LITMIR.BIZ

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      Lola took no notice. ‘So what does someone who deals in money actually do?’ she persisted.

      His face grew even colder. ‘I buy and sell,’ he told her tersely. ‘That’s all.’

      Lola registered the superb quality of the suit he wore. Clearly buying and selling, as he put it, was very lucrative indeed! ‘You make it sound so simple,’ she said slowly.

      There wasn’t a flicker of emotion on his face as he watched her unconscious assessment of him. ‘I prefer not to make it sound anything at all,’ he told her flatly. ‘But you asked the question, as women inevitably do—’

      ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Lola glared at him. ‘You asked me exactly what you wanted; what did I do that was so different?’

      ‘You homed straight in on the money side of it, didn’t you, sweetheart? Sometimes I really think it would save time if I produced a bank statement for women to peruse at their leisure!’

      ‘Oh, sor-ry!’ said Lola furiously. ‘I didn’t realise you were so touchy about money!’

      ‘When you’ve met as many women with dollar signs flashing in their eyes as I have,’ he mused with distaste, ‘then being touchy about it is inevitable.’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug of his shoulders, before he said, ‘Were your parents very rich, Lola?’

      The deep, velvet undertone of his voice sent new shivers skating down Lola’s spine, but she could not quite decide whether it was excitement or fear which had caused them. ‘Why do you ask that?’ she queried.

      His eyes glittered. ‘Isn’t it rather obvious? Your house on St Fiacre’s for one thing. How did you happen to come by a house like that on your salary?’

      ‘How do you think I came by it?’ she retaliated as she encountered the oh, so familiar judgemental expression on his face.

      ‘A man, I suppose?’

      Lola met his gaze and read the condemnation there and didn’t care. How dared he judge her without even knowing her? ‘That’s right,’ she said steadily.

      ‘A rich man?’

      She saw the censorious look which soured his expression and decided that she would like to sour it even more! ‘You’ve got it in one!’ She smiled and noticed his knuckles whiten as the bread stick he had picked up was reduced to dust by the inadvertent clenching of that strong fist.

      ‘A ve-ry rich man,’ she purred deliberately, and saw a muscle begin to work violently in his cheek. ‘Much richer than you, probably. Why, I expect he could buy you out a hundred times over, Geraint!’

      He let the bread dust trickle out of his hand into the large, cut-glass ashtray, so that it looked like sand running through an egg-timer. His eyes were full of mocking amusement as they caught her in their cool gaze. ‘I doubt it,’ he contradicted her with soft confidence.

      And Lola doubted it too; that was the trouble. She found herself wondering why she hadn’t stormed out of the restaurant, but one look at the lean, autocratic face in front of her reminded her that it was not easy to walk out on someone this gorgeous. She drank more wine in an effort to calm herself.

      ‘So what was it between you and your generous benefactor?’ he asked eventually. ‘The love-affair to rival all love-affairs?’

      ‘No, it wasn’t,’ she answered flatly, then sighed, wondering just how much to tell him. The trouble was that there was nothing much to tell—but nobody ever believed her! Lola had grown used to people who didn’t really know her drawing their own tacky conclusions! But for some reason that cold look of disapproval on the face of Geraint Howell-Williams was more than she could bear.

      She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands to look at him earnestly. ‘I don’t really like talking about it,’ she admitted.

      ‘Oh?’

      Lola glared at him. ‘Because nobody believes me, and because people tend to pre-judge me—they all seem to think that I’m some kind of amateur hooker who played for very high stakes—and won! A horrible, critical look comes over their faces—a bit like the expression you’re wearing now!’

      ‘Am I? Sorry.’ He lifted his shoulders in a gesture of appeal which had something of the little boy about it, and it stabbed at Lola’s soft heart.

      ‘Of course the other reason I don’t talk about it,’ she explained, her blue eyes glinting with mischief, ‘is because now that I own a prime piece of real estate I’m very wary of would-be fortune hunters.’

      ‘And do you put me in that category?’ he asked her softly.

      She looked at him with a wry expression. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she snorted. ‘Fortune hunters don’t usually come kitted out in handmade Italian suits!’

      ‘Thank you,’ he said gravely, though Lola thought she detected a reciprocal glitter of humour lurking in the depths of his stormy eyes. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?’

      Lola went pink. ‘If you want.’

      ‘So why don’t you tell me all about the house?’ he suggested. ‘And let me judge for myself.’

      What harm would the truth bring? Lola thought. Anything would be better than him believing that she had been Peter Featherstone’s lover. She began to pleat her napkin with fidgety fingers. ‘About three years ago, I first met Peter Featherstone on a flight to. Brussels—’

      ‘Did he have a woman with him?’ he demanded quickly.

      Lola frowned at the interruption. ‘No.’

      He nodded. ‘And so you got chatting—naturally?’

      Lola gave him a long-suffering look. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, with sardonic emphasis. ‘We aren’t discouraged from chatting to passengers, you know. Do you have a problem with that, Geraint?’

      His face was expressionless. ‘I guess not.’

      ‘Peter used to travel all over Europe quite regularly, and often I was among the cabin crew. And then one day, while we were chatting, quite by coincidence I discovered that he was on the board of a charity I’m involved with—’

      ‘Charity?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘You’re involved with a charity?’

      ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ exploded Lola. ‘Now who’s talking stereotypes? What’s the matter, Geraint—don’t I fit into your idea of the kind of person who does things for charity?’ She looked at him, and her mouth twitched. ‘No, on second thoughts don’t answer that!’

      ‘Which charity?’ He frowned.

      ‘Dream-makers,’ Lola told him, still gratified by the rather dazed expression which had not left his face since the mention of the word ‘charity’! ‘It’s for very sick children. We find out where they’d most like to go, or who they would most like to meet, and we try and arrange it for them. Peter owned a number of toy shops and factories in the south of England and he was a very generous benefactor.’

      ‘So what happened?’ he asked carefully. ‘Between you and Peter.’

      ‘Well, nothing—that’s the odd thing.’

      ‘No romance?’ he barked.

      ‘He was years older than me, for heaven’s sake! Over sixty—’

      ‘But an attractive man, all the same?’

      Lola afforded him an icy look. ‘I honestly never thought of him in those terms. I only had dinner with him once or twice, after which for some inexplicable reason, he must have changed his will—leaving me the house. And then he died. Perhaps he knew just how sick he had become. Anyway, he suffered a fatal heart attack about a year ago.’ ‘That’s terrible,’ he said automatically.

      It

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