Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

shoulders had tensed as if he was suddenly under stress. ‘Did I?’ he queried coolly.

      Lola sensed his reluctance, and wondered what had caused it. ‘You know you did!’

      His expression was guarded. ‘And what if I told you that I don’t particularly care for talking about myself?’ he questioned.

      ‘I would say that either you’re repressed or you’ve something to hide!’

      ‘Touché!’ he laughed. ‘What would you like to know?’

      Lola sat back in her seat. ‘Oh, I’m sure that an intelligent man like yourself doesn’t need any help from me,’ she told him sweetly.

      His grey eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Are you teasing me again, Lola Hennessy?’

      ‘Why?’ she laughed, enjoying herself hugely. ‘Can’t you take it?’

      ‘Oh, I can take anything you care to throw at me,’ he challenged in a sultry murmur. ‘Anything at all.’

      The atmosphere began to crackle with an eroticism which was almost tangible, and Lola found herself unable to look him in the eye. She began fiddling unnecessarily with the thick linen napkin on her lap, and was indescribably pleased when she decided to let his mocking invitation go unanswered and started to speak.

      ‘I come from Wales,’ he told her, and his musical accent deepened as he went on to describe the country of his birth. ‘Beautiful West Wales—which is wild and dark and thoroughly magnificent!’

      Yes, thought Lola at once. Wild and dark and magnificent—just like you. . .

      He looked at her keenly. ‘I’m afraid that it’s the classic, corny tale of rags to riches—sure you’re ready for it?’

      Beneath the flippant tone and the throw-away statement Lola was convinced that she detected a chink in his steely armour and she found herself intrigued by this apparent streak of vulnerability. For surely it added an extra dimension to the man’s character, rather than detracting from it?

      ‘Quite ready,’ she told him truthfully, and something in her quiet, almost respectful tone made him grow still for a moment.

      ‘My father was a coal-miner,’ he began, and his grey eyes darkened with pain. ‘But he suffered a lot of ill health when he was still quite young—along with many others, of course.’ He ran a hand distractedly through his thick, tar-black hair. ‘When I was eight he was finally laid off and given an invalidity pension.’ His voice grew harsh. ‘But it wasn’t enough to feed a family of sparrows—let alone me and Mam and my sister, Catrin.’

      He gazed down at the small centrepiece on the table, a glass bowl filled with yellow mimosa, and his features hardened with the memories. ‘So my mother went out to work—doing the only things which an early marriage had qualified her for. She cleaned houses, took in sewing—did whatever she could do which fitted in around Catrin and me. Mostly she was what I suppose you’d call a drudge.’

      He shot her a bleak, almost defiant look and Lola suddenly caught a glimpse of the boy behind the man. The boy who had longed to protect his mother from hard work and penury, but because of his tender years and inexperience had been unable to do either.

      Which must have been a heavy cross for a proud man like Geraint Howell-Williams to carry, Lola recognised instinctively. ‘And?’ she prompted gently.

      ‘Oh, it wore her down eventually. And him. His pride baulked at having to let a woman support him. The two of them used to go without to give us children fresh, wholesome food, and ultimately they suffered for it. When the flu epidemic swept Wales, they both succumbed to it. I was ten,’ he added as an afterthought, as if that fact were somehow unimportant.

      Lola was no stranger to childhood pain, and she winced in distress as she tried to imagine his anguish at being left an orphan at such a tender age. ‘Oh, Geraint,’ she said softly. ‘How on earth did you manage?’

      She saw the sudden deep lines of pain that scored his face, but they were gone again almost immediately—as though over many years he had schooled his expression so as never to betray them.

      ‘My sister brought me up,’ he told her, smiling for the first time, but the smile was laced with something bitter which Lola could not, for the life of her, work out. ‘She sacrificed her place at university in order to give me mine, years later—and for that I shall forever be in her debt.’ He turned to catch the eye of a waiter, and in profile his proud, craggy features might have been hewn from stone.

      But by the time a bottle of mineral water had been placed on the table he seemed to have recovered his usual self-assurance and a frosty light which glittered in the depths of his grey eyes warned Lola that he would not tolerate her sympathy—however well-intentioned.

      ‘So you’ve heard all my secrets, Lola,’ he told her silkily. ‘Now I think it’s your turn, don’t you?’

      Lola felt squirmingly uncomfortable at the way he was looking at her. Because it was no longer desire that she read in his grey eyes, nor even a benign interest. Instead, there was an air of detachment about him, a sudden air of almost icy curiosity which made Lola’s throat clam up nervously, and it took several mouthfuls of the gin and tonic he had ordered for her before the courage of her convictions returned, and she was able to face him with a resolute air.

      ‘What do you want to hear?’ she asked quietly.

      ‘Oh, the usual stuff.’

      His voice was so brittle, Lola thought. It was almost as if he had decided that, having confided in her, he now needed to step back, become a cold and untouchable stranger. Was he always so unpredictable? she wondered. ‘How jaded you sound!’ she told him honestly.

      ‘Do I?’

      ‘But then I suppose you have women pouring their hearts out to you all the time.’

      He gave an odd smile. ‘I’m not giving any secrets away, sweetheart—if that’s what you’re getting at.’

      Did that mean he was discreet?

      Lola wondered sightly hysterically just how many other women had paraded their upbringing in front of him like this, on request. Had some of them perhaps embellished their early years, in order to impress him—moulded them to a degree, by means of oversight or exaggeration, so as to measure up to what they thought he wanted of them?

      Well, not Lola! Hers had been an unremarkable, isolated and often lonely childhood, but she had always refused to sentimentalise it.

      ‘I spent my early life in a small village called Taverton, in Cornwall,’ she told him starkly. ‘My mother still lives there.’

      ‘And your father?’

      ‘He died when I was eleven.’ Lola took a quick gulp of her drink and then regretted it as the tonic fizzed its way uncomfortably down her throat.

      ‘That’s something we have in common, then,’ he said quietly. His voice sounded strained—as though the fact was a shock to him, and an unwelcome one at that.

      ‘Yes.’ Lola looked up as once again the understanding flowed between them like a warm current, as it had done last night at the tennis club, and she suddenly realised how easy it would be to fall for him. To really fall for him.

      He narrowed his grey eyes consideringly. ‘So you haven’t lived at home for—how long?’

      ‘Seven years. I’m twenty-five.’ She tried to inject a little enthusiasm into her voice, to act as if this was a gentle getting-to-know-you chat, instead of an interrogation by a master inquisitor—which was how it felt!

      He put his glass down on the table and smiled, as if he had resolved to lighten the mood by changing the subject. ‘And have you always wanted to fly?’ he asked, his eyes never leaving her face.

      Lola nodded. Flying had been her whole life, really—and her enthusiasm for it had never waned. ‘Always!’