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second thoughts. Why would he want to re-ignite an affair with a woman he had once deemed unsuitable? With any luck he had reconsidered, deciding the past should remain the past, after all.
    ‘Mommy,’ Dylan’s voice, insistently demanding her attention. ‘Pleeeasse!’
    ‘Why not! Go grab a coat though. It’s going to be cold out there.’
    Time spent outdoors blew the cobwebs away. Rhianna ran along the sand with her son, fed the seagulls and finished the outing off with a hotdog from the stand by the wharf. After two hours, Dylan was yawning his head off from the fresh air and activity and they headed for home.
    Grady was still out by the time she returned. He’d gone into the city for another meeting with Edmund Bishop. By now it looked certain that he would obtain the lucrative contract to supply all of Bishop Enterprises new computer hardware. As this entailed several thousand workstations, winning the contract was a definite feather in Grady’s cap. Rhianna had been pleased to see how cheerful her employer had been over breakfast that morning, laughing and joking with Dylan which was unusual. Grady was not a morning person and the most they usually got from him were uncommunicative growls.
    After tucking Dylan into bed for a nap, Rhianna decided to grab a quick shower to warm up. She was just slipping into her robe when there was a light tap on the door.
    ‘Yes?’
    Enid Carstairs, the housekeeper, put her head around the door. ‘Visitor for you Rhianna. I popped him in the study.’
    Rhianna froze for a moment. A visitor. .. She spoke from between lips that had suddenly gone dry. ‘Who... who is it Enid?’
    ‘He didn’t give his name but he’s a foreign gentleman.’ Catching Rhianna’s expression, Enid looked concerned. ‘Is everything all right dear?’
    ‘I...’ What to say? What could she say? Disaster had struck and the devil had walked in the door. Gabriel Ortega was in the house, waiting to her right now. And their son was sleeping two rooms away . Everything was completely and utterly wrong! She tried to collect herself. ‘Give me a minute. I’ll be right down.’ Somehow, she had to get him out of the house. ‘Oh, and Enid? I might have to... to go out for a while. Could you mind Dylan if I do?’
    ‘Always a pleasure,’ the woman assured her, although there was no mistaking the curiosity in the look she cast Rhianna. The housekeeper must think she behaving very oddly.
    Rhianna got dressed, dragging on jeans and a black cotton sweater. Her hair hung down her back in a loose mass and she left it like that, uncaring of how she looked; in fact, she hoped she looked terrible. Gabriel Ortega had seen her dressed up for a night out but her day-to-day persona was very different. Perhaps when he caught sight of her he would realize that she wasn’t the alluring young woman she had once been.
    She couldn’t have been more wrong. Five minutes later Gabriel looked around from the titles he had been studying in the bookcase and saw a woman that made his heart momentarily stand still. Far from appearing dowdy, Rhianna looked extraordinary lovely, her thick silvery hair hanging loose down her back, her skin still faintly flushed from the shower so that her cheeks were tinged with pink. She wore no makeup but then, she didn’t need anything to enhance her naturally pale beauty.
    Gabriel sucked in a deep breath. It had taken him exactly twenty-four hours longer than he had anticipated to track Rhianna down and he his impatience had been an unfamiliar irritant. Now that she was standing before him again he had to fight down a sudden, overwhelming compulsion to walk across the room and claim that full, sensuous mouth with his own. On the drive over he had determined that he would be patient with her. While her body had told him that she was far from immune to him when they danced, there were other matters that must be dealt with if he was to achieve the outcome he desired; namely, Rhianna, in his life