Tall, Dark And Dangerous. Kate Proctor

       CHAPTER ONE

      GINNY PRICE flopped down on the cobbled terrace, a sigh of frustration escaping her as she leaned back against the huge, plant-filled terracotta pot with which she had been wrestling. It had been heavy enough empty, she reflected exasperatedly, and now it weighed a ton. Only a complete idiot would have filled the wretched thing before positioning it in its destined spot—and she was that idiot!

      But at least she had finished the Lebauts’ garden without committing any similar amateurish blunder, she consoled herself, and even better, she had been generously paid for her efforts. Her spirit boosted by the memory, she lazily brushed some of the soil from her cut-down denim dungarees before adjusting her battered straw hat, almost the same colour as the short-cropped hair capping her head, and let the late afternoon Mediterranean sun play against the tanned oval of her face.

      With Libby’s baby due in two months, it was wise to get all the money they could in the kitty, she thought, a dreamy smile widening the generous curve of her mouth, just to be sure they had every possible contingency covered.

      For one who had never in her life had to take the cost of anything into consideration, Libby had become a zealous convert to economising, thought Ginny with a lazy chuckle of indulgence.

      ‘It’s not as though I’ll not be seeing someone just as qualified as Sylvie,’ Libby had stated, with the studied firmness of one not wholly convinced, having learned, during her last check-up in Cannes that her obstetrician, a woman who had gone to endless lengths to gain her confidence, would be spending the following month at a sister clinic in Paris. ‘I mean, she did say I could see her in Paris, if I wanted…’

      ‘And you obviously want,’ Ginny had laughed, giving the plainly troubled American girl a comforting hug. She knew that an emergency appendectomy at an early age had left Libby decidedly edgy about matters medical—and how ruthlessly her friend had suppressed all her fears for the sake of the baby she was carrying. ‘So go ahead. That friend of yours, Jeanne, has invited you to stay with her often enough—and she knows about the baby…’

      Ginny sat up, frowning, her thoughts scattered by the sight of a car turning up the drive. It was a white, open-topped sports car, one of those fortunes on wheels, she noted with amusement, that Libby would probably have been able to identify in an instant.

      She craned her neck as the car, instead of stopping and reversing as she had expected, continued up the drive towards her. The driver probably realised it was semi-circular and would keep going, she told herself, only to find the car drawing to a halt beside her.

      It was as the man stepped from the car, and while Ginny was scrambling inelegantly to her feet, that she got her first real sight of him and found herself having to bite back an exclamation of disbelief. So much for her always having pooh-poohed the idea of there being a man of her dreams, she thought weakly—though this particular man, appearing as if from the blue, was no doubt the physical embodiment of a good many women’s dreams!

      He was tall, perhaps an inch or two over six feet, with a lithe, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped body that was in perfect proportion to his height. His hair was dark, not the black her first glimpse had taken it to be, but a deep, dark mahogany that the sun had streaked here and there with attractive splashes of coppery gold. With all this man had going for him, thought Ginny with amused disbelief, he could afford a flaw or two where his features were concerned. But apart from the decidedly bad-tempered expression adorning the chiselled perfection of those features she was now minutely examining, there was nothing she found that could be remotely described as a flaw. And as for the dark luxuriance of the lashes surrounding those widespaced, startlingly blue eyes, she thought with amused fascination that she could think of a number of women who would kill to possess them!

      It was only when the man stopped speaking and flung her a look of undisguised impatience that the fact hit Ginny that