SARA WOOD - The Seduction Trap

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Excerpt “You’ve been very kind.” “I could hardly leave you to cope. I’ll let myself out.” Either Tessa’s hearing was faulty, or he sounded husky. She frowned, unable to understand why. “I’ll come around in the morning,” Guy added. “No!” she demurred. “I couldn’t possibly let you. You don’t need to—” “I do.” To her alarm, he took her hand in both of his and stared earnestly into her rapidly widening eyes. All her hormones were telling her to encourage him. Luckily she found the tag ends of her common sense and drew back, her face set in disapproval. “No!” she muttered sharply, her pulses racing like wildfire from the warm intimacy of his hands. Guy gave her one of his heart-stopping smiles. “I must,” he said with a helpless shrug. “You know you have something I want very badly. And I think you’d like to give it up.”

About the Author Childhood in Portsmouth, England, meant grubby knees, flying pigtails and happiness for SARA WOOD . Poverty drove her from typist and seaside landlady to teacher till writing finally gave her the freedom her Romany blood craved. Happily married, she has two handsome sons: Richard is calm, dependable, drives tankers, Simon is a roamer—silversmith, roofer, welder, always with beautiful girls. Sara lives in the Cornish countryside. Her glamorous writing life alternates with her passion for gardening, which allows her to be carefree and grubby again!

Title Page The Seduction Trap Sara Wood www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

Copyright

“I could hardly leave you to cope. I’ll let myself out.”

Either Tessa’s hearing was faulty, or he sounded husky. She frowned, unable to understand why.

“I’ll come around in the morning,” Guy added.

“No!” she demurred. “I couldn’t possibly let you. You don’t need to—”

“I do.”

To her alarm, he took her hand in both of his and stared earnestly into her rapidly widening eyes. All her hormones were telling her to encourage him. Luckily she found the tag ends of her common sense and drew back, her face set in disapproval. “No!” she muttered sharply, her pulses racing like wildfire from the warm intimacy of his hands.

Guy gave her one of his heart-stopping smiles. “I must,” he said with a helpless shrug. “You know you have something I want very badly. And I think you’d like to give it up.”

Childhood in Portsmouth, England, meant grubby knees, flying pigtails and happiness for SARA WOOD. Poverty drove her from typist and seaside landlady to teacher till writing finally gave her the freedom her Romany blood craved. Happily married, she has two handsome sons: Richard is calm, dependable, drives tankers, Simon is a roamer—silversmith, roofer, welder, always with beautiful girls. Sara lives in the Cornish countryside. Her glamorous writing life alternates with her passion for gardening, which allows her to be carefree and grubby again!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

AN ARM, clad in softly tailored linen reached out of the black convertible. A lean, male hand, strong and tanned, traced the letters on the road sign. ‘Turaine.’ Guy savoured the name, almost reverently.

‘Yeah. It’s a lovely sign, as signs go,’ came the sarcastic tones of the woman in the driver’s seat beside him.

He grinned. ‘Heaven forbid that I should commit the sin of sentimentality,’ he said drily in his deep New Orleans drawl. ‘Hell, I’ll be leaping out and kissing the ground next!’

Giselle made a face. ‘Exactly how much ground is yours?’

‘Ours, sweetheart. What’s mine is yours, now my father’s dead. The valley—’ he gave a careless sweep of his arm, which embraced lush pastureland, walnut groves and vast chestnut forests ‘—and the village. Apart from three cottages owned by my father’s mistress. But I’ll have them within the week. Something tells me she’ll be eager to leave when I turn up.’

Bleak shadows from the past changed the colour of his eyes, deepening the dark sable to a hard ebony and giving the lie to his confident, casual tone. It had been nineteen years since he’d set foot in Turaine. He brooded over the enforced exile of himself and his mother because of his father’s obsession for another woman. And now he was thirty-five and the mother he’d protected and cared for was dead.

He’d exchanged his privileged background for poverty, supporting his bewildered mother by taking any job that came along: waiting on tables, working in kitchens and finally marrying into the gourmet food business.

At last it was time to come home. Time— almost —to mellow out and enjoy his financial success. Powerful emotions surged in his heart and he chipped away at them in case he did something stupid, like running Sound of Music -style through the meadow. If he wasn’t careful, he thought in amusement, he’d lose his reputation for being unruffled under stress.

‘Looks a bit tatty,’ observed Giselle, frowning at the village on the small hill ahead.

Guy looked closer. It did. A faint sense of foreboding took the edge off his contentment. ‘A few repairs needed, I think,’ he said, brushing away anything that might blight his homecoming.

Quite calmly he asked Giselle to drive on—over the well-remembered stone bridge where he’d fished as a child, up the winding lane which skirted the medieval walls where he’d kissed his first girl, and through the narrow arch into Turaine itself.

‘Stop here,’ he said laconically on their entering the square.

He felt amused by his own self-control. Who, seeing the languid unfolding of his long legs from the car, the deliberate pause for a minute adjustment to the designer sunglasses and the orderly smoothing of his windswept black hair, would have imagined that he felt ready to break into song with happiness?

It was a pity that no woman had ever given him this sense of joy. Not even, he had to confess, the incomparable Giselle.

With no outward or inward enthusiasm, she gracefully unfolded her long tanned legs from the convertible, crossly checking over the small square. What a dump! Maybe, she thought, the château would be more to her taste.

‘Deserted!’ she observed disdainfully. ‘Not even a bar open? No café? What kind of a French village is this?’

‘Temporarily dry, by the looks of it.’ Guy’s keen eyes noted something else: definite signs of neglect. Well, he’d pull everything together soon enough. ‘No matter. Once we’re indoors, I’ll crack open a bottle of vintage champagne to celebrate.’

A little cheered, she watched Guy saunter with French nonchalance over to a corner of the square, which she knew—since she’d been told ad nauseam —dropped directly to the River Dordogne over a hundred feet below. In that corner would be the gates to the Château Turaine, with its long drive flanked by…

Giselle frowned, halting her internal monologue in astonishment. Guy stood motionless before the massive iron gates, his elegant figure displaying all the signs of severe shock.