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He looked as if he really meant it. She followed him over the cobbled approach feeling awful, because she had promised, hadn’t she? She hated letting people down, and never did, if she could help it. But she couldn’t help feeling sorry for Enid, who was in love with him, and his parents who were so anxious to see him settle down.
Annie hadn’t expected to be able to eat a thing. But after relishing the delicious crispy bacon and scrambled eggs she knew that not even a guilty conscience could curb her healthy appetite.
And the coffee was good, very good, and as Mark poured a second cup for them both he said, ‘Look at it from my point of view. I didn’t ask Enid to fall in love with me, or to “Save herself” for me, as Mum so archly puts it. She’s your age and never had a boy-friend—and I guess that makes me feel guilty. But, dammit all, I shouldn’t have to!’
He looked so grim. Annie couldn’t help but sympathise. Only a week ago, after a particularly hectic day at the Threadneedle Street head office of his import/export business, he had invited her to his parents’ home for the August Bank Holiday weekend. It coincided with his mother’s birthday, and, as with any family gathering, he’d told her resignedly, Enid Mayhew would be there, gazing at him with adoring eyes and following him around as if tied to him with invisible string.
The daughter of a near neighbour, she’d had a crush on him since she wore gymslips and pigtails and braces on her teeth, and his entire family—including his rather terrifying-sounding big brother—thought Enid eminently suited for the part of tying him down, putting a curb on his wilder schemes and generally domesticating him.
‘If you appear as my guest—five-four of gorgeous curves, dressed to knock their eyes out—they might all get the message,’ he’d said. ‘Let me alone to get on with my life. I love them all to pieces, but I want them off my case. I’m sick of them throwing Enid at my head!’
It hadn’t seemed too much to ask then, but now, cradling her cup in her hands, savouring the strong dark brew and watching his gloomy expression with sympathy, she asked, ‘And what do you feel about Enid—as a person?’
At first he looked as if he didn’t understand the question. Then he shrugged. ‘She’s fine. I’m very fond of her. She can be good company when she forgets to moon over me, and there isn’t a mean bone in her body. But—’ he set his coffee cup down with a clatter ‘—that doesn’t mean I want her tethered to me like a whopping great anchor. I want to fly high.’
He already had, Annie thought, but wisely held her tongue. His business wasn’t the tinpot affair Rupert had scathingly called it. Business was booming and, ironically, two months after she’d broken her engagement, Mark’s assistant had left to set up a PR consultancy and she had been chosen to take his position at a hugely increased salary.
So it seemed that without even trying she had become what Rupert had wanted her to be. A career woman. Certainly she had put all her fond ideas of marriage and a family on hold.
She wouldn’t let another man into her life until she was sure his aims were the same as her own.
She wouldn’t let another man get close to her until she could find one who could make her senses sing to sweet wild music, just as...
But she was not going to think about that, because whenever she did embarrassment sent her into a state resembling shock, all bound up with a decidedly uncomfortable riot of clamouring hormones.
Discovering that the stranger she’d leapt on had been none other than the chief executive of the bank, Daniel Faber, had given her screaming inner hysterics, and Rupert’s slagging off as he’d driven her home on that dreadful December night—on the unsuitability of her dress, her untidy hair, the way she’d skulked in a corner, then practically dragged him away—had been just what she’d needed to tell him to get lost, to get out of her life and stay out
So she could understand why Mark wanted to get his family off his back. Nobody liked the feeling of being forced into a mould they didn’t fit.
‘I guess I should have said I couldn’t make it,’ Mark said gloomily. ‘Invented some excuse. But Mum would hate Dan or me to miss her birthday. I’m too fond of the old meddler to fob her off with a lie and a bouquet of flowers by Interflora.’
Any man who was good to his mother had Annie’s vote. And she knew how awful it was when people tried to turn you into something you could never be.
Annie stood up from the table, smoothing the soft silky shorts over her curvy hips, settling her big round sunglasses back on the end of her neat nose. ‘I’m on. Crisis over. So lead the way and tell me something about your home county. All I know about Herefordshire is that it’s crammed with black and white Tudor houses...’
Mark’s family home wasn’t one of the timber-frame houses the county boasted but a mellow stone rambling affair, surrounded by trees in heavy, late summer leaf. Hot sunlight beamed down from a cloudless sky and a pack of dogs of all shapes and sizes streamed from the open door in welcome.
Mark, retrieving their luggage, said, ‘If you want to get Dad on side, admire his roses. Since he retired, the garden’s given him a new lease of life. And if you praise Mum’s cooking and clear your plate she’ll forgive you anything.’
Anything? Even stealing her beloved younger son away from the so-suitable Enid? Mark had promised Annie he wouldn’t go so far as to say they were an item, or make advances—public or otherwise. He’d stated that her presence as his guest would be enough because of the way she looked, and because he hadn’t taken a girl home since his college days—the type of woman he socialised with in London wasn’t the type to take home to meet the family. Nevertheless, she was getting cold feet all over again, agonising over whether her shorts were too skimpy, her top too revealing.
Bending down, she greeted the tide of dogs to hide her misgivings, wishing she were back in her Earl’s Court flat, listening to Cathy rave about her latest boyfriend or discuss the merits of the newest fad diet.
‘Annie, I’d like you to meet my parents.’ Mark’s voice, laid-back as ever, had her shooting upright. Hopefully they’d relate the flush she could feel creeping all over her skin—every exposed inch of it—to the enthusiastic licking the dogs had bestowed on her.
Mr and Mrs Redway were both somewhere in their sixties, his mother comfortably plump, his father tallish, sparish, very much an older version of Mark himself, his curly nut-brown hair greying, his hazel eyes hinting at a smile that had gone into hiding at the moment.
The greeting she received was nothing if not polite. Too polite, Annie thought, cringing.
Then, ‘Take your things up, Mark. I’ll show Miss Kincaid to her room. And Father, fetch Enid from the kitchen; we have time for a drink before lunch.’ Mark’s mother turned to her son, her smile wistful. ‘The dear girl’s making preparations for the buffet this evening. She refuses to let me do a thing. So thoughtful—as always.’
Maternal frost enveloped Annie as she followed her reluctant hostess up the twisty stairs, along one corridor then down another—as far from Mark’s room as she could possibly get, she guessed.
Annie felt like turning tail and running, but when the older woman paused, pushed open an ancient oak-board door and said, ‘Your room, Miss Kincaid. I do hope you’ll be comfortable,’ she grabbed her slipping courage by the edges, decided to be herself and not the threatening femme fatale that her boss thought his family would see her as, smiled warmly and insisted, ‘Call me Annie. It’s awkward, isn’t it, when strangers descend on you? I was brought up by an elderly aunt who had to have a week’s notice, preferably in writing, before anyone dropped by for afternoon tea! And by the way, many happy returns of the day.’
‘Oh—Mark must have told you!’ The blue eyes crinkled with pleasure and Annie nodded, her smile widening.
‘Of course he did. He wouldn’t have missed your birthday for the world. You know,’ she added confidingly, ‘although he likes to fly high and far, the homing instinct’s very strong. He’ll always come home to roost.
‘I was going to bring you flowers, but he said they’d have wilted long before we got here.’ She walked further into the room—pretty and airy, rosy sprigged wallpaper, its delicate pattern repeated on the curtains and bedspread. ‘I don’t know your tastes, but I remembered Mark once mentioning your weakness for Belgian chocolates.’ She bent and opened her weekend case, scrabbling around for the gift-wrapped box, uncomfortably aware of the brevity of her vividly coloured shorts.
But when she turned and extended the beribboned package there wasn’t a hint of disapproval on her companion’s comfy face.
‘How kind, Annie.’ She took the gift. Then, after a tiny pause, asked, ‘Have you been seeing my son for long?’
Annie wasn’t going to lie to this patently nice woman. ‘I work for him. We’re friends. Nothing more than that.’
If he could hear her, Mark would probably fire her on the spot—or reduce her salary by half. But Annie wasn’t into subterfuge and there wasn’t much she could do about it. Whether his mother believed her or not was another thing. But at least the older woman did seem more relaxed.
‘Come down as soon as you’ve freshened up. There’s a bathroom right opposite. We’ll all have drinks out in the garden—out of the front door, turn right and you’ll find us. Dan should be home any time now, and then we can have lunch.’
‘Dan’ would be big brother, Annie thought, the confidence engendered by being her natural self seeping out of her as soon as she found herself alone.
Meeting the lovelorn Enid would be the next hurdle. She’d rather not jump it, would rather skulk in her room.
She wondered whether to change and decided against it. Whatever she put on she’d still be noticeable. Unpacking took five minutes, washing and renewing her make-up—sunblock and her usual scarlet lipstick—took another five, while brushing the tangles out of her windblown mane took ten.
Irritated with the whole situation now, she dropped her brush down in the clutter she’d already created on the pretty Victorian dressing table and headed for the door. Only another forty-eight hours or so to get through, so she’d just have to grin and bear it—and remind herself to harden the mush that passed for her heart if her boss ever asked her to do him a favour again!
Halfway down the twisty stairs, feeling sick, still trying to remind herself of exactly why she had agreed to come here as Mark’s weekend guest, she felt very ill indeed when she recognised the austerely handsome face and power-packed frame of Daniel Faber as he suddenly rounded one of the quirky bends in the sixteenth-century staircase.
‘I’ve come to bring you down. Everyone thought you’d probably got lost. This house is something of a warren!’
But Annie had already subsided in a heap, sitting down on the nearest tread because her legs had given way, muscle and bone turning to water.
Perhaps he wouldn’t recognise her. It had been dark out on that terrace. They hadn’t been introduced at the party, either. And she and Rupert had left before he’d come back into the room. She’d made sure of that! And the embarrassing happening had been more than eight months ago...
‘Just what the hell are you doing here?’
Annie gave a faint groan. As soon as he’d had a proper look at her, he’d recognised her all right—and the quietly rasping tone told her he didn’t remember their brief encounter with any pleasure whatsoever!
But then, neither did she, she reminded herself bracingly, gingerly hauling herself back to her feet, hanging onto the banister. And even though it had been she who had hurled herself at him, he hadn’t passed up on the opportunity to kiss her back—he’d done more than that, too, she recalled, righteous anger momentarily quelling severely intense embarrassment.
‘I’m here as Mark’s guest, as I guess you must already know. Surely you were told who to fetch.’
Proud of her cool tone, she made the mistake of raking her eyes over him, slowly, from top to toe. And once she’d started the appraisal she couldn’t seem to stop.
How she could ever have mistaken him for Rupert, even in pitch-darkness, she would never know. Long legs encased in cool cotton chinos, topped by a body-hugging black T-shirt—his superb physique owed nothing whatsoever to expensive tailoring.
At six feet, Rupert was tall, but Daniel Faber could give him a good three inches. Plus, he was far wider in the chest and shoulder region and narrower in the hip. But she had known the difference hadn’t she? her ever-active conscience reminded her, bringing hot colour to her face.
As soon as his mouth had covered hers she’d known. And hadn’t been able to resist the startling effect of what the intimacy of his lips and hands had done to her.
His dark-browed frown made a deep cleft between the smoke grey eyes as he returned her minute scrutiny, as if mentally stripping away the silky shorts and top was something he had to do but didn’t want to.
‘I’ve only just arrived,’ he said through the slow build-up of sizzling tension. ‘Dad took me aside and told me Mark had brought a woman guest, that you’d been put in the rose room. He didn’t tell me who you were. I took it on myself to fetch you. I wanted to judge for myself how serious Mark might be about you. None of us are entirely happy about the situation. Now I know who you are, I’m furious.’
He looked it, too. Quietly and coldly furious. So he was the adoring Enid’s champion, too. Mark had implied as much. Yet her brow furrowed. ‘How can you be brothers?’
‘Half-brothers,’ he corrected impatiently. ‘My mother remarried after my father died, and a year later Mark arrived. At the time of the marriage I was eight years old. Old enough to know I wanted to keep my own father’s name.’
So he’d been a self-opinionated little boy, too. That figured. Her body was still tingling almost painfully where his eyes had wandered, and she’d had more than enough of this pointless and potentially embarrassing conversation.
She said, ‘Shall we join the others before they send the dogs to find us?’ and watched his wickedly sensual mouth curve cynically as the steely eyes stabbed her, reaching right into her soul and hurting it.
‘And we wouldn’t want anyone—Mark especially—to think we were doing anything we shouldn’t, would we?’
Flinching at the taunt, Annie willed her legs to stop shaking, held her golden head high and pushed past him. The weekend had barely begun and it had already turned into a nightmare. She had hoped she would never come face to face with Daniel Faber again, telling herself that even if she did, he wouldn’t recognise her.
Now the worst had happened. Face to face with him and not only had he recognised her, he was rubbing her face in her indiscretion. Would he tell his family? Make a joke of it? Or would he make something darker out of a simple mistake?
Only it hadn’t been a mistake. Not after his arms had closed around her, his lips making demanding love to her mouth.
Just thinking about it made her face go hot, and a gasp of shock, charged with wicked excitement, burst from her as he caught her hair with one hand, twisting the length of it round his wrist, forcing her to turn back, face him.
‘I can’t stop you being a menace to the male sex. But don’t mess with my family, Annie Kincaid.’ Another slight twist of his wrist and she was closer to that tough male body. The harsh, handsome face bent over hers, his breath sweet and clean. So close she could feel his body heat, his power, his contempt See that contempt in the dark grey eyes.
The contempt withered her; she fought against it, a battle twinned with the crazy desire to get closer still, to touch and be touched, to feel the long, hard length of him against her soft, receptive female curves.
She wanted to tell him he was mistaken, too. She was no man-eater. But that would be giving his jaundiced view of her a credibility it didn’t deserve. Desperately trying to clear her head of the accumulated muddle he had created, she narrowed her eyes at him.
‘You’re overreacting, Mr Faber. If what happened that night—and it was only a kiss, remember—affected you so strangely, then I’m sorry. But that’s your problem. There’s nothing I can do about it.’
The moment the words were past her lips she knew she’d said the wrong thing. The sudden hiss of his indrawn breath, the dark glitter of his eyes, told her that her piece of bravado had been taken as a challenge.
Too late to retract now, though. The damage was done. And more was to come as that sensual mouth came down on hers, his tongue diving deep between her parted lips with instinctive, bred-in-the-bone male possession.
And just as suddenly, just as she recovered from the stunned shock of engulfing excitement, her blood fizzing dizzily through her veins as she began a feverish response, he put her away, his hand sliding through her hair, right through the thick and crinkly golden length of it to where it tapered to a curling point in the small of her back.
‘Nothing you can do about it? How about carrying on where we left off? When I feel like it,’ he drawled. ‘For now, though, go on down to lunch. And remember, I’ll be watching you. There isn’t a corner you can hide in without my eyes finding you.’
Lunch? An impossibility. How could she swallow a thing? She pretended to, though, because to do otherwise would let him see he’d won, ruined her appetite, made her needle-sharp-aware of every inflection of his voice, every flicker of those enigmatically veiled eyes—those watching eyes.
The table in front of the birthday girl had been piled with gift-wrapped packages. Molly Redway indeed looked like an excited girl as she tore through paper and sent satin ribbon bows flying to cries of, ‘Just what I wanted! Oh, how lovely!’ and, ‘How did you know I yearned for new driving gloves?’ She laid the supple kid leather against her flushed cheek and Daniel said, affectionate amusement curling through his voice, ‘You hinted often enough, Ma! Glad you’re happy with them, though.’
And her husband reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘We made notes of all the hints, jotted them down, and then decided who should make you a gift of what!’
Annie slumped gratefully back in her seat, thankful for the distraction. At least Daniel Faber’s carefully guarded eyes had something else to focus on right now. And Enid Mayhew had been a revelation.
She was lovely. Slender, with cool, aristocratically beautiful features, her dark hair cut short, soft tendrils framing her face and curling against her long white neck.
Surely any man would be bowled over if such a gorgeous creature professed herself in love with him? So what was wrong with Mark?
Covering her untouched salmon mousse with her vast paper napkin, Annie thought she knew why Mark backed off and hid when most men would jump through hoops of fire to gain the interest of such a beauty. Enid made her adoration far too obvious—had been doing so, apparently, since she was at school.
Unlike his half-brother—who would greedily take whatever offer presented itself, as witness the way he had responded to her mistaken embrace on that dark December night, and then vilify the woman in question—Mark was a hunter. He would want to pursue, make the woman he wanted want him back, not hand him everything on a plate.
It was all there in her beautiful expressive eyes, in the way those same eyes had misted, the soft lips trembling, when they’d been first introduced, in the way the girl had avoided looking at her ever since.
Annie ached to tell her that she was going about everything in exactly the wrong way. That she, Annie, wasn’t what Mark wanted her to seem. But how? When? Since she’d joined the others for pre-lunch drinks on the terrace Mark hadn’t left her side, and Daniel had done what he’d said he would. Watched her. Watched her until her skin prickled and her nerve-ends screamed. There seemed little hope. of snatching a few private moments with the other girl.
‘You’ve done something to your hair,’ Mark commented, one brow quirked to where Enid sat at the far end of the table.
He was sitting far too close to her, and his voice made Annie jump. She’d be fainting at the sight of her shadow next, she thought weakly, wide eyes taking in the other girl’s pretty blush.
‘I—I had it cut.’ She flicked the end of her tongue over her lips. ‘I—it was too long and heavy. Hot.’
So she got practically speechless whenever the love of her life bothered to notice her, did she? Annie thought, then saw everyone—except Mark—looking at her own heavy, riotously curling mane and felt herself blush, too. Though not so prettily, she was sure.
‘Suits you.’ Mark sounded vaguely surprised, and Enid shot to her feet, her mouth quivering.
‘I’ll clear away.’
‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Molly Redway was adamant. ‘You spent all day yesterday and most of this morning in the kitchen. Father, why don’t you take everyone on a tour of the garden while I stack the dishwasher? Mrs Potts is due to arrive soon. She’s broken her rule of never working at weekends because of this evening’s party...’ Still chattering, she shooed everyone out of the cool, elegant dining room, through the French windows and into the late August heatwave.
The gardens drowsed in the sun, the trees, heavy and sleepy, casting islands of welcome dark green shade, the harsh light bleaching the rose blooms of colour. Conversation was desultory, movements slow in the summer heat.
A normal family taking mild exercise after lunch. Only this wasn’t normal. There were muddles and undercurrents swirling just beneath the surface—fore-runners of change. Annie had the feeling that she was some kind of catalyst, and hated it.
At her side, Mark took her hand and Annie, her miserable thoughts on another plane entirely, didn’t really notice until his fingers tightened, hurting her. Annoyed with him, she tugged away.
He’d promised there’d be no touching, no lying, that her presence alone would be enough to convince them all that there was no chance at all of him suddenly doing what everyone thought was right for him—settling down to married life with Enid.
Seeing his brother take Annie Kincaid’s hand, right in front of Enid’s distressed eyes, Daniel decided something had to be done.
He’d been a fool to think a warning would be enough. ‘Don’t mess with my family,’ he’d said, and meant it. But women like Annie Kincaid didn’t heed warnings. They used their sexuality to get what they wanted out of life.
She was here with Mark, and yet after only the slightest hesitation she’d responded to that kiss of punishment on the stairs. If he’d carried on, instead of putting her away, he could have taken her back to her bedroom, stripped off the tantalising wisps that were supposed to pass as clothing, stripped her down to her luscious, willing flesh and taken her, possessed her.
And she would have revelled in it.
Disturbed by the way his thoughts were beginning to affect his body, he fell in step beside Enid and began to talk horses, which was her other passion, his mind only half on the conversation.
The poor kid had been in and out of the house since her early teens, had become like one of the family. Mark was a fool if he couldn’t see that Enid was worth a thousand Annie Kincaids—cheap baggages with their big and beautiful eyes on the main chance brought nothing but trouble and grief. He wouldn’t want his brother hurt in that particular fire.
Normally he would have said that Mark was old enough, smart enough, to look out for himself. But instinct told him that once Annie Kincaid got a man in her clutches she would twist him around her pretty fingers until he bled. Then toss the besotted wretch aside if a better prospect appeared on the horizon.
He’d seen it happen with Rupert Glover. He was not going to stand around and wait for it to happen to Mark.
