Contents

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      PROLOGUE

      NICK waited in the foyer of the hotel until Glen and Mrs Courtald had left for their appointment with the lawyer. He despised subterfuge, but what he had to say to Cat was too important to risk any interruption—especially not from her mother or fiancé.

      When he knocked on the suite door he noted with an odd remoteness that his pulse-rate was up. And when he heard her call, ‘Coming,’ in the low, husky voice she’d grow into when she’d learned what sex was all about, his gut clenched and a charge of male hunger hit him with the force of a bomb.

      The door opened. Cat’s smoky blue eyes widened; colour surged through her exquisite skin before draining away. Her fingers tightened on the veil she’d been trying on—short and fluffy as befitted an eighteen-year-old bride.

      ‘N-Nick,’ she said unevenly. ‘This is a surprise.’

      ‘Ask me in,’ he said tersely.

      She hesitated, then stepped back. ‘You’ve missed Glen—he and my mother have just gone.’

      ‘I didn’t come to see them,’ he said, walking into the suite Glen had reserved for the girl he was marrying the following day—the best hotel in Auckland, as befitted the bride of one of New Zealand’s top advertising men.

      Its impersonal opulence should have overshadowed such a small person, yet in spite of her youth and her fragility Cat stood very erect, the ridiculous veil still perched on hair the polished red-brown of a chestnut, and although he sensed her unease, her gaze was direct and steady. ‘What do you want?’ she asked quietly.

      Nick had had erotic dreams about that hair, and her slender body, and that ripe mouth, still innocent in spite of her engagement to his friend. Glen was being very careful with her, apparently content to wait until they were married before consummating their relationship.

      Clamping down on a bitter, raw jealousy that astonished and infuriated him, Nick said bluntly, ‘Have you thought what marriage to Glen will involve?’

      ‘I might be only eighteen,’ she returned with a cool dignity he found both maddening and provocative, ‘but I’m not a total idiot. Yes, I know what marriage involves. I watch television, read newspapers and magazines and books, go to films, talk to people.’ She paused before adding with delicate sarcasm, ‘And my parents were married.’

      Did she know that his hadn’t been? Possibly; Glen might have told her. ‘What people have you talked to? The pupils at that expensive boarding school you graduated from at the end of last year? What do they know?’

      With a spark of temper she retorted, ‘As much as any kid who grows up on the streets, actually. Just because they come from a different socio-economic group doesn’t mean that the same problems don’t affect them.’ Small face hot with dismay, she went on swiftly, ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean that you—’

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he interrupted. ‘I did grow up on the streets, but I’m talking about the realities of life as a very rich man’s trophy wife.’

      Her cheeks stung as though he’d hit them. ‘I thought a trophy wife was someone who took the place of the real wife. Glen hasn’t dumped anyone for me.’

      Nick bit back his first, lethal response. It was no use dragging in Morna’s private tragedy; besides, technically Cat was correct. Glen had never offered to marry the woman who’d been his lover for the past five years.

      Instead, he said relentlessly, ‘Glen is going to expect you to run his house, to plan dinners, to organise parties, to meet and charm clients. Can you do that?’

      ‘I can try,’ she said, adding on a note of uncertainty that wrung his heart, ‘My mother will help me.’

      ‘Your mother is not well.’

      A shadow darkened her features. How much pressure, Nick wondered savagely, had Cat’s charming, gentle, uncomplaining mother applied? Oh, nothing overt, but with her father dead, and his small annuity gone with him, Mrs Courtald must have seen Glen as the answer to all her prayers.

      Cat said, ‘She’s—well enough.’ Her full, soft mouth, tantalisingly red, tightened. ‘And I’m a quick learner,’ she finished on a challenging note.

      She was going to go through with it. For only the second time in his life Nick braced himself as a shaft of panic overturned the processes of his cool, incisive brain. Reasserting control, he asked with cutting scorn, ‘Why are you marrying him, Cat? If it’s money—’

      ‘It is not money!’ Indignation woke those sleepy eyes to fiery alertness, jutted the small, pointed chin. Coldly she retorted, ‘Glen’s an attractive, exciting man, kind and thoughtful and fun to be with—’

      ‘And twenty years older than you.’

      Her chin jutted even further. ‘So? I like older men.’

      ‘Because you want a father to replace the one you’ve just lost,’ he said brutally; he was doing this all wrong and he didn’t know how to rescue the situation. ‘But Glen is not yet forty, and he’s no father figure. He’s going to want to sleep with you, Cat—’

      ‘Don’t call me that!’

      ‘Why not? You’re like a cat, sweet and kittenish when everything’s going your way, but I can see the feline in you. Glen can’t—he thinks you’re docile and obedient and playful. He’s a virile