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minutes?’
    ‘Let’s try and give it at least ten.’
    ‘For the duration of the “talk”?’
    ‘If you like.’ He tilted his head and arched a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Think you could do that?’
    Celia didn’t really know what to think. A ceasefire? A truce? Really? Was it even possible after fifteen years of animosity?
    Maybe it was. If Marcus was willing. She could be civil, couldn’t she? She generally was. So with a bit of effort she could manage it now. Particularly since, despite herself, she was kind of intrigued to know what he wanted to talk to her about. And besides, she didn’t like the way he was making her sound like the unreasonable one here. She wasn’t unreasonable at all, and she’d prove it.
    ‘Why not?’ she said, tossing him a cool smile from over her shoulder and continuing towards the kitchen garden.
    * * *
    Well, that had gone a lot more easily than he’d expected, thought Marcus, going after her. He’d anticipated much more of a battle, much more withering sarcasm and scathing retort, but then perhaps that conversation with her father had knocked her confidence a bit. Not that she’d ever dream of showing it, of course.
    Nevertheless a mortified, confidence-knocked Celia was novel. Intriguing. More alluring than it probably should have been. As was a chat without all the acrimony, he reminded himself swiftly, which was the main point of this little exercise.
    ‘So I’m imagining that wasn’t quite the way you were intending the conversation with your father to go when you asked for my help,’ he said once he’d caught up with her.
    Celia snapped her gaze to his and shot him a look of absolute horror. ‘Not exactly.’
    ‘So much for small talk.’
    She shook her head as if remembering the conversation in all its awful glory, and winced. ‘I still can’t believe he said all that stuff about, well, you know, sorting me out and things.’
    ‘Nor can I.’ Although, to be honest, he was now so aware of her, it was pretty much all he could think about. That and getting to the bottom of why she detested him so much.
    ‘I’m so sorry.’
    ‘Why? It’s not your fault.’
    ‘I guess not, but, still, he put you in an awkward position.’
    ‘I doubt mine was as awkward as yours.’
    ‘Probably not.’
    ‘Nor is it your fault your father’s stuck in the Dark Ages.’
    ‘No, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear.’
    They reached the kitchen garden and he held open the gate. Celia brushed past him, making all the nerve endings in his body fizz and his pulse race as her scent slammed into him.
    ‘Where does it come from?’ he asked, just about resisting the urge to take advantage of her proximity and pulling her into his arms because that was not what this was about.
    ‘His attitude?’
    He nodded and followed her down the path that bisected the garden, watching the sway of her body that was exaggerated by the flimsy fabric of her dress and ignoring the punch of lust that hit him square in the stomach.
    Celia shrugged and sighed, then bent to look at the label stuck in the earth in front of a row of something leafy and green. Her hair tumbled down in long golden waves and Marcus found himself scanning the garden for a soft piece of ground he could pull her down to.
    ‘Who knows?’ she said, and he dragged his attention back to what she was saying. ‘The fact that he was a doted-on only child? That he had a stereotypical fifties mother? Or was he simply born a chauvinist?’
    ‘Why do you put up with it?’ he said, clearing his throat and determinedly shoving aside the images of Celia writhing and panting beneath him, her dress ruched up around her hips and her body arching against him.
    She straightened, swept her hair back with a twist and looked at him. ‘I don’t have any choice. He’s still my father even though I’m never going to be what he thinks I should be.’
    ‘Which is no bad thing,’ he said, briefly trying to imagine Celia as a housewife and