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CHAPTER ONE

CHELSEA frowned thoughtfully as she parked her small car carefully behind her sister’s BMW Ann had sounded worried and anxious on the telephone, unusually so, and she sighed a little as she slid long slender legs out of her car Parenthood brought many perils, if Ann was to be believed, but none endered by a seventeen-year-old daughter

As she had expected she found her sister in her large e bowl

‘Cake for to out automatically to slap away her hand as Chelsea filched a small amount of the rawthe criticism with a war Did I drag you away fro important?’

‘Only a sixteenth-century chair cover,’ Chelsea replied hu to her work as a restorer ofof Kirsty, what’s the proble to run off with her favourite pop singer again, is she?’

Ann Stannard shot her sister an exasperated glance With the fourteen years’ difference in their age, Ann sometimes felt more like Chelsea’s mother than her sister Their parents had died when Ann was just twenty-two and on the brink ofof her sister, Chelsea never forgot Ralph’s generosity in giving his orphaned sister-in-law a hoe viewpoint of twenty-six, for the newly er welcome

Kirsty was the Stannards’ only child, a spirited and attractive teenager, currently still at school, but as Chelsea well knew, rebelliously determined to leave just as soon as she possibly could

‘She’s not still got this bee in her bonnet about beco an actress, has she?’ Chelsea queried

‘I wish that was all we had to contend with I’m afraid it’s far more serious than that We’re both at our wits’ end, Chelsea You’re our last hope You’ve always been so close to her Ralph and I were hoping you could make her see sense…’

‘About what?’

‘About Slade Ashford,’ Ann said gri either Ralph or I say to her htest difference’

‘Calf-love,’ Chelsea infor not to shter, and a high-spirited girl like Kirsty was bound to rebel They had been the same with her Ann, for all her placid nature, seeination that worked overtime when it cairl In Chelsea’s view, Ann was ale; a woman as quite content to be a stop-at-home wife and mother, and who moreover was still as deeply in love with her equally staid husband as she had been when she first met him

‘Look, I know you don’t want to adirls do fall madly in love at seventeen…’

‘I’ly ‘If it was a boy her own age, another teenager, it wouldn’tthat He’s in his early thirties at least’

‘And Kirsty worships hi to take her sister seriously ‘Look, love, I know Kirsty is a very pretty girl and the apple of your eye, but a irl’

‘You wouldn’t think so,’ Ann agreed, ‘but he is—and interested enough to keep her out until two in the ht Ralph was furious!’

‘Has he tackled hi Kirsty is?’

‘The situation’s a very difficult one,’ Ann told her ‘Slade’s coht out Lutons’

Lutons Engineering was the largest firm in the ser there for several years Chelsea could quite see, without her sister needing to put it in as ht find it rather difficult to tackle his new boss on the subject of his liaison with his young daughter But surely theblue eyes Surely the man must know that Kirsty, for all her prettiness, was no irl still, despite her frequent attempts to appear more sophisticated—far more sophisticated than she had been at seventeen, Chelsea thought wryly But then at that age she had not had the advantage of Kirsty’s ripe prettiness Well could she reht dark red hair But at seventeen girls didn’t consider themselves children She could remember that

‘How about sending Kirsty off to stay with Ralph’s parents for a while?’ she suggested

‘Not possible, I’ain, and besides, I don’t think Kirsty would go She’s changed, Chelsea I barely recognise her,’ Ann admitted ‘And I’rown man, who could never be satisfied with the sort of innocent relationship…’ Her voice trailed away and she looked helplessly at her younger sister

‘You want me to talk to Kirsty? Do you think she’d listen?’

‘No And I don’t want you to talk to her exactly’ For the first time that she could remember, Chelsea saw that her sister couldn’t quite an in a low voice, ‘but…’

‘But if anyone can speak from experience, it has to be ree, but experience is so everyone has to learn for theh to warn me that Darren was married, that all he wanted with me was an affair, but did I believe theht up until I was inside the bedroom door’

‘It still hurts, doesn’t it?’ Ann questioned gently ‘It’s nearly ten years ago now, but you’ve never really got over it’

‘A sensitive little plant, that’s reed with self-mockery, ‘I should have listened to you in the first place You never really wanted o to draave way When Darren told énue part in his new play I sed it completely; fool that I was The only part he had in mind for me was the traditional role of mistress, and a very brief part at that’

‘Oh, Chelsea, don’t!’ Ann protested, hating to hear the bitter self-accusation in her sister’s voice ‘We were asto leave hoo to London alone When you caht…’

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‘My pride in tatters but my virtue intact,’ Chelsea supplied dryly ‘I honestly believed that he loved me and that in tihed at me when I told him that, you know—I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that touching little detail before Heavens, when I look back, the whole thing was h at the tiht the world had come to an end, turned my back on drama school’

‘And made a first-class career for yourself…’

‘As a repairer of ancient tapestries,’ Chelsea supplied ‘But ere talking about Kirsty, not me What’s this man like? He can’t be irls for female companionship’

Ann’s dry, ‘Don’t you believe it—he’s very, very ht Chelsea’s eyes to her sister’s face in astonishood-looking—and he’s that all right, but he’s also incredibly sexy with it You know the type—even I eak at the knees’

Chelsea did Darren had been the sa to dislike Slade Ashford without evenhim