CHAPTER ONE
JETHRO COLE secured the aluminium extending ladder on the roof rack and stowed the bucket and window leathers in the back of the old van. Then he wiped the sweat from his brow with a tanned forearm and pushed the unruly fall of black hair out of the way with impatient fingers. Past time he got a haircut.
He expelled a slow, relaxing breath through even white teeth. The end of another long working day, clambering up and down ladders in the hot July sun, cleaning other people’s windows. At least he was beginning to get the hang of it now, and not collecting too many complaints about smears and missed corners.
He had collected a couple of propositions from bored housewives, though, which he had pretended not to understand in order to avoid giving offence and to keep their custom, and now he was getting loud and appreciative wolf whistles, by the sound of it!
Digging into the pockets of his battered jeans for the ignition key, he watched with barely concealed amusement as the perpetrators drew level. A brace of teenaged girls, arm in arm, with wildly permed hair, identical pairs of fake leather jeans and skimpy tops that left nothing whatsoever to the imagination.
‘You can peer through my windows any time, gorgeous!’ said the one with the nose-stud, while the other simply giggled through a mouthful of gum as they teetered away on mile-high heels in the direction of the High Street, obviously in search of whatever Shrewsbury offered in the way of night-life.
His self-inflicted lurch into the one-man window-cleaning business was showing him a slice of life never glimpsed in the sophisticated, air-conditioned, superficially polite world of mega-big financial wheeling and dealing, and his grin was rakish, his amber eyes glinting with humour as he slid behind the wheel and coaxed the reluctant engine into spluttering life.
He was driving around in a beat-up old van while his Jaguar XK8 convertible was gathering dust in a lock-up on the other side of town, wearing scuffed jeans and a faded T-shirt that should have been binned years ago while his designer casuals were folded away in a suitcase back at 182 Albert Terrace.
He’d stayed there a whole lot longer than he’d originally intended. In normal circumstances an overnight stop to catch up with his former nanny’s news was as long as it got.
But here he still was, cleaning windows instead of directing operations and steering his varied enterprises from one or other of his worldwide boardrooms. Or unwinding in his isolated cottage for a couple of weeks, as had been his intention.
Because when he’d stopped off to pay his respects to Nanny Briggs, as he always did en route to his country home—roughly every twelve months—his schedule had been turned on its head.
And, despite his original grit-your-teeth-and-get-on-with-it attitude, he was enjoying every minute! And he would, he reminded himself drily, be enjoying it a whole lot more if he were getting what he wanted, or at least getting close to it.
He was experiencing the type of excitement that usually came when he was close to finalising a fantastic deal, and which never before in his thirty-four years of living had been associated with a woman.
Women came easily.
But not this one. Not Alissa Brannan.
His pursuit of her delectable person wasn’t making much progress, he had to admit, but he’d get there. He always got what he wanted, didn’t he?
He wouldn’t have built up a massive business empire, practically from scratch, if he’d allowed failure a look-in, he reminded himself. Besides, pursuing a woman carried a rare excitement for a man who’d been relentlessly hunted since he was in his early twenties and notching up his second million.
His mood was reflective as he drew out into traffic. He had first seen Alissa Brannan around a year ago. She’d been performing on the catwalk at a showing of a talented Italian designer’s first collection, and he, Jethro, a connoisseur of beautiful women, had been impressed. Very impressed.
If he hadn’t been accompanying his woman of the moment he might have done something about it. But while his occasional affairs lasted he was loyal; it was part of his unwritten code.
That very evening, he remembered, that particular relationship had ended, with the customary gift of a piece of expensive jewellery and no recriminations on either side. Another part of the unwritten code.
Discreet enquiries had given him the information that Alissa Brannan, the exciting new clotheshorse all the top designers were suddenly frantic for, had the reputation of a recluse. Apparently she never dated and socialised rarely—charity functions were about the size of it.
He’d be the one to make her change her mind about dating. That was the promise he’d made himself. But he hadn’t been able to do a thing about it because his work had taken him overseas and kept him there for long stretches of time.
Any other woman, briefly fancied, would have quickly faded from his mind, forever forgotten in the larger importance of empire-building. But somehow those exquisitely lovely features, the grace of her willowy body, had stuck in his mind.
There hadn’t been another woman in the last twelve months, despite the offers. He’d told himself he was too busy jetting around the world from one boardroom to the other, that at the age of thirty-four his appetites were slowing down.
But meeting her again, in the backstreets of this quaint old medieval town, had told him that there was no danger of him slowing down—not in that department!
He negotiated a busy roundabout and took the exit that would lead him to the downmarket side of town, his mind totally occupied with thoughts of the beautiful, elusive creature who had somehow got right under his skin.
Meeting her had turned what had been a week of doing his duty by Nanny Briggs and her husband Harry into something else entirely. It had been too much of a coincidence to be anything other than fate.
He caught the thought and tossed it around. Fate? He didn’t believe in it. He was in control of his own destiny. He took life by the scruff of the neck and shook it until i
t fell into his preferred pattern.
So why was Alissa giving him the cold shoulder?
His black brows were pulled into a frown as he parked the van in front of 182 Albert Terrace. He swung his long legs out, slammed the door behind him and strode across the blistering pavement, his bleak mood dissipating when he discovered Nanny Briggs behind the dusty hedge, watering the pots of geraniums that brightened the narrow strip of front garden.