Sally Wentworth - One Night Of Love

Cover Page

Excerpt “I’m very, very attracted to you, Dyan.” Bending, Oliver lightly kissed her eyelids, her cheek, her lips. Dyan lifted her hand and ran her fingertips over his mouth. “We hardly know each other,” she said softly. “We only met a few days ago.” “Long enough to know that we like each other. Long enough to recognize the sexual attraction that we both feel. And don’t say that it isn’t there,” Oliver added, capturing her hand. “You know it as well as I do.” “I wasn’t going to deny it,” Dyan admitted. “But…” She paused, seeking the right words, but Oliver finished the sentence for her. “But you’re not the kind of girl who goes with a man on the first date?”

About the Author SALLY WENTWORTH was born and raised in Hertfordshire, England, where she still lives, and started writing after attending an evening course. She is married and has one son. There is always a novel on the bedside table, but she also does craftwork, plays bridge and is the president of a National Trust group which goes to the ballet and theater regularly and to open-air concerts in the summer. Sometimes she doesn’t know how she finds the time to write!

Title Page One Night Of Love Sally Wentworth www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Copyright

Bending, Oliver lightly kissed her eyelids, her cheek, her lips.

Dyan lifted her hand and ran her fingertips over his mouth. “We hardly know each other,” she said softly. “We only met a few days ago.”

“Long enough to know that we like each other. Long enough to recognize the sexual attraction that we both feel. And don’t say that it isn’t there,” Oliver added, capturing her hand. “You know it as well as I do.”

“I wasn’t going to deny it,” Dyan admitted. “But…” She paused, seeking the right words, but Oliver finished the sentence for her.

“But you’re not the kind of girl who goes with a man on the first date?”

SALLY WENTWORTHwas born and raised in Hertfordshire, England, where she still lives, and started writing after attending an evening course. She is married and has one son. There is always a novel on the bedside table, but she also does craftwork, plays bridge and is the president of a National Trust group which goes to the ballet and theater regularly and to open-air concerts in the summer. Sometimes she doesn’t know how she finds the time to write!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

THE signature beneath the letter from a leading London insurance company was completely indecipherable, but, thanks to his secretary’s having neatly typed his name, Dyan was able to read that the letter was from Oliver Balfour, the man they were wishing on her throughout the expedition. Dyan had a theory, evolved from years of reading company letters, that the higher up the hierarchical scale a man rose, the less legible his signature became. And on that measure this man must be close to the top.

Her mouth twisted into a little grimace when she saw the terse command for the highly secret recovery expedition to find the yacht, Xanadu, to start at once, which, although it was put politely, was a definite order. Didn’t these people ever realise that there was seasonal weather and the state of the tides to be taken into consideration, for heaven’s sake?

The rest of the correspondence about the ill-fated Xanadu was in the file in one of their ‘Top Secret’ metal boxes to which Dyan had been given the key when her boss, Barney Starr, had handed her the project. Before opening it, Dyan had locked herself in her office and pulled down the blind, measures insisted on by Barney who had constant nightmares about industrial espionage. In this case she thought he might be overdoing it, because the Xanadu was only a small vessel as ships went, but when she read the list of missing artefacts sent by the insurance company Dyan gave an incredulous whistle. It seemed that the motor yacht was the luxury toy of a millionaire pop-singer who had been over to Europe on a buying spree. Nothing wrong in that, except that he had been buying old and almost priceless objects: Russian icons, Fabergé eggs, Holbein miniatures, Greek and Egyptian funerary artefacts, a Roman statue…The list seemed to go on endlessly.

The millionaire had been taking them all back to adorn his new home in the West Indies, but a couple of days before they’d been due to arrive the boat had been caught in the tail end of a hurricane and capsized. The crew and passengers had got off and been rescued safely, but the boat had gone down in the Caribbean Sea. Probably because of the huge waterproof safe that had been built into it to house all the objets d’art, Dyan thought grimly as she studied the plan of the yacht. And raising that safe would be her problem, and that of the team she would pick to help her. Reaching out for the phone, Dyan began to put that team together.

Three weeks later, Dyan was standing in the airport in Nassau on New Providence island, waiting for the flight from London which was bringing Oliver Balfour to join them. She had worked extremely hard during those three weeks, getting the expedition ready to put to sea, but had done so with maximum efficiency and the minimum of fuss. It was important that no other salvage company should hear about the Xanadu and its cargo, so it was necessary to keep a low profile. She hadn’t even told the crew what they were going after yet, letting them think it was a historic wreck. The only people who would know the truth were herself and the man from the insurers, whose plane, she saw from the Arrivals board, had just touched down on the runway.

Dyan wondered what he would be like, and didn’t look forward to meeting him. She would much rather have handled the expedition on her own, without some man from the insurers breathing down her neck. From the wording of his letters Balfour sounded to be a typically chauvinistic male, and she could just guess at his reaction when he found out that there was a woman in charge of the expedition. That he hadn’t been told she was a woman, Dyan was all too certain; Barney, the head of the salvage company, had a wicked sense of humour and he always found it extremely entertaining not to tell his customers that they would be dealing with a female. When he spoke to her, or spoke of her to a client, Barney always referred to her as just ‘Logan’, without any prefix, and also conveniently dropped the pronoun. Often she’d heard him on the phone saying, in his broad American accent, ‘I’m putting Logan in charge. One of my best salvors, a qualified oceanographer. Logan will handle it for you.’ A couple of dozen times she’d seen the customers’ smiles of greeting slip into a look of stunned surprise when they’d realised that ‘Logan’ was a female. And not only female but also young, tall and curvy, and with a mass of rich chestnut hair into the bargain!

The customers’ first impulse—and they were without exception male—was to get on the phone to Barney and demand to know what the hell was going on. They were brusquely told that there was no sexual discrimination in the Starr Marine and Salvage Company, that Logan had been hand-picked for the job and would do a good one. It had then been left to Dyan to prove herself which, because she really was good at her job, she had always managed to do, but she still found it annoying, especially as she knew full well that if she’d been a man her proficiency would have been accepted without question. It was a matter of pride that every customer for whom she’d worked had asked for her by name if they’d needed to use the company again. But Oliver Balfour, of course, was a new customer and she fully expected to encounter the usual problems.

Picking up the jacket of the short-skirted linen suit she was wearing, Dyan hooked it over her shoulder and made her way down to where she was to meet Mr Balfour. A great many beautiful, long-legged girls passed through Nassau airport on their way to or from the holiday resorts, but even so Dyan attracted attention. It wasn’t only her legs and that flaming hair; there was an air of cool confidence about her, in her walk and the proud set of her shoulders. It told anyone who cared to look that at twenty-six she had already made it, had got to where she wanted to be, and— apart from chauvinistic customers—no longer had to prove anything to anyone.

Dyan supposed that she could have dressed more conservatively for this meeting, made it less of a shock for the customer, but she didn’t see why she should; it was her work that was supposed to be important, not her appearance. So she perched her sunspecs on the top of her head, fished the small sign saying ‘STARR MARINE’ from her bag and held it up in front of her as she waited for the passengers to come through.

She didn’t expect to have to wait too long; the Club and Business Class passengers always came ahead, and she was quite sure her customer would be among them. A man was already emerging into the concourse, tall and carrying his one large bag himself. Dyan put him down as a returning local and looked past him for someone pushing a trolley loaded with enough luggage to last several weeks. But then she did a double-take as the man stopped in front of her and said, ‘Are you looking for me? I’m Oliver Balfour.’

It wasn’t often that Dyan had to tilt her head to look at a man, but she had to now, which must make him about six foot three, she judged. And so very English-looking in his well-cut dark business suit, worn regardless of West Indies heat. But what surprised her most about him was his youth. As he was a director of his company she had naturally expected him to be at least middle-aged, but this man looked quite young, only in his early thirties, his features still lean and clear-cut. And it was a good-looking face, which she also hadn’t bargained for.

Taken aback by surprise, she hadn’t answered, and he said on an impatient note, ‘Well? Are you waiting for me or not?’

She gave him a hasty smile. ‘Yes, I am. Welcome to Nassau, Mr Balfour.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Dyan Logan.’

Dyan looked at his face expectantly, waiting for realisation to dawn, for anger to take the place of shock, but to her surprise his brows merely drew together slightly for a moment and then cleared. Taking her hand, he shook it briefly. ‘How do you do?’ She blinked, expecting him to say more, but he merely added, ‘Shall we go?’

‘Er—yes, of course.’ She smiled in genuine warmth, thinking in amazed pleasure that for once in her life she’d found a man who accepted women on equal terms. ‘Is that all your luggage?’

‘Yes.’

‘You travel light,’ she remarked.

‘I try to.’

‘I have a car waiting.’ She started to lead the way, but paused to say, ‘Do you need to change any money or anything while we’re here at the airport?’

‘No, thank you; that’s all taken care of.’

She glanced at him with keen but hidden curiosity. He gave the impression of efficiency in that beautiful dark suit, and he looked very clean and neat, his dark hair trimmed to just the right length above his collar, his firm chin clean-shaven despite the long flight, and his nails newly manicured. With anyone else she would probably have reminded them that they wouldn’t be near a bank or anything for some weeks, but with Oliver Balfour Dyan felt that it would be quite unnecessary; if he said it was taken care of, then that was it. Fleetingly she wondered how someone who looked so fastidious—there was no other word for itwould manage on board the salvage ship for a month or more. It was a fairly new vessel but definitely not in the luxury class.