The Tycoon's Virgin Bride. Sandra Field

did some quick mental calculations. “She enrolled twelve years ago. So she must have graduated when she was twenty-one.”

      Twelve years ago Jenessa had been seventeen. The same age as the spike-haired art student who’d said she wanted to sketch him after that lecture he’d given at Columbia.

      But the art student had had eyes that were almost purple.

      Contacts, Bryce. Colored contacts.

      The way Jenessa moved, the elegance of her lean, capable fingers, that elusive sense that somewhere he’d seen her before…his intuitions had been dead-on. He had.

      In his bed. Twelve years ago.

      Jan Struthers had been Jenessa Strathern. What a fool he’d been not to make the connection.

      “Bryce, are you all right?” Corinne asked.

      Hastily Bryce pulled himself together, furious that he’d revealed, if only partially, the shock of his discovery to Charles and Corinne. “Sorry, I was just wondering if I’d met her on a visit I made to Columbia some years ago,” he said with a minimal degree of honesty.

      Charles gave a hearty laugh. “Computers and art don’t go together,” he said, “so I rather doubt it. Bryce, I saw that article about you in the Financial Times recently, where they were explaining how extremely well you’ve done by maintaining your independence from any of the big corporations. You’re to be congratulated, that’s not an easy road.”

      Talk about your career, Bryce. Talk about anything other than the fact that Jenessa Strathern, a woman you lust after, has already been in your bed. When she was still a teenager. “That’s high praise, Charles,” he said wryly. “But you know me—what other choice did I have? I’m far too single-minded, not to say stubborn, to work for someone else.”

      It was true. He’d always been a loner; for many years it had suited him to go his own way, both in his business life and his personal life. “But thanks for the compliment,” he added. “Now maybe I’d better go and say hello to the proud parents, and take a peek at Samantha. I only hope she doesn’t cry when I pick her up.”

      “If she does, pass her back to her mother,” Corinne said with a mocking smile.

      “Good advice,” he grinned. Excusing himself, Bryce crossed a pebbled path and a stretch of manicured lawn toward the arbor. Through his long struggle to reach the international reputation Charles had applauded, he’d learned a number of lessons, the first of which had been to mask his feelings. Discouragement, ambition, anger, despair: he’d taught himself to hide them all. But could he dissemble the chaos of emotion in his chest right now from his best friend and from the woman who’d gone to his hotel room when she was only seventeen? He wasn’t sure he could.

      He’d soon find out. “Hi Travis, Julie,” he said. “Hello, Jenessa.”

      Travis clapped him on the shoulder, his black hair ruffled by the wind; in a time-honored ritual, Bryce punched Travis lightly on the chest. The two men were similar in height, and since sports were one of their shared interests, were both of athletic build. But there the similarities ended, for Travis’s emotions, since he’d met Julie, were much more on the surface than those of his friend. Open up, man, Travis was apt to say to Bryce: with as much effect as if he’d addressed the walls of a squash court.

      Julie gave Bryce a friendly kiss on the cheek, while Jenessa said in a voice as cool as the ocean, “Hello, Bryce.”

      She looked rather like the ocean, he thought, in her pale turquoise linen dress, her matching hat circled by a froth of white flowers. Her unruly curls framed her face; her makeup accentuated the elegance of her cheekbones and the depths of her eyes. Blue eyes. Not purple. Fathoms deep, and unfathomable.