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PROLOGUE

MILD autuh the kitchenof Alexa’s flat on the borders of Notting Hill, illu the pinewood table set for breakfast for two The siant pottery crealy and pieceht flowers adorned the table in a glass vase, and the aro in the air

So did a tension that Alexa would have had to be a block of stone not to feel

She had had no inkling of it until this uid—sensual, even—forthat never failed to leave her with a sense of rich well-being that lasted all the day long—even on days like this when, unlike the previous night, she would go to bed alone

But she was used to that by now Used to going froht of sensual overload that left her dazed, swept to shores she had once known nothing of but to which now she was a familiar, oh, so familiar traveler, to abstinance But as she stood by the table, coffee pot in hand, her slender body concealed by nothing but a pale green silk peignoir, her long, still slightly tousled hair rippling down her back, she felt her throat give a little catch, as though her body—more than her body—remembered with absolute clarity that sense of wonder, almost disbelief, that would sweep her away on a tsunami of emotion

Not that she ever revealed that emotion Only the passion hich it was expressed The eed

For a moment—an endless, eone She had accepted, had had to accept, that all she could have hat she had now These brief, precious times when she would burn with an intensity that transfor days and nights of celibacy until her phone would ring and everything else became secondary, inconsequential, irrelevant Her friends, her work, her whole life—all put aside

And then for one night, perhaps two, perhaps—so rarely—more, when the call summoned her to a private airfield and whisked her aithin an hour of the summons to some continental city or—even more rarely, even e, soive herself entirely to the

Was she rash, foolish, intemperate to be so? Of course she was! She knew it—kneith every last ounce of sense within her Good sense Sense that tempered, as it must—should—that volatility of emotion which was the other half of her, that intensity of emotion that fuelled not just her life but her art Sense that kept her outward persona cool, composed—controlled

That hat others saw The persona she deliberately projected Few of her friends, especially those in the heady and passionate world of art, realised that her outward appearance of dispassionate calm in fact concealed an inner intensity of emotion—emotion that she channelled only into the art that she painted for herself, not for her profession Others saw a tranquil beauty—a pale, silken-haired English rose—but few recognised the flame that burnt deep, deep within her

Raised by parents who had led ordered, intellectual lives, Alexa knew that they had been taken aback to discover their only child was as artistically talented as soon beca her schooldays They had not opposed her choice of subject—far fronised that they found it faintly astonishing that their daughter should have taken so to art which, to their sedate minds, was associated with stormy passions, extreme emotions and, worst of all, a tendency to lead disordered and messy lives

Was that why—almost as a favour to her parents, perhaps—she had schooled herself to be as unlike a temperamental artist as she could? Why she enjoyed a tranquil, ordered existence, keeping her outward life cal her emotionality to her work? Yet she knew that it also came naturally to her to be reserved, dispassionate, self-contained, and once she had graduated from art school she ran her professional life as smoothly as her personal life

As for one—but one, for they had not, Alexa had known, been special to her So she reserved herself on that score as well, enjoying the company of a select few boyfriends, ho to the theatre, to concerts, to art exhibitions Eh, she was untouched, and physically none had ever set her afire to explore the sensual pro that flame hidden so deep within her

No one but the man who stood there now, paused in the doorway, a man who, every time her eyes rested o

n him, made the breath catch in her throat, her pulse quicken Every time