‘Clara’s very …’ Astrid paused delicately ‘… colourful, but she’s hardly your type, Simon. And that dress! Totally inappropriate, I thought.’
It had been, but Simon couldn’t help remembering how good Clara’s legs had looked in it.
‘I know you’re too intelligent to be taken in by a girl in a miniskirt,’ Astrid went on, ‘but I hope you’ll be careful.’
‘I’m always careful,’ said Simon.
It was true. He liked his life firmly under control. Risk analysis was his speciality. He didn’t do reckless or spontaneous. And he certainly didn’t do foolish. He’d seen just how disastrous recklessness and foolishness could be, and neither were mistakes he would be making.
‘I know.’ Astrid’s expression softened. ‘Look, it’s hard to talk about these things in the office. Why don’t we meet for a drink later?’ Then, just when he was congratulating himself on being right about her returning to her senses, she spoiled things by adding, ‘I’d really like you to get to know Paolo.’
So much for a quiet drink sorting things out. Simon wanted to be with Astrid, but he had no desire to get to know any more about Paolo. As far as he was concerned, he already knew more than enough.
‘I’m sorry, Astrid,’ he said, ‘but my mother is coming to town this evening, and I promised to take her out to dinner. I’m expecting her any minute, in fact. Another time, perhaps.’
Preferably when Paolo was unavailable.
As if on cue, his PA buzzed him from her office. Not sorry for the distraction, Simon flipped the switch. ‘Yes, Molly?’
‘I’ve just had a call from Reception,’ said Molly. ‘Your mother’s there. She’s fine, but there’s been some kind of incident. Could you go down?’
When the lift doors opened, Simon spotted his mother straight away. She was at the centre of a cluster of people on the far side of the atrium, but when she saw him she hurried over to meet him. ‘Thank goodness you’re here!’
Simon’s brows snapped together at the sight of her flustered appearance. Frances Valentine was still an attractive woman, but now her highlighted blonde hair was dishevelled, and there were spots of colour in her cheeks. ‘What on earth has happened?’
‘I’ve been mugged!’ she announced with her usual flair for the dramatic.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked in quick concern.
‘I’m fine. It’s Clara I’m worried about.’
‘Clara?’
‘She saw what happened, and tackled the mugger,’ Frances said admiringly, tugging him over to a bedraggled figure sitting on one of the low leather sofas, nursing one arm. ‘Wasn’t it brave of her?’
With a sinking sense of inevitability, Simon recognized the long legs first. His gaze travelled up over the torn tights, mud-splattered skirt and top to a face that was already unsettlingly familiar. Above the colourfully striped scarf that was wound several times around her neck, Clara Sterne’s face was paler than the night before but, even shaken, she managed to look more vivid than the other women clucking over her and, as her brown eyes widened at the sight of him, he felt an odd little zing pass through him.
‘You’re Frances’s son?’ she exclaimed.
‘You know each other?’ his mother said in delight.
‘No,’ said Simon.
Just as Clara said, ‘Yes.’
How did a woman as warm and friendly as Frances have a son as stiff as Simon Valentine? Clara wondered. She hadn’t been expecting to see him just then, and surprise had sent her heart jumping into her throat at the sight of him.
At least she hoped it was surprise.
He looked as disapproving as ever, as if she had thrown herself into that puddle and torn her tights and hurt her wrist just to annoy him. She had wanted to see him, of course, but not like this.
‘What happened?’ he asked his mother.
Frances launched into her story. ‘I was just crossing the road when I felt this thump on my shoulder and this awful oik grabbed my bag.’ She shuddered. ‘I got such a fright! It’s my favourite bag too. Do you remember I bought it in Venice last year?’
Judging by Simon’s expression, he knew nothing about his mother’s handbags and cared less. Clara saw him keeping a visible rein on his impatience.
‘How did Clara get involved?’
‘She saw what was happening.’ Frances sat down next to Clara and patted her knee. ‘Lots of other people must have seen too, but no one else moved. Clara took off after him straight away, and she got hold of my bag, but they had a bit of a tussle and he pushed her to the ground before he ran off.’
Drawing breath, she looked up at her son. ‘I’m very much afraid she may have broken her wrist, but she says there’s no need to call an ambulance. You try and talk some sense into her, Simon.’
‘There’s no need, really.’ Clara managed to get a word in at last. ‘I’m perfectly all right. I can walk.’
‘You’re not all right! Look at you. You’ve ruined your tights, and I can tell your wrist is hurting.’
It was. When the mugger had shoved her, Clara had lost her balance and her wrist had taken the whole weight of her body as she fell. But her legs were all right, thank goodness, and she hardly counted as an emergency.
‘I’ll get a taxi,’ she compromised.
‘You’ll do no such thing!’ said Frances roundly. ‘Simon has a car. You’ll take her to hospital, won’t you, darling?’
Clara had never seen anyone look less like a darling than Simon Valentine right then. It was almost worth a sore wrist and scraped knees to see the expression on his face, where impatience, frustration and reluctance warred with the mixture of exasperation and affection he obviously felt for his mother.
‘Of course,’ he said after a moment.
‘Really, it’s not necessary …’
‘Nonsense!’ said Frances. ‘You’re a heroine, and so I shall tell the police.’
‘All right.’ Rather to Clara’s relief, Simon interrupted his mother’s account of her heroics and took charge. Her wrist was getting more painful by the minute, and she was glad to be able to sit numbly while he despatched the cluster of receptionists who had been clucking ineffectually and arranged for his mother to be taken to his home in a taxi.
Only then did he turn his attention to Clara.
‘There’s no need to look at me like that,’ she said as she got stiffly to her feet.
‘Like what?’
‘Like you think I arranged the mugging on purpose.’
‘It crossed my mind.’ Simon pushed the button for the lift to take them down to the basement car park. ‘If you were desperate enough to sit through a lecture on monetary policy, who knows what you’d be prepared to do.’
‘I was desperate to talk to you, but not quite desperate enough to tackle a mugger,’ said Clara. She didn’t add that Roland would certainly have pushed her into it if he thought it would get results.
As it appeared to have done. She mustn’t waste this opportunity, she told herself, but her knees were stinging where she had grazed them and the pain in her wrist made it hard to concentrate.
Simon looked at her sideways as the lift doors slid open and they stepped inside.
‘And yet you did it anyway. It was a dangerous thing to do. What if the mugger had been armed?’