CHAPTER ONE

      ‘I’M SORRY, Josie. But Charles is dead.’

      ‘But he can’t be. I’m pregnant!’ Josie exclaimed, tearing her gaze away from sinfully deep, assessing eyes to glance frantically around the room, unaware of the stunned silence her comment had caused. Her father was seated on the sofa, while Major Zarcourt was at his desk, but there was no sign of Charles Zarcourt. The look of shock on her father’s face registered and to her horror she realised she’d spoken out loud, before the sound of sardonic laughter broke the silence.

      Her violet eyes swung back to the tall, dark man standing by the drinks cabinet. It was Conan Zarcourt who had delivered the thunderbolt. And, of course, it was Conan who’d laughed! She might have guessed; he must have a penchant for outrageous statements, she thought angrily.

      Immaculate in a dark business suit and crisp blue shirt, Conan was leaning against the cabinet with a glass of amber liquid in his hand. As she watched he raised the glass to his mouth and drained it. Then he slammed the empty glass back down with unnecessary force, the expression on his ruggedly attractive face hard to define. He looked more than angry, Josie thought, he looked positively venomous, and for a second she saw a flash of what looked like anguish in his dark eyes. But she must have been mistaken, as he smiled a grim smile.

      ‘Let me get you a drink. You’re going to need one,’ he offered bluntly:

      ‘No. No alcohol for me. An orange juice.’ Even in her shocked state Josie still had the sense to realise she couldn’t drink in her condition.

      ‘As you wish.’ Conan’s mouth turned down in a wry grimace as he filled a glass with juice and then walked towards her.

      He held the glass out to Josie. She looked down at his large hand and back up into his face. Was it only a couple of minutes ago that she’d walked into the study, and been stopped in her tracks by Conan’s outrageous response to her casual enquiry, “Has Charles arrived early?”

      Her fingers brushed against Conan’s as she took the glass he offered, and her hand trembled slightly. What was it about Conan that even when he was at his most vile, cracking stupid jokes about his half-brother Charles, her body reacted alarmingly when he was around?

      She stared up at the man towering over her. With thick black hair, broad forehead, a straight, rather large nose, and wide mouth and square jaw, Conan wasn’t conventionally handsome; his was a face too rough-hewn for that, but it was still strangely compelling. To her certain knowledge he had visited Beeches Manor only twice in the ten years Josie had lived in the area.

      The first time she’d met him she had been looking after the jumble stall at the church summer fair. Charles was supposed to be helping her, but had gone to get her a cold drink when a man impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit had appeared.

      ‘The only thing here that would fit me...is you.’ His deep, sexy drawl had shivered along Josie’s nerves, giving her goosebumps, and her startled gaze had locked with his for a second, before his eyes had swept over her body in blatant male scrutiny. ‘Tell me, are you for sale?’ Josie had fought back a chuckle at his cheek, but before she could respond Charles had returned.

      ‘No chatting up the local girls,’ Charles had told the stranger, and much to Josie’s surprise he’d slipped an arm around her waist, adding, ‘And certainly not mine.’

      ‘I might have guessed,’ the man had murmured, and he’d walked away.

      ‘You know him?’ Josie had asked Charles.

      ‘You could say that. But never mind him; how about having dinner with me tonight?’

      Josie had had a crush on Charles Zarcourt for years, and the disturbing stranger had been forgotten as she’d jumped at the chance of a date with Charles.

      Forgotten until the second time she’d seen Conan, when she had almost died of embarrassment.

      She dismissed the disturbing memory with a shake of her small head. She could not think about that now. She needed to discover why Conan was here. But then why not? Technically it was his home, she supposed. Conan was right about her needing a drink. Today had been the worst day of her life so far, and she had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that it wasn’t going to improve.

      She’d taken the afternoon off work and driven from Cheltenham to Oxford to visit the clinic attached to the hospital there, and had her worst fear confirmed. She was pregnant. She had returned home to Low Beeches farmhouse to find an urgent message asking her to go to the Manor House. She had naturally presumed her unofficial fiancé, Charles, had returned from active service in the Army a day early. But looking at the grim faces around her she’d begun to wonder.

      Josie took a great gulp of the juice and almost choked as it went down the wrong way, so her father’s words barely registered.

      ‘You have to be brave, Josie.’

      ‘Brave,’ she murmured. She glanced around again but there was no sign of Charles. Josie blinked and rubbed one damp palm against her thigh. She hadn’t eaten all day and was feeling light-headed.