‘I’ll come with you,’ Janine said, following her to the door. ‘I need to make sure it’s locked up safely.’
She wasn’t trusted to hand over the keys? Or did the wretched woman think she’d drive off in it? Add car theft to her crimes? Oh, wait. She was supposed to be crazy...
‘Actually, you’ll need to do more than that. I’m parked in a twenty-minute zone and it’ll need moving before— Oh, too late...’
She startled the traffic warden slapping a ticket on the windscreen with a smile before clicking the lock and tossing the keys to Janine as if she didn’t give a fig. She wouldn’t give her the pleasure of telling everyone how she’d crumpled, broken down. It was just a car. She’d have it back in no time. Just as soon as Miles stopped panicking and started thinking straight.
She emptied the glovebox, gathered her wellington boots, the ancient waxed jacket she’d bought in a charity shop and her umbrella and added them to the box, then reached for her laptop bag.
‘I’ll take that.’
‘My laptop?’ She finally turned to look at Janine. ‘Did Miles ask you to take it?’
‘He’s got a lot on his mind,’ she replied with a little toss of her head. In other words, no.
‘True, and when I find out who’s responsible for this mess he won’t be the only one. In the meantime,’ she said, hooking the strap over her shoulder and patting the soft leather case that held her precious MacBook Pro, ‘if he should ask for it, I suggest you remind him that I bought it out of my January bonus.’
Janine, caught out, flushed bright pink but it was a short-lived triumph.
‘There’s a taxi waiting to take you to the Fairview,’ she said, turning on her heel and heading back to the office.
Tash glanced at the black cab, idling at the kerb. Even loaded as she was, the temptation to stalk off in the direction of the nearest Underground station was strong, but there was no one apart from the traffic warden to witness the gesture so she climbed aboard and gave him her address.
The driver looked back. ‘I was booked for the Fairview.’
‘I have to go home first,’ she said, straight-faced. ‘I’m going to need a nightie and toothbrush.’
* * *
Darius strode the length of the King’s Road, fury and the need to put distance between himself and Natasha Gordon driving his feet towards the Underground.
A minor setback? A house that she’d made unsellable, and a seven-figure tax bill on a house he couldn’t live in—what would merit serious bother in her eyes?
Cornflower-blue, with hair that looked as if she’d just tumbled out of bed and a figure that was all curves. Sexy as hell, which was where his thoughts were taking him.
Once on the train, he took out the small sketchbook he carried with him and did what he had always done when he wanted to block out the world. He drew what he saw. Not the interior of the train, the woman sitting opposite him, the baby sleeping on her lap, but what was in his head.
Dark, angry images that had been stirred up by a house he’d never wanted to set foot in again but just refused to let go. But that wasn’t what appeared on the page. His hand, ignoring his head, was drawing Natasha Gordon. Her eyes, startled wide as he’d confronted her. The way her brow had arched like the wing of a kestrel hovering over a hedgerow, waiting for an unsuspecting vole to make a move. The curve of hair drooping from an antique silver clasp, the tiny crease at the corner of her mouth that had appeared when she’d offered him a smile along with her hand. It was as if her image had burned itself into his brain, every detail pinpoint-sharp. The blush heating her cheeks, a fine chain about her neck that disappeared between invitingly generous breasts. Her long legs.
Was he imagining them?
He couldn’t remember looking at her legs and yet he’d drawn her shoes—black suede, dangerously high heels, a sexy little ankle strap...
He did not fight it, but drew obsessively, continuously, as if by putting her on paper he could clear his mind, rid himself of what had happened in that moment when he’d stood up and turned to face her. When he’d looked back, knowing that she’d be there at the window. Wishing he’d taken her with him when he’d left. When he’d hovered for a dangerous moment on the point of turning back...
Wouldn’t Morgan have loved that?
He stopped drawing and just let his mind’s eye see her, imagining how he’d paint her, sculpt her and when, finally, he looked up, he’d gone way past his stop.
* * *
Tash sat back in the cab as the driver pulled away from the kerb, did a U-turn and joined the queue of traffic backed up along the King’s Road.
A little more than twenty minutes—just long enough to get a parking ticket—that was all it had taken to reduce her from top-selling negotiator at one of the most prestigious estate agencies in London, to unemployable.
* * *
‘It’s a beautiful house, Darius.’ Patsy, having dropped off some paperwork and made them both a cup of tea, had discovered the Chronicle in the waste bin when she’d discarded the teabags. ‘Lots of room. You could make a studio in one of the buildings,’ she said with a head jerk that took in the concrete walls and floor still stained with oil from its previous incarnation as a motor repair shop. ‘Why don’t you just move in? Ask me nicely and I might even come and keep house for you.’
‘You and whose army?’ He glanced at the photograph of the sprawling house, its Tudor core having been added to over the centuries by ancestors with varying degrees of taste. At least someone had done their job right, taking time to find the perfect spot to show the Chase at its best. The half-timbering, a mass of roses hiding a multitude of sins. A little to the right of a cedar tree that had been planted to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria.
The perfect spot at the perfect time on the perfect day when a golden mist rising from the river had lent the place an ethereal quality that took him back to school holidays and early-morning fishing trips with his grandfather. Took him back to an enchanted world seen through the innocent eyes of a child.
‘It’s got at least twenty rooms,’ he said, returning to the armature on which he was building his interpretation of a racehorse flying over a fence. ‘That’s not including the kitchen, scullery, pantries and the freezing attics where the poor sods who kept the place running in the old days were housed.’ Plus half a dozen cottages, at present occupied by former employees of the estate whom he could never evict, and a boat house that was well past its best twenty years ago.
She put the magazine on his workbench where he could see it, opened a packet of biscuits and, when he shook his head, helped herself to one. ‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Wring that wretched girl’s neck?’ he offered, and tried not to think about his hand curled around her nape. How her skin would feel against his palm, the scent of vanilla that he couldn’t lose... ‘Subject closed.’
He picked up the Chronicle and tossed it back in the bin.
‘It said in the paper that she’d had some kind of a breakdown,’ Patsy protested.
A widow, she worked as a freelance ‘Girl Friday’ for several local businesses, fitting them in around the needs of her ten-year-old son. She kept his books and his paperwork in order, the fridge stocked with fresh milk, cold beer, and his life organised. The downside was that, like an old time travelling minstrel, she delivered neighbourhood gossip, adding to the story with each stop she made. He had no doubt that Hadley Chase had featured heavily in her story arc this week and her audience were no doubt eagerly awaiting the next instalment.
‘Please tell me you don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,’ he said as, concentration gone, he gave up on the