security team were endeavouring to locate another living being in a village so deserted that he would not have been surprised to find out that he had strayed onto the set of a disaster movie. An attempted assault by a freaky mini-dog with enormous rabbit ears and incongruous short legs was no more welcome. As the careless pet owner approached him at a run Angelo had an icy cutting reproof on his lips.
‘Piglet…stop that right now!’ Gwenna was aghast to see that Piglet had targeted a male dressed in an immaculate business suit, for in her experience such men were less tolerant of annoyances. There were two houses for sale on the other side of the green and she wondered if he was a city estate agent.
Angelo looked down into clear eyes the startling blue of Dutch Delft, set in a heart-shaped face of such rare beauty that for the first time in his life he forgot what he had intended to say. In a millisecond the opportunity to stare was lost. Fair head bowing, she bent down in an effort to catch the offending dog.
‘I’m so sorry…please don’t move in case you stand on him,’ Gwenna begged, frantically chasing her defiant pet round masculine feet shod in the very finest leather. By the time she got a firm hand curved round Piglet’s wriggly little body she felt hot and exceedingly foolish.
Out of the corner of his eye Angelo saw one of his security team hurrying towards him to provide the usual if belated barrier between his employer and the rest of the human race. Angelo shifted a staying hand to keep the man at a distance. The rays of the sun were picking out streaks of pure gold in her hair. Even though that blonde waving mass was confined in a band at the nape of her neck, it was still long enough to trail down her narrow spine. In his mind’s eye he was still picturing her face and already questioning why she had had such an impact on him. He was fiercely impatient for her to look up again.
‘Piglet, you little rascal…I’m so, so sorry,’ Gwenna declared feverishly, clipping Piglet’s lead to his collar and rising. ‘He didn’t nip you, did he?’
Even while Angelo marvelled at the impact of her beautiful eyes, wide cheekbones and generous mouth, he was also registering that the world of fashion and style was foreign territory to her. Her faded blue summer dress hinted at the lush curve of her breasts before billowing out in shapeless folds that revealed only her slender ankles. ‘Nip?’ he queried, his lean, powerful frame poised with natural elegance while he waited for her to respond to him as women always responded, with widened eyes and smiles and a host of flirtatious signals.
‘Bite? He didn’t, did he? He has teeth like needles.’ Intimidated by his sheer size, for he was well over six feet in height, Gwenna kept her distance. It was impossible though to avoid noticing how extremely handsome he was. That awareness, not to mention the weird compulsion she had to stare at him, was sufficiently unlike her to make her feel distinctly unsettled in his presence.
‘He didn’t bite…’ Angelo watched and waited in vain for the female sexual response that was so predictable, he expected it and took it for granted. Instead her long silky brown lashes screened her expressive gaze and she evaded his scrutiny. It annoyed him even while he was absorbing the fact that, in spite of the unforgiving brightness of the light, her skin retained the luminescent sheen of a pearl. He wondered if she was that same pale-as-milk shade all over and almost smiled.
‘Thank goodness…Jake…Freddy!’ Gwenna was anxiously looking back to see where the boys had got to and eager to focus her attention elsewhere.
Two ginger heads popped out from behind the hedge that bounded the grounds of the church.
Angelo froze. She had kids? He scanned her hand. Her wedding finger was bare.
‘Chase us, Gwenna!’ Freddy begged.
‘Are you their nanny?’ Angelo enquired.
Gwenna blinked in surprise at that unexpected question. ‘No, I’m not…I’m just looking after them for an hour. Excuse me,’ she added, glancing up without meaning to and discovering that his dark golden eyes held a light that made her tummy clench and her throat tighten. Hurriedly she screened him out again and grabbed up the basket of flowers that she had set down.
‘Perhaps you could tell me how far Peveril House is from here.’
Gwenna came to a halt again, for any appeal for assistance was a sure path to her full attention. She glanced across the green but there was no sign of the car he must have arrived in. ‘It’s a good five miles. If you go down the fork behind the church, you’ll see a sign for the hotel,’ she told him. ‘People don’t often come this way.’
‘I wonder why not,’ Angelo drawled softly. ‘The scenery is quite exquisite. Will you dine with me tonight?’
Taken aback by that smooth invitation, Gwenna flashed him a surprised glance and soft pink warmed her cheeks. ‘But I don’t know you…’
‘Seize the opportunity,’ Angelo advised silkily.
‘No…thank you, but I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
Other men invariably retreated at the first hint of refusal. That bold demand for an explanation startled her. ‘Well, er…’
‘Boyfriend?’
Tongue-tied by discomfiture, Gwenna shook her head and wished she found it easier to tell lies. ‘No, but…’ Her full, soft mouth folding, she dipped her head and fell silent.
She had turned down the only excuse that Angelo could have accepted. Even then he would only have sought another angle of approach, for he had yet to meet a woman capable of resisting what he offered. Fidelity, he had long since discovered, was usually negotiable. The silence lingered. He could not credit that, for the very first time in his life, he was meeting with a flat refusal.
‘Excuse me,’ she muttered again, her eagerness to be gone yet another rebuff to the male watching her. ‘I have to go.’
Angelo stood in mute disbelief as she walked away from him and through the church gate. His gaze tracked her every move as he had a perverse need to know if she would look back; she did not.
Breathless and taut, Gwenna secured the dog lead to the wooden bench that sat to one side of the arched wooden door and stepped gratefully into the cool dim interior of the old church. Freddy and Jake chattered while she set about her task of arranging the flowers for the christening that was to take place the following morning.
It was quite some time since anyone had asked her out; she met very few fresh faces. She could not understand why she was so flustered. Or why she had the most peculiar desire to creep back to the door to peer out and see if the handsome stranger was still there, which of course he wouldn’t be. He would now be well on the way to his incredibly posh hotel, which was probably hosting an international business conference or some such thing. There had been a slight inflection on certain words that had suggested that English might not be his first language. Certainly men with that kind of gloss and sophistication were scarcer than hen’s teeth, locally.
What was the matter with her? Why was she even curious? She dashed impatient fingers through the strands of fair hair clinging to her damp brow. She didn’t date. There was just no point when it couldn’t go anywhere. She had learned the hard way that even when men said friendship was fine, they always wanted more and more always involved sex. But she didn’t want physical intimacy without love, which would leave her feeling just as empty and alone when it was over. The taunts she had endured as she grew up had convinced her that old-fashioned values could provide a bulwark of protection from the worst mistakes. She was painfully aware that her own mother had paid a high price for flouting those same principles.
An image of the stranger’s lean bronzed face swam before Gwenna afresh, and the extraordinary impact of those dark deep set eyes against the fantastic symmetry of his hard bone structure. A soft gurgle of laughter was reluctantly dragged from her. So, she was female and human and she had noticed a breathtakingly gorgeous guy. Not her type though. He had been altogether too arrogant and slick to appeal to her. She liked open, friendly men with a creative bent. Add in tobacco brown hair and laughing green eyes, she reflected