Promise Of Passion

By Natalie Fox

Playing with fire!

Caroline Maxwell was a bright, intelligent single woman with a busy career and an adorable four–year–old girl in her care.

Ellis Frazer, dynamic financier, was a confirmed bachelor with a sophisticated life–style.

They were complete opposites, and Caroline knew an affair with Ellis could end in heartache. But there was an explosive attraction between them, a promise of passion Caroline wasn't sure she could resist or even wanted to!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781460865354

Natalie Fox

Natalie Fox is the pen name of Natalie Guilar a popular writer of 26 romance novels from 1991 to 2002. In 1997 she won the Preston Citizen's book of the year award for Passion With Intent, and since then her books have been translated into many languages.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

‘THEY are all sold, I’m afraid,’ Caroline told the stranger as she stepped into the gallery.

The door banging shut after him had made her jump and rather impatiently she’d come out from her barn studio beyond the gallery, wiping her hands on her protective overall. Her mother had obviously forgotten to put the latch down on her way out for her afternoon walk with her granddaughter, Martha.

As the man turned towards Caroline her first thought was that she wished she’d leapt out of her filthy overall and into something more suitable for addressing a customer. He was a seriously attractive man, dark and tall with an air of sophistication about him that made her feel miserably shabby and wanting.

Not a local, she surmised as she stepped towards him, smiling now because anyone who crossed the threshold of the gallery door was a potential buyer. He was smoothing his hand down the back of her bronze Red Devon bull displayed on a pedestal. An art lover, Caroline mused, a sensuous man too by the look of the intensity of feeling in his touch. She never objected to people touching her work. Bronzes were for caressing and this man was milking the sensation for all it was worth.

‘The exhibition finished last weekend,’ she volunteered as she stopped in front of him. ‘But you are welcome to browse. It will give you an idea of the sort of work we do.’

He afforded her only half a smile but it was enough to have Caroline’s unaccustomed heart fluttering absurdly. His bone-structure was superb, very masculine with the firmness of arrogance. A nose any Greek god would be proud of. Wonderful mouth set off by a strong jawline beneath. Not conventionally good-looking but so darkly striking that Caroline was already casting the mould in her mind.

‘Do you have to scrutinise me quite so thoroughly?’ he said in a voice so smooth that Caroline was equally taken aback as she would have been if he had bawled at her.

Smiling to cover her embarrassment, she said, ‘I’m sorry. Sculpture’s what I do and studying bone-structure becomes a way of life. Most people don’t notice.’ She wondered if her scrutiny had been obsessively over the top and thought it probably had because he was an exceptional specimen. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you,’ she added as his eyes raked over her facial bone-structure framed by a crowd of tumbling tawny spirals that hung beyond her narrow shoulders. She wondered if he approved of the bane of her life, the hair that had a will of its own and rampaged wildly whatever she did to it. He was certainly taking full stock of it and now slowly letting his eyes descend down her long, slim body, shabbily clad as it was, not embarrassing her but certainly swamping her with awareness. It had certainly been a very long time since a man had looked at her that way.

‘I’m not embarrassed, not at all,’ he murmured at last as he moved on to the next sculpture.

Caroline watched him as he moved around the exhibits, only stopping to examine the bronzes. Her mother had exhibited with her, mingling her own pieces of delicate porcelain with Caroline’s more powerful, robust bronzes. The contrasting combination had worked and the exhibition had sold out on the bank holiday weekend just past.

‘If everything is sold, how come it’s all still here?’ he asked conversationally. He picked up one of her mother’s delicate pinch pots; eggshell-blue, it was as delicate as an eggshell. Caroline held her breath, her eyes transfixed on his fingers, gauging the possible clumsiness of them. Not a manual worker this man. His hands were strong but surprisingly sensitive. To Caroline’s relief he handled the delicate porcelain as if it was very precious, which it was, to her mother. She breathed again when he replaced it on its stand.

‘People don’t collect till an exhibition is over. I shall start packing up and dispatching in the morning,’ she told him.

‘Of course,’ he murmured absently, his eyes skimming over the rest of the exhibits. ‘Is it all your stuff?’

Caroline raised a brow, tensing slightly at his interpretation of her artistic products. ‘My stuff is the bronzes,’ she told him stiffly. ‘The other stuff is my mother’s.’

Another half-smile. He didn’t give much away, Caroline thought, the idea of a commission sliding away with his lack of enthusiasm for her and her mother’s work.

‘And it’s all sold?’ he echoed, as if not quite believing that possible.

Caroline felt her patience slipping with the declining thought of a commission. Not that she needed it desperately: it had been a successful year so far. But the winter months were drawing ever closer and without tourists it was sometimes a struggle to make ends meet from season to season.

‘Is that so surprising?’ she challenged brittly but not brittly enough to put him off considering a purchase at a later date.

His brows went up in surprise at her tone. ‘Did I give that impression?’ He gave her no space to answer but shrugged and went on. ‘To be frank I’m not au fait with all this…’ A hand came up in a sweeping gesture of the white-walled gallery.

So he wasn’t interested in buying, just whiling away the time, but sometimes a sale came from these time-killing browsers. Still, she couldn’t resist muttering under her breath, ‘And it’s not even raining.’

He heard and got the point and this time she was blessed with a smile that brought a hesitant smile to her own full lips. He turned away from her and left Caroline with a feeling that an introduction should have been made at that point and she wasn’t sure if it was her failure to execute one or his.

‘So what can I help you with, or are you just passing time till the next London train leaves?’ she asked bluntly. She really did have a lot of work on and he wasn’t going to buy, she felt sure.

He was a Londoner, she guessed, surprised at her own curiosity about him because, though her first impression of him had been one of awesome admiration for his dark good looks, she was now beginning to doubt he had anything to back it up. His manner wasn’t exactly warm and hospitable and his clothes—linen suit and mulberry-coloured silk shirt—were a far cry from anything she’d seen in this tiny Cornish coastal town.

‘No, I’m not merely passing time,’ he told her, turning back to face her, the smile gone and a coolness about him now that chilled Caroline. ‘Just weighing up your talent,’ he added smoothly.

Caroline defiantly held his eyes before speaking, wondering what he was getting at and wondering if he practised hard to achieve this haughty air about him.

‘Really? Well, if you’re not au fait with this sort of stuff you just might get your calculations wrong.’

‘Ah, but I did my homework before coming,’ he said mysteriously. ‘I asked around, found you were the best bronze sculptress in the south-west. So here I am.’

So he was a customer after all. She allowed her emotions to do an about-turn. She smiled at him encouragingly.

‘You have something in mind?’

She should have added ‘a commission’ to that query because she saw a suggestive remark looming on the horizon. But one didn’t materialise and she realised her assessment of him was punched with holes. Usually she was quite good at gauging people’s characters but this stranger was different. She had nothing definite to go on but he certainly wasn’t the usual run-of-the-mill man. Not a flirt but not a man uninterested in women either. Funny, but she doubted he was married.

His dark eyes locked with hers. ‘I’d like to offer you a couple of commissions,’ he told her.

Caroline pushed for a smile. ‘Two,’ she mused, careful not to sound too over-enthusiastic, careful not to sound sarcastic either. His tone had suggested she might fall at his feet in gratitude. But she found she was wrong again as he went on.

‘I realise that you must be very busy but I would like you to seriously consider the work. It is very important to me.’

Curiosity prompted her next words. Curiosity about what might be important in his obviously successful world. ‘In that case let me offer you a coffee and we can talk about it.’

She gave him another smile and led the way across the gallery, through her vast barn studio, which she had been in the process of tidying, and down a flight of flagstone steps to the main white-washed cottage. The cottage and the bits that had been added on over the decades were tumbled together on three uneven floors, tucked into the cliff-side. The front door was the door of the gallery off a narrow lane and the back door, two floors down in the kitchen, opened on to a patio and a poor excuse for a garden and the cliff-path. An unusual off-beat property that her mother had bought after the death of her husband, not able to face life in the draughty old rectory at Helston on her own. Caroline had moved down to live with her after the second tragedy in their lives, the tragic death of Caroline’s sister, Josie.

Caroline had settled in the seasonal coastal village, surprising herself because as a teenager she couldn’t wait to get away from Cornwall to study in London. And there she had stayed, completing her training and setting up with a group of like-minded friends in a converted warehouse in the Docklands area of London. It had been a wonderful existence, doing exactly as she pleased, gathering inspiration from a busy city and swapping artistic viewpoints with her friends. Then David had happened and her world had been complete and then suddenly with Josie’s death, it had all fallen apart. Her life was vastly different now; it couldn’t help but be with Martha. But all in all she had found a certain contentment and was absorbed with her work and happy that her mother was coping so beautifully at last.

‘Do sit down. I’ll make coffee. I won’t be a minute.’

She left him gazing out of the plate-glass window that stretched almost from wall to wall of the sitting-room. It was a modern window, alien to the rest of the property, one that previous owners had put in to take advantage of the stupendous views. The Atlantic rolled away forever beyond the glass, and below the cliff dropped away to a craggy cove with golden sands. A coastal path that only a few local residents knew about led down to the cove.

‘There used to be a path down to the cove years ago. Is it still there?’ he asked when Caroline came back into the room with a tray of coffee which she placed on a side-table.

She’d slid out of her overalls while the kettle boiled and had picked pieces of plaster out from her wild hair. Now she gazed at him in surprise.

‘Yes, it is,’ she admitted. ‘How did you know about it? Are you local?’

‘I grew up round here,’ was all he said. He took the coffee she offered him and Caroline nodded to the wing-chair by the window.

He sat down, only on the edge of the seat as if he wasn’t planning on staying long.

‘Can you do horses and people?’ he suddenly asked, taking Caroline by surprise again because she had honestly thought he might have settled into reminiscing about his childhood in the area.

‘Depends,’ Caroline said, perching on the win-dowsill, her back to the seascape beyond.

‘Depends on what—money?’ he suggested darkly and then added in a lighter tone, yet laced with cynicism, ‘I can afford you.’

A small rebellious bubble swelled inside Caroline. He had money and liked to show it and he had a contemptuous attitude towards women. She wouldn’t allow the bubble to burst, though; he was a customer, she reminded herself.

‘It depends on whether you want the people mounted on the horses, life-size!’

He smiled thinly and put his coffee-cup down on a side-table. ‘I read about you but I did warn you I’m not very well informed on this type of thing.’

‘So why the commission?’

He shrugged. ‘Personally I find the thought of a bronze bust of someone ostentatious, but I try to suffer my mother’s whims whenever possible.’

Caroline’s full lips parted in surprise. Well, I wouldn’t have put him down as a mother’s boy, she thought, but there you go.

‘She wants it, I jump. Life-size, of course; my mother will hear of nothing less. As for the horse, that’s my whim, my passion. He’s everything I’m not and I want him immortalised in a medium that suits the strength of his character. Can you understand that?’

Caroline wasn’t sure what she was expected to understand so she just nodded.

‘My mother doesn’t travel, neither does my stallion unless it’s to stud, so you will have to come to us, of course.’

Caroline shook her head. ‘I can’t do a full-scale horse,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t the facilities for such a size, but if a scaled version was acceptable I’m sure——’

‘Quite acceptable,’ he said, getting to his feet. He reached in his inside pocket and brought out a card. ‘Ten o’clock in the morning suits me well enough. I’ll pay your travelling expenses, of course——’

‘Just a minute,’ Caroline interrupted, startled now. He was going too fast for her. She stood up and took the card he held out to her but didn’t read it. ‘I can’t just put down everything to suit you and your mother’s whims.’ She saw a flash of impatience in his eyes but wasn’t in the least bit perturbed by it. She lifted her chin. ‘I’ve other commitments——’

‘Do you want this commission or not?’ he snapped.

Caroline’s green eyes widened. ‘Yes, I want your commission but I don’t need it, Mr…’ she lifted the card and read from it’…Mr Frazer.’ Her eyes went back to meet his. ‘This is a family business, not a hobby venture. My mother and I have other work on and——’

‘Name your price.’

‘It’s not a question of money,’ Caroline protested, her skin darkening with anger.

‘It’s aways a question of money,’ he said darkly. He reached in his inside pocket again.

Caroline held up her hands in protest. ‘Just a minute. If you’re reaching for your cheque-book, forget it!’ she almost shouted, then calmed herself. This was obviously something important to him and work was work, though she suspected working for him could never be a labour of love. ‘Look, I’m not refusing the work,’ she said in a placatory tone underpinned with firmness. ‘But I do have other commitments that must be dealt with