CHAPTER ONE

      WHAT on earth was she doing here?

      Stazy looked around the room, shaking her head in self-disgust. She realised she didn’t know a single person here, save for the man at her side—and then she barely knew him, even though he was responsible for bringing her along!

      They had spoken for the first time only yesterday—previous polite good mornings or good evenings, if they had happened to meet in the lift or corridor, did not count as speaking in Stazy’s book!—and yet here she was, at a family wedding with him.

      Boredom had a lot to answer for, she decided, and loneliness. And, for some reason, yesterday she had been feeling both rather acutely.

      She had been aware that the man who occupied the neighbouring apartment to her own was called Jordan Hunter, had seen his name over a security button downstairs. But apart from that she knew absolutely nothing more about him. Or he her. But yesterday, for some unknown reason, she had been feeling vulnerable and in need of company...

      She couldn’t have been more surprised when they had arrived here together this evening and she’d discovered she was a guest at the wedding reception of Jordan’s brother Jonathan! Getting through the meal had been awful enough, Jordan silent at her side, but at least she’d had someone seated on her other side to talk to, a man who’d identified himself as Jordan’s uncle. Except he hadn’t stopped talking, totally monopolising her attention through every course, so that she’d hardly had a chance to eat her food, let alone look at the other guests! But now the meal was over, and everyone had moved into an adjoining room, where a band at one end played music the wedding invitees could dance to.

      That was the real problem now; Jordan was just as silent and taciturn as he had, been at the table. How quickly could she escape? Stazy wondered impatiently.

      She wished she had never responded to his attempt at conversation yesterday!

      ‘How do you like your apartment?’

      Since only the two of them stood in the lift, Stazy had known Jordan Hunter had been talking to her! And, considering she had occupied the apartment next door to his for the last three months, the question seemed a little late in coming. Neighbours tended to be a little more friendly back home...

      ‘I like it just fine,’ she answered dismissively, grateful when the lift doors opened at their floor and they could step out into the corridor.

      ‘You’re American.’ It was a statement, and a slightly surprised one at that.

      Stazy had been about to walk away, having already taken her keys from her bag, a confused look on her face as she looked up at Jordan Hunter. She had expected him to leave too, but he hadn’t moved after he’d stepped out of the lift.

      He was, she acknowledged, by any woman’s standards, extremely good-looking. Tall, several inches taller than her own five feet nine inches, with curly hair that seemed, she recalled, to have a permanently tousled look, almost as if he were constantly running his fingers through its dark length.

      Aged probably in his mid-thirties, more than ten years older than her own twenty-one years, he had the assurance and sophistication to match his maturity; in fact, Stazy had never seen him dressed in anything other than one of the numerous tailored suits he seemed to possess, with pristine shirts and matching silk ties. By contrast, he had probably never seen her wearing anything but jeans or leggings, matched with loose tops, her copperred hair usually flowing loosely down her spine.

      Jordan’s face was like a ruggedly hewn sculpture, with a square jaw, firm, unsmiling mouth—although the laughter lines visible beside his eyes and lips said he didn’t always look this grim!—and a long, slightly arrogant nose. His eyes she had been saving until last—because they were the most unusual colour Stazy had ever seen! Too light in colour to be called brown, they were actually gold, and surrounded by the thickest, darkest lashes imaginable.

      Stazy had noticed all this about him a couple of days after she moved in. But only abstractly. Men, she had decided, were a treacherous bunch of rogues. A totally different species. Probably from a different planet, too, totally incompatible with women. And so Jordan Hunter’s good looks had been noted—and then dismissed.

      ‘Yes, I’m American,’ she confirmed dryly. She knew all about English reserve, but by practically ignoring her existence for the last three months she felt Jordan Hunter had been taking it too far. For all the notice he had taken of her, she could have been lying dead in the apartment next door to his for that length of time, and he would never have known