‘Slow down when you drive through the village,’ he said to his chauffeur, dumping the brochure on top of his case and staring out of the window. ‘I want to see exactly what I’m supposed to be enjoying for the next two months.’
And there it was, suddenly in front of him, the town clinging to the sides of a hill, an engaging mixture of old and not so old buildings. Just out of sight, he knew the River Dart flowed from the wilds of Dartmoor before entering the sea just here. It was picturesque and, more importantly, not nearly so small and backward as he had imagined. Theo gave silent thanks to Gloria, who obviously knew him well enough to realise that too much nature would not be a blessing in disguise. From what he could make out, there were restaurants, cafés, some shops, at least the comfortable trappings of civilisation.
The car swerved away from the town, heading south, just as his eyes focused on the figure of a girl trying to shut the door of a small office that looked more like a house than a place of work. She was struggling with it and, for a few wild, disconcerting seconds, Theo felt his heart race. From behind, whoever she was reminded him swiftly and poignantly of Elena. Same slight frame and fair hair falling straight to her shoulders. Then he blinked and was angrily aware that his mind had drifted again.
With formidable control Theo slammed shut the door on the painful memories that were always trying to fight their way out and concentrated on the picturesque drive towards the cottage.
There had been no exaggeration on the part of the estate agents. The cottage, when it finally came into view, was every bit as charming as it appeared to be in its picture. At nearly four-thirty in the afternoon, the already fading light picked up the yellow tint of the walls and turned them into burnished gold. The garden, which was not small, was lovingly pruned and trimmed back and the small path that led up to the house was exactly like something out of a child’s story book.
His mother, he had no doubt, would have heartily approved. She had always disliked his penchant for the ultramodern.
‘You can drive the car to the station when you’re done here, Jimmy.’ He let himself out of the car and, with the aid of a stick, something he frankly found ridiculous and largely unnecessary, he began walking towards the front door, key in hand. ‘Just bring the bags in. No need for you to stay.’
‘I should make sure that everything is okay…’
Theo spared him a frowning backward glance. Since when had the world started feeling sorry for him?
‘I think I can handle it from here. Apparently the housekeeper’s coming round in about an hour to check and make sure everything’s in place.’ He tried to temper the harshness of his voice with a smile. ‘No point having two people falling over themselves in a small house checking the locks on the doors. If you leave the car at the station I can find a way of getting to it if I need it.’
‘Of course, sir.’
As soon as the man had gone, Theo sank on to the sofa and stared around him.
Without the comforting sounds of distant cars and sirens outside, the silence around him seemed oppressive and unfamiliar. He spent a few well used minutes cursing his decision to listen to the combined exhortations of Timos and his mother and wondering what in hell he was going to do with any time not spent in front of his computer or on the phone. Such as now. He even missed the social life in London, which had always seemed to be forcing itself down his throat when he least needed it. But it had been contact.
With a dark scowl, he tramped his way upstairs and was in the process of doing something he had seldom done in his life before, namely unpacking his own bags, when he heard the trill of the doorbell.
On the other side of the door, Sophie Scott wrapped her jacket more tightly around her. Her scowl matched Theo’s.
This was the first time the cottage was being rented since she had moved out two months previously and she liked it as little as she had expected. She had tried to make the place as impersonal as possible, but she knew that there were reminders of her past happy life spent there with her father everywhere. From the books she hadn’t been able to transfer to her own much smaller rented accommodation in the flat above the office, to the linen, which was freshly laundered but still a legacy of the past, to the flowers in the garden, each one of which seemed capable of propelling her down memory lane.
She heard the heavy shuffle of approaching footsteps and her whole body stiffened in response.
The smile she tried hard to pin on her face threatened to harden into a grimace and she reminded herself what the lawyer had told her. That she needed the money. Ideally she should sell the house, but if not she would simply have to rent it. It could fetch a great deal of money, particularly in the summer months. Cornwall was a very desirable tourist destination and getting more so. Blah, blah, blah.
The door was pulled open and, for a few heart-stopping seconds, Sophie’s mind went completely blank as she took in the man standing in front of her.
He was very tall—over six foot—and was not the middle-aged oily Greek man she had conjured up in her imagination. Nothing oily about him at all. In fact, he was handcrafted perfection. His hair was raven-black and swept away from his face and his eyes were the green of perfect Cornish seas, but it was the angles of his face that struck her most because they gave his flawless features a harsh, powerful beauty.
He was wearing casual clothes, a faded shirt rolled to the elbows and a pair of weathered jeans that moulded his long legs. She managed to keep her gawping eyes under control, but she was well aware that his body was every bit as impressive as his face.
‘You must be the housekeeper.’
Sophie opened her mouth to explain the situation in no uncertain terms and shut it. He had stood aside to let her enter and she brushed past him, suspiciously looking around, checking to see if anything had been broken, which was unlikely considering he had only been in the place for a matter of a couple of hours. Still.
She was skin-tinglingly aware of his eyes on her—green, green shuttered eyes, and it made her feel clumsy and awkward.
‘When did you arrive?’
‘About an hour ago. No time to make any mess yet, but feel free to inspect the premises.’ Theo now recognised her. The fair hair, the colour of vanilla ice cream, the slender frame. Along with recognition came a certain amount of resentment that he could have confused her with Elena, even if it had only been for a few passing seconds. Up close, this woman was nothing like his fiancée. Her eyes were brown, not cornflower-blue, and her skin still carried the golden stain of summer. Elena, so wildly different from every Greek girl he had ever known, had been a fair-haired beauty, courtesy of her Scandinavian mother. She had not been able to cope well with the sun, always making sure that she wore hats, large straw things that emphasised her fragility. This woman was more robust-looking.
As was the direct expression on her face.
‘I’m not here to inspect the premises,’ Sophie told him bluntly. ‘I’m here to make sure that you’re satisfied with the food I’ve bought for you and to find out whether you know where everything is and how everything works. And I’m not the housekeeper. The housekeeper is a girl called Annie and she’ll be with you the day after tomorrow. Catherine is the lady you employed to cook your food and that’s all she’ll do. Cook and do the dishes. You’ll be expected to take care of the rest.’
‘If you’re not the housekeeper and you’re not the cook, then would you mind telling me exactly who you are?’ Theo maintained a semblance of politeness with difficulty. Bad enough to find himself in the middle of nowhere without having to deal with unexplained hostility from a woman who hadn’t yet seen fit to introduce herself. ‘Because I don’t think I got your name. And for the astronomical sum of money I’m forking out for this place, I expect a certain amount of civility.’
Sophie felt colour crawl into her cheeks.
‘I apologise if I seemed a bit…a bit…abrupt…’ she said. Her mouth