The Mistress Scandal. KIM LAWRENCE

make an honest woman of me.’

      ‘Marriage?’ Her neutral tone hid her own grave misgivings. Sophie was so young, and marriage was such a drastic step. ‘You don’t look over the moon,’ she observed shrewdly.

      ‘Oh, that wasn’t his initial response. Originally he wanted me to … you know.’ Two pink spots appeared on her pale cheeks as her eyes slid from Alice’s. ‘I guess that’s why I was bit sensitive,’ she confessed huskily. ‘He says he loves me …’

      Alice could hear the obvious doubt in her sister’s wobbly tone. ‘And do you love him?’

      ‘I thought I did. I ended up comforting him. I thought he was … I don’t know, strong …’

      ‘Slick’ was the word that more readily sprang to Alice’s mind. But then, she reminded herself, I’m not eighteen any longer, and Sophie isn’t the only one to have been won over by Greg’s charm offensive.

      Even the most stubborn critics of the siting of a software factory on the outskirts of their picturesque market town had been won over by his smooth persuasiveness and carefully stage-managed and conspicuous community involvement.

      Alice, on the other hand, had been won over to the scheme by the number of skilled well-paid jobs advertised locally, and the innovative building that would house the high-tech workforce amidst charmingly landscaped grounds.

      ‘He seemed so sure of himself—of everything!’ Sophie looked so bewildered that Alice’s heart ached. ‘Now he’s more concerned about what his precious brother will say than how I’m feeling!’ Sophie shook her head. ‘I must sound really stupid.’ She gave a shaky laugh and ran a hand through her smooth shoulder-length blonde hair. ‘I suppose I want what you and Oliver had; he was so perfect. You were perfect together.’

      Sophie saw the naked anguish that flickered across her sister’s face and bit the tongue responsible for causing that pain.

      ‘Still, you’ve got Will, and he looks more like Oliver every day.’

      ‘So everyone keeps saying,’ Alice responded, her eyes fixed on her son who was, unless her memory was playing tricks, the spitting image of his father, from his thick dark wavy hair to his gorgeous velvety eyes.

      ‘You will come? For moral support, I mean?’

      ‘Of course I will,’ Alice agreed, knowing full well that the task of calming and comforting their distraught, adoring parents over the next few weeks would inevitably fall to her.

      The phone call came out of the blue.

      ‘Mrs Lynn?’

      There had been a pause where she ought to have identified herself. The caller repeated himself, and this time just a tinge of impatience coloured that deep, vibrant voice.

      Alice gave herself a sharp mental shake. The similarity was uncanny, but the phone had a way of distorting voices.

      ‘This is Alice Lynn,’ she confirmed, her voice calm, her palms sweaty.

      ‘I’m Gabriel MacAllister … Greg’s brother …’

      ‘I know who you are, Mr MacAllister.’ What I don’t know, she wanted to say, is why you’re calling me.

      ‘We should talk.’

      ‘Why?’

      There was a pause, as though her blunt response had taken him by surprise. ‘Do you think your sister should marry my brother?’ He sounded as though he was discussing the price of shares. Alice’s every instinct recoiled from such a cold-blooded attitude. It was none of her business, or his, and she should have told him so.

      ‘No.’ Alice heard herself reply with gut certainty.

      ‘Interesting.’

      In what way? she wondered.

      ‘I’m staying at the Grange.’

      The last time she’d been there had been to celebrate their anniversary. Oliver had had too much to drink and he’d confessed…. Alice felt the beginnings of a headache.

      ‘Would you like to meet me here for lunch?’

      ‘I can’t … my son …’ She knew she sounded vague and wishy-washy, the sort of person who fell in with other people’s wishes, and she didn’t like it. Her stomach was still churning just because his throaty drawl had triggered a carefully buried memory …

      ‘Fine, I’ll come to you.’

      ‘You don’t know where I live,’ she began as the worrying impression she was being manipulated intensified.

      ‘Oh, but I do, Mrs Lynn.’

      The words carried the slight but definite suggestion that that wasn’t all he knew about her. Putting the phone down, Alice felt dazed.

      All she knew about Gabriel MacAllister—other than the usual success-story stuff everyone knew—was what Sophie had gleaned from Greg, who had, to Alice’s mind, an unhealthy reverence bordering on fear for his brother. Put all the information together and the picture which emerged was of a sinister control freak.

      Did you give an omnipotent tyrant afternoon tea? she pondered, able to summon a wry grin. He’d probably turn up his nose at her supermarket teabags.

      ‘And I doubt he’s really into Marmite fingers, Will,’ she told her son, wiping the sticky black goo off his face and chubby fingers before she lifted him out of his highchair. ‘Nap time for you, young man.’

      She could hear Will’s spasmodic sleepy baby babble through the nursery alarm as she retrieved the scattered toys from the kitchen floor and placed them in a toy box. It was a task she performed numerous times each day, and as her hands went into autopilot her mind raced.

      What was Gabriel MacAllister up to? Despite the fact she thought Greg was the last person in the world Sophie should marry, she felt a deep sense of indignation that he possibly shared her view! Was he protecting the MacAllister millions from grasping schoolgirls? she wondered, glancing at her reflection in the mirror as she straightened.

      Her face was lightly flushed from a combination of the mild exertion and temper. She looked with lack of interest at her features. It was only on the rarest occasions since Oliver’s death and Will’s birth that she looked upon herself as a woman—she was just Will’s mum these days.

      Once she’d thought she was quite attractive, and she’d known that the combination of a slim, curvaceous body and pretty—some said beautiful—features attracted a lot of admiring attention.

      She glanced down at the faded tee-shirt and old jeans she wore and decided there was little possibility that her visitor would think she was going out of her way to impress him. Take sex out of your life and it cut down on the complications considerably, she decided approvingly.

      If Will hadn’t fallen asleep she might have let the doorbell ring, just to emphasise how unimpressed she was by the royal visitation. But she made do with adopting an expression of cool indifference before letting her visitor in.

      The world had gone completely mad—or perhaps she had! Fingers pressed to her pounding temples, she shook her head from side to side in denial.

      Alice wasn’t even aware she’d been walking steadily backwards until her head made jarring contact with the opposite wall. Her knees folded and she found herself sliding down the wall until she was sitting, knees drawn up to her chest, staring upwards dizzily. The doorway was empty; perhaps she’d been hallucinating.

      ‘You’re going to pass out if you keep hyperventilating,’ a deep voice observed objectively.

      Cancel hallucination! He was kneeling right there beside her. God, he even smelled the same. Shockingly her stomach muscles spasmed hotly in excitement as she registered the light, expensive cologne with musky male undertones.

      ‘It’s my house and I’ll