as she looked at the blue car parked at the roadside; visitors were few and far between to the tiny end-terrace house the two shared in a quiet residential part of town. Between work and caring for Lily, with all that entailed, there was very little time for a social life of her own.
‘Perhaps they’re visiting next door,’ she dismissed, parking her own car behind the blue one before getting out and opening the back door for Lily, deliberately not paying too much attention to the parked car. Just because they rarely received visitors that was no reason to stare at the car as if it were a vehicle from outer space!
Her daughter felt no such inhibitions, openly ogling the car as she held on to Joey’s hand and they walked to their front door. ‘There’s a man sitting inside, Mummy,’ she told Joey in a stage whisper.
Joey winced at the loudness of her daughter’s voice, sure the ‘man sitting inside’ the car must have heard her. After all, the car engine was switched off, and it was a warm evening, so the man probably had the window down too.
She unlocked their front door before pushing it open. ‘Come on, Lily’ she encouraged as her daughter still hung back curiously.
‘He’s getting out of the car, Mummy,’ Lily informed her even as she pulled on the sleeve of the light jacket Joey wore over a pink T-shirt and black trousers.
Joey could see that for herself, her gaze narrowing against the evening sunshine as she watched the man slowly unfolding his long length from inside the car.
Tall and blond, with a smoothly handsome face dominated by a pair of analytical blue eyes that raked over her in cool assessment, before moving down to stare openly at Lily. Joey felt as if she had had all the breath kicked out of her as she instantly recognised him.
Lily’s father.
The ominous feeling that had dogged her for the weeks following her terse letter in reply to his own came back in full force.
Because Joey knew, as she put a protective arm about Lily and pulled her daughter close against her, there could be only one reason why Daniel had come here…
CHAPTER TWO
‘GO INSIDE and hang up your school blazer, Lily,’ Joey told her daughter shakily. ‘I’ll join you in a few minutes.’
‘But, Mummy—’
‘Go inside, Lily!’ she snapped, before drawing in a deep controlling breath, forcing herself to smile reassuringly as her daughter’s bottom lip wobbled precariously at her unexpected terseness. ‘I’ll be in shortly,’ she assured her lightly. ‘Go and put a video on for a while,’ she encouraged, knowing this unexpected treat after school would soothe Lily’s ruffled feelings; usually television and videos were banned until the weekend.
‘Great!’ Lily enthused, before rushing into the house without a backward glance, their unexpected visitor already forgotten.
At least, by Lily…
Joey tensed once her daughter was safely inside the house, her shoulders straightening as she raised her head to look across at the man who had created this scene.
She narrowed her gaze, her expression one of puzzlement as she looked at him fully. ‘You aren’t Daniel,’ she realised slowly.
Oh, this man was very like Lily’s father—both men tall and blond, both having those cool, calculating blue eyes—but this man was older than the thirty-two Daniel would now be, was probably aged in his late thirties or early forties. But the likeness between the two men was enough for Joey not to feel entirely reassured by this fact…
‘My name is David Banning.’ The man spoke with a hard American drawl. ‘I’m Daniel’s brother.’
Daniel’s brother…Joey hadn’t even known he had a brother. Although she had no reason to doubt this man’s word. Besides, the likeness was unmistakable.
‘Daniel didn’t have the nerve to show his face here himself, then?’ she scorned.
The blue gaze became even more icy, the hard mouth tightening into a thin line. ‘That would have been rather difficult, in the circumstances,’ David Banning rasped harshly. ‘Daniel died four months ago!’
Joey could only stare uncomprehendingly at David Banning after he made this blunt announcement, unable to take in what he had just said, swallowing hard, swaying slightly, knowing a sudden feeling of light-headedness.
Daniel was dead…?
But how—? What…?
She shook her head as a sudden thought occurred to her. ‘He can’t be,’ she denied weakly. ‘I…He wrote to me. Just two months ago—’
‘That was me,’ David Banning interrupted.
D. Banning. The letter she had received had been signed ‘D. Banning’. This man, Daniel’s brother, was D. Banning too…
She had thought the signature on the letter a little formal, given the circumstances, but, as Daniel hadn’t been seen since the moment he was informed of Lily’s birth, Joey had decided he really was the stranger he obviously preferred to be.
But the letter hadn’t been from Daniel at all. Because he had already been dead two months when the letter was sent…
‘How did he die?’ she breathed huskily.
His brother shrugged dismissively. ‘The same way he lived—recklessly,’ he said harshly. ‘He was driving a high-speed motorboat—too fast—when it flipped over and sank. We recovered his body three days later,’ he added.
Joey thought back to the fun-loving, irresponsible man she had known seven years ago. Yes, she could see Daniel enjoying the power of going along on the water at high speed, could almost hear that huskily triumphant laugh of his as he challenged the sea gods.
And lost…
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured dazedly.
‘Are you?’ his brother questioned sceptically. ‘I think the two of us need to talk, don’t you?’ he added hardly.
Joey stiffened defensively. She didn’t like the sound of that at all. This man had already told her all that she needed to know—hadn’t he…?
‘As you can see, I’m rather busy at the moment.’ She nodded vaguely in the direction of the house, the sound of the video playing inside audible in the quiet of early evening.
‘As I can see,’ David Banning echoed softly, moving around the car to stand only feet away from her, his light suit obviously expensively tailored, as was the white silk shirt and grey tie he wore beneath it. ‘She’s very like Daniel,’ he murmured huskily.
Joey recoiled at the claim. ‘She is called Lily,’ she snapped coldly. ‘And she is absolutely nothing like Daniel. Thank God!’
‘Just so,’ David Banning acknowledged with a mocking inclination of his head. ‘But I still say we need to talk—Josey, isn’t it?’ he drawled knowingly.
‘Joey,’
