Tamara snatched the mask away. ‘Don’t try and pretend you care about me, or that my mother meant anything to you,’ she sneered. ‘What was she—a one-night stand?’

‘I do not do one-night stands.’

Antonio was conscious that he had made the same angry assertion only a couple of weeks earlier. On that occasion it had been in response to his sister’s taunt that he was in no position to discuss relationships because he’d never had one, only a series of one-night stands.

His angry disclaimer had cut no ice with Sophia. He was used to his volatile sister’s cutting ripostes, but this one had stuck in his mind.

‘Your one-night stands may last six months, a year, even, but, believe me, Antonio, they’re not relationships. A relationship requires that you give something of yourself and you don’t even know how.’

‘So did you love her?’

There was a silence.

Antonio watched Tamara’s thin frame stiffen as though anticipating a blow.

An image formed in Antonio’s head: flawless skin, full lips painted red, and eyes that could radiate an innocence their owner had not possessed. It was a lovely face. A face inextricably linked with deceit and humiliation. The deceit had been hers, the humiliation his. And when you were nineteen and in love humiliation could be pretty devastating.

Falling in love with Miranda had been a life-shaping experience for Antonio. She had taught him an important lesson. You could allow your passions to rule you or you could rule them.

Antonio had made his choice.

Where his emotions were concerned he had taught himself to step back, to be objective. Having the women in his life complain that he gave nothing of himself seemed infinitely preferable to Antonio than the alternative.

But there was now a female in his life whom he could not step back from—one he could not be objective about.

He knew exactly what he had to say.

‘I was very much in love with your mother.’

The girl studied his face suspiciously. ‘You were…?’

‘I was, and I can honestly say I have never loved a woman since.’ Loving required trust and Antonio had no intention of trusting a woman again.

For no reason at all he found himself thinking about Fleur, those big, innocent eyes, and he felt tender feelings stir.

Then he thought about her mouth and was instantly locked into a steamy fantasy.

It was only when an attractive nurse in a crisp white uniform bustled in and said something he didn’t hear that Antonio managed to drag his thoughts away from the erotic images dancing in his mind.

Fleur hadn’t stuck around to see how the girl responded to his confession.

As she limped down the corridor her emotions were in turmoil. Antonio the man with the playboy reputation, she could deal with…sort of. Antonio the man who had only ever loved one woman, and lost her…now that was a very different prospect.

She hated this shift of feelings that was taking place inside her. But then maybe, she mused darkly, she was only getting what she deserved. Eavesdropping was a contemptible thing.

She had decided to despise Antonio Rochas before she’d even met him. Now she was presented with the possibility that underneath the cynicism and macho posturing there was a man capable of deep feeling. A one-woman man…

Did he compare all women with the one he had lost…?

Had he been thinking about his tragic lost love when he’d kissed her? Then, recalling the glazed heat in his glittering eyes, she decided not. It seemed unlikely that his brain had been involved at all during that brief passionate exchange!

And as her own brain had flat-lined the moment he had touched her, Fleur didn’t feel she was in a position to sneer.

Two nurses were emerging from the room next door when Fleur limped past, they looked startled to see her. Fleur just smiled and tried to look as though she were somewhere she was meant to be, which undoubtedly she wasn’t.

The helpful nurse had been wrong. She didn’t have to wait thirty minutes—it was nearly an hour before she received her painkillers. With time on her hands her imagination went into overdrive.

Had they argued over something trivial? Had both been too proud and stubborn to be the first one to say they were wrong?

She supposed that she was never going to know the real story.

Antonio stayed for a while after Tamara had fallen asleep. Sometimes she seemed so adult, but in repose, the defiance and belligerence absent from her face, his daughter looked like the child she actually was.

Her vulnerability touched him, aroused a fierce protectiveness in him.

Was this the way fathers felt? He wouldn’t know because the blonde had been right—there was more to fatherhood than matching DNA.

It suddenly hit him all the things he had missed. What had she been like as a baby, a toddler…? He would never know. The sense of loss hit him with a force so strong that it felt like a blade sliding between his ribs.

He felt a volatile mixture of emotions as he looked at this child who was a part of him. He suddenly realised the enormity of having the responsibility for another life. He found himself admiring single parents who raised their children alone.

Fleur had made it through the glass turnstile exit of Casualty when she saw Antonio.

He looked so alone.

He was standing, his hands dug deep in his pockets, his back set to the wind. He wasn’t looking in her direction and even if he had been she wasn’t sure he would have noticed her. His expression in profile suggested he was a man with a lot on his mind. Vulnerable…mentally she deleted the word that flashed into her head.

Do not even think about feeling sorry for him, she lectured herself sternly. If ever there was a man who could look after himself, it was Antonio Rochas.

Just walk past, Fleur…walk past and keep walking.

It was sound advice.

She nearly made it, very nearly. She had almost readied the rank of taxis when her conscience proved stronger than her instincts for self-preservation.

‘You’re an idiot, Fleur,’ she muttered to herself as she hurried back up the rain-slick path.

She stopped just a little out of his line of vision and studied him, trying to figure out what it was, beside the obvious, which made her react to him differently from the way she ever had to any other man.

It defied logic.

‘You’re still here…?’

Antonio turned his head and levered his broad shoulders from the wall. ‘I came out here for some fresh air while I waited.’

‘For what?’

‘You.’

‘Why?’

‘When I arrive with a lady I like to see that she gets safely to her destination.’

‘How sweet and gallant.’ She lifted her eyes to his and sketched a smile. ‘Though less sweet and gallant when you take into account your bed is usually her destination. So I suppose you have a vested interest in making sure she gets there.’

Antonio released a startled hissing gasp through his clenched teeth. Then to her dismay grinned. His blue eyes danced with mockery as he asked, ‘Is that where you are expecting to end up…?’

Wondering when she was going to stop blurting out the first thing that came into her head, Fleur willed her fiery cheeks to stop burning.

‘I would prefer to spend the night in this place—’ she tipped her head in the direction of the big building behind them ‘—and you know how much I love hospitals.’

Antonio didn’t dispute her angry claim. ‘They tell me they are letting you go home?’ His grin faded as his glance dropped to her leg.

She nodded, relieved that he had dropped the subject of his bed, then stiffened. ‘They should not have been telling you anything.’

Irritatingly her annoyance seemed to amuse him. ‘I promise they did not reveal any medical details. I don’t even know if you had stitches?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘And a tetanus shot. You were right.’

‘I usually am.’

‘Infallible and modest.’ He would have been even smugger if he had heard the doctor tell her that a fraction deeper and a tendon would have been severed.

Her comment drew a grin from him, this time it seemed more tired than sardonic.

‘Do you have to come back to the clinic?’

‘No, they topped up my tetanus cover and gave me an antibiotic jab.’ She shook the paper bag in her hand. ‘Painkillers.’ Which she did need; now the local had worn off her leg was aching with a vengeance. ‘And I can go back to my GP to have them taken out. So I’m sorted. How’s Tamara?’

Antonio visibly tensed at the name. ‘They’re keeping her in overnight,’ he said abruptly.

‘But she’s…’

‘They say she’ll be fine, but—’ his eyes swept across her upturned features and a disturbing expression slid into his eyes ‘—you already know that, don’t you?’

Fleur stiffened and looked up at him warily through her lashes. ‘I do…?’ Overplaying the innocence big time, mocked the voice in her head.

‘The nurses mentioned our visitor,’ Antonio revealed, stretching one arm above his head and rotating first one shoulder and then the other to relieve the knots of tension in his spine and shoulders.

A distracted expression slid across Fleur’s face as she imagined the things going on under his shirt…Things like taut muscle rippling beneath satiny golden skin. A hoarse sound escaped her throat as she lowered her eyes and grunted. ‘Why do you automatically assume that was me?’

‘The interesting limp, blond hair and golden eyes were clues,’ he revealed drily.

Her eyes flew upwards. ‘They did not notice what colour my eyes were!’ she scoffed.

‘No, but I did.’

His eyes locked onto hers and as she registered the explicitly sensual gleam Fleur’s stomach took a diving lurch. ‘I thought I’d look in,’ she admitted, tugging at the neckline of her borrowed top.

One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘But changed your mind?’

‘I got as far as the door, but…’

‘You saw me,’ he inserted drily. ‘Were you worried I would kiss you again?’

Hoped. The colour in her cheeks perceptibly heightened. Fleur shrugged while fighting to contain her growing panic. ‘Not really. I thought I was quite safe from your unwanted attentions in front of your daughter.’

‘Unwanted…?’

She squared her jaw. ‘You think I enjoy being mauled by strange men?’

‘I can’t speak in general, but if we’re talking specifics—’

Fleur, who didn’t want to talk specifically or any other way about that kiss in the car, cut across him with a high-pitched, ‘I just didn’t want to intrude.’

The muscles around his mouth quivered as his lips compressed into a hard line. ‘An intrusion might have been welcome.’

‘Well, it’s good that there was no real harm.’ At least not to Tamara. Fleur was less sure that she could claim the same, and she wasn’t thinking about her leg! ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

‘They said there’s not much point—they gave her something to help her sleep—but I will anyway,’ he said, flexing his shoulders once more before shoving his hands back into his pockets.

‘Then you couldn’t take me home, could you?’ she pointed out. ‘Unless your talents include the ability to be in two places at once.’

‘The idea was I take you home and then come back.’

Get in a car with him again…It would be like an alcoholic getting a job in a distillery! Accepting you have a problem is the first step, Fleur, she told herself. And, oh, boy, do I have a problem!

‘There’s absolutely no need, and anyway you wouldn’t want to risk Tamara waking up and you not being there.’

‘I seriously doubt if seeing my face when she wakes up would speed her recovery. But then you already know that too, don’t you? You’ll have such a lot to tell your friends.’

‘I’m not a gossip and I didn’t ask to be a witness to your private family arguments,’ she reminded him, stung by the suggestion she couldn’t wait to rush out to share his secrets with the world. Why exactly had he shared them with her? ‘And, frankly, I’ve got enough problems of my own without sharing yours.’

‘You didn’t ask to be kissed either, but you enjoyed that.’ His eyes skimmed over her face and his voice dropped a husky octave as he added a husky, ‘So did I.’ His long lashes swept upwards from the angle of his chiselled cheekbones as his blue eyes meshed with hers.

‘You sound surprised,’ she observed huskily.

His brows lifted as he looked struck by her remark. ‘I suppose I was,’ he admitted.

‘Because I look like someone who doesn’t know how to kiss.’

This spiky comment drew a laugh from Antonio. The uninhibited and extremely attractive sound made several people look curiously in their direction. It made Fleur’s hopelessly receptive stomach muscles quiver frantically.

‘With that mouth…’ The last traces of laughter faded from his face as his glance came to rest on the lush outline. ‘You could not fail to be a good kisser. That mouth,’ he said, staring at it hard, ‘was made for kissing.’

Not surprisingly Fleur, who was standing there with her feet nailed to the floor with dark waves of sheer longing lapping around her ankles, couldn’t think of a suitably glib retort.

The perplexed pucker that pleated his forehead deepened. ‘No, it was my reaction that surprised me,’ he admitted, still staring at her mouth.

I really wish he wouldn’t.

‘The last time I made love in a car I was in my teens.’

‘Knowledge I could have lived without.’ But not for the reason her caustic tone suggested.

In her head she could see female hands sliding under his shirt and along the smooth golden skin of his strong, supple back just the way she had wanted her to.

‘Around you my control is…not good,’ he revealed with admirable understatement. Around her he had less control than a kid deluged by the first rush of male hormones.

‘And we did not make love!’ That had only happened in her head and, though her mind was pretty messed up, she could still differentiate between what was real and what was a figment of her feverish imagination. Just!

‘That had very little to do with good judgement. If that car hadn’t sounded its horn…’

‘What car?’ she said without thinking.

Antonio tilted his dark head fractionally, as if acknowledging a compliment. ‘I’m flattered.’

And so pleased with himself that she wanted to kick him. ‘Oh, that car…’

‘Yes, that car.’

His indulgent tone set her teeth on edge. ‘Right, well, I should be getting home. I have to pick up Sandy.’

‘Don’t bother. I’ll drop him over in the morning.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘I want to.’

His tone was far more forceful and emphatic than the subject warranted. Now if he’d been saying, I want you…

Trying to act as if she weren’t shaking feverishly and her body hadn’t been engulfed by a flash of heat, Fleur gave a shrug that suggested she didn’t care one way or the other and began to walk away.

She had gone a few yards when she looked back over her shoulder. ‘You’re really not that good a kisser, you know.’

‘You are.’

If he’d smiled it would have passed as a joke, but he didn’t smile.

Hunching her shoulders, Fleur almost ran down the path, oblivious to the pain in her leg. Clearly he was a man who had to have the last word…The alternative was, well, actually, the alternative was plain ridiculous.

Chapter Eight

FLEUR dumped the bowl of blackberries she had just picked from the hedge on the drainer and, pausing only to kick off her Wellingtons, hurried to answer the door.

Smoothing down her hair, she opened the door. ‘Sorry, I was in the garden…’ She stopped, her eyes widening as she identified her visitor. ‘Hello…Tamara, isn’t it?’

Two days after the near-death lake drama and not wet or nearly dead the youngster was revealed as tall and slender with the makings of real beauty in the stunning bones of her softly youthful face and big liquid brown fawn-like eyes.

Just as Fleur had predicted, in a couple of years when those awkward coltish angles softened and the curves filled out Antonio was going to have a whole new set of problems, she reflected, unable to repress an uncharitable smile at the thought.

‘He said I had to come and thank you…’ Looking resentful as only a teenager could, she gestured towards the lane.

Fleur registered the Range Rover, then the outline of a figure in the driver’s seat, and tensed.

‘Like I wasn’t going to say thank you anyway,’ the girl added with a sarcastic sniff. ‘He didn’t have to tell me to.’

‘Would you like to come in?’ Fleur asked, knowing when not to offer an opinion. It wasn’t as though Antonio would thank her for speaking up for him. Antonio who had sent his daughter but not come himself. She would be well within her rights to march up to that car and demand the explanation she deserved!

She didn’t, because that would make him think she gave a damn whether or not he kept his promises.

Her glance flickered covertly towards the parked vehicle. For someone, she mused, who apparently put such great store by good manners, his could do with some work!

Was he sitting out there because he was afraid that she would want to take up where they had left off, which, now she came to think about it, was nowhere. Whatever the reason, he needn’t have worried—she had received the message loud and clear when one of the female gardeners had brought Sandy back the next morning.

Fleur had had no problem translating, ‘To save you the bother of calling for him,’ as, ‘You’ve got no excuse to come calling at the big house now.’ It was clear to her that he considered that kiss a massive lapse of judgement and not a lapse he felt inclined to repeat in the cold light of day.

And neither did she.

Tamara looked curiously past Fleur into the cottage, but shook her head. ‘I’d better not. He’s in a hurry.’

‘Some other time, maybe, and I’m glad you’re feeling better,’ Fleur said.

‘Thanks to you.’ The words were minus the sulky tones that had laced the conversation to this point.

‘You’re welcome,’ Fleur replied cheerfully. ‘But I didn’t actually have much to do with saving you,’ she admitted.

The girl frowned and in the process looked remarkably like a softer version of her father. ‘But…’

‘That was your father,’ Fleur inserted. ‘But then I’m sure you already know that.’ The girl’s expressive face was a fair indication that she knew nothing of the sort, but, pretending not to notice, Fleur added, ‘When he dived down for that last time…’ She closed her eyes, a shudder running through her body as without warning she was back there staring at the still water…waiting and praying.

‘I really thought he wasn’t coming back up…’ She didn’t have to pretend the husky emotion in her voice as her thoughts returned to that awful moment.

Then exhaling a gusty sigh and rubbing her arms, which were covered in a rash of goose-flesh, she lifted her eyes. The astonishment chasing across the youthful features of Antonio’s daughter was almost comical. Clearly this was the first time the girl had realised that the man she claimed to loathe had risked his life for her.

‘Well, he wasn’t, was he? Coming back up, that is—not without you, at any rate.’

Tamara stared at Fleur. ‘But he doesn’t even want me.’

‘Then he has a funny way of showing it.’

‘It’s only a matter of time before he sends me back.’ Fleur could hear the flicker of uncertainty mingled with despair in the young voice.

Her own expression was sympathetic as she suggested, ‘And you think acting like the teenager from hell will speed up the process? Have you thought about being nice, talking to him, telling him how unhappy you are?’

The girl’s brows knit in a frown as she insisted, ‘He doesn’t care about me.’

‘Has he said that?’

‘He doesn’t have to. It’s obvious,’ the youngster retorted defensively. ‘It would have solved his problem if I’d drowned.’

Fleur watched her eyes fill with tears and told herself that the smart thing to do would be to say nothing. Getting involved with the Rochas family was the last thing she wanted to do. She would get no thanks and if anything went wrong—a more-than-likely scenario—she’d be the first person he’d blame.

‘And I suppose you told him that.’ So much for not getting involved, Fleur.

The girl lifted her chin defiantly and shrugged. ‘He didn’t deny it.’

As bad as her father, Fleur thought, stifling a sigh as she studied the stubborn set of the girl’s jaw. ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? Not when he’s got that whole macho, man-of-steel-never-explain-yourself-to-anyone thing going on.’

The waspishly exasperated retort drew a reluctant chuckle from the girl. Pausing halfway up the path and unashamedly eavesdropping, Antonio paused. It was the first time he had heard his daughter laugh.

‘Don’t you like him?’

Fleur, surprised by the question, considered it.

‘Your father isn’t the sort of person that people like.’ Like was a tepid term and nothing about Antonio was tepid. She thought about his mouth and the way her insides dissolved when she looked at it and said, ‘He’s the sort of person people love or loathe.’

‘Which camp do you fall into, Fleur?’

The colour flew darkly to Fleur’s cheeks as a tall figure moved from the concealing shadow of a holly bush. He was wearing a grey cashmere sweater, dark, well-tailored casual trousers and a natural air of authority. He looked drop-dead gorgeous. So no change there.

Damn the man, he was always where you didn’t want him to be. He was always making you feel things you didn’t want to feel, she thought with a gulp of sheer despair as she realised that she had no control whatever over her reaction to him.

She had managed to go twenty-five years without feeling primitive sexual awareness so why now? Why him?

One dark brow at a satirical slant, his blue eyes shone with malicious humour as he scanned Fleur’s feverishly flushed face. ‘Or should I not ask?’

‘You’re an expert at doing things you shouldn’t,’ she retorted, then almost immediately wished she hadn’t, because the comment brought his gaze to her mouth and she knew he was thinking about that kiss.

Worse still, so was she!

‘How long have you been standing there?’ she demanded, lifting her chin.

‘How do you think I feel?’ his daughter appealed to Fleur. ‘He never lets me out of his sight, and he won’t let me see my real dad.’

Fleur turned shocked eyes on Antonio. ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

The girl laughed bitterly. ‘You think that because you don’t know him like I do,’ she claimed.

A very timely reminder, thought Fleur. You don’t know him at all, which made the fact that when he was this close she could think about nothing else but how his body would feel against her own all the more hideously appalling!

‘For the moment it’s better if you settle into your new life.’

The teenager glanced over at Fleur. ‘See…I told you so.’ Then, whipping her head back to her father, she snapped, ‘I don’t want a new life; I liked my old life.’

‘You’ll adapt,’ Antonio told her grimly. ‘How is your leg?’ he said, turning to Fleur.

‘It’s fine. I get the stitches out Thursday.’

‘But it could have been otherwise. Something you might like to remember, Tamara, the next time you feel the urge to demonstrate your independence. It is very often innocent bystanders who get hurt.’

The girl flushed and looked guiltily towards Fleur. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

‘One of the first lessons you need to learn, Tamara, is that a person, at least one with any guts, takes responsibility for the consequences of their actions and doesn’t try and blame someone else.’

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