The Return of the Stranger

‘Heath?’

The word whispered from her mouth, the papers falling from her hands and onto the table as she forced herself to look up, to look towards the doorway. The man she saw there had an impact on her senses that made her whole world, her sense of reality, rock dangerously on its axis.

Hello, Kat. When she had thought that she would never, ever hear that voice again, it was almost as if he had come back from the dead and had walked into the room in some disturbing ghostly form. Back to haunt her present as he had her past.

‘Heath!’

It was Heath. The same and yet not the same at all. This was a bigger man, leaner, more muscled, stronger, darker. So different and yet so much the same. The wild boy he had been, the youth with lightning in his eyes, danger in his fists, and trouble in his heart, was still there. She could see him still in those molten ebony eyes. But the untamed, unkempt boy was now hidden, concealed under a more forceful, powerful, more polished veneer. A gorgeously sophisticated, polished veneer. A forcefully male, stunningly sexy appearance.

This man stood tall and sleek, once wild jet-dark hair tamed into an elegant crop. The long, whipcord-lean body was sheathed in a superbly tailored steel-grey suit that hugged the contours of his powerful frame, clung to a narrow waist and long muscular legs that were now planted firmly on the soft surface of the cream and blue carpet, handmade leather boots gleaming black against the pastel colours. An immaculate white shirt heightened the darkness of his complexion, the tan that could only have been acquired from a long time—from life—in a country that had a much warmer climate than the Yorkshire moors. Around his shoulders hung a tailored black raincoat, unbuttoned and long, that made her think of some long-ago highwayman come to the door, pistols in his hand, ready to demand a ransom or that she hand over her jewellery. And—was that an earring that sparkled against the olive skin of one ear lobe? A brilliant, deep green emerald that winked in what little light there was from the window. An ornament as fantastic and unexpected—and as exotically beautiful—as the man who stood before her. ‘It really is you.’

Once she would have been so happy to see him. But that had been in the days when they had been such friends. That was someone who was long gone, probably for ever. After the way they had parted, the dark threats he had tossed over his shoulder as he left, she knew that friendship was no longer what he felt for her or any member of her family. If his stiff and hostile body language, the cold glitter of those deep dark eyes, the unsmiling expression said anything it was that he had not come here for a nostalgic reunion.

And because of how it had once been between them, that look left her feeling shockingly and shivering cold.

From a distance she heard his voice again. A man’s voice, deep and husky and touched by that unexpected and totally foreign accent. A voice she knew and yet had never heard before.

‘Who else were you expecting?’ he said.

The total lack of warmth in his tone sliced into her like a blade of ice, making the ground suddenly unsteady beneath her feet, her legs as unsupportive as cotton wool.

This man who had been such a vital, and essential, part of her life. So much more than a friend who had shared her childhood with her, the loss of her father, the beginnings of her adolescence, stood with her against her brother’s tyranny, and had then just vanished. Walking out without a word of explanation, and making no effort at contact ever since. She’d cried her loss into her pillow for more nights than she cared to remember but he had put her right out of his mind, it seemed. She had not seen or heard from him in almost ten years.

Now, ‘Hello, Kat,’ he’d said. And that was all it took to turn her world upside down.

But then that was what he had threatened to do. He had said that one day he would be back and then he would turn the life they knew on its head.

‘Who else did you think it might be, Miss Katherine?’

The touch of cynical humour, the dark mockery was new. Like his appearance it was so far from everything she had ever known of him. Her Heath had never looked like this. The Heath she had known had never had that sleek, sophisticated grooming that made him look like some glossy honed predator, who had prowled on silent paws, dangerous and alien, into the very civilised atmosphere of the home she had built. But then, she of all people knew how ‘civilised’ appearances could be misleading.

But in spite of that sophistication, that grooming, he still looked like some creature of the wild that was barely under control, eyes watchful, every muscle poised and taut ready for fight or flight—whichever was necessary.

No, looking into his eyes she saw no hint of flight at all. The old Heath was there in the burn of defiance in those golden eyes. A rebelliousness that no sophisticated clothing, however he had come by that, could ever conceal. When she looked up into his face it was to see a man who had the features of her long-ago friend and yet none of the warmth that had ever shone between them. Heath was here, but the boy she had known was gone and she missed him. The pain of it was like a stab to her heart.

‘Miss Katherine!’ she managed, breathless and uneven. Mocking the stiffness of his tone in the same moment that her heart lurched in discomfort at the sound of it. ‘You always used to call me Kat!’

‘You were Kat then.’

It was shockingly cold and distant and his eyes might have been shards of black-coffee ice in his tanned face. He slid the long coat from his shoulders, tossed it over the back of a nearby chair, and the sudden transformation from bold highwayman to sleek gentleman was such a shock that it actually had her breath catching in her throat.

‘But it was a long time ago,’ she told him stiffly. ‘We were nothing but children. Didn’t know any better.’

And in all that time had he learned nothing? Heath could only ask himself. He should have known better than to come here like this. He had told himself that he had come back for one reason only, vowed that he would deal only with the two men who had made his early years such misery. The men who had treated him like an animal and not a human being. He would come back to Hawden to show them what he had become, to reveal the power he now had over them, throw their insults, their cruelty, in their faces, and walk away, never once glancing back.

That plan was well in hand, at least as far as Joseph Nicholls was concerned. Arthur Charlton was a different matter. When he had learned of the other man’s death he had felt like a hunter thwarted of his prey. Denied the satisfaction of facing down the earl, he had burned with frustration. And that frustration had driven him where he had sworn that he would never go again.

Back into the presence of Katherine Charlton, who had once been Katherine Nicholls. The woman who had taken what little was left of his heart when life, her brother and his best friend had finished with it, and stamped on it, crushing it cruelly under her slender foot.

‘We are no longer children.’ He nodded. ‘And we haven’t been for a long time.’

And that was where the mistake he had made had been born. With memories of the few happy years of his childhood surfacing once he was back in England, he hadn’t been able to resist coming to the Grange just once. Hadn’t been able to fight against the need to come here and see just what Kat had become, what the years had made of her.

Just one look, he had told himself. One look at the woman she was now and then he would walk away.

But that one look had been fatal to his peace of mind. Fatal to his determination to walk away from Hawden and all it had once meant to him, shaking the dust of the place from his feet. That one look had told him that he couldn’t walk away from Katherine Charlton. One look was all that it had taken to show him that he still wanted her, still hungered for her more than he had ever wanted any women in his life. He had to put her away from him, move back from her both mentally and physically before the hunger that burned along every nerve destroyed his ability to think with the cold logic that he knew this situation demanded.

He had known that she would still be attractive. How could she have ever been anything else? Even as a girl she had always drawn all eyes.

He hadn’t known that she would turn into such a beauty.

Time had taken her long-limbed form and made it softer, more womanly, with the sort of curves that made his pulse rate kick into heated action. In the years since he had last seen her, her wild coltish, tomboy looks had been smoothed down, refined into this elegant ladylike creature who looked like a pale reflection of the Kat he had once known. Her long dark hair that had once hung untamed around her face, tumbling onto her shoulders, was now smoothed back into a sleek ponytail that swung when she moved her head. Her face had thinned, creating slashing cheekbones under the deep blue eyes, and those eyes looked huge, wider than ever, framed by lush thick black lashes. Even dressed in a simple blue cotton dress she looked every inch the lady of the manor, totally at home in the house where they had once peered in through the windows from the outside, fascinated by being forbidden to enter.

‘Oh, we’re definitely not children any more!’ Kat laughed, though it was a laugh with no humour in it. ‘We’ve left all that well behind us.’

He could practically feel the chill from her words, the bite of her response and her eyes had darkened in angry rejection of him.

The curt, sharp words might be flung into his face, meant to distance her from him as clearly as the way that she stepped back, away, but they did nothing to quell the heated sting of attraction that spiralled through him. Senses burning in instinctive response, he surveyed her from the indignant, defiant face her chin brought up so that she was looking down her aristocratic nose at him, to where her feet, in delicate blue sandals, were placed firmly on the thickly carpeted floor.

‘You are certainly no child. Every inch the lady.’

The flare of something in her eyes told him that she recognised the way his tone had deliberately been pitched so that the words were not a compliment. She must know so well what had been behind them.

Because the exclusion from the Grange had been just for him, he remembered on a twist of savage bitterness. Kat had never been barred from what the locals called ‘The Big House'. The night that the guard dogs had heard them in the garden, racing to attack the intruders, and grabbing Kat by the leg, powerful teeth ripping her skin, she had been taken into the house and made welcome, her hurts tended to, a bed provided for the night. He had been ejected forcibly, tossed out into the lashing rain like a stray, unwanted, flea-ridden cur. And when he had returned to High Farm, Joseph had taken a riding crop to him for daring to have the nerve to trespass on their aristocratic neighbour’s land.

That was the last time that he and Kat had ever been truly close. That experience had taught her what luxury money could bring, the pleasures of being cared for in the soft comfort of the Grange. When she had come home she had seemed like a different person, more like her brother’s sister rather than the untamed tomboy she had once been. She had moved further away from him with each day that had passed, and now here she was, still reserved, still distant, with her cool blue eyes showing that she too regarded him as an intruder into her elegant world.

Well, he was more than an intruder. And one day soon she would learn just how completely their positions had been reversed. Once he would have rushed to tell her. The man he had become knew how to wait, knowing it was worth it in the end.

‘I’ve grown up,’ she threw at him now. It was like ice, cold and sharp as her gaze. ‘I should hope that we both have.’

Oh she’d grown up all right. Grown up and further away from him than ever. The childhood friends they had once been no longer existed. If in fact they had ever truly been as close as he imagined. Looked at her coldly, he could well imagine that she had just been whiling away her time with him while the fancy took her.

But thinking coldly was almost impossible. He had once wanted this woman with the hunger and need of a lonely boy’s heart. But she had turned away from him, choosing instead to give herself to a man with the money and the position she craved. He was no longer that lonely boy who had fought himself for her as well as the rest of the world. And the feelings she stirred in him were nothing to do with youth but the hard, demanding hunger of a mature man. A man hardened by life and experience.

A man who wanted the woman before him with a hunger that had been growing inside him for ten long years, even when he had tried to deny that it existed.

Even when he had told himself that he would just take one look at her and walk away. He had actually believed that he could do just that. But that had been before he had seen the woman she had become. A woman who in the space of a few moments had woken a hunger in him that he knew would never subside easily or stay under control for very long.

He had come for revenge on her brother, on her husband who had escaped him by dying unexpectedly. But the truth was that he still had unfinished business with Lady Charlton. Unfinished business that he had refused to let himself recall how deep it went until now.

‘A lot of water has passed under the bridge since we were last together,’ he said, ironing every trace of what he had been thinking from his tone. ‘Things are no longer the same.’

‘They’re most definitely not.’

Mental discomfort pushed the words from Kat’s mouth. She didn’t know quite how to behave in front of this man who was and was not Heath. Certainly not the Heath she had known.

The ice in his eyes told its own story. And there was something in that ‘didn’t know any better’ that turned her blood cold in her veins. She was not dealing with the Heath she had known, or anyone like him. The new lines on his face, etched around his mouth and eyes, lines that could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as laughter lines, told their own story.