Lover By Deception. PENNY JORDAN

body felt cheated of its rightful role, its capacity for pleasure, its need for love...

      Anna drew in a distressed, sharp breath. She knew quite well that it was her ongoing training as a counsellor that was bringing to the fore all these unfamiliar and uncomfortable feelings, but that didn’t make them any easier to bear.

      Watching as Brough kissed his fiancée, Kelly, she had actually experienced the most shockingly sharp pang of envy. Not because Brough loved Kelly. That couldn’t be the reason. Brough, much as she liked him, was simply not her type. No, her envy had been caused by the most basic feminine kind of awareness that her womanhood, her sexuality, was being deprived of expression.

      But what did that mean? That she was turning into some kind of sex-starved middle-aged stereotype? Her body stiffened at the very thought, pride lifting her chin. That she most certainly was not. No way!

      Her cat, seeing that his mistress wasn’t going to respond to his overtures, stalked away in indignation. As she continued to stare out of the window Anna’s soft blue-grey eyes misted a little.

      At thirty-seven she still had the lithe, slender figure she had had at eighteen, and her hair was still as soft and silky, its honey-coloured warmth cut to shoulder-length now instead of worn halfway down her back. Ralph had used to run his fingers down its shiny length before he kissed her.

      Anna gave a small, distraught shudder. What was the matter with her? She had met men, plenty of them—nice men, good men—in the years of her widowhood, and not once had she ever come anywhere near desiring any of them.

      How irrational and unsolicited it was that her body should suddenly so keenly remember what desire was, how it felt, how it ached and urged, when her mind, her emotions, remained stubbornly resolute that they wanted no part in such a dangerous resurgence of her youthful sensuality.

      ‘Yes. I’m sorry, I’m coming,’ she acknowledged as Whittaker’s protesting wails suddenly intruded on her thoughts.

      CHAPTER THREE

      HUMMING exultantly beneath his breath, Ward checked the last signpost before his ultimate destination. Rye-on-Averton.

      It sounded such a middle England, respectable sort of place, but at least one of its inhabitants was anything but honest and trustworthy.

      He hadn’t been able to believe his luck when the agents he had employed had informed him that, whilst they could find no trace of Julian Cox, who according to their enquiries had, in fact, left the country and apparently disappeared, his partner, Anna Trewayne, had been traced to the small English town of Rye.

      They had even been able to supply Ward with an address and a telephone number, as well as a considerable amount of other pertinent information about Ms Trewayne.

      Widowed, childless, outwardly she appeared to live a life of almost boring propriety and respectability. Ward knew otherwise, of course. He could picture her now. She was in her late thirties and no doubt struggling to hold onto her youth. She probably possessed a certain amount of surface charm—a useful tool for helping to persuade vulnerable men to part with their money. Her make-up would be too heavy and her skirts too short. She would have sharp eyes and a keen interest in a man’s bank account and, of course, a very shrewd business brain—but not, it seemed, shrewd enough to warn her to do what her erstwhile parmer had done and disappear whilst the going was good. Perhaps she even had plans to continue with their ‘business’ on her own.

      Perhaps he was a chauvinist but for some reason Ward felt an even greater sense of revulsion and outrage towards the woman who had cheated his half-brother than he had done the man. An avaricious, heartless woman. Ward had a deep sense of loathing for the breed. His ex-wife had, after all, been one of them.

      He dropped the speed of his powerful, top-of-the-range Mercedes to turn off the bypass and into the town.

      Nestled in a pretty green valley, it had an almost picture-book quaintness. Mentally he compared it to the grimy, run-down, inner-city area where he had grown up and then grimaced. No haggard-faced, old-before-their-time, out-of-work men gathered on the corners of this place. No gangs of testosterone-driven youths with nothing in front of them, no way out of the underclass environment that trapped them, roamed these clean, tree-lined streets.

      Ward saw a parking area up ahead of him alongside the river and he pulled into it. Time to study his map. As he switched off the engine he was conscious of the beginnings of a tension headache. He picked up the street directory map he had brought with him. A few seconds later Ward jabbed his forefinger triumphantly onto the map as he found the place he was looking for.

      Anna Trewayne lived a little way out of town, her house solitary, without any neighbours, but then, no doubt, a woman of her ilk would not want the complications that curious neighbours could bring.

      As he reversed his car back into the traffic Ward’s expression was bleak.

      

      Anna was in the garden when Ward arrived, the sound of his car stopping on the gravel drive causing her to put down the basket she had been filling with flowers for the house and frown a little anxiously.

      She wasn’t expecting any visitors, and the car, like the man emerging from it, was unfamiliar to her.

      Expecting her visitor to announce himself at the front door, Anna turned to slip into the house through the still open conservatory door, but Ward just caught sight of her flurried movement out of the corner of his eye and, wheeling round, started to walk swiftly towards her, calling out to her, ‘Just a minute, if you please, Mrs Trewayne; I want a word with you.’

      Instinctively Anna panicked. Both the way he was walking and the tone of his voice were distinctly threatening and she started to run towards the protection of the conservatory, but she wasn’t quite fast enough and Ward caught up with her just as she reached the door, grabbing hold of her wrist in a grip that almost made her flinch at its strength.

      ‘Let me go... I... I have a dog...’ Anna told him, issuing the first threat that came into her mind, but just as she felt his grip starting to slacken Missie came trotting round the corner, her small, furry body quivering with welcome as she rushed happily towards Anna’s captor.

      ‘So I see,’ he agreed sardonically. He started to lift his free hand and immediately Anna reacted, her fear for her little dog far, far greater than her fear for herself.

      ‘Don’t you dare hurt her,’ she told him fiercely, holding out her own free arm protectively to Missie.

      The little dog, a bundle of white fluff, had been a rescue dog, bought as a puppy and then abandoned when the family who’d owned her had decided that her small, sharp teeth were doing too much damage to their home.

      Anna had taken her in, trained and loved her, and Missie adored her.

      Ward frowned his surprise. Odd that a woman of her type should ignore her own danger just to protect her dog. Not that he had intended to hurt the little creature, and Missie seemed to know it.

      Ignoring her mistress’s frantic attempts to shoo her away, she was happily investigating the stranger’s shoes, and then, as Ward extended his hand towards her, she jumped up and licked it, wagging her small tail approvingly.

      ‘Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want,’ Anna began nervously, ‘but’

      ‘But you do know Julian Cox, don’t you?’ Ward slipped in quietly.

      ‘Julian.’ Anna went pale. Was this man someone Julian had sent to demand more money from her? Had he perhaps guessed what they were doing?

      As he watched the blood drain from her face Ward experienced a disturbingly unfamiliar—and unwanted—sensation. All right, she might not look anything like he had imagined. Her skirt was calf-length, all soft and floaty, and as for her make-up—well, she had to be wearing some, surely? No woman of her age could have such a soft, pink, kissable-looking mouth naturally, could she? And her hair had to be dyed, he decided triumphantly, whilst as for that air of frightened vulnerability she was projecting—well, that was, no doubt, as false