is inheritance had been the house and the land; there hadn’t been any money to leave for its upkeep—and then Alex had happened to mention the existence of an eccentric American billionaire whose main vocation and purpose in life was the buying up and restoring of old properties which he then opened to the public, and Ran had lost no time in getting in touch with him.
To his relief Lloyd had flown over to England to view the house and promptly declared that he loved it.
That relief had turned to something very different, though, when he had received a fax from Lloyd advising him that his assistant, Ms Sylvie Bennett, would be flying over to Britain to act as his representative over the repair and renovation of the property. He could, of course, have simply chosen to turn his back, walk away, and leave someone else to liaise with Sylvie, but Ran wasn’t like that. If he had a job to do he preferred to see it through for himself, no matter how unwanted or potentially problematic that task might be.
Potentially problematic! A bitter half-smile curled his mouth. There was nothing potential about the problems that Sylvie was likely to cause him... Nothing potential at all.
He had heard scraps of news about her over the years, of course, mainly from Alex and Mollie. Sylvie had completed her degree course and majored summa cum laude... Sylvie was living in New York and looking for a job... Sylvie had got a job... Sylvie was working in Venice... In Rome... In Prague... Sylvie... Sylvie... Sylvie...
Alex and Mollie weren’t his only sources of information, though. Only the previous winter in London, Ran had unexpectedly bumped into Sylvie’s mother, Alex’s stepmother, predictably just outside Harvey Nichols.
Belinda had gushed enthusiastically over his recent elevation to the peerage. She had always been the most appalling snob and Ran could still remember how bitterly she had opposed Alex’s request to her after his father had died that Sylvie be allowed to stay on at Otel Place with him instead of being sent to boarding school.
‘Sylvie cannot possibly live with you, Alex,’ she had told him sharply. ‘For one thing it simply wouldn’t be proper. There is, after all, no blood relationship between you. And for another... Sylvie has been spending far too much time with the wrong sort of people.’
Ran, who had been standing outside Alex’s library whilst this conversation had been taking place, had turned round and been about to walk away when, to his disgust, he had suddenly heard his own name mentioned. Alex had demanded of his stepmother, ‘What wrong sort of people...?’
‘Well, Ran for a start... Oh, I know you count him as one of your friends, but he’s still merely an employee and—’
Alex had immediately exploded, informing his stepmother, much to Ran’s chagrin, ‘Ran is a friend and, as for anything else, he happens to be far better born than either you or I.’
‘Really?’ had come back the acid retort. ‘He might be better born, Alex, but he still doesn’t have any money. Sylvie is very much in danger of developing the sort of crush on him that could totally ruin her reputation if she’s to make the right sort of marriage.’
“‘The right sort of marriage”?’ Alex had retorted angrily. ‘For heaven’s sake, what century are you living in...?’
‘Sylvie is my daughter and there’s no way I want her mixing with the estate workers...and that includes Ran... And whilst we’re on the subject, Alex, I really do think that as Sylvie’s stepbrother you do have a responsibility to her to protect her from unsuitable...friendships...’
Ran could still remember how bitterly, furiously angry he had been, how humiliated he had felt... He had made sure that he kept his distance from Sylvie after that, even if Sylvie herself had not made that particularly easy. He had been twenty-seven then, ten years older than Sylvie. A man, whilst she was still only a child.
A child... A child who had told him passionately that she loved and wanted him; a child who had demanded even more passionately that he love her back, that he make love to her...with her...that he show her...teach her... take her...
He could have wrung her pretty little neck for that... wrung it or—He could still remember how she had defied him, flinging herself into his arms, wrapping them round him, pressing her soft lips against him...
Then, he had managed to resist her...just...that time...
She had always been so passionately intense. It was perhaps no wonder that the love she had professed to feel for him had ultimately turned to loathing and hatred.
And now she was coming back. Not just to England but here, to Haverton, into his home...his life...
What would she be like? Beautiful, of course; that went without saying... Her mother had told him as much when he had bumped into her—not that he needed telling; it had been blindingly obvious even when she was a child that ultimately she would be an extraordinarily beautiful woman.
‘You’ll know, of course, that Sylvie is working in New York...for a billionaire...’ Belinda had cooed happily at him, smiling with satisfaction.
‘He’s totally besotted with her of course,’ she had added, and though it hadn’t been put into as many words Ran had gained the distinct impression from Sylvie’s mother that the relationship between Sylvie and Lloyd was rather more than that of merely employer and employee...
It had come as something of a shock to him later, when he met Lloyd, to recognise how much older than Sylvie he actually was, but he had told himself that if Sylvie chose to have as her lover a man who was plainly so much older than her then that was her business and no one else’s.
Sylvie... In another few hours she would be here, their roles in many ways reversed.
‘I despise you, Ran, I hate you,’ she had hissed at him between gritted teeth when she had first left for New York, averting her face when he had leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
‘I hate you...’ She had said it with almost as much passion as she had once cried out to him that she loved him. Almost as much...
CHAPTER TWO
FIVE miles or so before her ultimate destination Sylvie pulled the car she had hired at the airport over to the side of the road and switched off the engine—not because she was unsure of where she was going, not even because she wanted to absorb the beauty of the Derbyshire countryside around her, magnificent though it was as it basked warmly in the mid-afternoon sunshine, devoid of any sign of human occupation apart from her own.
No, the reason she had stopped was that she had been tellingly aware for the last few miles not just of the slight dampness of her hands on the steering wheel but, even more betrayingly, of the increasing turmoil of her thoughts and the nervous butterflies churning her stomach.