Seductive Stranger

Did he eat out with Lucy Killane? she wondered. Did he often

visit her home? And if he did, how come Josh Killane pretended to be so unaware of any intimate relationship between her father and his mother?

Prue didn't believe that anyone could be blind to the way they looked at each other. Josh Killane was a liar—but why did he lie? She did not understand his motive, but perhaps he was hoping that if he pretended not to know how they felt about each other he might stop them marrying?

She visited David in the morning and found him sitting up in a chair beside the bed, reading a murder story with a violent cover; a blonde in a bath with a knife in her chest.

'Great plot, this!' said David, after she had kissed him and sat down, it's the best of those you brought me.'

She looked at the cover again, 'I didn't buy that one!'

David looked at the author's name. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'I borrowed it from someone.' He pushed the book under his pillow and leaned back, yawning a little. 'Talk to me; I'm bored. How's life on the farm?

Anything exciting happen in the haystacks lately?'

'Idiot,' she said, laughing, but thought that he looked very flushed—was his temperature still high?

She told him she had rung his parents, and they had been very cheerful. They had sent all sorts of loving messages, and David listened to them, smiling.

And you didn't tell them about my lung?'

She shook her head. 'How is it now?'

Doing fine. I think the surgeon's got a swelled head over the way I'm healing. I told him it was my tough Australian skin that was responsible, but he seems to think it's all his doing.'

'Poor man, I'm sorry for him, having to put up with you teasing him like that,' said Prue, but David's high spirits were a good omen. He was definitely well on the way to recovery, in spite of that flush, or were his bright eyes and frenetic chatter more a symptom of fever than of good health?

She didn't tell David she was going to tea with the Killanes. It slipped her mind until after she left the ward, but she was relieved that she hadn't mentioned it because David might ask about Josh Killane and she didn't know what to say about the man. Her feelings were becoming quite explosive and it would startle David if she betrayed that.

It startled her at times. She was disturbed by the way she kept thinking about Josh, even though she hated him—hated everything about him, from his wild good looks and that rakishly insolent air to his feudal attitudes towards everyone who came within his orbit.

Mind you, his whole family seemed to have the same attitudes. They really thought they were a breed set apart, those Killanes. Centuries of arrogant possession had made them like that, and it infuriated Prue—especially the way' Josh rode over the land in the valley with an air of being master of all he surveyed.

Look at the way he took domineering decisions on everything—from who should mend one of the local drystone walls to whether she should have tea with his mother!

Josh assumed too much—and that included something which seemed to come close to being droit de seigneur! He made love to her with disturbing assurance, and Prue despised herself for letting it happen.

She must make sure that Josh never got another chance to do that to her!

She had asked her father a few casual questions about Josh's private life without getting any clear answers, and she dared not seem too inquisitive in case her curiosity was misunderstood, but she couldn't help wondering if Josh made passes at every woman he met!

How on earth could she ask her father that, though? She certainly couldn't ask Josh. She would just have to pick up any clues she could, and again she regretted the fact that Betty Cain was so reluctant to talk. If Betty had been the chatty type, Prue might have picked up all the local gossip. The Killanes were the most important family for miles; most local people were probably fascinated by them and their affairs, especially their love-affairs.

It was bad luck that the woman who worked for her father should be so taciturn. Only that morning, she had said to her father, 'Betty doesn't say much, does she?' and James Allardyce had laughed, shaking his head.

'Why do you think I have her here? She doesn't spread scandal about my affairs, and one look at her and nobody thinks there's anything immoral going on betwixt me and her.'

She chuckled at that idea. 'No, 1 don't suppose they do.'

Her father took her to lunch near the hospital, in a pretty little restaurant with red and white checked curtains and tablecloths. The food was home-cooked and excellent; Prue had soup followed by a vegetable casserole topped with grated cheese, her father had the roast of the day, beef, with Yorkshire pudding. He had a plum pie dessert, too, but Prue skipped that and just had coffee.

Her father had nodded to several other customers who kept staring across the little restaurant at their table.

'They're wondering where I picked up the pretty girl half my age!'

James Allardyce said complacently, winking at her.

They probably knew she was his daughter, thought Prue. She was beginning to know these people! Gossip moved at the speed of light.