Читать книгу Emerald Mistress - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

JUST AFTER DAWN, Flynn Court was wreathed in a sea-fret that semi-obscured the classic elegance of the great house and concealed the worst of the dilapidation inflicted by decades of neglect. As the sun broke through the mist, Rafael settled his helicopter down on the landing pad situated to the north side of his ancestral home.

Ireland felt cool and airy and fresh after the heat of the Caribbean sun. Emerging from the helicopter, his current lover, Bianca, had a dramatic fit of the shivers and announced that she was freezing. As Rafael had warned her already that accompanying him to the wilds of County Kerry would involve a degree of physical hardship, a total absence of luxury and no exclusive social outlets whatever, he ignored the complaint. On Irish soil he always relaxed, secure in the knowledge that the local community respected his privacy and that the paparazzi who had finally connected his dual Irish-Italian heritage would receive no assistance and even less encouragement to pry further.

Breakfast was brought up to the master bedroom suite by one of the staff he’d had flown in to make the house ready for occupation the previous week. Barefoot, his shirt hanging open, Rafael sprawled along the window seat with his coffee and feasted his attention on the rolling parkland that ran down to the jagged rocks and the sand dunes that bounded the bay where he had played as a child.

In his father’s home in Italy he had been watched every hour of the day by nannies and bodyguards. The staff had walked in fear of Valente’s violent temper and had restricted Rafael’s play in an effort to protect him from even the smallest injury. Only at Flynn Court had Rafael had the chance to get dirty and paddle, fishing in rock pools and building dams. With his mother too out of it to know what he was doing most of the time, Rafael had run wild and free on the windswept beauty of the beach at the foot of the hill.

‘This is sublime…’ Bianca employed her favourite word, which she used to distinguish everything from a good meal to phenomenal sex and expensive perfume.

Rafael had forgotten her presence. She had little stimulating conversation, so tuning her out was not a challenge. Previously he had decided that the ability to emulate wallpaper was a something in her favour. Now, blonde hair trailing into a flowing mane over one shoulder, she was reclining on the bed. As befitted a supermodel who was internationally renowned for her beauty, she looked as inhumanly perfect as an advertising hoarding. She was posed for maximum effect, her flawless body arrayed in silk lingerie the colour of a café latte, artfully dampened nipples poking through the lace for his admiration. Oozing confidence in her manifold attractions, she stretched out languid legs that were an incredible thirty-six inches long. But Rafael wasn’t a photographer, and he liked his sex a little less choreographed. At this moment he felt nothing and knew that, once again, he had become bored.

Anyway, Bianca’s green eyes, smoky with smudged kohl, were fixed with mesmeric intensity on the true object of her desire. She smiled a Helen of Troy smile of unsurpassable luminosity that lit up the exquisite symmetry of her face. Rafael watched this display of blatant self-love that no mere man—or woman—could ever hope to equal. Bianca shifted position, skimming a light, caressing hand down over the smooth sculpted line of her slender thigh. She was enthralled to the point of ecstasy by her own beautiful reflection in the eighteenth-century mirror on the wall opposite.

A sudden noise from outside sent Rafael’s attention flying back to the tall sash window. A horse was galloping at breakneck speed across the field below his lawn. His interest was caught; he was a great horse-lover, and the owner of an internationally acclaimed stud farm in Kildare. He stood up for a better view; a flutter of colourful movement behind the lower hedge that bounded the field made him reach for the binoculars on the pier table.

A woman was fighting her way through the hedge. She was wearing a quite bizarre outfit: a camisole and shorts fashioned of fabric decorated with large pink flowers. Pyjamas? Worn with green Wellington boots? An aristocratic black brow climbed. A stray shard of sunshine made her hair shine as bright as polished copper in firelight. It was an amazing colour, red as the richest wine against her pale skin. Could this be the tough and savvy London career woman who had refused to sell the Gallagher property back to the Flynn Court estate? The woman who wanted to downshift to the idyllic illusion of rural simplicity? Rafael grinned. One more dreamer bites the dust….

‘If the mountain won’t come…’ Bianca giggled and let intimate hands stray below his shirt to trace his muscular back and then sink below his waist.

Rafael’s even white teeth gritted and he shifted to dislodge her. He wasn’t in the mood. After a week on the yacht in which Bianca had entertained his entire crew by walking around nude at every opportunity she had lost all mystery and allure. He had shagged her on the plane to pass the time. Perhaps out of guilt over his essential indifference now that desire had fled. Why did he get bored so easily? Why was the chase always so much more exciting than the sexual catch? But then, honesty urged him to admit, when had he ever had to mount a pursuit to score with a woman? Or employ the tactics of charm and persuasion?

His intent gaze narrowed on the woman charging across the field full tilt. Her firm round breasts bounced with unfettered abandon. The stallion soared like a great bird over the fence onto the rolling lawn. The redhead flung herself sideways over the same barrier, got into difficulties and virtually fell down the other side. She had a generous bottom, shaped like a heart. In fact, he acknowledged, his interest fairly ensnared, the body below that clinging jersey fabric was as lush and ripe with curves as an old-fashioned hourglass. That voluptuous hint of pure feminine abundance was distinctly sexy. Without any warning, she achieved the effect that Bianca had failed to rouse. His slumbering libido kicked in with a surge of sexual enthusiasm that startled him.

‘There’s a fat woman running round your garden!’ Bianca exclaimed in disbelief.

Fat? Rafael would have laughed out loud had he not at that moment registered that the stallion was frantically rolling its eyes in fear and panic. In that state of terror the horse was as much a danger to himself as to the foolish woman chasing him. Without hesitation, Rafael raced for the stairs.

‘Pluto…shush, there’s a nice boy,’ Harriet wheezed, struggling to make her voice calm and comforting, but so out of breath that her lungs felt strangled.

Showing the whites of his eyes, Pluto careered round like a crazy mechanical bucking horse, and then he started coming right at her and she froze. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of sudden movement, but that was the only warning she got before she was snatched off her feet and pinned face down to the damp ground, her ribcage momentarily squashed flat beneath a powerful masculine body. The thunder of hooves passing too close to her ears for comfort made her appreciate that she had very nearly been trampled.

‘Stay here,’ an accented male voice growled, and the weight on her back lifted again as he tugged Pluto’s head collar from her loosened grasp.

Harriet flipped over and watched him approach the sweating, snorting stallion. He was very tall and his movements were incredibly quiet, assured and graceful. His black hair was cropped short, his feet bare in the dew-wet grass. His blue shirt fluttered back in the morning breeze from the soft, well-worn denims that hugged his narrow hips and long powerful thighs to reveal a hair-roughened bronze torso that was as sleek and hard with muscle as the proverbial six-pack. She flushed at her straying attention and then noted that he was talking softly to Pluto. He knew his way around horses all right. The huge stallion trembled. The man reached up and, still talking with soothing cool, slowly and deftly slipped on Pluto’s head collar. In silence she watched as the stallion calmed down beneath much firmer handling than she would have dared to attempt.

Prior to this point she had only seen her rescuer’s bronzed profile, and now she saw him face-on. Her blue eyes widened and her heart began a slow, heavy beat that echoed her growing tension. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and for an instant she thought there was something eerily familiar about that stunning bone structure of his. Frowning, she discarded that unlikely notion, but still she stared at him, drinking in every vibrant aspect of him with a hunger that was startlingly new to her. His high cheekbones framed brilliant, dark golden eyes, divided by a strong masculine nose and completed by an aggressive jawline.

‘Thank you,’ Harriet said unevenly.

‘So you’re the lady who is planning to get back to nature and raise organic vegetables on my doorstep,’ he husked. ‘I’m Rafael Flynn.’

‘Harriet Carmichael.’ Only when she encountered that mocking scrutiny did she finally recall that she was wearing her comfy floral pyjamas, which could not be said to flatter the fuller figure. Her face coloured up and burned with embarrassment. She was furious with herself for blushing. After all, only a bikini would have shown more flesh. ‘Sorry about all the fuss. I don’t know how Pluto got out—’

‘If your horse had strayed onto the road he would be dead,’ Rafael Flynn slotted in smoothly.

Feeling that it was grossly insensitive to point out the obvious, Harriet stiffened defensively and resisted the urge to inform him that Pluto did not belong to her. Technically the stallion had been in her charge, and she was not one to duck responsibility. ‘But fortunately he didn’t,’ she countered tightly, while also trying not to wonder how long Pluto would have had to hang around the very quiet road to get run over by passing traffic.

A weather-beaten older man in a dark suit hurried round the side of the house towards them and came forward to take charge of the stallion. ‘Tolly will ensure that Pluto is brought back to you in a horsebox,’ Rafael Flynn asserted.

Harriet bit her lip, feeling like a schoolgirl being rebuked for imprudent behaviour. She would dearly have loved to seize hold of Pluto herself and frogmarch him back to his stable. But there were too many barriers to be cleared, and she was too sensible to even consider taking such a risk with a horse too powerful for her to hold. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced.’

‘Relax…I would have been gutted had I missed out on those enchanting pyjamas,’ Rafael murmured silkily.

His heavily lidded dark eyes roamed with unashamed intent over the jutting swell of her ripe breasts and lingered there with wicked appreciation before he directed his attention back up to the wonderfully voluptuous promise of her full-lipped pink mouth. If it had not been for Bianca he would have invited his neighbour to join him for breakfast in bed. At the same time, he knew that with regard to Harriet Carmichael he had to take care of business first. He never, ever allowed anything to deflect him from his goal. And she was in for a rough and rocky passage if she continued to oppose him.

Wholly unprepared for his comment and appraisal, and interpreting both as derisive amusement, Harriet flung him a look of angry disconcertion. ‘Very funny. Don’t let me keep you!’

Taken aback by that inept response to a mildly flirtatious comment, Rafael frowned as Bianca chose that inopportune moment to stroll out of the house. ‘The countryside is sublime,’ she sighed, invading his space.

The statuesque blonde was so beautiful that Harriet simply gaped, only glancing away uncomfortably when she appreciated that the other woman was virtually naked below the silk wrap that she had forgotten to close over. The possessive hand she curved over Rafael Flynn’s arm made Harriet feel equally uncomfortable. Had she been guilty of casting admiring eyes over another woman’s husband?

‘Miss Carmichael…’ In a fluster, Harriet focused on the silver haired older man, who had passed custody of Pluto over to a younger man in working clothes. ‘I’m Joseph Tolly. Forty years back our families were neighbours. You have a great look of your mother.’

A huge smile of surprise and pleasure momentarily banished Harriet’s discomfiture. ‘Honestly? My goodness, you must have known her. I would really love to hear what you remember about those days.’

‘You’d be very welcome to visit me this evening,’ the old man told her warmly.

‘I’d be delighted. Where do you live?’

Unaccustomed to being ignored, Rafael watched the exchange of civilities between his usually correct butler and his new neighbour with grim amusement. Bianca was flouncing back and forth like a child threatening a tantrum, because nobody was demonstrating the slightest interest in her either and attention was the oxygen of her existence. With that example before him, Rafael was able to concede that the ability to enjoy a friendly chat whatever the circumstances was inimitably Irish. He could even afford to smile with benevolence at such sentimentality between strangers. Having refused his generous offer to buy her property, his sexy neighbour was about to pay the price for that defiance in what would be a rather less civilised second act. When necessary, Rafael played a long game, and a deep one, and he did not stop playing until success was his.

Encountering Rafael Flynn’s glinting dark, reflective gaze, Harriet felt chilled. A split second later, discarding that sensation, she recalled that she was still standing on the front lawn of his fabulous Georgian mansion, and mortification threatened to eat her alive. How could she have forgotten for one moment that she was parading around in her pyjamas? Was it any wonder that Rafael Flynn was looking at her as though she had escaped from a zoo?

‘Excuse me…’she muttered, turning hurriedly on her heel to trek rigid-backed down the hill. Every big gaudy rose splayed across her bottom felt like a stabbing source of personal torment. The arrogant louse had laughed at her! But, she reflected uncomfortably, he could hardly have missed the juvenile way she had blushed and stared at him with eyes on stalks. Any guy that handsome had to be aware of his effect on women, so he was certain to have noticed. What on earth had come over her? She cringed with chagrin.

As if that were not bad enough, that crack about organic vegetables had hit her on the raw as well. Why shouldn’t she want to have a bit of a go at growing things? It seemed Mr McNally, the solicitor, had repeated everything she’d said—but then why should he not have? She had not asked the poor man to keep her aspirations to get down and dirty in the vegetable patch a big dark secret. Since when had she become so over-sensitive?

After a quick shower, and an even faster breakfast, Harriet began to plan the rebirth of the livery yard in greater detail. A proper name for the business and a sign out on the road would be the first step. Lost in thought, she stroked Samson’s silky ears until the little dog sighed with contentment. She would have to do some research to see which services were most likely to be in demand locally and check out the competition. She also needed to get moving on a repair programme, and talk to Fergal to find out exactly what his unofficial partnership with Kathleen had entailed. Someone to supply help and cover in what was basically a twenty-four-seven business would be very useful, Harriet conceded thoughtfully.

Fergal Gibson drove into the yard just as Pluto was being led out of the huge horsebox that had arrived from Flynn Court.

‘What happened?’ he exclaimed. ‘How did Pluto get out?’

‘The stable door’s damaged,’ Harriet told him. ‘I think he kicked his way out, but I have no idea why.’

‘It could have been Flynn’s helicopter coming in.’ Fergal ran careful hands over the restive stallion in search of injury and with a relieved sigh put him into another stall. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ll put up another bolt. Catching him must’ve been a nightmare.’

‘Rafael Flynn caught him,’ Harriet admitted ruefully.

Fergal chuckled. ‘Women and horses. Now, there is a guy with the magic touch. I hear that he can make them do anything for him.’

Her blue eyes gleamed. She was tempted to quip that that was no doubt why Rafael Flynn appeared to have such a good opinion of himself. ‘Is he married?’

‘Are you joking? I hear his latest lady is some famous fashion model.’

Thinking of the woman she had seen, Harriet thought that figured, and she told Fergal to come inside for tea when he had finished in the yard.

‘One of the local farmers has been looking after Kathleen’s animals for you,’ he informed her then, washing his hands at the sink with the ease of someone very much at home with his surroundings. ‘You’d best decide what you want done with them.’

‘Animals?’

‘Kathleen has a soft touch for strays. There’s an old mare called Snowball that she rescued, and she can still be ridden. There’s a pig too…oh, yeah, and chickens, ex-battery farm inmates,’ Fergal explained ruefully. ‘We’re talking pets and charity cases here, not pedigrees. I had them moved before Eugene McNally did his inventory because he would’ve had them put down. Now you can make the tough decisions.’

Harriet was already smiling at the prospect of a readymade family of livestock which would provide a vital link back to the cousin whom she had to thank for her inheritance. ‘If they had a home with Kathleen they’ll have a home with me.’

His tanned face broke into a warm, attractive grin.

‘Right.’ Harriet curved her hands round the mug of tea in front of her and breathed in deep. ‘You’re using the stables here…’

‘I was hoping we could come to an arrangement,’ Fergal admitted.

‘I’d like that if it is possible,’ Harriet told him honestly. ‘But I do need to make a living, and right now I don’t know if the figures will add up with your horses using that amount of space—’

‘I could start work on fixing up the old stables and move the geldings in there instead. That was phase two of Kathleen’s expansion plan. But the new stables were essential to bring in the owners who wanted their mounts to have only the best.’

Talking to Fergal was easy. He was straightforward, and happy to talk about her late cousin’s original plans. Having been priced out of the riding school business by the high costs of insurance and the seasonal aspect of the tourist trade, Kathleen had hoped to build a livery yard that would be upmarket to attract new clients and increase her income.

‘She must have had savings or something, because she really did spend a mint here,’ Fergal advanced. ‘She bought that pick-up brand-new, and the horsebox arrived only the week before she had the first heart attack.’ His cheerfulness visibly ebbed at that sobering recollection. ‘She was sixty-three and seemed as fit as a fiddle. She was waiting for surgery when she died.’

Harriet watched Fergal swallow thickly and knew that he had been genuinely fond of the older woman. He reminded her of a big, blond good-natured bear, slow of speech and thoughtful and kind.

‘You should come to the Point-to-Point races with me tomorrow. It’s the last meeting of the season,’ he told her with enthusiasm. ‘I’m running Tailwind. I can introduce you around. People need to know you’re open for business.’

‘I’d like that.’ Belatedly conscious of the speculative masculine look of appreciation she was receiving, Harriet glanced away and tried not to smile. She was flattered that he appeared to find her attractive. But she suspected that Fergal Gibson might be a wild flirt, and if she responded it would probably wreck any prospect of their establishing a good working relationship. Unless she was reading him wrong, it would be easy come, easy go with Fergal, and that had never been her style. But maybe a silly rebound fling was what she needed right now…after all, she had been extremely sensible and cautious all her life and where had it got her? Luke, she reminded herself squarely, was with Alice now.

* * *

‘What’s your interest in Harriet Carmichael?’ Rafael asked his elderly butler smoothly, while Bianca chatted to a friend on the phone about how sublime Ireland was—with the exceptions of the weather, the absence of large shopping outlets and nightclubs, Rafael’s cold and comfortless ancestral home and the amount of time he spent in the stables.

Tolly gave him a little smile. ‘Now, wouldn’t that be telling?’

Rafael laughed with true appreciation, for only Tolly would dare to tell him to mind his own business. ‘What do you know about her?’

‘That she’ll not be single for long,’ the older man forecast with assurance, his blue eyes twinkling.

Rafael elevated a mocking black brow. ‘On what do you base that belief?’

‘She’s a fine-looking girl with a lovely smile and land and a business. When it comes to a good catch the local lads are neither blind nor stupid. No, that little lady will be snatched up and off the market by the winter.’

‘Maybe she craves something rather more exciting?’ Rafael murmured softly.

Tolly’s weather-beaten features stiffened. ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

Sir? Rafael wondered why the old man should be so thin-skinned about a young woman he had only met that day. Was it because Tolly had once known her family and already considered her part of the community? Or was he simply showing his disapproval of Rafael’s infinitely casual attitude to women and sex? Whatever, Rafael was very much amused by Tolly’s sudden formality. Across the room, Bianca was now dancing, her hips shimmying to the driving beat of the music she had put on. She shed her jacket slowly, provocatively tugged her suede belt free of her tiny mini-skirt and treated herself to a seductive appraisal in the vast gilt mirror. Rafael decided that his next lover would be less vain and more intelligent and switched on the business news.

* * *

Joseph Tolly lived in a small, incredibly neat gate lodge beside the distinctly ruinous rear entrance to the Flynn Court estate. For all his arrogant confidence, Harriet reflected, with a stab of wicked satisfaction that shook her, Rafael Flynn was clearly too poor to adequately maintain his ancestral home. So why the heck had he attempted to buy Kathleen Gallagher’s property from her at such a healthy price?

The old man appeared at the door before Harriet even reached it. ‘Come on in,’ he urged with a broad smile of welcome.

She was touched to see the careful preparations he had made for her visit. A snowy white lace-edged cloth had been laid on a tray that bore old-fashioned floral bone china and a luscious chocolate cake. The simply furnished room was immaculately tidy and every wooden surface gleamed.

‘Will you tell me everything you remember about my mother’s family?’ Harriet urged her host eagerly, and then, rather more self-consciously, her cheeks colouring, she added, ‘You must be wondering why I’m asking a stranger when she’s still alive. My mother isn’t very nostalgic about the past.’

‘Perhaps there wasn’t much for her to be sentimental about,’ Joseph Tolly said gently. ‘In those days this community was struggling to survive. There wasn’t much employment. Even now the tourists need encouragement to travel several miles of twisting road from the nearest town to visit Ballyflynn. Have you been to see the old place where your family used to live?’

‘I don’t know where it is.’

‘Your mother’s family lived a field away from mine, on a smallholding about two miles out of the village. The house is derelict now, but I’ll draw you a little map so that you can go and have a look around.’

‘Thank you…I’d love to do that,’ Harriet confided.

‘Shall I tell you what I remember best about your mother?’

Harriet nodded very seriously and offered to pour the tea.

Watching her take charge of the tea tray, Joseph Tolly smiled and settled himself more comfortably into his shabby fireside chair. ‘Your mother must have been about fourteen when she decided she didn’t want to be known as Agnes any more, and she started calling herself Eva instead.’

Harriet blinked in surprise, for she had not known that her parent had chosen that name for herself. Agnes? But then all she had ever known of Eva’s history was the absolute basics: that her mother was the daughter of a small farmer who had been widowed while she was still a child. Her older teenaged brother had been killed in a tractor accident.

‘What a rumpus she caused!’ Tolly chuckled. ‘The nuns at the convent school had no tolerance for girls’ fancies, but your mother defied the lot of them—even the cantankerous old priest that we had then.’ His expressive eyes invited her to enjoy his warm humour. ‘Unfortunately I think she paid the price for it, because your grandfather took her out of school early and she was a bright girl.’

‘What was my grandfather like?’ Harriet prompted eagerly.

‘Dermot Gallagher had a mean temper on him,’ Joseph told her, with a look of honest apology at having to make that admission. ‘He wasn’t a lucky man, and his disappointments soured him and made him a harsh parent. He wouldn’t let your mother have a life like other girls, so when she ran away nobody was that surprised. If she wasn’t working on the farm, he hired her out to work for other people and kept her wages.’

Harriet was sobered by what she was learning, and finally appreciated why her mother might have preferred to leave that distant past buried. ‘I wish she’d told me what it was like for her then. I had no idea her childhood was that tough.’

‘Your cousin, Kathleen, once told my late wife that when your mother tried to stand up to Dermot he would threaten to have her locked up with the nuns. That may sound unbelievable to you, but right up until twenty years ago certain convents ran commercial laundries staffed by young women who had been put in their charge because they were supposedly a threat to decent society. More than one disobedient daughter ended up in those unhappy places, and some of them never came out again.’

Harriet lost colour when she made the connection. ‘You’re talking about the Magdalene Laundries?’

‘Yes.’ Tolly nodded grave confirmation. ‘Life was very different here then. No one would have dreamt of interfering between a father and his child.’

‘She must have felt so alone…’ Harriet thought that it was hardly surprising that when Eva had finally escaped her father’s threats and restrictions, partying had held rather more appeal for her than parenting.

‘Hasn’t Eva the life now, though?’ Joseph remarked in a determinedly cheerful change of subject that suggested he was more comfortable skimming the surface of her mother’s past. ‘I saw a picture of her in an old magazine last year. She looked like a queen in a ballgown at some charity do. She’s come a long way from the young woman who used to help out in the village shop.’

‘Could you give me the names of any of her schoolfriends?’ Harriet suspected that the key to discovering her father’s identity would most likely be found amongst her mother’s contemporaries.

‘I was acquainted with the family situation, but not with much else. We were of different generations.’ His eyes veiled, he served her with a mouthwatering wedge of chocolate cake, and for a few minutes there was silence as Harriet did justice to it.

‘I imagine that there was quite an uproar after my mother ran away.’ Harriet was thoroughly relaxed, and happy to match Tolly’s frankness with her own. ‘I’m very keen to find out who my father was.’

Clearly unprepared for that admission, Joseph looked startled. ‘But surely your mother—?’

‘No…she’s always refused to say,’ Harriet admitted ruefully.

‘But you can hardly go around asking awkward questions of people you don’t even know,’ the old man pointed out. ‘You could cause offence, and you might also cause trouble by casting suspicion on an innocent party. I would strongly advise you to speak to your mother again.’

Harriet suppressed a heavy sigh. She was not close to Eva, and worked hard at conserving the relationship she did have with her. The last time she had tackled the older woman on the score of her parentage Eva had taken strong umbrage.

Joseph gave his guest an anxious appraisal. ‘I think you also need to ask yourself what you’re hoping to get from the information you seek. Your father may be a man who let your mother down when she most needed his support. He might have no interest in knowing you.’

‘Yes, I accept that.’ Harriet was, however, studying her companion with increased interest. The very urgency with which he spoke made her wonder if he knew rather more about her background than he was willing to admit. ‘Were there rumours at the time?’ she pressed more boldly. ‘I mean, people must’ve talked.’

‘People always gossip, and rarely with kindness or commonsense,’ Tolly responded steadily. ‘It would be wrong of me to repeat idle chatter. If your mother was seeing anyone it was kept very much a secret.’

Harriet let the subject drop there, guiltily conscious that she had said rather too much for so short an acquaintance, and listened as her host talked gladly about less contentious issues. It had gone nine when she drove home in a deeply pensive mood. What did she hope to achieve from establishing the identity of her father? She knew that she had a deep need to know exactly where she had come from. But wasn’t it more than that?

Harriet had never really felt that she belonged anywhere. In the same way she had never known what it was to have a parent who was absolutely hers…at least not for long. As a child she had been hurt and confused, because she’d rarely seen the mother she adored. She had then had to adjust to the cruel reality that Eva could somehow manage to be a full time parent for her younger son and daughter. But perhaps it had hurt most of all when Harriet had finally discovered that the man she had grown up believing to be her father was not her biological father after all.

Eva had been six months pregnant when she’d married Will Carmichael, a research scientist a decade older. Seemingly she had snatched at the chance of a wedding ring and a name for her unborn child. A quiet, studious man, Will had been besotted with his youthful Irish bride, but the union had been a disastrous mismatch. Walking down a London street one day, Eva had been stopped by a talent scout and discovered as a fashion model. Hiring a nanny to take care of her baby, Eva had flung herself into the excitement of fame, fortune and foreign travel. The unequal marriage had disintegrated without fanfare.

Even after the divorce Will had been left to shoulder the burden of raising Harriet while Eva concentrated on her career. And when Harriet was five years old her mother had remarried and become a society wife. The wealthy English businessman with whom Eva had had her younger children, Alice and Boyce, had not encouraged Harriet’s visits to his country home in Surrey. He had disliked such an obvious reminder that his beautiful wife’s past had featured other men, and in the interests of marital harmony Harriet had been virtually airbrushed out of her mother’s life.

Harriet had been thirteen years old when she’d overheard a devastating exchange between Eva and Will on the phone.

‘I wanted to tell Harriet the truth years ago, but you wouldn’t agree,’ Will had been saying, with unusual curtness of tone for so mild-mannered a man. ‘She thinks of me as her father, and finding out that I’m no more her father than the Easter bunny will be a nasty shock! Teenagers are vulnerable, Eva. I don’t care if your therapist believes that coming clean on that score will benefit you; I’m more concerned about how it might affect Harriet.’

Harriet had been shattered by the revelation that the father who had brought her up with so much apparent love and sacrifice was not even a blood relation. Even though Will had repeatedly assured her that he loved her just as much as any biological parent, Harriet had still felt like a cuckoo abandoned in his nest. In her heart, where she had used the salve of her father’s love to compensate for her more distant bonds with her mother, she had felt utterly crushed. A kind and gentle man, Will Carmichael had taken on a responsibility that was not his and done his best by her principally because he had had no other choice. Her mother’s refusal to finish the story by telling Harriet exactly who her birth father was had not helped.

The following morning dawned bright and breezy, and Harriet scrambled out of bed with a little frisson of anticipation: it was an absolutely perfect day for the races. A veteran of such country pursuits in her early teen years, and well aware of how rough and ready such events could be, she dug out warm comfy clothes and thermal socks to go with her Wellington boots.

Samson trotted round her feet and fussed until she set out his breakfast.

‘You’re a real little tyrant,’ she told him fondly.

Out in the yard it was all go, and Harriet resolved to rise from her bed earlier. Fergal was cleaning up a dilapidated horse trailer and Una Donnelly was busy in Tailwind’s box, engaged in plaiting his mane into intricate knots. Harriet leant on the stall door to watch. ‘I was never very good at plaiting.’

The teenager looked across at her with a surprisingly ready smile, her liquid dark eyes full of pleasure, as if such compliments rarely came her way. ‘It takes a lot of practice,’ she confirmed. ‘But I could teach you if you like.’

‘OK…did Fergal bring you over?’

‘No, I’ve got a bike.’ She grimaced and lowered her voice to an exasperated whisper. ‘He passes our door but he won’t give me a lift because he’s scared of folk talking about us. He’s dead silly about stuff like that.’

Harriet gave her a non-committal smile.

‘You should let Fergal use the horsebox,’ Una added. ‘It’ll make the yard look better. You’ve got to think of your image in horsy circles.’

Harriet went pink and hurried over to Fergal to urge. ‘I never even thought to say…for goodness’ sake, use Kathleen’s horsebox!’

‘If I do, will you do me the honour of walking Tailwind round the paddock for me before the race?’ Fergal asked with a grin.

‘I’d be delighted.’

‘You can’t let Harriet do it!’ Una wailed incredulously. ‘That’s my job!’

As Harriet parted her lips, to hastily disclaim any desire to usurp the teenager’s place, Fergal caught her eyes with a meaningful expression in his and a brief jerk of his head that begged her not to interfere. ‘I’m sorry, Una. But Harriet needs to show her face and there’s no better way.’

Una hung over the door of the stall and said, in a voice that throbbed with tragedy. ‘How can you think of putting Harriet before me?’

Fergal bolted for the horsebox at the far end of the yard.

Harriet was transfixed by the virtual assault of the girl’s outraged dark brown eyes. ‘Are you dating him?’ Una asked baldly.

Harriet was grateful to be in a position to utter a brisk negative.

‘But he still chose you over me,’ Una breathed in a wobbly voice, her eyes glassy with the threat of tears. But then you’re an older woman.’

‘He’s thinking of business,’ Harriet answered with determined lightness, while endeavouring not to picture herself as some sultry aging vamp given to charming toy boys off the straight and narrow. She remembered all too well how super-sensitive she had been to every perceived slight and rejection at Una’s age, and could not decide whether the girl’s startling prettiness was more of a blessing or a curse. ‘Would you like some tea before we leave?’

‘I’m not sure I’m coming any more,’ the teenager mumbled chokily, half turning away. ‘It’s hardly worth my while, is it?’

‘I’d really appreciate the company,’ Harriet responded gently. ‘Do you realise I know nothing about you yet?’

‘Ask anyone in Ballyflynn. I’m Eilish Donnelly’s little mistake. Always in trouble and no better than I ought to be, according to everyone!’ Una shot at her in a tearful tirade. ‘And when my big bully of a brother finds out I’ve been thrown out of another school he’s going to kill me!’

Silence fell.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Harriet remarked prosaically, as if nothing out of the ordinary had been said.

‘I suppose if I asked you if you fancied Fergal you’d tell me to mind my own business…’ Una mumbled.

‘I would.’

That instant comeback provoked an unexpected giggle from the temperamental teenager. ‘At least you say what you think and don’t talk down to me like I’m six years old—like some people I could mention!’

‘Thanks…you saved my bacon,’ Fergal muttered with real gratitude when he found Harriet alone in the kitchen. ‘I am really glad you’re around the yard now. Una can be a handful and no mistake. I don’t know what’s come over her.’

Harriet believed him. He was pale at the memory of Una’s tearful emotional outburst, and practically shaking in his riding boots. Una was a strong-willed girl and she had Fergal in her sights. He probably did need to be very careful not to encourage her. Harriet could not help recalling how much more reserved and shy she had been with Luke, watching and loving from afar for so long, only revealing her feelings when it was safe to do so. Alice would have been much more open and extrovert and exciting. Perhaps that was yet another good reason why Luke had chosen to be with her sister rather than her.

‘Don’t get me wrong. Una’s a good kid,’ Fergal added hurriedly. ‘She’ll soon find someone more her age.’

Suspecting that Una was too passionate to quickly forget her first love, Harriet said nothing. She struggled to shut Alice and Luke out of her thoughts again. The past was the past and she had to live with it.

In the horsebox, Una chattered pointedly to Harriet while shooting stony glances at a blissfully unaware Fergal as he drove. The fields where the Point-to-Point races were being held were accessed down a long rough lane. Marquee tents served as a weighing room for the jockeys and also provided a bar with one side walled off in a members only enclosure. The event was already thronged with people, most of whom were as sensibly and plainly garbed as Harriet, in anticipation of the muddy conditions.

As she waited for Tailwind to be unboxed, several men nearby in a huddle were talking nineteen to the dozen. As with Fergal, it took her a moment or two to be able to distinguish clear words in the colourful lilt and flow of the musical Kerry accent.

‘So Martin the vet’s trying to see to Flynn’s mare that’s in foal while the model woman is spreading herself across the stable wall like she’s on one of those pop videos…you know, those ones they ban. And she’s wearing a very short dress,’ someone reported in an urgent whisper, ‘And what does Flynn say? He only tells the hussy to go and get some clothes on before she frightens the horse! Isn’t he the man?’ was the conclusion, in a tone of deep envy and near reverence.

Her face hot, Harriet moved hurriedly out of earshot. Across the field she saw Rafael Flynn’s girlfriend emerge from a big powerful four-wheel-drive. Garbed in a purely fashionable fitted tweed hacking jacket and pure white riding breeches that were skin tight, the leggy blonde moved as though she was on a catwalk, and looked so spectacular that everyone stopped dead to stare at her.

But Harriet’s attention flew straight past her to the tall dark male striding towards the paddock: Rafael Flynn himself. His height and carriage picked him out from the crowd. The breeze had ruffled his luxuriant hair into jet-black spikes. His lean, sculpted face was very bronzed against the light sweater he wore below an outdoor jacket so cool in cut it could only have been of Italian design.

Someone cannoned into Harriet and, caught unprepared, she lurched backwards into the deep muddy tracks forged by some heavy vehicle and fell.

‘I’m so sorry…I didn’t see you. Are you hurt?’ A burly older man was reaching down to help her up again.

Harriet glanced at the mud liberally staining her jacket and jeans and then she laughed and shrugged. ‘No, I’m fine…luckily I’m fully washable.’

From about thirty feet away Rafael watched the surprisingly good-natured exchange. Most of the women he knew would have been screaming the place down. Harriet’s instant smile seemed designed to reassure the clumsy idiot who had sent her flying that being tipped into the mud had been a fun experience for her. Right on cue, Bianca approached him to lament the dirt now spattering her highly polished leather boots. The diamond choker he had given her as a farewell gift glittered at her swan-like throat. Within a few hours she would be boarding her flight home to Belgium. She dug out a little hand mirror to check her hair and the temptation was too much for her: she succumbed to studying herself from every angle. Crushing boredom assailed him and he walked away without her noticing.

‘I wonder what Rafael Flynn is doing here,’ Fergal mused as he accompanied Harriet over to the paddock with his gelding. ‘He doesn’t often appear at local meetings.’

Keen punters were lining the fence, eager for a look at the runners in the next race. Harriet took charge of Tailwind. Halfway through her first round of the paddock she connected with brilliant, dark and incisive eyes and her heart jumped as though she had hit an electric fence. Rafael Flynn. She looked away, colour warming her cheeks. Her copper hair blew in bright streamers across her face until she clawed it back with a self-conscious hand.

Once the jockey had mounted Tailwind, to warm him up before the race, Fergal ensured that she met a lot of people. He was popular and he knew everyone. Several locals spoke with warm regret about her cousin, Kathleen, and she was asked about the type of livery that she would be offering once she got the yard up and running again. Throughout it all she was conscious of an infuriating constant need to look around and see where Rafael Flynn was, but she fought that mortifying urge with every weapon in her armoury. For goodness’ sake, she wasn’t a schoolgirl any more and she wasn’t about to behave like one!

Tailwind shot over the starting line like a bullet out of a gun. But he also ran out of the race at the second fence. Crestfallen by the poor showing, Fergal walked the gelding back to the horsebox. ‘Where’s Una disappeared to?’

Harriet noted the teenager ducking behind the sweet stall and moved with determination through the crowds to speak to her. ‘What are you doing over here? Fergal’s looking for you—’

Una peered nervously out at her. ‘I’ll be over in a minute. My brother’s over at the winners’ enclosure…I don’t want him to see me.’

‘Is he that scary?’

‘Scarier than scary.’ For a moment Una looked very young and vulnerable. ‘I’m never going to live up to his expectations. He wants me to be clever, like he is, and I’m not.’

‘I bet you’re a lot smarter than you think you are. Don’t put yourself down,’ Harriet told her squarely. ‘Can’t you talk to your mother about this?’

A thin shoulder jerked in an awkward shrug and Una veiled her eyes. ‘My mum’s not well a lot of the time. I don’t like bothering her. I have my sister, but she has a husband and a baby too…that’s why I hang out so much at the yard.’

Harriet resisted a sudden urge to hug the younger woman. ‘You’re always welcome there.’

An older woman intercepted her on the way back to the horsebox and questioned her closely about the livery yard facilities. Having expressed keen interest in a retirement package for her elderly horse, her first potential customer arranged to call and inspect the stables.

A smile of satisfaction on her lips, Harriet turned away and found Rafael Flynn striding towards her. Her tummy flipped like she was spinning on a merry-go-round.

‘Is it true that you’re planning to reopen the yard?’ he enquired flatly.

‘Yes…I don’t think I’m enough of a gardener to make a living growing organic vegetables,’ Harriet quipped, colliding with dark eyes that gleamed pure liquid gold in the sunlight.

Rafael Flynn braced a lean brown hand against a horsebox and gazed down at her. Instantly she was wildly aware of his size, and the raw charge of his potent presence. Forced to look up, she rested her attention momentarily on his impossibly long black lashes, which supplied the only softening influence to his lean, dark, overwhelmingly male features. She found it incredibly difficult to catch her breath.

‘Business has no personal dimension for me. You may find the livery venture more of a challenge than you expect.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re in the same line and that we’re going to be competing!’ Harriet breathed in unconcealed dismay.

A flash of momentary incomprehension tautened Rafael Flynn’s stunning bone structure. Then he flung back his handsome dark head and laughed with rich appreciation, showing strong white teeth. ‘No…I’m not in the livery line, Harriet.’

He had a dazzling smile. Rosy colour lit her fair skin, because his sexy accent did something almost intimate to the old-fashioned name that she had always hated. ‘That’s not a Kerry brogue, is it?’

He kept on smiling, and she tried to look away and couldn’t. ‘It is in part…but my ancestry is mixed.’

‘Like mine,’ she said breathlessly, fighting to think of something more interesting to say but finding her mind a horrific blank. Her eyes met his and a tight, hard knot of excitement spread a starburst of heat low in her tummy.

‘Dine with me tonight?’ Rafael murmured lazily, deciding to put his acquisition plans for her property on temporary hold.

With astonishing difficulty she recalled the Amazonian goddess, reputedly in current residence beneath his roof. ‘Your girlfriend—’

He shrugged a shoulder in a fluid gesture of unconcern. ‘Bianca’s history.’

His complete indifference to the reality that the blonde was watching them from about twenty yards away chilled Harriet to the marrow. ‘But she’s here—’

‘She knows it’s over. She’s leaving this afternoon. Dinner?’ he prompted drily.

Harriet backed off a step from him. He embodied every warning she had ever heard or read about a man: arrogant and emotionally detached, he was a pure-bred predator—absolutely not her type. She could not overlook or excuse his attitude to the unfortunate Bianca. ‘Sorry, but no thanks. I’m not thinking of dating anyone at the minute.’

‘I haven’t dated since I was fourteen.’ Rafael was wondering whether she imagined that a brief pretence of uninterest would increase his ardour—because he could not credit that she could be saying no to him.

‘I was engaged until quite recently, and I’m still getting over that.’

‘I’ll get you over it,’ Rafael promised in a low, earthy tone.

‘I’m also incredibly busy right now,’ Harriet muttered uncomfortably, backing away another couple of steps, intimidated by the effect of that full-on charge of raw charisma.

Rafael watched her retreat with concealed disbelief. He could not understand what her game was. Of course it was a game: in his experience all women played games. But she was playing to weird rules he did not recognise.

‘Nice talking to you,’ Harriet mumbled, and bolted, wincing at her own awkwardness.

There he was: literally the man of her dreams. But he was not the sort of guy she would dare to begin seeing or risk feeling anything for. Goodness, he had just dumped a woman who was so gorgeous people stopped dead to marvel at her! Off with the old, on with the new. Although she was certain that he had to be looking on her as more of a snack than a full banquet. After all, she couldn’t hold a candle to his ex-girlfriend. She couldn’t quite accept that he truly had asked her out to dinner. Her—Harriet Carmichael—dressed in muddy jeans and wellies, with no make-up, and probably a few pounds heavier than she’d used to be when she was with Luke.

Luke…The wash of humiliating memory sobered her feverish reflections. Perhaps she took life too seriously. Perhaps she needed to learn how to be more casual when it came to the opposite sex. Apart from a couple of boyfriends in her teen years, she had only had Luke in her life. Now she was back being single, and, though she might be twenty-eight years old, she felt no more confident or knowledgeable about men than she had done at twenty.

Hadn’t she just made the ridiculous error of trying to mentally measure up Rafael Flynn as a potential life partner? Were her nesting instincts sending her to the outer edge of craziness? He was fling material—wild fling material. He was racy, shameless and…exciting. If she was honest, he was more exciting than Luke had ever been. She should have had the courage to say yes to dinner and seduction. It might have made her feel a little less inadequate when she thought about Alice and Luke as a couple.

‘Harriet…’ Una approached her, her expressive face full of concern. ‘I think you should steer clear of Rafael Flynn.’

Although her own knee jerk reaction had been to run a mile from him, Harriet was already experiencing a certain amount of regret, self-doubt and confusion about that response. ‘Why?’

‘You’re too nice for him—you’re gentle and trusting. He’ll think that’s so dumb and he’ll break your heart.’

‘I haven’t got one to break right now. Someone got there before Mr Flynn,’ Harriet confided ruefully. ‘But thanks for caring.’

‘I’d hate to see you hurt—’

‘Is he really that bad?’ Harriet’s plea for further explanation was unconsciously wistful in tone.

Una flushed. ‘It’s not that he’s bad,’ the teenager disclaimed hurriedly. ‘Just from a different world. You’d be oil and water and he’d walk all over you.’

‘No…he wouldn’t do that,’ Harriet countered with quiet but firm conviction.

Una did not look convinced. ‘If an international supermodel can’t hold him for five minutes, who can?’

A woman with the strength to be tough and subject him to a locked room and chains, Harriet thought abstractedly. Implanting a few basic standards in the midst of the smash and grab ethics that drove him might not go amiss either.

That evening, two prospective clients took a tour of the yard. Harriet had mapped out a business plan and drawn up a basic livery contract before she’d even arrived in Ballyflynn. Now she sat up late working out how many boarders she’d require to break even. She was also thinking of opening a tack shop that sold feed and basic supplies, as there was nowhere local meeting that demand. She didn’t need to make a fortune, only a living, she reminded herself resolutely. She had downshifted to make a dream come true and enjoy a more simple life. And leading a successful simple life, she told herself censoriously, did not include any dealings whatsoever with the type of male who had affairs with fabulous fashion models.

On Monday morning Harriet received a call from the solicitor, Eugene McNally, and was surprised to be told that he was anxious to see her on a matter of some urgency.

The older man greeted Harriet at his office with perceptible discomfiture. ‘I’m afraid that I’ve been notified of a substantial claim against Kathleen Gallagher’s estate.’