Mistress for a Night. Diana Hamilton

hadn’t seen Harold since. He’d meant to, of course he had, but work had got in the way. He regretted that now that Harold was dead, he thought, his eyes still fixed on the dreary garden scene.

      It was raining now, icy needles that clattered against the window pane, and the short winter day was ending. The housekeeper, Mrs Moody, had told him that a hard frost was forecast for tonight.

      It meant driving conditions would be tricky in the morning. Georgia would probably decide not to risk the icy roads. She hadn’t bothered to grab a flight and get over for her mother’s funeral, so why should she put herself out to attend Harold’s?

      Unless she wasn’t totally sure of the way her stepfather had left his money and was anxious to find out, he thought cynically.

      His hard mouth pulled down, he strode over to the phone and lifted the receiver.

      Georgia was hunting in the back of the kitchen cupboard for the spare jar of coffee granules she knew she had somewhere when the phone in the apartment’s living room rang.

      ‘I’ll get it.’ Ben levered his tall, whip-thin body from the kitchen doorway, where he’d been lounging, watching her, the slow smile he gave her as sexy as his husky voice.

      Returning to her search, she briefly wondered why she always blew each and every one of his suggestions of a date clean out of the water. Yet she knew why, really. It had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her.

      They’d both occupied apartments on the same floor of the converted Edwardian mini-mansion in one of Birmingham’s leafier suburbs for the past eight months. Returning from New York after more than six years, she’d known no one in the city, and had been grateful for the friendship Ben had offered.

      He often dropped by for a chat in the evenings; sometimes, as now, to borrow something, at other times bringing a bottle of wine to share, or a recently acquired CD he thought she might like to listen to. He asked her out to dinner on an average of once a week, and apparently did not get disheartened when she consistently turned him down.

      She didn’t want sex rearing its ugly head and spoiling the easy friendship they had.

      As she emerged from the cupboard, clutching the jar, the phone was still ringing. It had an irritable sound. She headed out of the kitchen. Ben probably couldn’t find it; it would be lurking under something or other.

      Which was why, as of this afternoon, she was on three weeks’ leave. To finally get her apartment sorted. For eight months she’d worked her socks off, and it was time now to make a liveable home.

      Ben found the phone under the pile of folded curtains she was going to hang on poles to hide the ugly chipboard doors put in by whoever had converted the building for multiple occupancy.

      She heard his sexy voice turn frosty as he said to the caller, ‘Yes, she is. Wait one moment.’ He held out the receiver, his voice an accusation. ‘It’s some man. Didn’t give his name.’

      As if, Georgia thought wearily, no one of the male sex, apart from himself, of course, had any right to be speaking to her. Wishing again that the man/woman thing didn’t make a habit of rearing up to threaten perfectly good and stable friendships, she ignored Ben’s scowl and gave her name to her caller.

      If it was one of her team back at the agency she didn’t want to know. Her recent and highly successful presentation to the directors of a giant ice-cream manufacturing company—with not one of the men in suits finding a single fault with the storyboards or videos—had earned her the right to take part of her leave entitlement.

      It wasn’t one of her team. It was Jason.

      Seven years, seven crowded eventful years, years of determined change and the quiet internal struggle to forget had passed since she’d seen him or heard from him. Yet his low, gravelly voice still had the power to shut her down: heartbeats, breathing, brain function, everything inside her held in frozen suspension.

      So why was he calling now?

      ‘Are you still there?’

      The sudden change of tone, the stinging harshness, brought her back into the land of the living. Her breath came fast now, her heart racing, her voice all jagged edges as she confirmed, ‘Of course I am. What was it you wanted?’

      Hardly gracious, but there was nothing gracious or civilised about the bitterness that tainted the very blood in her veins at the sound of his voice.

      He told her coldly, with no softening of his tone. ‘Harold died three days ago. Suddenly, from a brain haemorrhage. The funeral’s at eleven tomorrow morning. I think you should be here at Lytham, and be prepared to stay on for at least twenty-four hours.’

      Georgia’s skin went cold. Underneath her soft denim jeans and chunky sweater her body felt clammy. Harold? Dead? She had difficulty taking it in.

      ‘I suppose you’re having trouble deciding whether you can spare the time,’ Jason said into her extended silence. ‘Harold would have told me if you’d married, so I take it you have some other arrangement with the guy who answered your phone. Bring him with you if you can’t do without him for a night.’

      ‘I wouldn’t inflict you and your attitude on anyone I cared about,’ Georgia came back, horrified by how much his snide assumption that she couldn’t bear to be without a man in her bed for one single night hurt.

      ‘Stop being childish.’ He sounded bored. ‘I’m not asking you to be here for the pleasure of your company, but because you owe your stepfather respect—and rather more than that.’

      ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ What the hell was he implying?

      ‘There’s a lot to be sorted out.’ He ignored her interruption. ‘As I’m sure you already know, his entire estate goes to you. That means there are decisions you have to make, responsibilities you need to shoulder. I want to be sure you take them seriously—like what happens to the staff here, for instance.’

      If the news of Harold’s sudden death had come as a shock, the information that—for some weird reason—he had willed his entire estate to her was an even greater one. It numbed her brain for several long seconds, making her oblivious to the rest of what he was saying.

      And then her mind began to buzz. Legacy or no legacy, there was no question of her staying away from his funeral. But it had been dark and raining heavily since four this afternoon, and the forecast had promised a hard frost overnight. She had no intention of risking her life—or her new sports car—on icy roads by travelling up early the following morning.

      ‘I’ll be with you in a couple of hours,’ she said coldly, and ended the conversation.

      If he thought she couldn’t wait to get her hands on her legacy, then so be it. His opinion of her had been rock-bottom for the past seven years, so it couldn’t possibly get any lower.

      Whatever, it didn’t matter now. How could it? She had altered beyond recognition, inside and out. She was nothing like the gullible child of seven years ago. She had worked hard to make sure that nothing could hurt her now, certainly not Jason’s continuing contempt.

      Yet suddenly rare tears glittered in her eyes, turning the amber to shimmering gold. Unexpected, unheralded tears for her younger self, long forgotten, for lost dreams, a lost child.

      She blinked them away and straightened her spine. She never thought about the past.

      ‘Bad news?’ Ben put an arm round her shoulders.

      ‘My stepfather died,’ she answered tightly. ‘I’m driving down to Gloucestershire tonight, before the roads turn into a skating rink.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’ His arm tightened around her, pulling her close. ‘And who was the guy on the phone?’

      ‘Does it matter?’ she said irritably. He was acting as if he had rights in her life. Then she relented, sighing, ‘Jason, my stepbrother. I hardly know him.’

      And