Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

green salad in front of her.

      ‘So what is life like,’ he asked casually, ‘as an air stewardess?’

      Lola plunged her fork into a buttery wedge of avocado and scowled. ‘You don’t have to go through the motions of asking me these questions, you know,’ she told him defensively. ‘I mean, you must have dated stewardesses before—I’d hate to think that I was forcing you to sit through yet another rendition of “what I love about my job”!’

      ‘Now who’s being the cynic?’ he responded coolly. Some indefinable emotion hardened the gorgeous mouth. ‘I can assure you, Lola, that I have never been forced to do anything in my life.’

      No, she couldn’t really imagine anyone having the strength of character to be able to browbeat Geraint Howell-Williams into doing something he didn’t want to!

      She started on the predictably delicious wine he had ordered for her and allowed herself the luxury of looking directly into the black-fringed, stormy eyes. ‘Life as a stewardess is terrific,’ she told him. ‘I would recommend it to anyone for all the obvious reasons—namely the opportunity to see the world and meet lots of people.’

      ‘And in the long term?’

      Lola blinked. ‘The long term?’ forty?’

      ‘Is it a job you can see yourself doing at forty?’

      Lola looked at him blankly, trying to imagine herself trundling the drinks trolley up the aisle fifteen years on, and shuddered. ‘Well, no. Not really.’

      ‘So what do you see yourself doing at forty?’

      Lola clammed up. For some reason it would be acutely embarrassing to tell him that at forty she would have hoped to have settled down with some wonderful man she had yet to meet, and be rearing lots of children! ‘I—er—haven’t given it a lot of thought,’ she answered weakly.

      He threw her a hard, disbelieving look. ‘Really? Not planning to be safely tucked up in the marital bed by then? Don’t you want to be married, Lola?’

      The fact that he had so accurately echoed her thoughts threw Lola completely. ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted proudly, refusing to be cowed by his rather patronising attitude. He was managing to make a desire to settle down and get married sound as bizarre as a wish to fly to the moon in a hot-air balloon! ‘Why not?’

      ‘Why not indeed?’ he responded faintly. ‘But so far no one has been able to tempt you away from your single, exciting, globe-trotting life?’ he probed.

      ‘No so far, no.’

      ‘But I imagine that there must have been some candidates along the way,’ he drawled suggestively.

      It was not quite an insult, but it was as near as dammit, and Lola glared at him, her narrowed eyes sparking hot blue fire as she dared him to continue.

      ‘Candidates for what?’ she questioned slowly.

      ‘Marriage. Relationships. You must have known a good few men over the years—isn’t that one of the perks of the job?’

      Lola put her wineglass down with a thud. ‘Are you trying to offend me, Geraint?’

      ‘By asking about your men-friends?’ He regarded her levelly, the flame from the flickering candle casting fascinating shadows over the chiselled bones of his face. ‘Now what could be offensive about that?’

      She placed her knife and fork neatly on the plate, much of her salad untasted. ‘The implication being that I sleep around?’

      He gave her a long, steady look and Lola curled her nails hard into the palms of her hands in a deliberate attempt to distract herself from the power of that gaze.

      ‘Well, that is what you were implying, isn’t it?’ she demanded.

      ‘You’re being very defensive,’ he murmured, and poured her some mineral water.

      ‘So what if I am?’ she retorted, drinking some of the water thirstily. And who wouldn’t be defensive, she thought wryly, when they’d had to cope with as many snide innuendos as she had that evening? ‘Anyway, I’ve talked far too much. Tell me some more about you.’

      ‘What else could you possibly want to know?’ he drawled.

      ‘You haven’t even told me what you do for a living!’ she realised aloud. ‘Or how you know the mysterious Dominic Dashwood.’

      ‘I deal in money,’ he told her curtly, his grey eyes as cold as an arctic sea. ‘Dominic I met during my time at Oxford.’

      She remembered the small but significant pause after he had introduced himself at the tennis club. ‘And should I have heard of you?’

      ‘Not necessarily.’ He shrugged. ‘Only if you happen to read the financial pages—and then I’ve been in New York for the past ten years so it’s unlikely you’d have heard of me anyway. I’ve only just come back.’

      ‘And what brought you back?’

      Another pause. ‘Family business,’ he said finally, his face hardening forbiddingly.

      Lola took no notice. ‘So what does someone who deals in money actually do?’ she persisted.

      His face grew even colder. ‘I buy and sell,’ he told her tersely. ‘That’s all.’

      Lola registered the superb quality of the suit he wore. Clearly buying and selling, as he put it, was very lucrative indeed! ‘You make it sound so simple,’ she said slowly.

      There wasn’t a flicker of emotion on his face as he watched her unconscious assessment of him. ‘I prefer not to make it sound anything at all,’ he told her flatly. ‘But you asked the question, as women inevitably do—’

      ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Lola glared at him. ‘You asked me exactly what you wanted; what did I do that was so different?’

      ‘You homed straight in on the money side of it, didn’t you, sweetheart? Sometimes I really think it would save time if I produced a bank statement for women to peruse at their leisure!’

      ‘Oh, sor-ry!’ said Lola furiously. ‘I didn’t realise you were so touchy about money!’

      ‘When you’ve met as many women with dollar signs flashing in their eyes as I have,’ he mused with distaste, ‘then being touchy about it is inevitable.’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug of his shoulders, before he said, ‘Were your parents very rich, Lola?’

      The deep, velvet undertone of his voice sent new shivers skating down Lola’s spine, but she could not quite decide whether it was excitement or fear which had caused them. ‘Why do you ask that?’ she queried.

      His eyes glittered. ‘Isn’t it rather obvious? Your house on St Fiacre’s for one thing. How did you happen to come by a house like that on your salary?’

      ‘How do you think I came by it?’ she retaliated as she encountered the oh, so familiar judgemental expression on his face.

      ‘A man, I suppose?’

      Lola met his gaze and read the condemnation there and didn’t care. How dared he judge her without even knowing her? ‘That’s right,’ she said steadily.

      ‘A rich man?’

      She saw the censorious look which soured his expression and decided that she would like to sour it even more! ‘You’ve got it in one!’ She smiled and noticed his knuckles whiten as the bread stick he had picked up was reduced to dust by the inadvertent clenching of that strong fist.

      ‘A ve-ry rich man,’ she purred deliberately, and saw a muscle begin to work violently in his cheek. ‘Much richer than you, probably. Why, I expect he could buy you out a hundred times over, Geraint!’

      He let the bread dust trickle out of his hand into the large, cut-glass ashtray, so that it looked like sand running through