CHAPTER ONE

      A CLEAR February sky was turning a deeper blue, a brilliant orange sun was setting as Rachel Hawkins stepped into the street and left Morrison’s Feed & Supply for the last time. Out of another job. And everything had looked so promising too.

      She’d run the place perfectly well for two months while Mr Morrison had followed doctor’s orders in Marbella. Profits were up, costs down; who could have guessed he’d be so annoyed by a few little changes?

      ‘Perhaps,’ he’d said sarcastically, ‘you may have noticed the words “feed” and “supply” above the door, you may have noticed the absence of the word “zoo”. There is a reason for this, Rachel, and the reason—’ a scowl had split the newly tanned face ‘—is that this is a feed supply business, and not a bally menagerie. I want that lot out by the end of the week.’ A dramatic hand had pointed to the back, which was certainly rather livelier than it had been in the days when empty feed sacks had been stacked there. ‘And you are going with them.’

      Rachel sighed. Looking on the bright side, she’d managed to find homes for all the animals except one. Looking on the dark side, as far as Aunt Harriet was concerned, that probably left one too many. Rachel glanced down dubiously at the box with holes in which she’d put the tiny furry creature. He was quiet and perfectly house-trained, but Aunt Harriet had always refused to have a pet in the house, and something told Rachel that her aunt would not make an exception for William.

      Looking on the bright side again, for the first time in years Rachel Hawkins had spent a whole six months not standing thigh-deep in a swamp, providing good, wholesome nourishment for mosquitoes. Any day now the papers would be splashing out in headlines on this new shock to the ecosystem, she thought flippantly. She could see them now: SHOCK! HORROR! PROBE! ACUTE HAWKINS SHORTAGE SPARKS MOSQUITO FAMINE! ‘They were dying like flies,’ said one horrified observer. Well, it was just too bad, Rachel thought with a grin.

      Driscoll had said she’d be bored, but she hadn’t been; she’d loved every minute of it. She was still one hundred per cent committed to marrying Driscoll, but Rachel Hawkins was not—repeat not—going to be a professional scientist. Of course, going through four jobs in six months maybe didn’t give you much time to get bored, she admitted fair-mindedly. But she just knew she’d made the right decision. Sooner or later she’d find the right job. Maybe even a job that let her wear a suit.

      A suit. That was what she needed right now, in fact. In the brilliant late afternoon sunshine an adjacent shop window showed only her own reflection dressed for the unseasonably warm weather, haircut to match. Mr Morrison hadn’t approved; what would Driscoll think? If only Brian, misfit stable lad and self-taught hair artiste, hadn’t decided he was the heir to the flying scissors of Sassoon! His ‘practice trim’ had left her looking like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz; she’d had to go to a professional to have it evened up.

      ‘It will have to be very, very short,’ the professional had warned ominously.

      Rachel had had visions of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music—something short, boyish but very, very chic. She now eyed, doubtfully, the soot-black hair that framed her face, the enormous blue eyes under fly-away brows, the full, almost pouting mouth. Well, it was certainly short.

      It would probably look chic, too, if she had, say, a Dior suit to go with it. For some reason, though, she didn’t look a bit like the respectable twenty-seven-year-old author of The Thing From the Swamp, Son of Thing and Thing Meets Godzilla—to use Rachel’s personal titles for her research. For some reason she looked like an eighteen-year-old punk. Maybe it was the Doc Martens? The black jeans? Or maybe it was the Spiderman T-shirt. Whatever, Driscoll wouldn’t like it.

      Rachel sighed. Why was life so complicated? Still, first things first—she must have one last shot at finding a home for William, then find a suit...

      And there, down the tiny cobbled street of Blandings Magna, was the suit of her dreams. Half-sleeves, round collar, knee-length skirt, all in a delicious slubbed silk... Of course, it was on somebody. It was on a blonde with a spectacular figure—someone who probably looked chic even in a T-shirt. The woman stood by a black Jaguar, perched precariously on absurd stiletto heels—completely unsuitable for the country, of course, but this didn’t occur to Rachel. She stared open-mouthed for an instant, then began gravitating down the street towards the Garment of her Dreams. So there was such a thing as love at first sight. She’d always wondered.

      As she drifted forward, wide-eyed, someone slammed down the boot of the car and a man stood up. An earthquake would not have distracted Rachel from contemplation of the divine object—the way she felt now, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the earth had moved—but the man who came into