Miranda Lee - Mistress Of Deception

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Excerpt “You can’t marry Stevenson.” Alan ground out the words. “You don’t love him!” “How do you know?” Ebony said, using her fingers to comb her tangled hair back from her face. “Because you’re incapable of loving any man,” he stated harshly. Her short bark of laughter was half disbelieving, half mocking. “Certainly not a man like you!” His blue eyes blazed for a second before adopting an expression of cold contempt. “Then why keep on going to bed with me?”

About the Author MIRANDA LEE is Australian, living near Sydney. Born and raised in the Bush, she was boarding-school educated and briefly pursued a classical music career before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three grown-up daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast paced and sexy. Her interests include reading meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies. Miranda Lee is the author of Hearts of Fire.

Title Page Mistress Of Deception Miranda Lee 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

Copyright

Alan ground out the words. “You don’t love him!”

“How do you know?” Ebony said, using her fingers to comb her tangled hair back from her face.

“Because you’re incapable of loving any man,” he stated harshly.

Her short bark of laughter was half disbelieving, half mocking. “Certainly not a man like you!”

His blue eyes blazed for a second before adopting an expression of cold contempt.

“Then why keep on going to bed with me?”

MIRANDA LEEis Australian, living near Sydney. Born and raised in the Bush, she was boarding-school educated and briefly pursued a classical music career before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three grown-up daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast paced and sexy. Her interests include reading meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.

Miranda Lee is the author of Hearts of Fire.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

‘I PRESUME you’ll be going to the wool fashion awards tonight?’ Deirdre Carstairs asked her son over lunch.

‘Unfortunately, yes,’ was his cool reply.

‘Why “unfortunately”? Fashion is your business, after all.’ And your life, she added silently, and with some irritation. Alan had always been a workaholic, but lately he was worse than ever, sometimes working all night. One would have thought that establishing a chain of very popular off-the-peg menswear stores all over Australia, as well as personally running the manufacturing establishments to fill them, would have been enough. Now he was planning on branching out into designer clothes as well.

Deirdre suppressed a sigh. It was so difficult to tell Alan anything. He’d taken over as head of the family when he was only twenty, his father’s unexpected death from a heart attack having left the family’s clothes factory on the brink of receivership. Their home too had been found to be holding a second mortgage. Alan had had to work his fingers to the bone to pull them out of bankruptcy. But he’d succeeded, and succeeded very well. She was extremely proud of him.

The one unfortunate result of his success, however, was that he’d become rather bossy. He expected people just to go along with whatever he wanted. It must have come as a considerable shock, Deirdre realised, when the one woman who’d managed to capture his heart had upped and married another man a few years back.

Her head lifted, eyes narrowing with suspicion as she watched her son forking his fettuccine marinara into his mouth. ‘Is Adrianna going to be there?’ she asked casually.

His shrug seemed non-committal, but he was a master at hiding his feelings. ‘I doubt it. Her label hasn’t been entered into the competitions. She rarely comes to Sydney any more.’ He lifted his dark, glossy head, his very male but rather cruel mouth curving back into a wry smile. ‘Stop fishing, Mother. The reason I don’t want to attend tonight is because I’m tired.’

‘Then don’t go. Stay home here and watch it on television with your poor old mum.’

He laughed, and Deirdre wished he would laugh more often. Laughter lent some warmth to his coldly handsome face, and those hard blue eyes of his.

‘Poor old Mum, my foot. You’re not poor. I’ve made sure of that! And secondly, at fifty-five, you’re not old either. Why don’t you do me and yourself a favour and find some nice man to occupy your time? Then I won’t have to put up with your trying to organise my leisure time for me.’

‘Do you have any leisure time?’ she remarked archly.

‘Occasionally.’

‘Heaven knows when. Or what you do with it.’

Alan’s laugh was dry. ‘Don’t you worry about what I do with my time, Mother. I’m a big boy now.’

But Deirdre did worry about him. Since Adrianna’s rejection, Alan had not brought one woman home. She didn’t for one moment imagine her handsome son was celibate, but she shuddered to think he might be indulging in one-night stands rather than risk being hurt again. She did so want him to get married and have children, but she dared not broach the subject. He was very prickly about his private life.

‘Will Ebony be one of the models tonight, do you know?’ she asked instead.

‘I dare say,’ Alan returned in that same flat tone he always used when the subject of Ebony came up these days. Deirdre knew her son well enough to know that when he sounded his most calm he was, in fact, at his most annoyed.

It was a wicked shame, she thought, that their once close relationship had been ruined by money. Ebony was a sweet girl, but too proud in Deirdre’s opinion. Fancy taking offence when she found out that her parents’ estate had been negligible, and that Alan—as her appointed guardian—had generously, but quite rightly, paid for all her education and expenses. What had she expected him to do? She’d only been fifteen, after all.

Still, when the girl had discovered shortly after leaving boarding-school at eighteen that this was so, she’d apparently been most upset. She and Alan had had some kind of altercation in the library over the situation, resulting in Ebony running to her room, crying. Deirdre had been unable to comfort her, the girl saying over and over that she had to leave.

At the time Ebony had been doing a grooming and modelling course that Deirdre herself had given her as a Christmas present that year. When the lady running the modelling course had recommended Ebony to a modelling agency, saying she had the potential to reach the top in that profession, the stubborn child had immediately dropped her idea of going to teacher-training college and had pursued a career that would start paying immediately.

She’d been an instant hit, on both the catwalk and behind the photographers’ lenses, and it hadn’t been long before she was giving Alan a cheque every week in repayment. Then, as soon as she’d been earning enough money, she had moved out of the house and into a flat of her own.

Alan had been furious, and had refused to speak of Ebony for a long long time. It wasn’t till Deirdre had thrown her a twenty-first birthday party a little over a year ago that he had even deigned to be in the same room with her. Whenever she’d come to visit Deirdre on previous occasions, and Alan had been home, he would make some excuse to leave the house. This time, however, under threat from his mother, he had been civil to Ebony in front of the other guests, though far from pleased when he’d found out she was to stay the night. Forgiveness was not one of Alan’s strong points.