The Return of the Stranger

Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of the tall, dark man standing by the window, a silent, watchful observer of this new arrival in the room.

‘Hello!’ she said, the rising lift in her voice, the sparkle of her smile making Kat’s heart twist, her nerves tugging painfully as she recognised the signs she knew only too well.

Isobel had spotted someone she fancied. That much was obvious. And the man who had sparked her interest was none other than Heath. Which Kat supposed shouldn’t have surprised her. Compared with the skinny, scruffily dressed boys her sister-in-law usually hung around with, Heath was all man. His height and his bearing seemed to fill the room, those deep-set black eyes burned like burnished jet under dark, arched brows and when he smiled …

Dear heaven, when he smiled, his face was transformed, Kat admitted, feeling her stomach twist and lurch almost as if she were on board a ship that had suddenly pitched sharply downwards in the waves. It was shocking to realise that this was the very first time that his sexy mouth had even curved into any sort of a smile or that his forcefully carved face had shown any warmth, since he had appeared in the room so unexpectedly.

‘Hello, Isobel.’

It seemed as if that trace of the accent on Heath’s words had deepened, darkened, making him sound so much more exotic, so much more foreign.

‘You know who I am?’ her sister-in-law was definitely intrigued and the smile that played over her mouth was a blend of curiosity and provocation.

‘Of course. You are young Isobel all grown up.’

‘And you are?’

Isobel fluttered her long, mascaraed eyelashes flirtatiously, and Kat felt the twist of something cruel in her heart as she saw Heath switch on another swift, easy smile in response.

It was even more shocking to realise that the sharp burn of reaction had a double-edged source, one that made her mouth dry in horror as she recognised it for what it was. When he smiled, Heath looked so very different, so devastatingly sexy that the heat of her response was like a flash of electricity along her nerves. But it was blended with something else, something that was far less comfortable to endure. Deep in her memory where she had tried long ago to bury it, she could hear the echo of Arthur’s voice, vicious and savage-toned. You’re still dreaming of your bit of rough—that gipsy. That’s what turns you on.

‘Don’t you recognise Heath?’ she put in hastily, rather too sharply.

‘Heath?’ her sister-in-law queried. ‘Heath who?’ And the jolt of realisation brought Kat up sharp against the fact that she had no idea how to answer that question. She hadn’t even thought about what Heath might be calling himself now.

She hadn’t thought of anything beyond the fact that he was here, back in her life again.

‘Heath Montanha,’ Heath supplied, those dark eyes of his still fixed on Isobel.

And no wonder. The girl who had been little more than a child at eleven when Heath had left the village all those years before had blossomed in the time he had been away. She was a small blonde bombshell, curvy and sensually glamorous, beside whom Kat always felt too tall and rangy, taken back to the tomboyish adolescent she had been who had never quite fitted in anywhere.

Anywhere but with Heath.

Remembered pain twisted in her gut as she recalled how once he had always been at her side, her friend, her support. Heath had never needed to belong in the way that she had longed to. He had laughed at the girls who had thought they were so cool, turned his back on any need to be conventional or fashionable. It had been her own need to find the femininity that she had felt had been so lacking in herself that had drawn her to the sort of society offered by the Charltons. That had ultimately led to the ‘dream wedding’ that was supposed to give her everything she had ever fantasised about.

A dream wedding that had opened the door to a private nightmare.

‘Heath Montanha?’

Not Nicholls, Kat added to herself. Well, who could blame him? Obviously the thing he had most wanted to do once he was away and free of the village was to discard the name of the family he had never belonged to in the first place. And the name of the man who had once made his life such hell.

‘Such an exotic name! What nationality is that?’

Isobel was openly flirting now, her voice light and teasing, her smile straight into those dark, watchful eyes.

‘It’s Brazilian.’

‘You went to Brazil? Why there?’

It was Kat who asked, unable to suppress her curiosity.

‘Why not? After all you were the one who once told me that my father could have been an emperor of China.’

Memory stabbed like the sharpest stiletto as she recalled the light-hearted way they had created an imaginary ancestry for him. A rich, powerful background that would enable him to hold his own against Joseph and Arthur’s tyranny. They had been on the same side then. And she had believed that nothing could come between them.

‘You remember that?’

‘I remember,’ Heath acknowledged and the emphasis he put on the words sent a shiver down her spine.

What else did he remember? And more importantly, how did he remember it?

‘I’d love to go to Brazil.’

Isobel was determined to drag Heath’s attention back to her. Not that there was any dragging needed, Kat acknowledged. Isobel had always had the effect of an open honeypot on men. Men who had never looked at Kat in quite that way. Certainly men of the type that Heath had become had never looked at her like that.

Even her husband had never looked at her in that way. Not even on her wedding day, when every woman had the right to feel beautiful. As soon as they had been alone, he had criticised her appearance and set himself to try to change everything about her. It was only later that she had come to realise just why he had been that way.

‘Rio de Janeiro … the sun—the sea—samba dancing.’

Isobel let her curvaceous body sway in time to imaginary music inside her head.

‘But don’t you think you should offer our visitor some refreshment, Kat? How long has he been here and you haven’t even offered him a drink?’

‘I was just about to.’

It wasn’t the truth and a quick sidelong glance from Heath’s dark eyes told her that he knew that only too well. The thought of her sister-in-law reproving her for her neglect of hospitality for the man who as a boy had always had the door of this house slammed in his face twisted something deep inside. She had no doubt that exactly that thought had come to him too.

She had once promised herself that if she had ever found herself in a position of wealth and comfort where she could welcome Heath then she would do so with open arms. Now she was exactly where she dreamed of being but too much had come between them to ever let that happen.

‘Perhaps I should ring for tea. If you would like that …’

The words were barely out of her mouth before she was hearing in her own head how they must have sounded to Heath. And seeing the way that his lips curled she could almost read just what was going through his mind. That she had deliberately played the ‘lady of the manor’ card, offering afternoon tea as if she were her mother-in-law and not a young woman of nearly twenty-five. Though the truth was that she hadn’t felt young for too long. Not for almost four years.

‘Tea?’ he drawled mockingly. ‘How very English.’

‘Well I am—we are English,’ Kat snapped defensively, her tone too sharp for politeness as the suddenly vicious twist to his beautiful mouth said only too clearly.

‘While I am just a mongrel, hmm?’

There was open challenge in those blazing jet eyes now. Challenge and a dark, cynical derision that had all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stiffening in wary sensitivity.

‘That isn’t at all what I meant!’

‘And why not? It is true after all. I am of mixed blood as you always suspected—and not pure-bred English like you and your family.’

Memory stabbed again at the thought of how they had once speculated on just what his ancestry might be, what exotic background could have created his dark dramatic looks.

‘You found out about your true background?’