PROLOGUE

      ANNIE KINCAID was dying for Rupert to take her home. She just couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Normally she loved parties, but this one was giving her a headache.

      The level of noise was nothing like as raucous as some of the thrashes she’d been to, so that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t the soft music—Vivaldi, she thought—or the thrum of conversation, the occasional ripple of well-modulated laughter that was making her temples pound.

      She pushed ineffectually and despairingly at the thick tendrils of wheat-gold crinkly hair which had escaped the chignon she’d so painstakingly created and felt a few more pins slither out onto the gorgeous Persian carpet.

      ‘You should get it cut—one of those new short, sharp styles,’ Rupert had once said, ‘It’s much too wild, makes you look like a bimbo instead of a nineties career woman.’

      Just one of the niggles that that had piled up, until last night the pile had become a mountain of monstrous proportions.

      They’d been at his ultra-modern Marylebone apartment, all steel and leather furniture and waxed wooden floor-blocks. Sitting over the trendy Thaistyle supper he’d had delivered from the restaurant round the corner—he always refused to let her cook for him, which annoyed her because she was good at it—she’d casually mentioned children.

      ‘I’d love a huge family. Well,’ she’d amended, seeing his sudden frown. ‘Three, at least. I never had brothers or sisters, and after my parents died I was brought up by a maiden aunt—the only relative I had. Aunt Tilly thought children were meant to be rarely seen and never—and I mean never—heard!’ Her comment, glossing over the loneliness and lovelessness of her childhood, had been meant to be joky, to ease away that frown.

      If anything, the scowl on his bluntly good-looking face had intensified. ‘Talk sense, Annie. What are you—twenty-four? You’ve got your career to think of—’

      ‘A secretary,’ she had interrupted, to his obvious displeasure. ‘That’s all I am.’

      She didn’t want to be a career woman; she wanted to be a mum, the builder and holder-together of a sprawling, happy family.

      ‘You could advance,’ Rupert had pointed out. ‘If you tried. If you got away from that tinpot import lot you’re with. Move to a decent company, aim for personal assistant to a top man. As a matter of fact, there’s a secretarial position coming vacant in the research department at the bank. I could swing an interview, maybe even pull a few strings. I do have some clout, you know. Work hard, and it could lead to better things—much better things. The only thing that’s holding you back is your attitude.’

      He’d poured more wine into her glass. Had he thought it would soften her up, make her more mellow?

      ‘With both of us working after we’re married we could afford a seriously decent lifestyle. I don’t intend to become the sole provider, missing out on the good life, worrying myself half to death over school fees and fodder bills. Think about it. The job with the bank, that is. As for the other—’ he’d shrugged, dismissing her needs, ‘—we’ve got another fifteen years ahead of us before we need even consider starting a family.’

      He’d pushed the wine towards her over the glass top of the table with the tip of his finger. And smiled his charming smile. The smile that had stopped her in her tracks when she’d first encountered it a few months ago.

      Last night it hadn’t worked. It hadn’t really worked for weeks, come to think of it. And that was responsible for her headache tonight, the way she couldn’t be bothered to mingle, enjoy getting to know new people the way she usually did.

      Sighing, she remembered the way she had exploded. Told him she didn’t want to work in a stuffy merchant bank until she was forty. And said that if he generously allowed her to have a child when she’d reached that venerable age then she’d be drawing her old-age pension before he or she had finished full-time education.

      She didn’t want to be a career woman with a short, sharp hairstyle, thanks all the same!

      She’d called him a selfish chauvinist, and a load of other unflattering names she hadn’t been aware she’d known, and stumped out

      And she wouldn’t be with him at the party tonight, only he’d phoned her at work—her despised work, she reminded herself—and practically re-invented himself.

      ‘About last night, well, Annie, I apologise. I shouldn’t try to force my opinions on you. I love you just as you are, even when you’re at your most contrary! I suggest we talk things through, properly. We can go back to my place after the party and discuss everything sensibly.’

      With being mad at him, and wondering if their engagement was a huge mistake, she had forgotten about the party his head of department was throwing to mark his imminent retirement.

      She’d been wondering if he would have bothered to get in touch with her today if the party hadn’t been happening, and was sure of it when he went on, ‘Edward has invited the entire staff—at executive level, of course—and their partners. Wives, mostly. It wouldn’t do my career prospects much good if I failed to turn up. And they all know of our engagement so they’ll expect you to be there. The chief exec is very strong on stable marriages, and I guess that goes for engagements, too.’

      She didn’t care what the stuffy old chief executive, whoever he was, thought. But she did care about Rupert, and even if they decided that their engagement had been a mistake she wouldn’t do a thing to harm him, or his career prospects. She knew how