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to enter his home.
    The interior was more or less what she had expected—largeand warm and beautifully furnished in a tasteful mix of modern and antique.
    Light hands smoothly removed the jacket. Glancing up and around, she mumbled a wary, ‘Thanks,’ but felt uncomfortably lost without the jacket to hide in.
    Leading the way across the square hallway, he opened a door and invited her to precede him through it. In silence she went, still telling herself that she was going to find her aunt Laura waiting there—
needing
to find her aunt Laura waiting there.
    But, except for the obvious fact that this was a man’s very comfortable study—with its roaring log fire, light-oak-panelled walls and heavy oak furniture—the room revealed no sign of Aunt Laura.
    Behind her, the door closed. She turned to confront him.
    ‘Where’s my aunt?’ she demanded.
    Sleek black eyebrows shot up. ‘I do not recall saying that your aunt would be here,’ he replied, moving gracefully across the room to where a big solid desk stood with its top clear of papers.
    Had he said it? Claire’s brow puckered up as she tried to remember just what he had said about her aunt, and found she couldn’t say for sure.
    But the impression had been drawn, she was sure of it. ‘Then why have you brought us here?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘If it wasn’t to meet up with Aunt Laura?’
    He had switched on a small laptop computer and was studying whatever had appeared on the screen while casually tapping at one of the keys—though his head lifted at the question, his dark eyes drifting up the full length of her then back down again in a way that raised every fine hair on her body. ‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ he replied, his attention already back on the computer screen again. ‘You are a mess, quite frankly,’ he stated bluntly. ‘And in no fit state to take care of yourself, never mind a helpless youngbaby. So, for the time being at least, you will stay here with me.’
    ‘But I don’t want to stay here!’ Claire cried, too horrified by the prospect to dress up her protest.
    That brief grim smile of his that he liked to use so much registered her horror. ‘I wasn’t aware,’ he drawled, ‘that I was giving you a choice.’
    No choice? Who did he think he was, for goodness’ sake? ‘It isn’t your problem.’ She flatly refused the offer. ‘We will manage somehow,’ she insisted with more confidence than she really felt. ‘My aunt—’
    ‘Your aunt,’ he interrupted, ‘is already out of the country. And since we both know that she would rather—break
both
wrists,’ he said, with a telling glance at Claire’s plaster-cast, ‘than be forced to play housemaid to anyone, then I think we can take her out of the equation, don’t you?’
    Out of the country—out of the equation? ‘But it’s you who says where Aunt Laura goes!’ she pointed out confusedly.
    He didn’t even deign to answer that. Instead he lost interest in whatever was written on the computer screen and snapped it shut then straightened to give Claire his full attention.
    She was still standing where he had left her, looking pale, drawn, and totally bewildered. A short sigh whispered from him. ‘Look—why don’t you sit down?’ he suggested. ‘And at least allow me to call the kitchen and order you something to eat and drink. I have been with you for most of the afternoon but as far as I have seen you have only taken a couple of sips of water in all that time …’
    As it was, she had already determined that she wasn’t accepting anything else from this man until she knew just what it was that was going on here, so the desire to tell him where to put his offer was strong.
    But she was thirsty and cold, and at this moment she was ready to kill for something hot inside her stomach. ‘A cup of tea would be nice,’ she nodded. ‘Please,’ she added belatedly.
    Then—seemingly because she had given in to one craving—she found herself giving in