LITMIR.BIZ

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conducive to a harmonious working partnership. Unless…?

      ‘Liam, I thought you said you believed me about my relationship with your father—’

      ‘I do!’ he assured her forcefully, crossing the room to take up a kneeling position next to her chair. ‘Of course I do.’ He took both her hands firmly in his. ‘That wasn’t the drawback I was talking about,’ he said impatiently. ‘Although I’m not too sure, on reflection, whether it was a particular compliment to me that you should think a relationship with me would be a drawback!’ He gave a dismissive shake of his head. ‘What the hell? I probably deserved that! No, the drawback is that my assistant has to be a married lady.’

      Juliet frowned. ‘Why?’

      He shrugged. ‘My wife insists on it.’

      ‘But you’ve just said—’

      ‘Well, she isn’t my wife quite yet.’ He grimaced self-consciously. ‘But I’m hoping.’ He looked up at her with dark blue eyes. ‘Juliet, will you marry me?’

      She stared at him once again. She didn’t seem to be able to do much else at the moment!

      ‘I love you very much,’ he continued pleadingly. ‘I know I haven’t shown that too much, but if you’ll let me I would like to spend the rest of my life making up for that. For a lot of things,’ he added darkly, obviously thinking of the past. ‘Juliet?’ he prompted as she still remained silent. ‘I just want to see you smiling and happy—see the shadows leave your eyes.’

      She swallowed hard. ‘You also want to fatten me up,’ she said inconsequentially.

      ‘Only a little,’ he conceded. ‘I just want to look after you!’

      ‘And who will look after you?’ she said huskily.

      ‘You will. If you would like to. I mean—’

      ‘I know what you mean, Liam,’ she laughed softly, sitting forward to throw her arms about his neck. ‘And I would love to look after you. And have you look after me. I love you, Liam,’ she told him emphatically. ‘I love you very much!’

      ‘God, I never thought I would hear you say that!’ he groaned huskily, his face buried in the thickness of her hair. ‘I love you too, Juliet. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you, loving you, and having you love me.’

      ‘Yes!’ she told him ecstatically. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

      ‘I think it’s a pity that Diana and Tom chose Liam John as their baby’s name,’ Juliet murmured as she lay on her side in bed next to Liam, playing with the dark swirls of hair on his chest.

      They had just made love, wonderful passionate love, such as they had enjoyed from the first.

      Liam looked sleepily replete, his arms about her as he cradled her against him. ‘I was rather pleased when they decided to name him after me.’ He sounded puzzled. ‘I thought you were too. You certainly spend enough time cooing over him,’ he teased lightly.

      Diana had given birth to a healthy son only three weeks before, to everyone’s delight, and Juliet had to admit that she did spend rather a lot of time at Diana’s cradling the baby.

      ‘But what are we going to call our son when he’s born?’ She continued to make a pattern with the hairs on his chest.

      ‘We have plenty of time to—’ Liam broke off as she gently shook her head, looking up at him, her eyes glowing. ‘We don’t have plenty of time?’ he said slowly.

      She shrugged. ‘About thirty-three weeks, by the doctor’s calculations,’ she told him happily.

      ‘Juliet!’ Liam shot up into a sitting position in the bed. ‘You had better lie down—Oh, you are! Oh, well, we had better—’

      ‘Calm down, Liam,’ Juliet laughed lovingly. ‘I’m fit, and healthy, and very happy. And our baby is going to be the same,’ she assured him firmly.

      He looked down at her wonderingly. ‘I didn’t think it was possible, but at this moment I love you more than ever.’ He gathered her up into his arms. ‘I love you, Juliet Carlyle, mother of our child!’

      She no longer cringed at the name Carlyle. And neither would their son. Or daughter. Or both.

      ‘What are you thinking now?’ Liam grinned down at her, a much less grim-looking Liam than he used to be, their marriage of the last six months having been an extremely happy one.

      ‘I’m thinking,’ she said slowly, her arms curving up about his neck as she pulled him down to her, ‘that I would like us to make love again!’

      ‘Any time, my darling,’ he laughed huskily. ‘Any time!’

Return Engagement

      For Matthew Timothy Mortimer

      I’m so proud you’re my son.

CHAPTER ONE

      ‘TOUCHES of Lady Chatterley, do you think?’ Janie giggled.

      Cyn made a slight acknowledging movement of the remark, although her attention was still held by the scene they were unwittingly witnessing.

      They had been shown into this small reception-room only seconds ago by the rather haughty butler, while he left them to go off in search of Rebecca Harcourt, the young mistress of the house.

      Cyn only hoped the young lady out in the garden wasn’t her—otherwise their journey here could have been a wasted one!

      She and Janie had driven into town especially to see the Harcourts, and had been suitably impressed by the house from the outside. The grounds the house stood in alone were almost as big as the park across which the house actually faced. Grand old houses like this one weren’t so unusual in London, but the amount of ground attached to it was, Cyn was sure, given the expense of property in London and its immediate vicinity.

      It was because of the size of the grounds that the Harcourts needed the gardener at all, she would say. And what a gardener—a tall golden god of a man, about twenty-five, his skin bronzed from the amount of time he obviously worked outside, although that colour was more likely to be simply weather-worn, considering it was only April and, what watery sun there was did not actually contain much heat just yet.

      He had been working on one of the extensive borders outside when Cyn and Janie were shown into the reception-room, obviously absorbed in his work. He had seemed to remain so, when a young girl of about twenty crossed the landscaped lawn several feet away from him to enter the wooden-structure gazebo that stood in one corner of the garden facing away from the house. But seconds later he had straightened, glanced casually about him, before he too went into the gazebo.

      Hence Janie’s teasing remark! The girl who had crossed the garden, seemingly unaware of the gardener working there, hadn’t looked like a maid, or anyone else who worked in the house for that matter. Her blaze of red hair was expertly styled, her make-up perfectly applied, the suit she was wearing designer-label, if Cyn wasn’t mistaken.

      God, she hoped it wasn’t Rebecca Harcourt...! Because Cyn very much doubted that that Adonis of a gardener was her intended bridegroom.

      Gerald Harcourt had actually been the one to make the appointment for Cyn to come here today, claiming his motherless daughter needed help organising her wedding, which was to take place in August. And organising weddings, and dealing with all the problems that seemed to bring along with it, was what Cyn did in her business, Perfect Bliss.

      The idea for such a scheme had come to her out of the blue one day. Being stuck in yet another dead-end job, working for a particularly temperamental catering boss who often threw temper tantrums while they were actually

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