It was too easy to blame her father for her hedonistic naïveté. He had loved her and indulged her shamelessly, but he had been too old to understand the pitfalls lurking to snare such a very young and unworldly girl as she had been.
She had had very few friends of her own age, and no female relatives at all. No relatives of any kind in fact, apart from her father. She had been taught privately at home and, although her father had taken her all over the world with him and had showered her with jewellery and pretty clothes, she had had no real experience of life at all. His death when she was nineteen had come as a tremendous shock, even though it seemed that the doctors had been warning him for years that he was overdoing things.
She was his only child and sole heiress and, more scientist than businessman, he had never thought to tie up her inheritance in a way that would ultimately protect her so that when Julian…
‘I came over to ask whether you’d like to have dinner with me.’
The invitation shocked her out of her thoughts. She stared at him in disbelief.
‘Dinner? With you?’ Her mouth compressed. She was no longer an idealistic nineteen-year-old. She knew very well now that, when men paid pretty compliments and spoke falsely of love, their words were simply being used to mask other desires and other needs. Men were predators on her sex, using women to further their own aims and their own ambitions. ‘Dinner? Are you crazy?’ she questioned him sharply. ‘I’ve already told you you’re wasting your time. I have no intention of selling my home.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t as a possible purchaser of your land that I wanted to give you dinner,’ he told her, enjoying the confusion which suddenly darkened her eyes before suspicion drove it away. ‘No, it’s your expertise in the art of floral décor I’m interested in at the moment. Don’t think I’ve given up on getting your land, though,’ he warned her. ‘I can be very determined when I want something.’
‘I’m sure,’ Rue told him drily.
He laughed, apparently completely unabashed by the cool tone of her voice.
‘My mother is coming to stay with me in a few weeks’ time. I bought the house as it stands, but some of the rooms look a little bit dreary. I thought some dried flowers might add a slightly more welcoming touch, and I wanted to seek your professional advice and expertise.’
Rue looked at him, not sure of whether to believe him or not.
‘Of course,’ he added carelessly, ‘I quite understand if you prefer not to come up to the house. I can see that visiting it might prove too painful.’
His suggestion that she might be jealous, that she might for one moment resent the fact he was living in her old home, goaded Rue into immediate retaliation.
‘Not at all,’ she told him swiftly. ‘I don’t think I have anything on tonight. If you’d tell me what time you’d like me to call—but there would be really no need for you to provide me with dinner.’
‘It will be my pleasure,’ he interrupted smoothly. ‘I much prefer to cook for someone else other than myself. It’s so much more rewarding, don’t you agree?’
And, before Rue could hide her astonishment that such a very masculine man should actually admit to being able to cook, he turned and looked at her, his grey eyes alight with amusement. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t mind some cuttings from your herbs, once I’ve got the kitchen garden re-established. It’s in a very run-down state at the moment.’
‘Yes,’ Rue remarked absently. ‘The previous owners only visited the house on very rare occasions, and it’s been badly neglected.’
She was curious to know why an apparently single man should choose to buy himself such a large house, and on an impulse she couldn’t quite analyse she asked quickly, ‘Do you live alone, or…?’
‘Am I married or otherwise attached?’ he supplied drily, making her flush with embarrassment and irritation. ‘Neither. Just as for many another successful businessman, there never seems to have been time to establish any deep-rooted relationships, which is why I now find myself in my mid-thirties and somewhat isolated from the rest of my peer group. Everywhere I look these days I seem to see happily married men with wives and families.’
‘A wife and family shouldn’t be too difficult for a man of your wealth to find,’ Rue told him cynically.
‘That depends,’ he responded and, without waiting for her to qu
estion him, he added, ‘on how high one’s standards are. Mine are very high,’ he told her evenly, which meant, Rue reflected bitterly, that if and when he married it would be to some pretty and possibly well-born young woman whose looks would be a perfect foil for his success.
‘I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock,’ he announced. ‘We can eat about half-past eight and over dinner we can talk about the kind of floral arrangements you might be able to provide that would add a slightly softening effect to the house’s austerity.’
‘There’s no need for you to pick me up,’ Rue told him sharply. ‘Heavens, it’s only half a mile or so to walk, and besides, I do have transport.’
‘I’ll pick you up,’ Neil reiterated in a voice that warned her that he was not prepared to listen to any further argument.
After he had gone, Rue stood where she was in the middle of the field, in a daze, wondering why on earth she had been mad enough to allow him to talk her into having dinner with him. The last thing that she wanted was to spend time in his company.
She didn’t like him. Since Julian’s death and the end of her marriage, she had kept her distance from all men, but most especially from those men like Neil Saxton, from whom emanated an almost tangible aura of male sexuality. She no longer deceived herself. The pretty, girlish bloom she had once had was long gone. She was not beautiful in the accepted sense of the word, nor did she want to be.
She had no desire at all to excite male admiration, and she was certainly not so stupid as to imagine that Neil Saxton wanted her company because he found her attractive as a woman. Once, long ago, she had been foolish enough to believe that a man loved her. She had paid a very heavy price for that folly, and it was a mistake she was never going to repeat.
As she bent over her work she told herself that it was stupid to waste time thinking about Neil Saxton. If there was any way she could have got out of their dinner date she would have done so, but she had to acknowledge that he was perfectly capable of coming into the cottage and dragging her out by force if he felt it necessary.
No, she would have dinner with him tonight, and afterwards she would make it plain to him that she wanted no further contact whatsoever with him.