The Gold Collection: A Bride For The Taking. Maggie Cox

evening together and the lovely meal. Thank you. It was so nice to be taken out to dinner. I can’t remember the last time I did such a normal thing.’

      ‘It was my pleasure. My hope is that we’ll have many more evenings like this together. Are you okay?’ he asked, frowning. The wary look hadn’t retreated, he saw.

      ‘Yes, I’m fine. A good night’s sleep will sort me out, I’m sure.’

      ‘I’ll walk you to your door, then.’

      ‘There’s no need … thanks all the same.’

      Sophia was already taking her keys out of her purse. As she glanced up again, Jarrett saw she appeared to be thinking hard about something.

      ‘Do you still see any of the women who kept you company when you were lonely?’ she quizzed him.

      He might have known she wouldn’t let him off lightly. She was behaving like every other woman who had the bit between her teeth about something. But in Sophia’s case her need to know about this particular facet of his past was entirely justified, he thought—because she knew only too well the pitfalls of being with someone who couldn’t be relied upon except to hurt her.

      ‘No, I don’t. I already told you I never dated anyone for very long, but neither did I cold-heartedly desert them. When we parted it was always mutual. The kind of women I saw were usually from the corporate world, as time-poor as me because they were immersed in their careers, wanting to make a name for themselves. Having a romantic relationship was never going to be top of their list of priorities.’

      There had been one liaison where the woman in question had got a little bit too attached to the idea of deepening her association with him, Jarrett recalled wincingly, but he had told her as diplomatically and as kindly as possible that he couldn’t consider it. She hadn’t guessed that he was holding out for the woman of his dreams, and he wondered if she would have been surprised that he secretly harboured such a romantic ideal.

      ‘Did you ever want more than just a mutually satisfying fling with anyone in particular?’ Sophia asked, just as though she’d read his mind.

      He heard the slight condemnation in her voice and flinched inwardly. ‘No, I didn’t,’ he admitted, low-voiced. ‘And I don’t want you to think that’s because I’m some kind of devil-may-care playboy, because I’m not. The truth is I just never met anyone I fell for in that way. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had a desire to. To fall in love, I mean.’ He hardly knew how he kept his hands off of her as he said this, because she was becoming more irresistible and important to him every time he saw her.

      Like now, when her face was so bewitchingly illuminated by the gentle rays of moonlight drifting in through the windscreen.

      The smooth skin between her brows puckered in thought. ‘I’m sure if it’s meant to happen it will,’ she commented, and then, leaning towards him, dropped a light kiss at the corner of his mouth.

      A purely chaste kiss, Jarrett thought in frustration. Every masculine instinct he had clamoured for him to haul her into his arms and kiss her properly … to taste and ravish her mouth in the way that he yearned to do … to run his hands down over her lithe, beautiful body and build up a storm—a storm that he’d sensed had been brewing between them ever since he had first set eyes on her.

      Yet he couldn’t bring himself to succumb to such a raw, elemental need when the woman he desired was still wrestling with so many fears from her past. He would just have to learn to be patient.

      Already out of the car, Sophia dipped her head to give him a smile. Her long hair fell softly around her face and framed it. ‘If you want to drop round tomorrow some time and have coffee then I’d be glad to see you,’ she said.

      His relief was off the scale. For a moment there he’d worried that she might put him off indefinitely.

      ‘What time?’

      ‘Don’t you have to work?’

      ‘Yes, but tomorrow I’m working from home … How about eleven o’clock?’

      ‘Eleven is fine. I’ll see you then.’

      Jarrett didn’t respond with goodnight or goodbye. He merely gave her a brief nod. He guessed he wanted to avoid any reference to the fact that they were going to be parted—even if it was only until tomorrow …

      A devastating nightmare had shocked Sophia awake. The icily threatening quality of the dream disorientated her, and for a moment or two she was completely unaware of where she was or even her own name.

      Breathing hard, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. It jolted her to realise that she wasn’t back in the expensive London house she’d once shared with Tom Abingdon, and neither was this her bed. She hardly remembered electing to sleep on Great-Aunt Mary’s threadbare old couch, but now it came back to her. When she’d finally decided to turn in—just like on the previous three nights—it had hit her that she was all alone in the house without Charlie. It was too hard to sleep in her own bed when on the other side of the room her son’s endearing little cabin-bed with its Paddington Bear quilt was empty, and above her the rest of the cavernous rooms were full of imagined ghosts that her imagination was only too eager to make real.

      The fire that she’d left alight in the grate to keep her warm during the night was down to a few glowing embers, and the large stately room she’d been sleeping in was now so cold that it frosted her breath.

      In the horrible nightmare that had visited her she’d been running barefoot through eerily menacing dark woods, with Tom chasing after her, threatening all kinds of dire consequences when he caught up. When the white-hot rage that he was still tormenting her had suddenly spilled over, giving Sophia the courage to turn and face him, the cruel face that had gaped back into her eyes hadn’t been her deceased husband but his father …

      A chill and queasy sensation lodged like congealed porridge in the pit of her stomach and made the inside of her mouth dry as sand. Reaching for the glass of water she’d left nearby on a table, she gulped the contents down. Before she finished the drink, the hot tears burning at the backs of her eyes were streaming in an unchecked flow down her face. She hadn’t even undressed. She was still wearing the blue wraparound dress she’d worn out to dinner with Jarrett.

      With stoic determination she scrubbed away the moisture streaking down her face with the heel of her hand. Just the thought of him sent a tropical heatwave sweeping through her blood and made her ache almost beyond bearing to see him again. And, for a blessed few moments even the memory of his reassuring presence drove out the cold and fear that gripped her. Simply recollecting his sculpted handsome face, haunting blue eyes and the richly sensual quality of his mesmerising voice was enough to make her yearn to have him appear. Not only was he the most attractive man she had ever seen, to Sophia’s mind his best asset was his unquestioning ability to be kind. She’d seen plenty of evidence of that. Jarrett epitomised the very best of masculinity, where her deceased husband had epitomised the worst.

      With all her heart she wished she could turn back the clock and invite him in for coffee, instead of walking into this lonely old house on her own. But her emotions had been in a distressing state of turmoil after her revelations to him about her marriage, and she’d feared she had told him too much. Confessing the details of her personal horror story had left her feeling uncomfortably exposed, and fear of Jarrett’s unspoken judgement had made her want to distance herself from him for a while.

      If only she hadn’t succumbed to that painful impulse so quickly, she thought now. If she hadn’t, he might still be here …

      Jarrett had lain down on his bed fully clothed, thinking hard about the evening he’d just spent with Sophia. His mind simply refused to let him dwell on any other subject. It had done his heart good to see her tuck into her meal with such enjoyment, and he wondered how many meals she’d left uneaten or barely touched because she’d been consumed by the threat of harm her malicious ex-husband regularly seemed to have menaced her with?

      His