Flora's Defiance. Lynne Graham

met fell over themselves to say yes. Yes to every invite, yes to sex, yes to just about any damned thing he wanted. Women in Angelo’s world were very predictable and he had never had the smallest urge, he told himself fiercely, to walk on the wilder side of life. He had never forgotten the years of misery that had resulted from his late father’s desire to do exactly that with Willem’s mother, a beautiful volatile widow.

      But would Flora have slept with him last night? That question came out of nowhere at him before he was even aware of having thought about such a possibility. He was impervious to the covert looks he was receiving as his brilliant blue eyes became even more abstracted. He wanted her. He was even willing to admit that there was just something about Flora Bennett that grabbed him every time he saw her. Yet last night his intentions had been pure.

      Of course it was entirely possible that Flora Bennett knew a great deal more about Willem and Julie’s lifestyle than he had had cause to suspect. His lean strong features darkened at that idea. Flora had seen little of her sister since her wedding to Willem, but she could well have decided to give Julie and her problems a wide berth. Angelo had never had that option because the overwhelming need to protect Mariska from her parents’ folly had repeatedly forced him to intervene. Unfortunately taking care of Mariska’s needs would entail building some kind of an ongoing connection with the other side of her family. He might distrust Mariska’s aunt but she was still the only blood relative the little girl had left alive. He could not ignore that bond or the fact that Flora had spent over two hours happily entertaining her niece and had inspired her nanny to remark that Mariska’s English aunt was wonderfully natural with children.

      How much weight would the professionals put on that bond or on so admirably maternal a demonstration? Was he prepared to get married just to improve his own claim to the little girl? Angelo shifted uneasily in his seat. The prospect of only sleeping with one woman for the rest of his life appealed to him as much as a dose of poison. Of course he could make marriage more of a business arrangement and retain a certain amount of freedom, he reasoned bleakly. Many women would accept such conditions simply to become a van Zaal with access to a fleet of private jets, a luxurious array of international homes and a huge allowance to spend on designer clothes and jewellery. Angelo had learned very young that it was possible to buy virtually anything he wanted and he was prepared to pay handsomely over the odds to acquire the perfect wife.

      A perfect wife who would naturally be blonde, educated, classy and from the Netherlands. Dutch women were wonderfully practical and resilient, he thought appreciatively. He needed a sensible woman from a respectable background who would accept his challenging work schedule without complaint and who would embellish his social and domestic life while still essentially allowing him his privacy. A woman content to enjoy the lifestyle he could give her and make no further demands of him. He decided that as long as the controversial subjects of fidelity or romance were kept off the menu he could face the prospect of marriage for Mariska’s sake. He had become very fond of the little girl.

      Emerging from that lengthy and very sobering thought process, Angelo checked his watch and made one of the lightning-fast decisions that he was famous for. After a working lunch to make up for his non-participation in the meeting, he would meet Flora Bennett at the houseboat and tie up the loose ends between them before she left Amsterdam and returned to England. It was the rational thing to do and he was not being influenced by his attraction to her, he assured himself with considerable satisfaction. He was far too level-headed to stray into such hazardous territory with a woman of dubious morals.

      Around the same time as Angelo was travelling from his head office in Rotterdam back to Amsterdam, Flora was literally reeling out of the public building where she had met with Mariska’s social work team: she was in deep shock from what she had learned during that encounter.

      Shock that she’d had not the slightest idea of what really had gone on in Willem and Julie’s lives, shock that Julie had managed to convince her during their weekly phone calls that they were leading a perfectly ordinary life when, in fact, the very opposite was true. Indeed, both Willem and her sister had resorted to petty crime in an effort to satisfy their addiction to drugs. Her half-sister and her husband had been thieves and drug addicts. Hopelessly addicted, so that despite all pleas and offers of counselling that had been offered to them they had continued on their dogged path to self-destruction. Indeed Willem and Julie had been high when Willem had crashed their car and then he and his wife had died. Flora remained amazed by the stroke of fate that had kept Mariska alive.

      Although every attempt had been made to shield Angelo’s privacy it had slowly become abundantly clear to Flora that Willem’s stepbrother had been heavily involved from the outset in all attempts to persuade the young couple to enter a rehabilitation programme. He had also done everything that he could to protect his stepbrother’s child from harm.

      In recent months, Mariska had virtually never been left to rely on parental care alone. Either she had been in day care or in her nanny’s care, and when Willem and Julie had partied and Anke had deemed her charge to be at risk she had taken Mariska to Angelo’s home. Yet, even with all those safeguards in place, Flora’s niece could still easily have been killed along with her parents when Julie had chosen to take her daughter out of day care early one afternoon without telling anyone and had got into Willem’s car with her. Mariska’s very survival was a small miracle.

      A stiff late spring breeze gusted down the street of tall, narrow and highly ornamental buildings that bordered the canal Flora was walking alongside and her tears chilled on her cheeks. She stepped hurriedly out of the way of a cyclist riding past and sucked in a steadying breath while she paused to consult the map she had bought to help her negotiate the maze of streets.

      It was an effort to think straight while she was being eaten alive by a great burst of angry resentment and regret. But her half-sister was gone and nothing could bring Julie back. Yet on whose say-so had Flora been excluded from knowing about and trying to help the young couple? Flora had a very strong suspicion about the identity of that culprit. While the social workers had been bound by rules of confidentiality, only Angelo van Zaal would have dared to leave Julie’s one close relative in ignorance of her plight.

      When she’d first moved to Amsterdam, Julie had sent her sister loads of photos, so now Flora had little difficulty picking out the bright blue-and-white-painted houseboat from the others moored on a quiet stretch of water overlooked by a picturesque terrace of gabled houses. After all, she had a framed sunlit picture of that same evocative scene sitting in her home. She stepped onto the deck and as she did so the door of the cabin opened, framing the tall black-haired male whose inexcusable silence over the past year had stoked her umbrage.

      For an instant, Flora froze, her wide green eyes locking onto Angelo van Zaal. He looked strikingly elegant if out of place in his formality in a dark grey business suit and silk tie. The suit had the exclusive fit of a tailored designer garment, framing wide strong masculine shoulders and hugging lean hips and long muscular thighs. As he stepped outside the breeze ruffled his luxuriant black hair above his lean, darkly handsome features. The sheer impact of his physical charisma hit her like a sudden blow to the head, leaving her dizzy. She collided with sapphire-blue eyes and her tummy shimmied like a jelly while her breath feathered in her throat.

      ‘What on earth are you doing here? ‘ she demanded tautly.

      ‘This seemed to be an opportune time and place to talk to you.’

      ‘It’s a little late for that now, isn’t it? ‘ Green eyes flashing as emerald as jewels in sunlight, Flora stalked past his tall still figure into the saloon of the houseboat. The spacious interior had a bare look, for all the surfaces were clear and a stack of cardboard boxes spread out from one corner. ‘In fact I would say that talk of any kind between us now would be a waste of your valuable time.’

      Unaccustomed to such a bold unapologetic attack, and with his handsome mouth in a sardonic line, Angelo studied her. Colourful copper-coloured hair falling in a lavish windblown cloud round her shoulders, Flora wore a short black trench coat, jeans and a green sweater, and even in that casual garb she looked amazing, he acknowledged with distinct reluctance. She had the transparent alabaster skin of the true redhead and soft pink self-conscious colour defined her cheekbones