A Haunting Obsession
A Haunting Obsession
Miranda Lee
Hidden PowersWhy did Jordan Vine-Hall make Bonnie Merrick lose her cool? Jordan exuded the sort of arrogance that Bonnie detested, but surely that should have stopped her from being drawn to him so strongly! After being widowed, Bonnie had taken control of her life and was fast becoming a successful real-estate agent.But when she showed Jordan around the old McClelland house - which was rumored to be haunted - something else took over… Suddenly Bonnie and Jordan became obsessed by a passion they just couldn't resist!
What was it about Bonnie that had bewitched him so? (#u9f44af42-e90d-5225-8b9f-c7d3ab31faf1)About the Author (#ude3350d1-7192-53f2-9ea2-286369fdc8cf)Title Page (#u0f5c0a6b-08ed-5017-a294-eabde46eb969)CHAPTER ONE (#u01eba71d-1374-547e-9c26-5a28d75a10a4)CHAPTER TWO (#uafb06a85-77fd-5acf-8eae-4842e8dd00d1)CHAPTER THREE (#ufa1de636-6745-5812-b4e8-bb46b97eb7bc)CHAPTER FOUR (#uaebc0e65-2fe5-500f-8952-ee9b138e4cc6)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)Teaser chapter (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
What was it about Bonnie that had bewitched him so?
It couldn’t be just her physical beauty. She was lovely...yes....
No, it was something else, something...intangible. A vulnerability perhaps? The thought made him almost laugh. The coolly competent Mrs. Merrick vulnerable? The clever, conniving Mrs. Merrick...?
She was a witch, a sorceress, a caster of spells....
MIRANDA LEE is Australian, living near Sydney. Born and raised in the bush, she was boarding school educated and briefly pursued a classical music career before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast-paced and sexy. Her interests include reading meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.
A Haunting Obsession
Miranda Lee
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
JORDAN VINE-HALL sat at his large leather-topped desk, drumming the fingers of his right hand and glaring down at the phone. It had taken all of his control not to slam the damned thing down after speaking with that woman. Even now—several seconds later—his temper was still frayed around the edges.
Who did she think she was, treating him like that? Didn’t she know the adage that the customer was always right? Any real-estate agent worth his or her salt would have been fawning all over him, not giving him the proverbial cold shoulder.
OK, so he’d been a bit brusque initially, and he’d probably piqued her undoubtedly feminist nature by saying he’d asked for a salesman. But so what? Her job was to sell him a house, not make snap judgements on his possible chauvinism. She should have hidden her irritation, not snootily told him that she was, in fact, a valued member of Coastal Properties’. sales staff, but if he insisted she would pass him on to one of her male colleagues.
Perhaps he should have let her do just that!
Hell, he had a good mind not to go at all. Let her wait and sweat for nothing. No doubt, underneath, she thought she was on to a sure sale with his having said money was no object. Serve her right if he didn’t turn up. God, she hadn’t even had the decency to crawl a little once she’d known she had money on the line.
A wry but somewhat reluctant half-smile curved one corner of Jordan’s normally serious mouth and he leant back into the deep leather chair, elbows on the padded arm-rests, his long fingers steepled in front of his chest. He supposed he had to admire her for that. It was even a pleasant change in a way. And rather intriguing. He was used to people kowtowing to him, especially women.
Closing his eyes, he tried to put a face to the coolly competent voice and came up with one which looked suspiciously like his mother when she’d been younger, his black-haired, black-eyed beautiful mother, his sleekly sophisticated and treacherously adulterous mother!
Jordan scowled, then snapped forward on his chair, determined to get his mind back on work, and off Mrs Merrick of Coastal Properties. But it was no use. His curiosity over the woman was far too aroused.
Or was it something else?
He frowned, then swore. Yes, dammit. That was it. That was definitely it. Somehow, Mrs Merrick’s voice—or was it her challenging attitude?—had sparked a sexual response in him. God knew how. It was crazy, really. Quite crazy.
But, crazy or not, he couldn’t sit in his damned office another moment. He had to see for himself the face behind the voice, had to see if reality would live up to fantasy.
And if it did?
His conscience stabbed at him as he put on his jacket and felt for his car keys in the pocket. The woman was married. He himself was on the verge of becoming engaged, to a very beautiful young lady who gave him everything he’d ever wanted from a woman. Total attention. Adoration. Sex—when he had time for it. She never complained or demanded. She was sweet and accommodating. She was perfection.
She wouldn’t change if he married her, either. He was confident of that. Erica was one of those females who considered being a wife a career in itself. Exactly his cup of tea.
So what the hell are you doing, jumping up and running off to see some woman, just because she has a sexy voice? You don’t mean to do anything about it, do you? Do you?
Suddenly, he wasn’t at all sure of that, either.
His grimace reflected this highly uncharacteristic inner torment. It wasn’t like him to be unsure of anything. He’d always known exactly what he wanted in life, and was on the verge of having it all.
Now here he was, being besieged by the most ridiculous—and potentially dangerous—impulse. Common sense warned him to buy a weekender from another real-estate agent in Blackrock Beach; there were several listed in the phone book. But somehow common sense had no power against his intense desire to see the woman he’d just hung up on in the flesh. No power at all.
He mocked himself with a dry laugh as he hurried towards the lift. With a bit of luck, Mrs Merrick wouldn’t be anything at all like the coolly beautiful creature she sounded. Voices could be very deceiving. She would probably turn out to be a hard-faced middle-aged hag with about as much sex appeal as Ma Kettle.
Jordan hoped so. He really did.
A glance at his watch showed ten past ten. He’d told her he’d be there by lunchtime. If he put his foot down, he might make it before twelve...
Bonnie heaved a weary sigh, shaking her head as her eyes wandered back to the phone, now lying silent on her desk.
I didn’t handle that at all well, she thought regretfully. I let the man niggle me from the first moment, when he assumed I wasn’t one of the sales staff, merely because I was a woman.
Training had stopped her short of being rude, but there was no denying the coolness in her voice, or the pique behind her offer to transfer him over to one of the men.
Fortunately, he hadn’t called her bluff. She could do with an easy sale to start the week, after spending the whole weekend in bed with a tummy bug. Bonnie had topped the sales figures for the previous month, and had been hoping to repeat the performance for November.
Which meant she could hardly afford to look gift-horses in the mouth, and Mr Moneybags had sounded like a gift-horse.
What was his name, now? Vine-Hall. Yes, that was it. Vine-Hall. The name suited him. Pompous and arrogant!
‘That’s quite a scowl, love. Are you sure you should have come back to work this morning?’
Bonnie smiled up at the tall, lean man standing beside her desk. Gary was the only one of her male colleagues not at all undermined by her recent sales success. Forty-five and happily married, he was a genuinely nice man with a very relaxed personality and no ambition to do anything but make enough money to live on. Which he did nicely.
‘I couldn’t bear another minute in that house by myself,’ she answered truthfully. She hadn’t realised till yesterday how much she hated the place, forty-eight hours without a break within its walls bringing back that claustrophobic feeling of imprisonment which had swamped her during the last year of her three-year marriage.
Gary was frowning down at her. ‘You’re awfully pale,’ he said. ‘And you have dark rings under your eyes. Come on, I think you could do with a fortifying cup of coffee.’
‘I’ll go for that,’ she said, and stood up to accompany Gary down to the back room and the coffee-machine.
‘You’ve lost weight as well,’ he said as he went about making coffee for both of them.
‘Now I really like the sound of that.’
‘You’re not fat, Bonnie,’ he chided.
Maybe not, she thought, but having a womanly shape did have its drawbacks. Bonnie had found that in the male-dominated business world of real estate voluptuous curves could be more of a burden than an asset. When buying clothes nowadays, her first consideration was always whether the outfit would minimise her figure, not emphasise it.
The linen suit she was wearing that morning was a typical choice. A bland cream colour, it had a straight but not too tight skirt and a long, gently shaped jacket which could be kept buttoned up without restriction, the deep V-neckline filled modestly with a gold silk camisole the same colour as her hair.
‘I could do with less in certain areas,’ she said ruefully as she took the steaming mug Gary offered her.
‘Not from a man’s point of view.’
A reproachful glance from Bonnie only brought a nonchalant shrug. ‘I might be married, but I can still look.’
‘Just so long as that’s all you do.’
‘I’m not Neil, love.’
Bonnie sighed and sipped her coffee.
‘Is he still bothering you?’ Gary asked.
‘Not for the moment.’ He’d temporarily stopped asking her out, but only after she’d turned him down a zillion times. But Neil was the persistent type. He was also under the illusion that a widow was always a good mark, especially a young, attractive one who, to all intents and purposes, had not had a man in her bed for three years.
‘I’d watch him if I were you,’ Gary murmured.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I’ve come across blokes like Neil before. They don’t like losing... at anything.’
Bonnie nodded wryly. ‘So I’ve gathered.’
‘He was most put out at the meeting this morning when the boss spent more time fussing over your health than praising him for his weekend sales.’
‘Yes, I noticed that.’
‘Edgar did too, and he didn’t seem too happy with Neil’s attitude. Why do you think he kept him back afterwards?’
Bonnie grimaced. ‘He’ll only make things worse if he says anything.’
‘My feelings exactly. That’s why I thought I’d give you a quiet warning. Neil’s not likely to take a dressing-down too well. Thankfully, he’s heading the figures this month so far. It might be better if he stays there,’ Gary finished with a meaningful look.
Bonnie blinked her astonishment. ‘Are you suggesting I deliberately let him win?’
‘It might be the wisest course of action. Edgar isn’t going to fire Neil, love. He’s a top salesman. Life could get very awkward for you around here, however, if you keep making our young stud feel a failure in more ways than one. He’s only a baby, you know, and not used to rejection in the female department.’
‘He’s twenty-five, same as me,’ she grumbled. ‘About time he grew up a bit: Despite Gary’s suggestion sounding sensible, something very strong within Bonnie rebelled at the idea of holding back in deference to male ego. She’d spent her entire marriage doing that, and the damage to her self-esteem had been enormous. It went against the grain just to let Neil win. It really did!
Gary took her silence for agreement. ‘You could waste a nice lot of time trying to sell that dear old house which just came on the listings this morning. You know... the one perched on the bluff between here and Cairncross Bay.’
‘That monstrosity! It would take a magic wand to sell that place!’
Gary laughed. ‘Exactly. I’ve actually got the photo in my pocket here, since it’s my unenviable job to write a spiel for the window display. How shall I describe it?’ he joked as he held it out in front of him. ‘A handyman’s delight?’
She glanced down at it and shook her head. Lord, it looked like something out of The Munsters! Two-storeyed and wooden, the house had odd turret-like projections, large black chimneys, and small pokey windows. Add to that its ramshackle condition and the overgrown garden surrounding it, and images of ghosts weren’t far away.
Edgar had told them it was reputedly haunted. Bonnie didn’t wonder. And shuddered anew.
‘Who on earth is going to buy a dump like that?’ she mused aloud as she stared down at it.
‘An eccentric recluse with a passion for Frankenstein?’ came Gary’s mocking suggestion.
‘Very funny. We could have easily unloaded it to a developer for the fifteen fantastic acres it’s sitting on if it hadn’t been for that stupid covenant on the title stipulating that the house and land have to remain intact.’
‘True,’ Gary agreed drily. ‘We might even have gotten the ridiculous three hundred thousand they’re asking for it.’
‘Edgar said they might accept two hundred and fifty thousand.’
The house was a deceased estate, the current owner having inherited it from his aunt who’d dropped dead of a stroke in a local supermarket only the previous week. A Mrs McClelland. Seventy-five years old and batty as they came, according to the nephew and heir. He’d informed Edgar it was just as well she didn’t die in the house because no one would have found her for months. Apparently she was something of a hermit. Refused to leave the place because she said the spirits of her dead husband and baby lived there. The nephew wanted the place sold as quickly as possible. He’d cleared away all the personal effects, cutlery, crockery and such, but was willing to sell the rest as was, with the furniture inclusive.
If the furniture was anything like the house, Bonnie thought ruefully, it would hardly be a selling factor.
‘No one could sell this place for that price,’ she pronounced firmly.
‘Just the thing, then,’ Gary said drily, ‘to waste your time and ensure your figures don’t pass Neil’s. Daphne has the keys at Reception. Why don’t you fill in the morning having a look at it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Gary. I’m not sure I could stomach just letting Neil win.’
‘Suit yourself. But don’t say you haven’t been warned.’
Gary had just wandered off back to his desk when the object of their discussion strode into the backroom.
There was no doubt Neil was handsome, Bonnie conceded. But brother, did he know it. A real peacock, he was always preening himself by combing his thick blond hair or straightening the loud ties he favoured. On spotting her standing by the coffee-machine, his blue eyes narrowed. He stared, first at her body, and then at her hair.
Bonnie groaned silently, regretting her decision to leave her hair half down that day. Over the years, her hair had caused her as much, perhaps even more trouble than her figure. A flamboyant gold colour, its naturally tight curls made it impossible to style. She hated it short yet, long, it grew in a wild spiralled abundance which, when left totally out, gave her an untamed look that men were quick to misinterpret.
‘I suppose I should have guessed,’ came Neil’s cryptic mutter as he stalked over to snatch a mug down out of the automatic dispenser.
‘Guessed what?’
“That you’re having it off with the boss.’
Bonnie was speechless. OK, so Edgar Gray was a womaniser. Everyone in Blackrock Beach knew that. Even at fifty, with his receding hairline and spreading waistline, he still had considerable success with the opposite sex. Women liked him and he had three ex-wives to prove it. Even Bonnie liked him, but only as her boss. Edgar had always had the good sense not to cross the invisible line she had drawn up the day he’d hired her.
‘You might think you can pull the wool over everyone else’s eyes around here with your cool touch me-not act,’ Neil swept on nastily, ‘but I used to drink at the same pub as your hubby on a Friday night, and I know just what you are. He used to worry himself sick that you were seeing men behind his back. Men, honey. Not a man. You’re a closet nympho, Bonnie Merrick. I know it and you know it. I just didn’t think you’d sleep with an old geyser like Edgar. I thought a hot-looking bird like yourself would be more selective.’
All the blood had drained from Bonnie’s face. She tried to say something, tried to deny Neil’s appalling accusations, but she could not seem to find her voice.
Neil laughed at her shocked expression. ‘You’ve got it down pat, haven’t you? That wide-eyed innocent look. I’ll bet you fooled your husband real good to begin with, just like you fooled me here for a while. You know, I always wondered why Edgar hired you, a girl with no sales experience at all. But you had the experience he was looking for, didn’t you?’
‘You’re mad!’ she blurted out. ‘Do you realise if I told Edgar what you’ve just said he’d fire you?’
‘You think so, honey? I doubt it. Even if by some remote possibility I was wrong, dear old Edgar would be so flattered. After I apologised sincerely then told him it was all an honest enough mistake, he’d give me another lecture while underneath he’d be cock-a-hoop that people still thought he was such a stud.’
‘You’re insane!’
‘Heck, no, honey, I’ve never been saner. I knew there had to be a good reason why you kept turning me down. Now I know why. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business, isn’t it? I reckon I’ve also finally figured out how come you’ve become such a whiz at selling houses. When a guy buys a place from you, he gets a bonus, doesn’t he? One thing I’d like to know, though: do you screw the sucker before he signs on the dotted line or after?’
Bonnie almost threw her coffee all over him. At the last second, she gave him a contemptuous glare then whirled away to pour it down the sink. Without looking back, she marched back to her desk where she snatched up her bag and car keys before sweeping on to Reception.
‘Daphne, has Edgar given you the keys to the McClelland place yet?’ she asked the receptionist whose job it was to keep all the keys.
‘Yes, I think so. Yes, here they are. The address is written on the tag. I have no idea where that road is, though, do you?’
‘Edgar gave us all detailed directions so we wouldn’t get lost. Apparently, it’s only five minutes from here but tucked away down a deserted bush track.’
‘Is that where you’re off to now?’
‘Sure is.’
It was only ten-thirty. Mr Plum-in-the-mouth Moneybags Vine-Hall wouldn’t arrive before twelve at the earliest. She’d make sure she was back by then with her best the-client-is-always-right smile in place, plus a possible decision over what she was going to do about Neil.
Meanwhile, she badly needed a breath of fresh air.
‘Going to show it to that man who rang from Sydney a little while ago?’ Daphne enquired eagerly.
‘Good lord, no. No, I’m not expecting him till lunchtime. I should definitely be back by then but if, for some weird and wonderful reason, I’m delayed, look after him for me, will you? His name’s Vine-Hall.’
‘My pleasure,’ Daphne cooed. ‘His voice was yummy.’
Bonnie laughed at her youthful optimism. Daphne was only nineteen. ‘My experience with yummy male telephone voices,’ she informed the bubbly brunette, ‘is that they’re connected to very fat, very bald and very un-yummy men. Mr Vine-Hall, I can assure you, will prove to be a very disappointing specimen of the male species.’
CHAPTER TWO
BONNIE’S frustration was momentarily forgotten the second she stepped out of the office on to the pavement and glanced across the main street to the beach beyond.
Blackrock Beach on a clear sunny day was something to behold. The sparkling blue sea, the clean white sands, the stately Norfolk pines in the foreground, the rugged cliffs curving round at each end of the beach—it was a view bar none. Bonnie had lived most of her life here and she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Sighing, she turned and strode round to the car park behind the office, wishing as she went that Neil Campion lived somewhere else. Today, he’d moved from being a minor irritation in her life to a major problem. Bonnie wasn’t sure what to do about him yet, but she knew one thing. She wasn’t going to let him win this month’s sales competition. No, siree. The pewter mug for November was going to sit on her mantelpiece alongside October’s if it was the last thing she did.
Her decision to visit the McClelland house this morning was not just to get away from Neil. Neither was it to waste time. She was determined to find some waysome angle—of selling that monstrosity. They had few enough new listings this month and she couldn’t afford to waste a single opportunity.
It was to be thanked for that she hadn’t totally alienated Mr Moneybags earlier on. Imagine having stupidly handed him over to someone else. Daphne would probably have put him through to Neil. Bonnie shuddered at the thought.
Five minutes later, she was turning her Ford Falcon on to the narrow dirt track which led down to the McClelland house, grimacing when a cloud of dust rose from under the wheels to settle over the shiny green paintwork. Darn. Now she would have to take Mr Vine-Hall around in a dirty car. How irritating!
Bonnie automatically eased her foot off the accelerator, which was just as well because the surface was like corrugated iron. The thought of bringing clients down this excuse for a road was daunting enough, but when it came to an abrupt end in front of the oldest, tallest and rustiest pair of iron gates Bonnie had ever seen she just stared in disbelief.
Edgar hadn’t mentioned the gates. Or the crumbling stone wall. Neither were they in the photograph. Bonnie could well understand why. The house beyond was bad enough but, combined with the Count Dracula gates, the whole caboodle would give anyone the willies.
Shaking her head, she climbed out of the car and peered through the rusty rungs at the house itself. Under a bright November sun it didn’t look nearly as spooky as it had in the photograph, but still, it was hardly inviting. The once white walls were a grimy grey, with paint peeling off them. Something green and fungusy was growing all over the roof. The guttering was drooping in places and the garden, if one could call it a garden, was an overgrown disaster area.
A small laugh bubbled up in her throat as she imagined what Mr Vine-Hall would say if she showed him this place as a possible weekender. Still, it did have his two stated requirements. It was sure to have an ocean view from the upstairs windows, and Edgar had said there was a cliff trail somewhere which led down to a small private cove.
Since money was no object, then Mr Moneybags could pour plenty into having the place done up and the grounds restored. Actually, if one had some imagination, it might not look half bad. The house itself had a quirky sense of character which was missing from modern homes. As for the grounds...well, at least there was plenty of them!
Of course, not everyone wanted to live with a couple of ghosts, Bonnie conceded ruefully to herself. Maybe there were three of them, now that the lady of the house had passed away as well.
When the gates creaked alarmingly as she pushed them open, Bonnie decided it was as well she didn’t believe in ghosts. Otherwise coming here alone might have unnerved her.
Actually, she didn’t feel totally calm as she drove the car through the gateway and up to the house. All those small dark windows. Maybe someone was watching her through one of them.
Shrugging off her fanciful thoughts as ridiculous, she climbed out of the car and walked up the three cracked stone steps on to the wide but rickety front veranda. One of the planks creaked ominously underfoot, sending a shiver running down her spine.
Now stop this, she told herself firmly, and, squaring her shoulders, stepped up to the front door. Bonnie resisted the impulse to clang the iron knocker up and down to frighten away anyone or anything that might be inside. Instead, she inserted the large brass key and prepared herself for a fight to get the old lock open.
When the key turned with surprising ease, she was reminded that till recently this house had been lived in. Just because it looked as if it had been standing there forlorn and unused for years and years, it didn’t mean it was so. Bonnie swung open the door, determined not to allow herself to be besieged by any further fanciful thoughts.
Her first impression was one of darkness and mustiness, but once she’d snapped on the light the hallway was bathed in a soft warm glow, making the worn strip of patterned carpet quite welcoming. The sense of cosiness increased as she ventured further inside, and it was with an air of expectation—but no eeriness—that Bonnie continued on through the house.
The first door leading off the hallway to the left revealed a formal sitting-room, or parlour, as it was once called. None of the furniture qualified as valuable antiques, Bonnie observed, but it was all rather quaint. She wandered through the room, running a gentle hand over the backs of the chintz-covered armchairs and ignoring the cobwebs in the corners.
A pair of louvred doors led into what could only be described as a morning-room or sun-room. It was surprisingly light, with a large window and pale polished floors. An old roll-top desk stood against one wall, a battered oak sideboard against another. The sun was streaming on to a round wooden table under the window and it occurred to Bonnie that to breakfast in such a room would be a marvellous start to the day.
She moved on, opening the only exit door to find herself in a long rectangular kitchen which was a real horror. An ancient electric stove was the only reasonably modern appliance in sight. There wasn’t even a refrigerator. Lord knew how that poor old woman had managed without one.
The kitchen led into a dining-room on the other side of the house, which, in turn, was connected through another pair of louvred doors to a library-cum-study This was a most attractive room, despite its carpet being threadbare, the velvet curtains mouldy, the leather chairs worn, and the bookshelves more full of dust than books.
The whole place had potential, she decided as she climbed the rather narrow staircase. And charm. She liked it. Surely someone else would like it too?
Upstairs, the main bedroom ran the entire length of the left side of the house. But it was empty except for a large brass bed covered in a hand-crocheted cream quilt. Clearly old Mrs McClelland hadn’t used the main bedroom, despite its not smelling musty in there at all. It did, in fact, carry a faint whiff of lavender. She went over and sniffed at the pillows. Yes... lavender.
The bathroom that came off the landing at the top of the stairs was as antiquated as the kitchen. Bonnie shook her head at the chipped enamel bath on legs, and the tiny washbasin with its plug on a chain. The separate toilet had a chain for flushing as well. This brought a smile till she remembered these were the very things that would make the house difficult to sell.
Only two rooms were left upstairs, both coming off a narrow L-shaped gallery on the right side of the stairwell.
For some unaccountable reason Bonnie walked past the nearest to open the other.
It was clearly the room the old lady had slept in, despite the lack of personal effects. The furniture was dark and heavy, the rug alongside the single bed worthy of being on the endangered species list, the patchwork quilt having seen better days. The whole room was depressing, she thought, and quickly shut the door.
Which left only one room to inspect. Bonnie walked swiftly back along the narrow hallway, wanting suddenly to be done with the house, yet when her hand reached to turn this last remaining knob she hesitated. An odd nervousness claimed her and she almost turned and walked away. Then something—some force much stronger than fear—impelled her wrist to turn.
After she let the knob go, the door seemed to open by itself, creaking slowly wide. With her heart in her mouth, Bonnie took a tremulous step inside, scooping in a startled breath as her eyes travelled around the room. The tentacles of some indefinable emotion wrapped themselves around her heart and squeezed tight, bringing with it an incredible wave of sadness.
It was a nursery.
Heavy legs carried her further into the room, shaking fingers creeping out to touch the white cradle, swinging it back and forth, back and forth. Her stomach twisted as she gazed at the purity of the snow-white sheets, the delicacy of the pink and white motifs sewn on to the pillow-case. She wanted to cry when she picked up the handmade toys, crafted with such love and attention to detail. And when she opened the baby-record book on top of the chest of drawers, the sudden constriction in her chest only reinforced what she already knew.
It was empty.
Not a word had been entered in that sad, sad testament. One glance had told Bonnie that this nursery had never been occupied. There were no chips on the white furniture, no marks on the wallpaper, no tell-tale damage to the toys.
Sympathy swelled her heart as she thought of old Mrs McClelland. What unfulfilled dreams lay in this room? What heartache?
Her eyes brimmed with sudden tears. Hastily she blinked them away and moved towards the large bay window that gave a perfect view of the ocean. The sun was quite hot through the glass and she flicked open the buttons of her jacket as she stood there, drinking in the view and willing herself to think happier thoughts.
But nothing could distract her from an overwhelming feeling of grief. Finally, her eyes dropped away, and she found herself peering down at the old-fashioned window-seat and the definite hollow in the padded seat.
Realisation jerked her back upright. Good God, she thought shakily. This was where the old lady used to sit and the impression of her body still lingered. How many hours had that poor woman spent here? How many times had she been drawn to this spot?
Something strangely compelling pulled Bonnie down till she was also sitting there, her back against the wooden window-frame, her green eyes glazing as they travelled along the same path those weary old eyes had travelled... into the past.
Only this time the past was Bonnie’s...
Keith had been getting ready for work that final day, buttoning up his policeman’s uniform, looking as handsome and dashing as ever. She’d watched him from where she lay, huddled up under the sheets, still not able to believe what had happened the night before.
It wasn’t that Keith had never hit her before. He had. But only with his hand, and never more than once, or twice.
But last night...
Oh, God, she could hardly bear to remember. The pain had been excruciating. It was still excruciating.
When he came over and sat down on the side of the bed, she couldn’t help cringing away from him.
‘Don’t be like that, Bonnie,’ he reproached. ‘It wasn’t my fault, you know. You made me lose my temper. Why didn’t you just tell me where you went yesterday in the first place? I knew you weren’t shopping. There were too many miles on the speedometer. You should have admitted you’d driven up to Morriset to visit your sister in the first place. I don’t mind you visiting Louise, as long as you ask permission first. If you’d done that, there would have been no reason for you to lie, and no reason for me to punish you for it.’
Bonnie stared at him, her head dizzy with fear.
‘Promise me you’ll ask permission next time,’ he said, cupping her chin and squeezing tight.
Her heart began to thud.
‘I want to hear you say it, Bonnie,’ he snarled. ‘Say, I promise I will ask permission next time.’
‘I... I promise I’ll ask permission next time,’ she choked out, her throat dry, her tongue thick.
‘Good girl.’
When he lowered his mouth to give her an obscenely deep kiss, his hands slipping under the sheets to play with her breasts at the same time, she was almost sick. When his mouth lifted and he began pinching one of her nipples, watching coldly while the pain registered in her eyes, she wanted to kill him.
‘Just a little reminder of what you can expect if you lie to me again,’ he warned before standing up abruptly and striding from the room. ‘Make sure you’re here when I get home,’ he called back over his shoulder.
She would never know if she would have been home at the end of that day, because Keith never came home. He was killed that morning, during a car chase, at an intersection. One of his colleagues called at the house soon afterwards to give her the bad news. He thought her tears were tears of grief, but he was wrong. They were tears of relief.
CHAPTER THREE
JORDAN studied the rough map that the chap at Coastal Properties had given him before gunning the engine of his car and driving off in search of the increasingly enigmatic Mrs Merrick.
His disappointment when he’d found out she wasn’t in the office had been sharp. But his unexpectedly early arrival had drawn some interesting information which he might not otherwise have gleaned about the woman.
Her dashing young colleague had not hidden his contempt for her business ethics, suggesting with a smirk that Jordan was a very lucky man to have someone like Mrs Merrick ‘handle’ him. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.
The various implications would have been clear to a brain-dead moron. A queen’s counsel certainly did not need to have it beaten into his head with a hammer.
Mrs Merrick, in her workmate’s opinion, was obviously not above using her physical assets when trying to make a sale. Jordan wasn’t sure if he was repelled or excited by that thought. It would seem likely that the lady must have some special assets worth trading on if she did business that way. In his experience, females with lax morals were pretty well always easy on the eye.
Yet tramps had never held any fascination for him. And he’d come across a good few in his thirty-six years.
If she was a tramp, that was. He’d found that people eager to offer unsought-after information about others were often lying. Or at least exaggerating. He resolved to keep an open mind on the subject of Mrs Merrick’s morals.
It took him a good ten minutes to find the dirt road, having driven right past it the first time. His patience was wearing thin by the time he made it down the rough track and up to what must have been the weirdest, ugliest old house he had ever seen. Parking next to a green Falcon, he climbed out, did up his suit jacket and dragged in a deep breath.
The moment of truth had come...
Bonnie sighed softly as she sat on in that room of dreams, mindless of time passing. It was as if she had entered another world where time stood still, where people could rest a while before picking up the strands of their lives again.
What first roused her from her trance-like state? Was it a sound, or the draught that suddenly chilled her legs? She stiffened in the window-seat, her eyelids fluttering nervously as they became fixed on the open doorway. Her ears strained to catch any more sounds but instantly all was very, very quiet.
Then she heard them. Unmistakable footsteps on the stairs, coming closer...closer...each soft thud a warning for her to move, to get up, to investigate. Her eyes grew wider as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, turned, then moved inexorably towards the nursery. Her heart began hammering wildly against her chest.
When a tall, dark figure loomed into the dimly lit rectangle that was the doorway, even her breathing ceased. All she could do was stare, her eyes round, her lips parted. Common sense told her this was not some ghost, come to haunt her. But her mind was too far from reality to grasp that fact sufficiently, to act upon it. And so she sat frozen on that window-seat, struggling to get some breath back into her stunned body.
Jordan could do nothing but stare, every muscle within his body having gone rigid with shock.
Dear God...
He’d expected a beauty of some sort, especially after his encounter with that chap from the office. But his mental picture of Mrs Merrick had shifted from a classy, sleek-haired brunette to a cheap, brassy blond. He certainly hadn’t been expecting an angel.
Yet that was exactly what she looked like sitting there in the sunlight... a gloriously golden angel. His breath caught in his throat as she lifted her chin slightly, and the rays of the sun caused a halo effect behind her head.
He took a startled step forward, a shift in the light allowing him to focus on the details of her face. Once again, he had to smother a gasp of shock. For there was nothing angelic about that face.
Oh, it was lovely all right. Exquisitely so. But there was something about those widely spaced green eyes and sinfully lush mouth which made one think of hell, not heaven, sin, not virtue, temptation, not restraint.
Suddenly, he wanted to pull her to her feet, drag her into his arms and bury his face into everything she was...and promised to be...from her hair to her breasts to her...
When the stranger took an abrupt step forward and his facial features broke into the light, Bonnie drew in a sharp breath.
Dear heaven, she thought shakily. She had come across a couple of exceptionally good-looking men in her life—her husband had been one of them—but this was something else. This man gave tall, dark and handsome new meaning.
But it wasn’t just his looks that held her momentarily captive. There was an intensity about him, especially in those deeply set dark eyes which were at that moment locked on her own. She could not stop staring at him. Neither could she find her voice. The seconds ticked away and the room started to swim around her. She tried to break her eyes away, but could not seem to find the strength, or will-power.
‘Mrs Merrick from Coastal Properties, I presume,’ the object of her staring said at last in a strangely cold voice.
It was enough to snap Bonnie out of herself, though not with as much instant composure as she would have liked.
‘Yes...yes...that’s right...that’s me,’ she said, slipping from the window-seat on to slightly numb feet. When a long golden curl came loose to fall across her right eye, she quickly looped it back behind her ear and drew in a deep, steadying breath.
‘And who might you be?’ she returned, hoping she sounded a darn sight calmer than she felt. Her rattled brain struggled to find the identity of this man who not only knew her name and place of employment, but who felt he had the right to walk into this house uninvited and unannounced.
Inspiration struck in a rush. ‘Oh, of course!’ she exclaimed ‘You must be Mrs McClelland’s nephew.’
The handsome stranger made no attempt to confirm this guess, or to come further forward. He slid his hands into the trouser pockets of his navy pin-striped suit and proceeded to survey her with unnerving attention to detail, his eyes sweeping slowly down her body, lingering on where her cream jacket was lying open at the front.
Bonnie’s chest tightened with dismay. It took all of her self-control not to grab the lapels of her jacket and hold the garment defensively closed across her chest.
For she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Frankly, she never wore one if she was wearing a suit with a lined jacket, simply because she looked less busty without one. Since she normally never undid her jacket at work, no one ever noticed. All she had to remember to do was not walk too fast. And what woman did that in high heels?
When the man’s gaze remained cool, not lascivious in any way, Bonnie felt some relief. But not enough for her to relax totally.
‘No, I am not Mrs McClelland’s nephew,’ the stranger informed her in an upper-crust accent. ‘I’m Jordan Vine-Hall. Your office directed me here. I did call out to you downstairs but you didn’t answer.’
Bonnie’s heart sank. Oh, God. Mr Moneybags himself! And she hadn’t been at the office to meet him.
Any dismay was quickly overridden by a surge of the same irritation he’d engendered in her during their earlier phone call. What right had he to drive up here so darned quickly? And why couldn’t he have been fat and bald? Why did he have to be the most impressive-looking man in the Southern hemisphere, maybe even the whole world? Lord, Daphne would have a field day when she got back to the office!
‘You shouldn’t have come out all this way, Mr Vine-Hall,’ she said extra-coolly in an attempt to hide her inner fluster. ‘I would have been back at the office by twelve.’
‘It’s just on twelve now, Mrs Merrick.’
A quick glance at her wristwatch brought a gasp of shock. ‘Good heavens, so it is! I... I lost track of time. I’m so sorry, Mr Vine-Hall. I don’t know what to say.’ Bonnie hated having to grovel, but she could see that a little grovelling was called for.
‘No need to apologise,’ he drawled. ‘As I said, I was early.’
‘I hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding me.’
‘I had good directions. Your—er—friend was most helpful.’
‘Oh, what friend was that?’
‘I think his name was Neil.’
The memory of the morning’s encounter with Neil swept back in and Bonnie grimaced. Whatever was she going to do about him? Should she tell Edgar or try to brazen the situation out?
‘Something wrong, Mrs Merrick?’
Bonnie was jerked back to the present. ‘No, no, I was just wondering where to take you first. I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in this place, would you?’
His face told it all.
‘I didn’t think so,’ she muttered drily. ‘Would you—um—mind waiting outside while I lock up?’
He glared at her for a second, then spun round and stalked off, leaving Bonnie with the impression of extreme irritation.
Her sigh carried a weary acceptance that the week might not start with an easy sale after all. Still, she supposed he had some right to be annoyed, coming all this way from Sydney then having to traipse out here after her, when he’d probably expected her to be there at the office, ready and waiting to dance attention on him. Wealthy men liked a lot of attention, she’d found.
Bonnie touched a slightly shaking hand to her head and glanced around the nursery. It was this room’s fault, she decided. She hadn’t wanted to come in here. She should have listened to her intuition. She should certainly have never sat down in that window-seat. Somehow, by doing so, the old woman’s pain had become her pain, filling Bonnie’s soul with a nameless yearning. It filled her now, yet remained tantalisingly out of reach.
What was it the old woman wanted her to do?
Bonnie shook her head. She was being fanciful again, the so-called haunted atmosphere getting to her. She didn’t believe in ghosts. She didn’t believe in haunted houses, or hidden messages from beyond. Her job here was to find a buyer for this place, not surrender to vague, highly emotional impulses.
Resisting the urge to give the room one last look, Bonnie closed the door and started down the stairs, doing up her jacket as she went. This time, she tried to see the house more as Mr Vine-Hall had and not through sentimental, rose-coloured spectacles.
It was a hideous old place. Run-down. Musty. Poky.
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, Bonnie felt oddly depressed.
But depressed salespeople rarely sold houses, so she made a conscious effort to brighten up before stepping outside, plastering a cheery smile on her face.
She needn’t have bothered, since her cantankerous client was standing on the veranda with his back to her. Every line in his body spelt impatience and tension, from the rigid set of his shoulders to the wide, feet-apart stance. She suspected he was a man who never relaxed, who lived life at too fast a pace. She wondered, for the second time, what he did for a living, and resolved to find out as soon as she could.
‘All set,’ she said brightly on joining him at the edge of the veranda.
He turned slowly towards her and once again she was struck by his looks, though up close and on second inspection he was not as conventionally handsome as she had first thought. His face was long and lean, his nose sharp, his mouth stern. It was a rather harsh, ascetic face, softened only by the wave of dark hair across his high forehead, and dominated by a pair of deep-set black eyes which drew one’s own eyes to them like a magnet. They had held her, transfixed, up in the nursery. They were holding her now, his gaze piercing, as though he was trying to see right into her very soul.
And what he was seeing was not to his liking.
Or was he always like this? she puzzled. Austere, grim, and coldly disapproving?
‘Shall we be using both cars?’ he asked curtly.
She noted the sleek bronze sedan parked on the other side of her Falcon. ‘I think we should go in mine,’ she said sensibly. ‘Otherwise we’ll waste valuable time.’
‘And my car?’ he asked, his left eyebrow arching sardonically skywards.
‘It will be quite safe here,’ she assured him, smothering any annoyance. The man definitely had an attitude problem. But she’d dealt with difficult clients before and prided herself on usually being able to bring them round. ‘I’ll lock the gates on the way out,’ she told him, and drummed up a placating smile.
No luck. All it produced was a half-sneer, as though her smile had been a long-awaited mistake.
‘But will I be safe, Mrs Merrick?’ he muttered.
‘Pardon?’
Her bewilderment at this cryptic comment seemed to surprise him.
‘I usually prefer to drive,’ he stated brusquely. ‘Do you drive competently, Mrs Merrick?’
‘I am a very competent driver,’ she snapped, giving in finally to irritation.
‘Yes, I’m sure you are,’ he said with an odd hint of scorn still in his voice. ‘I’m sure you’re very competent at everything you do. Shall we go?’ And he strode off down the steps in the direction of the cars, leaving a totally thrown Bonnie behind.
She glared after him, wondering what on earth she had done to get so far on his wrong side. Surely, if he’d been really annoyed by her not being at the office when he arrived, he could have demanded that someone else show him around?
Bonnie found it very frustrating to be on the end of such disfavour, particularly when she didn’t think it justified. All she could imagine was that Mr Vine-Hall was even more of a chauvinist than he’d displayed during his phone call this morning. There was no doubting his displeasure at having to deal with a woman. Any woman. Perhaps he considered doing business with such a young one the living end!
That had to be it, she supposed, though a niggling little something kept telling her there was more to this situation than met the eye. But what?
Shaking her head, she trailed after the man, thinking to herself that this was the worst Monday she had encountered in a long, long time. What else could go wrong?
Mr Vine-Hall was stretched out in the passenger seat by the time she slid behind the wheel, her automatic sidewards glance meeting a wary, sour-puss expression. Those unnerving black eyes flicked over her once more, and what he saw still didn’t seem to meet with his approval.
‘So where are we off to first, Mrs Merrick?’ he asked, that dry note still in his voice.
Bonnie suppressed a sigh and decided to give good manners and pleasantries one last try. ‘Perhaps you’d better call me Bonnie,’ she began with dogged optimism. ‘Not many people call me Mrs Merrick.’
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t imagine they do.’
Once again, Bonnie was taken aback. What on earth was going on here?
But then suddenly he smiled, and she was quite blown away. Not only by the change in his face—from churlish to charming in one second flat—but by the involuntary leap in her heart.
‘In that case you must call me Jordan,’ he returned smoothly. ‘Yes, I think first names are definitely called for, since I have a feeling we’re going to be spending quite some time together. I’m a very difficult man to please, you see, Bonnie. You’re going to have to earn every cent of your commission with me.’
‘I... I’ll do my best,’ she said, having to battle hard not to show how rattled she was feeling. Mr Vine-Hall’s about-face had been astonishing enough, but that was nothing to her own response to it.
She hoped against hope that it was just shock, and not a sexual thing. After Keith, Bonnie had feared good-looking men for a long time, but her experience with Neil—and a couple of others—had begun to reassure her that she was not blindly susceptible to a handsome face.
Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe they’d just been the wrong type of handsome face.
Her panic was instantaneous, fear making her stomach tighten and her heart thud. She found herself staring at that smiling mouth and wondering if its kiss would send her swirling into a sensuous mist, if the stroke of his tongue would ignite her blood, enslaving her senses, making her want whatever he wanted, making her weak as water in his arms.
Heat began to gather in her face, a heat that was as telling as it was embarrassing.
Wrenching her eyes away, she leant forward to fumble the key into the ignition. Totally flustered now, her reversing was disgracefully ragged, her forward acceleration down the driveway not much better, the car shuddering to a rough halt on the other side of the open gates. Bonnie’s hand shook as it reached for the door-handle.
‘I’ll lock the gates,’ her passenger offered abruptly.
Mortified, she sat stiffly behind the wheel while he moved to accomplish what she probably would have fouled up as well. ‘Competent’, she had claimed to be. A groan escaped her lips at the incompetence she had just displayed.
She watched in the rear-view mirror as he easily pulled the heavy gates shut and snapped the padlock in place. His actions were smooth and uncluttered, performed lithely with the agility of a young athlete. And yet, Bonnie judged, he must be at least thirty-five.
As he turned back to walk towards the car, she tore her gaze away, not wanting to be caught in the act of looking at him again. She could just imagine what he was already thinking.
Self-disgust had her getting a grip on her rampant emotions with a steely resolve. There would be no calling him by his first name. He would remain Mr Vine-Hall no matter how many hours they had to spend together. On top of that, if she found out that her reaction to his smile a moment ago was sexual, she would turn him over to Gary faster than one could say Jack Robinson.
Because there was one thing Bonnie was sure of. She wasn’t ready yet to become involved with another man. The wounds of her relationship with Keith were too recent, too raw. And while logic told her all men were not like Keith, she couldn’t envisage trusting any man again with her body, or her life, for a long, long time. Which meant keeping any unwanted hormonal activity firmly under control!
‘Thank you,’ she said crisply once the instigator of her internal lecture was resettled, keeping her eyes staunchly on the road ahead. ‘One thing I forgot to ask you, Mr Vine-Hall,’ she continued as she eased the car into gear and moved slowly down the bumpy road. ‘Does this weekender have to be in Blackrock Beach? We do have several very nice properties listed at some of the other local beaches.’
‘I was thinking of only Blackrock Beach when I rang,’ he replied thoughtfully, ‘but I can see it’s changed a lot. I was picturing the sleepy little seaside spot I used to holiday in as a boy, but it’s hardly that any more.’
‘No, it’s boomed since the expressway was put in from Sydney up to the Central Coast. Hardly a block in view of the beach which hasn’t been built on.’
‘Yes, so I noticed. So no... I won’t hold you exclusively to Blackrock Beach. Show me whatever you think might suit. I do like my peace and quiet at the weekend. And a reasonable amount of privacy.’
Bonnie had reached the end of the dirt road by now, and was feeling decidedly better with this businesslike conversation. If she didn’t have to look into his undeniably handsome face too much, and he didn’t smile at her too often, she should be able to get through this afternoon without any more awkward moments.
‘Oh, and Bonnie...’ His pregnant pause forced her to look over at him.
‘Yes?’
‘You agreed to call me Jordan, remember?’
And he smiled at her again.
CHAPTER FOUR
GODDAMN it, she was blushing again!
A guilty confusion wiped the smile off Jordan’s face. If there was one thing he knew about women of easy virtue it was that they didn’t blush when you started coming on to them. Neither did they keep breaking eye contact or become totally flustered.
The truth of the matter quickly sank in. That bastard back at the real-estate office had lied about her. She wasn’t a tramp at all. She was a respectable married woman who was too damned sexy-looking for her own good.
It certainly put a different interpretation on her reactions to him. Any hope that she’d been giving him the eye was obliterated. Clearly, her staring was because he must have seemed horribly rude. Hell, he had been horribly rude, right from the start!
She wasn’t to know he’d been fighting urges which till today had been totally alien to his personality. Good lord, he hadn’t surrendered to any form of uncontrollable passion since he was an adolescent! On top of that, the last female on earth he would consider trying to seduce would be a married woman, albeit a supposedly amoral one. He’d seen the pain adultery caused.
Yet that was exactly what he wanted to do. Seduce her.
He’d staunchly resisted temptation at first, only to give in finally, deliberately misinterpreting her offer that he call her by her first name, thinking he only had to turn on a bit of charm to make her realise he was willing to go along with whatever was on offer.
Shame was hard on the heels of guilt. Jordan knew he was no saint—what man was?—but his behaviour today had been appalling. So the woman was exquisite, with a voice like cool silk and a body men might kill for. So what? That was no excuse.
Damn it all, he’d defended men in court who had done just that, committed crimes of passion over a beautiful woman. He’d always thought what fools they were. There were plenty of other beautiful women in the world. Why ruin their lives over just one? Why not simply walk away and climb into another bed? What made them so vulnerable to that one particular woman that they could think of nothing and no one else?
Such obsessions were the result of a sick mind, he used to believe. Or a weak character. Suddenly, he was gaining a different perspective on sexual obsession. And he didn’t like it one bit.
Jordan wanted no part of such a weakness, no part at all!
His inner torment was getting out of hand when his usual ruthless logic came to his rescue. This obsession—for want of a better word—was due to nothing more than an acute case of male frustration. He’d been working incredibly long hours over the past few weeks. Why, he hadn’t even had a spare hour to write, let alone make love.
Erica, of course, had been very understanding, which was only to be expected. Her lack of any real physical passion was something Jordan actually found reassuring. Hell, the last sort of woman he wanted for a wife would be one who actually needed sex. How would he be able to trust her when this sort of thing happened after they were married?
He could still remember that awful Saturday afternoon when he’d come home injured from soccer practice, only to stumble across his mother ‘entertaining’ a man who wasn’t his father on the sofa. He’d been just fifteen and up till then had thought his mother little short of a saint.
He’d stood there, white-faced and shaken, while she’d scrambled into some clothes and shuffled the man out of the back door. When she’d returned to face her son, she’d launched into a muddled explanation, all the while floods of tears running down her flushed cheeks.
Jordan had listened to her pleas for understanding with a chilled heart. She’d claimed she still loved his father but that he was hardly ever home, his ambition to become a judge taking up all his spare time. She’d sobbed that she needed company, needed to be loved.
Needed to be screwed, more like it, he’d decided, having seen the man she’d chosen for her lover. He’d been very good-looking and very common, with tattoos over his arms. Not the type to know much about love, only sex.
She’d begged him not to tell his father, and he hadn’t. But someone else must have, for he’d overheard his parents having a bitter row that night.
Nothing was ever the same after that. His parents hadn’t divorced, but an air of cold remoteness had descended on their relationship which never thawed. Adultery had destroyed his parents’ marriage, plus his own respect for his mother. It was the ultimate betrayal, in his opinion, and Jordan wanted no part of it!
He decided then and there to ask Erica to marry him this very night. Make the commitment official, after which he would sweep her off to bed. That should set his equilibrium to right!
‘By all means call me Mr Vine-Hall, if you’re more comfortable with that,’ Jordan resumed, his tone crisp. ‘I wouldn’t like you to think I was trying to come on to a married woman.’
Bonnie swallowed. Had she been thinking that? Admittedly, she’d been flustered by his suddenly being nice to her, but she hadn’t really stopped to find a reason for it. Her brain seemed to have been scrambled by his smile along with her body.
She steeled herself and looked over at him. He was no longer smiling, but when their eyes met an electric charge seemed to sizzle across the space between them, making her stomach tighten and her breasts prickle alarmingly, Intuition told her that he would come on to her if she weren’t a married woman.
Tell him you’re not married, whispered an insidious little voice. Tell him you’re a widow.
She clenched her jaw underneath the force of the temptation, shuddering inside as she remembered where her carnal weaknesses had led her last time—to hell and back. No way could she risk such treatment again. No way. Let him continue to think she was married. It was the only wise course of action.
‘Of course I don’t think that, Jordan,’ she said, amazing herself at the cool tone she’d found in her desperation. ‘I can recognise a gentleman when I see one. Now, there’s a place at Bateau Bay which I’d like to show you. The lady who owns it is sure to be home and doesn’t mind if I drop in at any time.’
His returning smile was rather wry, she thought, but infinitely preferable to his earlier, disturbingly sensual offering. ‘I’m totally at your disposal,’ he said.
Bonnie managed to keep a straight face, despite her decidedly x-rated thoughts. God, she was wicked. Wicked and weak. She’d been afraid this would happen to her one day. No, not afraid—terrified! She’d always known it was still there, deadly and dormant, despite those last months of marriage having seemingly frozen every desire for sex she had ever had.
OK, so it had taken an exceptional man to melt her ice, but still... that ice had proven to be a disconcertingly thin layer. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop her mind skittering from one erotic image to another, couldn’t stop her body flooding with a sexual awareness that was both appalling yet insidiously exciting.
Hating herself, she carefully put on her right-hand indicator and headed north.
Jordan didn’t like the first place she showed him. Too large, he said. Or the second. Too small. Or the third. Too noisy. The fourth seemed to find some favour, though he would not be drawn into over-effusiveness. By this time it was half-past one and when he suggested that they stop somewhere for a bite to eat Bonnie reluctantly agreed. Already, time spent with the man had increased her awareness of his physical attractions. Added to that was an admiration of the man himself, and what he did for a living.
He was a barrister. Not an ordinary barrister, either. A queen’s counsel. It was no wonder he was impressive, not only in his looks but his general bearing. Never had Bonnie seen a man carry himself with such superb aplomb. Or was the word panache?
Whatever, there was no doubt he was the most self-contained, self-possessed man she had ever come across, not to mention the most attractive. The prospect of just the two of them having an intimate little lunch together was daunting indeed. But she could hardly object. Besides, she was starving herself.
They ended up at a café in a small shopping square in Erina which had umbrellaed tables outside in the sun and a delightful little menu. Bonnie chose a vegetable pie with a side-salad and coffee, Jordan opting for the same, but with chips and a bread roll included.
‘Have you been selling real estate long?’ was his first question after they’d given their orders.
‘Two years,’ she admitted, reminding herself to be careful not to accidentally reveal her widow status. Continuing with the ruse was more difficult than she’d realised. A couple of times already she’d almost unconsciously given the game away.
‘You’re good,’ he said. ‘Refreshingly honest and not pushy. I’ll bet you’ve been very successful.’
‘I have been of late. I even won a pewter mug for best salesperson last month.’
‘Ahh...’
His ‘ahh’ sparked her curiosity. ‘What do you mean by “ahh”?’
‘Nothing, really. Do you work at the weekend?’
‘Almost always.’
That eyebrow lifted again. It was a habit of his, she realised, the gesture carrying a range of expressions from merely curious to cynical to drily amused to downright sarcastic. She could well imagine him using it to good effect in court to undermine a witness’s testimony, or as a clever personal aside with the jury. She could see him now, setting those jet-black eyes of his on some highly susceptible woman juror, lifting that eyebrow and immediately creating an intimate little bond between them.
‘What about this weekend?’ he asked. ‘Will you be working this weekend?’
‘Yes.’
His frown confused her a little. What was it he wanted to do this weekend? Surely he wasn’t going to ask her out, not when he thought her a married woman?
Such a prospect should have shocked her. Instead, she found it unnervingly exciting.
‘Right,’ he said curtly ‘In that case I’d like to bring my fiancée up this Saturday, once we’ve narrowed the choices down to a couple of places.’
Bonnie felt the breath leave her lungs in a whoosh. A fianceé... He had a fiancée.
Well, of course he has, you stupid idiot! Either that or a wife. What did you expect? Men like Jordan Vine-Hall don’t go round unsnapped up unless they’re perennial playboys or gay.
Bonnie suspected she looked as dismayed as she felt. Which was crazy. She should be grateful, since it put him firmly beyond her reach. God, get it together, girl, she told herself firmly. ‘What time would you like me to be available?’ she asked, avoiding his eyes and struggling to keep her voice steady.
When he didn’t answer, she glanced up, only to find him staring at her with narrowed eyes.
‘Doesn’t your husband find it annoying to have you work every weekend?’ he asked sharply.
Bonnie decided there was no point in continuing with this fiasco, which was beginning to be a strain. Besides, what would happen if someone back at the office let the cat out of the bag? She would look a fool.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I didn’t realise you didn’t know. I’m a widow. My husband died three years ago.’
Jordan felt as if someone had just punched him in the stomach. A widow. She was a widow!
Goddammit, he thought savagely. Goddammit!
His fists curled into tight balls and he rubbed them up and down on his thighs under the table, an explosive emotion charging through his veins. If he’d known she was a widow, he would never have mentioned Erica, would never have given her any reason to reject him.
For he had to have her. He could see that now. He’d pretended to himself that he could resist temptation when it would have meant committing adultery, but not even the most noble intention had stopped him still wanting her. It had been building in him all afternoon. The desire. The passion. The need.
Maybe he would have been able to resist in the end. Maybe he would have been able to go away meekly and forget her. But she’d opened the Pandora’s box now. She was free, free to accept his advances, free to accept his love.
Love?
Good God, was he mad? He didn’t love the woman. He didn’t love any woman. Love was for adolescents and masochists. He wanted her, that was all. It was sex, nothing more.
This last reaffirmation sent his brain catapulting back to his earlier reasoning that it wasn’t Bonnie Merrick he was wanting so badly, but any woman. A night or two in Erica’s bed and this insane yearning would quickly become a distant memory.
But what if it didn’t? What then, Jordan? What then...?
Bonnie was taken aback by his reaction to her announcement. He looked almost angry. Yet why should he be angry? It didn’t make. sense.
‘You’re very young to be a widow,’ he said at last, ‘let alone one of three years.’
‘I’m twenty-five,’ she said, rather defensively.
‘Was your husband much older?’
‘A couple of years.’
‘Only a couple of years. What did he die of?’
‘He was killed on the job...in a car accident. He was a policeman.’
He mouthed another of those non-committal ‘ahh’s.
‘And children?’ he went on after a few seconds’ silence. ‘Do you have children?’
‘No.’ Thank God, she thought. For a while she had begged Keith to let her have a child, thinking it might solve their problems, but of course it would have been the worst thing they could have done. She was grateful now that he had refused to give her a child, no matter how sick his reasons.
‘Do you regret that?’
‘Not really. I was too young to be a mother back then.’
‘How old were you when you were married?’ ‘Nineteen.’
That is young,’ he agreed.
Their food arrived at that moment, bringing a welcome break to what Bonnie was beginning to feel was an inquisition. Perhaps it was the lawyer in him, but when he asked questions Jordan was very intimidating. It reminded Bonnie uncomfortably of Keith’s never-ending third degrees. She decided it was time to turn the tables.
‘So tell me some more about your life, Jordan?’ she asked as she cut her vegetable pie into quarters. ‘Why haven’t you married before now?’
‘I hadn’t met the right woman.’
‘And is your fiancée much younger than you?’
‘Erica’s twenty-four. I’m thirty-six.’
Bonnie detected a curtness in his voice. He didn’t want to talk about his fiancée, this Erica. She wondered why.
‘I’ll bet you work hard,’ she remarked.
‘Too hard.’
‘Which is why you need some place where you can come and relax.’
His laugh startled her. ‘I doubt I’ll end up doing much relaxing up here.’
‘I... I don’t understand.’
He settled those incredible eyes on her and a little shiver ran down her spine. ‘I write in my spare time, you see,’ he explained, obliterating the sudden ridiculous fear that he was somehow referring to her, that he meant to spend his weekends in orgies of wanton behaviour with none other than Mrs Bonnie Merrick, the closet nympho of Blackrock Beach. ‘When I write, I hole up in my study and tap away on my PC in a compulsive fervour. Relaxation is far from my mind, which is invariably tormented with all sorts of wild characters and wickednesses.’
‘Goodness!’ she exclaimed, hoping she wasn’t betraying any of her own wildly wicked thoughts. ‘What on earth do you write? Accounts of the murder trials you’ve been involved in?’ When talking of his work he’d explained that his law firm was ninety per cent criminal defence, mostly on capital cases.
Again he laughed. ‘If I tell you, will you promise to keep it a secret?’
‘Of course.’
‘I write thrillers.’
‘But how wonderful! I love thrillers. Have you been published?’
He nodded.
‘Would I have read any?’
‘I doubt it. I’ve only had three out so far, under the name of Roger Black. They’re all about a lawyer named Richard Halliday who solves the most gruesome crimes. Plenty of sex and violence, with undertones of political anarchy. My publisher thinks the public will love them, but, alas, my family and business colleagues would not.’
‘Why not?’
He gave her a look that suggested she knew nothing of his world.
‘What about your fiancée?’ she persisted, perhaps foolishly. But she was curious about the sort of woman Jordan would choose as his wife. ‘What does she think?’
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Miranda Lee
Hidden PowersWhy did Jordan Vine-Hall make Bonnie Merrick lose her cool? Jordan exuded the sort of arrogance that Bonnie detested, but surely that should have stopped her from being drawn to him so strongly! After being widowed, Bonnie had taken control of her life and was fast becoming a successful real-estate agent.But when she showed Jordan around the old McClelland house - which was rumored to be haunted - something else took over… Suddenly Bonnie and Jordan became obsessed by a passion they just couldn't resist!
What was it about Bonnie that had bewitched him so? (#u9f44af42-e90d-5225-8b9f-c7d3ab31faf1)About the Author (#ude3350d1-7192-53f2-9ea2-286369fdc8cf)Title Page (#u0f5c0a6b-08ed-5017-a294-eabde46eb969)CHAPTER ONE (#u01eba71d-1374-547e-9c26-5a28d75a10a4)CHAPTER TWO (#uafb06a85-77fd-5acf-8eae-4842e8dd00d1)CHAPTER THREE (#ufa1de636-6745-5812-b4e8-bb46b97eb7bc)CHAPTER FOUR (#uaebc0e65-2fe5-500f-8952-ee9b138e4cc6)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)Teaser chapter (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
What was it about Bonnie that had bewitched him so?
It couldn’t be just her physical beauty. She was lovely...yes....
No, it was something else, something...intangible. A vulnerability perhaps? The thought made him almost laugh. The coolly competent Mrs. Merrick vulnerable? The clever, conniving Mrs. Merrick...?
She was a witch, a sorceress, a caster of spells....
MIRANDA LEE is Australian, living near Sydney. Born and raised in the bush, she was boarding school educated and briefly pursued a classical music career before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast-paced and sexy. Her interests include reading meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.
A Haunting Obsession
Miranda Lee
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
JORDAN VINE-HALL sat at his large leather-topped desk, drumming the fingers of his right hand and glaring down at the phone. It had taken all of his control not to slam the damned thing down after speaking with that woman. Even now—several seconds later—his temper was still frayed around the edges.
Who did she think she was, treating him like that? Didn’t she know the adage that the customer was always right? Any real-estate agent worth his or her salt would have been fawning all over him, not giving him the proverbial cold shoulder.
OK, so he’d been a bit brusque initially, and he’d probably piqued her undoubtedly feminist nature by saying he’d asked for a salesman. But so what? Her job was to sell him a house, not make snap judgements on his possible chauvinism. She should have hidden her irritation, not snootily told him that she was, in fact, a valued member of Coastal Properties’. sales staff, but if he insisted she would pass him on to one of her male colleagues.
Perhaps he should have let her do just that!
Hell, he had a good mind not to go at all. Let her wait and sweat for nothing. No doubt, underneath, she thought she was on to a sure sale with his having said money was no object. Serve her right if he didn’t turn up. God, she hadn’t even had the decency to crawl a little once she’d known she had money on the line.
A wry but somewhat reluctant half-smile curved one corner of Jordan’s normally serious mouth and he leant back into the deep leather chair, elbows on the padded arm-rests, his long fingers steepled in front of his chest. He supposed he had to admire her for that. It was even a pleasant change in a way. And rather intriguing. He was used to people kowtowing to him, especially women.
Closing his eyes, he tried to put a face to the coolly competent voice and came up with one which looked suspiciously like his mother when she’d been younger, his black-haired, black-eyed beautiful mother, his sleekly sophisticated and treacherously adulterous mother!
Jordan scowled, then snapped forward on his chair, determined to get his mind back on work, and off Mrs Merrick of Coastal Properties. But it was no use. His curiosity over the woman was far too aroused.
Or was it something else?
He frowned, then swore. Yes, dammit. That was it. That was definitely it. Somehow, Mrs Merrick’s voice—or was it her challenging attitude?—had sparked a sexual response in him. God knew how. It was crazy, really. Quite crazy.
But, crazy or not, he couldn’t sit in his damned office another moment. He had to see for himself the face behind the voice, had to see if reality would live up to fantasy.
And if it did?
His conscience stabbed at him as he put on his jacket and felt for his car keys in the pocket. The woman was married. He himself was on the verge of becoming engaged, to a very beautiful young lady who gave him everything he’d ever wanted from a woman. Total attention. Adoration. Sex—when he had time for it. She never complained or demanded. She was sweet and accommodating. She was perfection.
She wouldn’t change if he married her, either. He was confident of that. Erica was one of those females who considered being a wife a career in itself. Exactly his cup of tea.
So what the hell are you doing, jumping up and running off to see some woman, just because she has a sexy voice? You don’t mean to do anything about it, do you? Do you?
Suddenly, he wasn’t at all sure of that, either.
His grimace reflected this highly uncharacteristic inner torment. It wasn’t like him to be unsure of anything. He’d always known exactly what he wanted in life, and was on the verge of having it all.
Now here he was, being besieged by the most ridiculous—and potentially dangerous—impulse. Common sense warned him to buy a weekender from another real-estate agent in Blackrock Beach; there were several listed in the phone book. But somehow common sense had no power against his intense desire to see the woman he’d just hung up on in the flesh. No power at all.
He mocked himself with a dry laugh as he hurried towards the lift. With a bit of luck, Mrs Merrick wouldn’t be anything at all like the coolly beautiful creature she sounded. Voices could be very deceiving. She would probably turn out to be a hard-faced middle-aged hag with about as much sex appeal as Ma Kettle.
Jordan hoped so. He really did.
A glance at his watch showed ten past ten. He’d told her he’d be there by lunchtime. If he put his foot down, he might make it before twelve...
Bonnie heaved a weary sigh, shaking her head as her eyes wandered back to the phone, now lying silent on her desk.
I didn’t handle that at all well, she thought regretfully. I let the man niggle me from the first moment, when he assumed I wasn’t one of the sales staff, merely because I was a woman.
Training had stopped her short of being rude, but there was no denying the coolness in her voice, or the pique behind her offer to transfer him over to one of the men.
Fortunately, he hadn’t called her bluff. She could do with an easy sale to start the week, after spending the whole weekend in bed with a tummy bug. Bonnie had topped the sales figures for the previous month, and had been hoping to repeat the performance for November.
Which meant she could hardly afford to look gift-horses in the mouth, and Mr Moneybags had sounded like a gift-horse.
What was his name, now? Vine-Hall. Yes, that was it. Vine-Hall. The name suited him. Pompous and arrogant!
‘That’s quite a scowl, love. Are you sure you should have come back to work this morning?’
Bonnie smiled up at the tall, lean man standing beside her desk. Gary was the only one of her male colleagues not at all undermined by her recent sales success. Forty-five and happily married, he was a genuinely nice man with a very relaxed personality and no ambition to do anything but make enough money to live on. Which he did nicely.
‘I couldn’t bear another minute in that house by myself,’ she answered truthfully. She hadn’t realised till yesterday how much she hated the place, forty-eight hours without a break within its walls bringing back that claustrophobic feeling of imprisonment which had swamped her during the last year of her three-year marriage.
Gary was frowning down at her. ‘You’re awfully pale,’ he said. ‘And you have dark rings under your eyes. Come on, I think you could do with a fortifying cup of coffee.’
‘I’ll go for that,’ she said, and stood up to accompany Gary down to the back room and the coffee-machine.
‘You’ve lost weight as well,’ he said as he went about making coffee for both of them.
‘Now I really like the sound of that.’
‘You’re not fat, Bonnie,’ he chided.
Maybe not, she thought, but having a womanly shape did have its drawbacks. Bonnie had found that in the male-dominated business world of real estate voluptuous curves could be more of a burden than an asset. When buying clothes nowadays, her first consideration was always whether the outfit would minimise her figure, not emphasise it.
The linen suit she was wearing that morning was a typical choice. A bland cream colour, it had a straight but not too tight skirt and a long, gently shaped jacket which could be kept buttoned up without restriction, the deep V-neckline filled modestly with a gold silk camisole the same colour as her hair.
‘I could do with less in certain areas,’ she said ruefully as she took the steaming mug Gary offered her.
‘Not from a man’s point of view.’
A reproachful glance from Bonnie only brought a nonchalant shrug. ‘I might be married, but I can still look.’
‘Just so long as that’s all you do.’
‘I’m not Neil, love.’
Bonnie sighed and sipped her coffee.
‘Is he still bothering you?’ Gary asked.
‘Not for the moment.’ He’d temporarily stopped asking her out, but only after she’d turned him down a zillion times. But Neil was the persistent type. He was also under the illusion that a widow was always a good mark, especially a young, attractive one who, to all intents and purposes, had not had a man in her bed for three years.
‘I’d watch him if I were you,’ Gary murmured.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I’ve come across blokes like Neil before. They don’t like losing... at anything.’
Bonnie nodded wryly. ‘So I’ve gathered.’
‘He was most put out at the meeting this morning when the boss spent more time fussing over your health than praising him for his weekend sales.’
‘Yes, I noticed that.’
‘Edgar did too, and he didn’t seem too happy with Neil’s attitude. Why do you think he kept him back afterwards?’
Bonnie grimaced. ‘He’ll only make things worse if he says anything.’
‘My feelings exactly. That’s why I thought I’d give you a quiet warning. Neil’s not likely to take a dressing-down too well. Thankfully, he’s heading the figures this month so far. It might be better if he stays there,’ Gary finished with a meaningful look.
Bonnie blinked her astonishment. ‘Are you suggesting I deliberately let him win?’
‘It might be the wisest course of action. Edgar isn’t going to fire Neil, love. He’s a top salesman. Life could get very awkward for you around here, however, if you keep making our young stud feel a failure in more ways than one. He’s only a baby, you know, and not used to rejection in the female department.’
‘He’s twenty-five, same as me,’ she grumbled. ‘About time he grew up a bit: Despite Gary’s suggestion sounding sensible, something very strong within Bonnie rebelled at the idea of holding back in deference to male ego. She’d spent her entire marriage doing that, and the damage to her self-esteem had been enormous. It went against the grain just to let Neil win. It really did!
Gary took her silence for agreement. ‘You could waste a nice lot of time trying to sell that dear old house which just came on the listings this morning. You know... the one perched on the bluff between here and Cairncross Bay.’
‘That monstrosity! It would take a magic wand to sell that place!’
Gary laughed. ‘Exactly. I’ve actually got the photo in my pocket here, since it’s my unenviable job to write a spiel for the window display. How shall I describe it?’ he joked as he held it out in front of him. ‘A handyman’s delight?’
She glanced down at it and shook her head. Lord, it looked like something out of The Munsters! Two-storeyed and wooden, the house had odd turret-like projections, large black chimneys, and small pokey windows. Add to that its ramshackle condition and the overgrown garden surrounding it, and images of ghosts weren’t far away.
Edgar had told them it was reputedly haunted. Bonnie didn’t wonder. And shuddered anew.
‘Who on earth is going to buy a dump like that?’ she mused aloud as she stared down at it.
‘An eccentric recluse with a passion for Frankenstein?’ came Gary’s mocking suggestion.
‘Very funny. We could have easily unloaded it to a developer for the fifteen fantastic acres it’s sitting on if it hadn’t been for that stupid covenant on the title stipulating that the house and land have to remain intact.’
‘True,’ Gary agreed drily. ‘We might even have gotten the ridiculous three hundred thousand they’re asking for it.’
‘Edgar said they might accept two hundred and fifty thousand.’
The house was a deceased estate, the current owner having inherited it from his aunt who’d dropped dead of a stroke in a local supermarket only the previous week. A Mrs McClelland. Seventy-five years old and batty as they came, according to the nephew and heir. He’d informed Edgar it was just as well she didn’t die in the house because no one would have found her for months. Apparently she was something of a hermit. Refused to leave the place because she said the spirits of her dead husband and baby lived there. The nephew wanted the place sold as quickly as possible. He’d cleared away all the personal effects, cutlery, crockery and such, but was willing to sell the rest as was, with the furniture inclusive.
If the furniture was anything like the house, Bonnie thought ruefully, it would hardly be a selling factor.
‘No one could sell this place for that price,’ she pronounced firmly.
‘Just the thing, then,’ Gary said drily, ‘to waste your time and ensure your figures don’t pass Neil’s. Daphne has the keys at Reception. Why don’t you fill in the morning having a look at it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Gary. I’m not sure I could stomach just letting Neil win.’
‘Suit yourself. But don’t say you haven’t been warned.’
Gary had just wandered off back to his desk when the object of their discussion strode into the backroom.
There was no doubt Neil was handsome, Bonnie conceded. But brother, did he know it. A real peacock, he was always preening himself by combing his thick blond hair or straightening the loud ties he favoured. On spotting her standing by the coffee-machine, his blue eyes narrowed. He stared, first at her body, and then at her hair.
Bonnie groaned silently, regretting her decision to leave her hair half down that day. Over the years, her hair had caused her as much, perhaps even more trouble than her figure. A flamboyant gold colour, its naturally tight curls made it impossible to style. She hated it short yet, long, it grew in a wild spiralled abundance which, when left totally out, gave her an untamed look that men were quick to misinterpret.
‘I suppose I should have guessed,’ came Neil’s cryptic mutter as he stalked over to snatch a mug down out of the automatic dispenser.
‘Guessed what?’
“That you’re having it off with the boss.’
Bonnie was speechless. OK, so Edgar Gray was a womaniser. Everyone in Blackrock Beach knew that. Even at fifty, with his receding hairline and spreading waistline, he still had considerable success with the opposite sex. Women liked him and he had three ex-wives to prove it. Even Bonnie liked him, but only as her boss. Edgar had always had the good sense not to cross the invisible line she had drawn up the day he’d hired her.
‘You might think you can pull the wool over everyone else’s eyes around here with your cool touch me-not act,’ Neil swept on nastily, ‘but I used to drink at the same pub as your hubby on a Friday night, and I know just what you are. He used to worry himself sick that you were seeing men behind his back. Men, honey. Not a man. You’re a closet nympho, Bonnie Merrick. I know it and you know it. I just didn’t think you’d sleep with an old geyser like Edgar. I thought a hot-looking bird like yourself would be more selective.’
All the blood had drained from Bonnie’s face. She tried to say something, tried to deny Neil’s appalling accusations, but she could not seem to find her voice.
Neil laughed at her shocked expression. ‘You’ve got it down pat, haven’t you? That wide-eyed innocent look. I’ll bet you fooled your husband real good to begin with, just like you fooled me here for a while. You know, I always wondered why Edgar hired you, a girl with no sales experience at all. But you had the experience he was looking for, didn’t you?’
‘You’re mad!’ she blurted out. ‘Do you realise if I told Edgar what you’ve just said he’d fire you?’
‘You think so, honey? I doubt it. Even if by some remote possibility I was wrong, dear old Edgar would be so flattered. After I apologised sincerely then told him it was all an honest enough mistake, he’d give me another lecture while underneath he’d be cock-a-hoop that people still thought he was such a stud.’
‘You’re insane!’
‘Heck, no, honey, I’ve never been saner. I knew there had to be a good reason why you kept turning me down. Now I know why. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business, isn’t it? I reckon I’ve also finally figured out how come you’ve become such a whiz at selling houses. When a guy buys a place from you, he gets a bonus, doesn’t he? One thing I’d like to know, though: do you screw the sucker before he signs on the dotted line or after?’
Bonnie almost threw her coffee all over him. At the last second, she gave him a contemptuous glare then whirled away to pour it down the sink. Without looking back, she marched back to her desk where she snatched up her bag and car keys before sweeping on to Reception.
‘Daphne, has Edgar given you the keys to the McClelland place yet?’ she asked the receptionist whose job it was to keep all the keys.
‘Yes, I think so. Yes, here they are. The address is written on the tag. I have no idea where that road is, though, do you?’
‘Edgar gave us all detailed directions so we wouldn’t get lost. Apparently, it’s only five minutes from here but tucked away down a deserted bush track.’
‘Is that where you’re off to now?’
‘Sure is.’
It was only ten-thirty. Mr Plum-in-the-mouth Moneybags Vine-Hall wouldn’t arrive before twelve at the earliest. She’d make sure she was back by then with her best the-client-is-always-right smile in place, plus a possible decision over what she was going to do about Neil.
Meanwhile, she badly needed a breath of fresh air.
‘Going to show it to that man who rang from Sydney a little while ago?’ Daphne enquired eagerly.
‘Good lord, no. No, I’m not expecting him till lunchtime. I should definitely be back by then but if, for some weird and wonderful reason, I’m delayed, look after him for me, will you? His name’s Vine-Hall.’
‘My pleasure,’ Daphne cooed. ‘His voice was yummy.’
Bonnie laughed at her youthful optimism. Daphne was only nineteen. ‘My experience with yummy male telephone voices,’ she informed the bubbly brunette, ‘is that they’re connected to very fat, very bald and very un-yummy men. Mr Vine-Hall, I can assure you, will prove to be a very disappointing specimen of the male species.’
CHAPTER TWO
BONNIE’S frustration was momentarily forgotten the second she stepped out of the office on to the pavement and glanced across the main street to the beach beyond.
Blackrock Beach on a clear sunny day was something to behold. The sparkling blue sea, the clean white sands, the stately Norfolk pines in the foreground, the rugged cliffs curving round at each end of the beach—it was a view bar none. Bonnie had lived most of her life here and she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Sighing, she turned and strode round to the car park behind the office, wishing as she went that Neil Campion lived somewhere else. Today, he’d moved from being a minor irritation in her life to a major problem. Bonnie wasn’t sure what to do about him yet, but she knew one thing. She wasn’t going to let him win this month’s sales competition. No, siree. The pewter mug for November was going to sit on her mantelpiece alongside October’s if it was the last thing she did.
Her decision to visit the McClelland house this morning was not just to get away from Neil. Neither was it to waste time. She was determined to find some waysome angle—of selling that monstrosity. They had few enough new listings this month and she couldn’t afford to waste a single opportunity.
It was to be thanked for that she hadn’t totally alienated Mr Moneybags earlier on. Imagine having stupidly handed him over to someone else. Daphne would probably have put him through to Neil. Bonnie shuddered at the thought.
Five minutes later, she was turning her Ford Falcon on to the narrow dirt track which led down to the McClelland house, grimacing when a cloud of dust rose from under the wheels to settle over the shiny green paintwork. Darn. Now she would have to take Mr Vine-Hall around in a dirty car. How irritating!
Bonnie automatically eased her foot off the accelerator, which was just as well because the surface was like corrugated iron. The thought of bringing clients down this excuse for a road was daunting enough, but when it came to an abrupt end in front of the oldest, tallest and rustiest pair of iron gates Bonnie had ever seen she just stared in disbelief.
Edgar hadn’t mentioned the gates. Or the crumbling stone wall. Neither were they in the photograph. Bonnie could well understand why. The house beyond was bad enough but, combined with the Count Dracula gates, the whole caboodle would give anyone the willies.
Shaking her head, she climbed out of the car and peered through the rusty rungs at the house itself. Under a bright November sun it didn’t look nearly as spooky as it had in the photograph, but still, it was hardly inviting. The once white walls were a grimy grey, with paint peeling off them. Something green and fungusy was growing all over the roof. The guttering was drooping in places and the garden, if one could call it a garden, was an overgrown disaster area.
A small laugh bubbled up in her throat as she imagined what Mr Vine-Hall would say if she showed him this place as a possible weekender. Still, it did have his two stated requirements. It was sure to have an ocean view from the upstairs windows, and Edgar had said there was a cliff trail somewhere which led down to a small private cove.
Since money was no object, then Mr Moneybags could pour plenty into having the place done up and the grounds restored. Actually, if one had some imagination, it might not look half bad. The house itself had a quirky sense of character which was missing from modern homes. As for the grounds...well, at least there was plenty of them!
Of course, not everyone wanted to live with a couple of ghosts, Bonnie conceded ruefully to herself. Maybe there were three of them, now that the lady of the house had passed away as well.
When the gates creaked alarmingly as she pushed them open, Bonnie decided it was as well she didn’t believe in ghosts. Otherwise coming here alone might have unnerved her.
Actually, she didn’t feel totally calm as she drove the car through the gateway and up to the house. All those small dark windows. Maybe someone was watching her through one of them.
Shrugging off her fanciful thoughts as ridiculous, she climbed out of the car and walked up the three cracked stone steps on to the wide but rickety front veranda. One of the planks creaked ominously underfoot, sending a shiver running down her spine.
Now stop this, she told herself firmly, and, squaring her shoulders, stepped up to the front door. Bonnie resisted the impulse to clang the iron knocker up and down to frighten away anyone or anything that might be inside. Instead, she inserted the large brass key and prepared herself for a fight to get the old lock open.
When the key turned with surprising ease, she was reminded that till recently this house had been lived in. Just because it looked as if it had been standing there forlorn and unused for years and years, it didn’t mean it was so. Bonnie swung open the door, determined not to allow herself to be besieged by any further fanciful thoughts.
Her first impression was one of darkness and mustiness, but once she’d snapped on the light the hallway was bathed in a soft warm glow, making the worn strip of patterned carpet quite welcoming. The sense of cosiness increased as she ventured further inside, and it was with an air of expectation—but no eeriness—that Bonnie continued on through the house.
The first door leading off the hallway to the left revealed a formal sitting-room, or parlour, as it was once called. None of the furniture qualified as valuable antiques, Bonnie observed, but it was all rather quaint. She wandered through the room, running a gentle hand over the backs of the chintz-covered armchairs and ignoring the cobwebs in the corners.
A pair of louvred doors led into what could only be described as a morning-room or sun-room. It was surprisingly light, with a large window and pale polished floors. An old roll-top desk stood against one wall, a battered oak sideboard against another. The sun was streaming on to a round wooden table under the window and it occurred to Bonnie that to breakfast in such a room would be a marvellous start to the day.
She moved on, opening the only exit door to find herself in a long rectangular kitchen which was a real horror. An ancient electric stove was the only reasonably modern appliance in sight. There wasn’t even a refrigerator. Lord knew how that poor old woman had managed without one.
The kitchen led into a dining-room on the other side of the house, which, in turn, was connected through another pair of louvred doors to a library-cum-study This was a most attractive room, despite its carpet being threadbare, the velvet curtains mouldy, the leather chairs worn, and the bookshelves more full of dust than books.
The whole place had potential, she decided as she climbed the rather narrow staircase. And charm. She liked it. Surely someone else would like it too?
Upstairs, the main bedroom ran the entire length of the left side of the house. But it was empty except for a large brass bed covered in a hand-crocheted cream quilt. Clearly old Mrs McClelland hadn’t used the main bedroom, despite its not smelling musty in there at all. It did, in fact, carry a faint whiff of lavender. She went over and sniffed at the pillows. Yes... lavender.
The bathroom that came off the landing at the top of the stairs was as antiquated as the kitchen. Bonnie shook her head at the chipped enamel bath on legs, and the tiny washbasin with its plug on a chain. The separate toilet had a chain for flushing as well. This brought a smile till she remembered these were the very things that would make the house difficult to sell.
Only two rooms were left upstairs, both coming off a narrow L-shaped gallery on the right side of the stairwell.
For some unaccountable reason Bonnie walked past the nearest to open the other.
It was clearly the room the old lady had slept in, despite the lack of personal effects. The furniture was dark and heavy, the rug alongside the single bed worthy of being on the endangered species list, the patchwork quilt having seen better days. The whole room was depressing, she thought, and quickly shut the door.
Which left only one room to inspect. Bonnie walked swiftly back along the narrow hallway, wanting suddenly to be done with the house, yet when her hand reached to turn this last remaining knob she hesitated. An odd nervousness claimed her and she almost turned and walked away. Then something—some force much stronger than fear—impelled her wrist to turn.
After she let the knob go, the door seemed to open by itself, creaking slowly wide. With her heart in her mouth, Bonnie took a tremulous step inside, scooping in a startled breath as her eyes travelled around the room. The tentacles of some indefinable emotion wrapped themselves around her heart and squeezed tight, bringing with it an incredible wave of sadness.
It was a nursery.
Heavy legs carried her further into the room, shaking fingers creeping out to touch the white cradle, swinging it back and forth, back and forth. Her stomach twisted as she gazed at the purity of the snow-white sheets, the delicacy of the pink and white motifs sewn on to the pillow-case. She wanted to cry when she picked up the handmade toys, crafted with such love and attention to detail. And when she opened the baby-record book on top of the chest of drawers, the sudden constriction in her chest only reinforced what she already knew.
It was empty.
Not a word had been entered in that sad, sad testament. One glance had told Bonnie that this nursery had never been occupied. There were no chips on the white furniture, no marks on the wallpaper, no tell-tale damage to the toys.
Sympathy swelled her heart as she thought of old Mrs McClelland. What unfulfilled dreams lay in this room? What heartache?
Her eyes brimmed with sudden tears. Hastily she blinked them away and moved towards the large bay window that gave a perfect view of the ocean. The sun was quite hot through the glass and she flicked open the buttons of her jacket as she stood there, drinking in the view and willing herself to think happier thoughts.
But nothing could distract her from an overwhelming feeling of grief. Finally, her eyes dropped away, and she found herself peering down at the old-fashioned window-seat and the definite hollow in the padded seat.
Realisation jerked her back upright. Good God, she thought shakily. This was where the old lady used to sit and the impression of her body still lingered. How many hours had that poor woman spent here? How many times had she been drawn to this spot?
Something strangely compelling pulled Bonnie down till she was also sitting there, her back against the wooden window-frame, her green eyes glazing as they travelled along the same path those weary old eyes had travelled... into the past.
Only this time the past was Bonnie’s...
Keith had been getting ready for work that final day, buttoning up his policeman’s uniform, looking as handsome and dashing as ever. She’d watched him from where she lay, huddled up under the sheets, still not able to believe what had happened the night before.
It wasn’t that Keith had never hit her before. He had. But only with his hand, and never more than once, or twice.
But last night...
Oh, God, she could hardly bear to remember. The pain had been excruciating. It was still excruciating.
When he came over and sat down on the side of the bed, she couldn’t help cringing away from him.
‘Don’t be like that, Bonnie,’ he reproached. ‘It wasn’t my fault, you know. You made me lose my temper. Why didn’t you just tell me where you went yesterday in the first place? I knew you weren’t shopping. There were too many miles on the speedometer. You should have admitted you’d driven up to Morriset to visit your sister in the first place. I don’t mind you visiting Louise, as long as you ask permission first. If you’d done that, there would have been no reason for you to lie, and no reason for me to punish you for it.’
Bonnie stared at him, her head dizzy with fear.
‘Promise me you’ll ask permission next time,’ he said, cupping her chin and squeezing tight.
Her heart began to thud.
‘I want to hear you say it, Bonnie,’ he snarled. ‘Say, I promise I will ask permission next time.’
‘I... I promise I’ll ask permission next time,’ she choked out, her throat dry, her tongue thick.
‘Good girl.’
When he lowered his mouth to give her an obscenely deep kiss, his hands slipping under the sheets to play with her breasts at the same time, she was almost sick. When his mouth lifted and he began pinching one of her nipples, watching coldly while the pain registered in her eyes, she wanted to kill him.
‘Just a little reminder of what you can expect if you lie to me again,’ he warned before standing up abruptly and striding from the room. ‘Make sure you’re here when I get home,’ he called back over his shoulder.
She would never know if she would have been home at the end of that day, because Keith never came home. He was killed that morning, during a car chase, at an intersection. One of his colleagues called at the house soon afterwards to give her the bad news. He thought her tears were tears of grief, but he was wrong. They were tears of relief.
CHAPTER THREE
JORDAN studied the rough map that the chap at Coastal Properties had given him before gunning the engine of his car and driving off in search of the increasingly enigmatic Mrs Merrick.
His disappointment when he’d found out she wasn’t in the office had been sharp. But his unexpectedly early arrival had drawn some interesting information which he might not otherwise have gleaned about the woman.
Her dashing young colleague had not hidden his contempt for her business ethics, suggesting with a smirk that Jordan was a very lucky man to have someone like Mrs Merrick ‘handle’ him. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.
The various implications would have been clear to a brain-dead moron. A queen’s counsel certainly did not need to have it beaten into his head with a hammer.
Mrs Merrick, in her workmate’s opinion, was obviously not above using her physical assets when trying to make a sale. Jordan wasn’t sure if he was repelled or excited by that thought. It would seem likely that the lady must have some special assets worth trading on if she did business that way. In his experience, females with lax morals were pretty well always easy on the eye.
Yet tramps had never held any fascination for him. And he’d come across a good few in his thirty-six years.
If she was a tramp, that was. He’d found that people eager to offer unsought-after information about others were often lying. Or at least exaggerating. He resolved to keep an open mind on the subject of Mrs Merrick’s morals.
It took him a good ten minutes to find the dirt road, having driven right past it the first time. His patience was wearing thin by the time he made it down the rough track and up to what must have been the weirdest, ugliest old house he had ever seen. Parking next to a green Falcon, he climbed out, did up his suit jacket and dragged in a deep breath.
The moment of truth had come...
Bonnie sighed softly as she sat on in that room of dreams, mindless of time passing. It was as if she had entered another world where time stood still, where people could rest a while before picking up the strands of their lives again.
What first roused her from her trance-like state? Was it a sound, or the draught that suddenly chilled her legs? She stiffened in the window-seat, her eyelids fluttering nervously as they became fixed on the open doorway. Her ears strained to catch any more sounds but instantly all was very, very quiet.
Then she heard them. Unmistakable footsteps on the stairs, coming closer...closer...each soft thud a warning for her to move, to get up, to investigate. Her eyes grew wider as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, turned, then moved inexorably towards the nursery. Her heart began hammering wildly against her chest.
When a tall, dark figure loomed into the dimly lit rectangle that was the doorway, even her breathing ceased. All she could do was stare, her eyes round, her lips parted. Common sense told her this was not some ghost, come to haunt her. But her mind was too far from reality to grasp that fact sufficiently, to act upon it. And so she sat frozen on that window-seat, struggling to get some breath back into her stunned body.
Jordan could do nothing but stare, every muscle within his body having gone rigid with shock.
Dear God...
He’d expected a beauty of some sort, especially after his encounter with that chap from the office. But his mental picture of Mrs Merrick had shifted from a classy, sleek-haired brunette to a cheap, brassy blond. He certainly hadn’t been expecting an angel.
Yet that was exactly what she looked like sitting there in the sunlight... a gloriously golden angel. His breath caught in his throat as she lifted her chin slightly, and the rays of the sun caused a halo effect behind her head.
He took a startled step forward, a shift in the light allowing him to focus on the details of her face. Once again, he had to smother a gasp of shock. For there was nothing angelic about that face.
Oh, it was lovely all right. Exquisitely so. But there was something about those widely spaced green eyes and sinfully lush mouth which made one think of hell, not heaven, sin, not virtue, temptation, not restraint.
Suddenly, he wanted to pull her to her feet, drag her into his arms and bury his face into everything she was...and promised to be...from her hair to her breasts to her...
When the stranger took an abrupt step forward and his facial features broke into the light, Bonnie drew in a sharp breath.
Dear heaven, she thought shakily. She had come across a couple of exceptionally good-looking men in her life—her husband had been one of them—but this was something else. This man gave tall, dark and handsome new meaning.
But it wasn’t just his looks that held her momentarily captive. There was an intensity about him, especially in those deeply set dark eyes which were at that moment locked on her own. She could not stop staring at him. Neither could she find her voice. The seconds ticked away and the room started to swim around her. She tried to break her eyes away, but could not seem to find the strength, or will-power.
‘Mrs Merrick from Coastal Properties, I presume,’ the object of her staring said at last in a strangely cold voice.
It was enough to snap Bonnie out of herself, though not with as much instant composure as she would have liked.
‘Yes...yes...that’s right...that’s me,’ she said, slipping from the window-seat on to slightly numb feet. When a long golden curl came loose to fall across her right eye, she quickly looped it back behind her ear and drew in a deep, steadying breath.
‘And who might you be?’ she returned, hoping she sounded a darn sight calmer than she felt. Her rattled brain struggled to find the identity of this man who not only knew her name and place of employment, but who felt he had the right to walk into this house uninvited and unannounced.
Inspiration struck in a rush. ‘Oh, of course!’ she exclaimed ‘You must be Mrs McClelland’s nephew.’
The handsome stranger made no attempt to confirm this guess, or to come further forward. He slid his hands into the trouser pockets of his navy pin-striped suit and proceeded to survey her with unnerving attention to detail, his eyes sweeping slowly down her body, lingering on where her cream jacket was lying open at the front.
Bonnie’s chest tightened with dismay. It took all of her self-control not to grab the lapels of her jacket and hold the garment defensively closed across her chest.
For she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Frankly, she never wore one if she was wearing a suit with a lined jacket, simply because she looked less busty without one. Since she normally never undid her jacket at work, no one ever noticed. All she had to remember to do was not walk too fast. And what woman did that in high heels?
When the man’s gaze remained cool, not lascivious in any way, Bonnie felt some relief. But not enough for her to relax totally.
‘No, I am not Mrs McClelland’s nephew,’ the stranger informed her in an upper-crust accent. ‘I’m Jordan Vine-Hall. Your office directed me here. I did call out to you downstairs but you didn’t answer.’
Bonnie’s heart sank. Oh, God. Mr Moneybags himself! And she hadn’t been at the office to meet him.
Any dismay was quickly overridden by a surge of the same irritation he’d engendered in her during their earlier phone call. What right had he to drive up here so darned quickly? And why couldn’t he have been fat and bald? Why did he have to be the most impressive-looking man in the Southern hemisphere, maybe even the whole world? Lord, Daphne would have a field day when she got back to the office!
‘You shouldn’t have come out all this way, Mr Vine-Hall,’ she said extra-coolly in an attempt to hide her inner fluster. ‘I would have been back at the office by twelve.’
‘It’s just on twelve now, Mrs Merrick.’
A quick glance at her wristwatch brought a gasp of shock. ‘Good heavens, so it is! I... I lost track of time. I’m so sorry, Mr Vine-Hall. I don’t know what to say.’ Bonnie hated having to grovel, but she could see that a little grovelling was called for.
‘No need to apologise,’ he drawled. ‘As I said, I was early.’
‘I hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding me.’
‘I had good directions. Your—er—friend was most helpful.’
‘Oh, what friend was that?’
‘I think his name was Neil.’
The memory of the morning’s encounter with Neil swept back in and Bonnie grimaced. Whatever was she going to do about him? Should she tell Edgar or try to brazen the situation out?
‘Something wrong, Mrs Merrick?’
Bonnie was jerked back to the present. ‘No, no, I was just wondering where to take you first. I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in this place, would you?’
His face told it all.
‘I didn’t think so,’ she muttered drily. ‘Would you—um—mind waiting outside while I lock up?’
He glared at her for a second, then spun round and stalked off, leaving Bonnie with the impression of extreme irritation.
Her sigh carried a weary acceptance that the week might not start with an easy sale after all. Still, she supposed he had some right to be annoyed, coming all this way from Sydney then having to traipse out here after her, when he’d probably expected her to be there at the office, ready and waiting to dance attention on him. Wealthy men liked a lot of attention, she’d found.
Bonnie touched a slightly shaking hand to her head and glanced around the nursery. It was this room’s fault, she decided. She hadn’t wanted to come in here. She should have listened to her intuition. She should certainly have never sat down in that window-seat. Somehow, by doing so, the old woman’s pain had become her pain, filling Bonnie’s soul with a nameless yearning. It filled her now, yet remained tantalisingly out of reach.
What was it the old woman wanted her to do?
Bonnie shook her head. She was being fanciful again, the so-called haunted atmosphere getting to her. She didn’t believe in ghosts. She didn’t believe in haunted houses, or hidden messages from beyond. Her job here was to find a buyer for this place, not surrender to vague, highly emotional impulses.
Resisting the urge to give the room one last look, Bonnie closed the door and started down the stairs, doing up her jacket as she went. This time, she tried to see the house more as Mr Vine-Hall had and not through sentimental, rose-coloured spectacles.
It was a hideous old place. Run-down. Musty. Poky.
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, Bonnie felt oddly depressed.
But depressed salespeople rarely sold houses, so she made a conscious effort to brighten up before stepping outside, plastering a cheery smile on her face.
She needn’t have bothered, since her cantankerous client was standing on the veranda with his back to her. Every line in his body spelt impatience and tension, from the rigid set of his shoulders to the wide, feet-apart stance. She suspected he was a man who never relaxed, who lived life at too fast a pace. She wondered, for the second time, what he did for a living, and resolved to find out as soon as she could.
‘All set,’ she said brightly on joining him at the edge of the veranda.
He turned slowly towards her and once again she was struck by his looks, though up close and on second inspection he was not as conventionally handsome as she had first thought. His face was long and lean, his nose sharp, his mouth stern. It was a rather harsh, ascetic face, softened only by the wave of dark hair across his high forehead, and dominated by a pair of deep-set black eyes which drew one’s own eyes to them like a magnet. They had held her, transfixed, up in the nursery. They were holding her now, his gaze piercing, as though he was trying to see right into her very soul.
And what he was seeing was not to his liking.
Or was he always like this? she puzzled. Austere, grim, and coldly disapproving?
‘Shall we be using both cars?’ he asked curtly.
She noted the sleek bronze sedan parked on the other side of her Falcon. ‘I think we should go in mine,’ she said sensibly. ‘Otherwise we’ll waste valuable time.’
‘And my car?’ he asked, his left eyebrow arching sardonically skywards.
‘It will be quite safe here,’ she assured him, smothering any annoyance. The man definitely had an attitude problem. But she’d dealt with difficult clients before and prided herself on usually being able to bring them round. ‘I’ll lock the gates on the way out,’ she told him, and drummed up a placating smile.
No luck. All it produced was a half-sneer, as though her smile had been a long-awaited mistake.
‘But will I be safe, Mrs Merrick?’ he muttered.
‘Pardon?’
Her bewilderment at this cryptic comment seemed to surprise him.
‘I usually prefer to drive,’ he stated brusquely. ‘Do you drive competently, Mrs Merrick?’
‘I am a very competent driver,’ she snapped, giving in finally to irritation.
‘Yes, I’m sure you are,’ he said with an odd hint of scorn still in his voice. ‘I’m sure you’re very competent at everything you do. Shall we go?’ And he strode off down the steps in the direction of the cars, leaving a totally thrown Bonnie behind.
She glared after him, wondering what on earth she had done to get so far on his wrong side. Surely, if he’d been really annoyed by her not being at the office when he arrived, he could have demanded that someone else show him around?
Bonnie found it very frustrating to be on the end of such disfavour, particularly when she didn’t think it justified. All she could imagine was that Mr Vine-Hall was even more of a chauvinist than he’d displayed during his phone call this morning. There was no doubting his displeasure at having to deal with a woman. Any woman. Perhaps he considered doing business with such a young one the living end!
That had to be it, she supposed, though a niggling little something kept telling her there was more to this situation than met the eye. But what?
Shaking her head, she trailed after the man, thinking to herself that this was the worst Monday she had encountered in a long, long time. What else could go wrong?
Mr Vine-Hall was stretched out in the passenger seat by the time she slid behind the wheel, her automatic sidewards glance meeting a wary, sour-puss expression. Those unnerving black eyes flicked over her once more, and what he saw still didn’t seem to meet with his approval.
‘So where are we off to first, Mrs Merrick?’ he asked, that dry note still in his voice.
Bonnie suppressed a sigh and decided to give good manners and pleasantries one last try. ‘Perhaps you’d better call me Bonnie,’ she began with dogged optimism. ‘Not many people call me Mrs Merrick.’
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t imagine they do.’
Once again, Bonnie was taken aback. What on earth was going on here?
But then suddenly he smiled, and she was quite blown away. Not only by the change in his face—from churlish to charming in one second flat—but by the involuntary leap in her heart.
‘In that case you must call me Jordan,’ he returned smoothly. ‘Yes, I think first names are definitely called for, since I have a feeling we’re going to be spending quite some time together. I’m a very difficult man to please, you see, Bonnie. You’re going to have to earn every cent of your commission with me.’
‘I... I’ll do my best,’ she said, having to battle hard not to show how rattled she was feeling. Mr Vine-Hall’s about-face had been astonishing enough, but that was nothing to her own response to it.
She hoped against hope that it was just shock, and not a sexual thing. After Keith, Bonnie had feared good-looking men for a long time, but her experience with Neil—and a couple of others—had begun to reassure her that she was not blindly susceptible to a handsome face.
Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe they’d just been the wrong type of handsome face.
Her panic was instantaneous, fear making her stomach tighten and her heart thud. She found herself staring at that smiling mouth and wondering if its kiss would send her swirling into a sensuous mist, if the stroke of his tongue would ignite her blood, enslaving her senses, making her want whatever he wanted, making her weak as water in his arms.
Heat began to gather in her face, a heat that was as telling as it was embarrassing.
Wrenching her eyes away, she leant forward to fumble the key into the ignition. Totally flustered now, her reversing was disgracefully ragged, her forward acceleration down the driveway not much better, the car shuddering to a rough halt on the other side of the open gates. Bonnie’s hand shook as it reached for the door-handle.
‘I’ll lock the gates,’ her passenger offered abruptly.
Mortified, she sat stiffly behind the wheel while he moved to accomplish what she probably would have fouled up as well. ‘Competent’, she had claimed to be. A groan escaped her lips at the incompetence she had just displayed.
She watched in the rear-view mirror as he easily pulled the heavy gates shut and snapped the padlock in place. His actions were smooth and uncluttered, performed lithely with the agility of a young athlete. And yet, Bonnie judged, he must be at least thirty-five.
As he turned back to walk towards the car, she tore her gaze away, not wanting to be caught in the act of looking at him again. She could just imagine what he was already thinking.
Self-disgust had her getting a grip on her rampant emotions with a steely resolve. There would be no calling him by his first name. He would remain Mr Vine-Hall no matter how many hours they had to spend together. On top of that, if she found out that her reaction to his smile a moment ago was sexual, she would turn him over to Gary faster than one could say Jack Robinson.
Because there was one thing Bonnie was sure of. She wasn’t ready yet to become involved with another man. The wounds of her relationship with Keith were too recent, too raw. And while logic told her all men were not like Keith, she couldn’t envisage trusting any man again with her body, or her life, for a long, long time. Which meant keeping any unwanted hormonal activity firmly under control!
‘Thank you,’ she said crisply once the instigator of her internal lecture was resettled, keeping her eyes staunchly on the road ahead. ‘One thing I forgot to ask you, Mr Vine-Hall,’ she continued as she eased the car into gear and moved slowly down the bumpy road. ‘Does this weekender have to be in Blackrock Beach? We do have several very nice properties listed at some of the other local beaches.’
‘I was thinking of only Blackrock Beach when I rang,’ he replied thoughtfully, ‘but I can see it’s changed a lot. I was picturing the sleepy little seaside spot I used to holiday in as a boy, but it’s hardly that any more.’
‘No, it’s boomed since the expressway was put in from Sydney up to the Central Coast. Hardly a block in view of the beach which hasn’t been built on.’
‘Yes, so I noticed. So no... I won’t hold you exclusively to Blackrock Beach. Show me whatever you think might suit. I do like my peace and quiet at the weekend. And a reasonable amount of privacy.’
Bonnie had reached the end of the dirt road by now, and was feeling decidedly better with this businesslike conversation. If she didn’t have to look into his undeniably handsome face too much, and he didn’t smile at her too often, she should be able to get through this afternoon without any more awkward moments.
‘Oh, and Bonnie...’ His pregnant pause forced her to look over at him.
‘Yes?’
‘You agreed to call me Jordan, remember?’
And he smiled at her again.
CHAPTER FOUR
GODDAMN it, she was blushing again!
A guilty confusion wiped the smile off Jordan’s face. If there was one thing he knew about women of easy virtue it was that they didn’t blush when you started coming on to them. Neither did they keep breaking eye contact or become totally flustered.
The truth of the matter quickly sank in. That bastard back at the real-estate office had lied about her. She wasn’t a tramp at all. She was a respectable married woman who was too damned sexy-looking for her own good.
It certainly put a different interpretation on her reactions to him. Any hope that she’d been giving him the eye was obliterated. Clearly, her staring was because he must have seemed horribly rude. Hell, he had been horribly rude, right from the start!
She wasn’t to know he’d been fighting urges which till today had been totally alien to his personality. Good lord, he hadn’t surrendered to any form of uncontrollable passion since he was an adolescent! On top of that, the last female on earth he would consider trying to seduce would be a married woman, albeit a supposedly amoral one. He’d seen the pain adultery caused.
Yet that was exactly what he wanted to do. Seduce her.
He’d staunchly resisted temptation at first, only to give in finally, deliberately misinterpreting her offer that he call her by her first name, thinking he only had to turn on a bit of charm to make her realise he was willing to go along with whatever was on offer.
Shame was hard on the heels of guilt. Jordan knew he was no saint—what man was?—but his behaviour today had been appalling. So the woman was exquisite, with a voice like cool silk and a body men might kill for. So what? That was no excuse.
Damn it all, he’d defended men in court who had done just that, committed crimes of passion over a beautiful woman. He’d always thought what fools they were. There were plenty of other beautiful women in the world. Why ruin their lives over just one? Why not simply walk away and climb into another bed? What made them so vulnerable to that one particular woman that they could think of nothing and no one else?
Such obsessions were the result of a sick mind, he used to believe. Or a weak character. Suddenly, he was gaining a different perspective on sexual obsession. And he didn’t like it one bit.
Jordan wanted no part of such a weakness, no part at all!
His inner torment was getting out of hand when his usual ruthless logic came to his rescue. This obsession—for want of a better word—was due to nothing more than an acute case of male frustration. He’d been working incredibly long hours over the past few weeks. Why, he hadn’t even had a spare hour to write, let alone make love.
Erica, of course, had been very understanding, which was only to be expected. Her lack of any real physical passion was something Jordan actually found reassuring. Hell, the last sort of woman he wanted for a wife would be one who actually needed sex. How would he be able to trust her when this sort of thing happened after they were married?
He could still remember that awful Saturday afternoon when he’d come home injured from soccer practice, only to stumble across his mother ‘entertaining’ a man who wasn’t his father on the sofa. He’d been just fifteen and up till then had thought his mother little short of a saint.
He’d stood there, white-faced and shaken, while she’d scrambled into some clothes and shuffled the man out of the back door. When she’d returned to face her son, she’d launched into a muddled explanation, all the while floods of tears running down her flushed cheeks.
Jordan had listened to her pleas for understanding with a chilled heart. She’d claimed she still loved his father but that he was hardly ever home, his ambition to become a judge taking up all his spare time. She’d sobbed that she needed company, needed to be loved.
Needed to be screwed, more like it, he’d decided, having seen the man she’d chosen for her lover. He’d been very good-looking and very common, with tattoos over his arms. Not the type to know much about love, only sex.
She’d begged him not to tell his father, and he hadn’t. But someone else must have, for he’d overheard his parents having a bitter row that night.
Nothing was ever the same after that. His parents hadn’t divorced, but an air of cold remoteness had descended on their relationship which never thawed. Adultery had destroyed his parents’ marriage, plus his own respect for his mother. It was the ultimate betrayal, in his opinion, and Jordan wanted no part of it!
He decided then and there to ask Erica to marry him this very night. Make the commitment official, after which he would sweep her off to bed. That should set his equilibrium to right!
‘By all means call me Mr Vine-Hall, if you’re more comfortable with that,’ Jordan resumed, his tone crisp. ‘I wouldn’t like you to think I was trying to come on to a married woman.’
Bonnie swallowed. Had she been thinking that? Admittedly, she’d been flustered by his suddenly being nice to her, but she hadn’t really stopped to find a reason for it. Her brain seemed to have been scrambled by his smile along with her body.
She steeled herself and looked over at him. He was no longer smiling, but when their eyes met an electric charge seemed to sizzle across the space between them, making her stomach tighten and her breasts prickle alarmingly, Intuition told her that he would come on to her if she weren’t a married woman.
Tell him you’re not married, whispered an insidious little voice. Tell him you’re a widow.
She clenched her jaw underneath the force of the temptation, shuddering inside as she remembered where her carnal weaknesses had led her last time—to hell and back. No way could she risk such treatment again. No way. Let him continue to think she was married. It was the only wise course of action.
‘Of course I don’t think that, Jordan,’ she said, amazing herself at the cool tone she’d found in her desperation. ‘I can recognise a gentleman when I see one. Now, there’s a place at Bateau Bay which I’d like to show you. The lady who owns it is sure to be home and doesn’t mind if I drop in at any time.’
His returning smile was rather wry, she thought, but infinitely preferable to his earlier, disturbingly sensual offering. ‘I’m totally at your disposal,’ he said.
Bonnie managed to keep a straight face, despite her decidedly x-rated thoughts. God, she was wicked. Wicked and weak. She’d been afraid this would happen to her one day. No, not afraid—terrified! She’d always known it was still there, deadly and dormant, despite those last months of marriage having seemingly frozen every desire for sex she had ever had.
OK, so it had taken an exceptional man to melt her ice, but still... that ice had proven to be a disconcertingly thin layer. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop her mind skittering from one erotic image to another, couldn’t stop her body flooding with a sexual awareness that was both appalling yet insidiously exciting.
Hating herself, she carefully put on her right-hand indicator and headed north.
Jordan didn’t like the first place she showed him. Too large, he said. Or the second. Too small. Or the third. Too noisy. The fourth seemed to find some favour, though he would not be drawn into over-effusiveness. By this time it was half-past one and when he suggested that they stop somewhere for a bite to eat Bonnie reluctantly agreed. Already, time spent with the man had increased her awareness of his physical attractions. Added to that was an admiration of the man himself, and what he did for a living.
He was a barrister. Not an ordinary barrister, either. A queen’s counsel. It was no wonder he was impressive, not only in his looks but his general bearing. Never had Bonnie seen a man carry himself with such superb aplomb. Or was the word panache?
Whatever, there was no doubt he was the most self-contained, self-possessed man she had ever come across, not to mention the most attractive. The prospect of just the two of them having an intimate little lunch together was daunting indeed. But she could hardly object. Besides, she was starving herself.
They ended up at a café in a small shopping square in Erina which had umbrellaed tables outside in the sun and a delightful little menu. Bonnie chose a vegetable pie with a side-salad and coffee, Jordan opting for the same, but with chips and a bread roll included.
‘Have you been selling real estate long?’ was his first question after they’d given their orders.
‘Two years,’ she admitted, reminding herself to be careful not to accidentally reveal her widow status. Continuing with the ruse was more difficult than she’d realised. A couple of times already she’d almost unconsciously given the game away.
‘You’re good,’ he said. ‘Refreshingly honest and not pushy. I’ll bet you’ve been very successful.’
‘I have been of late. I even won a pewter mug for best salesperson last month.’
‘Ahh...’
His ‘ahh’ sparked her curiosity. ‘What do you mean by “ahh”?’
‘Nothing, really. Do you work at the weekend?’
‘Almost always.’
That eyebrow lifted again. It was a habit of his, she realised, the gesture carrying a range of expressions from merely curious to cynical to drily amused to downright sarcastic. She could well imagine him using it to good effect in court to undermine a witness’s testimony, or as a clever personal aside with the jury. She could see him now, setting those jet-black eyes of his on some highly susceptible woman juror, lifting that eyebrow and immediately creating an intimate little bond between them.
‘What about this weekend?’ he asked. ‘Will you be working this weekend?’
‘Yes.’
His frown confused her a little. What was it he wanted to do this weekend? Surely he wasn’t going to ask her out, not when he thought her a married woman?
Such a prospect should have shocked her. Instead, she found it unnervingly exciting.
‘Right,’ he said curtly ‘In that case I’d like to bring my fiancée up this Saturday, once we’ve narrowed the choices down to a couple of places.’
Bonnie felt the breath leave her lungs in a whoosh. A fianceé... He had a fiancée.
Well, of course he has, you stupid idiot! Either that or a wife. What did you expect? Men like Jordan Vine-Hall don’t go round unsnapped up unless they’re perennial playboys or gay.
Bonnie suspected she looked as dismayed as she felt. Which was crazy. She should be grateful, since it put him firmly beyond her reach. God, get it together, girl, she told herself firmly. ‘What time would you like me to be available?’ she asked, avoiding his eyes and struggling to keep her voice steady.
When he didn’t answer, she glanced up, only to find him staring at her with narrowed eyes.
‘Doesn’t your husband find it annoying to have you work every weekend?’ he asked sharply.
Bonnie decided there was no point in continuing with this fiasco, which was beginning to be a strain. Besides, what would happen if someone back at the office let the cat out of the bag? She would look a fool.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I didn’t realise you didn’t know. I’m a widow. My husband died three years ago.’
Jordan felt as if someone had just punched him in the stomach. A widow. She was a widow!
Goddammit, he thought savagely. Goddammit!
His fists curled into tight balls and he rubbed them up and down on his thighs under the table, an explosive emotion charging through his veins. If he’d known she was a widow, he would never have mentioned Erica, would never have given her any reason to reject him.
For he had to have her. He could see that now. He’d pretended to himself that he could resist temptation when it would have meant committing adultery, but not even the most noble intention had stopped him still wanting her. It had been building in him all afternoon. The desire. The passion. The need.
Maybe he would have been able to resist in the end. Maybe he would have been able to go away meekly and forget her. But she’d opened the Pandora’s box now. She was free, free to accept his advances, free to accept his love.
Love?
Good God, was he mad? He didn’t love the woman. He didn’t love any woman. Love was for adolescents and masochists. He wanted her, that was all. It was sex, nothing more.
This last reaffirmation sent his brain catapulting back to his earlier reasoning that it wasn’t Bonnie Merrick he was wanting so badly, but any woman. A night or two in Erica’s bed and this insane yearning would quickly become a distant memory.
But what if it didn’t? What then, Jordan? What then...?
Bonnie was taken aback by his reaction to her announcement. He looked almost angry. Yet why should he be angry? It didn’t make. sense.
‘You’re very young to be a widow,’ he said at last, ‘let alone one of three years.’
‘I’m twenty-five,’ she said, rather defensively.
‘Was your husband much older?’
‘A couple of years.’
‘Only a couple of years. What did he die of?’
‘He was killed on the job...in a car accident. He was a policeman.’
He mouthed another of those non-committal ‘ahh’s.
‘And children?’ he went on after a few seconds’ silence. ‘Do you have children?’
‘No.’ Thank God, she thought. For a while she had begged Keith to let her have a child, thinking it might solve their problems, but of course it would have been the worst thing they could have done. She was grateful now that he had refused to give her a child, no matter how sick his reasons.
‘Do you regret that?’
‘Not really. I was too young to be a mother back then.’
‘How old were you when you were married?’ ‘Nineteen.’
That is young,’ he agreed.
Their food arrived at that moment, bringing a welcome break to what Bonnie was beginning to feel was an inquisition. Perhaps it was the lawyer in him, but when he asked questions Jordan was very intimidating. It reminded Bonnie uncomfortably of Keith’s never-ending third degrees. She decided it was time to turn the tables.
‘So tell me some more about your life, Jordan?’ she asked as she cut her vegetable pie into quarters. ‘Why haven’t you married before now?’
‘I hadn’t met the right woman.’
‘And is your fiancée much younger than you?’
‘Erica’s twenty-four. I’m thirty-six.’
Bonnie detected a curtness in his voice. He didn’t want to talk about his fiancée, this Erica. She wondered why.
‘I’ll bet you work hard,’ she remarked.
‘Too hard.’
‘Which is why you need some place where you can come and relax.’
His laugh startled her. ‘I doubt I’ll end up doing much relaxing up here.’
‘I... I don’t understand.’
He settled those incredible eyes on her and a little shiver ran down her spine. ‘I write in my spare time, you see,’ he explained, obliterating the sudden ridiculous fear that he was somehow referring to her, that he meant to spend his weekends in orgies of wanton behaviour with none other than Mrs Bonnie Merrick, the closet nympho of Blackrock Beach. ‘When I write, I hole up in my study and tap away on my PC in a compulsive fervour. Relaxation is far from my mind, which is invariably tormented with all sorts of wild characters and wickednesses.’
‘Goodness!’ she exclaimed, hoping she wasn’t betraying any of her own wildly wicked thoughts. ‘What on earth do you write? Accounts of the murder trials you’ve been involved in?’ When talking of his work he’d explained that his law firm was ninety per cent criminal defence, mostly on capital cases.
Again he laughed. ‘If I tell you, will you promise to keep it a secret?’
‘Of course.’
‘I write thrillers.’
‘But how wonderful! I love thrillers. Have you been published?’
He nodded.
‘Would I have read any?’
‘I doubt it. I’ve only had three out so far, under the name of Roger Black. They’re all about a lawyer named Richard Halliday who solves the most gruesome crimes. Plenty of sex and violence, with undertones of political anarchy. My publisher thinks the public will love them, but, alas, my family and business colleagues would not.’
‘Why not?’
He gave her a look that suggested she knew nothing of his world.
‘What about your fiancée?’ she persisted, perhaps foolishly. But she was curious about the sort of woman Jordan would choose as his wife. ‘What does she think?’
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Miranda Lee
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Hidden PowersWhy did Jordan Vine-Hall make Bonnie Merrick lose her cool? Jordan exuded the sort of arrogance that Bonnie detested, but surely that should have stopped her from being drawn to him so strongly! After being widowed, Bonnie had taken control of her life and was fast becoming a successful real-estate agent.But when she showed Jordan around the old McClelland house – which was rumored to be haunted – something else took over… Suddenly Bonnie and Jordan became obsessed by a passion they just couldn′t resist!