LITMIR.BIZ

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for her, working with Bob Fleury, and that she was going to have to do a good deal of biting on her tongue to keep her conflicting and often fiery independent views to herself.

      They had already clashed once on the subject of hunting and Mollie suspected that there were going to be many other points of contention between them.

      He must have some saving grace, though, because his wife, Eileen, to whom he had introduced Mollie, was a surprisingly modern-minded woman with a decided twinkle in her eye and a warm smile that belied her quite formal country woman appearance.

      Both Bob and Eileen were in their late fifties, but Eileen had some very up-to-the-minute ideas and their home, with its elegant simplicity, like Eileen herself, had impressed Mollie considerably.

      It wasn’t of Eileen, though, that she was thinking as she drove up a track which hopefully would lead to the farm.

      She had already taken a couple of wrong turnings, the reason being that virtually all the land that surrounded the town was privately owned and subsequently its narrow lanes were bereft of any kind of sensible signposts.

      Now, finally, she hoped she had found the right lane, but she was already running late for her appointment and Bob, as she knew, was a stickler for the old-fashioned kind of good manners which included being very strict about good timekeeping.

      The sharp wind blowing across the Atlantic, up the English Channel and over the cliffs had tousled Mollie’s hair when she had got out of the car earlier to check on her bearings, and now she pushed it irritably out of her eyes—a dark rich red heavy mass of glossy curls which, together with her small-boned frame, gave her an air of feminine fragility which she privately thoroughly resented.

      She was a modern woman, strong-minded and independent, and she wanted to be treated as such. Her spirit and her personality more than made up for what she lacked in terms of physical strength and size.

      She put her foot down a little harder on the accelerator. The lane was single track only, and not tarmacked, and she winced as her small car bumped uncomfortably over the deeper ruts.

      Her mind on the coming interview, she neglected to hear or see anything of the battered Land Rover coming round the bend towards her, but fortunately its driver saw her and he brought his vehicle to an immediate brake-protesting stop which caused Mollie to realise her own danger and likewise apply her own brakes.

      Her car stopped just inches short of the mud-spattered nose of his. Cursing under her breath at the delay, she saw the Land Rover’s driver swinging open his door.

      The last thing she needed now was to waste any more time. Angrily she pushed open her own door and got out. Whoever was driving the Land Rover wasn’t the farmer. Bob had described him to her as a man in his sixties, and this man was nowhere near that. Nowhere near, she acknowledged, sucking in a sharp breath as she took a good look at him.

      Tall—taller even than her father, who was just exactly six feet—and broad, extremely broadshouldered, in the worn checked shirt he was wearing open at the throat to reveal a male vee of flesh disconcertingly shadowed by a soft sprinkling of very male-looking body hair.

      His hair was black and very thick, his eyes an extraordinarily piercing shade of crystal-clear blue. They also possessed a certain steely look that for some obscure reason made her heart beat just a little bit faster and her chin go up as she fought down the odd mixture of nervousness and excitement that shot hotly through her veins.

      She estimated that he was around thirty-two or three, almost a decade older than she was herself. But although his skin looked warmly tanned, suggesting that he spent a good deal of his time out of doors, and despite the fact that he was driving an extremely battered and shabby-looking Land Rover, and in defiance of the casual and well-worn clothes he was wearing, he had about him an air if not exactly of some dangerously good-looking predator, then certainly not one that fitted her mental image of a farmer.

      He was far too sure of himself for one thing, far too arrogant and dominant in the way he approached her car and her, holding the door open for her in a gesture which, at face value, might seem courtly and polite but which Mollie assessed more darkly as a demeaning male act of aggression, an unspoken command to her to get out of her car.

      If she hadn’t already been doing so she would have firmly refused and remained where she was, but as it was she was already halfway out, and had very little option other than to complete the manoeuvre.

      She wasn’t going to allow him to think he had got the upper hand, though. No way.

      Standing opposite him, she demanded aggressively, ‘You do realise, don’t you, that this is a private road?’

      She could see from his expression that she had caught him off guard. He choked briefly and started to frown, his mouth hardening as he surveyed her grimly.

      ‘A private road along which you were travelling too fast,’ he retaliated smoothly.

      He had a voice like rich, dark chocolate, Mollie recognised weakly. Very bitter rich, dark chocolate. She had always been susceptible to voices, and his was... She gulped and swallowed. His was.,.

      Stop it, she warned herself severely. He isn’t your type of man at all. You don’t like dark-haired, darkbrowed, shockingly handsome and seriously sexy men. You never have, and besides...

      His lordly assumption of control plus his arrogant attitude, coupled with her own quick-to-take-fire emotions and her uncomfortable awareness that she had been driving just a bit too fast, had a predictably explosive effect on Mollie’s temper.

      ‘I was not driving too fast,’ she contradicted him immediately—and untruthfully—and then added with what to her was perfectly reasonable logic, ‘And besides, you were driving a Land Rover, so you must have seen me coming...’

      ‘I did,’ he agreed grimly, adding as though to underline his point, ‘I stopped.”

      ‘So did I.’

      The look he gave first the nose of her small car and then her made Mollie’s face burn pink with angry colour.

      ‘This is a private road over private land,’ she began again. ‘I have the permission of the owner to be driving along it—’

      ‘You do?’ She was interrupted softly.

      ‘Yes, I do. I work for the Fordcaster Gazette.’

      ‘Oh, you do, do you...?’ he said gently, but Mollie was far too incensed to pick up on the subtle undercurrent of danger held in the softly spoken but very inflexible words.

      ‘Yes, I do,’ she agreed, recklessly ignoring the small warning voice trying despairingly to make itself heard, its protest drowned out by the hot, angry turmoil of her need to get the better of her foe as, tossing her head, she lied bravely, ‘And anyway, the owner of this land happens to be a personal friend of mine.’

      The dark eyebrows rose, the blue eyes suddenly looking coolly amused and holding an expression that was extremely cynical.

      ‘I think not,’ he corrected Mollie crisply, adding before she could say anything, ‘You see, I happen to be the owner of this land, and this private road happens to be my private road.’

      Mollie’s mouth opened and then closed again. For sheer effrontery she had never met anyone like him.

      ‘You’re lying,’ she told him fiercely once she had got her breath back. ‘This road goes to Edgehill Farm, the Lawsons’ farm.’

      ‘To Edgehill Farm, yes, but it does not belong to the Lawsons; it belongs to me. The Lawsons are my tenants.’

      ‘I—I don’t believe you,’ Mollie managed to stutter defensively.

      ‘You mean you don’t want to believe me,’ he corrected her with a malign and very cold smile.

      ‘Who are you anyway?’ Mollie challenged him.

      The cold smile became even colder, cold enough to make her shiver slightly, although she fought valiantly to conceal

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