Secret Courtship

After all, hadn’t she been married for more than three years to someone just like him?

With an effort she blanked her mind of the ugly images that tried—as they still so often did—to form there. Tugging out her wallet, she gave the driver a couple of bills. “Thanks,” she said. “Keep the change.”

As the cab reversed, and took off in a whirl of dust, Laura hitched her heavy backpack over one shoulder and, after standing for a long moment, her thoughts in turmoil, made her way slowly along Juniper Avenue.

Her eyes were bleak as she examined the showy pastelcolored houses situated on either side of the road. They were palatial edifices, most of them having four- or fivecar garages, and all of them overpowering the lots on which they stood. There was little greenery—the gardens consisting only of stamp-sized lawns and a few low, exotic shrubs, with the remaining area taken up by fancy brick paths, elegant patios, ornate fountains and Olympic-size swimming pools. A plethora of BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes and Jaguars graced the architecturally designed driveways.

Not a soul was in sight. Laura could see no children playing in the gardens, no couples strolling with dogs, no young mothers hanging out diapers-in fact, she could see no clotheslines. They were probably prohibited, she decided with a cynical twist of her lips. The avenue was quiet, deserted...

Just like a street in a ghost town.

And hardly a tree to be seen.

Childhood memories could never be relied on entirely, and Laura’s father had left her with his aunt Charity for only one summer, but still that holiday had left her with cherished recollections of fairytale cottages set amid towering. evergreens.

At least she knew that her great-aunt’s property would not have changed. The estate lawyer had assured her of that when they had talked on the phone regarding her legacy.

“Sweet Briar Cottage has never been modernized, and, as Miss Brown was in hospital for the last months of her life, you’ll find the property sadly neglected.”

When he’d earlier apprised her of the death of her only remaining relative, Laura had felt a sharp pang of regret.

“I didn’t know she was in hospital,” she’d told him quietly, “because we had lost touch. She and my father fell out many years ago and I was forbidden to correspond with her. Then, after I got married, my husband—” She’d broken off abruptly.

She hadn’t wanted to tell this stranger what the situation had been between Jason and her; she hadn’t wanted him or anyone else here to know her wretched secrets.

After a pause, the lawyer had coughed discreetly before saying, “Your best plan, Miss Grant—financially, that is-would be to put the cottage up for sale. That it is in a state of disrepair matters not a jot—it’s the lot, not the building itself, that’s of value. Whoever buys the place will bulldoze it and build. The location is prime.”

Well, the location might be prime, Laura reflected now, but there was no way she was going to sell. What the lawyer hadn’t known was that the timing of her great-aunt Charity’s legacy couldn’t have been better. She, Laura, not only wanted the cottage, she needed it.

She was going to make it her permanent home ...

The truck came out of nowhere-or rather from around the corner. One minute the wide street was empty, and the next the huge vehicle was in front of her, bearing down fast and loud, like some terrifying orange and green protagonist from the pages of a Stephen King novel.

For a second Laura froze, and then, as the squeal of brakes screamed in her ears, she lunged frantically toward the sidewalk at her right. She lost her balance as she landed, and, tripping on the edge of the curb, sprawled out face-down on the ground, her backpack swinging forward, as she landed, to hit her a resounding whack on the head.

It took her several seconds to get her wind back, and by the time she had struggled to a sitting position the truck had screeched to a halt. She heard the driver’s door open and slam shut again, heard the sound of heavybooted purposeful steps coming toward her... And then a man’s voice, hoarse with anger, attacked her.

“What the devil were you doing in the middle of the road? Were you trying to kill yourself?”

Laura knew she had been in the wrong, and had been prepared to apologize, but the anger in the stranger’s voice had brought back memories—memories of another such voice, raised in anger—and she squashed her apology as ruthlessly as if it had been some nasty insect.

Ignoring the pain in her knees, she scrambled to her feet, gathering up her backpack and swinging it over her shoulder... But when she tossed her ponytail back from her face and looked up at the truck driver for the first time, she felt something inside her reel back selfprotectively.

The man was too much—everything about him was too much. He was too dark, too tall, too attractive—and far, far too sexy. Dark, dangerous-looking... and dusty. Very dusty. And sweaty. And needing a shave. Badly.

Laura took in a deep rasping breath that was intended to steady her... but it didn’t steady her in the least. The stranger positively radiated raw male power, and she just knew, by the arrogant self-confidence of his stancelegs astride, booted feet apart, fists rammed onto lean hips—that when he walked it would be with a subtle twist of that lithe body and those lean hips that would send out a sexual invitation of the most irresistible kind.

His clothes, she noted in a swift glance, were exactly what she would have expected a man like him to wear—a heavy-duty khaki shirt, soiled and sweat-stained, and faded jeans that rode low on his hips and were kept from drifting indecently lower by a leather belt with an ovalshaped silver buckle...

Laura swallowed hard, and raised her eyes to direct her quick appraisal in a safer direction.

Black hair—luxuriant and curly. Skin—swarthy, and tanned to a deep nut-brown. Features—ruggedly hacked and aggressive. A bold nose, a wide slash of cheekbone and a grim jaw—the last as uncompromisingly set as his wide shoulders. Beads of sweat trickled down his brow, creating paths on the dust-caked skin, and sweat glistened around his mouth too—a wide mouth, with full, sensual lips that were made for kissing ... Though kissing was, Laura had no doubt at all, the very last thing on this man’s mind at the moment.

Her all-encompassing scrutiny of him ended in a sharp stab of irritation; he was wearing metal-rimmed mirrored sunglasses, and showed no signs of removing them. Didn’t he know it was rude to keep sunglasses on when talking to someone?

“Don’t you think—” she glared at the tinted lenses, trying to penetrate them but seeing only the reflection of her own slight figure, taut and hostile “—that you were perhaps going just a little too fast?”

She hadn’t realized how stifling hot the afternoon had become; now, as she stared challengingly up at the stranger, she felt a ribbon of moisture slide down her back, under her white T-shirt, teasing every bone of her spine till stopped by the waistband of her jeans.

She wriggled uncomfortably, but had to admit that it wasn’t only the perspiration that was making her wriggle; it was this man. The air crackled with his sexuality— and her nerve-endings flickered out excited little “message received” responses. Grimly she deleted them. So what if the man was devastatingly attractive? Jason had been devastatingly attractive, hadn’t he? And just look where that had led her...

“Lady.” The truck driver’s voice, harsh with exasperation, grated into her scattered thoughts. “The road is for wheeled vehicles; the sidewalk is for pedestrians. Had I been driving my truck along the sidewalk, I could understand your ridiculous attitude...”

It was becoming more difficult by the moment to keep her mind on what he was saying. He had moved closer as he spoke, and the air was suddenly chokingly thick with the musky smell of sweat—sweat generated by hours of labor under a cruel sun. Like whiskey matured for ten years in the cask, it had an indefinable extra something—something earthy, erotic and disturbing—something that was as powerful as a punch to the solar plexus.

Laura almost hunched over with a gasp as it hit her, and only with a great effort did she manage to control herself. Her violent reaction to him, she decided, with some agitation, was due to his being different from the kind of men she was used to—rawer, tougher, sexier. That was all it was...

She drew herself to her full height of five feet one. “It would have been simpler,” she said with a scathing look, “if you had just stopped and come back here with a gracious apology.” Tilting her chin haughtily, she sidestepped him and marched with stiff steps toward his truck. “As it is, I intend to report you to the owner of your company, whoever he—”

She came to an abrupt halt as she stared up at the name emblazoned on the vehicle’s dusty cab. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” She breathed out the words wearily, and without any attempt to hide her disgust.

Diamond Ace Holdings

Nicholas Diamond-Budding Contractor

Satisfaction guaranteed

As a rule, jet lag didn’t bother her. But now, suddenly, she felt the five-hour flight from Toronto begin to have its effect. Her legs began to tremble, her mouth to feel parched. She had come so far—looking for peace, looking for a place to heal her wounds—and she was at last within a stone’s throw of Sweet Briar. The only thing standing in her way was this bad-tempered, bad-mannered—

“Forget it!” She spun round again and looked up into his scowling dust-caked face. “A man like Nicholas Diamond is certainly not going to care if one of his workers is guilty of reckless driving.” She saw the driver’s strongly-marked black eyebrows shoot up, as if she’d startled him, saw him open his mouth as if to reply. But she didn’t give him a chance.

“In fact,” she went on in a withering tone, “knowing what I do of the man, he’d probably give you a bonus if he found out you were in such an all-fired hurry to get the job done.” Before stepping past him, she made sure she would have the last word. “I’ll be watching out for you, and if I ever see you driving so carelessly again, I’ll call the police. Goodbye, Mr-”

She silently uttered a vexed “Damn!” Her speech had sounded great, but it had tailed off at the end. It had had to tail off because, of course, she didn’t know the man’s name.

“Diamond,” he offered, on a soft breath. And, as she watched, his face—that tanned and sweaty and dust-caked face—twisted in a smile that sent a chill of apprehension shivering through her. “Nicholas Diamond.” He reached up and removed his sunglasses, and his eyes were winter-gray and hard as steel. “My friends ... and they are legion... call me Nick.”

Laura watched, her own lips parted in a shocked gasp, as, with tension in every line of his bearing, the man wheeled away from her and strode back to the truck. His khaki shirt pulled against the muscles of his shoulders as he went, his jeans clove besottedly to his tight buttocks and long powerful legs and his black hair gleamed with the brightness of summer sunshine on dark water. The gears clashed as he set the truck in motion, and even at that distance Laura heard him utter a harsh and heartfelt oath.

She stood there, the smell of the exhaust fumes thick in her nostrils, crowding out the heady, erotic man-scent that had so disturbed her just moments ago. And she stayed like that, without moving, her heart thumping with slow, ponderous bumps against her ribs, long after the sound of the engine had faded away into the hush of the afternoon.

Sweet Briar was exactly as Laura remembered it.

Oh, the garden was sadly overgrown, the white front door and the windowframes cried out for a coat of paint, and when she opened the picket gate one of the hinges, eaten out by rust, swung loose with a sound like a sigh.

But as she walked slowly up the uneven brick path she could almost hear Great-Aunt Charity’s voice calling out to her as it had during the days of that hot, long-ago summer.

“Hurry, darling child. I made us some ice-cream, and it’s melting in the dish! Put that skipping rope down, and go wash your hands—I’ll be out back, under the apple tree ... waiting for you.”