Modern Romance Collection July 2024 Books 1-4

CHAPTER ONE

RAJBELANGER, the richest man in the world, was in a reasonably good mood as his helicopter landed on the roof of the Diamond Club in London.

After all, the exclusive club, a sanctuary for him and other people of immense wealth, was his personal creation. Lazlo, the manager, greeted him quietly at the door and ushered him indoors to the welcome quiet of the private members’ club. The classical décor of marble columns and high ceilings matched with muted colours and the ultimate in opulent comfort was satisfying to Raj’s critical gaze. And within the refined safe harbour of the Diamond Club, there were no paparazzi or celebrity spotters. The staff were rigorously vetted and trained. Every member enjoyed a private suite and the catering and business facilities were as international as the clientele.

Encountering an appreciative appraisal from Lazlo’s female assistant manager, Raj looked away, his dark golden eyes reflecting irritation at the height, build and dark good looks that had always attracted too much attention to him. Six feet four inches tall, he was a lean, powerful, strikingly handsome man, who despised vanity. He stayed fit for the sake of his health and stamina. He believed that what was inside an individual was a great deal more important than their outer shell. Beauty faded, but without disease, intelligence survived. A former child prodigy of unequalled brilliance and a legendary entrepreneur in the fast-moving tech world, Raj had strong opinions and few people dared to argue with him.

His British lawyer, Marcus Bateman, awaited him in his private suite. A small, grey-haired man, he had an astute brain and shrewd business sense. As breakfast was set out for them, Raj made small talk because he never discussed private matters when there were potential witnesses present. Once they were alone, he broached the issue that had troubled him for longer than he would have cared to admit: the plight of his orphaned niece, Phoenix Petronella Pansy Belanger.

Four months earlier, Raj had lost his last surviving relative, his brother, Ethan. Ethan and his wife, Christabel, had died in a car crash. A cocaine-fuelled car crash. The nanny looking after their ten-month-old baby girl had immediately contacted social services, keen to hand over responsibility for her charge and find a new placement.

‘Have you changed your mind about seeking custody?’ Marcus enquired quietly.

‘No, if Christabel’s half-sister is deemed a suitable parent for the child, I have no objection,’ Raj declared levelly. ‘As a single man, I would be the wrong guardian for a little girl. The life I lead is wholly unsuited to childrearing, nor would I even know where to begin in that task.’

The older man nodded, aware that Raj had been subjected to a dysfunctional environment from when he was an infant until he was finally emancipated from that regime by his mother’s desertion of his father. Raj’s own disturbing experiences would make it almost impossible for him to relate to an ordinary child. In truth, Raj had never known what it was to be ordinary. He had been hothoused and home-schooled and had won a handful of advanced degrees from the world’s leading universities long before he became a teenager.

It was in the normal affection and social stakes that Raj had lost out most. He had been raised without warmth or friends and with parents whose sole focus had been on developing his exceptional intellect. When his mother had given birth to Ethan, however, Raj had been na?vely thrilled by the prospect of a kid brother. Protected from their father’s malign influence, Ethan had been raised with everything that Raj had been denied. He had been cuddled and encouraged, loved and praised even when he hadn’t deserved it and yet, much to Raj’s dismay and surprise, Ethan had somehow matured into an appalling failure. Had his brother been spoilt? Had the umbrella of cash provided by Raj’s wealth caused Ethan’s expectations to range too high? Had the unfair comparisons made between the two brothers cruelly damaged Ethan’s ego and backbone?

Raj had done everything within his power to support his brother as an adult, particularly after his mother’s demise. Sadly, Ethan had failed to rise to the challenge of the many opportunities he had been offered. Indeed, Ethan had proved to be weak, lazy and dishonest, although his disloyal and greedy wife, Christabel, had been the worst of the two. Raj had met his niece only once at the christening font when she had been a red-faced and screaming little bundle and he had had an accidental glimpse of her once in the hall of his brother’s home. Further meetings after that had proved problematical because neither Christabel nor Ethan had liked social occasions with young children present. The baby had been kept very much in the background of their lives and Raj suspected that she had seen more of the nanny than she had ever seen of her parents.

‘Miss Barker, the child’s aunt, has agreed to allow you to visit your niece,’ Marcus told him cheerfully. ‘I took the liberty of consulting your PA and organising an access visit for next week.’

Raj thrust his breakfast plate away and thanked him. ‘But I gather that the foolish woman is still refusing to accept any money from me?’ he murmured flatly.

‘She remains determined to raise the little girl without your financial help,’ Marcus confirmed. ‘It’s admirable in the circumstances.’

‘Irrational,’ Raj overruled impatiently. ‘I will address the issue when I meet her next week.’

‘Bear in mind that Miss Barker is not in need of money. She’s a successful artist in her own right. Arguing with her could cause resentment and make it more difficult for you to retain access to your niece. In a few months the adoption will be ratified by the court,’ Marcus warned gravely.

Raj compressed his lips. He foresaw no difficulty in dealing with Sunshine Barker. Had he believed that she bore the smallest resemblance to her late sister, Christabel, he would have felt forced to dispute her application to adopt their niece. But he had had Sunshine’s life extensively researched and she was as different from the unscrupulous and calculating Christabel as it was possible to be. She lived in a country cottage and embraced the rural life right down to the extent of foraging in the local woods for cooking supplies. She was educated, creative, bohemian, a messy blonde in Moses sandals with a string of rescue animals. But she was also well respected in her community and well liked.

Raj did not see her as a challenge.

Sunny had dropped her contact lens and she couldn’t find it, although in the process of feeling delicately over the floor and below furniture she had discovered a hairbrush and a brooch that she had thought she had lost. In frustration she fumbled for her spectacles on the nightstand by the bed but she had evidently mislaid them as well, which was unfortunate when she was virtually blind as a bat without them. They would turn up, sooner or later, she consoled herself, screening a yawn as she brushed her mane of blonde hair with the retrieved and now dusted brush.

She was tired, naturally, she was. Just yesterday she had had Pansy stay overnight for only the second time and now her niece would actually be living with her round the clock. Even so, she was still being vetted as an adoptive parent by the social services and another orgy of cleaning and tidying awaited her because, while nobody expected her to live in a perfect household, a slovenly one wouldn’t be acceptable either.

It was just unfortunate that Sunny hadn’t yet had time to complete her renovation of her late grandmother’s cottage. She had had the bathroom and kitchen gutted soon after her grandmother’s demise six months ago, but the walls still rejoiced in ancient chintzy wallpaper and her own clutter was now layered over both her mother’s and her gran’s cherished bits and pieces. She was looking forward to plain painted walls, but the original pine floors were a little cold and hard for a baby who was starting to walk, so she had put down fluffy rugs for her niece’s benefit. Eventually, she would get the house fully sorted but, right now, Pansy’s care, comfort and contentment were her main priorities.

And now this wretched insurance assessor was coming to view the barn, which had been damaged by a storm ten days earlier. She suppressed a sigh, relieved that her niece was down for her nap and that she had contrived to dress in her version of an office worker’s clothing for what she viewed as a formal meeting. It was true that the skirt was a little tight...too many bacon sandwiches when she was short of time and energy, and possibly too many chocolate treats at the railway stations she had hung around in while she was commuting back and forth to London on a daily basis to get properly acquainted with her niece at her foster home. Familiar guilt at her poor food choices trickled through her. And the long-sleeved top felt a little neat too over her bountiful bosom. Sunny much preferred loose garments in soft, misty colours like the plants she adored.

The bell went in three short hasty bursts. Three! Good to know upfront that she was about to deal with an impatient person, indifferent to the presence of pets and a baby in the household. Bear, her Great Dane–wolfhound mix, loosed a bone-chilling howl, making her grateful that she had no close neighbours. Barefoot, she sped to the door, afraid that tardiness might affect her claim.

A very tall male towered over her. She focused on a shirt button visible between the edges of a suit jacket and then a tie and was relieved that she had put on the skirt and top.

‘So, you’re...er...whatever. If you would give me just two minutes, I’ll slip on my shoes and take you round to inspect the barn...’

The shoes she had intended to wear were still in the bedroom but her trusty welly boots were by the wall and she thrust her feet into them instead. ‘These will do,’ she said with a wide smile, skimming a glance up and up...and up. ‘My goodness, you’re very tall.’

‘You are...petite,’ Raj selected with unusual tact, although he was really wondering why on earth she wanted him to inspect her barn.

He was transfixed by her because she was such a mess. Her skirt was lopsided and unbuttoned at her tiny waist, above which swelled the sort of splendid feminine bounty that Raj generally only saw in his fantasies. The ugly orange top looked like something dragged out of a charity shop and the skirt was covered with animal hair. A faint shudder of distaste slivered through him but his dark gaze stayed welded to the huge smile lighting up her face. She was gorgeous, undersized and over-endowed in curves it was true, but still undeniably gorgeous. She had the most amazing tumbling fall of long wavy golden hair and violet eyes the colour of a flower, not a person, he adjusted. Coloured contact lenses? No, she didn’t seem the type and she had yet to even look him in the face.

‘Do you have any identification?’ she asked him, something Raj had never ever been asked before.

His hair was dark, well, she was almost certain of that but he was only a blurred vision of size. He was way too tall and broad and kind of intimidating in stature. If you were the sort of woman who was intimidated by large men, that was...and she was not.

She didn’t recognise him? Raj was amazed. She had not been at the christening or the wedding. However, he had somehow assumed that she had been at the double funeral. Admittedly though, there had been a huge turnout for the funeral, and he had not met her then, probably because he had been surrounded by people too eager to speak to him and ensure that he noticed their presence and remembered their names. He should’ve made a point of meeting her that day, he castigated himself. Unfortunately, he had kept his distance from the group of Christabel’s friends, many of whom had been taking selfies and photos and generally conducting themselves as though they were attending some glitzy event, rather than a tragic interment.

Suppressing a sigh, he withdrew his passport and extended it. Sunny Barker had the tiniest fingers he had ever seen on an adult. He was hugely entertained by the whole process as she squinted uneasily down at the passport. She was irredeemably scatty, badly needing to be organised by someone. She would drive a control freak of his type insane, he reflected absently.

Sunny peered down at the passport but it was just a blur and she thought it was a very odd means of identification to show her. Hadn’t his insurance firm given him an identity card with a logo? Evidently not and that was scarcely his fault. It was not as though she were inviting him inside her home, she reminded herself soothingly.

‘Your barn?’ he prompted with rare indecision, willing to play along to be reasonable and reluctant to embarrass her, which would only increase the awkwardness of their first meeting.

‘Come this way,’ Sunny urged, squeezing out past him—really, he did take up an awful lot of doorstep space—to lead him down the path and round the corner of the house into what had once been a farmyard.

Bear gambolled along by her side, giving the visitor a very wide berth. Bert peered out and snarled from beneath a shrub they were passing. Bear backed away. Bert advanced, threat in every line of his tiny body.

‘Stop it, Bert!’ Sunny scolded. ‘You’re being a bully.’

Raj glanced in disbelief at the tiniest dog he had ever seen outside a handbag. The giant dog was terrified of the tiny one. He wondered why he was being shown the barn. He wondered why he was with this strange woman, who didn’t even recognise who he was. Did he expect everyone to know him at first glance? Sort of, he acknowledged uneasily. And Sunny Barker was his former sister-in-law’s sibling, shouldn’t she recognise him? Have taken some interest in his presence in the family tree? Even if they had never enjoyed a formal introduction?

‘So, here’s the barn. As you can see a giant branch fell on the roof and messed it up a little.’

‘More than a little,’ Raj countered, studying the poorly maintained structure, automatically foreseeing any insurance firm’s likely response to such a claim but stifling his urge to issue a warning. Instead, he viewed the very tall horse staring out at him over the stable door. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Muffy. She’s a Clydesdale,’ Sunny told him, suddenly full of animation, delighted, it seemed, by his presumed interest. ‘She was very upset about the roof tiles falling and the rain coming in.’

Raj contemplated the misnamed horse, who didn’t look as though she would stir into life for anything less than a hurricane. ‘She seems content.’

‘She’s very easy-going...but I need the roof fixed. She’s elderly,’ Sunny whispered, as if the horse might be shy about her age being bandied about in public. ‘She needs a nice dry stall.’

‘Why are you showing me your barn?’ Raj chose to ask abruptly, watching as she petted the horse, the movement drawing the top tighter over the ample swell of her breasts while he wondered why he was even looking.

Anyone would be forgiven for thinking that he was a teenager who had never seen breasts before! For goodness’ sake, he was a sophisticated male with four mistresses in different cities. He took care of his sexual needs in the same efficient way that he took care of everything else in his life. He focused on privacy and practicality. He could be in London, New York, Paris or Tokyo and he could lift the phone and visit any one of his mistresses. Reminding himself of those facts did nothing to prevent his intense gaze from sliding from the generous thrust of her breasts to the curve of her perky and curvy bottom as she bent over the door and then angled those violet eyes up to open very wide on him. Unforgettable, beautiful eyes.

‘Why are you asking me that? You’re an insurance assessor,’ Sunny told him in surprise.

‘No, I’m not. I’m Raj Belanger and your niece is also my niece and I’ve arrived on a prearranged visit to see her...’

‘You’re coming to visit next week,’ Sunny informed him with confidence. ‘Same day, pretty much the same time but definitely next week.’

‘I think you’ll find you’re incorrect in that conviction. My staff rarely make mistakes,’ Raj asserted drily just as the shaggy Great Dane bolted from behind his owner to flee behind Raj in a determined effort to escape the domineering, aggressive chihuahua.

Disconcerted by the sudden pandemonium, Raj suffered a glancing blow to the back of his legs and skated forward, belatedly discovering that the surface below him was slippery and giving his soles no purchase as he was thrown off balance. He fell back heavily into the mud and lifted himself even faster to stare down at his soiled hands in disgust.

‘I am so sorry...’ Sunny whispered, urging him by the elbow back towards the house, thinking that the bigger people were, the harder they fell, but she had never seen anyone look quite so appalled by a little mud. ‘Come this way, so that you can wash.’

She had been about to tell him that he had arrived on the right day but in the wrong week, only it seemed unkind to make that comment just at that moment. Was this man truly Pansy’s uncle? The richer than Croesus guy? She was appalled at the reception she had given him. Of course, he had been quiet. He had been wondering what on earth she was talking about but had been too polite to say so.

Raj was already using his phone with angry stabs of a muddy finger, speaking into it in another language in curt tones of command. He was kind of bossy and he had a short fuse, Sunny decided as she got him back through the front door and spread open the bathroom door to the soundtrack of Pansy wailing for attention. ‘You’ll want to...er...freshen up and I’ll bring you a towel.’

Yanking fresh towels in haste from the laundry press, she laid them on the hamper by the door and tried not to notice that he had clearly fallen into a puddle because his suit trousers were wet and mired. Poor man, as prone to accidents as the rest of humanity in spite of all his wretched money, she reflected ruefully, ashamed that she had had so many unkind, biased thoughts about him in recent weeks. A male who apparently believed that he could bribe her to take better care of his niece, apparently incapable of understanding that she most wanted to be a mother to Pansy and simply love her. And there would be no price tag involved in that process.

Someone was knocking on the door again. She sped to answer it, wanting to go and lift Pansy but determined to take care of everything at once. Another formally dressed male handed her a suit in a zipped clothing bag. ‘For Mr Belanger,’ he told her.

She wondered where he had come from and how he had arrived with her so quickly but she was flustered now and she raced back to thrust the bag at her visitor and swiftly closed the bathroom door on him again to go to her niece’s room. Pansy was standing up bouncing at the side of the cot. With her mop of blonde curls and big blue eyes, she was incredibly cute and she lifted her little chubby arms to be lifted as soon as she saw her aunt.

‘Yes, my precious. Aunty was late,’ she confided softly, sweeping the soft warm weight of the toddler up into her arms and hugging her close. ‘Time for your snack...right?’

Raj surveyed the modern washing facilities with intense relief as he stripped. He had enjoyed disturbing glimpses of other rooms en route to the bathroom. And everything was flowery or patterned and there was clutter on every available surface. The cottage was a hoarder’s dream and he could see that the knick-knacks were creeping in to despoil the bathroom as well. A line of pottery flower sculptures adorned with improbably sparkly fairies marched along the window sill and he raised his brows.

Raj liked order, reason and discipline in every space he occupied. Everything, outside the arts, had to be functional in his world. He stepped into the shower because he was soaked through to the skin and the hot water soothed him even if the soap’s strange grittiness did not. He was in Sunny’s home, accepting her hospitality, and it would be strange not to expect differences, he reminded himself. She was different, after all. Very different, he conceded thoughtfully.

Towelling dry and feeling rather more like himself, he got dressed again in the fresh suit and put the discarded one in the empty bag. After a moment’s hesitation, he lifted the discarded towels and placed them on top of the laundry hamper. For the first time in many years, he was making an effort to be scrupulously polite.

‘Mr Belanger?’ Sunny called as soon as she heard the bathroom door open. ‘We’re in the kitchen!’

Raj breathed in deep, like a male girding his belt before battle, and, pausing to acknowledge the threat of the low doorway, he ducked his proud dark head and strode on into the kitchen where bunches of wizened foliage hung down from the rafters. His attention, however, shifted straight to Sunny and her welcoming smile before almost apprehensively moving to the child seated in the toddler high chair. A pretty little girl waved her toast at him happily while slurping clumsily out of a toddler cup.

‘Sit down at the table and make yourself at home,’ Sunny urged expansively. ‘I know you haven’t had much contact with Pansy—’

‘Pansy?’ Raj interrupted in surprise. ‘I thought she was called Phoenix. And any official documents I’ve seen on her refer to her as Phoenix.’

‘Apparently your brother preferred Pansy and told the nanny to use that name,’ Sunny told him. ‘And the social worker in charge of her case decided that was best because she already recognises her name. The other two names are a bit...fancy.’

‘Interesting,’ Raj remarked, duly informed. He had thought the names a mouthful as well but prided himself on being too diplomatic to express that opinion.

‘Coffee or tea? I have a lovely soothing herbal tea.’

Raj didn’t believe he needed soothing. ‘Coffee for me, black, no sugar, thank you. And call me Raj. In a loose sense, we are members of the same family,’ he opined.

Warmed by that unexpected acknowledgement of a family link, Sunny poured the coffee, set it in front of him and slid over a plate of biscuits. ‘Help yourself.’

Raj scanned the biscuits that had what looked like real flowers set into the dough. They were very decorative. He breathed in deep and selected one.

Sunny laid a knife on the plate. ‘They’re all edible flowers but if you don’t like the look of them, feel free to scrape them off,’ she said lightly.

Raj ignored the knife and chewed the biscuit, which tasted surprisingly good. He watched Sunny lift his niece from her chair, clean her up carefully and then begin playing with her.

‘Who’s a beautiful girl, then?’ she asked the baby, who was in the air chortling with glee, bare feet kicking up.

As Sunny turned her face up to look at the child, her expression shone with love and warmth and happiness. It was exactly what Raj had hoped to see in the woman who wanted to mother his orphaned niece and he was pleased and relieved in equal parts. ‘What made you decide that you wanted to adopt her?’ he heard himself ask.

‘I’m unlikely to have children of my own. I have a...medical condition,’ she admitted uncomfortably. ‘And there was Pansy alone without parents and she’s my own flesh and blood. It was an instant decision. I only wish Christabel had allowed me to visit her more often and then I would have been more familiar to Pansy when I came back into her life. Instead, I had to get to know her as a stranger.’

‘Why didn’t your sister allow you to visit your niece?’ Raj enquired with a frown.

‘Well, my half-sister and I weren’t close. She was eight years older and then we grew up apart.’

‘That’s right. I seem to remember Christabel mentioning that her mother died and her father remarried and divorced.’

‘And then last year, my grandmother, who owned this house, died and left it to me because this is where I grew up. Gran was terminally ill,’ Sunny explained. ‘Christabel took me to court to claim a share of the house’s worth after my grandmother passed away and I’m afraid she was furious when I won the case. It also emptied my savings account, though.’

Raj frowned because he had read about the case in her background file. Her late sister had been remarkably avaricious, he mused, because, after marrying Ethan, she had not known what it was to be short of money.

‘May I ask why you didn’t want to adopt Pansy?’ Sunny prompted.

‘I believe that you have more to offer her,’ he said quietly. ‘I have no wife and no real desire for offspring. I wouldn’t know where to begin raising a little girl and I would be reluctant to leave her in the care of a nanny all the time. My lifestyle would not be suitable for a young child.’

‘You know your own mind and capabilities best,’ Sunny conceded lightly. ‘Speaking for myself, I’m grateful that I wasn’t in competition with you.’

‘Were I, at any stage, to consider you an inappropriate guardian, I would challenge you for custody. I should be candid on that score,’ Raj incised, delivering that warning without hesitation.

Temper sizzled through Sunny at that arrogant statement. Although he had no desire to take personal responsibility for his niece, he expected to sit in judgement over her parental skills. With difficulty, she stifled her resentment, determined not to get on bad terms with such a powerful male. ‘I’m happy that you have enough interest in Pansy to visit her. She won’t have a father but, hopefully, she’ll have a favourite uncle.’

‘That’s generous of you, although I expect to be only an occasional visitor.’

In a sudden movement, Sunny broke off listening to his well-modulated drawl and sped across the kitchen to pounce on the spectacles reflecting the light coming through the windows. ‘I’ve been looking for these everywhere!’ she gasped in satisfaction as she unfurled them and fixed them to her nose. ‘I lose them so easily that I always keep three pairs on the go.’

‘There are pairs of spectacles sitting on the hallstand and also on the bathroom window sill,’ Raj disclosed to her astonishment.

And Sunny was amazed by his observational powers and also struck almost dumb by her first proper look at him. She had seen his picture once in a newspaper and had thought that he was an attractive man if a little grim and grave of expression. But in the flesh, she learned that Raj Belanger had much greater impact on her as a woman. He had stunning even features, high cheekbones, an aristocratic nose and a wide full mouth. His face was further blessed by very dark, intense eyes surrounded by dense inky lashes. Gorgeous, simply gorgeous eyes.

‘You’re staring at me,’ Raj said sardonically.

‘I’m sorry. You just look much more handsome in person than you do in a newspaper when you’re always looking forbidding,’ she mumbled. ‘And you don’t look at all like Ethan.’

Dark colour scored the line of Raj’s high cheekbones. ‘You don’t really think before you speak...do you?’ he countered.

‘It’s a habit of mine. I’m sorry for getting so personal and embarrassing you.’ Now equipped with her spectacles, Sunny, with cheeks burning fire-engine red, studied the calendar on her wall and her slight shoulders dropped. ‘And I owe you another apology. You were expected today and the insurance assessor is coming next week. My only excuse is that I’ve been getting ready for Pansy to come home and I’ve been very busy.’

Raj waved a forgiving hand, grateful that they were off the topic of his appearance and her barn. Did he look forbidding as she had termed it? It was true that he didn’t smile very much. Yet wasn’t it strange that Sunny made him want to smile because she amused him? She was all out there like an advertising hoarding while he was the exact opposite, generally keeping his feelings to himself and of a much more introverted nature.

‘Let’s move into the sitting room so that you can start getting acquainted with Pansy,’ Sunny suggested, lifting the plate of biscuits and his coffee and her own tea onto a tray.

Raj vaulted upright, feeling as though he were being managed and disliking the unfamiliar sensation. He watched Pansy toddle somewhat clumsily in her aunt’s wake, very much like a miniature drunk struggling still to find her balance.

He was smiling when he followed the duo into the cluttered sitting room where piles of books, potted plants and, in one corner, an actual log made the small space seem even smaller. He sank down into an armchair. He studied Sunny, who was gazing owlishly at him from behind her spectacles. That blue-violet shade of eyes had a luminous quality, he decided. His attention lingered.

‘Why does Pansy not know you either?’ Sunny asked just as Raj was about to ask out of sheer curiosity why there was a log on the floor.

‘I generally only saw my brother and your sister at adult social occasions. I entertained them at my London home but they always left the baby at home,’ he explained. ‘Your sister said that she needed a break from being a mother. Why weren’t you at the wedding or the christening?’

‘Christabel had a simply huge guest list of important people she had to invite and I didn’t make the cut and our grandmother wasn’t well enough,’ Sunny said without chagrin. ‘I did understand. She and Ethan led very glamorous lives in comparison to ours.’

As Sunny brought a plastic container of toys out and Pansy began noisily tossing everything within it out, Raj relaxed a little because he was not immediately being challenged with the task of getting to know a young child. ‘Where do you do your painting?’ he asked curiously.

‘In the sunroom behind the kitchen. The light’s good there. I usually get up at the crack of dawn to paint. But I’ll have to adapt my schedule to suit Pansy now.’

Encountering a narrowed glance from his dark eyes, which flamed gold in the sunny room, Sunny could feel her self-consciousness rise exponentially. There was something very intense about Raj Belanger. She didn’t know whether it was the raw, restive masculine energy he emanated or the demanding potency of his dark gaze. But there was definitely an unnerving quality to being in his powerful presence. She could feel her nipples tightening inside her bra and a faint uncomfortable clenching in her pelvis. She went rigid, suddenly registering that what she was feeling in his radius was not simple tension but pure sexual attraction. It had been so long since she had experienced such a reaction to a man that she was sharply disconcerted by it.

‘I’d like to see your work,’ Raj declared, breaking free of the odd spell she cast over him to withdraw his gaze from her. What the hell was the matter with him? In denial of the stirring hardness at his groin, he turned his handsome dark head away to watch the large black cat pad from behind the potted plants, where he had evidently been sunning himself, to claw at the log. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Miracle...the only survivor of a litter who died, a bit like Bear. Bear’s mother rejected him at birth. I brought him home to see if I could feed him and keep him alive and, as you can see, he survived.’ At the sound of his name, the big dog approached her and pushed against her knee affectionately before lying down, the very picture of relaxation.

As Pansy saw the cat, she let out a squeal of excitement and reached out her arms. The cat sprang off the log and ran out of the room and Sunny laughed. ‘Miracle already knows to stay out of her reach. Bert stays in his basket in the kitchen. Hopefully he’ll be adopted this week. A lady is coming to see him. He needs a home where there are no other pets or children.

‘I’ll show you the studio,’ Sunny added, rising up, allowing her niece once again to toddle in her wake.

He followed them into the sunroom, a large unexpectedly clear space dominated by an artist’s easel and a side table stained with paint and littered with sketches, photos and brushes.

‘It’s not finished yet,’ she explained as he looked over her shoulder at the watercolour.

‘Anthriscussylvestris aka cow parsley,’ Raj murmured, amazed by the detail she had already brought into being.

‘Or Queen Anne’s lace, which sounds much more romantic,’ Sunny pointed out. ‘Although that’s actually a different plant known as wild carrot.’

‘What do you work from?’

‘Sometimes photos, sometimes the actual plant, sometimes both. You know the Latin names.’

‘Yes. It was a hobby when I was younger. I liked the precision of Latin plant names.’

Sunny stepped away from the canvas, surprised by the intensity of his scrutiny when she had expected him to show only a cursory interest in her work.

Raj loved the watercolour. It was so real he felt as though he could reach into the picture to touch the delicate lace blooms and it was a much more scientifically accurate presentation than he had expected from her. ‘Let me buy it,’ he suggested suddenly.

‘I can paint you another one but I can’t give you this one,’ Sunny declared in a surprised rush. ‘It’s the last of a series I’ve done for a big botanical book that’s soon to be published and I’m tied by contract to hand it over.’

‘Who would ever know that you gave this one to me and another to them?’ Raj asked drily.

‘I would know and that’s not how I work with my clients,’ she retorted crisply.

‘I’ll commission you for another,’ he responded curtly, dissatisfied by her reluctance to cater to his request, a response that he had never met with before. ‘Am I allowed to ask why you won’t agree to me providing financial support for my niece?’

Disconcerted by that sudden change of subject, Sunny hovered uneasily, her heart-shaped face troubled as she struggled to put her convictions together in a hurry. ‘I don’t want Pansy to be so spoiled that she no longer follows her dreams or strives to achieve something of her own in life. Ethan was like that. He knew he could have virtually anything he wanted because you would buy it for him or make it happen for him, and it only made him impossible to please and it stifled any natural drive he had.’

Raj gazed down at her in complete shock, colour slowly receding below his naturally olive complexion. Nobody had subjected him to such blunt speech or censure since childhood. He was stunned by her lack of tact and her daring in mentioning his late brother in such terms.

‘Who do you think you are to speak of my brother in such a manner?’ he shot at her in a sudden burst of anger.

It wasn’t a shout; he raised his voice only a little but his intonation was raw and the atmosphere was tense. Pansy was standing by the window, and her little face crumpled and she loosed an uncertain sob. Sunny reached down to lift and comfort her niece. ‘I think it’s time you left,’ she said tautly.

Firm mouth compressed, Raj did not require encouragement to take his leave. He was outraged by what she had said about Ethan. She seemed impervious to the awareness that, as the giver of that money, Raj would not accept being blamed for having encouraged Ethan’s faults. He had simply done his utmost to find some field that interested his brother into making an effort and the sad truth was that he had failed. Leaving Ethan to sink alone had been too much to ask of Raj’s conscience. Every time he had failed with Ethan, he had tried again...and again.

He strode to the front door and opened it, breathing in slow and deep. ‘I will see you next month,’ he announced. ‘Same day, same time...if it suits you.’

‘It suits,’ she conceded, white as a sheet as she watched him stride down the path and heard a vehicle engine start up and then another engine, indicating that more than one car had accompanied him to the meeting, but any cars were hidden from view by her high hedge.

Listening to the cars recede into the distance, Sunny groaned out loud. Oh, what had she done, speaking so candidly on such a private, personal and decidedly hurtful topic? Of course, he had taken offence when he had done his utmost to settle his brother into a secure position! And she had only got to know Ethan through his visits with Christabel before their wedding, because there had been little contact after that date. She should have more carefully chosen her words, lied if necessary, she reasoned unhappily, rather than risk antagonising Pansy’s uncle by referring to his sibling like that. Instead, she had waded in, careless of the wound she might be inflicting, and she was ashamed. Yes, she had spoken her true feelings, but honesty was not always the best policy.