The Threat of Love

Caro stood up to polite applause and began her brief outline of the report as they had all read it. 'Now, if you have any questions I shall be happy to answer them,' she ended, sitting down.

A silence fell. Everyone on the Westbrooks team looked at Gil. He was leaning back in his chair, his dark eyes fixed on the ceiling, his fingers silently tapping on the polished table. He seemed to be lost in thought.

After a moment or two, one of the accountants asked Caro a question about the projected profit graph on the back of the report.

She answered readily, and several other questions came hot on the heels of that, none of them difficult or hard to answer. After around twenty minutes it was obvious that Gil either had nothing to say, or was reserving his fire, and Caro grew very edgy. What was he up to? Why was he staying silent? She kept waiting for him to intervene, to start his cross-examination of her, but he did not make a move. Everyone around the table was clearly intrigued; they kept glancing at each other, lifting their brows or grinning, and Caro knew what they were thinking. Gil's silence had led them to believe that the sale of Westbrooks no longer had any importance for him because he was marrying her anyway, and would remain in control of the store.

But that wasn't true. Gil had told her furiously that he wasn't marrying her to keep his store. No shotgun wedding, he had said, and he had meant it. So why was he staying silent?

Fred looked at his watch a few moments later. 'Any more questions?' There was a significant pause, everyone looked at the table, then Fred said, 'Well, if no one has any further questions for my daughter, I suggest we break for coffee now.'

Caro gathered up her papers, smiled politely at the congratulations people offered her, then said quietly to her father, 'Do you want me any more after the break, Dad?'

'Stay if you want to, or not, as you like,' Fred said.

'I think I'll get back to my office,' she said. 'I have a mound of paperwork I've had to neglect while I did this report.'

Everyone was crowding round the far end of the room, where the coffee was laid out. Caro was able to slip out without being noticed, and spent the rest of the day in her office working with angry energy. She worked late. Her father was to be a guest at an important dinner in the City of London, at which the main speaker was to be the Prime Minister, so she did not have to get home in time to eat dinner with Fred. She wasn't hungry, and couldn't be bothered to go out for a meal. Their housekeeper was off for the evening, too, so Caro decided that when she did get home she would have beans on toast or scrambled egg, cooked by herself and eaten at the kitchen table.

It was nearly nine when she let herself into the house. Silence lay on it like dust; sometimes she was disturbed by being alone in a house but not tonight. Tonight, she needed to be alone. She felt like someone after a funeral: haunted by loss, heavy with grief.

She walked slowly towards the kitchen. Just as she was opening the door she heard a crash from one of the other rooms and froze. What was that?

Hadn't Fred gone to that dinner? But if he hadn't, he would have rung to tell her he would be at home. He had known she was working late.

She stood listening intently, her nerves stretched, and heard another sound, a faint movement.

There was someone in the house, in the sitting-room. She crept back along the hall to listen outside the door, and heard somebody breathing on the other side of the door. Were they listening to her? If only she had a weapon! She looked around frantically, saw a heavy walking-stick of her father's with a silver handle, and grabbed it. That would do!

She took a deep breath, quietly turned the handle of the sitting-room door and gave a rapid glance around, and saw a man with his back to her, actually having the nerve to pour himself a glass of her father's best whisky. Caro leapt at him, the heavy stick raised.

He heard her coming and whirled, jumping aside just in time before the silver handle would have come down on his skull.

'What the devil do you think you're doing?'

Caro dropped the stick, turning white, then red. 'Gil! I could have killed you!'

CHAPTER TEN

Gil bent to retrieve the stick and weighed it in his hand, grimacing. 'I'm very glad that didn't smash into m

y head! You're a dangerous woman.' He glanced at her through his lashes, smiling crookedly. 'But then I knew that.'

'I thought you were a burglar!' Caro whispered with an enormous effort. She was feeling very odd; waves of coldness were washing over her. She swayed and the room went round and round. Oh, no, I'm going to faint, she thought, panic-stricken. I can't.. .not now.. .not with Gil watching me...

The next time she opened her eyes she was lying on a couch and Gil was kneeling beside her, pushing back the hair from her forehead, staring anxiously at her. 'Caro...' he said huskily. 'You scared the life out of me. Are you OK?'

'I fainted,' she said with bitterness. Gil was always seeing her in embarrassing situations. What a fool he must think her!

'Right into my arms,' he said, stroking her cheek with the tips of his fingers, and his caress made her head swim again. She sat up hurriedly, very flushed now, her body was always going from one extreme to the other while Gil Martell was around.

'Gil, how did you get into the house? What are you doing here?' she asked, brushing down her skirt and running a shaky hand over her dishevelled hair.

What on earth had possessed him to do such a shameful thing?

'When I told him that I liked to do my own proposing and I wasn't in the market to be bought up by prospective father-in-laws, he flew into a temper,' Gil drily said. 'He became very Victorian, and said I had compromised you. He was apparently incensed by the story that appeared in yesterday's paper. More by the picture, I gathered, and the implications of it. You had been photographed with me coming out of my home in the early hours of the morning, in a very dishevelled state, and the whole world was going to believe that we had been sleeping together.' He looked at her through his lashes, smiling crookedly, and Caro couldn't stop the inevitable rise in her colour. Did he have to keep reminding her? As if she needed reminding! Images of their lovemaking kept flashing through her head when she least wanted them; she was haunted by those moments in his arms.

'I'm sorry, it's ridiculous, I'll speak to my father,' she said stiffly.