Madeleine Ker - The Alpha Male

But then a dark figure loomed up next to her van, and it was too late to flee.

She lowered her window slowly. Ryan leaned down, his handsome face speckled with snowflakes, and smiled at her. “I’m glad you came,” he said softly.

“You wretch,” she retorted. “You didn’t tell me there would be anyone else.”

“They’re leaving in a short while,” he told her. “In any case, you know them both, Penny. And they’re dying to see you. Switch off your engine and come in.”

An English-literature graduate, MADELEINE KER has been writing for over two decades. Her first Harlequin romance novel was titled Aquamarine, and was published in 1983. Since then, she has penned thirty-three novels for Harlequin as well as a number of thrillers. She describes herself as “a compulsive writer,” and is very excited by the way women’s fiction is evolving. She is also a compulsive traveler and has lived in many different parts of the world, including Britain, Italy, Spain and South Africa. She has a young family (whom she has “relentlessly dragged around the world”) and a number of pets.

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IT STARTED being a bad morning when Hippy Dave backed his van into the workshop door at five o’clock in the morning.

Hippy Dave was one of Penny’s less orthodox suppliers. He and his wife, Chandra Dawn, roamed the country, haunting village fairs. They also collected natural things that Penny could use for her arrangements, like interesting pieces of driftwood, bark, dried moss, dead bulrushes and the like.

They often came up with unusual material that Penny couldn’t easily find elsewhere, so she welcomed their irregular visits. But she also suspected that Dave and the ethereal Chandra Dawn had other uses for the natural things they harvested; so when she heard the crunch of her workshop door being splintered by Dave’s fender, she went out in a thoroughly bad temper.

‘Dave! Have you been eating those magic mushrooms again?’

His tousled head emerged from the window of the rainbow-coloured van. ‘Sorry, Penny,’ he said shamefacedly. ‘Wasn’t concentrating.’

‘Oh, Dave,’ she said as she examined the damage. ‘This is all I need!’

Dave hopped out of the van, wearing overalls and a pair of yellow boots. ‘Just didn’t notice the door was open, Pen.’

The workshop of Penny’s florist shop opened into a mews, which was useful for deliveries, and where she parked her own smart little red van with its proud logo, PENELOPE WATKINS, FLOWERS & DéCOR. It had been while manoeuvring round her van, to get his own vehicle as close to the workshop entrance as possible, that Hippy Dave had caught the opened door. It now hung mournfully off its hinges.

‘I’ll fix the door, I promise,’ Dave said, squatting to take a closer look at the damage.

‘No, thank you,’ Penny said firmly. She’d had previous experience of Dave’s odd-job capabilities and knew she’d be better off getting a carpenter. And it would be useless asking Hippy Dave to foot the bill; he and Chandra Dawn were perennially broke.

As though reading her thoughts, Dave spread his grimy hands. ‘Tell you what. You can have all the stuff in the van for free. Make it up to you, at least in part. OK?’

‘You’d better get out of here before Ariadne arrives,’ Penny said. ‘She’ll skin you alive.’

Dave’s watery blue eyes widened as he contemplated the wisdom of this advice. Penny’s associate Ariadne Baker, half-Greek and with a Homeric temper to match, was not one of his biggest fans. She had expressed her opinion of his shortcomings loudly and pointedly on previous occasions.

‘Yeah, you’re right. Look, let’s get the gear out of the van. I brought you something real special this time. It’s yours for nuffink.’

‘Oh, don’t bother. Just clear off.’

‘Take it off my hands. Nobody else will buy this old rubbish,’ Dave whined. ‘I mean, this lovely natural object, sculpted by nature’s own hand. Have a look, Pen!’

‘Let’s see what you’ve got, then,’ Penny sighed, too depressed to want to look at the ruined door any longer.

Hippy Dave threw open the back door of his van to reveal what looked like an entire tree crammed in among boxes and crates.

‘What am I supposed to do with that?’ Penny asked blankly.

‘It’s lovely,’ Dave said, hauling the thing out of the van. ‘You’ll see. There! What do you think of that?’

‘I’m a florist, not a tree surgeon,’ Penny said, looking at the enormous branch Dave had produced. ‘This is no good to me!’

‘Look at the shapes in there,’ Dave said, half closing his eyes and waving his hands vaguely, the better to visualise nature’s handiwork. ‘That silvery bark is beautiful, and look at those strands of moss. That’s magic, that is!’

‘Dave, please take it away,’ Penny said. ‘I can’t use it.’

‘It’s unique!’

‘It’s useless. I don’t want it.’

Dave opened his mouth to argue, but just then a new voice joined the conversation.

‘What’s going on here?’

It was Ariadne Baker, who had just arrived, wrapped up against the frosty morning in a military overcoat, a cigarette in one hand, the other clutching a plastic cup of coffee she’d bought from a roadside stall on her way into town.

Twice-married and twice-divorced, Ariadne was a dramatically pretty woman around thirty, some seven years older than Penny, with jet-black hair and bright green eyes.

Those eyes hardened now as they took in the scene. ‘What’s that piece of dead tree for? And what happened to our door? Dave?’

Hippy Dave was not known for decisive movements, but a lifetime of evading the long arm of the law had given him a heightened instinct for self-preservation. He dropped the branch and hopped nimbly into his van.

‘Be seeing you, Pen,’ he called out of the window as the worn-out engine rattled into life.

And then the rainbow van was bounding down the mews, its still open back door waving a disreputable farewell to the two women.

‘He’s smashed our door!’ Ariadne gasped.

‘Yes,’ Penny said.

‘And he’s left that rotten old tree for us to clear up!’

‘Also true.’

‘I’ll have his guts for garters!’

‘You’ll have to catch him first,’ Penny pointed out. ‘He’ll be halfway to London by now. Help me get the branch inside.’

‘We don’t want that horrible old thing in our nice clean workshop!’ Ariadne exclaimed.