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      CHAPTER ONE

      JUST before three o’clock on a chilly April afternoon, Helena drew into the crowded car park of Dorchester solicitors Messrs Mayhew & Morrison, and glanced at her watch. She was five minutes early for her appointment—so she’d made good time on her journey from London.

      As she’d left the motorway and joined the quieter country roads, the usual wave of nostalgia had run through Helena. Dorset was home territory—and she’d stayed away too long this time. In fact, she realized, she hadn’t returned since her father’s funeral four years ago.

      Opening her bag, she took out the solicitor’s letter and looked at it again. It merely confirmed the date of today’s meeting when the will of the late Mrs Isobel Theotokis would be discussed. As she slipped the letter back into its envelope, Helena’s eyes moistened briefly. Mrs Theotokis, who’d been her father’s long-time employer, had obviously not forgotten Helena, nor her promise all those years ago that the precious porcelain figurines which had so fascinated the child would one day be hers.

      Helena checked her appearance briefly in the car’s interior mirror. Her generously fringed, widely spaced blue eyes seemed to glitter in certain lights, and someone had once said that they belonged in a stained glass window. She had regular features and a small nose, and her milky skin, though typically English rose, reacted well to the sun’s rays so that most summers she looked prettily tanned. And today she had chosen to wind her thick blonde hair up on top into a coiled knot.

      She got out of the car and presented herself at the solicitor’s office. The girl at the reception desk looked up and smiled.

      ‘Ah, yes—Miss Kingston? Good afternoon.’ She stood up and immediately led Helena towards an inner door. ‘Mr Mayhew is waiting for you.’

      As Helena was ushered inside, John Mayhew, the senior partner, stood up at once and came forward to greet her. He was a short, affable man with white bushy eyebrows and a moustache to match and he shook Helena’s hand warmly.

      ‘Thank you for making the trip, Helena,’ he said kindly, and the girl’s throat tightened briefly. She was known to John Mayhew because her father’s modest affairs had also been handled by this firm, and the last time she’d been here was to finally settle everything up—and it hadn’t taken long.

      ‘Do take a seat,’ the man said, adding, ‘The other… interested party… has been delayed slightly. But he should be here any minute.’

      Even as he spoke, the door opened and Helena turned her head, colour rising rapidly in her cheeks, leaving her breathless as the layers of her memory peeled away. She was suddenly weightless, floating backwards in space… she was in free fall!

      Oscar! Helena formed the name silently under her breath. Oscar…

      This was Isobel’s great-nephew whom Helena, three years his junior, had once worshipped… Oscar, who had initiated her into the first heady delights of romantic love. But that had been more than ten years ago… a lifetime away.

      She forced herself to try and breathe normally as she looked up at him.

      It was no surprise that he was still the most mind-numbingly handsome man she had ever seen—or would ever see—wearing his overt sensuality like a permanent badge of office. Helena gripped her hands together tightly. Why hadn’t she thought that they might possibly meet again—and under these particular circumstances? But it had not crossed her mind, and she’d not been ready for it. But she met his gaze levelly as he looked down at her.

      His glossy black hair was styled more formally than she remembered, but the chiselled, dark-skinned features, the expansive brow, the firm uncompromising mouth—that had closed over hers so many times—were still as enchanting as they had always been.

      He was wearing a formal suit perfectly designed to do justice to his lean, powerful physique, but he had no tie on, his crisp white shirt partially open at the front, revealing the merest glimpse of dark bodily hair at the throat. Helena swallowed over a dry tongue as he looked down at her.

      John Mayhew broke the few moments’ silence. ‘I am sure you two must have met in the past,’ he said, ‘but let me introduce you again…’

      Before he could go on, Oscar cut in, the familiar voice rich and evocative, with only a trace of his cruelly seductive native tongue. ‘No need for that, John,’ he said slowly. ‘Helena and I know each other from when I used to visit my great-aunt at holiday times.’ He paused, moving forward slightly, extending a strong brown hand in greeting. Then, ‘How are you, Heleena?’ And Helena’s heart quickened. Because that had been Oscar’s occasional, special pronunciation of her name. And hearing it again made her inner thighs tingle.

      ‘I am well, thank you,’ Helena responded coolly, half-standing to meet his outstretched hand. His long, sensitive fingers curled against her own, making her colour rise again. ‘And you… Oscar?’

      ‘Good, thank you,’ he said briefly. He sat down on one of the big leather armchairs opposite John Mayhew’s desk, and glanced briefly at Helena again. Pale, sometimes wistful, Helena had become a stunning, sophisticated female, exhibiting all of nature’s attributes, he thought. She was wearing a dark blue, fine woollen suit and cream shirt and very high heeled shoes, her slender legs clad in sheer dark tights. As she looked across at him, her lips were slightly parted as if she was about to say something, but it was her eyes, those blue, blue eyes which had once known