Mistress by Agreement. Helen Brooks

told what to do or not to do by a female, and a young and attractive one at that.’

      Rosalie shrugged again. ‘I’m tougher than I look,’ she said without smiling.

      He gazed at her, one dark eyebrow quirked and a disturbing gleam in the back of the brilliant eyes. ‘Are you now?’ he murmured softly. ‘A lady of mystery?’

      ‘There’s no mystery.’ She had spoken too quickly and she knew it as well as he did. She buried her face in the menu.

      So, he’d hit a nerve? Kingsley’s eyes narrowed a fraction as he sat back in his seat just as one of the waiters arrived with the bottle of wine and another of sparkling mineral water. Life had taught him a few lessons in his thirty-five years on the earth, he reflected as he watched the waiter filling their glasses. One, expensive wine was worth every dollar compared to the other stuff. Two, gambling was a mug’s game. Three, never trust a woman, especially a beautiful one with hair like bronzed silk and eyes the colour of a stormy sky, eyes that carried secrets in their cloudy depths. For sure the secrets would be nothing more important than what hair dye she used to colour her hair, and within a few weeks he would be itching to move on. Although Rosalie’s hair looked natural…

      He picked up the menu, suddenly annoyed with his thoughts and the world in general although he couldn’t have explained why. ‘The roasted shallot and lemon thyme salad is very good to start with,’ he suggested mildly. ‘One of Glen’s specialities. Or the mediterranean fish soup? And I can recommend the roast lamb or braised tangerine beef with herb dumplings.’

      Rosalie smiled politely. She chose watercress soufflé followed by poached fillet of sea bass with asparagus tips, and after she had given her order to Glen, who had reappeared like the proverbial genie out of a bottle, she sat back in her seat and had a couple of hefty swallows of the very good wine whilst she watched Kingsley discussing the merits of the lamb against the beef with his friend. If ever she had needed a drink it was now, she thought with wry self-mockery. Why ever she had agreed to come out to lunch with this disturbing individual she didn’t know, let alone commit to spending what virtually amounted to a whole afternoon in his presence.

      When the food came it was utterly delicious, although Rosalie had to admit that Kingsley’s Mediterranean fish soup and roast lamb looked and smelt wonderful, added to which she had never particularly cared for sea bass. But her food was excellent, all of it, along with the wine and the chocolate macadamia steamed pudding drenched with whipped cream she chose for dessert. She didn’t think she had ever tasted food so good, and she told Kingsley so as they drank their coffee.

      He smiled. He’d smiled quite often during the meal as they had made light conversation, and she had to concede he’d got the art of conversation, along with the smile, down to a T. But the smile had never reached the cool blue of his eyes and the conversation was such that she knew nothing more about him than when they had first sat down at the table. Which was enough, more than enough, she told herself dryly.

      ‘Glen’s easily the best chef I’ve ever come across.’ Kingsley drained his coffee-cup and gestured to the hovering waiter for the bill. ‘As the waiting list for a table bears out.’

      ‘Surely he could earn a fortune if he chose to work somewhere like the Savoy or the Ritz?’ Rosalie asked, her eyes wandering round the interior of the restaurant again.

      ‘He’s done the big-time thing and ended up nearly ruining his marriage and his health,’ Kingsley said shortly. ‘He got out of the rat race, bought this place and set up with Lucia, his wife, who does all the behind-the-scenes work. He’s had offers galore to go back as a head chef or expand here to bigger and better, but the bottom line is he doesn’t need it. He’s happy here, Lucia’s happy, that’s all that matters to Glen in the long run. He’s found his Shangri-La.’

      Rosalie stared at him. ‘You sound as if you envy him,’ she said at last.

      He smiled but this time it didn’t even crinkle the skin around his eyes. ‘Why would I do that?’ he said easily. ‘I’m exactly where I want to be in life. How about you?’

      ‘Me?’

      ‘Yes, you. Are you where you want to be in life?’ he asked with a silkiness Rosalie immediately suspected. ‘Doing what you want, being who you want, with whom you want?’

      She didn’t like this conversation. ‘Certainly,’ she said briskly.

      ‘Then we are both very fortunate.’

      Rosalie’s jaw set. She couldn’t quite put a label on the quality of his voice but it suggested disbelief, and who the hell was Kingsley Ward to question her, anyway? ‘Yes, we are.’ She rose from her seat. ‘I won’t be a moment,’ she said coolly before making her way to the door marked ‘Signorinas’ at the back of the restaurant.

      Once in the small but immaculately clean little cloakroom Rosalie walked across to the two tiny washbasins situated under the plain, unframed mirror. She stared at the flushed reflection and two angry eyes stared back at her. She had done what she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do weeks ago when she’d taken the job, and let Kingsley Ward get under her skin. Her soft lips tightened but her irritation was at herself and not Kingsley.

      Self-control. It was all about self-control, everything was, she knew that. If anyone knew that, she did. She shut her eyes, shaking her head as it drooped forward, but today the memories she usually kept firmly under lock and key surfaced in a flood. Suddenly she was a little girl again, sitting shivering on the landing with her eyes straining down into the shadowed hall as she listened to the familiar sound of her father shouting at her mother in the sitting room below. Other sounds followed, they always did, but what made this occasion more memorable than all the ones that had gone before was that in the midst of the sound of slaps there came a silence, and then her father’s voice, the tone agitated, saying, ‘Chantal? Chantal, get up. Come on, get up.’

      The memory blurred at this point but she could recall the bright lights of the ambulance and then the police car when they had arrived at the house. It had been a police-woman who had come and found her, still sitting in numb silence on the stairs. They had taken her to her maternal grandparents—her father had been brought up in a children’s home and had no family—and it had been a day or two later when her grandmother had told her, very gently but with tears streaming down her face, that Mummy had gone to see the angels in heaven. Her beautiful, tender mother, who wouldn’t have hurt a fly, had never recovered consciousness from the aneurysm that had begun to bleed in her head, caused by one of her husband’s blows.

      On the day of the court appearance her father had taken his own life, and at the age of five she had become an orphan. Her grandparents had looked after her from that point, and with her mother having had younger siblings who had gone on to have children her childhood had not been an unhappy one. But there had been a void, a massive gap because she had been a mummy’s girl from the moment she had been born. As she had grown she had begun to understand why her mother had absorbed herself so completely in her child. Her grandparents had told her that her father had been an unhappy individual as a result of a traumatic childhood, insanely jealous of any attention his wife had paid to another adult, be they man or woman, and consequently her mother had led a life isolated from the rest of the world in an effort to keep the peace. Her headstone was a memorial that this hadn’t worked.

      Rosalie raised her head, her eyes large and dark with the painful memories. When she’d been eighteen and entering university her grandparents had decided to return to their native France to live their autumn years with the relatives there; her grandfather’s health had been poor and he’d wanted to be close to his brothers.

      She had agonised for some time whether to give up her university place in London and go with them, but she had been born in England and she didn’t want to study in France, besides which there were all the friends she would leave behind. In the end she had stayed, and then she had met Miles Stuart…

      ‘Enough.’ She spoke the word out loud, her mouth setting in a grim line as she ruthlessly put a check on her mind. Why was she thinking of all this today? But she knew why. Miles and Kingsley Ward