Darkness Into Light

‘Then he’s your father?’

‘Nope,’ she laughed lightly. ‘I live here alone.’

‘But you can’t be Danny Martin.’ He shook his head in denial of that fact.

She frowned at his emphatic tone. ‘Why can’t I?’

‘Because I’ve seen him about the grounds,’ the man said tersely. ‘He’s about seventy years old, with grey hair, and a stooped back!’

‘Zacky Boone.’ She instantly recognised him by the description. ‘And you would have a stooped back, too, if you had been gardening as long as he has!’

‘You’re the head-gardener?’ He still didn’t look convinced.

‘Third generation,’ she assured him proudly. ‘Dad had no boys, you see, and as I was the oldest girl I was the natural choice to take over from him when he retired.’

‘I don’t see anything natural about the choice.’ His steely gaze raked over her critically. ‘Wasn’t there something else you would rather have been doing?’

‘Wasn’t there something else you would rather have been doing than watching over Henry Sutherland?’ she instantly came back. ‘It can’t take a lot of intelligence to be a bodyguard.’ She had decided as they spoke that was what he had to be, the height and breadth of him, the muscular physique seeming to imply as much. ‘You don’t look as if you’re just brawn and muscle with nothing up top,’ she observed.

‘Thank you,’ he accepted with dry sarcasm. ‘But I can assure you that the bodyguards employed here don’t have“nothing up top” either,’ he told her grimly. ‘They’re very intelligent men, with the quick senses to match.’

‘Oops.’ She grimaced at his anger. ‘I didn’t mean to step on anyone’s toes.’

‘You haven’t stepped on mine,’ he assured her abruptly. ‘I don’t happen to be a bodyguard.’

‘Oh?’

‘My name is Sutherland—Pierce Sutherland—–’

‘Oh God, not another one.’ She gave him an angry glare.

Grey-blue eyes clouded with puzzlement. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘So you should be,’ she said crossly.

He looked more confused than ever. ‘What have I done?’

‘Nothing! But—–’

‘Thank God for that,’ he drawled mockingly.

‘But your cousin Nigel has.’ She glared at him again. ‘At least, I presume he’s your cousin.’

The assessing grey-blue eyes swept over her slender body, lingering on the fullness of her breasts before going down to her flat stomach. ‘I can’t see any evidence of it,’ he taunted.

For the first time that she could remember she blushed, she, Danielle Erica Martin, who never blushed. She had chosen to enter a profession consisting mainly of men, had been the only female in her class at college with twenty—–five men, and during that time she had become immune to personal remarks and innuendoes; she had had to or walk around with a permanent blush. But this remark, made by a complete stranger, was a little too personal to ignore.

‘I didn’t mean to me.’ She shot Pierce Sutherland a resentful glare. This was serious, damn it. ‘He’s seducing my sister Cheryl into breaking her engagement to the boy she’s been in love with since she was fifteen years old!’ she told him indignantly.

Dark brows met over grey-blue eyes. ‘Doesn’t the lady have to be willing for that?’

‘Not when she’s faced with a charming, good-looking, intelligent man who seemingly has an unending supply of money at his disposal with which to grant her every wish!’

‘Hm,’ he murmured. ‘I see your point; your sister has become a mercenary.’

‘No! Are you sure your name is Sutherland?’ She eyed him suspiciously.

This time there was definitely a twitch to the firm lips. ‘Which family trait am I lacking in?’

Well, the first she hadn’t known him long enough to judge, the second couldn’t be doubted, not when he was almost-naked not ten feet away from her, the fourth she would take on trust because of his name; it was difficult to tell a person’s wealth when their only clothing was a pair of brief swimming trunks! It was the third trait she doubted.

‘Cheryl is not a mercenary,’ she defended indignantly. ‘She’s just momentarily infatuated with this Nigel’s seeming ability to do exactly what he wants to do.’ A mercenary, in fact. She had called her sister that only this evening when Cheryl telephoned to tell her of the feelings she had for Nigel Patrick, the son of Henry Sutherland’s sister, and how she was thinking of breaking her engagement to Gary because of him.

Cheryl and Gary had been going out together for almost five years, it would break his heart if Cheryl left him now. It would break Cheryl’s, too, when she came to her senses. The best Danny had been able to do was to persuade her sister to wait a little longer before discussing it with Gary. Her sister’s ready agreement to the suggestion showed her that Cheryl wasn’t as sure about her feelings for Nigel as she pretended to be.

‘And what did you decide had to be done about them as you mowed the lawn?’

‘At this ungodly hour,’ she finished with a grin.

‘Exactly,’ Pierce drawled.

‘Well, I have two options open to me at the moment,’ she related thoughtfully. ‘I can either let it run its course—which is a bad idea. Or I can try to show Nigel in a bad light, you know two-timing Cheryl or something like that.’ She was eager to know his opinion on the latter; he must know his cousin better than she did.

‘That isn’t a good idea either.’ Pierce shook his head mockingly. ‘Nigel may be family, and consequently my opinion’s slightly biased, but if he’s seeing your sister you can be sure she’s the only woman he’s seeing; he never concentrates on more than one woman at a time.’

‘Then how about past scandals?’

‘There aren’t any.’

‘A playboy?’

‘He works at least nine hours a day, often six days a week, as the head of accounts for all Sutherland interests; that doesn’t leave him a lot of time to do anything!’

‘Bad habits?’ She was getting desperate now.

Pierce shook his head. ‘I don’t know of any.’

‘There must be something wrong with him!’ she wailed protestingly. ‘Everyone has at least one fault.’

‘I believe he used to pull little girls’ braids as a boy,’ Pierce taunted, looking pointedly at Danny’s.

‘Very funny.’ She glared at him.

‘What’s your fault?’ He raised dark brows.

‘I talk to strange men who are wearing only bathing trunks at almost twelve o’clock at night!’

For a moment there was only silence, and then he began to laugh, a rich deep sound that was well worth waiting for. ‘And mine is that I listen to the problems of the head-gardener who has a body like Raquel Welch at twelve o’clock at night!’