Stay calm. Relaxed.
‘Hello, Grace.’
A prickling tension stiffened her spine as those two softly spoken words dragged her round to face the man who had uttered them.
Seth Mason! She couldn’t speak—couldn’t even breathe for a moment.
She would have recognised him from his voice alone, a deep, rich baritone voice with no trace of any accent. Yet those masculine features—strongly etched and yet tougher-edged in their maturity—were unforgettable too. How often had her dreams been plagued by the stirring images of that hard-boned face, those steel-grey eyes above that rather proud nose? The slightly wavy, thick black hair still curling well over his collar, with those few stray strands that still fell idly across his forehead.
‘Seth…’ Her voice tailed away in shock. Over the years she had both longed and dreaded to see him again, yet she had never expected that she would. Especially not here. Tonight. When she needed everything to go right for her!
From his superior height, his penetrating gaze locked onto hers and his firm, well-defined mouth—the mouth that had driven her mindless for him as it had covered hers—twisted almost mockingly at her discomfiture.
‘How long has it been, Grace? Eight…nine years?’
‘I—I don’t remember,’ she faltered, but she did. Those few fateful meetings with him were engraved on her memory like her five-times table. It had been eight years ago, just after her nineteenth birthday, when she had thought that everything in life was either black or white. That life was mapped out for her in just the way she wanted it to go and that anything she wanted was hers for the taking. But she had learned some hard lessons since then and none more painful than the ones she had suffered from her brief liaison with this man—when she had discovered that nothing could be taken without there being a price, and a very high price, to pay.
‘Don’t remember, or don’t want to?’ he challenged softly.
Flinching from the reminder of things she didn’t want to think about, she took some consolation from realising that they were concealed from most of the party by the tall case of ceramics. She ignored his velvet-sheathed barb and said with a nervous little laugh, ‘Well…fancy seeing you here.’
‘Fancy.’
‘Quite a surprise.’
‘I’ll bet.’
He was smiling down at her but there was no warmth in those slate-grey eyes. Eyes that were keener, more discerning, if that were possible, than when he’d been…what?…twenty-three? Twenty-four? A quick calculation told her that he would be in his early thirties now.
The tension between them stretched as tight as gut, and in an effort to try and slacken it she tilted her small pointed chin towards a display of watercolours by an up and coming artist and asked, ‘Are you interested in modern art?’
‘Among other things.’
She didn’t rise to his bait. He had an agenda, she was sure, and she wasn’t even going to question what it might be.
‘Did you just walk in off the street?’ His name certainly hadn’t been on the guest list. It would have leaped out at her instantly if it had been. Nor was he dressed to kill like a lot of the other guests. He was wearing an open-necked white shirt beneath a leather jacket that did nothing to conceal the breadth of his powerful shoulders, and his long legs were encased in black jeans that showed off a lean waist and narrow hips, a testament to the fact that he exercised regularly and hard.
‘Now, that would be rather too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’ he supplied silkily, although he didn’t enlarge upon how he had managed to cross the threshold of her little gallery, and right at that moment Grace was far too strung up to care.
Making a more obvious point of looking around her this time, she asked, ‘Is there anything you fancy?’ And could have kicked herself for not choosing her words more carefully when she saw a rather feral smile touch his lips.
‘That’s a rather leading question, isn’t it?’ Rose colour deepened along her cheekbones as images, scents and sensations invaded every screaming corner of her mind. ‘But I think the answer to that has to be along the lines of once-bitten, twice shy.’
So he was still bearing a grudge for the way she had treated him! It didn’t help, telling herself that she probably would be too, had she been in his shoes.
‘Have you come here to look around?’ Angry sparks deepened her cornflower-blue eyes. ‘Or did you come here tonight simply to take pot shots at me?’
He laughed, an action that for a moment, as he lifted his head, showed off the corded strength of his tanned throat and made his features look altogether younger, less harshly etched. ‘You make me sound like a sniper.’
‘Do I?’ I wonder why? Grace thought ironically, sensing a lethal energy of purpose behind his composed façade, yet unable to determine exactly what that purpose was.
The dark strands of hair moved against his forehead as he viewed her obliquely. In spite of everything, Grace’s fingers burned with an absurd desire to brush them back. ‘Still answering every question with a question?’
‘It would seem so.’ She was amazed that he remembered saying that, even though she hadn’t forgotten one moment of those torrid hours she had spent with him. She met his gaze directly now. ‘And you?’ He’d been a boatyard hand from a poor background, manually skilled, hardworking—and far, far more exciting than any of the young men she’d known in her own social sphere. ‘Are you still living in the West Country?’ His nod was so slight as to be indiscernible. ‘Still messing about with boats?’ It was only her nervousness that made it sound so detrimental, but by the way those steely eyes narrowed he’d obviously taken it exactly the wrong way.
‘It would seem so,’ he drawled, lobbing her words back at her. ‘But then, what did you expect from a young man with too many ideas above his station? Wasn’t that what you as good as said before you went on to make me look an utter fool?’
She flinched from the reminder of things she had done when she had been too young and wrapped up in herself to know any better.
Defensively she said, ‘That was a long time ago.’
‘And that excuses your behaviour?’
No, because nothing could, she thought, ashamed, and it was that that made her snap back, ‘I wasn’t offering excuses.’
‘So what are you offering, Grace?’
‘You think I owe you something?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘It was eight years ago, for heaven’s sake!’
‘And you’re still the same person. Rich. Spoilt. And totally self-indulgent.’ This last remark accompanied a swift, assessing glance around the newly refurbished gallery with its pricey artwork, fine porcelain and tasteful furnishings—which owed more to her own flair for design than to cost. ‘And I’m still the poor boy from the wrong side of town.’
‘And whose fault’s that?’ His whole hostile attitude was causing little coils of
