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dark, virile power that radiated out from him.
    ‘This apartment, for one thing.’ She waved her hand to encompass the beautiful room. ‘We were going to look for a house together once we came back from our honeymoon; you know that. I’ve never wanted to live in the middle of London and you promised me we’d find a family houseon the outskirts somewhere, something that was really ours. But it’s always “tomorrow” or “next week”.’
    ‘This is ours,’ he said quickly, a note of surprise in his voice.
    ‘No, it isn’t,’ she said steadily. ‘It never has been. It’s yours, just yours.’ With Liliana’s spectre forever popping up like the evil genie.
    ‘Okay, we’ll look next week if you—’ He stopped abruptly as her wide azure eyes forced him to hear what he was saying. He ran a hand through his short black crop of hair in an impatient gesture as he rose irritably, walking across to the cocktail cabinet and pouring himself another stiff brandy. ‘Marianne, I’m up to my eyes in this new development, but why don’t you start looking and narrow it down to just two or three for us to look at together?’ he said evenly as he turned to face her again. ‘And if we both like something enough I promise you we’ll take it, okay? I accept we should have moved sooner.’
    ‘You do?’ She stared at him, hope springing up in her heart. ‘And you promise we’ll move?’
    ‘I promise.’ And then he smiled his rare, sexy smile as he added, ‘I even promise you can have the last say; you’re going to be there more than me so that’s only fair.’
    She should have challenged him on that—their home was to be a new beginning, just as important to him as it was to her, besides which when she started working for her degree and went on to a career it was likely she wouldn’t be at home any more than Zeke—but with him smiling at her like that after the trauma of the last minutes, when she had thought the altercation was going to turn into an argument of momentous proportions, all she felt was overwhelming relief.
    She rose to her feet, flying across the room and into hisarms as she said excitedly, ‘Tomorrow! First thing tomorrow I’ll start looking! Oh, Zeke!’
    And then, as he gathered her into him, his passionate kisses taking them both into a blaze of hungry sexuality where the only thing that mattered was the satiation their lovemaking would bring, nothing else seemed important.
    Later, once they had showered and gone to bed—only to love some more before settling down to sleep, entwined in each other’s arms—Marianne lay awake for some time after Zeke’s steady breathing told her he was asleep. A real home of their own would be a new beginning, and she would make it work, she told herself determinedly; she would. She couldn’t live without Zeke, she didn’t want to live without him, and he had met her halfway over this. That was a portent that they’d be happy…wasn’t it?
     
    It took Marianne six weeks of looking, as far away as Reading on the one hand and Watford and Chelmsford on the other, but eventually, in the third week of a bitterly cold November, she came across the house which immediately knocked all the others off her list.
    Ironically, considering she had had particulars from umpteen estate agents, it was her father who had put her on to the place. She and Zeke had spent the previous Sunday with him, and when she had mentioned they were looking for a family house—preferably on the outskirts of London somewhere, but with modern motorways distance wasn’t too much of a problem—Josh Kirby had nodded thoughtfully.
    ‘Funnily enough I might know of somewhere to suit you,’ he’d said quietly as he’d carved the enormous Sunday joint. ‘Old Wilf Bedlows—you remember him, Annie, came to your wedding?—is retiring early; only chatted to him on the phone the other week. He was theonly wealthy one among us at medical school; his parents were consultants, so I understand,