‘Dearest boy.’ She lifted a smiling face for his kiss. ‘So, this is your lovely girl.’
The twinkling gaze swept over Alanna in an assessment as shrewd as it was comprehensive, and, for a moment, she had an absurd impulse to step back, as if getting out of range.
Then Mrs Harrington’s smile widened. ‘Well, isn’t this just grand. Welcome to Whitestone, my dear.’
The distinct Irish accent was something else Alanna hadn’t expected although she supposed ‘Niamh’ should have supplied a clue.
She pulled herself together. ‘Thank you for inviting me, Mrs Harrington. You—you have a very beautiful home.’
Oh, God, she thought. Did that sound as if she was sizing the place up for future occupancy? And had Gerard warned his grandmother that they’d only been dating for a few weeks rather than months.
Mrs Harrington made a deprecating gesture with a heavily beringed hand. ‘Ah, well, it’s seen better days.’ She turned to the girl beside her. ‘Move up, Joanne darling and let—Alanna, is it?—sit beside me while she tells me all about herself.’
Gerard was looking round. ‘I don’t see my mother.’
‘Poor Meg’s upstairs having a bit of a lie down. I expect she found the journey from Suffolk a great burden to her as I always feared she would.’ Mrs Harrington sighed deeply. ‘Leave her be for now, dearest boy, and I’m sure she’ll be fine, just fine by dinner.’
Alanna saw Gerard’s mouth tighten, but he said nothing as he turned away.
‘So,’ said Mrs Harrington. ‘My grandson tells me you’re a publisher.’
‘An editor in women’s commercial fiction.’ Alanna knew how stilted that must sound.
‘Now that’s a job I envy you for. There’s nothing I love more than a book. A good story with plenty of meat in it and not too sentimental. Maybe, now, you could suggest a few titles that I’d enjoy.’
‘Can you recommend a book for an elderly lady who loves reading?’
Almost the same request she’d heard in a London bookshop nearly a year ago, but spoken then in a man’s deep drawl. And the start of the nightmare she needed so badly to forget, she thought, trying to repress an instinctive shiver.
Which was noticed. ‘You’re feeling cold and no wonder, now the evening breeze has got up.’ Niamh Harrington raised her voice. ‘Will you come in now, Zandor? And close those windows behind you, for the Lord’s sake. There’s a terrible draught, and we can’t have Gerard’s guest catching her death because you’re wandering about on the terrace.’
Alanna found she was freezing in reality. She stared down at her hands, clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles were turning white.
‘Zandor,’ she repeated under her breath in total incredulity. Zandor?
No, it couldn’t be. Not possibly. She was nervous so she’d misheard. That’s all it was.
‘I apologise, Grandmother. To you and my cousin’s beautiful friend. We must all take care that no harm comes to her.’
Not just the name, she thought dazedly. But the voice—low-pitched and tinged with that same note of faint amusement. Instantly and hideously recognisable. Shockingly, horribly unmistakable.
As, God help her, she must be to him.
She forced herself to look up and meet the gaze of the tall figure, dark against the setting sun, framed in the French windows.
The man from whose bedroom she’d fled all those months ago, leaving her with memories that had haunted her ever since.
And for the worst of all possible reasons.
HE CLOSED THE French windows behind him with elaborate care and strolled forward, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, long-legged in close-fitting black pants, his matching shirt casually unbuttoned halfway to the waist, affording Alanna an unwanted view of his bronze chest, and an even more disturbing reminder that, when she’d left his bed at their previous encounter, he’d been wearing no clothes at all.
He said softly, ‘Perhaps we should properly introduce ourselves. I am Zandor.’ He paused. ‘Zandor Varga, and you are...?’
She produced a voice from somewhere. A husky travesty of her usual clear tones. ‘Alanna,’ she said, and swallowed. ‘Alanna Beckett.’
He nodded, those astonishing, never forgotten pale grey eyes studying her, hard as burnished steel.
‘It is a delight to meet you, Miss Beckett...’ He paused, and she swallowed, waiting for him to say ‘again’ and for the questions to begin.
His faint smile told her he had read her thoughts. He said silkily, ‘But then my cousin Gerard has always had exquisite taste.’ And turned away.
She felt limp with relief, but knew that was only transitory. That she was by no means off the hook.
And that the day which had started badly had just got a hundred—a thousand times worse.
She realised now that it hadn’t been her imagination playing tricks that day in Chelsea. That as the owner of the Bazaar Vert chain, he’d been visiting the King’s Road branch and must have just left when she caught that brief but dangerous glimpse of him. And that Gerard had been seeing him off the premises when he came to her rescue.
It was also apparent, from Gerard’s passing remarks and his aunt’s irritable comment about last minute changes, that Zandor had indeed not been expected at the birthday celebrations.
Oh, God, she thought, panic clawing at her. If only he’d stayed away...
And wondered why he’d changed his mind.
But even so, they’d have been bound to meet eventually, that is if she went on seeing Gerard. And how could she—under the circumstances? When that night with Zandor would always be there, a time bomb lethally ticking its way down to disaster.
Because the way he’d looked at her had told her quite plainly that he was not simply going to let bygones be bygones.
Presumably her hasty and unheralded departure had offended his masculine pride. That he was usually the one to walk away. Well, tough. She owed him nothing, as she would make clear when the time inevitably came.
However, Mrs Harrington could not have detected anything amiss in the recent exchange as her lilting tones had reverted to the subject of books.
‘Middlemarch, now,’ she was saying. ‘Did you ever read that? A wonderful book, but what a fool young Dorothea to be marrying that dried-up stick of a man. And then leaping out of the frying pan into the fire with the other fellow.’ She snorted. ‘A ne’er do well, if ever there was one. And what in the world is it that draws a decent girl to the likes of them?’
Somehow, Alanna managed a smile. ‘I’ve no idea. But it’s still a great novel.’
As I told your grandson who bought it for you around this time last year...
She was grateful when they were interrupted by Mrs Healey.
‘Isn’t it time we all got ready for dinner, Mama? I know we’re not actually dressing tonight, but I’m sure Miss Becket, for one, would like to tidy herself,’ she added with a look suggesting that Alanna had recently been dragged through a hedge backwards. ‘Joanne can show her to her room.’
Alanna found her hand being patted. ‘I have to let you go, dear