ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ELLIE CLUNG TO her seat, fingers wrapped fiercely around soft cream leather as the hedgerow spun by her window in a blur of mottled greens. For a moment the fuzzy images brought her paintings sharply to mind...until the fast-moving vehicle hit a sharp bend in the road. Then all she could think of was survival.
She tightened her grip, fear rising as she watched Matt fighting for control. His jaw was set, his profile firmly etched, displaying his annoyance at having had to leave work midafternoon to come and pick her up. But if they were going to get back home in one piece, then she had to say something, no matter how angry he was.
“Come on, Matt... I’m sorry that my car broke down, but if you keep driving like a madman, you’ll put us both into the hedge. If I’d known you were going to be like this, I’d have gotten a ride into the village with the tow truck, then caught a bus or something.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I could hardly leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere. You just don’t understand...” Matt increased his speed as the road leveled out. “I’m putting together an important deal and I need to get back to the office.”
“When aren’t you putting together a deal?” groaned Ellie. “But if you keep up this speed, you’re not going to be there to finalize it anyway—you’re going to be in the hospital.
“I can handle this car with my eyes shut,” Matt insisted, his voice softening as he mentioned his beloved BMW. “And what were you doing in this miserable place?”
“I told you yesterday I was going on a painting excursion today. There’s a chance I might be able to show some of my pieces at an exhibition in a couple months, and I need more material.”
Matt swung the wheel hard right, a sparkle of elation in his eyes as the powerful car responded.
“About that...” he began, concentrating all his attention on the road.
“What about it?”
The vehicle straightened out and he glanced across at her, a hint of amusement in the curve of his lips. “Your new paintings...”
Ellie frowned. Matt rarely took any notice of her work.
“No offense, Ellie, but are you really sure you’re going the right way with it? All those faded blurry bits make the pictures look kind of strange. Why can’t you just paint nice scenes with proper animals, if that’s what you want to concentrate on?”
Respecting the fact that Matt had gone out of his way to pick her up, Ellie had been trying to stay reasonably calm. His derogatory comment about her work, however, made her blood boil. Plus, he knew nothing about art.
“I don’t tell you how to do your deals,” she retaliated. “So why don’t you just keep your opinions on my painting to yourself. For your information, I’m taking a contemporary slant on animals and the countryside, and if you had any interest at all you would have noticed that I’ve been changing my style for a while.”
Matt turned his attention back to the road, negotiating another tight curve in the narrow lane. The car swerved sideways, tires screaming and Ellie tightened her grip on the seat, wishing she was anywhere but here.
“Slow down, Matt!” she yelled.
“And maybe you should keep your opinions on my driving to yourself,” Matt responded. “I’m perfectly in control.”
“Until we hit a tree or a tractor or something. Are you trying to kill us both?”
As they cleared the corner, Ellie took a breath, leaning back. She and Matt may have been engaged for only a few months, but these days it felt more like a lifetime. They seemed to be pulling in different directions, arguing about anything and everything. Determinedly shrugging off her irritation, she tried again.
“Look, Matt...I know it’s a pain for you having to come out here, and I do appreciate it...”
He cut her off midsentence. “No, Ellie, you have no clue how much of a pain it is for me to drop everything in the middle of a big deal. But I’m not so selfish that I’d leave you stranded. In fact...” He glanced across at her, his gray eyes cold as ice. “Sometimes I think you don’t actually have much of a clue about anything to do with me.”
“What!” Ellie froze. “I don’t have much of a clue about you? You’ve got that the wrong way around. If you understood anything at all about me, you’d know that my stupid paintings are actually beginning to do quite well. In fact, Mel says...”
“And that’s another thing,” he blurted, pushing his foot down on the gas again. “I’m sick of you going on about this Mel bloke. I’m your fiancé, remember.”
“How could I forget that? Clearly, though, you’ve forgotten that Mel is the owner of the gallery that might be exhibiting some of my paintings, and she just happens to be a woman.”
For a fleeting instant, she detected a flicker of amusement in his face as her information sank in. He glanced across at her, his expression softening, but before she could respond, a bright flash of russet against the vivid green of the grass shoulder up ahead caught her attention.
“Watch out!”
His automatic reaction was to stand hard on
