between her and the awkward teenager he’d known for that brief period, but she merely shrugged and glanced away.
Outside the small country church, groups of darkly clad figures still hovered, waiting to pay their respects. Behind, the Somerset hills rose, sharply white in contrast, glittering under the late frost.
‘I was just a kid.’ How had he managed with just one look to make her feel exactly what she was—a total intruder?
‘A kid who was nicely rounded if not plump.’ His remark seemed to give him licence to regard the willowy lines of her body with a thoroughness that was overtly sexual—albeit suspicious—awakening her to the full force of an attraction that only she knew had driven the young Alexia almost crazy with shame. ‘A stammering seventeen-year-old with glasses.’
‘That was ten years ago.’ The sudden tremor in her voice was unmistakable, causing a cruel smile to lift one corner of his mouth. ‘I outgrew the puppy-fat with the specs.’
A nerve seemed to quiver in that strong jaw as his gaze flicked inevitably upwards. ‘You were also a brunette.’
There was scepticism in every lean inch of him. But he had had to mention it, hadn’t he? she thought tensely, feeling his gaze resting with hard contemplation on her hair. She had tried low-lights when it had started greying, then, out of desperation, she’d worn it short and blonde for a while, when the paler strands had become too significant to hide. But by the time she was twenty-five she had given up the battle and started growing it again, so that now it touched her shoulders in a sea of waves beneath the loosely flowing black hood, in her natural colour, soft silver, which with her velvety black brows and blue eyes gave her a uniqueness she had, for some time now, been forced to accept.
‘Not everyone’s as perfect as you, York,’ she uttered, dragging her gaze reluctantly down over his hard, lean physique before sidestepping away from him. At thirtysix—if her calculations were correct—he was the perfect specimen of untrammelled masculinity and didn’t even possess one grey strand on that arrogant head!
‘Exactly why have you come here?’
‘You wrote to me, remember?’
‘Did I?’
The doubt in his voice made her back stiffen as she turned, but over her shoulder she threw back disdainfully, ‘You know you did.’
‘All right, supposing I did? That was over six weeks ago. Pity you couldn’t have managed to get here while he was still alive!’ His condemnatory tones followed her across the frozen grass. ‘But then why bother—when you probably guessed he’d already made you a substantial beneficiary in his will?’
She turned back and cast a quick glance up at him, her eyes guarded, concealing any emotion. She hadn’t even considered that the late, wealthy businessman might have left his only grandchild anything…
‘Isn’t that what you were hoping?’ His hard, accusing tone said he believed she had considered it—and above everything else.
‘No,’ she said quietly, the cold that penetrated the thin soles of her low-heeled shoes making her shiver. She’d forgotten how long the winter could linger in England.
‘Oh, come on…Alex.’ That crease between the thick masculine brows, the way he hesitated over her name told her that, not surprisingly, he still wasn’t convinced that she was who she said she was—wasn’t absolutely sure. ‘Why else would you have flown twelve thousand miles from New Zealand just to arrive right on cue here today? And don’t try to convince me it was out of a loving granddaughter’s devotion, or you would have come as soon as you’d realised he was ill.’
He was right, but what could she tell him? That she hadn’t got his letter? That she’d only recently changed address in Auckland and that his communication had taken five weeks to catch up? Everyone knew there had been virtually no contact and certainly no affection between Page Masterton and his granddaughter in twentyseven years, and she doubted if this hard, cynical nephew of his would believe an excuse like that.
As for coming here today—a perfect stranger—because that was what she was—what could she say to him? How could she explain her reasons when she wasn’t even sure what they were herself? Perhaps she just wanted justice for the unfortunate Shirley and her wretched little offspring, but she had ceased to associate herself with either of them for so long that she wasn’t sure any more.
Or perhaps it was because she, Alex Johns, all alone in the world, had once so ached to belong to a family—no, not just any family, this family, she thought, with bitter self-recrimination—that she had followed their enterprises through those specially ordered English newspapers with a rapacity that had bordered on the obsessional. She only knew that when she had come home from the studios last week and found lying on the mat that crumpled letter that began, “My dear Alexia…” the desire to give in to what remained of those reckless, adolescent yearnings had proved too much.
Her mind clamped tight against the feelings that had ravaged her then. But if York Masterton knew for a moment one of the main reasons why she had been motivated to come…
She shuddered, staring sightlessly at the stone monuments and marble carvings around the little churchyard, guessing at the degree of verbal brutality he could be capable of.
‘You didn’t give a damn about him.’ Those censuring masculine tones flayed her. ‘Otherwise you would have been here weeks ago—as soon as you received my letter.
Do you think I went to all the trouble of trying to trace you for the fun of it? If it had been left to me I would have—’
He broke off, the lean angles of his face looking drawn—drawn with grief for his uncle, she was astute enough to realise. But there was a bitter detestation in him, too, of her, and quietly she taunted, ‘You would have done what, York? Left me to rot?’ Raw bitterness percolated through her words. ‘Like your uncle did with Shirley?’
She saw anger flare in those grey-green eyes before it gave way to a question—analysing, diamond-hard.
‘Shirley?’
Alex took a breath, steeling herself against his cynical probing. ‘She was only nineteen when she had me, York, you know that. We were more like sisters. Surely you can’t have forgotten how she didn’t like me calling her anything else? I suppose she didn’t like having to admit I was her daughter.’
‘But you’ve no qualms about admitting it?’
His voice was coldly sarcastic and a wave of colour washed up over Alex’s face. Did he mean because of Shirley’s volatile, fiercely rebellious nature? Or was he testing her, looking for some inconsistency…? She almost wanted to turn and run.
‘Anyway, it was up to you, wasn’t it?’ she said pointedly, refusing to let his sarcasm and his obvious suspicions get to her. ‘So why did you—write to me, I mean? Did Page specifically request you to?’
‘No.’
So he had tried to find his late cousin’s missing daughter solely on his own initiative. For some reason that disturbed Alex far more than if it had been at the other man’s instigation.
‘He wouldn’t have admitted to it, but I knew he wanted me to find his only grandchild. As for myself…’ his mouth took on a humourless curve as he regarded her again with that studied
