Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

bequest. ‘Mr Featherstone wished his reasons for bestowing the gift to remain confidential—and that is one of the conditions of the bequest, Miss Hennessy.’

      He had given her his bland, solicitor’s smile, but the rather insulting glint in his eyes had left Lola in no doubt as to why he believed she had been left the house!

      He had obviously jumped to the very same conclusion as Geraint, thought Lola bitterly as she bumped the pram across the sunlit lawn and down towards the fountain, where a finely carved wooden seat was placed so that the sitter could listen to the gentle, comforting sounds of the nearby water.

      Simon gurgled happily and Lola sat down on the seat, absently rocking the pram, the sun warm on her face, her eyes closed as she drifted in and out of coherent thought, her fatigue presumably brought on by her waking up through the night on the hour, every hour, thinking of that devious Welshman!

      Oh, and the torrent of conflicting emotions which seemed to have been raging through her ever since Geraint had first walked into her life—that might also have had something to do with her tiredness, she thought wryly.

      She heard no footfall on the still damp grass, had no indication whatsoever that she had a visitor until a shadow blotted the sun from her face and she opened her eyes to find Geraint towering over her, an uncompromising expression darkening his already shadowed features.

      Lola’s heart fluttered more than her eyelashes and she could have kicked herself for her instinctive reaction, immediately fixing an unwelcoming expression onto her face.

      ‘What do you want?’ she asked him ungraciously.

      ‘To talk to you,’ he answered grimly.

      ‘I think we’ve said just about everything there is to say.’

      ‘I think not,’ came the unyielding reply.

      ‘You’re trespassing,’ she pointed out. ‘I could call the police and have you thrown off my land.’

      ‘I doubt it,’ he answered, with an obdurate smile. ‘I could have you in my arms and in bed before you had dialled the first digit! Couldn’t I, Lola?’

      ‘How dare you?’ she questioned furiously, even though her heart was beating like a drum with excitement.

      He smiled again, a wicked, foxy smile which made Lola want to scream aloud—be looked so damned gorgeous! ‘Is that a challenge?’ he asked softly.

      ‘No, it jolly well isn’t!’

      His grey eyes swivelled in the direction of the pram. ‘Why have you got Triss’s baby?’

      ‘She’s got man trouble,’ said Lola, scowling at him indignantly as though he were responsible. ‘She wanted to be child-free while she tried to sort something out. She’s coming back for him later on.’

      ‘Good.’ He sat down on the seat beside her and stretched out his long legs. ‘Did you miss me?’

      ‘Like a hole in the head!’

      ‘No, seriously.’

      Lola turned to survey him with incredulous eyes. ‘Good heavens—I actually think you mean that!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why should I miss you, Geraint?’

      He gave a small nod, like a man who was satisfied with the answer, and then smiled. ‘We’ll return to that later, Lola—but in the meantime I have several things I need to say to you.’

      In spite of feeling that what she ought to do was to insist that he leave her property immediately, Lola was intrigued.

      ‘Is Simon warm enough, do you think?’ he enquired solicitously as he peered down into the pram.

      Lola nodded. ‘He’s well wrapped up—and the fresh air will do him good.’

      ‘You like babies, don’t you?’

      ‘Yes,’ Lola agreed, if a little defensively. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

      ‘Nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘Nothing at all.’ And his grey eyes searched her face.

      Well, she was not going to enlighten him! Let him squirm! Let him suffer! Let him think she was pregnant! That might make him reconsider next time he bedded a woman as some kind of attempt at retribution!

      ‘Say what it is you have to say, Geraint,’ she told him bluntly.

      ‘I know why Peter left you the house—’

      ‘So you told me,’ she interrupted cuttingly, her voice absolutely dripping with sarcasm. ‘Wasn’t it to do with my loose morals? Oh, no! I forgot! We disproved that theory with your surprise discovery of my virginity!’

      ‘That’s enough!’ he ground out.

      ‘But why are you looking so uncomfortable, Geraint?’ Lola turned her big blue eyes on him in a mock-trusting look. ‘After all, I’m only telling the truth!’

      He studied her for a moment with a mixture of exasperation and amusement, then suddenly his dark and snarling mood seemed to evaporate. ‘Are you going to let me tell you my story?’ he queried silkily.

      The trouble was that she was dying to hear it—and, what was more, Geraint knew it, too! ‘I can’t very well stop you, can I?’ she snapped.

      He hesitated, as if searching for the most diplomatic way of saying it, and that brief temporising was enough to make Lola sit up. Literally. She stared at him, sensing that something momentous was about to happen.

      ‘Please tell me.’

      ‘Peter Featherstone was your father,’ he told her gently.

      Her denial was instant and furious—what an absolutely absurd thing to say! Her father had died when she was eleven—he was lying!

      ‘No! He was not my father!’ She was on him in seconds, pummelling her fists hard against his chest, raining blows on him which would have winded a lesser man, but he did not move out of her line of fire, not once; he just let her get her anger out of her system.

      ‘You’re lying, Geraint Howell-Williams!’ she gasped. ‘You’re lying to me!’

      And then, quite suddenly, all the fight went out of her. She stopped hitting him and slumped back against the bench, like a puppet whose strings had just been cut off.

      He spoke calmly, with the solicitude of a doctor breaking bad news. ‘I’m not lying, Lola,’ he said, very quietly. ‘But you know that in your heart. Don’t you?’

      She buried her face in her hands and rocked backwards and forwards. She did not make a single sound, but when she looked up her cheeks were pale and tear-stained, and pain darkened Geraint’s grey eyes as he registered her shock.

      ‘Don’t you?’ he repeated.

      She nodded. ‘There’s no reason for you to lie, Geraint. I believe you.’ Strangely enough, she would have believed him anyway—simply on account of the truthful intensity which burned in his eyes—but there was no need for him to know that.

      Not yet, anyway.

      ‘How—did you find out?’ she asked eventually.

      ‘I went to see your mother.’

      ‘You’ve seen my mother?’ she asked him in disbelief. ‘Where? When?’

      ‘Yesterday. I went to Cornwall.’

      ‘But how on earth did you know where she lived?’

      ‘You told me. When we were in Rome. Remember?’

      Yes, come to mention it she did recollect mentioning the name of the small village in passing. Fancy him remembering that! Lola lifted her head slowly. ‘But why did my mother tell you?’ she whispered. ‘And why now?’

      He looked at her steadily. ‘I think that the burden of the secret she’s been carrying for all