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CHAPTER ONE

ELEVEN years—a lifetime ago, the last time she had been to Pigeon Hill—she had walked this road beneath a boiling Antipodean sun, tattered shorts and a T-shirt clinging to coltish limbs, her hair shaded by a Huck Finn hat, jandals on her narrow feet. Then the road had been metalled, and her legs had been white with dust by the time she got to Pigeon Hill, the station named after the looming, bush-clad hill where the large, slow-flying native pigeon flourished.

She certainly had never imagined returning to Pigeon Hill in a car that cost more money than she could have visualised at seventeen; then her sights had been set on a job in a shop, and eventually marriage and children.

If a hotel in Wellington hadn’t failed to give Luke Dennison a message, that was probably exactly what would have happened.

Because the hotel staff had failed she was a mature, worldly woman with a famous face and body, and a secure future. She should, Perdita supposed, her full lips compressing with the irony of it, thank that unknown person who hadn’t done his or her job properly.

Suddenly realising that she was veering towards the wrong side of the road, she twisted the steering-wheel a little too impatiently. She hadn’t driven on the left for some years; it would pay to concentrate on her driving, not what had happened so long ago.

Five letterboxes loomed ahead like a cluster of ragged beehives. Suspended from the top bar of the gate was a neat sign that said Pigeon Hill. Beneath it in smaller letters was painted L.D.E. Dennison. Perdita’s stomach clenched.

Breathing deeply, she braked. The car rattled over the cattle stop and along the road winding across a wide green paddock towards a cluster of roofs. The three farm cottages belied their name; sheltered from the southerly winds by the blue, forested hill that was Pukekukupa, they were substantial houses, built for families.

A couple of hundred metres before the first one, the well-kept track divided. Perdita took the fork that led to the homestead. Nestled behind its plantations of trees, all that could be seen of it was the pale orange bulk of the roof.

Her mouth dried with anticipatory dread; she had to fight the temptation to turn around and drive down the road, the three and a half hours back to Auckland, then get on to a jet to take her as far from New Zealand as possible. The seatbelt tightened across her chest as her foot hit the brake.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ she muttered fiercely, easing it off.

A tunnel of greenery led into a wide, gravelled forecourt in front of a gracious, two-storeyed wooden house built in the colonial Georgian style that had been fashionable seventy years before. As she pulled up and stopped the engine, moisture trickled disgustingly down Perdita’s spine and dampened her palms. Surreptitiously wiping her hands on a handkerchief before she got out, she forced air into her deflated lungs.

She knew who waited for her inside the homestead. Over Frank’s objections she had written to Luke Dennison a week ago to tell him that she was coming, and why.

‘He’ll run,’ Frank warned.

‘Not Luke Dennison.’ The idea was laughable.

The private investigator had given her a sharp look, but he hadn’t asked the question that was so clearly hovering on his tongue. Instead, he’d grunted and said pessimistically, ‘Then he’ll be waiting at the door with a battery of high-powered solicitors waving writs and a couple of policemen.’

‘I’ll take that chance.’

Now, looking at the perfectly proportioned house, after all these years still intimidated by its air of formal classicism, she wondered whether Frank had been right. Perhaps she should have simply arrived unannounced.

Sheer, cold willpower got her across to the path, and between low box hedges to the panelled front door with its graceful fanlights. Licking parched lips, she rang the doorbell.

To her astonishment Luke Dennison himself opened the door. Her great, gold-speckled green eyes skidded across his face, recreating the countenance of the man who had haunted her for the last eleven years, ever since that last visit to Pigeon Hill.

Four inches taller than Perdita, lean and lithe, perfectly proportioned, his rangy frame was made impressive by the hard muscles of physical labour. He blocked the doorway, watching her with a predator’s frightening, disciplined concentration. Neither the eyes that searched her face, eyes the colour and consistency of aquamarines, nor a beautifully cut mouth, softened the angles of his striking, unhandsome face. A straight blade of a nose gave him an air of patrician arrogance.

Dennisons had lived in this place for over a hundred years, lords of all they surveyed, and it showed.

‘Hello, Luke,’ Perdita said, her tone remote and rigidly controlled.

‘Perdita.’ Deep and textured to the edge of roughness, he had the kind of voice that could stroke indolently through a woman’s defences. However, there was no note of lazy sensuality in it now. Like hers, it was totally lacking in expression, as invulnerable as the compellingly hewn bone-structure of his face, as devoid of emotion as the icy, crystalline eyes. ‘Come in.’

Comprehension hit her like a blow as soon as she stepped through the door. The house was empty.

The mixture of fear and anticipation that had boosted her for the last five months drained away, leaving her limp with sour reaction, but unsurprised. After all, she hadn’t expected it to be easy. Long lashes veiled her eyes, giving her a sultry, enigmatic look.

‘The office, I think,’ he said, standing back so that she could precede him down the passage and into an expansive room where the latest in computer technology blended in odd harmony with kauri bookshelves and the rich colours, muted by time, of a Persian carpet.

Just inside the door Perdita stopped, regarding the man in front of her with relentless eyes. ‘Where are they?’ she said with sudden, betraying anxiety.

‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked, walking across to a cabinet. Instead of the careful gait of most big men he moved with an economical, animal grace that was peculiarly his.

‘No, thank you. Where are they?’ In spite of herself her voice trembled.

‘Sit down.’

She lowered herself into the wing chair, the last traces of nervousness replaced by a resentment that heated her skin and eyes. Although she expected him to loom over her, try to intimidate her with height and the blunt threat of his male strength and power, he too sat down, his pale eyes fixed on her face in a scrutiny that was controlled and ironic.

‘I’ve seen your photograph hundreds of times,’ he remarked, an undernote of sarcasm permeating the words, ‘and imagined that it was all done with make-up, but I was wrong. You are exquisitely beautiful.’

‘My looks are not important,’ she said, her voice held level by willpower. He was trying to make her angry— and succeeding only too well. But a fit of temper would compromise her self-command, and he’d take advantage of any weakness. She met his gaze with her own. ‘Where are the children?’

His hands were clasped on the desk in the traditional attitude of power. ‘Did you really believe they’d be here?’ he asked deliberately. ‘You must think I’m extraordinarily trusting.’

‘It seems that I’m the trusting one.’ As she spoke she got to her feet and headed for the door.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘Where does it look as though I’m going? I’m leaving,’ she said, relieved that she could sound so unemotional. ‘I don’t want to socialise. The only reason I’m here was to see the children.’

‘Come back and sit down,’ he ordered.

Shoulders stiff, she turned reluctantly. ‘Why?’

‘Because we need to talk.’ When she didn’t move he leaned back in the chair, narrowed eyes holding hers. ‘Common sense should tell you that I’m not going to let you just burst into their life.’

He was right. They did need to talk. She nodded slowly, and walked to the chair, sitting down with a guarded expression that gave, she hoped, nothing away.

‘First of all,’ he said without inflection, ‘why did you suddenly decide after all this time that you want to meet them?’

‘It was no sudden decision.’ She hid a swift flare of anger with precisely chosen words. Did he think she’d come back on a whim? ‘I’ve always wanted to know how they are, but until a few months ago I couldn’t find out who had adopted them.’ She smiled humourlessly, repressing memories of the outrage she had experienced then, the pain and the strange, weakening exultation. ‘Now that I know, I want to see them.’

‘If you can convince me that you won’t upset them,’ he said collectedly, ‘then you may see them.’

Her green glance mocked him. ‘Really? You’ll excuse the faint note of disbelief, I’m sure. Somehow I got the distinct impression that you’d have been more than happy if your children’s birth mother had never turned up. You certainly covered your tracks well. In spite of the new laws, it’s taken me five years to find out who adopted my daughters. You have a lot of power, Luke.’

‘And I’ll use it,’ he said with a soft menace that dragged the hairs on her skin upright in a primitive, involuntary reaction, ‘to stop anyone from hurting my children.’

‘I don’t want to hurt them.’ If she wanted to hurt anyone it was him. ‘I just need to see that they’re happy.’

Dark brows snapped together. ‘Why shouldn’t they be happy?’ he demanded. ‘They’re loved and cared for.’

‘I need to be sure of that.’ She closed her eyes for a second. ‘They are my daughters as well as yours. I didn’t abandon them, you know. I’d have kept them if I could.’

He didn’t move, didn’t react in any way, yet somehow she sensed that her frank plea had struck home. She leaned forward. ‘It doesn’t have to be here,’ she said quietly. ‘We could meet somewhere in a park. I just want to talk to them. I won’t tell them who I am.’

‘And if you think they’re unhappy?’ he asked with disbelieving curtness. ‘What will you do then?’

‘I don’t know. But—I’m not unreasonable, Luke. You’re their father, you’ve had them since they were a week old, and I’m not going to interfere unless I think the situation warrants it.’ An aching smile curved her wide, lush mouth. ‘I don’t expect it to. I just want to see them.’

He said heavily, ‘I suppose your private detective told you that Natalie is dead.’

Perdita’s lashes quivered. ‘Yes.’

She knew how much Luke had loved his wife, knew that her death must have been shattering to them all. As it had been to her.

In the older woman, her mother’s cousin, the young, emotionally neglected Perdita had found the love and consideration she had never been able to elicit from her own mother. Luke’s wife had loved her and valued her, and because Natalie was gracious and charming and affectionate, Perdita had responded with a child’s unquestioning gratitude. At eleven, newly come to Pigeon Hill, she had been struck up by Natalie’s conviction that life was perfectible—it merely needed work—and vowed to grow up as much like Natalie as she could. It still struck her as an excellent ambition, although she had long given up believing that she could ever resemble her cousin. Such people were born, not made.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said now, her voice uneven in spite of her attempt to steady it. ‘Oh, Luke, I am so sorry.’

He looked at her. ‘I really believe you are,’ he said harshly.

‘Of course I am! I loved her.’ Perdita swallowed, but nervous tension had her well and truly in its grip. Tears pearled through her fingers as she pressed them to her eyes, slid down her hands. She sniffed, and groped in her bag.

‘Here,’ Luke said, his voice strained.

A soft handkerchief was thrust into her hand. Turning away from him she blew her nose and swallowed hard. She couldn’t afford to give in to her emotions, it made her too vulnerable.

Wiping her eyes, she said thickly, ‘How did the girls take it?’

‘As you’d expect.’ He spoke with barely caged impatience. “They were shattered, but they’ve come through it fairly well. However, there’s been enough turmoil in their lives. I don’t want them upset again.’

‘All I’m interested in is their happiness. Do they know they’re adopted?’

‘Of course they do.’ He shrugged. ‘Natalie insisted.’

Being Natalie, she would have done everything right. Everything but stay alive.

‘Did Natalie know they were my daughters?’ she asked, unable to stop herself. Ever since she had read in Frank’s dossier that her daughters’ names were Olivia and Rosalind she had wondered whether Natalie and Luke had somehow discovered that she was their mother.

However, common sense told her it was just that Natalie liked Shakespearian names; she had always admired Perdita, saying once that when she had daughters she could do worse than search through his plays.

Now Perdita waited, holding her breath, shadowed eyes searching Luke’s hard-boned, uncompromising face with something like anguish, but his studied composure was so absolute that nothing could have broken through it.

‘No,’ he said deliberately, ‘and neither did I. All details of their parentage were kept quiet, although we were given character traits and intelligence, a few physical characteristics, things like that.’ In a voice that held derision he finished, ‘I was pleased the father was so like me.’

Her relief startled her, lowering her guard enough for her to blurt, ‘Didn’t you even wonder?’

His mouth twisted. ‘I didn’t know you were pregnant. Your mother certainly wasn’t telling anyone.’

Perdita opened her mouth to tell him that Natalie had known, she had visited her in the nursing home, but he forestalled her ruthlessly. ‘Not that it matters. Even if you can prove that you are their birth mother, Perdita, you have no legal claim to the children.’

‘I know that. I accept it. Is it so difficult to believe that I simply want to see them, to reassure myself that they’re happy?’

He said forcefully, ‘I don’t think you’d be a good influence.’

Perdita’s head lifted sharply, the bell of heavy hair falling across her neck in a silken swathe. For a moment she was speechless, scanning his face to see whether he could possibly be joking. He wasn’t. He meant every word he said. Evenly, almost lightly, she asked, ‘Why is that?’

‘The life you’ve led these past ten years.’ He waited for her answer, and when she didn’t speak said with cold-blooded austerity, ‘My daughters are only ten, Perdita. You’ve spent those ten years in the fast lane, living with a variety of lovers, leading an infinitely more sophisticated life than anything New Zealand can offer. I’d be at fault as a father if I allowed you the chance to impose your demi-mondaine manners and morals on them.’

Her face a mask of scorn, she got to her feet and confronted him fearlessly. ‘What a smug, sanctimonious prig you are, Luke. I don’t understand how Natalie could love you. Listen to me, and don’t forget it, because I’m not going to say it again. I intend to see my children. If necessary I’ll stay in Manley until they come back from wherever you’ve hidden them, and then sneak around to see them. I gave you the chance of doing it properly, but I will see them, whether you want me to or not.’

Ignoring his sharply indrawn breath, she turned towards the door, but before she had reached it he was barring the way, his face set in lines of contempt and anger, aquamarine eyes blazing with frigid fire.

‘Let me past,’ she said between her teeth.

‘Not until I’ve had my say,’ he returned dangerously. ‘Listen to me, Perdita, and for once think of someone other than yourself. Those girls have just come through a traumatic time. They don’t need any more pain. I swear, if you hurt them, confuse them or upset them, I’ll make you suffer so much that you’ll wish to God you’d never been born.’

She had to tilt her head back to look up into his face. Sheer fury turned her eyes to smoky pools, her voice to a molten purr. ‘Then you’d better come with them when I see them,’ she said softly, ‘so that you can monitor my behaviour. Because I am going to see them.’

He swore. Perdita had learned to ignore swearing, but she flinched at the naked hatred in his voice. ‘You little bitch,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought I was rid of you—why the hell did you have to come back?’

An emotion Perdita thought had died forever struggled in painful rebirth deep in some walled-off portion of her heart.

‘You must have known I would, as soon as I found out where the girls were.’

‘I didn’t know you were their mother until I got your letter three days ago.’ His eyes were opaque and hard and lethal. ‘We were told their mother had gone overseas and wouldn’t be coming back.’

‘Whoever told you that was wrong. I’m like Nemesis,’ she said silkily. ‘I never give up. Now, get out of my way.’

He stepped back as though the mere touch of her would contaminate him. ‘I’ll serve you with a non-molestation order,’ he threatened.

‘I’ll go to the media,’ she countered sweetly. ‘It would make good headlines, wouldn’t it? Especially if the British tabloids got hold of it. I’m quite famous, you know—they’d enjoy a good juicy scandal like that.’

He seemed to grow a further six inches. The implacable resistance she sensed in him was converted into a cold, concentrated fury. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he said in an almost soundless voice.

She couldn’t allow herself to be intimidated so completely. ‘Are you prepared to bet on that?’ she asked. ‘After all, anyone with my morals and manners has to be untrustworthy by definition.’

His hands slid around her throat. Fear slithered on evil cats’ feet through Perdita’s body, throbbed in the pulse beneath his fingers, chilled the anger in her veins to elemental ice. She saw pitiless determination in the gaze that fixed on to her mouth, smelt the faint, unmistakable scent of male, aroused and relentless.

Once before Luke Dennison had slipped the leash of his control to reveal the primal male to her. Now she saw it again, and as had happened that last time, an elemental terror turned her bones to liquid.

‘I’ve already warned you,’ he said quietly, a thumb coming to rest over the busy betrayer in her throat. ‘You’ve pushed as far as you’re going to, Perdita. Any more, and you’d better be ready for retaliation.’

Common sense told her that there was nothing he could do to her. This was New Zealand, after all.

Instinct knew otherwise.

Yet she didn’t flinch, even though she felt the colour drain from her skin. ‘Stop trying to frighten me,’ she said, green eyes as cold as his, and every bit as determined. ‘None of this drama is necessary, Luke. If you let me meet the children I’ll go on my way, and you won’t need to be bothered by me any more.’

‘I don’t want you anywhere near them,’ he said, levering her chin upwards to an unnatural angle that stretched her throat towards the frail boundary between discomfort and pain.

His immediate, total rejection scored across her heart like the cruellest of whips. She lowered her lashes so that all she could see of his face was the angular line of his jaw, as obdurate as his character, tough and uncompromising. She should have expected this; she, of all people, knew how hard he could be.

‘You can’t stop me,’ she said, hating the tremor in her voice, trying to summon courage from some deep inner reserve. ‘Be sensible, Luke. You can’t keep them imprisoned forever, and there’s no way you can run me out of town this time.’

‘Go on,’ he said when she fell silent.

‘That’s all. I’m going to see them.’

‘Damn you,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been haunted by you for bloody years—you must have known that coming back here would put us all in an intolerable situation!’

Then he kissed her.

The fierce possession of his mouth summoned a fire that marked her soul. Searing through the debris and accretions of the past eleven years, it stripped every bit of studied worldliness from her to cast her back into the adolescent turmoil of her first crush, the year she had turned seventeen.

Natalie had given her a watch and a new wardrobe to mark her status as an adult, and, dressed in the clothes his wife had bought for her, Perdita had fallen in love with Luke, helpless in the grip of a blind, unrequited passion.

That same passion, so newly reawakened, thrummed through her now with an intensity she didn’t even try to resist. She melted, her mouth softening, yielding, opening to his like a flower to the sun. Drumbeats pulsed through her in a rhythm of desire. Shivering, she was suffused with heat.

Luke ground his mouth on to hers, but almost immediately the quality of the kiss changed, transformed into seduction pure and simple, as nakedly sexual as the embrace that clamped her hips against his, as the utterly masculine promise that fitted so snugly between the notch in her legs.