sawing away at the broken door, demanding tea every ten minutes.
There were several bouquets to make and deliver all over town. There was a funeral at one of the cemeteries, and several mourners had ordered wreaths and floral tributes. Though she and Ariadne had already assembled most of these, the finishing touches had to be made, and they would need to be taken to the chapel of rest well on time.
Then there was the mayoral dinner tonight. Penny was doing it for the first time, and she was anxious that nothing should go wrong. There was a lot of work involved, very little of which could be prepared in advance. For a start, there were sixty-five vases of fresh flowers to arrange, then the four tables themselves to set out and lay, plus the several larger flower arrangements that would greet the guests in the lobby and flank the high table.
She had long since agreed all the details with Her Worship’s office, and she would need to be at the town hall by four at the latest, to start work.
She made herself her second cup of tea of the morning, and waited impatiently for Ariadne to arrive back from the flower market. There had been a lot of things to buy. Perhaps she should have gone with Ariadne. And where was Miles?
She heard the purr of a car in the High Street and looked up over her teacup. A steel-grey sports car, sleek and obviously very expensive, had pulled up outside the shop. Penny frowned, wondering who this could be, at this early hour.
The tall figure of a man got out of the car. She could not see him clearly through the blinds, but there was no question that he was looking into the shop windows as though to see if anyone was inside. She sat still, wondering why there was something so familiar about that tall, dark silhouette.
Then he knocked on the door. A hard, peremptory knock that made her heart sink. Getting a struggling business onto its feet had brought her into contact with all kinds of knocks on the door. Knocks like this one invariably brought trouble. She searched swiftly through her mind. Who did she owe money to? Had she left any taxes unpaid? Bills unsettled? She could think of nothing. Though she was still struggling, she had hoped she had left those precarious days behind her at last.
Her heart filled with unease, she went to the door and unbolted it. Cold morning air blew in her face as she swung it open.
‘I’m sorry, we’re not open yet,’ she began to say. But the words froze in her throat.
She was looking into the unsmiling face of the handsomest man she had ever seen.
And also the last man in all the world she wanted to see.
‘My God, I’ve found you at last,’ he whispered, holding her gaze with those grey eyes that could be as cold as the Arctic sea, or blaze like the sun off ice.
Involuntarily, she took a step back. He came into the shop and closed the door behind them. He was much taller than Penny, and he towered over her.
‘Ryan, you have no right to be here,’ she said in a tight voice. But her heart was racing as though it would burst out of her chest, and she felt her stomach churning. Such familiar feelings, when faced with Ryan Wolfe; they accompanied him the way wild winds and lightning accompanied winter storms.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t find you?’ he demanded, his gaze still locked on hers, as though he were drinking her in through his eyes.
Penny clenched her jaw. ‘I didn’t want you to follow me, Ryan. Why did you bother? What was the point?’
‘The point is that I can’t live without you,’ he replied.
Her heart seemed to stop for a moment at the harshly spoken words, but she forced herself to answer him. ‘Well, I can live without you,’ she said with a sketch of a smile. ‘I’ve been doing so for eleven months, two weeks and five days. Very happily, I might add.’
At last he tore his gaze away from her and glanced around the shop. His passionate, beautiful mouth curled. ‘You’re happy with this? When you know what I could give you!’
Anger brought a flush to her delicately sculpted cheekbones. ‘Don’t condescend to me, Ryan. Nothing is ever as good as what you can offer, is it? You hold everyone and everything in contempt.’
He shook his head slightly. ‘That’s not true. But I do know that I would give you the sun and the moon if you asked for them.’
She turned away. ‘You’re so sure of yourself. Haven’t all these months taught you anything?’
‘Time just deepens my feelings,’ he said, his voice husky. His eyes were devouring her again, hungry, more than hungry, ravenous. Her skin flared in gooseflesh as she recalled how very physical his hunger could be, how he could devour her body and soul in that fiery passion of his. ‘How could you do this to us, Penny? How do you manage to hide yourself from the truth?’
She turned back to him abruptly. ‘You shouldn’t have come here. Do you want to break both our hearts all over again?’
‘I want to make us whole.’ He took her arm in his hand, and as though his touch had burned her, Penny jerked away from him.
‘Don’t touch me!’
Ryan’s frown had relaxed for a moment, but at her rejection his face tightened again. ‘Do you know what you’ve put me through? It’s taken me almost a year to find you! You’ve hidden here under a false name, a false identity—’
‘Not exactly,’ she cut in. ‘Watkins is Aubrey’s name. My stepfather. I’m entitled to use it.’
‘You used it to hide yourself from me.’
‘You should have taken the hint,’ she retorted.
‘Penny, you can’t bury yourself here. You can’t bury all the passion we feel for each other.’
‘Passion dies, Ryan. I didn’t have to bury it. It grew cold as soon as I managed to get away from you.’ He began to speak but she stopped him by raising a slender hand. ‘I thought you had understood, a year ago. It’s over, forever. Your following me here was a bad mistake. Please go, now. And don’t come back.’
If she’d expected her little speech to make any impact on Ryan, she was disappointed. Those grey eyes, framed by such thick black lashes that they gave the appearance of smouldering like embers, considered her with all their force, all their damnable intelligence. ‘You don’t love me any longer?’ he asked quietly.
‘I don’t think I ever did,’ she replied.
His hair was longer than it had been in London. Then, it had been cropped short and kept neat, as befitted a young, dynamic, self-made millionaire on his way up the dizzy ladder. Now it had grown. Thick black locks half covered his ears and curled round his powerful neck; dishevelled by the wind, his hair looked almost wild, like the pelt of some glossy animal. He had either made it to the top of the ladder, and no longer cared what he looked like—or this was a different, even more dangerous Ryan Wolfe from the one she had known.
The tall and rangy body, too, looked leaner, though it was hard to tell, as he wore a sheepskin jacket against the bitter cold. The fleecy lining framed his sculpted jaw and muscular throat.
Who knew, with Ryan? Perhaps he had lost a fortune in some disastrous gamble? He was studying her now with cryptic eyes, his thumb rasping
