Back in the Lion's Den Read Online Free PDF

she thought sadly, yet with a wry grimace, because she didn’t give much for the chances of anyone who tried locking horns with Conan Ryder.
    And anyway, what could she tell them? That Conan was right? That the morning he’d come looking for her to tell her that her husband had died he’d discovered she’d spent the night in another man’s flat.
    She shuddered at the prospect of all the hurt and anger thatwould follow if she did disclose the truth to them. She couldn’t.
    Wouldn’t! she vowed grittily, aching under the weight of it.
    ‘Thanks, Dad,’ she murmured gratefully, and rang off.
    ‘So who’s this guy you’re going to be spending the summer with?’ Jodie Fisher asked as Sienna, returning from some last minute shopping before Conan arrived to pick them up, joined her on her porch after locking up her clapped out little red saloon.
    ‘He’s my brother-in-law—and I’m not spending the summer with
him,
as such,’ she corrected, keen to dispel any hopes her neighbour—a wild-haired blonde, who was noticeably pregnant and the mother of a four-year old—might be harbouring about her having designs on any man … least of all Conan Ryder. ‘Well I am, but not in the way you think. My mother-in-law’s sick,’ she outlined, feeling a nagging unease about how the woman would receive her. She didn’t elaborate to Jodie. Although Jodie was a good friend, often looking after Daisy at a moment’s notice—as she had done today—Sienna hadn’t confided to her exactly what the situation was with her late husband’s family. Such things were private. She had simply told Jodie that they lived miles away and she didn’t see them very often.
    ‘You wouldn’t be lying to me now, would you?’ Jodie’s attention was caught by something over Sienna’s shoulder. ‘Great Jumping Jacks! Wowee! Is that a BMW? Or is
that
a BMW? Is that
him?
No, don’t tell me! Let me guess! He’s pulling in here. It’s him! What I wouldn’t give for a brother-in-law who looked like that!’
    Jodie was clearly knocked sideways. But why the man made every woman who cast eyes on him want to swoon at his feet was beyond her, Sienna though grudgingly, with a careless glance over her shoulder. Yet the dark magnetism of the man behind the wheel of the graphite grey monster that had just pulled up in front of her own pathetic little excuse for a car caused a peculiar fluttering way down in her stomach.
    ‘It isn’t what you think, Jodie,’ Sienna told her when her friend continued to stand there agog. ‘You’ve got a one-track mind where anyone who isn’t hitched and as happy as you are—i.e. single and content—is concerned.’
    ‘Don’t give me that!’ Jodie pooh-poohed, sending her a sceptical glance. ‘You’re too young to settle for contentment, and you can’t hang on to the past for ever.’
    ‘Well, perhaps content’s the wrong word, but I’m adjusting to my life,’ she admitted, only just stopping short of telling Jodie that the last thing she wanted was another man in her life. ‘So if you’re thinking I’d consider making a match with Niall’s brother, then I’m afraid you’re going to have to think again. He’s far too arrogant, overbearing and too darn cocksure of himself ever to qualify as a contender for my affections, and—’ She broke off, enquiring of her friend, ‘What’s wrong with your mouth?
    Jodie was pulling faces, Sienna decided, as Shadow would have done, if he’d been able to, the day he’d rolled on that wasp-infested chocolate wrapper. When Jodie didn’t answer, however, she went on, ‘He’s too rich, he’s got a freezer cabinet for a heart and is about as approachable as a turned on water cannon. I wouldn’t sleep with Conan Ryder if he was the last man on—
What?
’
    Jodie’s eyes had come into the equation now. But even as it dawned on Sienna what her neighbour was trying to tell her, too late she felt that prickling awareness she always felt when Conan Ryder was