Innocent Cinderella: His Untamed Innocent / Penniless and Purchased / Her Last Night of Innocence

Marin could have done without that fairly callous remark about her predecessor, but she’d smiled and agreed that sorting of most kinds was well within her remit.

Not realising that, less than a month later, it would be her own immediate future that would need her attention.

And there, she thought with faint annoyance, went that damned phone again.

‘People know I’m away,’ Lynne had told her as she’d left, adding drily, ‘And I’ve left Rad a written memo too, so you shouldn’t be disturbed.’

Except it wasn’t working out like that. Someone or more had clearly slipped through the net.

‘Please leave your message after the tone,’ she advised the unknown caller in a sing-song voice, before adding more hot water and some extra drops of perfumed oil to the bath and sliding further down into its comforting depths.

It must be lovely, she reflected wistfully, to be so much in demand, to have friends constantly ringing to suggest a cinema, a meal or even a drink.

And to have someone like Mike…

That probably most of all, she admitted. Because, at twenty, she still hadn’t had anything approaching a serious relationship with a man.

On the other hand, she was by no means Marin No-Mates. She’d gone on dates since she’d been in London, of course she had, generally making up foursomes with the other girls at the agency. Occasionally, the guy she’d been partnered with for the evening had asked to see her again. Occasionally.

But in all honesty it had never really mattered to her when there had been no further contact.

She was the first to recognise that she was shy and found it difficult to sparkle in company, that she didn’t know how to flirt, or take part in the jokey conversations that said one thing but meant something completely different. That she couldn’t in a thousand years imagine herself being drawn into the kind of casual intimacy that seemed the norm these days.

Not that she disapproved, exactly. What other people did on the briefest acquaintance was none of her business. She only knew that it wasn’t for her, that her own inhibitions weren’t so easily discarded. Probably the men she encountered knew it too, and decided to go after girls with fewer hang-ups.

‘Do you think I’m a freak?’ she’d once asked Lynne, troubled, but the other had only laughed.

‘No, honey pie, I think you’ve got principles and you’re going to need to fall very seriously in love before you’re tempted to abandon them. And there’s nothing remotely freakish about that, so stop beating yourself up.’

The memory of that made Marin smile. Lynne was so good for her, she thought gratefully, so warm and outgoing like her father, Derek Fanshawe, who’d met and fallen in love with Marin’s mother six years earlier.

And very different from her own father, who’d been a quiet man, Marin thought, but fond. Her childhood had been safe and comfortable in the shelter of her parents’ happy marriage.

Clive Wade had been a successful solicitor, who specialised rather ruefully in divorce, declaring that every case that crossed his desk made him count his own blessings all over again.

And he’d gone on counting them until the day he’d collapsed outside a courtroom and died with terrible suddenness from a heart weakness no one had ever suspected, leaving Marin’s smiling, bright-eyed mother as a grey-faced ghost unable to comprehend so devastating a loss.

Looking blankly back at people who told her that at least she had no money worries. That Clive had been a high earner, and had invested shrewdly. And that she should sell their mortgage-free home with its memories and move on.

But it had been three years before a friend, who worked with her in the charity shop where Barbara Wade spent most of her mornings, had persuaded her to join her on a luxury trip round the Norwegian fjords. Derek Fanshawe, a big man with a ready smile, had been assigned to their table on the first evening, and by the time the cruise had ended Barbara, to her own surprise, no longer felt guilty about warming to his charm and ebullient kindness. Realised in fact that she was going to miss him more than she’d believed possible.

Only to discover he was not prepared to become a reminiscence to be smiled over and put aside. That, as a widower with an only daughter, he wanted to see Barbara again and eventually ask her to make a new life with him.

There could, Marin realised, have been so many problems. Second families so often didn’t work, and at first she hadn’t wanted to like Derek, seeing this as disloyalty to her father’s memory.

But he’d accepted her dilemma with such understanding and sensitivity that it had been impossible not to meet him at least halfway. And, watching her mother bloom in his affection, she’d soon grown to love him and know that she could welcome their marriage.

While in Lynne she’d found not only a sister but a friend. So, in spite of recent events, she could count her blessings too.

Although the telephone issuing yet another imperative summons was definitely not among them.

Groaning, she leaned forward to let the water drain away, then lifted herself lithely out of the bath, reaching for one of the fluffy, white bath sheets waiting in a neat pile on the tiled surround and wrapping it round her like a sarong, tucking the ends in above her breasts.

She shook her hair loose, combing the damp ends with her fingers, before wandering barefoot down the passage into the living room.

She went to the telephone table and pressed the ‘play’ button. A man’s voice—not Mike’s—said abruptly, ‘Lynne, pick up. It’s urgent.’ The second message was simply a sigh, expressing impatience and exasperation in equal measure, and the third had been cut off as soon as the machine had kicked in.

Perhaps the caller had decided it was time to take no for an answer after all, Marin thought as she turned away—then froze as she heard the rattle of a key in a lock, the sound of the front door opening then slamming shut, followed by a swift and undoubtedly masculine tread approaching down the hallway.

Sick with fright, she looked round for something, anything that she could use to defend herself against the intruder.

Except that he was already in the doorway, his voice harsh with irritation as he demanded, ‘For God’s sake, Lynne, have you suddenly gone deaf?’ He paused with a swift intake of breath as realisation dawned.

Marin found herself being comprehensively surveyed by eyes as glacially blue as a polar sea. When he spoke again, his voice was ominously quiet. ‘Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?’

Obeying an instinct she barely understood, she made sure the folds of the towel were secure.

‘I could ask you the same thing,’ she retorted, her voice quivering a little, because she already knew the answer—that the unexpected and unwanted visitor looking her over as she stood there, next door to naked and embarrassed out of her life, was Lynne’s boss, Jake Radley-Smith.

‘Don’t play games, sweetheart,’ he advised, his tone as cold as his gaze. ‘Just answer my questions before I call the police. How did you get in here?’

‘I’m staying with my sister.’

‘Sister?’ he repeated, as if the word was in a foreign language. ‘But Lynne’s an only child.’

‘Stepsister, then,’ she said. ‘Her father married my mother several years ago.’

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I’d forgotten. But it doesn’t explain why she’s given you the run of the place. However, that can wait.’ He glanced round, raking a hand through dark hair worn rather longer than fashion dictated. ‘So where is Lynne? I need to talk to her urgently.’

‘She’s not here; she’s away for the weekend in Kent. She said she’d told you.’

The tanned face became, if possible, even more forbidding. ‘I thought I might catch her before she left.’

Which was exactly why Lynne had made such a speedy departure, thought Marin.

‘I’m not missing out again,’ her stepsister had said grimly as she’d fastened her weekend case. ‘I’m going before Rad the workaholic finds another pressing reason for me to stay in London, like he did last time I planned to go to Kent. He may be prepared to put in twenty-four-seven, but not everyone feels the same, and I’d rather have this time off than a bonus, however generous, or Mike’s parents will wonder if I’m avoiding them.’

Marin straightened her bare shoulders. ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘She’ll be back on Sunday.’

‘Which does not solve the problem I have this evening,’ Jake Radley-Smith said curtly.

She lifted her chin. ‘I quite see she should have stayed here on the off chance you might need her,’ she returned with equal crispness. ‘But Lynne happens to have a life, and on balance I’d say it’s rather more important for her to meet the people who are going to be her in-laws than hang around in order to pander to her employer’s last-minute requests.’

There was a silence, then he said, ‘Quite a speech, Miss…er…?’

‘Wade,’ she supplied. ‘Marin Wade. And, as you can see for yourself that Lynne isn’t here, I’d really like you to go, please.’

He said almost pleasantly, ‘I’m sure you would, Miss Wade, but it’s hardly for you to order me off my own premises.’ The blue eyes looked her over again very much more slowly, and she felt her throat tighten.