Norman nodded. 'Rhys is a reputable and highly respected source on the Merlin legends. Coupled with our own research into the Arthurian fantasy, his contribution will be invaluable.'
She took the tools he was handing her from the garden shed and was about to agree with his statement when she heard the unmistakable roar of the Ferrari's exhaust. Her head jerked up, her nostrils flaring as she breathed the crisp air, like an animal scenting danger, only relaxing when she realised that the powerful car, with its daunting driver, was leaving, not arriving.
'That cousin of mine never did learn how to relax,' Norman offered, watching the Ferrari exit between the gateposts. 'He's always going somewhere in a hurry—got to be head of the pack. Oh, and by the way' —his eyes had fallen on the heavy teak garden seat, set beneath the solitary tree— 'we'll move that seat on Saturday afternoon. Put it on the terrace; it will get more sun there.'
The auction was to be held on Saturday morning, so Annie didn't think the position of the seat relevant. After all, by next summer she and Norman would be beginning their married life together at Monk's Hall—of that she was very sure. So she said nothing, following as he trundled the wheelbarrow down the path, and when Norman said, 'What do you think of him?' she didn't know whom he was talking about. Her mind had been on that auction and the sense of glorious achievement that would be hers after she had made her successful bid.
'I haven't given him much thought,' she lied as soon as she'd decided Luke was the subject under discussion.
Norman said sourly, 'Then you must be a one-off. Women have been thinking of nothing but him ever since he reached eighteen!'
'He never married?' Annie queried, unwilling to be drawn into any conversation centred around Luke, yet perversely fuelling it.
Norman shrugged. 'Ten years ago he was too busy making his first million to have time for thinking of settling down. Too busy to want to make a serious commitment. And later, well…' his mouth drooped distastefully '…I suppose he realised he was on to a good thing. He'd been used to having affairs—a succession of sophisticated women moving through his life the way the seasons move through the year.' He tugged on his gardening gloves, his expression disgusted. 'I can't approve of that kind of shallow behaviour.'
'No,' Annie nodded, tight-lipped. That made two of them! 'So you don't think he'll ever settle down?'
'Pigs might fly!' Norman grunted. 'He long since discovered he could take his pleasures as and when it suited him, no regrets—no strings. Having to remain faithful to one woman for the rest of his life would bore him mindless.' He drove the fork into the ground, lifting a clump of prize-sized beets. 'His values are not ours, Annie, my dear. He's a bit of a cynic, too; he likes to travel light, far and fast, and, most of all, alone.'
'And his job?' Norman's information came as no surprise. She had already, intuitively, had him pegged as a loner, a hard man, sufficient unto himself. A shallow womaniser—hadn't his blatant sexual overture to her, his own cousin's fiancée, given her proof of that? She quite expected Norman to tell her, He's a wheeler-dealer. Something in the world of high finance, just this side of the law. But what he did say shook her, rooted her feet to the ground.
'He's in the hotel business in a big way. He's got strings of them—the sort that cost an arm and a leg just to walk through the foyer. Not my cup of tea.' He was dismissive. 'They're mostly situated abroad, where the very rich go to play, but lately— so he tells me—he's moving into the UK, buying up period property and—' He bit his words back, as if only just realising he'd said too much. Then he added, quickly and gruffly, 'Let's get a move on. It looks as if we'll have a good crop of beets this year, even better than last.'
Silently, she watched him work for a few moments. Her body was rigid, as still as if it were carved from stone. But her mind was racing.
So that was it. Luke Derringer wouldn't be wasting his time in a quiet backwater like Seabourne if cash registers weren't pinging in his ears! He liked to travel, fast and light. He wouldn't be interested in Monk's Hall as a home. Oh, no, it was to be one of his first UK projects! A gracious, select hotel for those who preferred a luxurious, peaceful holiday? A prestigious retreat for those of the very rich who had outgrown the glitz and glamour of jet-set playgrounds?
She raised her delicately curved chin, her nostrils dilating. Not if she could help it!
'I'll give you a lift.' It was a statement, not a suggestion, and as always that deep, slightly husky voice made Annie's spine tingle.
'No, thank you.' She had been adjusting the jade silk scarf she was wearing with a collar less, slim-fitting, dark grey suit, and she turned from the small hall mirror and looked straight through him.
She could be very good at looking through people if she really put her mind to it, but, to her intense annoyance, he merely laughed. It was a rich sound, deep in his throat.
Predictably, infuriatingly, her pulses began to race. He had a terrible effect on her senses, and the worst of it was, he knew it! No, she corrected herself—not the absolute worst. She simply didn't know what to do about it, and there could be nothing worse than that. Despite knowing exactly what a shallow heel he was—that knowledge springing from her own intuition and his cousin's lips—the philandering devil still had the power to make her quake inside. He still haunted her mind, waking or sleeping!
He considered her, his head slightly on one side, half smiling.
'Why not? We're both going to the auction. Pointless to take two cars.' The smile widened, touching his eyes, making them sparkle like precious gems. 'I'll give you lunch afterwards.'
The hell you will! she screamed at him in her mind. If small doses of him affected her so strangely she couldn't bear to contemplate what an intimate lunch for two would do! And it would be intimate, she knew he'd make sure of that. He'd been seducing her with his eyes ever since he'd arrived. And as he was Norman's guest—not to mention the fact that he was also Norman's cousin—it was particularly reprehensible.
'How kind!' she snapped sarcastically, reaching for her grey suede handbag, tucking it under her arm like a weapon. 'I have far too many things to do. In any case, I would prefer to have my lunch here, with my fiancé.'
'Why so antagonistic?' He calmly removed the handbag from her clutching fingers and replaced it on the telephone-table, asking huskily, 'Do you know? Or would you like me to tell you?'
He lifted a leisurely hand to her face, his fingers lightly touching her skin. Annie flinched, her eyes widening as they winged up to meet his. The blue was startling, vivid, deep, and she felt as if she were drowning, while that husky voice was having a shamefully disastrous effect on her, hypnotic almost.
'I wanted you from the first,' he told her silkily. 'And you know it. It was an instant reaction—a chemical response—call it what you will, but it was there. And you felt it, too. But you're denying it, fighting it. And so you translate all that emotion into antagonism.'
His words appalled the part of her mind that was still capable of logical thought. She tried to speak, to deny his every shaming word, but hot sensation flooded through her, drying her mouth, clogging her throat.
He was close and coming closer, and she managed to croak, 'Don't!' but didn't manage to move. She couldn't move, despite the thumping of adrenalin through her veins. She knew he was going to kiss her.
He had leaned forward, the intention clear in his eyes, in the sensual softening of the hard, incised mouth, and there was nothing, nothing at all she could do to prevent it. Something long buried, something primitive and undeniable, had surfaced, taking her over. Hazily, her eyes focused on his mouth.
As he kissed her, her eyes closed helplessly. She had no will-power left, none at all, as her lips parted willingly beneath the searching pressure of his. Desire came in a relentless flood, sweeping her away like a mindless weakling. Norman's occasional, undemanding kisses left her feeling warm inside, comforted. This was elemental, burning her up.
Physical need, too familiar to be disguised, prope
lled her hands to slide over the width of his shoulders, curving around his neck, twining through the crisp dark hairs at the nape of his neck, and, groaning softly, he deepened the kiss, fusing them together in this single, basic need.
Then, abruptly, he released her, drawing away, his eyes glittering with some nameless emotion as he said raggedly, 'Deny what there is between us, and you're a liar.' Then he walked away, leaving her shaken and stunned.
She didn't know how she drove to Monk's Hall without wrecking the runabout she and Joan shared. She felt mangled inside with sheer, blistering rage.
He would never have dared to kiss her like that, say the things he'd said, had anyone else been in the house. But Norman, unaccountably, had elected to go with Joan into town to pick up the weekend shopping—much to Joan's unconcealed delight and her own annoyance.
She had expected him to attend the auction with her—it was their future home that was going under the hammer, when all was said and done! And he might have known she would need his moral support because that louse Luke would be there, putting his bids in!
But no—oh, no! She crunched through gears and almost stalled the engine. He had decided to accompany Joan, as if she needed all the help she could get and hadn't been doing the weekend shopping for years!
So Norman had left her alone with Luke and Luke had kissed her. That made her very angry. That his kiss had filled her, body and soul, with burning sensation made her angrier still! She disgusted herself. And what poor Norman would have to say if he ever discovered how his cousin had taken advantage of his absence didn't bear thinking about. And what he would think if she ever told him how Luke's kiss had affected her made her mind boggle.
She arrived at Monk's Hall very ruffled. Dozens of cars were parked on the main driveway, spilling out into the quiet street. She spotted the gun-metal Ferrari and clamped her teeth together, groaning as the unwelcome memory of how it had felt to be in his arms stirred stinging sensation to life in her loins.
People were already taking their seats in the long salon. Many of those occupying the folding wooden seats were obviously onlookers, peering round avidly at each newcomer. But Luke Derringer, standing, his elegantly dark-suited back to her as he looked out from one of the tall windows, was no onlooker.
He would, if he could, turn this potentially beautiful home into an expensive hotel, small but prestigious, a means of pouring yet more money into his already heavily laden pockets! He would take it from her if he could, just as he would take kisses on a whim, and, she decided, her face going hot, just as much more as she could be persuaded to 'allow'!
Some men were like that. A fleeting attraction was all it took. And the more unscrupulous among them—such as Luke Derringer—wouldn't turn a hair even if the object of the fleeting, shallow physical attraction happened to be engaged to a member of his own family!
But women were different. They allowed their emotions to become involved, and if they weren't careful could end up betrayed and hurt. But she, Annie, knew how to be careful, to rank a man's character higher than the transient lusts of the flesh. At least, she hoped she did!
She slipped into a vacant seat in the centre of the back row, murmuring her excuses as she edged past an elderly farmer and two stout women with almost identical red faces beneath garish headscarves. Her heartbeat was fast, too fast, and she knew she had to compose herself before the serious business of bidding began.
The woman on her left leaned forward and began gossiping with a faded man in a trilby on the row in front and Annie leaned back, closing her eyes, taking deep, slow breaths. Luke Derringer wouldn't take this house from her, she silently vowed. That he had already taken something more important she wasn't yet ready to admit. But, whatever happened, she wasn't going to let him emerge the victor in this battle for Monk's Hall. She would use every last penny of her father's legacy to ensure it didn't happen.
During her lifetime she'd had precious little to thank her father for. He and her mother had already been divorced by the time she'd reached her first birthday. In all those years she'd never received so much as a postcard from him. But now she sent a private prayer of thankfulness because he had remembered her at the end of his life.
From the head of the room someone called for silence and after a buzz of quickening interest the room became unnaturally quiet as the auctioneer took his place.
After banging his hammer he looked at the sea of faces, announced the reserve price set by the client and went on to extol the virtues of the house, quoting from the catalogue when he said that Monk's Hall had been built in the reign of Queen Anne on the site of an ancient monastery.
As he opened the bidding a gaunt-eyed man whom Annie recognised as one of the local vets raised his catalogue, and the auctioneer nodded.
'I have a bid of one hundred and five thousand, ladies and gentlemen.'
Annie's fingers clenched tightly around her own catalogue, the paper feeling smooth and cool. Normal interest would push the bidding a fair bit higher. She would wait for the faint-hearted to be weeded out.
Carefully, she watched the back of Luke's head, sleek, dark, relaxed. He hadn't made a move. But, like her, he wouldn't join battle just yet. Her heart was pattering wildly as she tried to work out just how much he would be willing to pay. There had to be a certain line beyond which the profitability of the enterprise would become doubtful, she supposed.
The bidding had stuck now with a florid-faced man in the centre of the room, and Annie raised her catalogue.
'Two hundred thousand,' the auctioneer intoned expressionlessly.
From the front of the room Luke drawled, 'And ten.'
From then on the bidding went on relentlessly, with only the two of them in combat. The room was silent save for Annie's cool tones, Luke's drawled responses and the occasional hiss of indrawn breath from the onlookers as the tension mounted and thickened.
Outwardly calm but inwardly panicking, Annie calculated the amount of her own savings plus the surrender value of her life insurance policy, and made what would have to be her final bid.
For long, agonising moments her breath stuck in her throat, hurting her. Had Norman been here, she thought wildly, pressing the clammy palms of her hands together, then she could have asked him to add a little of his own financial weight.
But he wasn't here, and even if he had been, she acknowledged sickly, he would have been aghast at the amount she had already put on the table. Norman liked a bargain, and at the price Monk's Hall was going to fetch it wasn't one.
The sound of Luke's voice, topping her final bid by yet another ten thousand, came as no real surprise to Annie. In her heart she supposed she had always known that he would emerge the victor in any confrontation between the two of them.
She had lost Monk's Hall and would have to watch as it was turned into an hotel—yet another means of profit for the loathsome Luke Derringer. The blood draining from her face, she sat on her hard wooden seat and hated him as she had never hated anything or anyone in her life.
CHAPTER THREE
'I'm sorry about that.' Chris Howard's smooth tones penetrated Annie's raging mind as she tried to slot the key into the car door. She had been the first to walk out of the house, not daring to look to right or left because, if she had, she would have burst into tears. Luke Derringer had stolen the house she'd wanted for herself and Norman. That Norman had finally relented and told her to go ahead and bid had seemed like a good omen. But Luke had come on the scene and spoiled everything.
Chris had stepped into his father's shoes a few years ago, buying up the opposition in the small town, making the old-fashioned, family-owned firm the most successful estate agency and auctioneers in the area.
He looked genuinely concerned as he added, 'I know how you'd set your heart on owning Monk's Hall. Mind you…' his prematurely lined face softened wryly '…even if you'd managed to get it, you'd have had a hell of a job winkling Norman out of his cosy nest on the other side of town!'
She was about
to put him straight, to tell him that Norman had already given in, told her to go ahead, even promising to make himself responsible for any structural repairs that needed doing. But Chris was in there before her.
'As a matter of fact, Norman phoned me yesterday. He said you'd be bidding and asked me to look out for you afterwards. He guessed you'd be upset when Derringer walked away with the house you'd wanted and he suggested I take you for coffee. Would you like some? Or something stronger?'
'Why should he do that?' Annie shoved the car key back in her handbag, afraid that her shaky attempts to unlock the door would give her feelings away.
Chris looked embarrassed and that didn't surprise her. She understood what had happened and a new, slower, deeper anger was born. She said tightly, 'Norman only gave me his blessing because he knew I didn't stand a chance against that cousin of his.'
Chris didn't deny it. He looked over her head, his face uncomfortable.
'Giving you false hope was a lousy thing to do. I told him as much. Come on, I'll buy you that coffee.' He took her arm, but she found a smile from somewhere and tugged gently away.
'There's no need, but thank you all the same. There are one or two things I have to do.'
Turning briskly on her heel, she walked away, her back rigid, her footsteps firm and undeviating as she turned on to the narrow, steep walkway that led down beside the grounds of Monk's Hall to the shore.
She needed to be alone to come to terms with what Norman had done, and at this time of the year the beach would probably be deserted. The wide stretch of sand was backed by high unscalable cliffs, the only access from the town itself a narrow road to the small harbour, through the ravine, which was why Seabourne had never grown as a popular tourist resort.
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