No sarcasm sharpened that beautiful voice, nothing even obliquely hostile glimmered in those blue eyes, but the skin pulled tight on the nape of Jacinta’s neck as a shiver of cold foreboding slithered the length of her spine.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said warily, ‘but I don’t think—’

He smiled. It was a smile that had probably stunned more women than she’d had showers. Silenced by its impact, she had to swallow when her words dried on her tongue.

Calmly, almost blandly, he said, ‘If you feel awkward about living here with me I’ll stay in a flat I own in Auckland.’

‘I can’t drive you out of your house,’ she said, feeling both irritated and awkward.

His dark brows inched inwards. ‘I believe that you had to move out of your flat, and as Gerard’s sold his apartment you can’t go there. I spend quite a lot of time either travelling or in my flat in Auckland; a few extra nights there won’t be much of a hardship.’

What would it be like to own several houses?

After one swift, circumspect glance Jacinta realised she didn’t have a chance of changing his mind. Thoughts churned around her mind, to be promptly discarded. She didn’t have enough money to stay in a motel or rent another flat; the main advantage of Paul McAlpine’s bach had been that it was free of charge.

He watched her with eyes half hidden by his lashes, waiting with a sort of vigilant patience—the remorseless tenacity of a hunter—that intimidated her in a way she didn’t understand.

For heaven’s sake! She was letting the aftermath of one dance ten months ago scramble her brain entirely.

With enormous reluctance she finally said, ‘Then—thank you. I’ll try not to get in your way.’

‘Gerard said you’re starting on your thesis.’

‘Did he?’ she said non-committally. ‘What about Christmas?’ she asked. ‘Will the penguins be out from under the bach by then?’

‘It’s unlikely.’ An enquiring eyebrow lifted. ‘Were you planning to stay in the bach over Christmas?’

This would be her first Christmas alone. Through the lump in her throat she said raggedly, ‘Yes. My mother died only a week after we came back from Fiji.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘That was hard for you.’

Looking away, she nodded, swallowed and went on, ‘I never had the chance to thank you for your kindness to her in Fiji. You left the day before us, and I—’

‘I wasn’t kind,’ he interrupted. ‘I liked her very much, and admired her gallantry.’

‘She liked you, too.’ Jacinta paused to steady her wobbly voice. ‘She really enjoyed talking to you. It made her holiday. She was so determined I shouldn’t miss anything...’

Cynthia Lyttelton had insisted Jacinta use the facilities at the resort, pleading with her to swim, to sail, to go snorkelling. ‘Then you can tell me all about it,’ she’d said.

Because the resort staff had been kind and attentive to her mother, Jacinta had given in. When she’d returned, salt-slicked and excited, after her first snorkelling expedition, Cynthia had told her about this man who had joined her beneath her sun-umbrella—handsome as Adonis, she’d said, and funny, with a good, sharp brain.

Gently, he said now, ‘She told me she didn’t have long to live. I gather she’d been ill for a long time, yet she was completely without self-pity.’

‘She had arthritis, but she died of cancer.’ I will not cry, she averred silently, clenching her jaw against the onset of gnef.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated, and she knew he was.

So many people—considerate, well-meaning people—had told her that her mother’s death must have been a blessed relief to them both She’d understood that they were giving her what sympathy they could, but although often in great pain Cynthia had enjoyed life, and she hadn’t wanted to die.

And Jacinta still mourned her loss.

She nodded, and they sat without speaking for some moments while she regained control of her emotions.

Eventually she looked up, to meet a gaze that rested on her face with unsettling penetration. Instantly his lashes covered his eyes, and when they swept up again there was nothing but that vivid, unrevealing intensity of colour, hiding all emotion, all speculation. His sculptured mouth had thinned to a straight, forceful line.

A firebrand plummeted to the pit of her stomach. Instinct, so deeply buried in her unconscious she’d never known of its existence, stirred, flexed, and muttered a warning.

What am I getting into? she thought.

Common sense, brisk and practical, told her she wasn’t getting into anything, because she wouldn’t allow herself to. Paul McAlpine might look like every woman’s idea of a dream hero, with his golden hair and athlete’s body and disturbing mouth, but she didn’t have to worship at his shrine if she didn’t want to.

‘I usually have a quiet Christmas,’ he told her. ‘Anyway, it’s almost two months before we have to think of that. Our tea’s probably ready, but if you’d like to come with me now I’ll show you where the bedrooms are and you can choose one.’

Stiffly she got to her feet and went with him in and out of five superbly furnished bedrooms, all with both double-hung and French windows leading onto the encircling verandah. Just like something from a glossy magazine.