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‘You still wish you hadn’t been cornered into coming here tonight.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Because you hoped you’d never set eyes on me again.’
Octavia flushed. ‘That too.’
‘And you’d like very much for us both to forget our first encounter ever happened.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I would.’
‘Very understandable. And, for me anyway, quite impossible. The vision of you rising like Venus from the waves will always be a treasured memory.’ Jago paused. ‘And I like your hair loose.’
She was burning all over now. It wasn’t just what he’d said, but the way he’d looked at her across the table, as if her dress—her clothing—had ceased to exist under his gaze. As if the hair tumbling around her shoulders was her only covering. And as if he knew that her nipples in some damnable way were hardening into aching peaks inside the lacy confines of her bra.
But if her skin was fire, her voice was ice. ‘Fortunately your preferences are immaterial to me.’
SARA CRAVEN was born in South Devon and grew up in a house full of books. She worked as a local journalist, covering everything from flower shows to murders, and started writing for Mills and Boon in 1975. When not writing, she enjoys films, music, theatre, cooking, and eating in good restaurants. She now lives near her family in Warwickshire. Sara has appeared as a contestant on the former Channel Four game show Fifteen to One, and in 1997 was the UK television Mastermind champion. In 2005 she was a member of the Romantic Novelists’ team on University Challenge—the Professionals.
Recent titles by the same author:
COUNT VALIERI’S PRISONER
THE PRICE OF RETRIBUTION THE END OF HER INNOCENCE WIFE IN THE SHADOWS
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Seduction Never Lies
Sara Craven
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
OCTAVIA DENISON FED the last newsletter through the final letter box in the row of cottages and, with a sigh of relief, remounted her bicycle and began the long hot ride back to the Vicarage.
There were times, and this was one of them, when she wished the Reverend Lloyd Denison would email his monthly message to his parishioners instead.
‘After all,’ as Patrick had commented more than once, ‘Everyone in the village must have a computer these days.’
But her father preferred the personal touch, and when Tavy came across someone like old Mrs Lewis longing for a chat over a cup of tea because her niece was away on holiday, and who certainly had no computer or even a mobile phone, she supposed wryly that Dad had a point.
All the same, this was not an ideal day for a cycle tour of the village on an old boneshaker.
For once, late May had produced a mini-heatwave with cloudless skies and temperatures up in the Seventies, which had also managed to coincide with Greenbrook School’s half-term holiday.
Nice for the kids, thought Tavy as she pedalled but, for her, it would be business as usual tomorrow.
Her employer, Eunice Wilding, paid her what she considered was the appropriate rate for a young and unqualified school secretary, but she expected, according to the local saying, ‘her cake for her ha’penny’.
But at the time the job had seemed a lifeline in spite of the poor pay. One small ray of light in the encircling darkness of the stunned grief she shared with her father at her mother’s sudden death from a totally unsuspected heart condition.
He’d protested, of course, when she’d announced she was giving up her university course to come home and keep house for him, but she’d read the relief in his eyes, swallowed her regrets, and set herself to rebuilding both their lives, cautiously tackling the parish tasks that her mother had fulfilled with such warmth and good humour, while discovering that, in Mrs Wilding’s vocabulary, ‘assistant’ was another word for ‘dogsbody’.
But in spite of its drawbacks, the job enabled her to maintain a restricted level of independence and pay a contribution to the Vicarage budget.
In return, she was expected to put in normal office hours, five and a half days a week, with just a fortnight’s holiday taken in two weekly instalments in spring and autumn, and far removed from the lengthy vacations enjoyed by the teaching staff.
And half-term breaks did not feature either, so this particular afternoon was a concession, while Mrs Wilding conducted her usual staff room inquisition into the events of the past weeks, and outlined the progress she expected in the next half.
It was her ability to achieve these targets that had made Greenbrook School an undoubted success in spite of its high fees. Mrs Wilding herself did not teach, calling herself the Director rather than the headmistress, but she had a knack for picking those that could, and even the most unpromising pupils were given the start they needed.
When she eventually retired, the school would continue to flourish under the leadership of Patrick, her only son, who’d returned from London the previous year to become a partner in an accountancy firm in the nearby market town, and who already acted as Greenbrook’s part-time bursar.
And his wife, when he had one, would also have a part to play, thought Tavy, feeling an inner glow that had nothing to do with the sun.
She’d known Patrick all her life of course, and he’d been the object of her first early teen crush. While her school friends giggled and fantasised over pop stars and soap actors, her sole focus had been the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed Adonis who lived