Marriage On The Agenda

Lee Wilkinson

When Loris Bergman attended a party to celebrate the merger of her father's company with Cosby's, a huge American corporation, she couldn't shake off the feeling that one of the men attending was familiar to her.Jonathan Drummond insisted they were strangers! Despite his evasiveness about the role he played at Cosby's, a night spent with Jonathan convinced Loris that she loved him.But what, exactly, was on Jonathan's agenda? Marriage or revenge?

“Will you dance with me?”

Turning, Loris found herself looking into a lean, tanned face, with a straight nose, a cleft chin and a mouth that was firm, yet sensitive.

Again she got that illusory feeling of having once known him, a haunting sense of recognition, without being able to place him.

Her breath came faster, and it took a moment or two to steady herself. “I’d love to dance with you,” she answered.

His hold light, but far from tentative, he steered her onto the dance floor. “I’m Jonathan Drummond.” He volunteered no further information.

The name was unfamiliar. Though she was almost convinced they hadn’t, she felt compelled to ask, “Have we ever met before?”

LEE WILKINSON lives with her husband in a three-hundred-year-old stone cottage in a Derbyshire village, which most winters gets cut off by snow. They both enjoy traveling and recently, joining forces with their daughter and son-in-law, spent a year going around the world “on a shoestring” while their son looked after Kelly, their much-loved German shepherd dog. Her hobbies are reading and gardening and holding impromptu barbecues for her long-suffering family and friends.

Marriage on the Agenda

Lee Wilkinson

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE taxi skirted Hyde Park and dropped Loris Bergman outside the Landseer Hotel. Having paid the driver, she hurried inside and crossed the plush lobby to the Ladies’ Cloakroom.

When she had shaken the raindrops from her hooded cloak she gave that, and the small weekend case she was carrying, to the attendant, before glancing quickly in the mirror to check her image.

It was a bad enough crime to be so late for Bergman Longton’s St Valentine’s party, without her appearance being found wanting.

A small oval face with a pure bone structure, a wide, passionate mouth and almond-shaped eyes the colour of pale sherry, looked back at her. To others, her beauty was startling, but to Loris, with her total lack of vanity, familiarity had made her looks commonplace.

Satisfied that her long black hair and wispy fringe were tidy, and she looked cool and collected, she headed for the chandelier-lit ballroom.

The party was in full swing, with music and laughter and conversation. Some of the guests were dancing to a good-sized band, others milling about or gathered, glass in hand, in little groups.

A fair-haired, slimly built man, just under six feet tall and wearing impeccable evening dress, was standing alone in the background. His very stillness amongst the lively throng drew Loris’s attention. She had a fleeting sense of familiarity, a feeling that a long time ago she might have known him.

A second look convinced her she was mistaken.

If she had ever met this man, with his look of maturity and quiet strength, his unmistakable air of self-assurance, she would have remembered.

His stance was easy, relaxed, back straight, feet a little apart. A slightly cynical expression on his good-looking face, he was watching the other guests.

She was wondering who he was, and what he was doing at the gathering, when his brilliant, heavy-lidded eyes met hers.

Suddenly meeting that cool, ironic regard had the same impact as walking into an invisible plate-glass window. A sense of shock made her stop in her tracks while her heart began to beat in slow, heavy thuds.

As she stood, momentarily held in thrall, her mother’s voice said, ‘So there you are, at last…’

Tearing her gaze away from the stranger’s with an effort, Loris tur