Lover By Deception. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ beginnings of a tension headache. He picked up the street directory map he had brought with him. A few seconds later Ward jabbed his forefinger triumphantly onto the map as he found the place he was looking for.

      Anna Trewayne lived a little way out of town, her house solitary, without any neighbours, but then, no doubt, a woman of her ilk would not want the complications that curious neighbours could bring.

      As he reversed his car back into the traffic Ward’s expression was bleak.

      

      Anna was in the garden when Ward arrived, the sound of his car stopping on the gravel drive causing her to put down the basket she had been filling with flowers for the house and frown a little anxiously.

      She wasn’t expecting any visitors, and the car, like the man emerging from it, was unfamiliar to her.

      Expecting her visitor to announce himself at the front door, Anna turned to slip into the house through the still open conservatory door, but Ward just caught sight of her flurried movement out of the corner of his eye and, wheeling round, started to walk swiftly towards her, calling out to her, ‘Just a minute, if you please, Mrs Trewayne; I want a word with you.’

      Instinctively Anna panicked. Both the way he was walking and the tone of his voice were distinctly threatening and she started to run towards the protection of the conservatory, but she wasn’t quite fast enough and Ward caught up with her just as she reached the door, grabbing hold of her wrist in a grip that almost made her flinch at its strength.

      ‘Let me go... I... I have a dog...’ Anna told him, issuing the first threat that came into her mind, but just as she felt his grip starting to slacken Missie came trotting round the corner, her small, furry body quivering with welcome as she rushed happily towards Anna’s captor.

      ‘So I see,’ he agreed sardonically. He started to lift his free hand and immediately Anna reacted, her fear for her little dog far, far greater than her fear for herself.

      ‘Don’t you dare hurt her,’ she told him fiercely, holding out her own free arm protectively to Missie.

      The little dog, a bundle of white fluff, had been a rescue dog, bought as a puppy and then abandoned when the family who’d owned her had decided that her small, sharp teeth were doing too much damage to their home.

      Anna had taken her in, trained and loved her, and Missie adored her.

      Ward frowned his surprise. Odd that a woman of her type should ignore her own danger just to protect her dog. Not that he had intended to hurt the little creature, and Missie seemed to know it.

      Ignoring her mistress’s frantic attempts to shoo her away, she was happily investigating the stranger’s shoes, and then, as Ward extended his hand towards her, she jumped up and licked it, wagging her small tail approvingly.

      ‘Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want,’ Anna began nervously, ‘but’

      ‘But you do know Julian Cox, don’t you?’ Ward slipped in quietly.

      ‘Julian.’ Anna went pale. Was this man someone Julian had sent to demand more money from her? Had he perhaps guessed what they were doing?

      As he watched the blood drain from her face Ward experienced a disturbingly unfamiliar—and unwanted—sensation. All right, she might not look anything like he had imagined. Her skirt was calf-length, all soft and floaty, and as for her make-up—well, she had to be wearing some, surely? No woman of her age could have such a soft, pink, kissable-looking mouth naturally, could she? And her hair had to be dyed, he decided triumphantly, whilst as for that air of frightened vulnerability she was projecting—well, that was, no doubt, as false as the colour of her hair.

      ‘Don’t bother lying to me,’ Ward announced sternly. ‘I know you know him and know something else as well. I know just what the pair of you have been up to...’

      The p-pair of us...?’ Anna repeated, stammering a little. ‘I...’

      ‘I’ve got the evidence here,’ Ward told her curtly, releasing Anna’s wrist as he reached into the inside pocket of his suit.

      As she rubbed her tender wrist Anna wished that she had the courage to risk slamming the conservatory door and locking him on the outside of it, but a quick, fleeting glance at him warned her of the danger of doing anything so reckless. For a start there was the size of him. He was...he was huge, she decided. So tall, over six feet, and so...so big. Not fat...no, not that. She could feel her face growing hot as her feminine instincts conveyed the message to her that the male body, under its quietly dignified suiting, owed its size to hard-packed male muscle and the kind of physique one might normally associate with a man who spent a lot of his time working physically hard. His hair was thick and dark brown, tinged unexpectedly with gold at the ends where the sun had caught it, giving him an almost leonine look.

      ‘This is you, isn’t it?’ he demanded as he turned the paper he was holding towards Anna, jabbing his forefinger at a name printed on it.

      Anna’s eyes widened as she saw that it was her own.

      ‘Yes. Yes... it is...’ she admitted, her face burning hotly as she saw from the look he was giving her that he hadn’t, after all, missed the discreet female inspection she had been giving him. Trying to ignore him, she forced herself to read the document. What on earth was it?

      Anna blinked and stared hard at what he was holding, her heart starting to pound heavily. In front of her on the paper she could see her own name quite plainly, and just as plainly beneath it was written the word ‘partner.’ What on earth did it mean? Why on earth had Julian Cox untruthfully and surely illegally claimed her as his partner? Anna had no idea. All she could assume was that he had done it because he’d felt it added weight and credibility to whatever he had been planning. Or had he perhaps known that something like this could happen and, in that knowledge, had deliberately set her up to act as a fall guy? Anna wondered queasily. He was, she knew, perfectly capable of that kind of deliberately dishonest behaviour.

      The words of denial and protest springing to her lips were ruthlessly suppressed. Could this be the breakthrough, the evidence of Julian’s fraudulent deceit which Dee had striven so hard to find? She needed time to think, Anna decided, time to consult Dee and tell her what had happened, and, most of all, she needed that all-important piece of paper. But as she reached out to take it, as though he sensed what she was about to do, the man stepped back from her, determinedly folding it and putting it back in his pocket.

      ‘Well, your partner might have been clever enough to disappear, but you, it seems, were less wise—or perhaps more arrogant,’ Ward challenged softly.

      Arrogant!

      Anna couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

      ‘How does it feel, knowing that you have deprived other people of their money; that this house, the clothes you wear and the food you eat are, no doubt, paid for out of other people’s pockets?’ Ward demanded with scornful anger. ‘Nothing to say?’ he queried. ‘No protests of innocence? You do surprise me.’

      He would be even more surprised if he knew the truth, Anna reflected, but would he believe her if she tried to tell him? From the look on his face, somehow she doubted it. But if he thought she was going to stand there and allow him to revile her verbally...

      Tilting her head so that she could look straight into his eyes, she told him firmly, ‘Look, I’m sorry if СКАЧАТЬ