look on his face that he’d overheard.
The memory of her behaviour that day still made her cringe. But she had paid for it less than ten minutes later. Having left her snobbish companion talking to two other neighbours that they had bumped into outside the chemist’s, she popped across the road to the bank. She didn’t know whether Seth had followed her or not but as she came out of the building he was striding up the steps outside.
She could still feel the angry bite of his fingers around her wrist as he drew level with her, could still see the condemnation in those angry eyes.
‘Slumming it, were you? Is that what you thought you were doing with me down there in the sand?’ It was a harsh demand, but low enough so that anyone passing couldn’t hear. ‘You think you’re so high and mighty, don’t you?’ he breathed when she struggled free without answering, shockingly aware of Lance Culverwell coming up the steps to meet her. ‘Well, go ahead, have your five minutes of amusement. But don’t think that anything we did on that beach was for any other reason than because I knew I could!’
Those words still lacerated her as much as they had then, even though at the time she had known she deserved them.Making love with him had been so incredible for her that, crazily, even after her shameful treatment of him, she’d wanted to believe that they had been incredible for him, too.
But Lance Culverwell had had his suspicions about what had gone on. His interrogation had been relentless, and there had been rows back at the house. The following morning she had been packed off to London with her grandmother and she had never seen Seth again. Until today.
Pushing back the plate of crackers and cheese that she suddenly had no appetite for, she tried telling herself not to think about Seth Mason, to forget about him altogether. She hadn’t seen him in eight years before he had turned up at the gallery this evening, so there was no reason why she was ever likely to see him again.
Yes, she’d acted abominably, Grace admitted, but that was before she’d learned that pleasure, however fleeting, had to be paid for. Because six weeks after their uninhibited passion on that beach she had discovered that she was pregnant. That she was having Seth’s baby. Seth Mason, who wasn’t good enough even to be seen out with in her and her family’s opinion, was going to be the father of her child!
Chapter Three
‘W HAT do you have to say about the dawn raid on Culverwells, Ms Tyler?’ A microphone was thrust in her face and cameras flashed in a bid to capture the slim young blonde in the scooped-necked black t-shirt, combat trousers and trainers whose arm, draped with a casual jacket, was already reaching out to the revolving door.
‘No comment.’ She’d come straight in from New York and she couldn’t deal with the press now, not while she was tired, jet-lagged and wondering what the hell had been going on while she had been away. She would deal with them later, she decided, when she had had a chance to speak to Corinne. But her grandfather’s widow hadn’t been answering her calls, either at home or on her mobile. Grace knew that the only way anything could have happened to Culverwells was if Corinne had been behind it.
‘Surely you must have some statement to make? There will be changes in management—redundancies—surely?’
‘I said, no comment.’
‘But you can’t really think…?’
Their persistent questions were mercifully cut off by the revolving door. She was inside the modern, air-conditioned building, the head office of the company that still bore her grandfather’s name, even though it was in public ownership.
The silver-haired, moustached features of Lance Culverwell gazed down at her from the huge framed portrait in the plush reception area and, grabbing a moment to steady herself, Grace gazed back at it with tears of anger and frustration biting behind her eyes.
Oh, Granddad! What have you