www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CHAPTER ONE

      OF COURSE, it would have to be raining, Sybilla reflected with disgust as she emerged from the supermarket with her overladen trolley.

      It didn’t help to improve her mood either, she knew, acknowledging that the rain had been forecast and that because she had already been running late she had decided to take a chance and hope that it held off until she had completed her shopping.

      The way her life was going at the moment she really ought to have known better, she admitted ruefully as she stood under the shelter of the supermarket building and eyed the vast packed car park.

      Her car was parked right at the back; the car park had been full when she’d arrived and that had been the only spot she could find.

      She eyed the pencil-slim cream length of her skirt with a sinking heart as she acknowledged how inappropriate a garment it was in which to push a heavily laden trolley across a car park which seemed specifically designed not to ease the transportation of one’s shopping to one’s car, but to actively hinder it. The rain was becoming heavier; there were puddles on the tarmac, she was wearing a long-sleeved silk shirt, her skirt, brand-new expensive tights and equally brand-new and expensive high-heeled shoes.

      She looked, she admitted as she glanced around, rather ludicrously inappropriately dressed for her task.

      The majority of the other women shoppers were wearing comfortable, brightly coloured, weatherproof casual clothes, and flat or low-heeled shoes.

      But then it was hardly her fault that her business partner’s husband should have been involved in a car accident, necessitating Belinda’s rushing off to his bedside, while it fell to her to step into Belinda’s shoes, give up her precious day off, and take over Belinda’s appointments for the day.

      Fortunately Tom, Belinda’s husband, had not been badly hurt; even so, Sybilla could well understand her friend’s desire to be with him.

      Perhaps if she hadn’t offered to do her neighbours’ shopping for them as well as her own she could have put off this trip to the supermarket, but Mr and Mrs Simmonds were elderly and had been so grateful for her offer of help with their shopping that she had felt she couldn’t possibly cancel the trip.

      Another wry glance at the dense cloud-packed sky confirmed that the rain wasn’t likely to let up, and, since she could hardly stay where she was for the rest of the day, nor somehow magic her car to miraculously appear at the supermarket door, she really had no alternative but to accept that she was going to have to get wet and minimise the damage to her clothes as best she could.

      Gritting her teeth, she stepped out from under the canopy, resolutely pushing the trolley in front of her, groaning when she discovered that she had somehow or other managed to find herself one of those rogue trolleys with four wheels that appeared to want to go in the completely opposite direction to that she was pushing in.

      It was too wet and she was too impractically dressed to get down and try to free the jammed wheels, which meant that somehow or other she was going to have to control the trolley by leaning against the left-hand side of it at the same time as she pushed it.

      Normally blessed with a good sense of humour, Sybilla reflected that today was most definitely not going to be her day.

      She tried not to imagine what the muddy spray of water from the tarmac was doing to the backs of her legs, and was within a few yards of her car, and just about to give a soft sigh of relief, when a large expensive-looking Daimler saloon car swept towards her.

      Automatically she stopped, trying to pull the trolley out of the way, but, instead of it responding to her wishes, the inadvertently sharp tug she had given it made it yaw dangerously to one side.

      Of course, she made an immediate grab for it, but it was too late; dangerously overladen with the burden of her neighbours’ shopping as well as her own, to her absolute horror the trolley started to tip to one side.

      As she leaned across it to try and steady the trolley it bumped painfully into her shin, and she felt the metal tear into the fragile fabric of her tights before finally toppling over.

      The car, meanwhile, which had been the unwitting cause of her downfall, had stopped a couple of yards away, the driver no doubt intending to reverse into the empty parking space nearby.

      Naturally enough, though, Sybilla didn’t have much time to spare to pay attention to what was going on around her. She was far too concerned about how she was going to get her trolley back on its wheels, so at first she did not pay any attention to the opening and closing of the car door, save to mentally acknowledge that it had occurred with a very soft and expensive clunk, rather than with the sharp tinny sound her car door made.

      To be confronted therefore with a pair of immaculately polished male shoes, topped by equally immaculate and very expensive-looking dark-coloured trousers, startled her so much that she automatically abandoned the trolley and tried to stand up, horribly conscious of the appearance she must present: her fair hair hanging in rain-sodden strands around her face, her cream shirt and skirt no doubt liberally spattered with dirty rainwater-spots, her tights ripped beyond redemption, and her general appearance was one of a woman so totally unable to control her life that she was not in the least surprised that the man seemed to assume that she needed some help.

      She would have accepted it,