had left in the lounge, that Page had died. How do you think I felt, finding out that his funeral was today?’
‘Immensely relieved, I would have thought.’ His own sarcasm was unrelenting.
‘You don’t have the slightest sympathy for how I might feel, do you?’ she breathed, her teeth clenched as she struggled to control her temper. At least that was one advantage she had over the fiery-natured adolescent he had known. She was more in control.
He would never have a good word to say about Shirley—or anyone connected with her. She should have expected it. ‘My mother was born here-even if I wasn’t—even if she was regarded as being outside the socially accepted circle for having me. And whatever Page did to her—he was my grandfather. You’re not the only one who’s been blessed with the ability to feell’
He waited patiently while she finished. She wasn’t going to add that she had strong doubts about the last point—doubts about whether he could feel at all—which only increased as he drawled cynically, ‘Congratulations on the performance. Do you expect me to believe that you didn’t wait until Page was safely out of the way before you risked coming here? Were you hoping I’d be less of a problem to manipulate? Because, if you were, you’re in for a pretty rude awakening, Alex Johns—or whatever your real name might be. So what is it if, as you say—’ his chin jerked roughly upwards ‘—it isn’t the money?’
Those grey-green eyes were penetrating, causing Alex’s tongue to stray across her top lip. Fortunately, though, another car was coming up the drive, drawing York’s attention mercifully away from her. What would he have said if she’d told him? she wondered as she opened her door and stepped out into the cold, glittering day.
Half of Moorlands. A generous allowance and a few shares in the business.
As the solicitor and his clerk left, Alex stood numbly by the long leaded window, her arms folded, watching the dark saloon drive away.
‘How does it feel—getting things the easy way?’
Alex swung round, her gaze skittering across the plush, classically furnished lounge.
Jacketless, York was standing in the doorway, his hands on his hips, his long, powerful legs astride beneath the tailored trousers. Not many people had come back to the house, but those who had had gone. All except Celia, who was upstairs somewhere getting changed.
‘If you need to ask any more questions, why don’t you have it out with your solicitor?’ she recommended, with a toss of her head towards the window. ‘He seemed perfectly satisfied that he was dealing with the right woman.’ She felt her throat contract as he came into the room, an animal of such impressionable strength and forcefulness that inevitably her pulses started to quicken.
‘I’m not surprised—when you had him eating out of your hand from the word go.’
‘That’s hardly true,’ she reminded him. In fact the solicitor had been a very pleasant but astute middle-aged man. ‘And I thought you said he couldn’t be charmed by my winning smile.’
His gaze flicked cursorily over her slender figure beneath the pearl-grey silk blouse and straight navy skirt—all that she had been able to find that morning amongst her possessions suitable for wearing to a funeral.
‘Maybe I was wrong.’ His gaze lifted to assess the creamy smoothness of her complexion, the darkly fringed sapphire of almond-shaped eyes, the wide, sensual mouth, all framed by the intriguing silver of her hair—and in a voice that was dangerously soft he said, ‘Is any man immune?’
The tightening in Alex’s throat became almost painful and she took an involuntary step back, only to feel the soft cushions of the window-seat against her leg.
‘You’ve got all the charm of a beautiful woman plus a cool, level-headed intelligence. That’s a dangerous combination. The Alexia I knew was guileless, passionate, impulsive…’
‘She was a child!’
Light played across the rich ebony of that arrogant, tilted head.
“‘She”?’ he repeated in a voice like soft, suffocating silk.
‘So now you’ve got me doing it!’ Impatience coloured her voice. ‘What do you think I did with her? Killed her off and stole her identity?’ she argued, barely able to keep her mind on what she was saying. He was so dangerously attractive, had such a fascinating lure for the opposite sex that she might have melted under the blaze of that powerful magnetism if she hadn’t been so aware of how insensitive he was. ‘You saw all my papers!’
‘Yes.’
And he had had little choice but to accept them, as the solicitor had—to accept them as authentic, she thought, with a small twist of satisfaction. ‘So why are you still insinuating I’m not telling the truth?’
‘Why indeed?’ He moved a disconcerting step closer, that aura of potent male energy about him as unsettling as his uncomfortable nearness. ‘Perhaps it’s because under that oh, so cool-as-a-cucumber faąde you’re remarkably edgy. Unless, of course, by some stretch of the imagination you’re telling the truth and it’s something much more basic than the need for circumspection that’s making you so uneasy in my presence.’ Cold mockery
gave an upward curl to his mouth. ‘Still find me sexy, Alex?’
Despite the bitter frost that seemed to have got through to her bones, even though the house was centrally heated, Alex felt herself grow sticky beneath her blouse.
‘Is your conceit innate? Or has it been specially cultivated?’ she challenged stiffly, hiding the nervousness that her voice could so easily have revealed.
He laughed. ‘All right, if that’s the way you want it,’ he said. ‘I suppose if I’d been Alexia I’d probably have wanted to conceal the more intimate details too.’
Alex swallowed. She knew what he was talking about. She just didn’t want to think about it, and for a moment she longed to blurt out what he wanted her to say—that she wasn’t Alexia Masterton, she was someone else entirely. But that would have been self-defeating as well as stupid, and, striving for that outward calm he had mentioned, she murmured wearily, ‘Have you quite finished?’
A muscle twitched in his jaw and she thought for a moment that he was going to slap her down—metaphorically at any rate—for that little display of audacity. But all he did was stoop to pick up a tissue—hers, she realised—that was lying on the carpet, and, handing it to her, he said, ‘You can freshen up upstairs and then we’ll drive down into town so that you can pick up your luggage. Then I’ll take you round and show you what I’m going to do all in my power to stop you getting your hands on. That’s, of course, if you aren’t still too jetlagged.’
So he’d noticed that weariness in her. As he’d notice everything, she couldn’t help deciding with a little shudder.
Refusing to be baited into any more arguments with him, though, all she said was, ‘No.’ And, when he didn’t give her any indication of where she was to go, uttered pointedly, ‘Could you at least show me where it is—the bathroom, I mean?’
An emotion—impossible to read—flitted across his face. ‘You’re supposed to have been here before. I would have thought in the circumstances you would
