Fortunately he felt no apprehension as he glanced at the group of hooded teenagers smoking in a group outside the off-licence. He was six-foot-three with a muscled body that was honed to perfection thanks to a rigorous routine of exercise and sport when he could find the time. He was more than capable of putting the fear of God into any group of indolent cigarette-smoking teenagers.
But, hell, this was still the last thing he needed. On a Friday evening. In December. With the threat of snow in the air and a shedload of emails needing his attention before the whole world went to sleep for the Christmas period.
But family duty was, in the end, family duty and what choice had he had? Having seen this dump for himself, he also had to concede that his mission, inconvenient though it might be, was a necessary one.
He exhaled impatiently and swung out of the car. It was a bitterly cold night, even in London. The past week had been characterised by hard overnight frosts that had barely thawed during the day. There was a glittery coating over the rusting car in the garden next to the house and on the lids of the bins in the garden to the other side. The smell of Chinese food wafted towards him and he frowned with distaste.
This was the sort of district into which Luiz never ventured. He had no need to. The faster he could sort this whole mess out and clear out of the place, the better, as far as he was concerned.
With that in mind, he pressed the doorbell and kept his finger on it until he could hear the sound of footsteps scurrying towards the front door.
* * *
On the verge of digging into her dinner, Aggie heard the sound of the doorbell and was tempted to ignore it, not least because she had an inkling of an idea as to whose finger was on it. Mr Cholmsey, her landlord, had been making warning noises about the rent, which was overdue.
‘But I always pay on time!’ Aggie had protested when he had telephoned her the day before. ‘And I’m only overdue by two days. It’s not my fault that there’s a postal strike!’
Apparently, though, it was. He had been kind enough to ‘do her the favour’ of letting her pay by cheque when all his other tenants paid by direct debit…And look where it got him…it just wasn’t good enough…People were queuing for that house…he could rent it to a more reliable tenant in a minute…
If the cheque wasn’t with him by the following day, he would have to have cash from her.
She had never actually met Mr Cholmsey. Eighteen months ago, she had found the house through an agency and everything had been absolutely fine—until Mr Cholmsey had decided that he could cut out the middle man and handle his own properties. Since then, Alfred Cholmsey had been an ongoing headache, prone to ignoring requests for things to be fixed and fond of reminding her how scarce rentable properties were in London.
If she ignored the summons at the door, she had no doubt that he would find some way of breaking the lease and chucking her out.
Keeping the latch on, she cautiously opened the door a crack and peered out into the darkness.
‘I’m really sorry, Mr Cholmsey…’ She burst into speech, determined to get her point of view across before her disagreeable, hateful landlord could launch his verbal attack. ‘The cheque should have arrived by now. I’ll cancel it and make sure that I have the cash for you tomorrow. I promise.’ She wished the wretched man would do her the courtesy of at least standing in her very reduced line of vision instead of skulking to the side, but there was no way that she was going to pull open the door. You could never be too careful in this neighbourhood.
‘Who the hell is Mr Cholmsey, and what are you talking about? Just open the door, Agatha!’
That voice, that distinctive, loathsome voice, was so unexpected that Aggie suddenly felt the need to pass out. What was Luiz Montes doing here? On her doorstep? Invading her privacy? Wasn’t it bad enough that she and her brother had been held up for inspection by him over the past eight months? Verbally poked and prodded under the very thin guise of hospitality and ‘just getting to know my niece’s boyfriend and his family’. Asked intrusive questions which they had been forced to skirt around and generally treated with the sort of suspicion reserved for criminals out on parole.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Just open the door! I’m not having a conversation with you on your doorstep!’ Luiz didn’t have to struggle to imagine what her expression would be. He had met her sufficient times with her brother and his niece to realise that she disapproved of everything he stood for and everything he said. She’d challenged him on every point he made. She was defensive, argumentative and pretty much everything he would have made an effort to avoid in a woman.
As he had told himself on numerous occasions, there was no way he would ever have subjected himself to her company had he not been placed, by his sister who lived in Brazil, in the unenviable position of having to take an interest in his niece and the man she had decided to take up with. The Montes family was worth an untold fortune. Checking out the guy his niece was dating was a simple precaution, Luisa had stressed. And, while Luiz couldn’t see the point because the relationship was certain to crash and burn in due course, his sister had insisted. Knowing his sister as well as he did, he had taken the path of least resistance and agreed to keep a watchful eye on Mark Collins, and his sister, who appeared to come as part of the package.
‘So who’s Mr Cholmsey?’ was the first thing he said as he strode past her into the house.
Aggie folded her arms and glared resentfully at him as he looked around at his surroundings with the sort of cool contempt she had come to associate with him.
Yes, he was good-looking, all tall and powerful and darkly sexy. But from the very second she had met him, she had been chilled to the bone by his arrogance, his casual contempt for both her and Mark—which he barely bothered to hide—and his thinly veiled threat that he was watching them both and they’d better not overstep the mark.
‘Mr Cholmsey’s the landlord—and how did you get this address? Why are you here?’
‘I had no idea you rented. Stupid me. I was under the impression that you owned your own house jointly. Now, where did I get that from, I wonder?’
He rested cool, dark eyes on Aggie. ‘I was also under the impression that you lived somewhere…slightly less unsavoury. A crashing misconception on my part as well.’ However far removed Agatha Collins was from the sort of women Luiz preferred—tall brunettes with legs up to their armpits and amenable, yielding natures—he couldn’t deny that she was startlingly pretty. Five-four tops, with pale, curly hair the colour of buttermilk and skin that was satiny smooth. Her eyes were purest aquamarine, offset by dark lashes, as though her creator had been determined to make sure that she stood out from the crowd and had taken one little detail and made it strikingly different.
Aggie flushed and mentally cursed herself for falling in with her brother and Maria. When Luiz had made his first, unwelcome appearance in their lives, she had agreed that she would downplay their financial circumstances, that she would economise harmlessly on the unadorned truth.
‘My mum’s insisted that Uncle Luiz check Mark out,’ Maria had explained tightly. ‘And Uncle Luiz is horribly black-and-white. It’d be better if he thinks that you’re…okay…Not exactly rich, but not completely broke either.’
‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,’ Aggie dodged.
‘Where’s your brother?’
‘He isn’t here and neither is Maria. And when are you going to stop spying on us?’
‘I’m beginning to think that my spying is