Marrying The Enemy!
Elizabeth Power
For better, or for worse… Alexia had known that coming home after all these years would be difficult - even more so as she'd be living under the same roof as York Masterton. The last time they'd met, Alexia had been an innocent teenager. Now she was a sophisticated woman who knew what she wanted: her rightful inheritance.York didn't bother to hide his suspicious dislike of Alexia - until he realized that, far from hating her, he wanted to marry her! And he'd give everything he owned to be able to trust his new wife. Especially now that she was having his baby… .
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u9433cd94-ca99-5f28-a51d-63ff432f9dda)
Excerpt (#uc7f2e17b-a840-5ccc-850d-ce3b20235a0b)
About the Author (#u98212e35-3181-587c-8911-1f8337f12e97)
Title Page (#u56b88258-56fd-5ff1-be2f-05c780ee6762)
CHAPTER ONE (#u148cc9ea-c2de-5084-a463-db814e5bb89f)
CHAPTER TWO (#u7174946d-07a0-55a3-aa3a-0e882288c725)
CHAPTER THREE (#u4bda976e-2265-5896-a17f-c6b0e590e57d)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
ldquo;I want you in every sense of the word, Alexia.”
York continued, “I want you to play a far greater role in my life than you’ve been doing. In my life. In my home. In my bed.”
ldquo;Permanently? You mean…” Alexia’s eyes desperately searched his. He couldn’t be serious, could he?
“Marry me.” He managed to make it sound more like an order than a request.
“Marry you? I can’t. I—”
”Why can’t you?” His gaze raked over the tense contours of her face…
ELIZABETH POWER was born in Bristol, England, where she lives with her husband in a three-hundred-year-old cottage. A keen reader, as a teenager she had already made up her mind to be a novelist, although it wasn’t until around age thirty that she took up writing seriously. As an animal lover, with a strong leaning toward vegetarianism, her interests include organic vegetable gardening, regular exercise, listening to music, fashion and ministering to the demands of her adopted, generously proportioned cat!
Marrying The Enemy!
Elizabeth
Power
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_e829be8c-1618-5b5a-8d30-4723d088fc48)
THE clod of earth made a dull sound on the coffin as the last of the mourners dispersed, leaving Alex standing alone before the open grave.
Page Masterton. Her supposed grandfather. The man who had ruined his own daughter’s life and then called on his estranged granddaughter to…To what? Forgive him in his old age?
A shadow, more ominous than the shifting soil, fell across the grave, causing her breath to catch, her insides to tighten with a stomach-churning anticipation. She knew, even before she turned round, that it would be York. York Masterton, whose entrepreneurial ventures she had followed even from the other side of the world, and an insidious tension stole through her as she turned to meet the harsh austerity of his dark, strikingly etched features.
‘Would you mind telling me who you are?’
His deep voice was as cold as the raw frost that hadn’t melted despite the vain attempts of the bright March sun, and beneath her black three-quarter-coat Alex shivered.
‘You mean you don’t know me, York? Your only cousin?’ There was no affection, only bitter sarcasm in her testing response, because hadn’t he been as instrumental as Page all those years ago in hastening Shirley’s sad end?
She observed his shocked surprise with a little twist of satisfaction. It wouldn’t be like the chief executive of Mastertons, Britain’s biggest name in quarrying and civil engineering, to be nonplussed, and he would be chief—totally in control—now that his uncle had died.
‘Alexia?’ Entirely thrown though he was, he still cut a dominating figure—the long, dark coat he wore over a dark suit, and his sleek black hair filling her with the fanciful, unsettling notion of a raven swooping over its prey. He was, however, merely frowning down at her, those grey-green eyes—which, with that lean, hardstructured face, were so suggestive of his Irish ancestry—disbelieving as he breathed again in a voice that held no trace of the Gaelic accent, ‘Alexia?’
She held her breath, and her gaze wavered for a moment beneath the piercing clarity of his. How could she convince him—or anyone else for that matter—that she was Alexia Masterton when she couldn’t even convince herself?
Her chin lifted in an unconsciously rebellious gesture. ‘Alex.’ Her tone was clipped and concise.
‘Alex.’ He repeated the name as though giving it careful consideration. ‘You used to hate being called that.’
She swallowed. ‘Did I?’
He didn’t respond, except with that cool, contemplative gaze.
‘Well…Alex…’ He took a step towards her, the power of his masculinity so overwhelming her that she would have moved back if it had not been for the scrape of the grave diggers’ spades behind her. ‘This is a surprise, though I must say I would never have recognised you.’
She laughed now, a small, tight sound. Well, no, you wouldn’t, would you? she thought drily, but said only, ‘I suppose I’ve matured a bit…’
‘A bit?’His exclamation held harsh incredulity. ‘You’ve changed beyond all recognition!’
Well, what had she expected him to say? She knew she would have been pushing her luck if she had hoped resemblance between her and the awkward teenager he’d known for that brief period, but she merely shrugged and glanced away.
Outside the small country church, groups of darkly clad figures still hovered, waiting to pay their respects. Behind, the Somerset hills rose, sharply white in contrast, glittering under the late frost.
‘I was just a kid.’ How had he managed with just one look to make her feel exactly what she was—a total intruder?
‘A kid who was nicely rounded if not plump.’ His remark seemed to give him licence to regard the willowy lines of her body with a thoroughness that was overtly sexual—albeit suspicious—awakening her to the full force of an attraction that only she knew had driven the young Alexia almost crazy with shame. ‘A stammering seventeen-year-old with glasses.’
‘That was ten years ago.’ The sudden tremor in her voice was unmistakable, causing a cruel smile to lift one corner of his mouth. ‘I outgrew the puppy-fat with the specs.’
A nerve seemed to quiver in that strong jaw as his gaze flicked inevitably upwards. ‘You were also a brunette.’
There was scepticism in every lean inch of him. But he had had to mention it, hadn’t he? she thought tensely, feeling his gaze resting with hard contemplation on her hair. She had tried low-lights when it had started greying, then, out of desperation, she’d worn it short and blonde for a while, when the paler strands had become too significant to hide. But by the time she was twenty-five she had given up the battle and started growing it again, so that now it touched her shoulders in a sea of waves beneath the loosely flowing black hood, in her natural colour, soft silver, which with her velvety black brows and blue eyes gave her a uniqueness she had, for some time now, been forced to accept.
‘Not everyone’s as perfect as you, York,’ she uttered, dragging her gaze reluctantly down over his hard, lean physique before sidestepping away from him. At thirtysix—if her calculations were correct—he was the perfect specimen of untrammelled masculinity and didn’t even possess one grey strand on that arrogant head!
‘Exactly why have you come here?’
‘You wrote to me, remember?’
‘Did I?’
The doubt in his voice made her back stiffen as she turned, but over her shoulder she threw back disdainfully, ‘You know you did.’
‘All right, supposing I did? That was over six weeks ago. Pity you couldn’t have managed to get here while he was still alive!’ His condemnatory tones followed her across the frozen grass. ‘But then why bother—when you probably guessed he’d already made you a substantial beneficiary in his will?’
She turned back and cast a quick glance up at him, her eyes guarded, concealing any emotion. She hadn’t even considered that the late, wealthy businessman might have left his only grandchild anything…
‘Isn’t that what you were hoping?’ His hard, accusing tone said he believed she had considered it—and above everything else.
‘No,’ she said quietly, the cold that penetrated the thin soles of her low-heeled shoes making her shiver. She’d forgotten how long the winter could linger in England.
‘Oh, come on…Alex.’ That crease between the thick masculine brows, the way he hesitated over her name told her that, not surprisingly, he still wasn’t convinced that she was who she said she was—wasn’t absolutely sure. ‘Why else would you have flown twelve thousand miles from New Zealand just to arrive right on cue here today? And don’t try to convince me it was out of a loving granddaughter’s devotion, or you would have come as soon as you’d realised he was ill.’
He was right, but what could she tell him? That she hadn’t got his letter? That she’d only recently changed address in Auckland and that his communication had taken five weeks to catch up? Everyone knew there had been virtually no contact and certainly no affection between Page Masterton and his granddaughter in twentyseven years, and she doubted if this hard, cynical nephew of his would believe an excuse like that.
As for coming here today—a perfect stranger—because that was what she was—what could she say to him? How could she explain her reasons when she wasn’t even sure what they were herself? Perhaps she just wanted justice for the unfortunate Shirley and her wretched little offspring, but she had ceased to associate herself with either of them for so long that she wasn’t sure any more.
Or perhaps it was because she, Alex Johns, all alone in the world, had once so ached to belong to a family—no, not just any family, this family, she thought, with bitter self-recrimination—that she had followed their enterprises through those specially ordered English newspapers with a rapacity that had bordered on the obsessional. She only knew that when she had come home from the studios last week and found lying on the mat that crumpled letter that began, “My dear Alexia…” the desire to give in to what remained of those reckless, adolescent yearnings had proved too much.
Her mind clamped tight against the feelings that had ravaged her then. But if York Masterton knew for a moment one of the main reasons why she had been motivated to come…
She shuddered, staring sightlessly at the stone monuments and marble carvings around the little churchyard, guessing at the degree of verbal brutality he could be capable of.
‘You didn’t give a damn about him.’ Those censuring masculine tones flayed her. ‘Otherwise you would have been here weeks ago—as soon as you received my letter.
Do you think I went to all the trouble of trying to trace you for the fun of it? If it had been left to me I would have—’
He broke off, the lean angles of his face looking drawn—drawn with grief for his uncle, she was astute enough to realise. But there was a bitter detestation in him, too, of her, and quietly she taunted, ‘You would have done what, York? Left me to rot?’ Raw bitterness percolated through her words. ‘Like your uncle did with Shirley?’
She saw anger flare in those grey-green eyes before it gave way to a question—analysing, diamond-hard.
‘Shirley?’
Alex took a breath, steeling herself against his cynical probing. ‘She was only nineteen when she had me, York, you know that. We were more like sisters. Surely you can’t have forgotten how she didn’t like me calling her anything else? I suppose she didn’t like having to admit I was her daughter.’
‘But you’ve no qualms about admitting it?’
His voice was coldly sarcastic and a wave of colour washed up over Alex’s face. Did he mean because of Shirley’s volatile, fiercely rebellious nature? Or was he testing her, looking for some inconsistency…? She almost wanted to turn and run.
‘Anyway, it was up to you, wasn’t it?’ she said pointedly, refusing to let his sarcasm and his obvious suspicions get to her. ‘So why did you—write to me, I mean? Did Page specifically request you to?’
‘No.’
So he had tried to find his late cousin’s missing daughter solely on his own initiative. For some reason that disturbed Alex far more than if it had been at the other man’s instigation.
‘He wouldn’t have admitted to it, but I knew he wanted me to find his only grandchild. As for myself…’ his mouth took on a humourless curve as he regarded her again with that studied insolence ‘…perhaps I was curious enough to wonder what Shirley’s daughter had grown up to be. From the teenager I remember I half expected to find her eking out an existence in one of the seedier parts of London.’
Alex’s hands curled into tight, tense fists. Was that what he thought had happened to her?
‘I hadn’t anticipated her running off to New Zealand—let alone changing her name—like someone determined never to be found.’
Perhaps she had been, Alex thought with a sudden, swift dart of anguish that caused her eyes to darken, but, picking up on his words, quickly she said, ‘Her? You mean me.’
An eyebrow tilted as he murmured silkily, ‘Of course,’ but the scepticism was still mirrored in his eyes. Obviously her claim to be his second cousin had thrown him more than she had anticipated. ‘It took three months of searching before I’d even picked up a trace.’
But somehow, with the help of that expensive missing persons bureau, he had assumed a link between Alexia Masterton and Auckland television programme researcher Alex Johns and acted upon it.
‘Full marks for enterprise, York.’ Another little shudder ran through her that was to do with more than just the bitter morning. ‘But then you always were resourceful.’
His mouth quirked. ‘How do you know? We only met once.’
Was he testing her again? She drew herself up to her full height, which, tall as she was, still left her feeling strangely overshadowed by his dominating stature.
‘Twice,’ she corrected him. ‘The first time for little more than a week. The second a year later—after Shirley died—when you came to ask—no, demand—that I came home.’
The subtle movement of an eyebrow was his only acknowledgement of that sudden little burst of rebellion. ‘But you didn’t, did you?’ he said. ‘You ran away instead.’ His eyes seemed to dissect her before he smiled superficially. ‘Full marks for remembering, Alex. Or are you simply as resourceful as I am?’
She swallowed, looking up at him, a wariness clouding the deep sapphire of her eyes. God! He would be lethal to anyone who imagined they could make a fool of him, she thought, but said only, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Beneath the expensive coat a broad shoulder lifted in casual dismissal, so that she breathed, ‘Are you honestly saying you’re actually doubting who I am?’
The lean contours of his face tightened before he sent a glance over his shoulder as doors were thrown closed on the gleaming black saloon cars outside the church.
‘You wouldn’t be the first to turn up laying claim to being Page’s long-lost granddaughter. Since he died we’ve had reporters lying in wait like a pack of starved wolves, hoping for news of the elusive Alexia, morning, noon and night. Thanks to my cousin’s determination to hurt her father—even down to that last act of killing herself—this family’s affairs are no longer granted the anonymity they should be—in private matters at any rate!’
‘So you think I’m one of them? One of these…fallacious claimants?’ she uttered, indignant at the callous way he had referred to his cousin’s death, though those sharply honed edges of his intellect were stripping her nerves bare. ‘Anyway, don’t you think my mother told me everything there was to know about you that I didn’t know already?’ she appended brittly. ‘You and Page?’
‘Your mother? Shirley?’ A cynical smile played around his lips. ‘Whatever she told you—for whatever reason—I needn’t ask if it was all bad, need I?’ he said. ‘My cousin had a talent for spreading untruths about her family—her father in particular—that was second to none. She was nothing but a single-minded, mendacious little tramp.’
Alex caught her breath at the smouldering animosity in him. How was he expecting her to react? With hot retaliation and bitter protestations? Perhaps he was thinking that if she were really Shirley’s daughter she would.
‘That’s just your opinion, York,’ she responded, with a calmness that surprised even her. ‘She was independent, yes—she had to be to bring up a child singlehanded. But I never had any reason to doubt that everything she told me was true.’
‘No?’ he sneered. ‘Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?’
He was trying to needle her, she realised, but said quietly, ‘Obviously not.’ And when he looked at her quizzically, as though half expecting her to come clean and admit to being the impostor he suspected her of being, she added quickly, ‘Anything she said about either of you, you deserved.’
Too well she knew how Page Masterton had totally governed his daughter’s life, preventing her from marrying the man she loved. ‘It’s not every woman who’s lucky enough to have a father who thinks so much of her that he shows it by threatening to call in a debt and bankrupt her fiancé’s family if the boy dares to even consider marrying into his. Only she was pregnant, but Page didn’t tell him that. He just arranged for a convenient job for him abroad.
‘And when Shirley rebelled by leaving home—when he couldn’t break her into being the adoring daughter he wanted her to be—he tried to get even by attempting to separate her from her own daughter on the only occasion she did come back—and with your help! Perhaps this isn’t the time or the place to say it, but Page ruined her life—and you know it.’
His gaze lifted briefly as a rook took off with a distracting cry across the churchyard, and his smile was frozen—like the grass—as he drawled, ‘My dear, you really have been misguided.’
‘Have I?’ Alex’s hood slipped back, freeing soft silver waves as she tossed her head indignantly. ‘But then you would stand up for him, wouldn’t you?’ she breathed in a bitterly censorious voice. ‘He wanted a son and you filled that role quite adequately, didn’t you?’
The firm lines of his mouth twisted in mocking disdain. ‘Hardly!’
‘No wonder she felt pushed out.’
‘Pushed out?’ His laugh split the air with a cloud of warm breath. ‘My dear young woman, you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he rasped. ‘By the time she’d made her bed I was little more than ten—scarcely old enough to have had any influence on the path of selfdestruction she was already headed down and you know it. And you’re right—anger tightened the muscles of his chest beneath the pristine shirt ‘—this isn’t the time or the place.’
She would have liked to tell him that she knew exactly what she was talking about, because, above all else, in the beginning, before the rot had set in—before circumstances had driven her into the reckless lifestyle that had killed her—Shirley had been her closest friend.
His last remark, though, had effectively silenced her—which was just as well, she realised, because two elderly women were approaching, one of them stopping a polite distance away as the taller of them singled York out.
‘York, I’m going back to the house in Brigette’s car so you’ll not need to be worrying about me. The service was beautiful, wasn’t it?’ she added approvingly, before her interest settled on the slim young woman at his side.
His smile for the older woman was warm, none of his animosity towards Alex allowed to show through the exterior charm, so that only she sensed the scorn behind it when he suddenly said, ‘Mother, would you believe that this confident, silver-haired creature is the long-lost Alexia?’ And then he added startlingly to Alex, ‘You remember my mother?’
Studying the grey-haired lady in the elegant dark wool suit, Alex felt all her composure deserting her. Was she supposed to? Because York Masterton clearly thought she should. But she couldn’t even remember Shirley’s ever saying she’d met his mother. Hadn’t both his parents moved to Ireland, which was where his paternal grandfather had come from? And hadn’t York stayed in England to finish his schooling before going into the family business because he’d got on better with Page—his step-uncle—than he had with his own father?
‘You mean…this is Page’s granddaughter?’
As the woman whispered her surprised disbelief Alex could feel York’s hard scrutiny. Unconsciously, her nails dug into her palms. What was he expecting her to say? That she remembered his mother vividly? And what was he going to do? Expose her as a fraud? Pick her up bodily and cart her off to the nearest police station if she said she didn’t?
Surprisingly, the thought of his handling her made her veins pulse with something more unwelcome than just the revulsion and resentment she knew she should only have room for, and, striving for something intelligible to say that wouldn’t further increase his suspicions about her, she couldn’t have been more relieved when his mother chipped in.
‘It’s gratifying to see you here, dear. Let us hope that now we can begin to put the past behind us. I’m Celia, if you weren’t already aware,’ she elucidated, her kind, friendly manner causing a pang of guilt in Alex because she wasn’t exactly here to make peace with the family as Celia thought.
‘But really, York,’ the woman went on, amiably reprimanding her son, ‘your memory doesn’t usually let you down. You must be overworking, darling, or keeping your mind on too many other things, otherwise you’d have remembered me saying only recently that I’d never had the chance to meet Shirley’s daughter.’
Well, thank heaven for that! Breathing a sigh of relief, Alex smilingly made some appropriate response, and from under her lashes sent a cursory glance towards the tall man beside her.
He was looking smug, as though he’d enjoyed her moment of discomfort, even if it had backfired on him before he’d been able to expose her to what she realised now was his sheer, machiavellian cunning. Then the second woman had moved across to him, smiling her appreciation for what she clearly saw as a very personable man as she expressed a few fond remarks about his uncle and stepped away.
‘I hope I’ll see you back at the house and that we’ll have some time to get to know each other, Alexia, before I leave for Dublin,’ Celia said with warm sincerity.
‘Yes.’ It wasn’t a very positive response from Alex. She didn’t want to go anywhere where York was likely to be—and that included the house—although she wasn’t sure how she could avoid it if she was to find what she had come for. But, grateful for a flicker of warmth from one member of the Masterton family, she added, ‘Thanks. I hope so too.’
York’s expression was unfathomable, so that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking as he watched the two older women walking away. But, on finding herself disconcertingly alone with him again, Alex’s chin came up and, despite her pumping heart, she breathed, ‘You can’t intimidate me, York.’
‘Can’t I?’ The firm, thrusting lines of his jaw harshened as he gave her his full attention again. ‘Maybe not,’ he conceded. ‘But if you think you can just walk in here and stake a claim on my uncle’s generosity without my doing anything to stop you, you’ve got another think coming!’
His determination unnerved her. Nevertheless, in spite of it she managed to smile.
‘That should be interesting.’ Whatever Page Masterton had left his granddaughter, she wasn’t likely to be making any claim to it. Even so, she couldn’t help taunting,
‘And I thought you were rich enough, York.’ From the things she’d read about him it seemed he’d made millionaire status ten times over! ‘What ever could he have left me that could possibly make any difference to you?’
The grass crunched under his highly polished black shoes as he followed her down onto the path towards the church. ‘We’re going to require concrete evidence from you as to exactly who you are before we even begin to think about discussing that.’
Alex drew in a breath, colour rising in her cheeks. ‘I don’t have to prove anything to you!’
His eyes were astute, missing nothing. ‘Spare me the indignation, lady,’ he advised. ‘It’s going to take more than that to convince me…Alex. And my uncle’s solicitors are going to need more than just a sultry smile and that sexy New Zealand accent before they agree to grant you the half-share of the house.’
‘Half the house? Is that what he left…?’ Me, she had been going to finish with, but stopped herself short. She had no right to it. Nor did she want it-any of the Masterton money.
‘Over my dead body,’ he whispered, the venom in him causing a slick of fear to infiltrate her blood.
Hadn’t she learned from everything she had read about him—from his hard-nosed business acumen down to the hidden forces of his personality—how tough he was? Hadn’t Shirley warned her? Why, then, had she imagined she could come here like this?
‘If I’d been Page I would have disinherited you entirely.’
‘But he didn’t.’ Unexpectedly, something stirred in Alex—something she banked down before it could manifest itself into anything more concrete as she uttered, ‘And you resent that like hell, don’t you?’
The hard glitter in his eyes confirmed it, but it was resentment born solely out of his contempt for Shirley and whoever he thought she was, she was surprised to find herself acknowledging, rather than any sort of greed on his part.
‘Wouldn’t you,’ he returned, ‘if you’d seen a man virtually destroy himself because of the total disregard by his only daughter, and when her avaricious, alleged little offspring turns up to get her hands on the only thing Shirley didn’t already bleed him of—his money?’
She doubted if Page Masterton had ever cared enough about his daughter to suffer any sort of emotional trauma over her desertion, but all she said was, ‘“Alleged”, York?’ From beneath her lashes she slanted him a glance that was both challenging and watchful. ‘Are you still insinuating I’m not who I say I am?’
They had come to a standstill on the path. Beneath the bare trees York’s face was criss-crossed by shadows.
‘Are you?’ he demanded, his eyes narrowing with cold calculation.
Alex’s breathing stilled beneath the stylish cut of her coat. How Shirley’s intimidated little daughter would have savoured seeing him in such a state of ambivalence—so undecided—ten years ago!
She laughed, the sound easy on the cold, clear air. ‘You really don’t know, do you? And that’s what’s really bugging you, isn’t it, York? The fact that you aren’t really sure. Just for once you aren’t completely in control and you can’t stand it, can you…cousin dear? Well, you’ll just have to accept my word for it, won’t you?’ she finished, with bitter irony twisting her mouth.
His smile was slick, without warmth, cold as the day. ‘Accept the word of anyone who calls herself Shirley’s daughter? Hah! That’s laughable in itself! But whatever you are—freeloading little tramp or total charlatan—I’m warning you now, I’m a very dangerous man to cross. Make one false move—just one mistake—and I’ll…’
‘You’ll do what?’ she retaliated, undeterred by his threatening tone. ‘Clap me in irons?’
His eyes mocked her response, her whole defiant stance. ‘Is that how you like to play? Bound and begging for mercy? Not quite the little innocent who came to my bedroom expecting chaste kisses.’
A heated flush stole into the translucent sheen of her cheeks. Oh, stupid, stupid fool! What was she letting herself get into? Why had she imagined she could come here without inviting a whole heap of trouble? Yet—from another life, it seemed—reluctantly she was aware of how his body would feel beneath her hands, of the hard, burning arousal of his kisses. Because Alexia had known. But that Alexia was dead. And all she had to do was play the part until her purpose here was accomplished…
‘Unlike you,’ she said softly, refusing to be swayed by the power of his sexuality, ‘I’ve always been rather particular with whom I play.’
He chuckled at that. Perhaps he didn’t mind being reminded that he had once been photographed with an actress who’d later become mixed up in a pretty hairraising scandal. ‘An unfortunate liaison,’ he said dismissively.
‘Very,’ she said pointedly, although she knew that his integrity had emerged unscathed.
‘Nevertheless, until I’m satisfied as to exactly who you are, you’ll be coming back to Moorlands with me where I can keep an eye on you for however long it takes.’
For however long what took? Proving her false identity? Was that what he was hoping for?
‘I’m doing no such thing! I’ve got a very adequate hotel room in town, thanks!’ she snapped, deciding that staying under the same roof with this man could lead her into nothing but trouble. ‘Naturally I’ll want to—’ she started, but he cut in, his expression inexorable, his mouth grim.
‘You’ll do exactly as I say.’
She wanted to argue against it, but that overriding determination in him—that tyrannical streak that she knew very well was characteristic of the Masterton men—was too strong. It was the reason why Shirley had left home, why she had struggled for an existence on her own with only her child after Page had prevented her marriage, why she’d been dragged down into the unfortunate lifestyle that had led to her overdose. Accidental, the coroner had said, brought about by a lethal blend of booze and barbiturates.
Something speared through Alex—something cutting and deep. Oh, to find some skeleton in the impeccable Masterton cupboard! Particularly in the high and mighty, unimpeachable York’s!
But refusing to do as he said, insisting on staying at the hotel, wouldn’t help her in trying to convince him that she was his cousin, nor to find those letters which, suddenly, had become the most important things in her life. And so, feigning sweetness, with a totally false smile, she uttered, ‘As you put it so hospitably, how can I refuse?’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_b2faa666-001f-5d18-85eb-27a827bdce34)
MOORLANDS stood in its own grounds on the fringes of a small Somerset resort, a beautifully grey-gabled, Cotswold-style house with fields rising to woodland on one side and the town stretching away to the sea on the other.
As they came up the long drive in York’s powerful saloon Alex was relieved that the journey from the church had been a short one, so that she hadn’t had to engage in much conversation with him.
‘The beech hedge was planted courtesy of Edmundo, our long-standing gardener,’ he commented about the copper-leafed boundary fence hung with cobwebs of frost on their right. ‘But then you wouldn’t remember him, would you?’ he breathed derisively, bringing the car around a triangular grassy island with an old and gnarled maple tree at its centre, testing her again—as he would continue to test her, she realised, every step of the way.
‘As a matter of fact I do,’ she shot back. ‘Portuguese, isn’t he?’ And the only person at Moorlands whom Shirley had spoken of with any affection, she remembered. ‘Didn’t he come to work here the year my mother was born?’
York slanted her a look that said it would take more than that to impress him. ‘Very good,’ he drawled. And then he added, ‘How old is his son?’
‘What?’
He had brought the car between two ivy-covered walls onto the deserted, cobbled forecourt, the look he gave her hard and inquisitorial when she didn’t immediately respond.
‘He didn’t have a son—just two daughters,’ she assured him after a long moment’s deliberation, colour swamping her cheeks as she went on heatedly, ‘If you think I’m going to spend my time here indulging in some sort of question-and-answer game with you, you’re very much mistaken, York Masterton! Either you accept me for who I am or you throw me out and let me go back to the hotel, which I’d be more than happy to do!’
He smiled knowingly. ‘I’ll bet you would!’ he said, cutting the engine of the BMW and turning towards her with his eyes anything but friendly. ‘Why didn’t you come here straight away instead of turning up at the funeral like some fugitive if you’ve got nothing to hide? Or would that have been too complicated? Did you imagine I’d be at more of a disadvantage meeting you in the churchyard like that, too unsettled by the occasion to think about much else, rather than if you’d faced me here, on my home territory?’
She hadn’t reckoned on his being quite so resolute in not believing her. But she had all the papers, so why was he managing to make her feel so unnerved?
‘This isn’t your home,’ was all she could think of to say at that moment. From what she had read in the papers, she’d thought that these days he lived in a luxury apartment in London.
‘It is now.’ Disconcertingly, his arm came across the back of her seat, and she almost hated herself for the small tingle that ran through her as he leaned across and murmured in a voice of mocking sensuality, ‘Mine and yours.’ She had to make a conscious effort to desist from inhaling the subtle, tangy spice of his aftershave. ‘That should make a very…interesting partnership.’
‘A partnership—with you?’ she choked, despising her body’s totally unwelcome awareness of him. ‘I’d rather go into business with a gorilla!’
He laughed without humour, that strong, masculine jaw hardening. ‘You’ve certainly come with some pretty well-conceived opinions about me, haven’t you…cousin?’ His tone derided the title. ‘Well, for your information, they’re all true. But who said anything about business?’
Alex felt her throat working nervously. Whoever he thought she was—his estranged cousin out for all she could get, or a total impostor—he had no qualms about using that powerful masculinity to try and scare her off.
Well, he wasn’t going to succeed!
Ignoring his innuendo, she uttered nonetheless unsteadily, ‘I told you—I didn’t come here for the money.’
‘Then what for—if you’re who you say you are?’ he demanded, allowing her to breathe again when he moved back, absently taking his keys out of the ignition. ‘And you haven’t answered my other question. Why were you talking round the graveyard instead of coming here to see me first?’
Alex bit her tongue to stop herself retorting that she hadn’t been ‘stalking’, as he had put it, advising herself that it would be in her best interests not to antagonise him deliberately.
‘I thought you’d answered that yourself. Why, I’m positively terrified of you, aren’t I, York?’ she couldn’t, however, resist tossing back sarcastically with a pale, beautifully manicured hand against her chest ‘The truth is, I didn’t get into Heathrow until breakfast time yesterday morning. It was a twenty-four-hour flight and I’m lucky if I slept for two. Consequently all I was fit for was to book into the nearest hotel and fall into bed, and I didn’t wake up until nine o’clock yesterday evening. I only found out then, when I picked up a paper someone had left in the lounge, that Page had died. How do you think I felt, finding out that his funeral was today?’
‘Immensely relieved, I would have thought.’ His own sarcasm was unrelenting.
‘You don’t have the slightest sympathy for how I might feel, do you?’ she breathed, her teeth clenched as she struggled to control her temper. At least that was one advantage she had over the fiery-natured adolescent he had known. She was more in control.
He would never have a good word to say about Shirley—or anyone connected with her. She should have expected it. ‘My mother was born here-even if I wasn’t—even if she was regarded as being outside the socially accepted circle for having me. And whatever Page did to her—he was my grandfather. You’re not the only one who’s been blessed with the ability to feell’
He waited patiently while she finished. She wasn’t going to add that she had strong doubts about the last point—doubts about whether he could feel at all—which only increased as he drawled cynically, ‘Congratulations on the performance. Do you expect me to believe that you didn’t wait until Page was safely out of the way before you risked coming here? Were you hoping I’d be less of a problem to manipulate? Because, if you were, you’re in for a pretty rude awakening, Alex Johns—or whatever your real name might be. So what is it if, as you say—’ his chin jerked roughly upwards ‘—it isn’t the money?’
Those grey-green eyes were penetrating, causing Alex’s tongue to stray across her top lip. Fortunately, though, another car was coming up the drive, drawing York’s attention mercifully away from her. What would he have said if she’d told him? she wondered as she opened her door and stepped out into the cold, glittering day.
Half of Moorlands. A generous allowance and a few shares in the business.
As the solicitor and his clerk left, Alex stood numbly by the long leaded window, her arms folded, watching the dark saloon drive away.
‘How does it feel—getting things the easy way?’
Alex swung round, her gaze skittering across the plush, classically furnished lounge.
Jacketless, York was standing in the doorway, his hands on his hips, his long, powerful legs astride beneath the tailored trousers. Not many people had come back to the house, but those who had had gone. All except Celia, who was upstairs somewhere getting changed.
‘If you need to ask any more questions, why don’t you have it out with your solicitor?’ she recommended, with a toss of her head towards the window. ‘He seemed perfectly satisfied that he was dealing with the right woman.’ She felt her throat contract as he came into the room, an animal of such impressionable strength and forcefulness that inevitably her pulses started to quicken.
‘I’m not surprised—when you had him eating out of your hand from the word go.’
‘That’s hardly true,’ she reminded him. In fact the solicitor had been a very pleasant but astute middle-aged man. ‘And I thought you said he couldn’t be charmed by my winning smile.’
His gaze flicked cursorily over her slender figure beneath the pearl-grey silk blouse and straight navy skirt—all that she had been able to find that morning amongst her possessions suitable for wearing to a funeral.
‘Maybe I was wrong.’ His gaze lifted to assess the creamy smoothness of her complexion, the darkly fringed sapphire of almond-shaped eyes, the wide, sensual mouth, all framed by the intriguing silver of her hair—and in a voice that was dangerously soft he said, ‘Is any man immune?’
The tightening in Alex’s throat became almost painful and she took an involuntary step back, only to feel the soft cushions of the window-seat against her leg.
‘You’ve got all the charm of a beautiful woman plus a cool, level-headed intelligence. That’s a dangerous combination. The Alexia I knew was guileless, passionate, impulsive…’
‘She was a child!’
Light played across the rich ebony of that arrogant, tilted head.
“‘She”?’ he repeated in a voice like soft, suffocating silk.
‘So now you’ve got me doing it!’ Impatience coloured her voice. ‘What do you think I did with her? Killed her off and stole her identity?’ she argued, barely able to keep her mind on what she was saying. He was so dangerously attractive, had such a fascinating lure for the opposite sex that she might have melted under the blaze of that powerful magnetism if she hadn’t been so aware of how insensitive he was. ‘You saw all my papers!’
‘Yes.’
And he had had little choice but to accept them, as the solicitor had—to accept them as authentic, she thought, with a small twist of satisfaction. ‘So why are you still insinuating I’m not telling the truth?’
‘Why indeed?’ He moved a disconcerting step closer, that aura of potent male energy about him as unsettling as his uncomfortable nearness. ‘Perhaps it’s because under that oh, so cool-as-a-cucumber faąde you’re remarkably edgy. Unless, of course, by some stretch of the imagination you’re telling the truth and it’s something much more basic than the need for circumspection that’s making you so uneasy in my presence.’ Cold mockery
gave an upward curl to his mouth. ‘Still find me sexy, Alex?’
Despite the bitter frost that seemed to have got through to her bones, even though the house was centrally heated, Alex felt herself grow sticky beneath her blouse.
‘Is your conceit innate? Or has it been specially cultivated?’ she challenged stiffly, hiding the nervousness that her voice could so easily have revealed.
He laughed. ‘All right, if that’s the way you want it,’ he said. ‘I suppose if I’d been Alexia I’d probably have wanted to conceal the more intimate details too.’
Alex swallowed. She knew what he was talking about. She just didn’t want to think about it, and for a moment she longed to blurt out what he wanted her to say—that she wasn’t Alexia Masterton, she was someone else entirely. But that would have been self-defeating as well as stupid, and, striving for that outward calm he had mentioned, she murmured wearily, ‘Have you quite finished?’
A muscle twitched in his jaw and she thought for a moment that he was going to slap her down—metaphorically at any rate—for that little display of audacity. But all he did was stoop to pick up a tissue—hers, she realised—that was lying on the carpet, and, handing it to her, he said, ‘You can freshen up upstairs and then we’ll drive down into town so that you can pick up your luggage. Then I’ll take you round and show you what I’m going to do all in my power to stop you getting your hands on. That’s, of course, if you aren’t still too jetlagged.’
So he’d noticed that weariness in her. As he’d notice everything, she couldn’t help deciding with a little shudder.
Refusing to be baited into any more arguments with him, though, all she said was, ‘No.’ And, when he didn’t give her any indication of where she was to go, uttered pointedly, ‘Could you at least show me where it is—the bathroom, I mean?’
An emotion—impossible to read—flitted across his face. ‘You’re supposed to have been here before. I would have thought in the circumstances you would have been able to tell me.’
‘Very funny,’ she returned. ‘That was ten years ago. People change their homes. Knock down walls. Build extensions…And anyway, my room had an en suite.’
She could see the question in those shrewd, perceptive eyes: was she guessing, or had she simply been informed?
‘In that case…’ With a gesture of exaggerated politeness he indicated for her to precede him out of the room, guided her across the sunny, tastefully furnished hall and up the curving staircase to the floor above.
‘This will be your room.’ He threw open one of the doors off the long landing. Sunlight streamed in from the leaded casement windows, spilling across the cream and floral duvet on the double bed.
This room overlooked the back of the house. Outside, the manicured gardens and the sweeping fields rising to the woods still glittered under a silver veil. A picturebook landscape. Lifeless, Alex decided, until she spotted a wisp of smoke drifting upwards from the chimney of a farm building in the distance.
‘The bathroom,’ she guessed, moving towards a door.
‘Wrong.’ His voice came, deep and relentlessly testing, from behind her. ‘My room. It might seem a little too cosy to you, but at least this way I can keep account of exactly what you’re doing.’
Alex’s feet pivoted on the pale, patently expensive carpet ‘Is that how you get your kicks?’ she breathed accusingly. ‘Listening to what your guests get up to?’
York’s mouth pulled down at the corners. ‘Not usually. But then we haven’t exactly established whether you’re a guest or not, have we?’
‘Haven’t we?’ she retorted, his suspicions beginning to test her reserves. And, though she hadn’t intended using it in any way as a defence, she couldn’t help adding, ‘I believe I’m co-owner, which surely gives me rights to come and go as I please, or even to bring friends back here if I so think fit?’
She had no intention of doing anything of the sort—she had said it only to show him that she couldn’t easily be cowed by his infernal arrogance—because although she got on well with people she was very much a loner. As for men, she had never met anyone who could break down her reserves enough to make her want to sleep with him. Only once. But she wasn’t even going to think about that.
‘You do and I’ll throw you both out,’ he rasped, interpreting her remark exactly as he wanted to. ‘No part of this house becomes yours until the necessary documentation’s drawn up to say that it does.’
‘So you’ll use strong-arm tactics? Like you did before. Sheer brute strength just so long as you could exercise Page’s every last whim in trying to separate Shirley from the one thing she cared about most—her daughter!’
His face appeared to turn savage beneath the raven sleekness of his hair. ‘Shirley didn’t care about anyone but herself—so don’t lay it on that thick, dear child. And never—never—breathe a denigrating word to me about my uncle in this house again. And if I’m not too mistaken—’ his voice was more controlled and, like his expression, suddenly coolly derisive ‘—I don’t think it would have taken very much persuasion on my part to induce her hot little daughter to stay.’
‘God! You’re conceited!’
‘Am I? Perhaps we ought to put it to the test.’
‘Don’t you dare!’
She didn’t know what happened next, only that he had caught the hands that flew up instinctively to fend him off, securing them behind her back, and primitive sensations rushed through her as she found herself locked against his hard body.
‘Let me go!’ She could barely drag the words past her lips, panic rising in her as he laughed harshly.
‘Why? Because it’s there now—that attraction, isn’t it…cousin dear?’ His words mocked, cruelly, relentlessly. ‘Is that why you’re putting on such a marvellous act of being affronted? Or is it the thought of sex between cousins? That never worried you before. But if Shirley didn’t make it clear enough—we’re only connected by marriage. Page and my father were only stepbrothers, so if the thought of any blood ties between us bothers you you can stop worrying about that right now.’
‘I’m not worried!’ she tossed up at him unthinkingly, her face defiant, though the startling reality of his hard strength was making her senses swim.
‘In that case—’ his mouth took on a sensual curve ‘—I don’t believe I exactly welcomed you the way a cousin should.’
She couldn’t have prevented what happened next if she had wanted to—the way his mouth suddenly covered hers, both gentle and yet shockingly erotic, those hands splayed across her back, holding her loosely but ready to turn hard and show their determined power if she dared to resist.
She sensed enough about that to stand still and take it, her mind struggling to reject the sickening excitement that was suddenly rising in her blood, a raw stirring of primitive needs she hadn’t anticipated or been prepared for, every cell tensing with her body’s acknowledgement of his hard power and his musky male scent beneath the subtle aftershave as his mouth played with leisurely insolence over hers.
His eyes were hooded, veiled by the thick sable of his lashes when he eventually lifted his head.
‘No response? And yet no resistance either.’
‘What did you imagine?’ The hard rise and fall of her breasts was the only indication of her shattered selfcomposure. ‘That if I was who I said I was there would be?’
He started to say something, but Celia’s voice in the corridor, exclaiming, ‘Oh, there you are!’ pulled them apart.
The woman came in, commenting to Alex, ‘I trust York’s doing everything possible to make you comfortable.’
‘Everything,’ she heard him drawl meaningfully, when she was still too shaken by his kiss to answer, and she was relieved when his mother, promising to see her downstairs, asked if she could have a word with York about her travel arrangements, which left Alex mercifully alone.
She didn’t have to take this! she thought, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. It smelt of his aftershave lotion and her lips were still tingling from his calculated humiliation. She could go home. Forget about why she had come. It was a long shot, anyway, that she would find those letters. She could go now. Pick up her case and get the train straight back to London. But that would be letting York Masterton get the better of her. And for Shirley’s sake—for her own sake—she wasn’t going to allow him to do that.
He was dangerously attractive, a threat to any healthy woman’s equilibrium, but she just had to make sure that she didn’t fall into the trap of succumbing to any tricks he might try and use to get her to weaken before that devastating and shockingly confident sexuality. If she did, she’d be courting trouble, she assured herself chasteningly, reminding herself of how York and his uncle had both played their part in driving Shirley away.
Well, she wasn’t going to let a Masterton man drive her away until she was good and ready! she resolved, with such vehemence that she scarcely noticed the jaded practicality of the en suite bathroom she finally found, or the lack of any really homely touches in this late millionaire’s home.
The red stone of the quarry gaped like an ugly mouth on the undulating Somerset landscape.
‘When my step-grandfather—Page’s father—started the company this was where it grew from,’ York stated, bringing the car to a standstill outside one of the Portakabins where all the site’s immediate administration was obviously carried out. ‘Just a small, family-run business he’d mortgaged to the hilt, supplying raw material to equally small local builders wherever he could.’
‘And from this he went into construction.’ Small office units at first, Alex remembered Shirley telling her, and, in Page’s time, larger, industrial sites, but only York had given the company the real hard-nosed drive and motivation that had made Mastertons the first name in multimillion-pound developments: sports complexes, inner city expansion, whole housing estates—the best in architectural design. She had found all that out herself. ‘Quite a success story,’ she couldn’t help saying appreciatively, with a little shiver of resentment as she pushed back a thick silver wave behind her ear.
York made a cynical sound down his nostrils. ‘And one that isn’t going to end with Little Red Riding Hood getting a bite-sized chunk of the apple,’ he promised, with sudden, soft vehemence.
She grimaced, glancing down at the redundant hood falling softly across her shoulder. ‘I thought that was Snow White—who ate the apple,’ she enlarged, with a tartness nonetheless, as if she had just bitten into some acrid fruit. ‘And my hood’s black. I’m afraid this little heroine isn’t afraid of the big, bad wolf. You’d still despise me, wouldn’t you, York, even if you were sure about me—for refusing to knuckle under to your demands and come back here like the dutiful granddaughter after Shirley died? For not bowing down to you and Page like you both expected me to?’
He didn’t answer, and, getting out, said only, ‘Wait here,’ his expression as cold as the icy draught through the car that persuaded him to shrug into his thick dark coat before throwing the door closed after him.
Tight-lipped, Alex watched him, her gaze reluctantly following his hard, arrogant physique as he mounted the steps to the Portakabin and disappeared inside.
Way down in the quarry she could hear the continual drone of heavy equipment, male voices shouting, could see the red dust cloud as the machinery ate into the hard rock.
After a while, restless from sitting doing nothing, she stepped out of the car, pulling up her hood and stuffing her hands deep into her pockets to protect them from the freezing air.
She was attracting a lot of looks from men coming in and out of another Portakabin, she realised after a few moments of pacing up and down, although she was used to being the object of men’s interest. It was fascination, she had convinced herself over the years, because of the uniqueness of her colouring, but in this instance she knew that a lot of the attention was generated by her having been seen arriving with York.
‘Hey, that’s nice, isn’t it?’
‘Um, very tasty.’
A soft wolf-whistle followed the rather sexist remarks she knew she had been intended to hear.
‘Cut it out, lads.’ It was an older man’s voice this time. A surreptitious glance from under her lashes showed that the ‘lads’ to whom he had spoken were barely out of their teens. ‘We don’t allow that sort of thing on site, and if we did we’d be a bit more particular about who we whistled at. Do you know who that is?’ A moment’s silence. ‘That’s Alexia Masterton. The old man’s granddaughter.’
‘Yikes!’
As surprised as the embarrassed-sounding youth, Alex caught her breath, and over the other sounds rising up into the Somerset hills heard the first youth utter, ‘You’re kidding! I thought she was dead.’
That carelessly uttered statement sent a cold emotion shivering through Alex.
She must have been mad to come here, she thought, her feet carrying her swiftly over the dusty ground back towards the car. Alexia Masterton had been dead and buried and she’d been a fool to resurrect her. But news certainly travelled fast! How could anyone have known?
‘Miss Masterton?’ She was so lost in thought that the man had to call the name again before she realised that someone was speaking to her. And as she turned he added, ‘Would you like a coffee while you’re waiting?’
‘N-no…thanks.’ She offered him a rather wan smile, still regretting what she couldn’t help deciding was a total lack of common sense on her part in coming here at all.
‘Come on. He could be some time,’ the man informed her, with a jerk of his chin towards the cabin where York had gone. He was fiftyish, with smiling, weather-worn features, and as she mentally replaced his thick donkey jacket with the suit in which she now vaguely remembered seeing him that morning it dawned on Alex that he must have overheard someone speak her name outside the church. ‘The lads won’t eat you. They might look vicious, but one smile from a pretty girl and they’d probably both run a mile.’
A harmony of guffaws rang out from what were now two very red-faced young men. They had been drinking out of tin mugs, but from somewhere had managed to produce a ceramic one for Alex.
The coffee was hot and tasted good, and she was glad the man, who introduced himself as Ron, had talked her into it.
‘I hope you’re going to be a regular visitor here. This place could do with brightening up a bit’ The man winked at the two youths, whose boldness had disintegrated and who were both totally dumbstruck now that Alex had moved into their sphere, but a small pang of guilt assailed her. She was misleading them—all of them—she thought. Ron was basically a nice man, and how could she explain that she had no intention of staying any longer than she could help, that really she had no right—no right at all—even being here?
‘Your grandfather always found time to look in to see how things were doing—when he was able to get about, that was. But then when Mr York—I mean Mr Masterton—took things over—and it’s been quite a time now—he never let things slide. He’s always kept up the family tradition in keeping himself aware of what’s going on here, big as he’s become. Even though quarrying—and this quarry in particular—is just a small part of what he’s involved with nowadays, he hasn’t forgotten those who’ve been loyal to him and his uncle—and even his father before him. He still likes to keep himself involved with any problems or difficulties the men might be facing down here.’
Which was one thing to be said for him, if nothing else! Alex conceded rather begrudgingly.
‘My…grandfather…’ She felt awkward even using that title to describe Page Masterton. ‘He was ill for a long time?’ She hadn’t got round to asking York just how long it had been.
‘Well…’ Ron pursed his lips, considering. ‘Probably about two or three months.’
She frowned, warming her hands around the hot mug, watching the steam rise, warm and aromatic on the air. ‘But I thought you said…’
‘Oh, because I said about him getting about?’ Ron grimaced. ‘Sorry to confuse you. No, I meant because of his wheelchair.’
‘His wheelchair?’ Alex’s frown deepened. She felt utterly flummoxed. ‘Oh—oh, of course,’ she said. How could she let these people—people who surprisingly but clearly had loved and respected Page Masterton—know that she, apparent claimant to much of his estate, didn’t know that he’d been disabled, a cripple? She felt a dryness in her throat that didn’t ease even when she swallowed. There was too much she didn’t know. Too much, she was gradually realising, that she hadn’t taken enough trouble to find out.
‘Didn’t you find him even a little bit difficult at times?’ She smiled, hoping she’d sounded blithe.
‘Not at all.’ Ron’s tone denied any suggestion of it. ‘He was the best employer any man could hope to work for. With some…’ his shoulders lifted, his mouth pulling down derogatorily into even deeper lines ‘…wealth goes to their heads and they won’t talk to the likes of us. ‘Course we always knew he was in charge. There wasn’t any questioning his authority. But he was a decent bloke. And I’m pleased to say Mr York—er—Masterton—is carrying on in the same way, although he’s got double the energy and the authority. ‘Course, he’s younger. But it’s a good thing with this lot if you ask me.’
Alex sipped the steaming coffee, her smile ruminative as she followed Ron’s gesture towards the two bashfullooking youths. It wasn’t the picture Shirley had painted of her father—or even of York.
‘So how long has it been exactly since Mr Mast—I mean Mr York,’ she corrected herself, ‘took over the running of things?’ Obviously it was a name used privately between the men, she realised, to distinguish between uncle and nephew. She had to find out, acquaint herself with facts she hadn’t gleaned simply from Shirley and the newspapers.
‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’
Hearing the deep, familiar voice, she whirled around, wincing as hot coffee slopped over her hand.
‘That was rather careless.’
Of course he’d noticed, and before she had realised it he was pressing a clean white handkerchief into her hand. It was slightly warm from his body heat and she knew that it would smell of his own personal scent. The scent that had lingered on her skin after he had kissed her…
‘Th-thanks,’ she stammered, feeling awkward, wishing he hadn’t, unable to look at him as he addressed the others.
‘Gary, Jason, I don’t pay you to stand around all day drinking coffee with the first nubile female that breezes in here.’ Like magic, his unquestionable authority had the two teenagers scuttling back to work. ‘Thanks for keeping her out of mischief, Ron.’ His tone held deep respect for the older man.
When they were back in the car, however, his coat discarded on the back seat, he said scathingly, ‘Asking a lot of questions, weren’t you?’ Suspicion burned in his eyes as he pulled away with more than a fair amount of aggression, the spinning wheels kicking up dust.
‘Why shouldn’t I ask questions about my family if I want to?’ Alex challenged indignantly.
He cast a sidelong glance across the car. ‘Your family?’ he sneered. ‘I don’t think there’s any way that I can be fooled into imagining that you have any right here.’ And before she could respond he said harshly, ‘And did you have to aim your questions at my employees?’
Perhaps I shouldn’t have, she thought, studying the nails of one hand which was resting in her lap. They were filed to their usual moderate length, enhanced only by a clear, protective lacquer. Edgily, though, she said, ‘Well, I knew the sort of response I’d have got if I’d asked you.’
He didn’t look at her as the car climbed the long road out of the quarry.
‘That doesn’t give you any right to go fraternising with them,’ he said. ‘Sharing their coffee-breaks, laughing and joking with them as if you were on their level. Familiarising yourself with my workforce, Alex, is, from now on, strictly taboo.’
Alex’s nostrils flared as she watched him stop at a junction. The lush Somerset valley dropped away below them, stretching for miles, green touched with silver, from the sparkling lower fields to the thick white caps over the surrounding hills.
‘You hypocrite,’ she murmured under her breath.
‘Hypocrite?’ Now, as he pulled away, he sent a questioning glance in her direction.
‘Ron said what a decent guy you were. That your position hasn’t made you put yourself above them—probably because of the act you put on in trying to convince them it hasn’t,’ she couldn’t refrain from adding, although, strangely, she didn’t really believe that. Instinctively she knew that York Masterton wouldn’t ever try to be anything but the man he was. ‘Now you’re implying I shouldn’t stoop even to talking to them.’
‘Corrupting is the word I’d use,’ he delivered with smooth precision. ‘And I was thinking more of them—not you.’
‘Thanks,’ she breathed, and stared belligerently at the road. Well, what could she expect from him? she thought. He didn’t trust her. And, even if he did eventually accept her as his long-lost cousin, because of his low opinion of Shirley and the gold-digger he obviously thought she, Alex, was he’d still continue to flay her verbally at the least opportunity.
‘I never knew Page was in a wheelchair,’ she said tentatively.
‘No? Didn’t you read it somewhere?’ he muttered with scathing emphasis.
Alex swallowed, trying not to be put off. ‘No.’
‘He was in it long enough,’ he rasped.
She took a deep breath, trying again. ‘How long?’
Broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘Nine—ten years.’ ‘Ten years!’ Shock made a squeak out of her voice. ‘Did—did Shirley know?’ she ventured, puzzled, after a moment.
The striking contours of his profile hardened as he made some derisive sound through his nose. ‘I doubt very much, pretty…cousin…if the woman you claim was your mother ever actually knew. Or cared,’ he appended roughly.
The bitterness in him was tangible enough to make her recoil in her seat. He had been close to Page—far closer than she had ever begun to imagine, she was surprised to realise, sensing the deeply personal grief beneath that tough, impenetrable exterior.
‘What happened to him?’ she found enough courage to ask at length.
‘Do you really care?’
He looked so savage, gripping the wheel with those long dark hands whitening at the knuckles, that she was almost intimidated into silence. But if she wanted him to accept her claim to being a Masterton then she had to start acting like one, she told herself firmly, from somewhere finding the confidence to utter, ‘He was my grandfather. I’m interested, that’s all.’
‘Yes, and that’s about the size of it, isn’t it?’ he tossed angrily back at her. ‘Which is why you can sit there nonchalantly talking about a man you never knew without the first bloody idea of the pain he went through—what it’s like to suffer!’
His outburst made her flinch. Then she wanted to hurl at him that she knew enough about pain and suffering to last her a lifetime, but that would have revealed too much about herself, so she didn’t dare.
‘He had a stroke. Now let’s forget it,’ he said eventually, plunging them both into silence and driving the luxurious car with barely restrained vehemence for the rest of the journey home.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_6c115619-d1f0-5d07-9130-eeea02357776)
OVER the next couple of days Alex kept herself occupied by discovering her surroundings. She explored the town, reached from the long road that ran downhill from the house to the quaint and historic seafront which in summer, she knew, would be crowded because of the modern holiday centre with its fun-filled watershoots and garish colours. On the far side of the town, it was, she decided, the only thing to detract from the resort’s beauty. Now, though, while waiting for spring to arrive, the town still possessed a sleepy charm, although the waters washing its sandy beach were murky from the silt on this part of the coast, and nothing like the deep blue of the ocean she had become accustomed to in New Zealand.
The Somerset countryside, however, could not be equalled, and, wrapped up in a warm anorak, scarf and gloves, Alex enjoyed ambling alone along the quiet rural lanes and through the silent woods adjacent to Moorlands on tranquillity-restoring walks she remembered Shirley telling her about more than a decade before.
Enjoying herself, though, wasn’t the reason for her being here, she reminded herself firmly, no matter how much the moor beckoned or the country lanes offered a diversion from the house and her reluctant awareness of a man she despised and yet who, contrarily, could make her pulses throb with more than just angry resentment whenever she was in his company.
As had happened that morning, when he had left her, to all intents and purposes, browsing through the books in Page’s study.
Having caught sight of a photograph sticking out of one of the pigeon-holes in the bureau, she had been so absorbed by other things the bureau had to offer, which included more old photos—mainly of the family, she presumed—as well as some interesting postcards, that she hadn’t heard anyone come in until York’s voice had cut startlingly through the silence.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Alex started, knocking something off the blotter as she swivelled round on her chair.
‘N-nothing,’ she uttered inanely. ‘I—I saw a photograph I thought was of Shirley and I suppose I just got carried away.’
From the hard cast of his features, he clearly didn’t believe her.
‘Were you looking for something in particular?’
Alex swallowed, wondering if the dryness in her throat stemmed from guilt or just from his sheer vitality as he stood there in that immaculate grey suit. It was a hard, restless vitality that seemed at odds with the bleak austerity of the room, with its tall mahogany clock and bookcases and the imposing ambience of what had once been his uncle’s very private sanctum. But wouldn’t he enjoy hurting her if he knew!
‘Nothing in particular…’
‘Then what were you doing in here under the pretext of looking at books? And what’s this?’ Casually he fingered the pointed leaf of a potted miniature daffodil she hadn’t been able to resist in town the previous afternoon, and which she had placed on a low-standing bookcase just inside the door.
‘This place seems so cold. I was just trying to brighten it up a bit,’ she defended firmly, and guessed from the way he grimaced as his grey-green eyes scanned the room that he probably agreed with her. But he wouldn’t have admitted it in a thousand years, she thought grudgingly, before enquiring with a boldness that refused to be dampened, ‘My mother’s things…what happened to them?’
An eyebrow lifted sceptically as he came towards her and with one fluid movement picked up the little gold dagger letter-opener that was lying on the rug, placing it back on the desk. ‘Do we have them?’
She tried not to breathe, tried not to acknowledge that subtle masculine scent of him that played on her reluctant senses.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, York!’ She wasn’t going to let him wear her down with suspicion, no matter how much he might try to use that daunting, tyrannical streak to intimidate her. She had come for the letters which Shirley had once told her about in one of her weaker, more confiding moments, and until she found them—if they were here—he could go to hell!
‘What sort of things?’ he asked then, almost disinterestedly.
Now she had to think quickly. ‘Anything. Books. Old toys. Teenage scribblings. You know, girlhood things.’
The clock, indicating the quarter hour, made her jump as it suddenly whirred into motion, as though it were in conspiracy with him to make her more edgy, though she was determined not to let her tension show.
‘You’re not likely to find anything like that ransacking my uncle’s bureau.’
‘I hardly expected to! And I wasn’t ransacking!’ she threw back heatedly, her nerves stretched to the limit because of his disturbing proximity. He was standing too close, one immaculately clad arm outstretched, hard knuckles on the edge of the desk.
‘As far as I know, my cousin took everything with her when she left, and what she didn’t take I would hope Page would have happily burned long ago.’ There was nothing but hatred in his voice for his unfortunate cousin—a hatred so intense that it made Alex shudder.
‘And to me it looks pretty much as if that’s what happened!’
Unconsciously, Alex’s fingers gripped the leather cushion under her legs as he made one purposeful move to come and stand, tall and imposing, in front of her.
‘What exactly is it you’re looking for, Alex?’
‘I told you.’ She could hear her own voice starting to quiver, and not so much from the threatening quality of his but because she couldn’t move, couldn’t swivel her chair now without risking actually touching him. ‘And I was under the impression I had every right to come in here. Legally if not morally.’
‘Morally?’ His laugh seemed to split the air. ‘What does a conniving little opportunist like you know about morals?’
Animosity burned in his eyes, so intense that involuntarily she shrank back from it, although she managed to keep her head high as he suddenly stooped to rest one hand on the back of her chair, the other on its padded arm.
‘My lovely little second cousin didn’t have any then—ten years ago—and I’m sure as hell she wouldn’t have grown up to stake any ostensible claims to any now. This air of cool poise is out of character, Alex.’
Sudden mockery was etching the dark symmetry of his features with something that was wholly feral and which sent warning bells clamouring through her brain.
‘The unrestrained passion of the Alexia I remember wouldn’t have diminished with the years. Such elemental attraction makes no concession to time. To age. Or even to hatred.’
His words were intimidatingly soft, the hand above her shoulder dropping now to move with heart-stopping sensuality along the delicate curve of her jaw. His fingers were strong and slightly rough against the heated column of her throat, slipping with outrageous insolence beneath the collar of her blouse, locking her breath in her lungs until she thought she was suffocating.
The clock was silent now, the only sound that steady, somnolent tick, and her expelled breath suddenly shivered through her as she fought a myriad reckless sensations generated by the perverse excitement of his touch. No matter how immune a woman might think she was, that treacherous sexual sophistication of his could break through any resistance, she realised with sudden, terrifying clarity.
‘No. Some of us just grow up, York!’ she uttered. And with one hard twist of her chair, which had her knocking her knee painfully against his, she leapt up and away from him, out of the room without stopping to subject herself to the mocking triumph she knew would be written on his face.
She was grateful when, the following morning, Celia suggested that they go riding. Not that Alex considered herself a particularly good horsewoman, but she welcomed anything that took her away from the house and York.
‘I always try to get in the saddle before I go home as the countryside’s so good for riding around here,’ Celia commented as she swung the Range Rover into the yard of the pretty moorland stable nestling beneath the dark ochre of the heathland and the lush green hills. Here and there the glint of silver betrayed a stream tumbling down
to the wooded valley. ‘It keeps the muscles in shape. Not that you need to worry about that,’ she said, with an approving glance over Alex’s slim figure.
‘Even so, I never say no to a workout,’ Alex laughed, petting one or two of the equine heads peering curiously out at them above the stable doors as they made their way across the yard.
‘York suggested you might enjoy a ride when I told him I was thinking about coming here today,’ the woman enlightened her when they were leading their horses out of their respective stalls, Celia looking the part in full riding gear, Alex noted, with an inward grimace at her own rather less suitable anorak and cords.
‘Did he?’ Fastening the helmet she had hired from the stable, she hoped she had managed to make her voice sound casual. She had heard York drive off in the BMW earlier that morning and had known relief at the likelihood that she might not be seeing him for the rest of the day.
Above them the moor beckoned, open and delightfully wild, and all she wanted to do was canter over the bracken-covered hillside until she reached the top, ride off the tensions that had been plaguing her ever since she had moved into his house. She wanted to forget about York.
When the land had levelled off, though, and they were walking their horses side by side after their first exhilarating canter up through the heath Celia spoke. ‘You haven’t been hitting it off very well with my son, have you?’ was her disconcerting comment. She was flying home later that day, back to Dublin, and Alex was dreading her going, apprehensive about being left entirely alone with York.
She wanted to say, He doesn’t believe I’m who I say I am. But she didn’t. Apparently, for some reason, York hadn’t voiced his concerns about her to his mother, and although Alex didn’t imagine Celia Masterton to be a woman easily taken in, the woman had accepted her far more readily than York seemed prepared to do. Better, therefore, she thought, not to start casting doubt in Celia’s mind as well!
So she said, ‘He obviously resented Shirley for disgracing the family name and running off like she did. I suppose it’s only natural, therefore, that he should resent me too.’
‘I don’t think it’s so much that, dear.’ They rode on in silence for a few moments before York’s mother, looking uncomfortable, went on, ‘He loved your grandfather more like a father than an uncle. Unfortunately he was always closer to Page than he was to Kieran, my late husband. And I believe Page—your grandfather—didn’t ever really get over…’
Her words were lost, caught and tugged away by the gusty wind that blew up from the wooded valley.
Didn’t ever get over what? The stroke? Alex was about to query, but two figures on horseback were trotting towards them from the opposite direction, and her heart missed a beat, every nerve sharpening as she recognised the proud, confident rider sitting astride the dappled stallion. York!
‘Well, well, this is an unexpected pleasure!’ Cold eyes that appeared green-gold as he brought the prancing stallion to a halt were bright with laughter, skimming cursorily over Alex before coming to rest on his mother. ‘I see Kay kept her promise and made sure to reserve the two gentlest horses.’
‘Kay being the one on the left,’ Celia joked informatively to Alex, who was regarding the small, pretty girl accompanying him with nowhere near the degree of cold interest with which his lovely companion was assessing her.
‘I own the stable.’ Kay extended a slender gloved hand. ‘Well, in partnership with Daddy.’ Some years younger than Alex, she spoke with confidence and polish, the short, dark hair cropped neatly into her neck and her figure-hugging jodhpurs and jacket giving her a rather boyish look that somehow added more allure to her femininity.
‘York said he had an extra guest,’ Kay informed her after the man had introduced them, although he still wasn’t committing himself to accepting her as his cousin, Alex noted when he referred to her simply as Alex. ‘When he stressed that you might want something gentle, though,’ Kay went on, ‘I hadn’t imagined you to be so young. I thought you’d be more Celia’s age. In fact when I saw you coming…’ She shrugged, gave a little laugh.
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