anyone, Verity?’ Charlotte had asked her gently. ‘Any special someone…an old flame…?’
‘No. No one,’ Verity had lied, hardening her heart against the memories she’d been able to feel threatening to push past the barriers she had put in place against them.
She’d had her share of opportunities, of course—dates…men who had wanted to get to know her better—but…but she had never really been sure whether it had been her they had wanted or the business, and she had simply never cared enough to take the risk of finding out. She had already been hurt once by believing a man who had told her that he loved her. She wasn’t going to allow it to happen a second time.
Squaring her shoulders, she inserted the key into the lock and turned the handle.
CHAPTER TWO
AS SHE stepped into the house’s long narrow hallway, Verity blinked in astonished surprise. Gone was the dark paint and equally dark carpet she remembered, the air of cold unwelcome and austere disapproval, and in their place the hallway glowed with soft warm colours, natural creams warmed by the sunlight pouring in through the window halfway up the stairs. The house felt different, she acknowledged.
Half an hour later, having subjected it to a thorough inspection, she had to admit that its present owners had done a wonderful job of transforming it. Her uncle would, of course, have been horrified both by the luxury and the total impracticality of the warm cream carpet that covered virtually every floor surface. Verity, on the other hand, found it both heart-warming and deliciously sensual, if one could use such a word about something so mundane as mere carpet. The bedroom carpet, for instance, with its particularly thick and soft pile, was so warm-looking that she had had to fight an urge to slip off her shoes and curl her bare toes into it. And as for the wonderful pseudo-Victorian bathroom with its huge, deep tub and luxurious fitments, not to mention the separate shower room that went with it—it was a feast for the eyes.
‘It’s the best we’ve got on our books,’ the agent had told her. ‘The couple who own it had it renovated to the highest standard and if his company hadn’t transferred him to California they would still be living there themselves.’
Well, at least she had plenty of wardrobe space, Verity acknowledged a couple of hours later, having lugged the last of her suitcases up the stairs and started to remove their contents.
It had been Charlotte who had decided that they should have a ceremonial clear-out of all the plain, businesslike suits Verity had worn during her years as Chief Executive and Chairperson of the company.
‘Throw them out!’
Verity gasped in shock as she listened to what Charlotte was proposing.
‘They’re far too good for that. That cloth…’
‘…will last forever. I know. I remember you telling me so when you originally ordered them—and that was five years ago.’
‘Just after Uncle Toby died, yes, I know,’ Verity agreed sombrely.
‘I hated them on you then and they don’t have any place in your life now,’ Charlotte reminded her, adding, ‘and, whilst we’re on the subject, I just never, ever, want to see you wearing your hair up again—especially when it looks so wonderful down. Nature is very, very unfair,’ she continued. ‘Not only has she given you the most wonderful skin, a profile to die for and naturally navy blue eyes, she’s also given you the most glorious honey-blonde hair. It’s every bit as thick and gorgeous-looking as Cindy Crawford’s and it curls naturally…’
‘Cindy who?’ Verity teased, laughing when Charlotte began to look appalled and holding her hands up in defeat as she admitted, ‘It’s okay. I do know who she is…’
‘What you need to do is to cultivate a more natural, approachable look,’ Charlotte counselled her. ‘Think jeans and white tees, a navy blazer and loafers, with your hair left down and just a smidgen of make-up.’
‘Charlie,’ Verity warned, telling her friend, ‘I’ve been in business far too long not to recognise someone trying to package an item for sale.’
‘The only person you need selling to is yourself,’ Charlotte countered. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of men I’ve introduced you to who you’ve simply frozen out…One day you’re going to wake up on your own heading for forty and—’
‘Is that such a very bad deal?’ Verity objected.
‘Well, there are other things in life,’ Charlotte reminded her, ‘and I’ve watched you often enough with my two to know how good you are with children.’
It wasn’t a subject which Verity wanted to pursue. Not even Charlie, who was arguably her closest friend, knew about Silas and the pain he had caused her, the hopes she had once had…the love she had once given him, only to have it thrown back in her face when he had married someone else, despite telling her…But what was the point in going back over old ground?
She had been nineteen when she and Silas had first met; twenty-two when he had married—someone else—and what time they had had together had been snatched between her years at university, followed by a brief halcyon period of less than six months between her finishing university and being sent to America by her uncle. Halcyon to her, that was. For Silas?
Face it, she told herself sternly now as she hung the last of her spectacular new clothes into the wardrobe. He was never really serious about you, despite everything he said. If he had been he’d have done as he promised.
‘I’ll love you forever,’ he had told her the first time they had made love. ‘You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I will ever want…’
But he had been lying to her, Verity acknowledged dry-eyed. He had never really loved her at all. And why on earth he had encouraged her to believe that he did, she really could not understand. He had never struck her as the kind of man who needed the ego-boost of making sexual conquests. He was tall, brown-haired and grey-eyed, with the kind of physique that came from working hard out of doors, and Verity had fallen in love with him without needing any encouragement or coaxing. She had just finished her first year at university and come home for the holidays to find him working in her uncle’s garden. He had introduced himself to her and had watched her quizzically as she had been too inexperienced, too besotted, to hide her immediate reaction to him, her face and her body blushing a deep vivid pink.
Verity tensed, remembering just how betrayingly her over-sensitive young body had revealed her reaction to him, her nipples underneath the thin tee shirt she had been wearing hardening so that she had instinctively crossed her arms over her breasts to hide their flaunting wantonness. He, Silas, had affected not to notice what had happened to her or how embarrassed she had been by it, tactfully turning his head and gently directing her attention to the flower bed he had been weeding, making some easy, relaxed comment about the design of the garden, giving her time to recover her equilibrium and yet, somehow, at the same time, closing the distance between them so that when he’d started to draw her attention to another part of the garden he’d been close enough to her to be able to touch her bare arm with his hand.
Verity could remember even now how violently she had quivered in immediate reaction to his touch.
Fatefully she had turned her head to look at him, her wide-eyed gaze going first to his eyes and then helplessly to his mouth.
He had told her
