Penny Jordan Collection: Just One Night Read Free Page A

else to take charge of this
particular project, but her pride—the same pride which had kept her going, kept
her head held high and her spirit strong through Ran’s rejection of her and
everything that had followed—refused to allow her to do so.
    This time she and Ran 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...
    Sylvie closed her eyes as she felt the tiny shivers of
apprehension icing down her spine. The last time she had seen Ran 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 America. 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
still hoping that maybe, just maybe, he had changed his mind...his heart... But
of course he had not. He had been there simply to assure himself that she was
actually leaving the country and his life.
    Alex knew, of course, that she had once had a foolish
adolescent crush on his friend and employee but, thankfully, that was all he did
know; thankfully, he had no knowledge of that shaming and searingly painful,
never to be thought about, never mind talked about incident that had taken place
when she had still been at university in England.
    No one knew about that. Only she and Ran. But that was all in
the past now, and she was determined that this time when she and Ran met, as
meet they would surely have to, she would be the one
who would have the upper hand and he would be the one who would be the
supplicant; she would have the power to deny and refuse him what he wanted and
he would have to beg and plead with her.
    Immediately Sylvie 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 Ran 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 Ran and all the other clients she had
had to deal with. The fact that Ran had once cruelly and uncaringly turned down
her pleas for his love, for his lovemaking , 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 as she continued to listen to
Lloyd enthusiastically telling her the virtues of his latest ‘find’.
    * * *
    Ran stared grimly around the unfurnished, dusty and
cobweb-festooned hallway of Haverton Hall. The smell of neglect and the much
more ominous dry rot hung malodorously on the still, late afternoon air. 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 Ran was growing up. Visits to see him had been
something which Ran 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, Ran, was Haverton’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 Haverton and
all the problems that went with it into the hands of Lloyd Kelmer.
    His initial reaction when he had unexpectedly and unwontedly
inherited the place had been to make enquiries 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