When the thrill of flaunting his riches before relatives and friends had worn off, he had bought a fancy house in Berkshire without even consulting her mother. Divided from lifelong friends, her mother had been lost. Worse, Jim Hamilton, always a domineering, short-tempered man, had become more and more aggressive as his wealth and importance grew. When their new and more far-flung neighbours had demonstrated a dismaying reluctance to welcome the Hamiltons into their select social circles, Belle had received the blame.
Even when the locals had finally drifted in to gape, if not to admire, the gulf between her parents had been insurmountable. The damage had been done. Treated with complete contempt by her husband and two eldest children, Belle had been an easy mark for a smooth-tongued younger man. In striking out to find happiness with Dennis, her mother had made an appalling error of judgement. But Chrissy believed that Belle had been driven, not least by her husband’s blatant infidelity, into making that final choice.
‘I thought most of this area was up for redevelopment,’ Blaze mused. ‘The demolition squad is practically parked on your doorstep.’
It was a dirty little street of narrow terraces, set on the edge of a gigantic building site. Some of the houses were already boarded up.
‘Not quite Buck House, is it?’ Chrissy snapped in an artificially correct voice, calculated to annoy.
Blaze filtered the car to a smooth halt, carefully avoiding the spill of rubbish from a tumbled dustbin. ‘What a little snob you are,’ he murmured drily. ‘I was only initiating conversation.’
Opening the door with desperate fingers, Chrissy flung him a look of incredulity. ‘N-no, you weren’t. You can’t open your mouth without being superior!’
Without a further word, she skidded out on to the pavement. Rifling in her bag for her key, she hurried down the street to an end terrace and unlocked the door.
‘Is that you, Miss Hamilton?’
Swallowing convulsively, Chrissy stilled in the act of closing the door. Her landlady was barring her passage to the stairs. ‘You’re back early.’
‘If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Davis—’
‘What about the rent? You got it yet?’ the older woman interrupted bluntly. ‘Because if you haven’t you can get out of here today. Give me that key!’
‘Mrs Davis, you will get—’
‘Nothing ever seems to come of your promises, luv. I must’ve been mad to take you in. Girls with kiddies in tow aren’t reliable. I should have known better,’ Mrs Davis fumed. ‘But I felt sorry for you, didn’t I? Well, I’ve got my own bills to think about and—’
A crisp, cool voice intervened. ‘How much does Miss Hamilton owe you?’
Her landlady spun in amazement. Chalk-pale with mortification and shock, Chrissy’s head twisted on her shoulders. Blaze stood in the doorway, not one whit perturbed by the scene he had interrupted. He was pulling a wallet from his jacket.
‘Three weeks, she owes,’ Mrs Davis retorted truculently, and added the amount.
A handful of notes changed hands faster than Chrissy could part her lips. ‘You can’t take his m-money!’ she protested.
‘Oh, can’t I? I don’t care who pays as long as it’s paid.’ Mrs Davis directed a grim smile of approval at Blaze. ‘And don’t you forget that you’re to be out of here by Saturday. I’ve got a removal van booked for the morning.’
Chrissy was so profoundly embarrassed as her landlady disappeared back into her ground-floor flat that she couldn’t bring herself even to look at Blaze. ‘I’ll post it to you,’ she promised shakily. ‘W-when I can,’ honesty bade her admit.
‘No hurry.’
She was quite nauseated by the knowledge that she was now in his debt. But she could do nothing but accept his charity. Mrs Davis wouldn’t give up the money and Chrissy was in no position to offer repayment. On the other hand, it was thanks to Blaze that she was not now being thrown out on the street. It took immense courage to rise above her sense of humiliation. Raising her bowed head, Chrissy collided with impenetrable sapphire eyes in one brief, stricken connection. ‘Thanks,’ she forced out with difficulty. ‘Maybe I’ll see you around some time,’ she concluded with awkward finality.
Without awaiting any further response, she started up the stairs, fast. On the first landing, she pressed open the door of her bed-sit with raw relief. She simply couldn’t have borne another second of his company.
‘What on earth are you doing back?’ her babysitter, Karen, demanded, rising from the single armchair with a frown.
‘It’s a long story.’
Rosie threw herself at Chrissy’s knees with a whoop of delight.
‘Bloody hell!’ a very male voice ejaculated.
Chrissy spun as though she had been jabbed in the back by a hot poker. She hadn’t heard Blaze follow her upstairs. He had to move like a leopard on the prowl. With Rosie planting an enthusiastic kiss on her cheek, she was paralysed to the spot, devastatingly conscious of Blaze’s stunned and silent scrutiny.
Chapter 2
There was a horrible hiatus. Karen hovered the way impressionable females usually did in Blaze’s vicinity. Possibly she recognised him. Rarely out of the society pages and the gossip columns, Blaze was very well-known. His life in the fast lane was notorious.
‘I’ll see you later, Karen,’ Chrissy said hurriedly.
As the other girl left with visible reluctance, Blaze strolled deeper into the room, scanning the sparse, worn furniture and the few shabby toys littering the cramped floor space. With a grace of movement that was inbred, he swung back to look at Chrissy, a wry twist to his expressive mouth. ‘I suppose I should have been prepared for this scenario,’ he drawled. ‘But I wasn’t. I was still thinking of you as a kid.’
‘I’m almost twenty-one.’ As she spoke, Rosie was struggling to get down, and reluctantly she bent to lower the wriggling toddler to the floor. She was praying that Blaze would leave, couldn’t imagine what strange quirk had made him follow her upstairs.
‘Still practically jailbait,’ he mused half under his breath.
Her cheeks fired scarlet, her mouth tightening. Did he automatically divide all women into two camps? Those he could sleep with and those he thought he shouldn’t sleep with? The idea revolted her, but it also resurrected cringing recollections of their last encounter. Hurriedly, she buried her mind’s urge to relive the past. In preference she reflected grimly on Blaze’s ‘love them and leave them’ reputation.
He was an unashamed user and abuser of the female sex, she thought in disgust. Once she had believed that her sister, Elaine, was too calculating to be hurt by any man. But Elaine had fallen hard for Blaze. After a brief whirl, he had ditched her again with savage unconcern, devastating her pride and driving her into a face-saving marriage with a man she didn’t love. Her over-confident sister had become just another line in a gossip column, another notch on his bedpost, and for the first time in her life Chrissy had felt sympathy for Elaine.
‘So this is the reason you can’t go home.’ Astonishingly, Blaze crouched down on Rosie’s level and solemnly accepted the scruffy pink rabbit he was being invited to admire.
‘Wosee’s wabbit,’ Rosie told him importantly.
‘I love wabbits,’ Blaze teased, the most natural, utterly breathtaking smile warming his darkly tanned features. The usual chill and