His Marriage Ultimatum. HELEN BROOKS

      ‘Of course I will, I’d love to,’ she lied enthusiastically. The truth of the matter was that she would have liked twenty-four hours to get used to the fact that her father had turned into a couple overnight.

      ‘Great. Joan’ll be thrilled. I think she was a bit worried you might feel she was taking me away from you.’

      He laughed with the insensitivity of a father who thought his daughter was perfect and could never have a self-centred thought in her life, and Liberty responded with an appropriate laugh of her own before she said, ‘It’s high time you had someone to share your life with and from the sound of it she’s had no picnic up to yet.’ And she meant every word.

      ‘Thanks, Pumpkin.’ Her father’s voice was husky now, and there was a brief silence before he said, ‘Eight o’clock at the Phoenix suit you?’

      ‘The Phoenix?’ This really was true love. It cost an arm and a leg for so much as a glass of wine at the Phoenix, one of London’s most exclusive nightclubs. Liberty had only been there once before when a date had been hoping to impress her. The man in question had been hoping for a lot more too—courtesy of payment for her dinner—and had been more than a little offended when she had rebuffed his arrogant advances and compounded what he saw as an insult to his male prowess when she had sent a cheque for the cost of her dinner to him the next day. ‘Best bib and tucker then?’ she teased lightly.

      ‘You bet.’ Her father chuckled like an excited schoolboy. ‘See you later. I’ll be watching out for you. And…thanks again, Pumpkin,’ he added softly.

      This was turning into one crazy day. She sat for a full minute more mulling over all her father had said before she started the engine, but on the drive back to the office it wasn’t her father and Joan Andrews who filled her mind, but a tall, broad, tough-looking individual with eyes the colour of a stormy winter sky. And she knew she was going to ring Carter Blake’s number.

      CHAPTER TWO

      LIBERTY told herself she shouldn’t have been surprised when the rest of the afternoon turned into a maniac merry-go-round, mainly due to an extensive power cut just after she returned from lunch. One of her father’s favourite sayings was that it never rained but it poured, and with all the practice computers rendered helpless and irate clients at every turn, the day just got worse and worse.

      By six o’clock she felt a frazzled wreck, and if it had been anyone else but her father she was seeing that night she would have rung and made her excuses, the thought of a long hot bath and an early night taking on the appearance of heaven.

      She was one of the last to leave the offices in Finsbury, east London, but that wasn’t unusual. She was aiming to become a junior partner within the next five years, and that wouldn’t happen without dedication and hard work. Normally she caught the tube to and from work, but owing to her lunch date with her mother she had decided to use the car that morning. As she stood and stared at it in the practice car park, she reflected that it hadn’t been one of her better decisions.

      But she couldn’t think about booking the car into a garage just now. She had the evening to get through and then a long day in front of her tomorrow; the car could wait.

      She drove home very carefully, conscious that she was tired and that another accident was the last thing she needed. Her mood lifted as she drew into the tree-lined street in Whitechapel where she had recently bought her first home. After leaving law college, she had spent two years serving articles with her present firm whilst still living at home with her father, but once she had been offered a permanent position had felt the time was right to leave the nest for a rented bedsit. Another rented property, this time a one-bedroomed flat, had followed three years later, but at the beginning of the year she had come across the small, one-bed seventeenth-century almshouse—originally built for ‘decay’d’ seamen or their widows, according to the estate-agent blurb—being advertised in the local paper. She had felt good about the house even then.

      The ground floor consisted of a living room and bedroom, with a kitchen, dining room and separate bathroom in the basement and a Lilliputian garden at the rear just big enough to hold a garden table and two chairs and a selection of flowering potted shrubs grouped round a stone bird table and bird-bath.

      The lady owner had been retiring and moving to live with a sister in Cornwall after twenty-five years in the house and, against all the advice she would have offered someone else, Liberty had immediately declared herself to be in love with the place and offered the full asking price. She had been installed in her quaint little home within the month, complete with a hefty mortgage which meant she would have to tighten her belt for the forseeable future.

      But it was worth it. As she exited the car a shaft of cold autumn sunlight caught the tiny panes in the living room window, causing them to twinkle and glow. Oh yes, it was worth it all right, she thought, mounting the eight walled steps leading up to the stout front door with renewed vigour. She was autonomous, self-sufficient and self-supporting and she would never, ever be beholden to any man to get her the things she wanted.

      Liberty did not consciously think of her mother at this point, but the woman who had had such an adverse effect on her personality and her life was under the surface of her mind nevertheless.

      The front door opened straight into the living room, which was warm and cosy and comforting. After kicking off her shoes, Liberty flung herself down onto one of her two plump two-seater sofas, which were covered in a vibrant shade of terracotta. She stretched before relaxing her limbs, eyes shut. She loved this room. The oyster curtains and carpet which she’d bought along with the house had been a perfect backdrop for the sofas she had acquired a year or so before seeing her home, and the bookcase behind her and old original fireplace gave a permanence to the surroundings which was wonderfully cheering.

      But somehow, tonight, the usual magic wasn’t working. She sat up, frowning slightly. Carter Blake. The wretched man was demanding her attention as he had all through the long afternoon. She might just as well phone him now.

      She reached for her handbag and extracted the card. She had glanced at it earlier, expecting a formal business card or something of that nature, but instead there had just been his name with a couple of numbers, one designated as a mobile. Was the other his home? She stared at it, the frown deepening as she resolutely ignored the quickening of her heartbeat.

      She would phone him and, if he didn’t answer, leave a message before she began to get ready. She glanced at her watch. She’d order a taxi for tonight first though.

      The taxi booked, she felt both annoyed and perplexed with herself when she realised her heart was thudding like crazy at the thought of making the second telephone call. ‘Get a grip, Libby.’ She spoke out loud into the quietness. ‘He’s just a man. Two arms, two legs and no doubt a very inflated opinion of himself.’ The last few years in the market-place of life had shown her that men like Carter Blake—attractive, forceful men who wore arrogance like a second skin—always had an inflated opinion of themselves!

      She made a face. That being the case, she wouldn’t rush to phone him after all. She would leave it for a day or two, or at least until tomorrow. She barely had time to shower and get ready for her father’s big night as it was.

      By the time the taxi hooted its arrival outside, Liberty had bathed, creamed and coiffured herself into quite a different creature from the smart and rigidly formal Miss Fox of daytime hours. She rarely let her hair down—both metaphorically and literally—but, ever since a pair of granite-grey eyes had given her a cool once-over, a spirit of rebellion seemed to have taken hold. And the Phoenix did require something that bit special.

      Her normally sedate hair was now framing a fully made-up face in a silky shoulder-length bob, the classic black evening dress she was wearing giving the illusion of restraint until one noticed the thigh-length slits either side of the pencil-slim skirt. Gerard had urged her to buy the dress for a forthcoming dinner-dance they had been supposed to attend before his liaison with the kittenish Alexia, and she was glad now she had insisted on paying for it herself. It would have been a shame to get rid of such a gorgeous gown but she would