CHAPTER 4

          Five miles or so before her ultimate destination, Veronica pulled the car she had hired at the airport over to the side of the road and switched off the engine. She did it not because she was unsure of where she was going, not even because she wanted to absorb the beauty of the Derbyshire countryside around her, magnificent though it was as it basked warmly in the mid-afternoon sunshine, devoid of any sign of human occupation apart from her own.

          No… Unfortunately, the reason Veronica had stopped was that she had been significantly aware for the last few miles, not just of the slight dampness of her hands on the steering wheel but, even more betrayingly, of the increasing turmoil of her thoughts and the nervous butterflies churning her stomach.

          When she finally met... confronted... Sasha, she wanted to be calm and in control of both herself and the situation. She wasn’t, Veronica reminded herself sternly, meeting him as an idealistic teenager who had fallen so disastrously and desperately in love with him, but as a woman, a woman who had a job to do.

          She would not... must not allow her own personal feelings to affect her judgment or her professionalism. In the eyes of other people, her job might appear to be just a piece of cake, traveling the world, living and breathing the air of some of its most beautiful buildings, able to afford to commission its very best workmen.

          Well, it was far more to it than that. As J.J. had remarked admiringly to her the previous year, when he had viewed the finished work on the Venetian palazzo, Veronica didn’t just possess the most marvelous and accurate eye for correct period detail, for harmony and color, for the intricacy that meant she could hold in her mind’s eye the entire finished concept of how an original period room must have looked.

          No, she also had an extremely shrewd and practical side to her nature which ensured that with every project she had worked on so far, she had managed to bring the work to completion on time and under budget.

          This was something that didn’t just ‘happen’. It involved hours and hours spent poring over costings and budgets, more hours and hours tramping around warehouses, inspecting fabrics and furniture, and in many cases, because of the age of the houses, it also meant actually finding and commissioning workmen to make new ‘aged’ copies of the pieces she required.

          Italy, as she had quickly discovered, was a treasure house for such craftsmen and so, oddly, was London, but always at a price, and Veronica had surprised herself a little at her ability to bargain for days, if necessary until she had got what she wanted and at a price she considered to be fair.

          This had, of course, led to her often having to take an extremely firm line, not just with the craftspeople she dealt with but very often with the original owners of their properties as well, who very often retained life tenancy in the houses and quite naturally wanted to have their say in how they were restored and furnished.

          Oh, yes, she was used to dealing with sometimes difficult ex-owners, and situations where she had to use both patience and tact to ensure that no one’s pride was hurt.

          It was a very definite skill to be able to walk the tightrope between avoiding hurting a prior owner’s often sensitive pride and ensuring that the house was restored as she knew J.J. would want it to be.

          But this time… Well, this time, it wasn’t just the sensitive feelings of a property’s ex-owner she was going to need to consider. No, this time the person whose feelings, whose emotions were going to need careful handling was herself.

“Damn it!” she exclaimed and tried to stop her hands from shaking. “I need to calm down! I have to do this! I need to do it!”

          Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply and calmly several times and then opened them again, wiping her hands on a tissue and then re-starting the Discovery’s engine. Hiring this four-wheel-drive was such a great choice…

          From the plans and other papers J.J. had given her to study, Veronica knew the Discover is going to be useful for traveling over the rugged terrain and the overgrown driveways that surrounded Elsinore Hall.

          Veronica also chose this car because, as she had discovered in the past, a large sturdy off-road vehicle often provided a boon for transporting the odd ‘find’ she came across when scouting around looking for materials for the restoration work to a property.

          The statue she had found for the secluded enclosed garden of the Italian palazzo had been one such find, bought and paid for on the spot before the vendor could change his mind, and loaded immediately into her car.

          Ten minutes later, Veronica was driving through the open gates to Elsinore Hall. The twin lodges at either side of the gate, joined by a pretty spanning ‘archway’, had both looked run-down and in need of repair.

          Veronica knew from her homework that they had been constructed at the same time as the main house, and the house, like them, had been designed by one of the country’s foremost architects in the Palladian manner favored by the likes of Inigo Jones.

          Theatrically, the drive to the house curved through flanking trees, several of which were missing, spoiling its original symmetry, although those which remained were so heavily in leaf that they still obscured all her attempts to glimpse the house until she had driven past the final curve in the drive.

          She caught her breath. Used as she was to beautiful properties - after all, Henry’s ancestral home was renowned for its elegant grace - this one, despite the shabbiness of its fading elegance, was something very special and she could see instantly why J.J. had fallen so immediately and completely in love with it.

          Set on a small incline, so that it could overlook its surrounding gardens and parklands, it was everything that the neoclassicist architects had decreed their houses should be and then some more, Veronica acknowledged as she drove slowly towards the graveled parking area in front of the massive columned portico to the house.

“This is it, Ronnie!” she said slowly. “Whatever happens… Whomever you’re about to see, stay strong! Keep you cool! Do your job and walk away.”

          Stopping the Discovery, Veronica opened the door and started to get out. Let the games begin! Don’t back down now!

          They met on the paved portico. Sasha opened the massive front door just as Veronica mounted the last step. She stopped the minute she saw him and gave him a quick glimpse. Her stomach did some flip-flops but she managed to keep her composure.  

          He hadn’t changed, but then why should he have? Sasha still looked exactly the same. Tall, broad-shouldered, with the smooth warm skin of a countryman, his jeans were clinging softly to the taut muscles of his long legs.

          His forearms were bare and bronzed, the soft checked shirt he was wearing was exactly the same kind of shirt Veronica could remember seeing him wearing all the years she had been growing up. His hair was still as thick and darkly rich as ever, his jaw just as chiseled.

          No signs of soft, rich living there, despite the odd snippets of gossip she had picked up from her mother and from Mollie about the discreet parade of elegant, wealthy women who had passed through his life.

          Well, Sasha had always had a penchant for that type, women in the main who were slightly older than him, dressed to kill, knowing... all the things that an adoring, unknowing seventeen-year-old was not.

          Only his eyes had changed, Veronica noticed, with a sudden sharp flicker of sensation which she immediately suppressed. Oh, they were still the same incredible color, somewhere between onyx and gold, still flecked with those heart-dizzying little specks of lighter color and still surrounded by those unfairly long, thick dark lashes.

          ‘Get a hold on yourself, girl!’ Veronica thought when she felt his gaze on her.

          Yes, all that was still familiar to her, but the lazily sensual way they were studying her, the subtle but very male message she could read in them as Sasha’s gaze flicked over her T-shirt-covered breasts and her slim waist in the plain blue jeans...

          That was most certainly not familiar to her, at least not from Sasha Neville-Talbot, the man who scared her soul for life. The man that crushed her heart into million pieces. The man that made fun of her and her youthful passion.  

          And it was only then, when she countered that look with an instinctive and automatically female one of cool reproval, that Veronica realized that one of them had closed the distance between them from its original safe several meters to a much, much less secure three or four feet. One of them...