CHAPTER ONE

      SHE was panicking so wildly she could barely manage to turn the knob of the stout front door.

      Her employer—soon to be her ex-employer—coming into the hall after her gave her extra strength. ‘Don’t be so…’ he slurred, but Mallon was not waiting to hear the rest of it. With shaking hands she yanked the door open and, heedless of the torrential rain deluging down, she went haring down the drive.

      She did not stop running until her umpteenth glance behind confirmed that she was not being followed.

      Some five minutes later Mallon had slowed to a fast walking pace when the sound of a motor engine alerted her to the fact that Roland Phillips might have decided to pursue her by car. When no car went past, panic started to rise in her again.

      There was no one else about, nothing but acres and acres of unbuilt-on countryside so far as she knew. As the car drew level she cast a jerky look to her left, but was only a modicum relieved to see that it was not Roland Phillips.

      Had she been hoping that the driver would be a female of the species, however, she was to be disappointed. The window of the car slid down, and she found herself staring through the downpour into a pair of hostile grey eyes.

      ‘Get in!’ he clipped.

      Like blazes she’d get in! She’d had it with good-looking men. ‘No, thank you,’ she snappily refused the unwanted offer.

      The grey eyes studied her for about two seconds. ‘Suit yourself!’ the mid-thirties man said curtly, and the window slid up and the car purred on its way again.

      Though not at any great speed, Mallon noticed as, shock from Roland Phillips’s assault on her starting to recede a little, she also noticed that, with a veritable monsoon raging, only an idiot would drive fast in these conditions.

      She trudged on with no idea of where she was making for, her only aim to put as much distance as possible between her and Roland Phillips at Almora Lodge. So far as she could recall there was not another house around for miles.

      Her sandals had started to squelch, which didn’t surprise her—the rain wasn’t stopping; the sky was just emptying about her head.

      That she was soaked to her skin was the least of her worries. She hardly cared about being drenched. Though she did begin to hope that another car might come by. If its driver was female Mallon hoped she would stop and give her a lift.

      More of her shock receded and, feeling cold, wet, and decidedly miserable, Mallon half wished she had accepted a lift with the grey-eyed stranger.

      A moment later and she was scoffing at any such nonsense. She’d had it with men; lechers, the lot of them! She had known some prime examples in her ex-stepfather, her ex-stepbrother, her ex-boyfriend, without the most recent example of that ilk, her ex-employer.

      The rain pelted down, and, since she couldn’t possibly become any more sodden, Mallon stopped walking and tried to assess her situation. She supposed she must have put a distance of about a mile or so between her and Almora Lodge. She had sprinted out of there dressed just as she was, in a cotton dress—too het up then to consider that this was probably the wettest summer on record—and without a thought in her head about nipping upstairs to collect her handbag. Her only thought then had been to put some space between her and the drunken Roland—call me Roly—Phillips.

      Mallon resumed walking, her pace more of a dejected amble now as she accepted that, new to the area, she had no idea where she was going. Her only hope was that someone, foolhardy enough to motor out in such foul weather, would stop and offer her a lift.

      Surely no one with so much as a single spark of decency would leave a dog out in such conditions, much less drive on by without offering her a lift?

      Perhaps that was why the grey-eyed man had stopped? He hadn’t sounded too thrilled at the notion of inviting her drenched person to mess up his leather upholstery. If, that was, his sharp-sounding ‘Get in!’ had been what you could call an invitation.

      Well, he knew what he could…Her thoughts broke off as her ears picked up the purring sound of a car engine. She halted—the rain had slackened off a little—and she turned and watched as the car came into view.

      She eyed the vehicle warily as it drew level, and then stopped. The window slid down—and at the same time the heavens opened again. Solemn, deeply blue eyes stared into cool grey eyes. He must have driven in a circle, she realised.

      The man did not smile, nor did he invite her into his car, exactly. What he did say, was, ‘Had enough?’

      Mallon supposed that, with her blonde hair plastered darkly to her head, her dress clinging past saturation to her body and legs, she must look not dissimilar to the proverbial drowned rat.

      She gave a shaky sigh. It looked as though she had two choices. Tell him to clear off, when heaven alone knew when another car would come along, or get into that car with him. He looked all right—but that didn’t mean a thing.

      ‘Are you offering?’ she questioned jerkily.

      His