Unguarded Moment

• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• Harlequin Plus
  

Liam pulled the towel from her.


Alix wanted to protest, but the words wouldn't come. She was watching him watching her, and she knew an unquenchable excitement.


His hands closed on her waist, traveling downward until they rested on the curve of her hips. His gaze touched hers, then dropped slowly to her lips and down to her breasts, barely concealed by the tiny jade-green bikini. Then his mouth brushed hers gently, and she swayed forward.


Liam must have been aware of her arousal, for he laid a trail of little kisses on her eyelids, her tern pies, the corners of her mouth. Alix was trembling as she fought to retain her sanity. She had been kissed before but never with this slow insidious beguilement that was transforming her shaking body into one long ache of yearning.

SARA CRAVEN

is also the author of these

Harlequin Presents

STRANGE ADVENTURE

A GIFT FOR A LION

WILD MELODY

TEMPLE OF THE MOON

A PLACE OF STORMS

PAST ALL FORGETTING

THE DEVIL AT ARCHANGEL 

DRAGON'S LAIR

HIGH TIDE AT MIDNIGHT 

MOTH TO THE FLAME

SOLITAIRE

FLAME OF DIABLO

FUGITIVE WIFE

SHADOW OF DESIRE

MOON OF APHRODITE

SUMMER OF THE RAVEN

WITCHING HOUR

DARK SUMMER DAWN

and this

Harlequin Romance

THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

Harlequin Presents first edition December 1982

1982 ISBN 0-373-10551-7

Copyright © 1982 by Sara Craven.

As the taxi stopped, so did the rain, and Alix Coulter flung the sky an appreciative glance as she paid off the driver. Her three weeks in the sun had been a leisurely delight, but at the same time had spoilt her for the vagaries of the English climate in August. It had been a distinct let-down to descend on London through thick cloud and find a sullen, humid day waiting for her.

Driving through the glistening streets, she'd wondered half humorously, half apprehensively, whether the threatening weather was an indication of what was waiting for her. Bianca had been all smiles when she'd said '
Au revoir'
, but that was no guarantee that Alix would be equally warmly welcomed. Bianca's moods were—mercurial, to find the kindest way of putting it, Alix supposed. Even the slightest obstacle in her primrose path could bring on a tantrum which might last for days. 'Artistic temperament', the directors and producers who worked with her on her films tactfully called it. 'Sheer bloodymindedness' was the more down-to-earth description from Lester Marchant, Bianca's most recent husband, now licking his wounds and ruefully contemplating the divorce settlement in the United States.

Alix sighed a little. She had liked Lester, and was sorry when he finally declared enough was enough and moved out. But as she was the first to admit, it wasn't easy being a member of Bianca's entourage. She had worked for Bianca for three years now, and while it was undoubtedly exciting, it wasn't always enjoyable.

Alix had often wondered, especially when Bianca was being more than usually imperious, why she stood it. She was a good secretary. She was calm, efficient and well organised. She wouldn't have the slightest difficulty in finding another job — and an employer not nearly as trying and demanding as Bianca apparently took a delight in being. And yet she still stayed, restoring order to Bianca's hectic social life, smoothing out her travel arrangements, taking her frequent changes of mind in her stride as equably as she did Bianca's constant changes of clothes.

It must be family feeling, she told herself wryly.

She had been quite shattered to learn that Bianca Layton was her aunt, her own mother's sister. She could never remember hearing it referred to even once during her childhood, although Bianca was already a name in films on both sides of the Atlantic, celebrated for her outrageous beauty and her love affairs which sometimes, but not always, ended in marriage.

It was incredible even to think of Bianca coming from the same staid background as her mother. All her life Margaret Coulter had stood up for all the virtues that Bianca seemed deliberately to flout. Alix often wondered whether her mother had been ashamed or envious of her amazingly glamorous sibling. ,

When Alix had at last discovered the truth, learned that Bianca Layton was her aunt and was coming to visit them, she had appealed to her mother, 'But why did you never tell me? Why have you never said anything all these years?'

Margaret Coulter was a quiet woman, but now she was so silent that Alix was afraid she had offended her in some way.

At last she said, 'There seemed no reason for you to know. Her world isn't ours, and I never thought we would ever see her again.'

There was a note in her voice which told Alix quite unequivocally that it was Margaret herself who had desired the separation. She looked at her mother uncertainly, at the greying dark hair cut and waved neatly into the same style for the past ten years, at the figure, no longer youthfully slender but blurring into comfortable lines, and realised that Margaret was probably dreading the inevitable comparisons which would be made.

Margaret met her gaze and her smile was wintry. 'No, we're not alike,' she said. 'We never were. No one took us for sisters, even when we were at school. Sometimes I could hardly believe it myself.'

It had seemed even more unbelievable when Bianca finally arrived. She seemed to fill the house with her presence. Her perfume hung exotically in the air. She was charm, she glittered, and she never once by either word or deed gave any indication that she found her sister's home and her sister's family drearily suburban and middle class.

She was gracious in a remote way to Alix and to Debbie, her younger sister. She obviously Wasn't used to very young girls; all three of her marriages had been childless.

And when Bianca had departed as dramatically as she had come, and they were left with that inevitable feeling of anticlimax, Debbie had said, 'But why did she come? What did she want?'

But no one had an answer to that—at least not then. Sometimes Alix found herself staring at the place at the neatly set table with its embroidered cloth and matching china where Bianca had sat and wondering dazedly whether it had all really happened, or whether they hadn't been victims of some sort of mass hallucination, or one of those dreams where the Queen comes to tea as if she was an old friend.

It had been a fleeting visit, and yet it seemed to have had a profound effect. Margaret Coulter had never been the ebullient, extrovert type, but now she seemed to become more withdrawn than ever, and her family watched her with concern.

One night Alix, who couldn't sleep, came downstairs for a drink of water and heard her father's voice, almost coaxing.

'Don't worry, Meg. It's over. It's past.'

And her mother's response, her tone throbbing with something like hatred, 'Or it could be just beginning.'

Alix, unseen and unheard, went back to bed without her drink, instinct telling her that any sort of intrusion would be unwelcome.

What had her mother meant? she wondered as she tossed and turned restlessly. Aunt Bianca had said nothing about another visit. Was this what her mother was afraid of? Constant descents on them, like some goddess coming down from Olympus, with all the fuss and attendant publicity which would probably be inevitable? She could understand why quiet, conventional Margaret should find such an idea abhorrent. It was that unmistakable note of venom which disturbed her. Her mother was a good woman—everyone said so. She belonged to the Mothers' Union and raised money for Oxfam and a string of other charities. She didn't have an enemy in the world—or at least that was what Alix had always believed.

She could only surmise that at some time in the dim and distant past something had happened between the sisters which had driven them irrevocably apart. There had been a breach which Bianca's unexpected visit had done nothing to heal. On the contrary, old wounds seemed to be open and bleeding.

Gradually, as the weeks lengthened into months, and nothing was heard from Bianca, although plenty was heard about her—more films, another marriage—things began to return to normal.

And two years had passed before Bianca came back into their lives again.

'Cheer up, ducks. It may never happen.' The taxi-driver's cheerful voice cut across her reverie, and Alix started. He had unloaded her luggage, two cases in cream hide, on to the pavement beside her. 'Very nice too.' His gaze slid from the cases over Alix, and on to the house they were standing outside, so she wasn't altogether sure what he was referring to, and certainly not inclined to ask.

The tan she had acquired over the past few weeks suited her, she knew, and she was wearing her thick dark hair loose on her shoulders instead of in a neat chignon as she usually did. Although that, of course, was not entirely her own choice. It was just that Bianca preferred her to look neat and businesslike when she was working.

Well, perhaps not just that, Alix admitted to herself wryly. She remembered the first day she had come here, summoned by a telephone call not from Bianca herself but from Lester Marchant.

Would she come and see them, he had said, because he had a proposition to put to her. Alix had hesitated at first, her instinct telling her that her mother wouldn't want her to go. But her curiosity proved too strong in the end.

She could remember the uncertainty she had felt, standing at the foot of the steps for the first time, looking up at the tall Georgian house and wondering if she had the courage to ring the doorbell.

At least she didn't have to do that any more, she thought, as she fitted her key into the lock, and she was certainly a more confident and self-reliant person than she would have been if she'd gone on with her humdrum little job in a solicitor's office.

The driver carried her cases in and she thanked him with a tip and a smile he would remember far longer. Then she closed the door and stood looking around her with the usual pang of delight which assailed her every time she entered the house. It was a beautiful hall, broad and spacious, with a broad imposing staircase, and the walls panelled in honey-coloured wood. Bianca had other houses, but this was where she spent most of her time.

'In spite of everything, England is still the most civilised place to be,' she, was fond of saying in interviews. The only thing she didn't find civilised was the weather, and as autumn dwindled into winter with rain and fog and frost, she was generally ready to be off to her home in California, or to accept any of the numerous invitations to friends' villas in Marbella or the South of France.

Alix had seen a lot of the world in the past few years. She had expected to be taken on location when Bianca was filming, but she hadn't been sure about the trips which were really frivolity. But Bianca had dismissed her misgivings with an impatient wave of her hand. When she travelled, she liked her entourage with her, and that included Alix as well as Edith Montgomery who had been with her all her life, it seemed, fulfilling a variety of roles—a kind of companion-maid-masseuse-dresser-housekeeper rolled into one.

Monty was coming downstairs now, neat in the dark skirt and white tailored shirt she usually wore, and she looked at Alix with her brows raised.

'So you're back,' she observed grudgingly and unnecessarily.