unforgiving brightness of the light, her skin retained the luminescent sheen of a pearl. He wondered if she was that same pale-as-milk shade all over and almost smiled.
‘Thank goodness…Jake…Freddy!’ Gwenna was anxiously looking back to see where the boys had got to and eager to focus her attention elsewhere.
Two ginger heads popped out from behind the hedge that bounded the grounds of the church.
Angelo froze. She had kids? He scanned her hand. Her wedding finger was bare.
‘Chase us, Gwenna!’ Freddy begged.
‘Are you their nanny?’ Angelo enquired.
Gwenna blinked in surprise at that unexpected question. ‘No, I’m not…I’m just looking after them for an hour. Excuse me,’ she added, glancing up without meaning to and discovering that his dark golden eyes held a light that made her tummy clench and her throat tighten. Hurriedly she screened him out again and grabbed up the basket of flowers that she had set down.
‘Perhaps you could tell me how far Peveril House is from here.’
Gwenna came to a halt again, for any appeal for assistance was a sure path to her full attention. She glanced across the green but there was no sign of the car he must have arrived in. ‘It’s a good five miles. If you go down the fork behind the church, you’ll see a sign for the hotel,’ she told him. ‘People don’t often come this way.’
‘I wonder why not,’ Angelo drawled softly. ‘The scenery is quite exquisite. Will you dine with me tonight?’
Taken aback by that smooth invitation, Gwenna flashed him a surprised glance and soft pink warmed her cheeks. ‘But I don’t know you…’
‘Seize the opportunity,’ Angelo advised silkily.
‘No…thank you, but I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
Other men invariably retreated at the first hint of refusal. That bold demand for an explanation startled her. ‘Well, er…’
‘Boyfriend?’
Tongue-tied by discomfiture, Gwenna shook her head and wished she found it easier to tell lies. ‘No, but…’ Her full, soft mouth folding, she dipped her head and fell silent.
She had turned down the only excuse that Angelo could have accepted. Even then he would only have sought another angle of approach, for he had yet to meet a woman capable of resisting what he offered. Fidelity, he had long since discovered, was usually negotiable. The silence lingered. He could not credit that, for the very first time in his life, he was meeting with a flat refusal.
‘Excuse me,’ she muttered again, her eagerness to be gone yet another rebuff to the male watching her. ‘I have to go.’
Angelo stood in mute disbelief as she walked away from him and through the church gate. His gaze tracked her every move as he had a perverse need to know if she would look back; she did not.
Breathless and taut, Gwenna secured the dog lead to the wooden bench that sat to one side of the arched wooden door and stepped gratefully into the cool dim interior of the old church. Freddy and Jake chattered while she set about her task of arranging the flowers for the christening that was to take place the following morning.
It was quite some time since anyone had asked her out; she met very few fresh faces. She could not understand why she was so flustered. Or why she had the most peculiar desire to creep back to the door to peer out and see if the handsome stranger was still there, which of course he wouldn’t be. He would now be well on the way to his incredibly posh hotel, which was probably hosting an international business conference or some such thing. There had been a slight inflection on certain words that had suggested that English might not be his first language. Certainly men with that kind of gloss and sophistication were scarcer than hen’s teeth, locally.
What was the matter with her? Why was she even curious? She dashed impatient fingers through the strands of fair hair clinging to her damp brow. She didn’t date. There was just no point when it couldn’t go anywhere. She had learned the hard way that even when men said friendship was fine, they always wanted more and more always involved sex. But she didn’t want physical intimacy without love, which would leave her feeling just as empty and alone when it was over. The taunts she had endured as she grew up had convinced her that old-fashioned values could provide a bulwark of protection from the worst mistakes. She was painfully aware that her own mother had paid a high price for flouting those same principles.
An image of the stranger’s lean bronzed face swam before Gwenna afresh, and the extraordinary impact of those dark deep set eyes against the fantastic symmetry of his hard bone structure. A soft gurgle of laughter was reluctantly dragged from her. So, she was female and human and she had noticed a breathtakingly gorgeous guy. Not her type though. He had been altogether too arrogant and slick to appeal to her. She liked open, friendly men with a creative bent. Add in tobacco brown hair and laughing green eyes, she reflected abstractedly, and she would be describing her likeness of the perfect man.
Fifty breathless minutes later, Gwenna returned Freddy and Jake to their mother, who had had a pre-natal appointment to attend at the hospital. She knew Joyce Miller well for the two women had worked together at the nursery for over a year.
‘Come in for a while,’ the heavily pregnant redhead urged. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
‘Sorry, I can’t.’
Joyce gave her a wry appraisal. ‘Is the Evil Witch jerking your chain again?’
Gwenna shrugged acceptance. ‘There’s still a few things needing done at my father’s house—’
‘But you don’t even live there. I can’t see what the state of the Old Rectory has got to do with you.’
It was quite a few years since Gwenna had moved into the small flat above the office at the nursery. Her accommodation was spartan but it had been a relief to embrace peace and independence. ‘I don’t mind if it keeps Eva happy. Tomorrow is a special day for Dad.’
‘And for you,’ Joyce chipped in. ‘Massey Manor was built by your ancestors. It was once your mother’s home—’
Gwenna laughed and shook her head. ‘More than a generation back and even then it was going to rack and ruin. My grandmother moved out because the roof was leaking so badly and by then she and my mother were only living in a couple of rooms. It’s a pity that none of my Massey ancestors had the magic knack of making money.’
‘Well, I think you’ve done incredibly well getting the locals together and coming up with so many good ideas to raise cash for the garden restoration.’
Gwenna grinned. ‘Thanks, but I’ve only ever been the backroom girl. It was my father’s persuasive tongue and his fantastic business connections which brought in the serious pledges of money. He’s done a marvellous job. Without his input we would never have made it this far.’
‘I’ve finally realised why you’re still single. You adore your father,’ the redhead said ruefully. ‘No man will ever match him in your eyes.’
Walking over to the Old Rectory where her father and stepmother lived, Gwenna thought about that conversation. She had not argued the point because the truth was too private. But,
