CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS two-thirty in the morning and the telephone was ringing. Right next to her bed. Sharp, insistent rings that demanded answering, and her immediate groggy thought was that some catastrophe had occurred. Something awful that couldn’t wait until a more civilised hour. After all, what voice at the end of a telephone at two-thirty in the morning was going to be the bearer of good tidings?

      For a split-second she was tempted to let the damn thing ring, to let the bad news wait until morning, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t in her nature. She had never had much success in dodging reality and she wasn’t about to achieve it now.

      She reluctantly lifted the receiver and waited for the person on the other end to speak. Which he did.

      ‘I knew you were there.’ That dark, velvety voice which could charm the birds off the trees was cold and abrupt and Christina felt her head thicken with a sudden, overwhelming tension, even though she told herself that that was silly. She was a grown woman of twenty-three and she had nothing to fear from Adam Palmer.

      But old habits died hard. Ever since she was a child, he had been able to fill her with a similar sickening nervousness.

      ‘What do you want?’ she asked, knowing immediately why he had called and forestalling his inevitable question. ‘Have you any idea what time it is?’ Her head felt as clear as a bell, her mind alert and already in a position of self-defence.

      ‘I know exactly what the time is,’ he returned dismissively, ‘and, just in case you’re waiting for an apology for my phoning you at this hour, there won’t be one forthcoming. So don’t hold your breath.’

      Oh, charming, she thought angrily. Has it occurred to you that I might not exactly relish being dragged out of sleep at this ungodly hour?

      She had a mental image of him. Tall, strikingly handsome and frighteningly clever. A man who had probably never suffered even the most fleeting attack of self-consciousness in his entire life. She doubted that he had even given a second’s thought to the hour of his phone call.

      She sat up straighter in her bed, her body stiff even though she was alone in the bedroom.

      ‘You could have waited until morning,’ she began on an indrawn breath, hanging on to some semblance of politeness while her mind conjured up satisfying pictures of him falling down a couple of flights of stairs, or finding himself lost in the middle of a desert somewhere with no help in sight. ‘You may think nothing of being up at this hour, but some of us happen to lead more orthodox lives.’

      ‘Cocoa at nine and then bed by nine-thirty, Tina?’ There was lazy mockery in his voice, and it sent the blood rushing to her head.

      How wonderful to have been able to think of some bitingly acid retort, but as usual on these occasions her mind went blank.

      She made a little strangled sound down the line and then took a deep breath, counting to ten. It was unwise to enter into any sort of argument with Adam Palmer, because he invariably won. In fact, it was unwise to let yourself become in the slightest bit ruffled by anything he had to say.

      ‘Yes,’ she said calmly, ‘and very enjoyable it is too, except when I get bothered by phone calls at this hour in the morning.’

      ‘What an exciting little girl you are,’ he remarked, in the same mocking voice, and she could have screamed. ‘But fascinating though your personal life is, you know my reason for calling you. Where the hell is my sister?’

      ‘I have no idea.’

      ‘And now that you’ve got that little lie off your chest, why don’t you tell me the truth? Where is she?’

      She should have prepared some suitable lie. She had known as soon as Fiona flew the nest that her brother would come barging along for a few answers. After all, she was Fiona’s closest friend. But lying didn’t come easy to Christina. She was a placid, self-controlled girl who found that the wheels of life moved far more smoothly without intrigue.

      ‘I can’t tell you that,’ she said into the waiting silence, and she heard the furious intake of breath down the other end. ‘Fiona made me promise not to reveal her whereabouts.’

      ‘Oh, she did, did she?’

      ‘She’s not a child any longer, Adam,’ she continued hastily, because it didn’t take a genius to realise that his rage was climbing a few degrees higher with every word she spoke. ‘She’s twenty-two now. She can vote, she can go to pubs, she can even get married if she wants to.’

      ‘So that’s what she’s up to, is it?’ he bellowed down the line, and Christina held the phone a little way back from her ear. ‘Marriage? To that...that...’

      ‘You’ll get high blood-pressure if you don’t relax,’ she said with a weak attempt to defuse the situation, which was utterly futile.

      ‘You’ll damn well get high blood-pressure in a minute,’ he roared. ‘I’m on my way over.’

      She heard the slam of the receiver and then that dead dialling tone and she looked at the phone with mounting horror.

      On his way over? To her flat? Now? The prospect of Adam swooping down at her in a thunderous rage and demanding answers out of her made her tremble with apprehension. It had been bad enough merely hearing his voice down the receiver.

      She thought of him in his Jaguar screeching over and her body was galvanised into action. Very quickly, she washed her face, combed her hair sensibly away from her face, and stuck on a pair of jeans and a jumper, feeling very odd being suddenly fully clothed when less than half an hour ago she was cocooned under a layer of blankets, sound asleep.

      Fiona, she thought, this is all your fault. Why did you have to involve me in your wretched schemes?

      But she really wasn’t cross with her friend. She had known her as long as she had known Adam, which was getting on for fifteen years, and she had long ago accepted her for what she was—an adorable, impulsive creature, who sailed through life blithely ignoring anything that remotely resembled cares or worries.

      That, perhaps, had been the essence of their friendship, the reason why it had survived intact for so long. Opposites attracted, and Christina knew that she was exactly the opposite of her friend: composed where Fiona was apt to