Secret Courtship

Notebook on her lap, she tapped her pencil against her teeth, remembering that on the way to Juniper Ridge in the cab she had noticed a village at the foot of the hill; perhaps she would find a cycle shop there. She started to scribble out her list, starting with the bike and adding enough items of food to keep her going for several days.

When she’d finished, she stretched lazily and smiled. Before she went shopping—before she even showered and changed—there was something she was going to do... somewhere she was going to go. A treat she’d promised herself, as a reward for her morning of hard work.

Standing up, she stuffed her list in the pocket of her jeans before taking her empty plate to the kitchen.

Then, anticipation sparkling up inside her like a sunburst of champagne bubbles, she made for the front door.

KEEP OUT

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

Laura stared disbelievingly at the sign nailed to the narrow gate at the forest entrance. Who on earth had put it there? And how long had it been there? When she’d spent that summer at Sweet Briar, there had certainly been no such sign. The forest had been there for everyone to enjoy.

Disappointment surged through her like sour bile. Everything, she decided bitterly, had changed. First, the old cottages had been razed to the ground; secondly, the back garden at Sweet Briar was no longer private; and now the forest was forbidden to her. Fighting a sudden welling of tears, she slumped against the gatepost.

At least the cottage itself remained unchanged. And for that she was profoundly thankful. But, instead of its being in its original jewel-like setting, it was as if the small house was the last survivor in a now unfamiliar world. She felt as though she was the last survivor in an unfamiliar world ...

“Excuse me!”

She hadn’t heard anyone approaching from the forest path. Now, as she jerked away from the post, she became aware of a man just a step away, waiting to get by. The man—for just a second she hadn’t recognized him, and then her heartbeats thundered with the intensity of galloping hooves on sun-baked turf—was Nicholas Diamond.

He was wearing an icy-gray shirt with the sleeves loosely rolled back over his forearms, a striped light gray and navy tie and a pair of navy suit trousers that snugly followed the contours of his thighs and narrowed to a pair of highly polished shoes... And over his shoulder, slung by a thumb, was his suit jacket—that he was carrying it that way was, she noticed bleakly, the only casual thing about him. Had he been wearing the jacket, he would have looked as if he’d stepped straight from the cover of a fat and glossy business magazine.

She realized that his original detached expression had given way to a frown.

“Aren’t you the young woman who was walking in the middle of the road yesterday?” Censure edged his tone. He opened the gate as he spoke, walked through and clicked it shut behind him, his critical gaze never leaving her.

“Aren’t you the roadhog who almost ran me over?” she retorted acidly. He had recognized her from their first encounter, but he obviously hadn’t connected her with the woman he’d tangled with during the night.

“Why are you hanging around?” The question had a hard edge. Still without taking his gaze from her, he jerked his head toward the sign. “This area is out of bounds,” he went on, but before he could say more, Laura broke in scornfully.

“I can see that! And whoever put up that sign should have his head examined. The forest belongs to everyone, and as long as people respect it then they should be allowed to wander through it at will.” She glared up at him. “Though that doesn’t seem to stop you! Are you one of these people who go through life disobeying rules just for the sheer hell of it?”

The breeze caught the scent from his body and brought it to her like an unwanted gift—a gift she had no way of refusing. It wasn’t the raw male scent she’d been subjected to the day before—that pheromone-laden scent which had called to some deep and dark and primal part of her—it was a clean, sophisticated fragrance, with musk and sandalwood undertones—one that teased her in a different but equally tantalizing and disturbing way. To her dismay, as she waited for him to respond to her challenging words, she felt her mouth become dry.

When finally he spoke it was in exactly the same tone as he’d used the day before, when he’d told her his name, and with exactly the same icy expression in his eyes.

“The forest,” he said, “belongs to me.”

Dry throat suddenly forgotten, Laura stood speechless. But only for a moment. When he started to move past her, his jacket brushing her arm as he did, she wrenched herself back from him with a snapped, “And you keep it all to yourself? Don’t you think that’s a bit...selfish?”

He wheeled round and fixed her with a glittering gaze. “Selfish? No,” he said bluntly, “I don’t think so.” His gaze narrowed as it flickered over her. “Tell me—do you have a job?”

No, she didn’t have a job... But looking for one was going to be her first priority once she’d got settled in at Sweet Briar—not that she was about to let this man be privy to any of her plans! Haughtily she tilted her chin. “For the life of me,” she retorted, “I can’t see what business that is of yours!”

“So you think I’m selfish?” His laugh was grim. “Lady, what I think is selfish is people like you who believe the world owes them a living. If you had a job, instead of just hanging around, some day you might be able to buy yourself a bit of land. When that day comes you can decide what you want to do with it, and who you will allow to walk on it. In the meantime, don’t expect to freeload on those of us who have earned what they possess.”

Again, to her horror, Laura felt tears begin to prick the back of her eyes, and as they did the fight began to drain out of her. It was crazy, the way she and this man rubbed each other the wrong way. If he did, indeed, own this forest acreage, then legally he was perfectly entitled to keep it to himself. And, though she hadn’t wanted to become involved with her neighbors, the last thing she’d expected was to become engaged in open hostility with any of them. It would be awkward, she conceded, to be at war with this man, when they lived next door to each other.

She opened her mouth to explain who she was, to make an effort to smooth the dangerous tension jerking back and forth like live cables between them, but the sound of an approaching car and the blare of a horn distracted her attention. The noise came from behind her, and when she turned round it was to see a sleek powder-blue Jaguar pull in at the side of the road about twenty feet away.

A tall, leggy female emerged, her hair—ash-blond and straight-glistening like a sheet of pale water around her shoulders, her slender figure immaculate in a powder-blue sheath dress that flattered every feminine curve. Her glance barely flickered over Laura, as, with a tinkle of silver bracelets, she raised an arm and waved to Nicholas.

“Are you ready, Nick?” Her voice was soft, and had a built-in huskiness that would, Laura mused tautly, appeal to men of all ages; it was a voice that would be hard to resist.

Nicholas Diamond showed no signs of wanting to resist it.

“Be right there, Melody,” he called in an easy tone.

But before he moved away his eyes slewed down to meet Laura’s for one fleeting moment. “Remember what I said,” he warned grimly. “The forest is off limits.”

Then he was gone, striding away toward the powder-blue Jag as if he’d already forgotten her existence.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER her altercation with Nick Diamond, Laura showered and changed and then walked down to the village, where she bought a sturdy second-hand bicycle. Before going home, she crossed to the supermarket, where she purchased enough groceries to last her a week.

It was fortunate that she had, because the following morning she woke to the sound of heavy rain ... rain that showed no signs of letting up in the near future.

Depressing though the bad weather was, it had its advantages. Laura couldn’t go out, so she set herself to spring-cleaning the cottage and to sorting out Charity’s clothes, and other items, for disposal ... shedding more than one tear in the process.

It took her six days to complete the work, and during that time it rained solidly. But when she woke on the seventh day she discovered that the rain had spattered itself to a stop through the night; when she stumbled to the bedroom window, it was to look out on a dazzlingly bright scene.

In her cream cotton robe and slippers, she wandered, yawning, through to the living-room, where she flung open the French doors and stepped out onto the patio.

Birdsong greeted her, and air so sweetly fresh that she drew in great lungfuls as she looked at the raindrops sparkling like jewels on every leaf. Raising her face to the sun, eyes closed, she stretched her arms high, as far as her fingers could reach. The belt of her robe slipped open, and the sun stroked her bare legs, and the swell of her breasts above the ribboned yoke of her nightie. It felt good—it felt free!—to stand there like that, and though her muscles ached it was a pleasant ache—a reminder of a job well done.

She was about to retie her robe and go inside again when she had a feeling someone was watching her. She jerked her head up to glance at the house next door...and froze.

Nick Diamond must have been passing an uncurtained window upstairs as she’d stepped outside, because she could see him standing there now—at least, she could see the upper half of his body. That body might be half-naked, or it might—her cheeks became warm-be totally naked; the lower frame of the window cut him off at the waist. What she could see of him was disturbingly male—wide, tanned shoulders and muscular arms, and a deep chest clouded with crisp black hair.

Her breath caught in her throat as their eyes locked, and she felt her pulse quiver as, for a time-stopping moment, she saw a flicker of sexual awareness in his gray gaze. It was only for a moment, because even as she felt an answering tingle run through her body his expression changed. He looked, all of a sudden, as if someone had struck him a blow on the head from behind.

He had, Laura realized, finally recognized that the female he’d almost run over with his truck, the female he’d also forbidden to trespass in his forest and the female with whom he’d tangled in the dark-shadowed living-room at Sweet Briar were one and the very same.

But, before she could move, before she could tilt her chin haughtily and stomp back inside, he raised one hand in a mocking salute, and, moving away, disappeared from view.

Resentment poured through her like burning acid as she absorbed the hard reality of the situation: there was nothing she could do to prevent Nick Diamond from staring down on her, at any time, from his window.

She remembered how, during her visit to Sweet Briar that long-ago summer when she was ten years old, Great-Aunt Charity had often flung off her blouse after a weeding session, and had collapsed in a deckchair with a glass of lemonade to sunbathe in her bra and her baggy old shorts while Laura played under the lawn sprinkler in her swimsuit.

How had the elderly woman reacted, Laura now wondered, when the cottage next door had been bulldozed to the ground and Nick Diamond had erected a house so tall that he could look down into her yard? Had she been horrified? Or had she, with the confidence of her years, continued to sunbathe in her—?

Splash!

Laura compressed her lips into a tight line as she heard, from the other side of the wall, the unmistakable sound of a body hitting water—a man’s body, she surmised irritably, a whipcord-lean and hair-roughened body, a darkly tanned and glorious body, slicing with tautmuscled perfection into the deep end of a luxurious swimming pool.

The sun was shining more brightly with every passing moment, but to Laura it might as well have been floundering behind a bank of thunder-purpled clouds. Her morning was already. ruined—as every morning would be when it had to be spent in such close proximity to Nicholas Diamond.