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CHAPTER ONE
His lips were warm on the tender skin of her throat. Somewhere along the way Nigel had removed his T-shirt and she could feel the heat of his body through her fine silk blouse. She closed her eyes tight and told herself that she was enjoying his kisses. It was Nigel—her friend, her colleague and soon to be her lover.
They were sprawled across the sofa in Zoe's London apartment, the only sound Nigel's heavy breathing. She felt his fingers at the buttons of her blouse and tensed, then forced herself to relax. Hadn't she planned this? She was twenty, and still a virgin! And now she was finally going to be a woman! So why did she feel sick?
The thought stopped her cold, and, shoving at Nigel's chest, she said, 'No, Nigel. Get off.' The ensuing tussle was undignified and bordering on the ridiculous. Zoe struggled from beneath his sprawling body but her elbow caught him in the eye, and his yelp of pain was drowned out by the ringing of the doorbell, followed by loud and rapid knocking.
'Saved by the bell!' Zoe murmured, and dashed across the room. Whoever was calling after midnight was in danger of waking the whole house. Her apartment was one of six in a converted Victorian town house.
She flung open the door, about to demand what all the urgency was for, and stopped. Her mouth fell open and she brushed a small hand through the tumbled mass of her silver-blonde hair, sweeping it out of her eyes to get a better view. It couldn't be. . . But it was. . . Justin Gifford.
For a second she saw the old Justin, as he had been before the fatal night of her eighteenth birthday. He was smiling tenderly down at her, his dark eyes filled with some emotion she could not guess at.
'Justin.' She said his name, and raised her hand as though to touch him, but he brushed past her and into the room. She closed the door and turned around. Obviously she had been mistaken about his tender glance, she thought dryly.
'So that's what stopped you.' Nigel's voice broke the tense silence. 'You heard the bell.'
Zoe glanced at Nigel, who was sitting on the sofa, struggling to pull his shirt back on, and then back at Justin.
The comparison was inevitable. Nigel looked like a flushed, frustrated twenty-one-year-old—which he was. Whereas Justin, at thirty-five, and touching six feet tall, exuded an aura of sophisticated, arrogant masculinity that was undeniable. Certain of his place and power in the world as a top barrister with a glittering future, tipped to be one of the youngest judges ever appointed, he dominated those around him without even trying.
He was doing it now! Standing in the centre of the room, a long cashmere overcoat draped casually over his broad shoulders. Beneath it a black wool roll-neck sweater moulded the muscular contours of his broad chest, and black denim jeans did the same for his long legs. His night-black hair was, unusually for him, rumpled in disarray and the contempt in his eyes, as he recognised at a glance what had been going on, was unmistakable.
His gaze swept over her small, dishevelled form and the furious glitter in his deep brown eyes would have made a saint quake. . .
'Does your lover live with you?' he demanded harshly.
Zoe tensed, and wiped her damp palms nervously down her jean-clad thighs. She wriggled her bare toes in the deep-pile carpet and straightened her shoulders in a vain attempt to add inches to her diminutive stature. She tilted back her head and looked a long way up into angry eyes.
'I don't think that is any of your business, Justin. More to the point, what are you doing here at this hour?' She was proud—her voice sounded firm when inside she was trembling. Nigel was not helping any by pulling his shirt down with one hand and knuckling his eye with the other, looking like a drowsy, sated male.
'I'm making it my business, Zoe.' Justin stepped towards her, his massive frame looming over her. She had nowhere to go; her back was at the door. 'Is that the kind of pipsqueak you prefer?' he demanded scathingly. 'I can't say I admire your taste. Get rid of him. Now.'
'Nigel is my guest— she spluttered.
'So he doesn't live here?' Justin cut in, and simply grabbed her arm and swung her behind him while roaring at Nigel, 'You—whatever your name is—get out.'
Nigel got to his feet. 'Wait just a minute. Who the hell do you think you are? Zoe and I—'
'There is no Zoe, not for you. Now out, before I throw you out.'
Zoe had seen Justin angry before, but never like this. 'You'd better go, Nigel,' she said quietly. Justin's hand around her wrist relaxed slightly at her surrender to his request. . .
'It's OK. Justin is my uncle's partner; I'll be all right,' she assured him, and she was free. Involuntarily she rubbed her wrist as she stepped away from Justin's towering presence, looking, if she did but know it, as if she was wringing her hands in agitation.
After a token objection Nigel left, and Zoe didn't blame him. She had first met Justin Gifford as a sad and frightened fourteen-year-old who had just lost her actor parents in an air disaster in California. She had been swept from her boarding-school
in Portland, Maine, to be deposited on her only relative, Uncle Bertie Brown, in England.
She remembered as if it were yesterday. Born and brought up in the States, with an American mother and an English father, she had arrived in what to her had been an alien country, to live in a huge old house, "Black Gables", with an uncle she had never met before.
