Contents

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      COMING NEXT MONTH

      CHAPTER ONE

      SOPHIE had woken up with an awful presentiment that the day wouldn’t go well. From the moment she’d squirted toothpaste all down the front of her pyjama top, to the near disaster when she’d just narrowly escaped spilling a whole mug of coffee down the front of the ‘posh’ frock she was reluctantly wearing to her friend Diana’s wedding, her nerves had been jangled. Okay, so she didn’t like weddings—hated them, in fact, but Diana was her closest female friend, and after a tumultuous year when her volatile relationship with Freddie was on one minute, then off the next, the least Sophie could do was show up and bear witness to the occasion.

      But her luck, if she was going to be blessed with any at all today—and Sophie was beginning to think that she wasn’t—just seemed to get worse and worse. She’d made three-quarters of the journey to the register office in her car when there’d been an awful spluttering hiss from the engine, then a pop, then…nothing, as it had finally given up the ghost and come to an undignified end by the side of the road. Sophie had had no alternative but to grab her coat and start walking to the register office. There was nobody she could ring for help because she wasn’t covered for breakdown and, besides, wouldn’t you know it? she’d left her mobile phone on the hall table along with her purse as she’d rushed out through the door. So she hadn’t even been able to get a taxi.

      Now, as she hurried across the grey London pavements grimly clutching her umbrella because it had been raining all morning, and was still raining, and just when she believed her luck couldn’t get any worse, a gleaming black Rolls Royce swept past her into a puddle, which resembled a small reservoir, and all but drowned her in the backwash. Coming to a furious standstill as cold, muddy water dripped like sludge down the side of her fawn-coloured coat and turned her expensive matching shoes to a darker, grimier version of the concrete pavement, Sophie swore out loud. Not just once—but three times, in quick violent succession, each passionate utterance giving undisputed vent to her fury and indignation.

      Narrowing her gaze, she saw to her surprise and satisfaction that the stately vehicle had slowed, then stopped at the side of the kerb. Not hesitating, she hurried towards it, her heart pumping with rage and her breath tight, her only concern that whoever was in there got a piece of her mind that they wouldn’t soon forget. If Sophie had to arrive at her best friend’s marriage ceremony looking as if she’d slept in a puddle beneath Waterloo bridge, then the occupant of that damned Rolls Royce was going to know that she prayed the same bad luck which had been visited on her today would dog the rest of his day.

      She didn’t for one moment doubt that the car’s owner would be male. Only a thoughtless, insensitive oaf would deliberately drive through a puddle when he could clearly see her walking on the pavement beside it. But when she reached the car, a silver-haired chauffeur stepped out and looked immediately contrite.

      ‘I’m so sorry, miss. We were in a hurry and I didn’t see that confounded puddle until it was too late.’

      ‘Well, I’m in a hurry, too, but you don’t see me ruining someone else’s day with my thoughtlessness, do you? You should have been more careful! Now what am I supposed to do?’ Her freezing fingers curling stiffly around her umbrella handle, and the puddle that had soaked her shoes turning her feet to twin blocks of ice, Sophie had trouble keeping her teeth from chattering.

      ‘Get back in the car, Louis. I don’t have time for this. We’re going to be late as it is.’

      It was only at the sound of that coolly imperious voice that Sophie glanced into the passenger-seat window at the back of the car. Catching a glimpse of precision-cut wheat-blond hair and eyes as hard as flint, she felt a shiver run down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold or damp conditions she currently found herself in. The man’s rapier-like instruction to his chauffeur, delivered as if he didn’t give a damn what had happened to Sophie as long as he got to where he was going, made her blood boil.

      ‘How dare you?’ she shouted. ‘I’m standing here soaked to the skin, my outfit ruined, because your stupid car happened to drive straight through a puddle the size of the River Thames, and all you can do is think about yourself and your own comfort! Well, I hope you have the worst day ever, I really do! You don’t even have the guts to step out and face me, do you? Never mind apologise!’

      ‘Miss…let me help you. I’m sure we could give you a lift to wherever you’re going. We could—’

      As the mortified chauffeur did his best to make amends for the ignorance of his boss, the passenger door suddenly opened and the man seated in the back of the car stepped out to gaze at Sophie with unconcealed disdain, as if she was an annoying drone buzzing around his dinner. He was very tall, and his height and breadth of shoulders alone, beneath his formal black coat, should have intimidated her. Green eyes, as crystal-clear and sharp as unflawed emeralds, studied her indignant features without so much as a flicker of emotion. None.

      ‘What is it you want from me? You shouldn’t have been walking so close to the kerb, and wearing such ridiculous shoes in this weather, too. You have only yourself to blame.’

      Ridiculous shoes? Sparing a brief wounded glance down at her too-expensive open-toed cream high-heeled sandals, which she had splashed out on purely in deference to her friend’s wedding, Sophie almost spluttered with rage.

      ‘How dare you? What kind of footwear I put on my feet isn’t your damned business remotely! I happen to be attending a special occasion…Not that that’s any of your business, either. Am I supposed to have foreseen that some idiot would drive by and almost drown me? You have a bloody nerve, you know that?’

      ‘I repeat…what do you want from me? Do you want me to reimburse you for the shoes or pay for your dry-cleaning? What? Tell me quickly so I can be on my way. I have already wasted valuable time standing here listening to you scream at me like a fishwife.’

      He had some kind of accent, Sophie realised from his clipped speech. Dutch perhaps? But, more than that, she was reeling that he should dare to call her a fishwife just because she’d stood up for herself and hadn’t let him simply get in his car and be driven away without making her feelings known.

      Seeing him take out his wallet and extract some notes, she all but blanched. ‘I don’t want your damned money! Didn’t it even occur to you that a simple gracious apology would do? I feel sorry for you…you know that? Driving around in your expensive car, hiding behind your tinted windows, acting like you run the world! Well, go on your way, Mister Whoever-you-are, and God forbid you’re as late for your precious appointment as I’m clearly going to be for mine! But if you are—just remember the reason why, huh?’

      About to turn on her unaccustomed high heel, Sophie was shocked into speechlessness by the blond giant’s hand clamping suddenly around her more fragile wrist.

      ‘If you don’t want my money then perhaps a lift to wherever you are going would be more appropriate? Louis can drop me off at my own destination, then take you on to yours. Will that suffice?’

      Knowing that it probably almost choked him to offer her a lift, and because her anger