But she had forgotten the dinner party that she had been expected to attend with her grandparents that evening, which she hadn’t been able to get out of, and she’d had no way of contacting Seth without anyone finding out. She’d forgotten to get his mobile-phone number, and she hadn’t been able to ring him at the boatyard as she’d learned that the owner—his boss—and her grandfather were old friends. So she had broken their date without a word—no message of regret, no apology. Which would have been rude enough, she thought, straightening up and dropping the soiled kitchen-paper into the bin, without that final blow to his ego.
The following day she had seen him again when she’d gone down to town with her grandfather and Fiona, the daughter of a neighbour just a couple of years older than Grace who had elected to come with them.
Having left her grandfather at the newsagent’s, Grace was walking along the high Street with Fiona when she suddenly looked up and saw Seth coming out of a shop.
Seth saw her too, and started to close the few yards between them, but then he held back, waiting for her to make the first move. She noticed the burning question in his eyes: where were you last night? No one with half an eye could have mistaken his smouldering desire for her that he made no attempt to hide.
A flame leaped in her from the memory of their mutual passion, of his hard hands on her body and the thrusting power of his maleness as he had driven her to a mind-blowing orgasm. But panic leaped with it, along with shame and fear of anyone finding out that she’d been associating with him and telling her grandfather. Fiona Petherington was a terrible gossip, as well as the biggest of snobs. ‘Look at the way that boy’s looking at you!’ she’d remarked witheringly. ‘Who is he? Do you know him?’
‘Oh, him,’ Grace remembered answering, as coolly as she was able to. ‘Just some boat boy who’s been sniffing round me. Quite sexy, if you don’t mind slumming it.’ Then she’d cut him dead and walked straight past him—and as she passed she realised from the look on his face that he’d overheard.
The memory of her behaviour that day still made her cringe. But she had paid for it less than ten minutes later. Having left her snobbish companion talking to two other neighbours that they had bumped into outside the chemist’s, she popped across the road to the bank. She didn’t know whether Seth had followed her or not but as she came out of the building he was striding up the steps outside.
She could still feel the angry bite of his fingers around her wrist as he drew level with her, could still see the condemnation in those angry eyes.
‘Slumming it, were you? Is that what you thought you were doing with me down there in the sand?’ It was a harsh demand, but low enough so that anyone passing couldn’t hear. ‘You think you’re so high and mighty, don’t you?’ he breathed when she struggled free without answering, shockingly aware of Lance Culverwell coming up the steps to meet her. ‘Well, go ahead, have your five minutes of amusement. But don’t think that anything we did on that beach was for any other reason than because I knew I could!’
Those words still lacerated her as much as they had then, even though at the time she had known she deserved them. Making love with him had been so incredible for her that, crazily, even after her shameful treatment of him, she’d wanted to believe that they had been incredible for him, too.
But Lance Culverwell had had his suspicions about what had gone on. His interrogation had been relentless, and there had been rows back at the house. The following morning she had been packed off to London with her grandmother and she had never seen Seth again. Until today.
Pushing back the plate of crackers and cheese that she suddenly had no appetite for, she tried telling herself not to think about Seth Mason, to forget about him altogether. She hadn’t seen him in eight years before he had turned up at the gallery this evening, so there was no reason why she was ever likely to see him again.
Yes, she’d acted abominably, Grace admitted, but that was before she’d learned that pleasure, however fleeting, had to be paid for. Because six weeks after their uninhibited passion on that beach she had discovered that she was pregnant. That she was having Seth’s baby. Seth Mason, who wasn’t good enough even to be seen out with in her and her family’s opinion, was going to be the father of her child!
‘WHAT do you have to say about the dawn raid on Culverwells, Ms Tyler?’ A microphone was thrust in her face and cameras flashed in a bid to capture the slim young blonde in the scooped-necked black t-shirt, combat trousers and trainers whose arm, draped with a casual jacket, was already reaching out to the revolving door.
‘No comment.’ She’d come straight in from New York and she couldn’t deal with the press now, not while she was tired, jet-lagged and wondering what the hell had been going on while she had been away. She would deal with them later, she decided, when she had had a chance to speak to Corinne. But her grandfather’s widow hadn’t been answering her calls, either at home or on her mobile. Grace knew that the only way anything could have happened to Culverwells was if Corinne had been behind it.
‘Surely you must have some statement to make? There will be changes in management—redundancies—surely?’
‘I said, no comment.’
‘But you can’t really think…?’
Their persistent questions were mercifully cut off by the revolving door. She was inside the modern, air-conditioned building, the head office of the company that still bore her grandfather’s name, even though it was in public ownership.
The silver-haired, moustached features of Lance Culverwell gazed down at her from the huge framed portrait in the plush reception area and, grabbing a moment to steady herself, Grace gazed back at it with tears of anger and frustration biting behind her eyes.
Oh, Granddad! What have you done?
It had been a shock to everyone when he had died last year and left everything he had, including his company shares, to his bride of two years. Not that Grace had begrudged Corinne anything; she’d been Lance Culverwell’s wife, after all. But her grandfather had been so smitten by the ex-model that he couldn’t have—or wouldn’t have—even contemplated anything like this happening, Grace thought despairingly.
A dawn raid, that journalist outside had called the takeover, giving rise to a picture in Grace’s mind of masked men on horseback brandishing rifles, intent on plundering the company’s safe.
If only it were that simple! she thought giddily, clutching her bum bag—which was the only piece of luggage she hadn’t instructed the taxi driver to drop off at her flat—as she took the executive lift to the top floor.
‘Grace! I tried and tried to reach you…’ The portly figure of Casey Strong, her marketing manager, rushed forward to meet Grace before she had barely stepped out of the lift. Greyhaired and due for retirement any day, he was flushed and out of breath. ‘Your phone was off.’
‘I’ve been in the air!’ She had come straight from the airport, having spent most of her time in New York trying to persuade one of their best customers not to take their business away from Culverwells. It was a PR job that hadn’t yet produced the result she wanted, as the company’s governing body was taking time to consider what its future action would be.
‘Grace! You’re here at last!’ It was Simone Phillips, her PA, who knew the problems that Culverwells was facing as well as anyone. It was the middle-aged, matronly Simone, who had finally managed to get hold of her with the shocking news of the takeover just as Grace had been coming through customs.
‘It’s Corinne. She’s sold out!’ the woman declared, confirming Grace’s worst suspicions. ‘And so has Paul Harringdale—your ex.’ Paul had had a big enough stake in the