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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?’
