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CHAPTER ONE

She had never seen him before in her life and she didn't think she wanted to see hiain

He looked dangerous, Annie Ross thought sharply, instinctively stepping aside to avoid a collision as the dark-haired stranger closed the ancient, silvery oak door in the garden wall

As she stood there, her feet planted wide on the broad paveaze, she decided hazily that her velvety brown eyesof her wild inner apprehension, because the slow, sexually assessing s blue eyes and quirked the austere lines of his ave way to a kind of laid-back query And then he turned with a slight inclination of his head, his long, easy stride taking hiun-metal Ferrari parked in the quiet, tree-lined street

Only when the roar of the exhaust shattered the warm afternoon silence did Annie release her pent-up breath For so

But, stiffening her spine, she mentally dismissed the man she had almost collided with, diserous, indeed! she nagged at herself She was being fanciful, and that wasn't like her She pushed the door open, the sun-bleached arers, and then rooted briskly in her soft leather shoulder-bag for the house key, her generouswryly The key was on perent, and he had told Norracefully, old chap Annie's obviously set her heart on Monk's Hall, so younow' And the three of the because Nore

But Annie hoped to alter all that Surely she could be allowed some say in the e? Her mouth, above a small rounded chin, took on the deter to sweep over the elegantly proportioned Queen Anne house

As always, when she closed the garden door behind her, there ca a world within a world, an enclosed and secret place found only when one passed through the silvery oak door in the high garden wall All around her the garden ild and lush, hints of early autuold and bronze

'That you, Annie?' Theas it did in this enchanted place, and she paused on the h her stylishly layered, rich, Titian hair, a half-s to soften her coral-tinted mouth as she saw Chris Howard pocket his keys and advance slowly down the path towards her

Chris was one of Norman's closest friends and had been the first to know of their engageht have known you couldn't keep away from the place!'

Annie thought that his grin looked strained today and she said, al someone around,' which was childish of her because, after all, it was part of his job

'That's right' His light blue eyes avoided hers 'The auction's only a week away—interest is bound to escalate sharply'

Fro the property Some had been merely curious, others interested but apprehensive about the price the house could coh the garden gate would not be a tih price of a desirable property worry him If she hadn't known that instinctively, then the car he drove, the clothes he wore, the easy aura of supre to him like a second skin would have told her that much He would be a et it And the wretch had taken up residence inside her head, spoiling her day

She was about to ask 'Who is he?' then decided she didn't want to know and re to have to twist Norman's arm over this'

She was only half joking because, when they'd decided to marry, Nor e have a ready-made home' He and his first wife had e, and after her unti a housekeeper, Joan, ith him still

'What is it about this place, for you?' Chris asked earnestly, sitting down on one of the stone benches that flanked thethe place ever since old Miss Jennings moved out and put it in my hands'