Return Engagement
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Carole Mortimer
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18,1K
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10
CHAPTER ONE
‘TOUCHES of Lady Chatterley, do you think?’ Janie giggled.
Cyn made a slight acknowledging movement of the remark, although her attention was still held by the scene they were unwittingly witnessing.
They had been shown into this small reception-room only seconds ago by the rather haughty butler, while he left them to go off in search of Rebecca Harcourt, the young mistress of the house.
Cyn only hoped the young lady out in the garden wasn’t her—otherwise their journey here could have been a wasted one!
She and Janie had driven into town especially to see the Harcourts, and had been suitably impressed by the house from the outside. The grounds the house stood in alone were almost as big as the park across which the house actually faced. Grand old houses like this one weren’t so unusual in London, but the amount of ground attached to it was, Cyn was sure, given the expense of property in London and its immediate vicinity.
It was because of the size of the grounds that the Harcourts needed the gardener at all, she would say. And what a gardener—a tall golden god of a man, about twenty-five, his skin bronzed from the amount of time he obviously worked outside, although that colour was more likely to be simply weather-worn, considering it was only April and, what watery sun there was did not actually contain much heat just yet.
He had been working on one of the extensive borders outside when Cyn and Janie were shown into the reception-room, obviously absorbed in his work. He had seemed to remain so, when a young girl of about twenty crossed the landscaped lawn several feet away from him to enter the wooden-structure gazebo that stood in one corner of the garden facing away from the house. But seconds later he had straightened, glanced casually about him, before he too went into the gazebo.
Hence Janie’s teasing remark! The girl who had crossed the garden, seemingly unaware of the gardener working there, hadn’t looked like a maid, or anyone else who worked in the house for that matter. Her blaze of red hair was expertly styled, her make-up perfectly applied, the suit she was wearing designer-label, if Cyn wasn’t mistaken.
God, she hoped it wasn’t Rebecca Harcourt...! Because Cyn very much doubted that that Adonis of a gardener was her intended bridegroom.
Gerald Harcourt had actually been the one to make the appointment for Cyn to come here today, claiming his motherless daughter needed help organising her wedding, which was to take place in August. And organising weddings, and dealing with all the problems that seemed to bring along with it, was what Cyn did in her business, Perfect Bliss.
The idea for such a scheme had come to her out of the blue one day. Being stuck in yet another dead-end job, working for a particularly temperamental catering boss who often threw temper tantrums while they were actually working, was not what Cyn wanted to do with the rest of her life. The problem was, she didn’t know what she did want to do either. She had gone through a long list of jobs the last few years—hotel receptionist, helper in a florist’s, assistant in a bridal shop for a very short time too, all mixed up with waitressing jobs, plus training to be a printer at one stage, a job she knew she definitely wasn’t cut out for after she had printed hundreds of posters inviting people to a Trafalgar Balls; her boss had been absolutely furious, and she could think of a few sailors who probably wouldn’t have been too happy either! Needless to say, it had been a short-lived training.
Most of her jobs had been, but after a rather traumatic evening, where she had been helping her boss cater at a private dinner party in a gentleman’s apartment, and his female guest had turned out to be the boss’s own wife out for an evening of fun while her husband was working, Cyn had decided it was time for her and that particular job to part company. Especially when her boss had started throwing knives about the apartment; Cyn had decided there and then that he wasn’t temperamental, just mental!
Unemployed again, she had sat down, briefly—she still had to pay the rent and the bills!—and thought over her career assets. Taken separately, they had seemed a bit haphazard, but when she put them all together...!
And so Perfect Bliss had emerged from the debris, the ‘complete wedding’ agency, designed to take away all the wear and tear—or did she mean tears?—from the bride and her family. Not that it had been an overnight success. After three years she still kept the agency ticking over with the occasional dinner party, but she had enough bookings for weddings not to take on too many other commitments. She had merely been waiting for the ‘big one’, as Janie called it, the society wedding that would get her name in those circles, where she hoped her agency might become fashionable once it was seen what a good job she did.
The Harcourt wedding was supposed to be that big break...!
Gerald Harcourt, a man in his early forties, had been a guest at one of the weddings Cyn had organised last weekend on Easter Saturday—a small affair in the country, and the bride was the daughter of a business friend, Gerald Harcourt had explained when he spoke to her during the wedding reception. He had been most impressed when he learnt that Cyn had organised the wedding, with the bride’s requirements in mind, from the printing of the invitations to the perfect colour of the wedding bouquet—a bouquet he had somehow managed to catch when the bride threw it into the wedding crowd before departing on the honeymoon Cyn had also booked for the happy couple.
The bouquet disposed of, given to one of the bridesmaids accompanied by a charming smile, Gerald had questioned Cyn about Perfect Bliss, explaining that his own daughter, his only child, was being married later in the year, and, as his wife had died more than a dozen years ago, Rebecca was finding the whole thing rather a headache on her own. Cyn had been only too happy to talk to him as she helped clear away after the reception. She found his tall, distinguished looks, dark hair lightly sprinkled with grey at the temples, blue eyes warm in a face that was maturely handsome, his body still fit and lean in the dark three-piece suit he had worn for the wedding, more than passingly attractive. She found the idea of organising his daughter’s wedding, the ‘society wedding’ she had been seeking, even more attractive, and she was more than willing to drive up from her little office in Feltham—she couldn’t afford London rents on business property—to the Harcourt home and talk to the daughter in person at a time to be arranged once Gerald had spoken to Rebecca.
But if that girl in the garden was Rebecca Harcourt, Cyn had a feeling Gerald was going to be in for a nasty surprise concerning this wedding. Not to mention the bridegroom! Not that anyone had, so far. Like most grooms, he seemed to be remaining well out of the headache of organising the actual wedding.
Even as Cyn stood there watching, the gazebo door opened once again and the girl emerged, but from her distressed state she was obviously in floods of tears, giving one last anxious look in the direction of the gazebo before rushing across the garden towards the house.
Not a happy bride!
Cyn turned away with a sigh, more than ever convinced that her journey here today had been a wasted one. If— She looked across the room as the door opened to admit, not Rebecca Harcourt, but Gerald himself.
‘My dear Cyn!’ he greeted her warmly, giving her one of his welcoming smiles. He was dressed in a dark business suit today and looking very lean and handsome. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve been kept waiting,’ he said regretfully as he crossed the room to her side, ‘but we seem to be having a little difficulty locating Rebecca.’ This last was added with a frown.
Cyn knocked Janie’s arm as she sensed that her young assistant had been about to blab Rebecca’s presence in the garden; unless she was very much mistaken, Rebecca Harcourt wouldn’t want her father to know she had been anywhere near the garden—or the young and handsome gardener! She might be wrong, of course, but somehow she doubted it.
‘That’s perfectly all right,’ she returned smoothly. ‘We were just admiring your home.’ In fact, she hadn’t taken too much notice of it since they had come inside and she had seen the formal elegance of the rooms, the antique furniture, the original paintings on the walls; all the trappings of wealth that people like the Harcourts took so much for granted. It was all very nice, but it wasn’t for Cyn.
Gerald looked pleased by her comment, looking about him appreciatively. He was obviously a man who enjoyed what his wealth could give him. ‘We like it,’ he dismissed. ‘Did you— ?’
‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, Gerald?’ interrupted a silkily soft voice.
A voice Cyn instantly recognised!
But it couldn’t be. Not here. Why here? came her next unbidden question, as she knew she wasn’t mistaken, that she would know that voice anywhere.
Wolf Thornton’s voice...
She couldn’t move. She did try, but not one single muscle in her body seemed to be obeying her at the moment. Her feet felt like lead weights rooted to the carpeted floor, her body so still and tense that she might have been a statue. She knew her face was as pale as alabaster, so she might almost have been one!
Her head was held at a taut angle, her eyes riveted to a spot above the fireplace, and she tried to remember what she was wearing today. What she was wearing? What difference did that make? Wolf Thornton was standing somewhere behind her, and she doubted if he was going to be any more pleased to see her than she was to see him.
Would he have changed? Had she? It was seven years since she had last seen him; of course she had changed! Her hair was no longer that cascade of moonlight silver-blond it had been when she was twenty, but styled to her shoulders in a feathered cut that was easier to manage, and the violet-blue eyes were no longer so naïve and unaware. Her even features were the same, of course—the slightly too short nose, the wide smiling mouth, the small pointed chin that could still lift defensively. And she still wore some of the clothes she had owned seven years ago. She couldn’t afford to replace them, so she knew she hadn’t put on any weight! Did Wolf still look the same? She was still too stunned to be able to turn and look—too frightened of what she would see in his face, too, when he saw it was her!
‘Glad you could make it,’ Gerald was greeting the other man now. ‘I’ve only just got in from the office myself. Although it’s just as well we decided to meet here after all; Rebecca seems to have done one of her disappearing acts again,’ he added indulgently.
‘She’ll turn up,’ the other man dismissed smoothly. ‘She always does.’
Oh, God, that voice. Cyn shivered in reaction, feeling waves of sheer terror coursing through her now. The last time she had seen Wolf Thornton she had made it perfectly clear exactly what she thought of him, and she had no reason to believe that the intervening years—she had had no contact with him during that time—had done anything to soften his feelings towards her.
How could this be happening to her? Of course, Wolf ran Thornton Industries, and Gerald Harcourt ran his own company, which was just as powerfully successful; so why shouldn’t the two businessmen be friends? But why had the two men had to meet today, and here of all places?
She could see Janie looking at her curiously now—when the girl could tear her gaze away from the man standing over by the door, that was! Wolf still had that animal magnetism that was so attractive to women, Cyn saw with dismay.
It was that realisation that finally broke the spell for her; Wolf always had been able to draw the women to him, and it had been something he took full advantage of.
She turned determinedly, that pointed chin at a defensive angle, her breath catching in her throat as she looked at Wolf for the first time in seven years. He hadn’t changed; that dark blond hair was still too long to be fashionable, several straight tendrils falling over his forehead, his golden-brown eyes surrounded by the longest dark lashes Cyn had ever seen on a man or a woman, his nose long and straight, his mouth— His mouth wasn’t the same, she realised with a frown. In the past his mouth had been a sensual invitation, the lower lip fuller than the top one, but now it was a thin slash of cynicism, looking as if he rarely smiled, the lines beside his nose and mouth not caused by laughter but by a harshness that seemed to underline all his features, Cyn realised as she looked closer at him, his eyes not a warm golden-brown at all, but as hard and unyielding as the gold they resembled.
And they became harder still as he seemed to sense her gaze on him and looked across at her, an instant flare of recognition in his expression, his mouth thinning even more as his jaw tightened, his eyes narrowed to steely slits as he straightened challengingly. Whereas in the past he had seemed possessed of a timeless quality, a natural enthusiasm that made it difficult to pinpoint his age, today he looked every one of his thirty-five years.
Cyn swallowed hard. She had never felt more like fleeing in her life before—fleeing for her life! There had been a time in her life when she feared Wolf might actually kill her.
‘Gerald—?’ Wolf’s control never wavered as he turned pointedly to the other man, still obviously waiting for that introduction.
As if he didn’t know exactly who she was! She refused to believe he had forgotten her. He might have wished he could, but she knew from his reaction a moment ago, when he first looked at her, that he certainly hadn’t.
‘Sorry, Wolf,’ the older man smiled easily, completely unaware of any tension in the room. ‘This is Lucynda Smith, of Perfect Bliss,’ he explained lightly. ‘Although it’s Cyn to her friends, she assures me,’ he added teasingly.
Wolf didn’t look as if he found anything in the least amusing about her name, or her! And the speculative look he gave the other man seemed to question just how much of a ‘friend’ of hers Gerald considered himself to be.
It was an interesting question; as well as asking Cyn to call here when they had spoken on Saturday, Gerald had also invited her out to dinner. The first she had been only too happy to organise, the latter she had said they would talk about further when they met again. She hadn’t envisaged Wolf Thornton also being present when that happened. In fact, she had always pushed firmly from her mind any thoughts that she and Wolf would ever meet again!
‘And this is my assistant, Janie Harrison,’ she put in firmly.
Janie looked grateful for the recognition, although for all the notice Wolf took of her Cyn might as well have saved her breath—although Gerald, charmingly polite as ever, acknowledged the girl with a welcoming smile. Janie blushed furiously. Her hair was not the rich auburn of Rebecca Harcourt but that ginger-blond that usually accompanied excessively pale skin. Poor Janie looked much younger than her eighteen years in her girlish pleasure at being in the company of two such presentable men.
Wolf Thornton wasn’t presentable, Cyn thought slightly resentfully; his ignoring of Janie, in order to continue looking at her with that chilling intensity, bordered on rudeness. Not that Janie looked too concerned; she was obviously as much in awe of this man, who looked so much like his name implied—fierce and untameable!—as she was attracted to him!
‘Miss Smith?’ Wolf said softly in answer to Gerald’s introduction.
Colour warmed her cheeks at his unspoken implication. She knew to what he was referring, of course; the last time they had met it had looked as if she was about to marry Roger Collins.
‘A case of “always the bridesmaid, never the bride,” I’m afraid,’ she returned lightly, meeting his gaze with an effort now.
Why was he continuing to behave as if the two of them had never met before? Why didn’t he just tell Gerald Harcourt that he knew exactly what her friends called her—her enemies too?
If he was surprised at her never having been married after all, then he didn’t show it. ‘Then forgive me for asking,’ he rasped in a completely unapologetic voice. ‘But if that’s the case, by what experience do you claim to be able to organise other brides’ weddings for them, especially one like Rebecca’s?’
He was meaning to be insulting—and he succeeded! He knew very well about her own working-class background, the distaste she had for so-called ‘society’, and he was taunting her with that knowledge.
‘Oh, come on, Wolf,’ Gerald dismissed lightly, still unaware of the undercurrents to the conversation taking place between Cyn and Wolf. ‘You don’t have to have been knocked over by a bus to know what the consequences will be. In my mind there isn’t much difference between getting married and being run over,’ he explained with a rueful grimace as everyone turned to look at him because of the simile he had used. ‘Both knock you off your feet and leave you completely disorientated!’
‘I hope none of my brides ever gets to talk to you on the subject.’ Cyn shook her head, unable to hold back a smile. ‘Otherwise I’d be out of a job!’
‘Talking of that job...’ Gerald frowned now. ‘I’ll go and have another look for Rebecca,’ he told them absently before leaving the room.
Cyn had never been so grateful for Janie’s pleading to come with her that morning than she was at this moment. Otherwise she would have been left alone in the room with Wolf. And by the time Gerald returned the room could have been reduced to bloody carnage. No, that was an exaggeration. Wolf didn’t look as if he had ever needed to be physically violent; he could probably fatally wound with the rapier-sharpness of his tongue when crossed, reduce an adversary to a quaking mass with the coldness of his gaze.
The silence that descended on the room after Gerald’s departure was oppressive—or was it only Cyn who saw it that way? She chanced a glance at Wolf and saw he was still watching her with those coldly narrowed eyes, and quickly looked away again. Janie, sweet, kind Janie, who could calm the mother of the bride with so little fuss it was hardly noticeable that there had ever been anything to calm, was gazing at Wolf with an infatuated glow in her pale green eyes.
Cyn felt angry on her behalf for the way in which Wolf didn’t even acknowledge that adoration, even though he must be aware of it: Janie was a little too obvious for him not to be! No doubt he was used to having girls finding him attractive, but that was no reason for him to be so damned blasé about it!
She wasn’t used to seeing him quite so formally dressed as he was today. His dark three-piece suit and snowy white shirt were austere in their impeccable tailoring; a grey silk tie was knotted severely at his throat. He wore no jewellery; he had always deplored the use of it by men, and his only adornment was a plain gold watch strapped to his left wrist above one long sensitive hand. His hands, Cyn saw with a fascination of her own, were just the same, long and artistic, nevertheless as strong as a vice when they needed to be, the nails kept deliberately short.
Wolfram James Thornton. She had expected to hear more of the name over the last seven years, but the only thing she had heard it used in connection with was Thornton Industries. The business section of the newspapers often carried articles about the rapidly expanding company; it seemed the family business had prospered under his guidance. Strange, she had never thought of Wolf as a businessman. But then seven years ago he hadn’t been...
‘So—Cyn, wasn’t it?’ he drawled hardly, challengingly, ‘you’re going to wave your magic wand and make this wedding perfect for Rebecca?’
Her cheeks felt warm at the insult behind his taunt. ‘I hope so, yes,’ she confirmed tautly.
He strode further into the room, at once dominating the intimacy of his surroundings. ‘A flowing white gown, a cake with little cupids decorating it, a horse and carriage to drive the bride and groom from the church to the wedding reception?’
Cyn paled as he used his words like sharp barbs to wound her; he hadn’t forgotten a thing! She drew in a shaky breath. ‘The latter might be a little difficult to organise in the middle of London,’ she dismissed sharply, her hands clenched so tightly she could feel her nails digging into her palms.
‘I’m sure it could be arranged—if that’s what the bride would really like,’ Wolf returned harshly.
She swallowed hard, deliberately turning away from the cold implacability of his face to look at Janie. ‘I seem to have forgotten to bring my notebook in with me—do you think you could go out to the van and get it for me?’ she requested warmly—the notebook in question feeling as if it were burning a hole through her handbag into her hip as she told the lie!
But this barbed conversation with Wolf, of which no one else seemed aware, just couldn’t continue. Much as she hated the idea, if he was a very good friend of the Harcourt family, a frequent visitor to the house, maybe she should just withdraw from being involved in this wedding at all. She could save herself an awful lot of work if she established that fact right now!
‘Of course,’ Janie agreed readily, shooting Wolf a longing look as she sidled past him and then out of the door.
‘Well...Cyn-to-your-friends,’ Wolf grated contemptuously as soon as they were alone, his golden gaze raking over her with slow insult, ‘just how long have you been a “friend” of Gerald’s?’
She drew in a sharp breath at the deliberate provocation of the remark. ‘I—’
‘It can’t have been for very long,’ Wolf added scathingly. ‘He only dropped his last mistress a matter of weeks ago.’
‘I’m not his mistress!’ Cyn hissed the denial, wondering if these heated spots of colour—through anger this time—were going to remain a fixture in her cheeks while she spoke to this hateful man. ‘We only met for the first time on Saturday!’
Wolf’s mouth twisted derisively, those lines grooved into his cheeks intensifying. ‘No, possibly you can’t be classed as a mistress yet; give it another few weeks or so! But don’t give yourself any false hopes where he’s concerned; you heard Gerald’s views on marriage,’ he added harshly.
She gave a weary sigh. ‘I don’t have any “false hopes”, or indeed hopes of any other kind, where Gerald Harcourt is concerned; I barely know the man.’ She shook her head dismissively.
‘It’s obvious he has more in mind than just a business arrangement between the two of you,’ Wolf rasped coldly, his eyes narrowed speculatively.
Taking into account that initial dinner invitation she had received from Gerald, he was no doubt right. But even if he was, it was none of his business if she and Gerald Harcourt should choose to go out together. Or if, indeed, they should become lovers. Just because he was a friend of Gerald’s, there was no reason for him—
‘It will never happen, Cyn,’ Wolf told her softly, his sharp gaze easily able to read her resentful thoughts. ‘Believe me.’
Her head went back challengingly—rather like a kitten putting itself up against a wolf! Wolf was tall and masculine, well over six feet in height, whereas she was barely five feet in her bare feet, not much more than that in the flat shoes she wore with black tailored trousers and matching jacket, the purple blouse she wore beneath the jacket making her eyes look almost the same colour. She looked tiny and slender, nothing like the twenty-seven she actually was—and this man was trying to intimidate her. Well, he wasn’t going to succeed!
‘My relationship—or otherwise—with Gerald is none of your concern,’ she told him waspishly, her eyes flashing.
‘I would make it so, Cyn,’ he assured her softly, warningly.
She frowned across at him, that frown deepening at the stark bitterness in that harshly hewn face. ‘You have no right, Wolf,’ she choked. ‘No right at all!’
‘I have every right, damn you!’ he began fiercely, his eyes glittering deeply gold as he took a threatening step towards her. ‘You—’
‘I couldn’t find it, Cyn,’ a slightly breathless Janie came back into the room at that moment, her face slightly flushed from her exertions. ‘I looked in the back of the van as well as the front and I—’
‘I found the notebook, Janie,’ Cyn told her guiltily, knowing she had wasted Janie’s time, as well as her own, trying to talk to Wolf alone in these circumstances; the differences between Wolf and herself were too deeply embedded to be dealt with in a few minutes of private conversation between them. ‘I realised it was in my bag after all almost as soon as you’d left the room, but by that time it was too late to stop you. I’m sorry about that,’ she smiled apologetically at the other girl, although to her credit, Janie didn’t look in the least put out; she was preoccupied once again gazing up enchanted at Wolf!
And he was looking at Cyn with such a look of intense dislike that a shiver of apprehension ran the length of her spine. They might not have resolved anything by their conversation just now, the intensity of his gaze seemed to say, but then the conversation was far from over. Oh, God!
Cyn turned gratefully towards the door as it opened to readmit Gerald, closely followed by the errant Rebecca. Cyn’s relief turned to dismay as she realised it was the girl from the garden...
All signs of recent tears had been completely erased by the subtle use of make-up. Rebecca Harcourt was even more beautiful close to like this, her skin flawless, her features smooth and even. And if there was a lingering anxiety in the deep blue of her eyes, Cyn felt sure she was the only one aware of it.
‘I’m so sorry I kept you waiting.’ Rebecca’s voice was huskily low—from those recent tears, or naturally so, Cyn couldn’t be sure. ‘I didn’t realise you were here,’ she added awkwardly.
But, to Cyn’s puzzlement, the remarks weren’t being made to her. Rebecca was looking up at Wolf as she crossed the room to his side.
‘Hello, darling.’ Rebecca reached up to kiss him lightly on the lips. ‘I’m so glad you could get away from the office so we could both talk to Miss Smith about the arrangements for the wedding.’ Now she turned towards Cyn, smiling a welcome.
Cyn just stared. She couldn’t have made a response even if she had wanted to. Wolf was Rebecca’s bridegroom...?
‘You know, I suddenly realised after I’d gone off in search of Rebecca,’ Gerald spoke ruefully, ‘that I never did get around to introducing Wolf to you, Cyn.’ He squeezed her arm apologetically for his oversight. ‘This is Wolf Thornton, my daughter’s fiancé.’
Wolf was the bridegroom!
