Gathering her courage, she opened the door properly, looked through the connecting doorway to the shop. The place seemed empty. The telephone was on the desk in one corner of the back room. She dived for it, and with trembling fingers dialled the emergency number.
* * *
HOURS LATER she opened the door of the turn-of-the-century Epsom cottage she’d restored and refurbished, and thankfully closed it behind her. The police had been great, but trying to remember every detail that would help them and poring through photographs of likely suspects had taken its toll. Someone had given her coffee and a biscuit, and the phone number of a victim support group.
Her legs were unsteady as she walked across the dimmed living room, drawn by the light blinking on the answering machine sitting on a graceful antique writing bureau. She turned on a side lamp and pressed the play button on the machine, listened to a message from the library about a book she’d requested, another from a friend offering to sell her a ticket to a charity concert, and then jerked to attention as Sholto’s voice filled the room. ‘I’ll phone again later,’ he said, adding, ‘It’s Sholto,’ as though she didn’t know his voice, didn’t react to it with every pore.
He had phoned again later, and again, each time with the same message, leaving no number for her to return the call.
Tempted to replay the tape just to hear his voice again, Tara clenched her teeth and reset it instead. She wasn’t a mooning adolescent now; she was a grown woman and she’d got over Sholto. Not easily, but at last. There was no way she was going to fall into that maelstrom of emotion and pain again. If he did repeat his call she would let the machine deal with it.
In the kitchen she opened the refrigerator and her stomach turned at the sight of food. Closing the door, she made herself more coffee and nibbled on a dry cracker. And found herself back in the living room, leaning against the door jamb and staring at the phone.
When it rang she almost dropped the half-finished coffee in her haste to intercept the rings before the machine cut in. Snatching up the receiver, she managed a breathless, ‘Hello? This is—’
‘Tara,’ Sholto said. ‘I’ve been phoning you all day.’
‘I was at the shop,’ she said. ‘I heard your message—messages.’
‘You work in a shop?’
He didn’t know, of course. ‘I own a shop. Bygones and Bibelots. Mostly it’s just called Bygones, though.’
‘Antiques?’
‘Yes, and some new stuff. A mixture.’
‘You work late.’
‘No, not really.’ She swallowed, remembering the man in the dark-visored helmet. The shadows in the unlit corners of the room were deepening and she had a sudden urgent desire to turn on all the lights in the house. ‘What did you want?’
‘I shouldn’t have said some of the things I did last night.’
Tara didn’t answer immediately. Was this some kind of apology? Although his tone was aloof rather than conciliatory.
‘I was caught off balance,’ he said.
‘So was I,’ Tara admitted. She’d said some fairly waspish things herself. ‘I wasn’t expecting you there.’
‘I suppose I spoiled the party for you.’
It was an apology—or at least probably as near as Sholto was likely to come to one.
‘Th-that’s all right.’ Dismayingly, she heard her voice wobble. Tears slid hotly down her cheeks. ‘It was j-just unlucky, I guess.’
‘Tara?’ His voice sharpened. ‘Are you all right?’
She wasn’t crying because he was marrying someone else, she told herself fiercely. It was too humiliating that he should think so. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Tara—what is it?’ He sounded cautious.
She could put the phone down. Only he’d be sure then that she was crying over him. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I got robbed, that’s all—’
‘Robbed?’ For a moment there was silence, before he said urgently, ‘Where? At your shop? Are you hurt?’
‘N-no,’ she gulped. ‘Not really—not badly.’
‘Do you have someone there with you?’
‘No.’
‘I’m on my way.’
‘Sholto—no! I’m all right.’
But he’d already hung up and all she heard was the hum of the dial tone.
CHAPTER THREE
THE DOORBELL buzzed imperatively fifteen minutes later. Tara had spent the time stemming the stupid tears, rinsing her face in cold water and rather unsuccessfully trying to cover up the aftermath of her crying jag with make-up.
She didn’t switch on the passage light and avoided raising her eyes to Sholto’s as she opened the door and said quickly, ‘You had no need to come rushing over. How did you know where to find me, anyway?’
‘Your address is in the phone book.’ He stepped inside and closed the door himself, and then his hard fingers lifted her chin, and he reached out his other hand to the light switch by the door.
His brows contracted as he saw the swelling on her cheekbone. He cursed under his breath. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘The police surgeon checked me over. It’s only bruises.’
‘Only! There are others?’
‘A couple. You know I bruise easily. I was lucky—it could have been worse.’ She shivered, thinking how much worse it could have been, and folded her arms across herself, turning away. ‘Now that you’re here, you’d better come in.’ She led the way to the living room.
‘Your back!’ he exclaimed, and as she looked round, startled, he said, ‘The bruise on your back, it’s already gone blue.’
Tara flushed. She’d forgotten about it, although she’d had to invent a story for the doctor. She’d noticed a bit of stiffness after she got up this morning, but there was nothing visible when she peered in the mirror, and she’d thought no more about it as she donned the dress that dipped even lower at the back than in front. Over the afternoon the bruise had evidently coloured up, although it couldn’t have been too bad earlier. Tod hadn’t noticed. ‘That must have happened last night,’ she said.
‘Last night?’ he repeated sharply. ‘What did that great ape do to you?’
Tara gaped at him. ‘If you mean Andy—’
‘I mean the guy you were draping yourself over all night, the one you brought home with you, even though it was obvious he was smashed out of his mind.’
‘He was not! And what makes you think I brought him home?’
‘I saw him get into your car. As a matter of fact, I thought you were trying to argue him out of it—I was half out of my car, intending to come to the rescue, when you leaned over and kissed him, so I figured you didn’t need help after all.’
Kissed him? She’d leaned over to fasten Andy’s safety belt. She supposed that from a distance it might have looked like an embrace. ‘Where were you, anyway?’ She’d thought that he and Averil had been long gone by then.
‘Sitting in my car, some way behind you.’
So what he’d seen could only have been through the windows of other parked cars. And he’d jumped to conclusions.
But surely they’d left the party before she had. Why hadn’t