CHAPTER ONE

      ‘FOR God’s sake, Darcy, I know you’re always losing things; but my mother!’

      Put like that it did sound a little careless. But it wasn’t completely accurate. She hadn’t exactly lost Maud Hunter; misplaced her was a better way of describing what had happened, she thought.

      But Reed didn’t look as if he wanted to hear that right now, and Darcy doubted he would find the distinction at all reassuring. After all, she had gone to the airport to meet Maud Hunter, and she had returned without her and now had no idea where she could be!

      Reed stood up in a forceful movement. ‘My God, Darcy, you lost my mother!’

      She sighed, pulling a face at his incredulity. ‘You already said that.’

      Sparks flew in accusing green eyes, his mouth tight. ‘And I’ll say it again, too, as many damned times as I have to to be able to take it in!’ He paced the room with long legs, his movements not made with their usual fluidity but with spasmodic energy. ‘You lost a sixty-year-old woman who’s just endured a long flight and is on her first trip to England in ten years!’ It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact. ‘This is a human being I’m talking about here, Darcy,’ he growled. ‘Not one of those dozen left shoes sitting in the bottom of your closet—and this is not the time for you to point out that closet means something else over here,’ he snarled as she opened her mouth to speak, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes as she quickly closed it again. ‘… Dozen left shoes sitting in the bottom of your closet,’ he repeated hardly, ‘because you have somehow lost the right ones!’

      ‘It’s the right shoes in the wardrobe and the left ones lost,’ she nervously corrected; Reed hardly ever lost his temper, but she knew that right now he had, his whole body tensed with it. Well she had misplaced his mother between here and Heathrow. Or did she mean Heathrow and here——

      ‘Darcy!’ he grated between clenched teeth. ‘I don’t give a damn if it’s half a dozen of each——’

      ‘I thought you were trying to stop swearing?’ She frowned as he used the word twice in as many minutes after days of holding back his usual habit of cursing whenever something didn’t go exactly as he planned it should.

      ‘Darcy!’ Her name came out as a fierce guttural growl this time. ‘A saint would swear at a time like this,’ he added in exasperation as she looked at him with bewildered confusion.

      A saint was something they both knew he wasn’t. As a professional speculator—in just about anything!—he often didn’t have the time to wait around and be pleasant. Admittedly he was dealing mainly in shares at the moment, but even so he was ruthless, was first and foremost a businessman. He was also very successful at what he did. The only way that Darcy could see he might possibly have fallen down on that success was hiring her as his secretary! And she had a feeling he felt the same way at the moment.

      He looked at her with sharp green eyes, stopping his pacing. ‘I suppose you did actually meet her at the airport?’ he asked hopefully.

      ‘Of course I did,’ she protested indignantly.

      Reed eyed her suspiciously. ‘Are you sure?’

      Her mouth compressed. ‘She’s a short lady, about my height, I suppose,’ she frowned thoughtfully, ‘with curly white hair, and green eyes like yours.’

      ‘I told you all that before you left for the airport,’ he snapped impatiently.

      ‘I have her luggage downstairs in the boot of the car!’ Darcy told him exasperatedly. She might have a habit of losing things, but she certainly didn’t invent meeting people. ‘She told me all about how naughty you were as a little boy,’ she remembered, her eyes dancing merrily. ‘How you turned the hose on the——’

      ‘All right,’ Reed barked irritably, obviously not in the mood to reminisce about his mischievous childhood. ‘I’ll accept that you did meet my mother——’

      ‘Well thanks!’ she bit out caustically, glaring at him.

      ‘But what the hell have you done with her now?’

      Reed had such a deep timbre of voice that when he raised it you felt like putting a hand on all the breakable objects in the room in case they clattered from their resting place and shattered on the ground. She saw his eyes narrow as she winced, clasping her hands together in front of her to resist the urge.

      ‘I haven’t done anything with her, Reed,’ she denied wearily. ‘On the drive back she mentioned it was years since she had read an English newspaper, and when she fell asleep——’

      ‘You