CHAPTER 3

          Even so, she gave him an ironic look.

“I’m just doing what I know the old man would have wanted me to do...” J.J. informed her loftily.

“Really? By buying a decaying neoclassical pile in the middle of Derbyshire?” Veronica asked him dryly and started shaking her head.  

“You’ll love it, Ronnie... I promise you!” he told her winningly and left the room leaving her alone with her thoughts.

          Veronica was still tempted to run after J.J. and tell him that she was far too busy and that he would have to find someone else to take charge of this particular project, but her pride, the same pride that had kept her going, kept her head held high and her spirit strong through Sasha’s rejection of her and everything that had followed, refused to allow her to do so.

          This time she and Sasha would be meeting on equal ground, as adults, and this time... this time... This time what? This time she wasn’t going to let him hurt her. This time her attitude towards him would be cool, distant, and totally businesslike. This time...

          Veronica closed her eyes as she felt the tiny shivers of apprehension icing down her spine. The last time she had seen him had been when he had unexpectedly turned up at the airport three years ago when she had been leaving England to finish her degree course in the States.

          She could still remember the shock it had given her to see him there, the shock and the sharply sweet surge of helpless pleasure and longing. She had still been so vulnerable and naive then. A part of her was still hoping that maybe, just maybe, he had changed his mind... his heart...

          Of course, he hadn’t. He had been there simply to see with his own eyes that she was actually leaving the country and his life. Henry knew, of course, that she had once had a foolish crush on his friend and employee but, thankfully, that was all he did know. He didn’t know a thing about the painful incident that happened while she was still at the university in England.

          No one knew about that. Only she and Sasha. But that was all in the past now, and Veronica was determined that this time when she’d met him, she would be the one who would have the upper hand and he would be the one who would do the begging.  This time, she would have the power to deny and refuse him what he wanted and he would have to beg and plead with her.

          Immediately, Veronica opened her eyes. What on earth had got into her? That kind of warped, vengeful thinking was, to her mind, as foolish and adolescent as her youthful infatuation with Sasha had been.

          She was above all that kind of thing. She had to be… her job demanded it. No, she would make no distinction between Sasha and all the other clients she had had to deal with. The fact that he had once cruelly and uncaringly turned down her pleas for his love, the fact that he had once rejected and demeaned her, would make no difference to the way she treated him.

          She was above all that kind of small-mindedness. Proudly she lifted her head and started to check all the information J.J. gave her about his latest ‘find’, preparing every single detail of this new, challenging project.

                                                         *****

          Sir Sasha Neville-Talbott stared grimly around the unfurnished, dusty, and cobweb-festooned hallway of Elsinore Hall. The smell of neglect and the much more ominous dry rot could be felt everywhere.

          The large room, in common with the rest of the Hall, had a desolate, down-at-heel air of weariness which reminded him uncomfortably of the elderly great-uncle who had owned the property when Sasha was growing up.

          Visits to see his great-uncle had been something which he had always dreaded and, ironically, he could remember how relieved he had been to discover that it was not he but an older cousin who would ultimately inherit the responsibility for the vast, empty, neglected house.

          But now that cousin was dead and he was now Elsinore’s owner, or at least he had been until a week or so ago when he had finally and thankfully signed the papers which would convey legal ownership of Elsinore and all the problems that went with it into the hands of J.J. Creed IV.

          His initial reaction when he had unexpectedly and unwontedly inherited the place had been to make inquiries to see if any of the British trusts could be persuaded to take it over, but, as their representatives had quickly and wryly explained, the trusts were awash with unwanted properties and deluged with despairing owners wanting them to take on even more.

          Faced with the prospect of having to stand aside and watch as the house and its lands fell into an even greater state of decay, Sasha hadn’t known what on earth he was going to do.

          His inheritance had been the house and the land. There hadn’t been any money to leave for its upkeep, and then Henry had happened to mention the existence of an eccentric American billionaire whose main vocation and purpose in life was the buying up and restoring of old properties which he then opened to the public.

          So, Sasha had lost no time in getting in touch with him. To his relief, J.J. had flown over to England to view the house and promptly declared that he loved it. That relief had turned to something very different, though, when he had received an e-mail from J.J. advising him that his assistant, Miss Veronica Hart, would be flying over to England to act as his representative over the repair and renovation of the property.

          He could, of course, have simply chosen to turn his back, walk away, and leave someone else to mediate with Veronica, but Sasha wasn’t like that. If he had a job to do, he preferred to see it through for himself, no matter how unwanted or potentially problematic that task might be. Potentially problematic!

          A bitter half-smile curled his mouth. There was nothing potential about the problems that Ronnie was likely to cause him... Nothing potential at all. He had heard scraps of news about her over the years, of course, mainly from Henry and Mollie.

          Ronnie had completed her degree course and majored summa cum laude... Ronnie was living in New York and looking for a job... Ronnie had got a job... Ronnie was working in Venice... In Rome... In Prague... Ronnie... Ronnie... Ronnie...

          Henry and Mollie weren’t his only sources of information, though. Only the previous winter in London, Sasha had unexpectedly bumped into Veronica’s mother, Henry’s stepmother, predictably just outside Harvey Nichols.

          Belinda had gushed enthusiastically over his recent elevation to the peerage. She had always been the most appalling snob and Sasha could still remember how bitterly she had opposed Henry’s request to her after his father had died that Veronica be allowed to stay on at Courtenay House with him instead of being sent to boarding school.

‘Absolutely not… Veronica can’t live with you, Henry,’ she had told him sharply. ‘For one thing, it simply wouldn’t be proper. There is, after all, no blood relationship between you. And for another... Veronica has been spending far too much time with the wrong sort of people.’

          Sasha, who had been standing outside Henry’s library whilst this conversation had been taking place, had turned around and been about to walk away when, to his disgust, he had suddenly heard his own name mentioned.

‘What wrong sort of people...?’ Henry had demanded of his stepmother

‘Well, Sasha Neville for a start... Oh, I know you count him as one of your friends, but he’s just one of your employees and…’

          Henry had immediately exploded.

‘Sasha is a friend and, as for anything else, he happens to be far better born than either you or I, Belinda.’

‘Really?’ had come back the acid retort. ‘He might be better born, Henry, but he still doesn’t have any money. Veronica is very much in danger of developing the sort of crush on him that could totally ruin her reputation if she’s to make the right sort of marriage.’

‘“The right sort of marriage”?’ Henry had replied angrily. ‘For heaven’s sake, Belinda, what century are you living in...?’

‘Veronica is my daughter and there’s no way I want her mixing with the estate workers... and that includes Sasha... And whilst we’re on the subject, Henry, I really do think that as Veronica’s stepbrother you do have a responsibility to her to protect her from unsuitable... friendships...’

          Sasha could still remember how bitterly, furiously angry he had been, how humiliated he had felt... He had made sure that he kept his distance from Ronnie after that, even if Ronnie herself hadn’t made that particularly easy.

          He had been twenty-seven then, ten years older than Veronica. A man, whilst she was still a child… A child who had told him passionately that she loved and wanted him… a child who had demanded even more passionately that he love her back, that he make love to her... with her... that he show her... teach her... take her...

          Sasha could have wrung her pretty little neck for that... wrung it or… He could still remember how she had defied him, flinging herself into his arms, wrapping them around him, pressing her soft lips against him...

          Then, he had managed to resist her... just... that time... She had always been so passionately intense. It was perhaps no wonder that the love she had professed to feel for him had ultimately turned to loathing and hatred.

          And now she was coming back. Not just to England but here, to Elsinore, into his home... into his life... What would she be like? Beautiful, of course… That went without saying...

          Her mother had told him as much when he had bumped into her… not that he needed telling. It had been blindingly obvious even when she was a child that ultimately, she would be an extraordinarily beautiful woman.

‘You’ll know, of course, that Veronica is working in New York... for a billionaire...’ Belinda had cooed happily at him, smiling with satisfaction. ‘He’s totally besotted with her, of course,’ she had added.

          Even if it hadn’t been put into as many words, Sasha had gained the distinct impression from Veronica’s mother that the relationship between Ronnie and J.J. was rather more than that of merely employer and employee...

          It had come as something of a shock to him later, when he met J.J., to recognize how much older than Ronnie he actually was, but Sasha had told himself that if Ronnie chose to have as her lover a man who was plainly so much older than her, then that was her business and no one else’s.

          Sweet Ronnie... In another few hours she would be here, their roles in many ways reversed.

‘I despise you, Sasha, I hate you!’ she had hissed at him between gritted teeth when she had first left for New York, averting her face when he had leaned forward to kiss her cheek. ‘I really hate you...’

          She had said it with almost as much passion as she had once cried out to him that she loved him. Almost as much...