ELLIOT frowned as he stared out of the window. The spacious, minimalist room had a particularly pleasing view over one of the few areas of greenery in London and, basking in the full light of a summer day, one would be forgiven for thinking that they were somewhere in the Med, and not, in fact, standing in a private room in a posh gym in central London.

Elliot glanced impatiently at his watch and swung round to face the door, leaning against the window-ledge.

Waiting was something Elliot Jay didn't do. It was something other people did. He expected his summons to be obeyed immediately without him having to hang around for… twenty minutes so far, according to his watch.

With mounting frustration, he stalked across to one of the chairs and sat down, wishing that he'd had the sense to bring his laptop with him so that he could at least do some work, wishing even more that he wasn't now in the position of having to do what he was doing, but he had no choice. Circumstances beyond his control had brought him to this juncture.

With a discipline born of experience, Elliot closed his mind off from those particularly unwelcome circumstances and instead allowed his eyes to roam around the room, to take in its harmonious lack of clutter, its sanitised impersonality. This was one of the reasons he had joined this particular gym when it had opened its doors eighteen months ago. That and the fact that it was a stone's throw from his massive penthouse apartment in Kensington. Vigo was a health club that didn't waste time trying to be cosy. There were no chummy sitting-room-style bars where the weary could unwind with gossip over cups of tea, no lounging chairs around the pool or wavy slides for the kiddies. Instead the bars were all kitted out just like this room, in black and chrome with sensible newspapers on the tables. There was an internet café for anyone inclined to stay longer than was strictly necessary and the exercise machines were of the highest specification. Not that he used them. He unwound twice a week over a brutal game of squash and then swam it off in the giant-sized pool which, at eight in the evening, was usually empty.

As in every area of his life, Elliot applied himself to his exercise with focused, ruthless concentration. As a teenager, his skills on the rugby field had been formidable enough to warrant encouragement from his coach to turn professional, not that being a professional sportsman had ever presented itself as a practical possibility. His intellect could never have been contained by something as physically demanding as a sport, however talented he might have been at it. His finely tuned brain required enormous mental challenge. As the youngest ever chairman of a prominent investment bank, not only did he get this challenge, but he also earned the phenomenal sums of money associated with the job, which meant that by the age of thirty-two he could afford to begin indulging in his own private ventures, which brought their own financial rewards. The intense workload, which most men would have found crippling, Elliot found invigorating. His days were charged with adrenaline and mapped out with the precision of military campaigns. Meetings followed meetings and his name was synonymous with thrusting success in the financial world.

But Elliot didn't work for the money. He worked because he was driven. Even his hours of relaxation had a purpose.

Right now, he had a task at hand and hanging around wasn't something he found relaxing. In fact, he had to curb his annoyance and remember that in this one instance, he was actually in the unfamiliar terrain of the supplicant asking a favour.

Which didn't mean that he liked it. But Melissa Lee had been personally recommended to him by the manager of the gym, a shrewd businesswoman and someone he trusted to give him clear-headed, impartial advice. Of course, he had been sparing with the actual details, merely told her that he required someone who could assist someone slightly overweight and a bit offkey. The Lee woman fitted the bill to the detail. She was twenty-four, a nutritionist and physiotherapist by training, although more than capable of mapping out a successful exercise routine, and she was fairly new to the gym, so had not yet acquired a string of regulars who needed her attention on a regular basis.

Keen though he was to employ Melissa Lee for the task at hand, he still could not resist looking pointedly at his watch when she finally entered the room.

"I've been waiting for forty minutes, Miss Lee." Melissa looked at the figure casually reclining on the chair and stopped abruptly in her tracks.

"One of our clients is interested in seeing you about a personal job," Samantha had told her, interrupting the session which Melissa had only just started. "Right now, if you could possibly make it." Samantha had failed to elaborate on either the nature of the job or the nature of the client in question, and the right now command in the sentence Melissa had chosen tactfully to ignore.

The blood now rushed to Melissa's face as she took in the physically striking specimen in front of her.

Working in a gym was a passport to seeing impressively built men. Every morning, when Melissa went in for her light workout on the machines at seven-thirty, before she began her daily routines, they were there, suits waiting for them in changing rooms while they primed themselves for the day ahead on rowing machines and treadmills and other vicious-looking instruments of torture. From the relatively relaxed safety of an exercise mat, she absentmindedly watched them as she did her situps, knowing herself to be unobserved because it had to be said that most of them had eyes only for themselves in the floor-to- ceiling mirrors that dominated the massive rooms.

But she had never seen the man sitting in front of her before. She would have remembered if she had. He had a memorable face. Glossy raven-black hair contrasted vividly with his eyes, which were a pure, cold blue, and his bone structure was perfect enough to make her do a double take. He was a sensationally attractive male, and even in that split second of taking him in she knew that he possessed the kind of presence that most women would have buckled at the knees at.

His expression, however, did not encourage that reaction in her. In fact, Melissa felt her smile rapidly fade away and she became aware that she was hovering by the door, like a student called in to see the headmaster for cheating in class.

She drew in her breath and took a few assertive steps into the room, holding out her hand, noticing that, although he politely extended his to briefly take hers, he didn't budge from his position on the chair, instead gesturing for her to sit down, as though he owned the place.

"I take it you are Miss Lee?" Blue eyes roved at a leisurely pace over her.

"That's right," Melissa answered, disconcerted by his scrutiny. "I'm sorry if I've kept you waiting but I was in the middle of a session when Samantha told me that you wanted to see me." She found no smiling acceptance of her apology, rather, silence and those ice-blue eyes appraising her, as though committing how she looked to memory. It was destabilising. Was he aware of that? "She said that you wanted to see me about a job of some kind." Whatever job it was, she decided on the spot that she wasn't going to take it. The man was positively intimidating. He also didn't look as though he needed any extra help with working out. Even dressed as he was in casual trousers and short-sleeved shirt, she could see that his body was well-toned and muscular with a slightly bronzed hue that gave him an exotic, compelling beauty. If he did want extra help working out, then it would be to a calibre that she, for one, was not trained to supply.

"That's right, although, of course, should you get this particular job, then showing up late would be out of the question."

"I did apologise," Melissa muttered in self-defence. "You could hardly expect me to cancel Mrs Evans without notice just because I had to suddenly dash over here to see you. Mrs Evans is one of my few regular clients and she really needs the physiotherapy sessions she has with me twice a week. She was in a car accident a few months ago and —"

"Enough." Elliot held up one hand impatiently. "I'm not here to waste time talking about perfect strangers. I'm here to put forward a proposal which I think you will find financially very rewarding."

Still smarting from having effectively been told to shut up, Melissa drew herself up and surveyed him loftily. "I'm employed by Vigo, Mr…Mr…I don't know your name…"

"Jay. You can call me Elliot."

She preferred not to call him anything. "I don't think I would be allowed to take on outside work. I'm sure there must be something in my contract about that. Besides, I have a pretty hectic schedule at the moment and it's increasing by the day. I may only have been here a few months but…"

"You needn't worry about taking time off for this job. No objections will be raised, I assure you." He was beginning to wonder what had possessed Samantha to sing the praises of this woman. She certainly wasn't what he had expected. For one thing, he hadn't expected to have to argue his case. He didn't know how much newcomers earned at a gym, but he would bet his bottom dollar that it wasn't a fortune, and London was an expensive place to live in. The prospect of some extra money should have been greeted with howls of delight.

And for another thing, Melissa Lee wasn't physically what he had expected either. He couldn't see very much under her shapeless dress but what he did see didn't accord with someone in the business of the body beautiful. She clearly wasn't fat but neither was she whipcord-slender with the muscles to match. She also didn't look the sort who thrived on putting people through their paces. He suppressed a sigh of pure frustration.

"I expect you want to know about the job I have in mind?"

"I don't think I can help you," Melissa informed him up front. "You're obviously a regular here at the gym and, whatever kind of workout you may have in mind for yourself, you really would need someone more qualified in the area. You see, I'm not sure whether Samantha told you, but I'm employed primarily as a nutritionist and a physiotherapist. I do a few classes but that's with the over-sixties. Mostly stretching exercises, very lightweight. You could probably do those in your sleep." 'Finished?" he enquired politely, when she had dried up. He waited for her absolute, undivided attention. "Do you normally approach everything in such a negative manner? Spotting all the obstacles before you take one step forward? If so, then I feel very sorry for these clients of yours. Do they know what they're getting into? That you won't make them better but in fact will see every pitfall, point them out and then lead them to the nearest bridge so that they can jump off?"

"That's not fair!" Melissa's normally warm, sunny disposition abandoned her completely. This man was hateful. Cold, emotionless, forbidding, arrogant and hateful. She couldn't think of anything worse than helping him in any way, shape or form. Or even being exposed to him unnecessarily. The man should carry a health warning. She opened her mouth to tell him just that, but he spoke first.

"We seem to have got off on the wrong foot." He leant forward to rest his elbows on his thighs and she distract- edly took in the rippling of muscle under the thin shirt, the powerful arms lightly dusted with a sprinkling of dark hair. "I'm not here to hire you for myself. I'm here to hire you for my daughter."

Melissa's mouth fell open and she gaped. The man had a daughter? Yes, he looked virile. In fact, physically at least, he was every inch the alpha male, just the sort magazines had a habit of pointing out was the average fertile woman's subconscious dream man, the sort that sent fantasies of reproduction into overdrive.

Melissa tried to picture him as a father and failed. "You look shocked," Elliot pointed out politely. "Am I stretching the bounds of your imagination here?"

"Yes," Melissa squawked truthfully. "You have a daughter? I'm sorry…it's just that you don't seem… well…you don't strike me as the sort of man…not that there's a sort…of course not —"

Elliot interrupted. "This is something of a long story. If you're interested in hearing about the job, then I suggest we meet at a more civilised time to discuss it. I had expected to have sorted this matter out tonight, but it's now nine-thirty and I assume you have to get home, so shall we say six tomorrow evening? In the bar downstairs?"

"Six tomorrow. Yes. Fine," Melissa repeated, still struggling to take in the impossible fact that Elliot Jay was a father.

He stood up and stared down at her. "And just in case you're inclined to gossip, don't. I abhor it. This will be a private arrangement between us and I won't want the details to be spread around this gym."

"I don't gossip." Her wide blue eyes met his and then she couldn't look away. She just kept staring until he nodded curtly at her and swung around, leaving her still gaping like a stranded goldfish.