Dark Victory

Dark Victory
Elizabeth Oldfield

Dangerous LiaisonsFlirting with danger Cheska Rider thought that she'd fully recovered from her one-night stand with Lawson. She was wrong! Lawson Giordano liked a woman who had her own thoughts, her own identity and ultimately the ability to make him jealous. In short, he liked the woman that Cheska had become.Cheska had decided that the time was right to pay Lawson back for walking out on her. It would be interesting to see just how much provocation Lawson would take!"Elizabeth Oldfield's portrayal… is a real treat." - Romantic Times

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u7734ab9e-4cb6-52b2-840c-df37a06ffae2)

Excerpt (#uc1af6346-bb81-59e9-8b7e-c4cb399cbf4f)

About The Author (#ud7cb95aa-87c1-5476-83c6-9d72244608b7)

Title Page (#u1f80419f-52d4-5e1a-a851-bc1ddb8fccd3)

Chapter One (#u1f0d492b-c129-563e-995e-72b34971a89c)

Chapter Two (#u90b31dc9-8c33-5d6a-8819-668dd0ec30f6)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

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)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Cheska’s mind was a blank.

“The kiss,” Lawson said, walking toward her.

“Kiss?” Cheska queried.

“You know the saying ‘kiss and make up?” Lawson bent over her. “We’ve done the making up part, so…?”

“Funny you should mention it,” she said. “I was just thinking the same thing myself.”

Lawson straightened a little, his eyes suddenly watchful. “You were?”

ELIZABETH OLDFIELD’s writing career started as a teenage hobby, when she had articles published. However, on her marriage the creative instinct was diverted into the production of a daughter and son. A decade later, when her husband’s job took them to Singapore, she resumed writing, and had her first romance novel accepted in 1982. Now she’s hooked on the genre! They live in London, and Elizabeth travels widely to authenticate the background of her books.

Dark Victory

Elizabeth Oldfield

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_961b08d7-2b48-5980-a8fe-2c69a0595e8b)

CHESKA sauntered contentedly towards the woodland pool which, from childhood, she had always regarded as her own special place. It felt so good to be home. Especially when the sky stretched above in a cloudless blue, when a warm breeze stirred the leaves in the trees, when the countryside was bright with drifts of wild flowers. She hugged slender arms around herself. It felt so good to be alone in the tranquillity of the morning and, praise be, to have at last escaped from the unfortunate, pressurising, increasingly dangerous attentions of—

Her thoughts and her footsteps came to a full stop. Her contentment vanished. She was not alone. On the far side of the oval pool, a man lay on his stomach, half hidden in the long grass. Cheska’s pewter-grey eyes narrowed. Who was he? What did he want? He appeared to be gazing up the long sweeping slope of green lawns in the direction of the manor house, but why? She regarded him with suspicion and acute distaste. She did not appreciate anyone violating her hideaway. After all, this was private property, she thought indignantly—and it had yet to reach eight o’clock.

Cheska studied the trespasser. Had she stumbled upon a gypsy, intending to poach a rabbit or maybe a wild deer? His thick jet-black hair and the golden skin of his arms made Romany blood a possibility.

Or might he be one of the so-called ‘New Age’ travellers the newspapers had been complaining about, scouting out a suitable tract of land on which his druggy friends could descend in hordes and create havoc by holding an illegal pop festival? Defiant hands were spread on her slim Lycra-clad hips. Over her dead body. Or was he, perhaps, more innocently, a tramp sleeping rough? Or, less threateningly still, a bird-watcher? All four options were dismissed. The tall, athletic figure stretched out on the far side of the sun-dappled water was too well dressed. He might be wearing jeans, but even from her vantage-point Cheska could see that they were clean and well cut, and that the burgundy sports shirt which fitted his muscular torso like a glove was of good quality.

Her eyes drifted back down. His lean-hipped, taut-curved backside was one of the sexiest she had ever seen. On a scale of one to ten, it definitely rated as a ten. Cheska gave her head a little shake. Where had that thought come from? The jet-lag which had kept her tossing and turning all night and had her raring to go at dawn must be befuddling her. She was not in the habit of admiring male bottoms and awarding points—let alone so early in the day—and, instead of admiring his, she ought to be deciding what the man was up to.

As Cheska watched, he slowly tilted his dark head from side to side, as though studying the eighteenth-century stone mansion from different angles, then he lifted a pair of binoculars. Her heart started to race. Oh, lord, what she had stumbled upon was a thief, undertaking a reconnaissance of the house before he broke in and swiped a selection of the family heirlooms! An exceptionally professional thief, she realised with galloping alarm, for a pad had been produced from his breast pocket and he had begun making notes.

With hasty steps Cheska backed out of sight behind the thick trunk of a beech tree. She gulped down a breath. What was she to do? Her instinct was to steal quietly and quickly away before the man spotted her, which, as he was so engrossed in his survey, should be simple. Her brow furrowed. Yet a prompt retreat would mean that, when she telephoned the police, there would be little description to give them—unless she waxed lyrical about his cute rear-end, Cheska thought wryly. But perhaps the thief was a known villain who, if identified, could be shadowed and apprehended. A burnished curl of cinnamon-brown hair was hooked decisively behind one ear. Before making her getaway, she would creep around the edge of the steepsided pool and sneak a swift, discerning sideways look.

After checking that the trespasser remained preoccupied, Cheska left the beech tree and, with stealthy scampering steps, hightailed it to the leafy screen of a rhododendron. She slunk to another bush, and another, and the next. The note-making continued. A few more furtive prowls and she was on the point of taking up her viewing position beneath the convenient canopy of a weeping willow, when her prey reached down into the grass to produce a camera. As he half turned, Cheska froze. Her pewter-grey eyes flew open wide. Her heart thudded behind her ribs. Jet lag must be playing weird tricks again, for the glimpse she had had of the man’s strong, angled profile had made her think…It couldn’t be, a voice wailed in protest inside her head. It is, her eyesight and common sense insisted. That Roman nose and clean-cut jawline are instantly recognisable, even after a gap of five years. When the man twisted his torso and reached down into the grass again, this time to dispense with a lens cap, her fears were confirmed. Her worst fears. Cheska raised a shaky hand to her brow. She had never expected to meet Lawson Giordano, whizz-kid director of television commercials, again, and certainly not in the depths of the Sussex countryside in the early hours of a summer morning.

She stared at the prone male figure. How did he come to be here? she wondered frantically. What on earth could he be doing? Her curiosity received short shift. His activities did not matter. What mattered was that Lawson Giordano had not seen her, so she did not need to meet him now, Cheska thought thankfully. She could, would, creep quickly and quietly away. As he focused the camera she took a blind step in hasty retreat, turned, and felt her flip-flop sandal start to slide out from beneath her foot. Her balance went.

‘Aarrgh!’ Cheska yelped, as in a flurry of windmilling arms, skidding legs and spiralling body she slithered out from the weeping willow, down the bank of the pool and into the dark green water.

Above her, Lawson Giordano’s head whipped round and he stared. He clambered to his feet. ‘Francesca Rider?’ he said, in stunned disbelief. For a moment or two he gawked down at her, and then he started to laugh.

Pink-faced and with untidy clouds of brown hair tumbling over her eyes, Cheska glared. A dry spring and summer had reduced the level of the pond, so the water barely reached her thighs and the legs of her black cycling shorts. She had also, by some miracle, managed to remain upright. And she was unhurt. She swept back her hair. OK, OK, she thought tetchily, her impromptu descent could be construed as somewhat comic, but she resented providing amusement for a man who had once savagely condemned her and then proceeded to exploit her for his own ends. Exploit her ruthlessly.

Cheska folded her arms across her chest. ‘It isn’t funny, she declared, her voice frigid.

Although it required an effort and a moment or two, Lawson Giordano managed to clamp down on his laughter—though a crooked grin annoyingly remained.

‘You think not?’ he said.

‘I do!’ Cheska snapped. ‘And it’s your fault that I fell.’

‘Mine?’

She glowered up at him. ‘I didn’t expect anyone to be here, and—and you startled me.’

Dark brown eyes made a swift but expert appraisal of her slim figure in the Lycra shorts and matching cut-away top.

‘You thought I might be a lust-crazed rapist, scouring the fields for scantily dressed maidens and about to pounce?’ Lawson Giordano suggested.

Cheska’s glower intensified. She had not considered herself scantily dressed—until he had mentioned it. But now she felt like a fugitive from some Las Vegas strip show!

‘You were looking at the house and I thought you might be what’s commonly called “casing the joint”,’ she retorted, and realised he was staring.