A Treacherous Seduction

‘Well, if it would be any help I could always come and relieve you at the shop for the odd half-day.’

‘You!’ Beth stared at Dee in astonishment, surprised to see that Dee was actually flushing.

‘You needn’t sound quite so surprised,’ Dee told Beth slightly defensively. ‘I did actually work in a shop while I was at university.’

Had she hurt Dee’s feelings? Beth tried not to show her surprise. Dee always seemed so armoured and self-contained, but there was quite definitely a decidedly hurt look in her eyes.

‘If I sounded surprised it was just because I know how busy you already are,’ Beth assured her truthfully.

Dee’s late father had had an extensive business empire which Dee had taken over following his death, managing not only the large amounts of money her father had built up through shrewd investment but also administering the various charity accounts he had set up to help those in need in the town.

Dee’s father had been the old-fashioned kind of philanthropist, very much in the Victorian vein, wanting to benefit his neighbours and fellow townspeople.

He had been a traditionalist in many other ways as well, from what Beth had heard about him—a regular churchgoer throughout his life and a loving father who had brought Dee up on his own after his wife’s premature death.

Dee was passionately devoted to preserving her father’s memory, and whenever anyone praised her for the good work she did via the charities she helped to fund she was always quick to point out that she was simply acting as her father’s representative.

When Beth and Kelly had first moved to the town they had wondered curiously why Dee had never married. She had to be about thirty, and surprisingly for such a businesslike and shrewd woman she had a very strong maternal streak. She was also very attractive.

‘Perhaps she just hasn’t found the right man,’ Beth had suggested to Kelly. That had been in the days when she herself had believed that she had very much found the right man, in the shape of Julian Cox, and had therefore been disposed to feel extremely sorry for anyone who was not so similarly blessed.

‘Mmm…or maybe no man can compare in her eyes to her father,’ Kelly had guessed, more shrewdly.

Whatever the truth, one thing was certain: Dee was simply not the kind of person whose private life one could pry into uninvited. And yet tonight she seemed unfamiliarly vulnerable; she even looked softer, and somehow younger as well, Beth noticed. Perhaps because she had left her hair down out of its normal stylish coil.

Certainly it would be impossible to overlook her, even in a crowd. She had the kind of looks, the kind of manner that immediately commanded other people’s attention—unlike her, Beth decided with wry self-disdain.

Her soft mousy-blonde hair would never attract a second look, not even when the sun had left it, as it had done last summer, with these lighter delicate streaks in it.

As a teenager she had passionately longed to grow taller. At five feet four she was undeniably short…‘Petite’, Julian had once infamously called her. Petite and as prettily delicate as a fragile porcelain doll. And she had thought he was complimenting her. Yuck. She was short. But she was very slender, and she did have a softness about her, an air which had once unforgettably and almost unforgivably led Kelly to say that she could almost have modelled for the book Little Women’s Beth.

On impulse, before going to Prague, she had had her long hair shaped and cut. The chopped, blunt-edged bob suited her, even if sometimes she did find it irritating, and had to tuck the stray ends behind her ears to stop them from falling over her face when she was working.

‘You are beautiful,’ Alex Andrews had told her extravagantly when he had held her in his arms. ‘The most beautiful woman in the whole world.’

She had known that he was lying, of course, and why, and she hadn’t been deceived—no, not for one minute—despite the sharp, twisting knife-like pain she had felt as she had listened to him in the full knowledge of his duplicity.

Why would he possibly think she was beautiful? After all, he was a man who any woman could see was quite extraordinarily handsome in a way that was far more classical Greek god than modern-day film star. Tall, with a body that possessed a steely whipcord-fit muscular strength, he’d seemed to radiate a fierce and very high-charged air of sensual magnetism that had almost been like some kind of personal force field. Impossible to ignore it—or him. Beth had felt at times as though he was draining the willpower out of her, as though he was somehow subtly overpowering her with the intensity of his sexual aura.

He also had the most remarkably hypnotic silver-grey eyes. She could see them now, feel their heat burning her. She could…

‘Beth…?’

‘I’m sorry Dee,’ she apologised guiltily.

‘It’s all right,’ Dee assured her, with her unexpectedly wide and warm smile. ‘Kelly told me that you’d collected your stemware from the airport and that you were unpacking it. I must say that I’m looking forward to seeing it. I’ve got some spare time tomorrow. Perhaps if I called round…?’

Beth could feel herself starting to panic.

‘Er…I don’t want anyone to see it until the town’s Christmas lights go on officially,’ she told Dee quickly. ‘I haven’t got it on the shelves yet, and—’

‘You want to surprise everyone by making a wonderful display with it,’ Dee guessed, her smile broadening.

‘Well, whatever you decide to do with it, to display it, I know it’s going to look wonderful. You really do have a very creative and artistic eye,’ she complimented Beth truthfully, adding ruefully, ‘And I most certainly do not. Which is why I needed your advice on the refurbishment of my sitting room.’

‘Your eye is actually very good,’ Beth assured her. ‘It’s just when it comes to those extra details that you need a bit of help. That crimson damask trimmed with the dull gold fringing would make a wonderful throw…’

‘It’ll be very rich,’ Dee commented doubtfully.

‘Yes, it will,’ Beth agreed. ‘Perfect for winter, and then for spring and summer you could switch to something softer. Your sitting room French windows open out onto the garden, and a throw which picks up the colours in that bed you’ve got within view of the window would be a perfect way to bring the garden and the sitting room into harmony with one another.’

Beth glanced at her watch and stood up. It was time for her to leave.

‘Don’t forget,’ Dee urged her, ‘if you do need some help in the shop, let me know. I realise that Anna sometimes stands in, when either you or Kelly aren’t available, but…’

She stopped as Beth was already shaking her head.

‘There’s no way that Ward will allow Anna to spend several hours on her feet right now. Anna says that you’d think no woman had ever had a baby before. Apparently it doesn’t matter how often she tells him that being pregnant is a perfectly natural state, that she’s happy and there’s absolutely nothing for him to worry about; he still treats her as though she’s too fragile to draw breath.’

Dee laughed ruefully.

‘He’s certainly very protective of her. He was most disapproving the other day when he found out she and I’d been to the garden centre and that I’d let her carry a box of plants. But then I suspect he still hasn’t completely forgiven me for sending him away when he came to look for Anna before they were married.’

‘You were only trying to protect her,’ Beth protested. She liked Ward, and was pleased that her godmother had found happiness with him after being widowed for so long, but she could well understand how two such strong characters as Dee and Ward would clash occasionally.

Only a very, very fine line separated a strong, determined man from being a bossy, domineering one, as she had good cause to know. Ward, fortunately, knew which side of the line to be on; Alex Andrews did not.

Alex Andrews.

He would certainly have enjoyed her present predicament, and he would have enjoyed even more saying ‘I told you so’ to her.

Alex Andrews!

Beth parked her small car outside the shop and let herself into the separate rear door which led upstairs to the living accommodation she had originally shared with Kelly.

Alex Andrews!

She was still thinking about him as she made herself a cup of tea and headed for her bedroom.

Alex Andrews—or, more correctly, Alex Charles Andrews.

‘I was named for this bridge,’ he had told her quietly the day they had stood together on Prague’s fabled Charles Bridge. ‘A reminder, my grandfather always used to say, of the fact that I was half Czech.’

‘Is that why you’re here?’ Beth had asked him, curious despite her determination to remain aloof from him—aloof from him and suspicious of him.

‘Yes,’ he acknowledged simply. ‘My parents came here in the early days after the Velvet Revolution in 1993.’ His eyes had grown sombre. ‘Unfortunately my grandfather died too soon to see the city he had always loved freed.

‘He left Prague in 1946 with my grandmother and my mother, who was a child of two at the time. She can barely remember anything at all about living here, but my grandfather…’ He stopped and shook his head, and Beth felt her own throat close up as she saw the glitter of tears in his eyes.