Christmas Angel for the Billionaire
Christmas Angel for the Billionaire
Liz Fielding
Christmas Angel
for the
Billionaire
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u26b3c6a4-91ed-59f7-aa89-367baf9fad12)
Title Page (#ubbbc1d0d-03f8-5a3f-9fe1-bc5877ca6b61)
About the Author (#u1b544e83-1e32-59ed-b171-19940858566d)
PROLOGUE (#ue9153c0f-af4b-50a1-86fc-b4be0d9f7f20)
CHAPTER ONE (#u34ed1150-ea8a-504d-b0bf-d21d04b0d764)
CHAPTER TWO (#uda0c9c92-93c5-5a48-9871-b94249e60025)
CHAPTER THREE (#u5870ecb1-be33-55c1-baf9-7891f6a8164a)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
A CHRISTMAS TRADITION (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days mostly leaves her pen to do the travelling. When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors, and spends a lot of time wondering ‘What if…?’ For news of upcoming books—and to sign up for her occasional newsletter—visit Liz’s website at www.lizfielding.com
PROLOGUE
Daily Chronicle, 19th December, 1988
MARQUESS AND WIFE SLAIN ON CHARITY MISSION
The Marquess and Marchioness of St Ives, whose fairy-tale romance captured the hearts of the nation, were slain yesterday by rebels who opened fire on their vehicle as they approached a refugee camp in the war-torn region of Mishona. Their driver and a local woman who worked for the medical charity Susie’s Friends also died in the attack.
HM the Queen sent a message of sympathy to the Duke of Oldfield, the widowed father of the Marquess, and to the slaughtered couple’s six-year-old daughter, Lady Roseanne Napier.
The Marchioness of St Ives, Lady Susanne Napier, who overcame early hardships to train as a doctor, founded the international emergency charity with her husband shortly after their marriage.
Daily Chronicle, 24th December, 1988
WE MUST ALL BE HER FAMILY NOW…
Six-year-old Lady Roseanne Napier held her grandfather’s hand as the remains of her slain mother and father were laid to rest in the family vault yesterday afternoon. In his oration, praising their high ideals, the grieving Duke said, ‘We must all be her family now…’
Daily Chronicle, 18th December, 1998
A PERFECT ANGEL…
Today, on the tenth anniversary of the slaying of her parents while helping to co-ordinate relief in warravished Mishona, Lady Rose Napier opened Susanne House, a children’s hospice named to honour her mother. After unveiling a plaque, Lady Rose met the brave children who are being cared for at Susanne House and talked to their parents. ‘She was so caring, so thoughtful for someone so young,’one of the nurses said. ‘A perfect angel. Her mother would have been so proud of her.’
Her mother isn’t here to tell her that, so we are saying it for her.
We are all proud of you, Lady Rose.
CHAPTER ONE
ANNIE smothered a yawn. The room was hot, the lingering scent of food nauseating and all she wanted to do was lay her head on the table in front of her, close her eyes and switch off.
If only.
There was a visit to a hospital, then three hours of Wagner at a charity gala to endure before she could even think about sleep. And even then, no matter how tired she was, thinking about it was as close as she would get.
She’d tried it all. Soothing baths, a lavender pillow, every kind of relaxation technique without success. But calming her mind wasn’t the problem.
It wasn’t the fact that it was swirling with all the things she needed to remember that was keeping her awake. She had an efficient personal assistant to take care of every single detail of her life and ensure that she was in the right place at the right time. A speech writer to put carefully chosen words into her mouth when she got there. A style consultant whose job it was to ensure that whenever she appeared in public she made the front page.
That was the problem.
There was absolutely nothing in her mind to swirl around. It was empty. Like her life.
In just under a minute she was going to have to stand up and talk to these amazing people who had put themselves on the line to alleviate suffering in the world.
They had come to see her, listen to her inspire them to even greater efforts. And her presence ensured that the press was here too, which meant that the work they did would be noticed, reported.
Maybe.
Her hat, a rich green velvet and feather folly perched at a saucy angle over her right eye would probably garner more column inches than the charity she was here to support.
She was doing more for magazine and newspaper circulation than she was for the medical teams, the search units, pilots, drivers, communications people who dropped everything at a moment’s notice, risking their lives to help victims of war, famine, disaster—a point she’d made to her grandfather more than once.
A pragmatist, he had dismissed her concerns, reminding her that it was a symbiotic relationship and everyone would benefit from her appearance, including the British fashion industry.
It didn’t help that he was right.
She wanted to do more, be more than a cover girl, a fashion icon. Her parents had been out there, on the front line, picking up the pieces of ruined lives and she had planned to follow in their footsteps.
She stopped the thought. Publicity was the only gift she had and she had better do it right but, as she took her place at the lectern and a wave of applause hit her, a long silent scream invaded the emptiness inside her head.
Noooooo…
‘Friends…’ she began when the noise subsided. She paused, looked around her, found faces in the audience she recognised, people her parents had known. Took a breath, dug deep, smiled. ‘I hope I’ve earned the right to call you that…’
She had been just eighteen years old when, at her grandfather’s urging, she’d accepted an invitation to become patron of Susie’s Friends. A small consolation for the loss of her dream of following her mother into medicine.
All that had ended when, at the age of sixteen, a photograph of her holding the hand of a dying child had turned her, overnight, from a sheltered, protected teen into an iconic image and her grandfather had laid out the bald facts for her.
How impossible it was. How her fellow students, patients even, would be harassed, bribed by the press for gossip about her because she was now public property. Then he’d consoled her with the fact that this way she could do so much more for the causes her mother had espoused.
Ten years on, more than fifty charities had claimed her as a patron. How many smiles, handshakes? Charity galas, first nights?
How many children’s hands had she held, how many babies had she cradled?
None of them her own.
She had seen herself described as the ‘most loved woman in Britain’, but living in an isolation bubble, sheltered, protected from suffering the same fate as her parents, it was a love that never came close enough to touch.
But the media was a hungry beast that had to be fed and it was, apparently, time to move the story on. Time for a husband and children to round out the image. And, being her grandfather, he wasn’t prepared to leave anything that important to chance.
Or to her.
Heaven forbid there should be anything as messy as her own father’s passionate romance with a totally unsuitable woman, one whose ideals had ended up getting them both killed.
Instead, he’d found the perfect candidate in Rupert Devenish, Viscount Earley, easing him into her life so subtly that she’d barely noticed. Titled, rich and almost too good-looking to be true, he was so eligible that if she’d gone to the ‘ideal husband’ store and picked him off the shelf he couldn’t be more perfect.
So perfect, in fact, that unless she was extremely careful, six months from now she’d find herself with a ring on her finger and in a year she’d be on every front page, every magazine cover, wearing the ‘fairy-tale’ dress. The very thought of it weighed like a lump of lead somewhere in the region of her heart. Trapped, with nowhere to turn, she felt as if the glittering chandeliers were slowly descending to crush her.
She dug her nails into her palm to concentrate her mind, took a sip of water, looked around at all the familiar faces and, ignoring the carefully worded speech that had been written for her, she talked to them about her parents, about ideals, about sacrifice, her words coming straight from the heart.
An hour later it was over and she turned to the hotel manager as he escorted her to the door. ‘Another wonderful lunch, Mr Gordon. How is your little girl?’
‘Much improved, thank you, Lady Rose. She was so thrilled with the books you sent her.’
‘She wrote me the sweetest note.’ She glanced at the single blush-pink rose she was holding.
She yearned to be offered, just once, something outrageous in purple or orange, but this variety of rose had been named for her and part of the proceeds of every sale went to Susanne House. To have offered her anything else would have been unthinkable.
‘Will you give her this from me?’ she said, offering him the rose.
‘Madam,’ he said, pink with pleasure as he took it and Annie felt a sudden urge to hug the man. Instead, she let her hand rest briefly on his arm before she turned to join Rupert, who was already at the door, impatient to be away.
Turned and came face to face with herself.
Or at least a very close facsimile.
A look in one of the mirrors that lined the walls would have shown two tall, slender young women, each with pale gold hair worn up in the same elegant twist, each with harebell-blue eyes.
Annie had been aware of her double’s existence for years. Had seen photographs in magazines and newspapers, courtesy of the cuttings agency that supplied clippings of any print article that contained her name. She’d assumed that the amazing likeness had been aided by photographic manipulation but it wasn’t so. It was almost like looking in the mirror.
For a moment they both froze. Annie, more experienced in dealing with the awkward moment, putting people at their ease, was the first to move.
‘I know the face,’ she said, feeling for the woman—it wasn’t often a professional ‘lookalike’ came face to face with the real thing. With a smile, she added, ‘But I’m afraid the name escapes me.’
Her double, doing a remarkable job of holding her poise under the circumstances, said, ‘Lydia, madam. Lydia Young.’ But, as she took her hand, Annie felt it shaking. ‘I’m s-so sorry. I promise this wasn’t planned. I had no idea you’d be here.’
‘Please, it’s not a problem.’ Then, intrigued, ‘Do you—or do I mean I?—have an engagement here?’
‘Had. A product launch.’ Lydia gave an awkward little shrug as she coloured up. ‘A new variety of tea.’
‘I do hope it’s good,’ Annie replied, ‘if I’m endorsing it.’
‘Well, it’s expensive,’ Lydia said, relaxing sufficiently to smile back. Then, ‘I’ll just go and sit down behind that pillar for ten minutes, shall I? While I’m sure the photographers out there would enjoy it if we left together, my clients didn’t pay me anywhere near enough to give them that kind of publicity.’
‘It would rather spoil the illusion if we were seen together,’ Annie agreed. About to walk on, something stopped her. ‘As a matter of interest, Lydia, how much do you charge for being me?’ she asked. ‘Just in case I ever decide to take a day off.’
‘No charge for you, Lady Rose,’ she replied, handing her the rose that she was, inevitably, carrying as she sank into a very brief curtsey. ‘Just give me a call. Any time.’
For a moment they looked at one another, then Annie sniffed the rose and said, ‘They don’t have much character, do they? No scent, no thorns…’
‘Well, it’s November. I imagine they’ve been forced under glass.’
Something they had in common, Annie thought.
She didn’t have much character either, just a carefully manufactured image as the nation’s ‘angel’, ‘sweetheart’.
Rupert, already through the door, looked back to see what was keeping her and, apparently confident enough to display a little impatience, said, ‘Rose, we’re running late…’
They both glanced in his direction, then Lydia looked at her and lifted a brow in a ‘dump the jerk’ look that exactly mirrored her own thoughts.
‘I don’t suppose you fancy three hours of Wagner this evening?’ she asked but, even before Lydia could reply, she shook her head. ‘Just kidding. I wouldn’t wish that on you.’
‘I meant what I said.’ And Lydia, taking a card from the small clutch bag she was carrying, offered it to her. ‘Call me. Any time.’
Three weeks later, as speculation in the press that she was about to announce her engagement reached fever-pitch, Annie took out Lydia’s card and dialled the number.
‘Lydia Young…’
‘Did you mean it?’ she asked.
George Saxon, bare feet propped on the deck rail of his California beach house, laptop on his knees, gave up on the problem that had been eluding him for weeks and surfed idly through the headlines of the London newspapers.
His eye was caught by the picture of a couple leaving some gala. She was one of those tall patrician women, pale blonde hair swept up off her neck, her fabulously expensive gown cut low to reveal hollows in her shoulders even deeper than those in her cheeks.
But it wasn’t her dress or the fact that she’d so obviously starved herself to get into it that had caught and held his attention. It was her eyes.
Her mouth was smiling for the camera, but her eyes, large, blue, seemed to be looking straight at him, sending him a silent appeal for help.
He clicked swiftly back to the program he’d been working on. Sometimes switching in and out of a problem cleared the blockage but this one was stubborn, which was why he’d left his Chicago office, lakeside apartment. Escaping the frantic pre-Christmas party atmosphere for the peace—and warmth—of the beach.
Behind him, inside the house, the phone began to ring. It would be his accountant, or his lawyer, or his office but success had insulated him from the need to jump when the phone rang and he left it for the machine to pick up. There was nothing, no one—
‘George? It’s your dad…’
But, then again, there were exceptions to every rule.
Tossing a holdall onto the back seat of the little red car that was Lydia’s proudest possession, Annie settled herself behind the wheel and ran her hands over the steering wheel as if to reassure herself that it was real.
That she’d escaped…
Three hours ago, Lady Rose Napier had walked into a London hotel without her unshakeable escort—the annual Pink Ribbon Lunch was a ladies-only occasion. Two hours later, Lydia had walked out in her place. And ten minutes ago she’d left the same hotel completely unnoticed.
By now Lydia would be on board a private jet, heading for a week of total luxury at Bab el Sama, the holiday home of her friend Lucy al-Khatib.
Once there, all she had to do was put in an occasional appearance on the terrace or the beach for the paparazzi who, after the sudden rash of ‘Wedding Bells?’ headlines, would no doubt be sitting offshore in small boats, long-range cameras at the ready, hoping to catch her in flagrante in this private ‘love-nest’ with Rupert.
She hoped they’d packed seasick pills along with their sunscreen since they were going to have a very long wait.
And she grinned. She’d told her grandfather that she needed time on her own to consider her future. Not true. She wasn’t going to waste one precious second of the time that Lydia—bless her heart—had given her thinking about Rupert Devenish.
She had just a week in which to be anonymous, to step outside the hothouse environment in which she’d lived since her parents had been killed. To touch reality as they had done. Be herself. Nothing planned, nothing organised. Just take life as it came.
She adjusted the rear-view mirror to check her appearance. She’d debated whether to go with a wig or colour her hair but, having tried a wig—it was amazing what you could buy on the Internet—and realising that living in it 24/7 was not for her, she’d decided to go for a temporary change of hair colour, darkening it a little with the temporary rinse Lydia had provided.
But that would have taken time and, instead, in an act of pure rebellion, of liberation, she’d hacked it short with a pair of nail scissors. When she’d stopped, the short, spiky result was so shocking that she’d been grateful for the woolly hat Lydia had provided to cover it.
She pulled it down over her ears, hoping that Lydia, forced to follow her style, would forgive her. Pushed the heavy-framed ‘prop’ spectacles up her nose. And grinned. The sense of freedom was giddying and, if she was honest, a little frightening. She’d never been completely on her own before and, shivering a little, she turned on the heater.
‘Not frightening,’ she said out loud as she eased out of the parking bay and headed for the exit. ‘Challenging.’ And, reaching the barrier, she encountered her first challenge.
Lydia had left the ticket on the dashboard for her and she stuck it in the machine, expecting the barrier to lift. The machine spat it back out.
As she tried it the other way, with the same result, there was a series of impatient toots from the tailback building up behind her.
So much for invisibility.
She’d been on her own for not much more than an hour and already she was the centre of attention…
‘What’s your problem, lady?’
Annie froze but the ‘Rose’ never came and she finally looked up to find a car park attendant, a Santa Claus hat tugged down to his ears against the cold, glaring at her.
Apparently he’d used the word ‘lady’ not as a title, but as something barely short of an insult and, like his sour expression, it didn’t quite match the ‘ho, ho, ho’ of the hat.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
‘Oh. Um…’ Concentrate! ‘I put the ticket in, but nothing happened.’
‘Have you paid?’
‘Paid?’ she asked. ‘Where?’
He sighed. ‘Can’t you read? There’s a notice ten feet high at the entrance.’ Then, since she was still frowning, he said, very slowly, ‘You have to pay before you leave. Over there.’ She looked around, saw a machine, then, as the hooting became more insistent, ‘In your own time,’ he added sarcastically.
And Bah! Humbug…to you, she thought as she grabbed her bag from the car and sprinted to the nearest machine, read the instructions, fed in the ticket and then the amount indicated with shaking fingers.
She returned to the car, calling, ‘Sorry, sorry…’ to the people she’d held up before flinging herself back into the car and finally escaping.
Moments later, she was just one of thousands of drivers battling through traffic swollen by Christmas shoppers and visitors who’d come up to town to see the lights.
Anonymous, invisible, she removed the unnecessary spectacles, dropping them on the passenger seat, then headed west out of London.
She made good time but the pale blue winter sky was tinged with pink, the trees black against the horizon as she reached the junction for Maybridge. A pretty town with excellent shops, a popular riverside area, it was not too big, not too small. As good a place as any to begin her adventure and she headed for the ring road and the anonymous motel she’d found on the Internet.
Somewhere to spend the night and decide what she was going to do with her brief moment of freedom.
George Saxon’s jaw was rigid as he kept his silence.
‘No one else can do it,’ his father insisted.
A nurse appeared, checked the drip. ‘I need to make Mr Saxon comfortable,’ she said. Then, with a pointed look at him, ‘Why don’t you take your mother home? She’s been here all day.’
‘No, I’ll stay.’ She took his father’s hand, squeezed it. ‘I’ll be back in a little while.’
His father ignored her, instead grabbing his wrist as he made a move.
‘Tell me you’ll do it!’
‘Don’t fret,’ his mother said soothingly. ‘You can leave George to sort things out at the garage. He won’t let you down.’
She looked pleadingly across the bed at him, silently imploring him to back her up.
‘Of course he’ll let me down,’ his father said before he could speak. ‘He never could stand getting his hands dirty.’
‘Enough!’ the nurse said and, not waiting for his mother, George walked from the room.
She caught up with him in the family room. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t! Don’t apologise for him.’ Then, pouring her a cup of tea from one of the flasks on the trolley, ‘You do realise that he’s not going to be able to carry on like this?’
‘Please, George…’ she said.
Please, George…
Those two words had been the soundtrack to his childhood, his adolescence.
‘I’ll sort out what needs to be done,’ he said. ‘But maybe it’s time for that little place by the sea?’ he suggested, hoping to get her to see that there was an upside to this.
She shook her head. ‘He’d be dead within a year.’
‘He’ll be dead anyway if he carries on.’ Then, because he knew he was only distressing his mother, he said, ‘Will you be okay here on your own? Have you had anything to eat?’
‘I’ll get myself something if I’m hungry,’ she said, refusing to be fussed over. Then, her hand on his arm, ‘I’m so grateful to you for coming home. Your dad won’t tell you himself…’ She gave an awkward little shrug. ‘I don’t have to tell you how stubborn he can be. But he’s glad to see you.’
The traffic was building up to rush-hour level by the time Annie reached the far side of Maybridge. Unused to driving in heavy traffic, confused by the signs, she missed the exit for the motel, a fact she only realised when she passed it, seeing its lights blazing.
Letting slip a word she’d never used before, she took the next exit and then, rather than retracing her route using the ring road, she turned left, certain that it would lead her back to the motel. Fifteen minutes later, in an unlit country lane that had meandered off in totally the wrong direction, she admitted defeat and, as her headlights picked up the gateway to a field, she pulled over.
She found Reverse, swung the wheel and backed in. There was an unexpectedly sharp dip and the rear wheels left the tarmac with a hard bump, jolting the underside of the car.
Annie took a deep breath, told herself that it was nothing, then, having gathered herself, she turned the steering wheel in the right direction and applied a little pressure to the accelerator.
The only response was a horrible noise.
George sat for a moment looking up at the sign, George Saxon and Son, above the garage workshop. It was only when he climbed from the car that he noticed the light still burning, no doubt forgotten in the panic when his father had collapsed.
Using the keys his mother had given him, he unlocked the side door. Only two of the bays were occupied.
The nearest held the vintage Bentley that his father was in such a state about. Beautiful, arcane, it was in constant use as a wedding car and the brake linings needed replacing.
As he reached for the light switch he heard the familiar clang of a spanner hitting concrete, a muffled curse.
‘Hello?’
There was no response and, walking around the Bentley, he discovered a pair of feet encased in expensive sports shoes, jiggling as if in time to music, sticking out from beneath the bonnet.
He didn’t waste his breath trying to compete with whatever the owner of the feet was listening to, but instead he tapped one of them lightly with the toe of his shoe.
The movement stopped.
Then a pair of apparently endless, overall-clad legs slid from beneath the car, followed by a slender body. Finally a girl’s face appeared.
‘Alexandra?’
‘George?’ she replied, mocking his disbelief with pure sarcasm. ‘Gran told me you were coming but I didn’t actually believe her.’
He was tempted to ask her why not, but instead went for the big one.
‘What are you doing here?’ And, more to the point, why hadn’t his mother warned him that his daughter was there when she’d given him her keys?
‘Mum’s away on honeymoon with husband number three,’ she replied, as if that explained everything. ‘Where else would I go?’ Then, apparently realising that lying on her back she was at something of a disadvantage, she put her feet flat on the concrete and rose in one fluid, effortless movement that made him feel old.
‘And these days everyone calls me Xandra.’
‘Xandra,’ he repeated without comment. She’d been named, without reference to him, after her maternal grandmother, a woman who’d wanted him put up against a wall and shot for despoiling her little princess. It was probably just as well that at the time he’d been too numb with shock to laugh.
Indicating his approval, however, would almost certainly cause her to change back. Nothing he did was ever right. He’d tried so hard, loved her so much, but it had always been a battle between them. And, much as he’d have liked to blame her mother for that, he knew it wasn’t her fault. He simply had no idea how to be a dad. The kind that a little girl would smile at, run to.
‘I have no interest in your mother’s whereabouts,’ he said. ‘I want to know why you’re here instead of at school?’
She lifted her shoulders in an insolent shrug. ‘I’ve been suspended.’
‘Suspended?’
‘Indefinitely.’ Then with a second, epic, I-really-couldn’t-care-less shrug, ‘Until after Christmas, anyway. Not that it matters. I wouldn’t go back if they paid me.’
‘Unlikely, I’d have said.’
‘If you offered to build them a new science lab I bet they’d be keen enough.’
‘In that case I’d be the one paying them to take you back,’ he pointed out. ‘What has your mother done about it?’
‘Nothing. I told you. She’s lying on a beach somewhere. With her phone switched off.’
‘You could have called me.’
‘And what? You’d have dropped everything and rushed across the Atlantic to play daddy? Who knew you cared?’
He clenched his teeth. He was his father all over again. Incapable of forming a bond, making contact with this child who’d nearly destroyed his life. Who, from the moment she’d been grudgingly placed in his arms, had claimed his heart.
He would have done anything for her, died for her if need be. Anything but give up the dream he’d fought tooth and nail to achieve.
All the money in the world, the house his ex-wife had chosen, the expensive education—nothing he’d done had countered that perceived desertion.
‘Let’s pretend for a moment that I do,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ She coloured slightly. ‘Nothing much.’ He waited. ‘I hot-wired the head’s car and took it for a spin, that’s all.’
Hot-wired…
Apparently taking his shocked silence as encouragement to continue, she said, ‘Honestly. Who’d have thought the Warthog would have made such a fuss?’
‘You’re not old enough to drive!’ Then, because she’d grown so fast, was almost a woman, ‘Are you?’
She just raised her eyebrows, leaving him to work it out for himself. He was right. He’d been nineteen when she was born, which meant that his daughter wouldn’t be seventeen until next May. It would be six months before she could even apply for a licence.
‘You stole a car, drove it without a licence, without insurance?’ He somehow managed to keep his voice neutral. ‘That’s your idea of “nothing much”?’
He didn’t bother asking who’d taught her to drive. That would be the same person who’d given him an old banger and let him loose in the field out back as soon as his feet touched the pedals. Driving was in the Saxon blood, according to his father, and engine oil ran through their veins.
But, since she’d hot-wired Mrs Warburton’s car, clearly driving wasn’t all her grandfather had taught her.
‘What were you doing under the Bentley?’ he demanded as a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature ran through him.
‘Just checking it out. It needs new brake linings…’ The phone began to ring. With the slightest of shrugs, she leaned around him, unhooked it from the wall and said, ‘George Saxon and Granddaughter…’
What?
‘Where are you?’ she asked, reaching for a pen. ‘Are you on your own…? Okay, stay with the car—’
George Saxon and Granddaughter…
Shock slowed him down and as he moved to wrest the phone from her she leaned back out of his reach.
‘—we’ll be with you in ten minutes.’ She replaced the receiver. ‘A lone woman broken down on the Longbourne Road,’ she said. ‘I told her we’ll pick her up.’
‘I heard what you said. Just how do you propose to do that?’ he demanded furiously.
‘Get in the tow-truck,’ she suggested, ‘drive down the road…’
‘There’s no one here to deal with a breakdown.’
‘You’re here. I’m here. Granddad says I’m as good as you were with an engine.’
If she thought that would make him feel better, she would have to think again.
‘Call her back,’ he said, pulling down the local directory. ‘Tell her we’ll find someone else to help her.’
‘I didn’t take her number.’
‘It doesn’t matter. She won’t care who turns up so long as someone does,’ he said, punching in the number of another garage. It had rung just twice when he heard the clunk as a truck door was slammed shut. On the third ring he heard it start.
He turned around as a voice in his ear said, ‘Longbourne Motors. How can I…’
The personnel door was wide open and, as he watched, the headlights of the pick-up truck pierced the dark.
‘Sorry,’ he said, dropping the phone and racing after his daughter, wrenching open the cab door as it began to move. ‘Turn it off!’
She began to move as he reached for the keys.
‘Alexandra! Don’t you dare!’ He hung onto the door, walking quickly alongside the truck as she moved across the forecourt.
‘It’s Granddad’s business,’ she said, speeding up a little, forcing him to run or let go. He ran. ‘I’m not going to let you shut it down.’ Then, having made her point, she eased off the accelerator until the truck rolled to a halt before turning to challenge him. ‘I love cars, engines. I’m going to run this place, be a rally driver—’
‘What?’
‘Granddad’s going to sponsor me.’
‘You’re sixteen,’ he said, not sure whether he was more horrified that she wanted to race cars or fix them. ‘You don’t know what you want.’
Even as he said the words, he heard his father’s voice. ‘You’re thirteen, boy. Your head is full of nonsense. You don’t know what you want…’
He’d gone on saying it to him even when he was filling in forms, applying for university places, knowing that he’d get no financial backing, that he’d have to support himself every step of the way.
Even when his ‘nonsense’ was being installed in every new engine manufactured throughout the world, his father had still been telling him he was wrong…
‘Move over,’ he said.
Xandra clung stubbornly to the steering wheel. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Since you’ve already kept a lone woman waiting in a dark country lane for five minutes longer than necessary, I haven’t got much choice. I’m going to let you pick her up.’
‘Me?’
‘You. But you’ve already committed enough motoring offences for one week, so I’ll drive the truck.’
CHAPTER TWO
ANNIE saw the tow-truck, yellow light flashing on the roof of the cab, looming out of the dark, and sighed with relief as it pulled up just ahead of her broken-down car.
After a lorry, driving much too fast along the narrow country lane, had missed the front of the car by inches, she’d scrambled out and was standing with her back pressed against the gate, shivering with the cold.
The driver jumped down and swung a powerful torch over and around the car, and she threw up an arm to shield her eyes from the light as he found her.
‘George Saxon,’ her knight errant said, lowering the torch a little. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘Y-y-yes,’ she managed through chattering teeth. She couldn’t see his face behind the light but his voice had a touch of impatience that wasn’t exactly what she’d hoped for. ‘No thanks to a lorry driver who nearly took the front off the car.’
‘You should have switched on the hazard warning lights,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘Those sidelights are useless.’
‘If he’d been driving within the speed limit, he’d have seen me,’ she replied, less than pleased at the suggestion that it was her own fault that she’d nearly been killed.
‘There is no speed limit on this road other than the national limit. That’s seventy miles an hour,’ he added, in case she didn’t know.
‘I saw the signs. Foolishly, perhaps, I assumed that it was the upper limit, not an instruction,’ she snapped right back.
‘True,’ he agreed, ‘but just because other people behave stupidly it doesn’t mean you have to join in.’
First the car park attendant and now the garage mechanic. Irritable men talking to her as if she had dimwit tattooed across her forehead was getting tiresome.
Although, considering she could be relaxing in the warmth and comfort of Bab el Sama instead of freezing her socks off in an English country lane in December, they might just have a point.
‘So,’ he asked, gesturing at the car with the torch, ‘what’s the problem?’
‘I thought it was your job to tell me that,’ she replied, deciding she’d taken enough male insolence for one day.
‘Okaaay…’
Back-lit by the bright yellow hazard light swinging around on top of the tow-truck, she couldn’t make out more than the bulk of him but she had a strong sense of a man hanging onto his temper by a thread.
‘Let’s start with the basics,’ he said, making an effort. ‘Have you run out of petrol?’
‘What kind of fool do you take me for?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to establish,’ he replied with all the long-suffering patience of a man faced with every conceivable kind of a fool. Then, with a touch more grace, ‘Maybe you should just tell me what happened and we’ll take it from there.’
That was close enough to a truce to bring her from the safety of the gate and through teeth that were chattering with the cold—or maybe delayed shock, that lorry had been very close—she said, ‘I t-took the wrong road and t-tried to—’
‘To’ turned into a yelp as she caught her foot in a rut and was flung forward, hands outstretched, as she grabbed for anything to save herself. What she got was soft brushed leather and George Saxon, who didn’t budge as she cannoned into him but, steady as a rock, caught her, then held her as she struggled to catch her breath.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked after a moment.
With her cheek, her nose and her hands pressed against his chest, she was in no position to answer.
But with his breath warm against her skin, his hands holding her safe, there wasn’t a great deal wrong that she could think of.
Except, of course, all of the above.
She couldn’t remember ever being quite this close to a man she didn’t know, so what she was feeling—and whether ‘okay’ covered it—she couldn’t begin to say. She was still trying to formulate some kind of response when he moved back slightly, presumably so that he could check for himself.
‘I think so,’ she said quickly, getting a grip on her wits. She even managed to ease back a little herself, although she didn’t actually let go until she’d put a little weight on her ankle to test it.
There didn’t appear to be any damage but she decided not to rush it.
‘I’m in better shape than the car, anyway.’
He continued to look at her, not with the deferential respect she was used to, but in a way that made her feel exposed, vulnerable and, belatedly, she let go of his jacket, straightened the spectacles that had slipped sideways.
‘It was d-dark,’ she stuttered—stuttered? ‘And when I backed into the gate there was a bit more of a d-drop than I expected.’ Then, realising how feeble that sounded, ‘Quite a lot more of a drop, actually. This field entrance is very badly maintained,’ she added, doing her best to distance herself from the scent of leather warmed by a man’s body. From the feel of his chest beneath it, his solid shoulders. The touch of strong hands.
And in the process managed to sound like a rather pompous and disapproving dowager duchess.
‘Good enough for a tractor,’ he replied, dropping those capable hands and taking a step back. Leaving a cold space between them. ‘The farmer isn’t in the business of providing turning places for women who can’t read a map.’
‘I…’ On the point of saying that she hadn’t looked at a map, she thought better of it. He already thought she was a fool and there was nothing to be gained from confirming his first impression. ‘No. Well…’ She’d have taken a step back herself if she hadn’t been afraid her foot would find another rut and this time do some real damage. ‘I banged the underside of the car on something as I went down. When I tried to drive away it made a terrible noise and…’ She shrugged.
‘And what?’ he persisted.
‘And nothing,’ she snapped. Good grief, did he want it spelling out in words of one syllable? ‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’ Then, rubbing her hands over her sleeves, ‘Can you fix it?’
‘Not here.’
‘Oh.’
‘Come on,’ he said and, apparently taking heed of her comments about the state of the ground, he took her arm and supported her back onto the safety of the tarmac before opening the rear door of the truck’s cab. ‘You’d better get out of harm’s way while we load her up.’
As the courtesy light came on, bathing them both in light, Annie saw more of him. The brushed leather bomber jacket topping long legs clad not, as she’d expected, in overalls, but a pair of well-cut light-coloured trousers. And, instead of work boots, he was wearing expensive-looking loafers. Clearly, George Saxon hadn’t had the slightest intention of doing anything at the side of the road.
Her face must have betrayed exactly what she was thinking because he waved his torch over a tall but slight figure in dark overalls who was already attaching a line to her car.
‘She’s the mechanic,’ he said with a sardonic edge to his voice. His face, all dark shadows as the powerful overhead light swung in the darkness, matched his tone perfectly. ‘I’m just along for the ride.’
She? Annie thought as, looking behind her, he called out, ‘How are you doing back there?’
‘Two minutes…’
The voice was indeed that of a girl. Young and more than a little breathless and Annie, glancing back as she reached for the grab rail to haul herself up into the cab, could see that she was struggling.
‘I think she could do with some help,’ she said.
George regarded this tiresome female who’d been wished on him by his daughter with irritation.
‘I’m just the driver,’ he said. Then, offering her the torch, ‘But don’t let me stop you from pitching in and giving her a hand.’
‘It’s okay,’ Xandra called before she could take it from him. ‘I’ve got it.’
He shrugged. ‘It seems you were worrying about nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked, calling back to Xandra while never taking her eyes off him. It was a look that reminded him of Miss Henderson, a teacher who had been able to quell a class of unruly kids with a glance. Maybe it was the woolly hat and horn-rimmed glasses.
Although he had to admit that Miss Henderson had lacked the fine bone structure and, all chalk and old books, had never smelt anywhere near as good.
‘I’m done,’ Xandra called.
‘Happy?’ he enquired.
The woman held the look for one long moment before she gave him a cool nod and climbed up into the cab, leaving him to close the door behind her as if she were royalty.
‘Your servant, ma’am,’ he muttered as he went back to see how Xandra was doing.
‘Why on earth did you say that to her?’ she hissed as he checked the coupling.
He wasn’t entirely sure. Other than the fact that Miss Henderson was the only woman he’d ever known who could cut his cocky ten-year-old self down to size with a glance.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, pretending he hadn’t heard.
Back in the cab, he started the engine and began to winch the car up onto the trailer but, when he glanced up to check the road, his passenger’s eyes, huge behind the lenses, seemed to fill the rear-view mirror.
‘Can we drop you somewhere?’ he asked as Xandra climbed in beside him. Eager to be rid of her so that he could drop the car off at Longbourne Motors.
That took the starch right out of her look.
‘What? No…I can’t go on without my car…’
‘It’s not going anywhere tonight. You don’t live locally?’ he asked.
‘No. I’m…I’m on holiday. Touring.’
‘On your own? In December?’
‘Is there something wrong with that?’
A whole lot, in his opinion, but it was none of his business. ‘Whatever turns you on,’ he said, ‘although Maybridge in winter wouldn’t be my idea of a good time.’
‘Lots of people come for the Christmas market,’ Xandra said. ‘It’s this weekend. I’m going.’
All this and Christmas too. How much worse could it get? he thought before turning to Xandra and saying, ‘You aren’t going anywhere. You’re grounded.’ Then, without looking in the mirror, he said, ‘Where are you staying tonight?’
‘I’m not booked in anywhere. I was heading for the motel on the ring road.’
‘We’d have to go all the way to the motorway roundabout to get there from here,’ Xandra said before he could say a word, no doubt guessing his intention of dropping the car off at Longbourne Motors. ‘Much easier to run the lady back to the motel through the village once we have a better idea of how long it will take to fix her car.’
She didn’t wait for an answer, instead turning to introduce herself to their passenger. ‘I’m sorry, I’m Xandra Saxon,’ she said, but she was safe enough. This wasn’t an argument he planned on having in front of a stranger.
Annie relaxed a little as George Saxon took his eyes off her and smiled at the girl beside him, who was turning into something of an ally.
‘Hello, Xandra. I’m R-Ro…’
The word began to roll off her tongue before she remembered that she wasn’t Rose Napier.
‘Ro-o-owland,’ she stuttered out, grabbing for the first name that came into her head. Nanny Rowland…‘Annie Rowland,’ she said, more confidently.
Lydia had suggested she borrow her name but she’d decided that it would be safer to stick with something familiar. Annie had been her mother’s pet name for her but, since her grandfather disapproved of it, no one other than members of the household staff who’d known her since her mother was alive had ever used it. In the stress of the moment, though, the practised response had gone clean out of her head and she’d slipped into her standard introduction.
‘Ro-o-owland?’ George Saxon, repeating the name with every nuance of hesitation, looked up at the rear-view mirror and held her gaze.
‘Annie will do just fine,’ she said, then, realising that man and girl had the same name, she turned to Xandra. ‘You’re related?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ she replied in that throwaway, couldn’t-care-less manner that the young used when something was truly, desperately important. ‘My mother has made a career of getting married. George was the first in line, with a shotgun to his back if the date on my birth certificate is anything—’
‘Buckle up, Xandra,’ he said, cutting her off.
He was her father? But she wasn’t, it would appear, daddy’s little girl if the tension between them was anything to judge by.
But what did she know about the relationship between father and daughter? All she remembered was the joy of her father’s presence, feeling safe in his arms. If he’d lived would she have been a difficult teen?
The one thing she wouldn’t have been was isolated, wrapped in cotton wool by a grandfather afraid for her safety. She’d have gone to school, mixed with girls—and boys—her own age. Would have fallen in and out of love without the eyes of the entire country on her. Would never have stepped into the spotlight only to discover, too late, that she was unable to escape its glare.
‘Are you warm enough back there?’ George Saxon asked.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
The heater was efficient and despite his lack of charm, he hadn’t fumbled when she’d fallen into his arms. On the contrary. He’d been a rock and she felt safe enough in the back of his truck. A lot safer than she’d felt in his arms. But of course this was her natural place in the world. Sitting in the back with some man up front in the driving seat. In control.
Everything she’d hoped to escape from, she reminded herself, her gaze fixed on the man who was in control at the moment. Or at least the back of his head.
Over the years she had become something of a connoisseur of the back of the male head. The masculine neck. All those chauffeurs, bodyguards…
George Saxon’s neck would stand comparison with the best, she decided. Strong, straight with thick dark hair expertly cut to exactly the right length. His shoulders, encased in the soft tan leather of his jacket, would take some beating too. It was a pity his manners didn’t match them.
Or was she missing the point?
Rupert’s perfect manners made her teeth ache to say or do something utterly outrageous just to get a reaction, but George Saxon’s hands, like his eyes, had been anything but polite.
They’d been assured, confident, brazen even. She could still feel the imprint of his thumbs against her breasts where his hands had gripped her as she’d fallen; none of that Dresden shepherdess nonsense for him. And his insolence as he’d offered her the torch had sent an elemental shiver of awareness running up her spine that had precious little to do with the cold that had seeped deep into her bones.
He might not be a gentleman, but he was real—dangerously so—and, whatever else he made her feel, it certainly wasn’t desperation.
Annie didn’t have time to dwell on what exactly he did make her feel before he swung the truck off the road and turned onto the forecourt of a large garage with a sign across the workshop that read, George Saxon and Son.
Faded and peeling, neglected, it didn’t match the man, she thought as he backed up to one of the bays. He might be a little short on charm but he had an animal vitality that sent a charge of awareness running through her.
Xandra jumped down and opened the doors and then, once he’d backed her car in, she uncoupled it, he said, ‘There’s a customer waiting room at the far end. You’ll find a machine for drinks.’ Dismissed, she climbed down from the truck and walked away. ‘Annie!’
She stopped. It was, she discovered, easy to be charming when everyone treated you with respect but she had to take a deep breath before she turned, very carefully, to face him.
‘Mr Saxon?’ she responded politely.
‘Shut the damn door!’
She blinked.
No one had ever raised their voice to her. Spoken to her in that way.
‘In your own time,’ he said when she didn’t move.
Used to having doors opened for her, stepping out of a car without so much as a backward glance, she hadn’t even thought about it.
She wanted to be ordinary, she reminded herself. To be treated like an ordinary woman. Clearly, it was going to be an education.
She walked back, closed the door, but if she’d expected the courtesy of a thank you she would have been disappointed.
Always a fast learner, she hadn’t held her breath.
‘Take no notice of George,’ Xandra said as he drove away to park the truck. ‘He doesn’t want to be here so he’s taking it out on you.’
‘Doesn’t…? Why not? Isn’t he the “and Son”?’
She laughed, but not with any real mirth. ‘Wrong generation. The “and Son” above the garage is my granddad but he’s in hospital. A heart attack.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. How is he?’
‘Not well enough to run the garage until I can take over,’ she said. Then, blinking back something that looked very much like a tear, she shrugged, lifted her head. ‘Sorry. Family business.’ She flicked a switch that activated the hoist. ‘I’ll take a look at your car.’
Annie, confused by the tensions, wishing she could do something too, but realising that she’d been dismissed—and that was new, as well—said, ‘Your father mentioned a waiting room?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. It’ll be freezing in there and the drinks machine hasn’t worked in ages.’ Xandra fished a key out of her pocket. ‘Go inside where it’s warm,’ she said, handing it to her. ‘Make yourself at home. There’s tea and coffee by the kettle, milk in the fridge.’ Xandra watched the car as it rose slowly above them, then, realising that she hadn’t moved, said, ‘Don’t worry. It won’t take long to find the problem.’
‘Are you quite sure?’ she asked.
‘I may be young but I know what I’m doing.’
‘Yes…’ Well, maybe. ‘I meant about letting myself in.’
‘Gran would invite you in herself if she were here,’ she said as her father rejoined them.
In the bright strip light his face had lost the dangerous shadows, but it still had a raw quality. There was no softness to mitigate hard bone other than a full lower lip that oozed sensuality and only served to increase her sense of danger.
‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ he said.
‘I’m going…’ She cleared her throat. ‘Can I make something for either of you?’ she offered.
He frowned.
She lifted her hand and dangled the door key. ‘Tea? Coffee?’
For a moment she thought he was going to tell her to stay on her own side of the counter—maybe she was giving him the opportunity—but after a moment he shrugged and said, ‘Coffee. If there is any.’
‘Xandra?’
‘Whatever,’ she said, as she ducked beneath the hoist, clearly more interested in the car than in anything she had to say and Annie walked quickly across the yard, through a gate and up a well-lit path to the rear of a long, low stone-built house and let herself in through the back door.
The mud room was little more than a repository for boots and working clothes, a place to wash off the workplace dirt, but as she walked into the kitchen she was wrapped in the heat being belted out by an ancient solid fuel stove.
Now this was familiar, she thought, relaxing as she crossed to the sink, filled the kettle and set it on the hob to boil.
This room, so much more than a kitchen, was typical of the farmhouses at King’s Lacey, her grandfather’s Warwickshire estate.
Her last memory of her father was being taken to visit the tenants before he’d gone away for the last time. She’d been given brightly coloured fizzy pop and mince pies while he’d talked to people he’d known since his boyhood, asking about their children and grandchildren, discussing the price of feedstuff, grain. She’d played with kittens, fed the chickens, been given fresh eggs to take home for her tea. Been a child.
She ran her hand over the large, scrubbed-top table, looked at the wide dresser, laden with crockery and piled up with paperwork. Blinked back the tear that caught her by surprise before turning to a couple of Morris armchairs, the leather seats scuffed and worn, the wooden arms rubbed with wear, one of them occupied by a large ginger cat.
A rack filled with copies of motoring magazines stood beside one, a bag stuffed with knitting beside the other. There was a dog basket by the Aga, but no sign of its owner.
She let the cat sniff her fingers before rubbing it behind the ear, starting up a deep purr. Comfortable, it was the complete opposite of the state-of-the-art kitchen in her London home. Caught in a nineteen-fifties time warp, the only concession to modernity here was a large refrigerator, its cream enamel surface chipped with age, and a small television set tucked away on a shelf unit built beside the chimney breast.
The old butler’s sink, filled with dishes that were no doubt waiting for Xandra’s attention—George Saxon didn’t look the kind of man who was familiar with a dish mop—suggested that the age of the dishwasher had not yet reached the Saxon household.
She didn’t have a lot of time to spare for basic household chores these days, but there had been a time, long ago, when she had been allowed to stand on a chair and wash dishes, help cook when she was making cakes and, even now, once in a while, when they were in the country, she escaped to the comfort of her childhood kitchen, although only at night, when the staff were gone.
She wasn’t a child any more and her presence was an intrusion on their space.
Here, though, she was no one and she peeled off the woolly hat and fluffed up her short hair, enjoying the lightness of it. Then she hung her padded jacket on one of the pegs in the mud room before hunting out a pair of rubber gloves and pitching in.
Washing up was as ordinary as it got and she was grinning by the time she’d cleared the decks. It wasn’t what she’d imagined she’d be doing this evening, but it certainly fulfilled the parameters of the adventure.
By the time she heard the back door open, the dishes were draining on the rack above the sink and she’d made a large pot of tea for herself and Xandra, and a cup of instant coffee for George.
‘Oh…’ Xandra came to an abrupt halt at the kitchen door as she saw the table on which she was laying out cups and saucers. ‘I usually just bung a teabag in a mug,’ she said. Then, glancing guiltily at the sink, her eyes widened further. ‘You’ve done the washing-up…’
‘Well, you did tell me to make myself at home,’ Annie said, deadpan.
It took Xandra a moment but then she grinned. ‘You’re a brick. I was going to do it before Gran got home.’
A brick? No one had ever called her that before.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she replied, pouring tea while Xandra washed her hands at the sink. ‘Your gran is at the hospital with your grandfather, I imagine?’
Before Xandra could answer, George Saxon followed her into the kitchen, bringing with him a metallic blast of cold air.
He came to an abrupt halt, staring at her for a moment. Or, rather, she thought, her hair, and she belatedly wished she’d kept her hat on, but it was too late for that.
‘Has she told you?’ he demanded, finally tearing his gaze away from what she knew must look an absolute fright.
‘Told me what?’ she asked him.
‘That you’ve broken your crankshaft.’
‘No,’ she said, swiftly tiring of the novelty of his rudeness. A gentleman would have ignored the fact that she was having a seriously bad hair day rather than staring at the disaster in undisguised horror. ‘I gave my ankle a bit of a jolt in that pothole but, unless things have changed since I studied anatomy, I don’t believe that I have a crankshaft.’
Xandra snorted tea down her nose as she laughed, earning herself a quelling look from her father.
‘You’ve broken the crankshaft that drives the wheels of your car,’ he said heavily, quashing any thought she might have of joining in. ‘It’ll have to be replaced.’
‘If I knew what a crankshaft was,’ she replied, ‘I suspect that I’d be worried. How long will it take?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll have to ring around in the morning and see if there’s anyone who can deal with it as an emergency.’
Annie heard what he said but even when she ran through it again it still made no sense.
‘Why?’ she asked finally.
He had the nerve to turn a pair of slate-grey eyes on her and regard her as if her wits had gone begging.
‘I assume you want it repaired?’
‘Of course I want it repaired. That’s why I called you. You’re a garage. You fix cars. So fix it.’
‘I’m sorry but that’s impossible.’
‘You don’t sound sorry.’
‘He isn’t. While Granddad’s lying helpless in hospital he’s going to shut down a garage that’s been in the family for nearly a hundred years.’
‘Are you?’ she asked, keeping her gaze fixed firmly on him. ‘That doesn’t sound very sporting.’
He looked right back and she could see a pale fan of lines around his eyes that in anyone else she’d have thought were laughter lines.
‘He flew all the way from California for that very purpose,’ his daughter said when he didn’t bother to answer.
‘California?’ Well, that certainly explained the lines around his eyes. Screwing them up against the sun rather than an excess of good humour. ‘How interesting. What do you do in California, Mr Saxon?’
Her life consisted of asking polite questions, drawing people out of their shell, showing an interest. She had responded with her ‘Lady Rose’ voice and she’d have liked to pretend that this was merely habit rather than genuine interest, but that would be a big fat fib. There was something about George Saxon that aroused a lot more than polite interest in her maidenly breast.
His raised eyebrow suggested that what he did in the US was none of her business and he was undoubtedly right, but his daughter was happy to fill the gap.
‘According to my mother,’ she said, ‘George is a beach bum.’
At this point ‘Lady Rose’ would have smiled politely and moved on. Annie didn’t have to do that.
‘Is your mother right?’ she asked.
‘He doesn’t go to work unless he feels like it. Lives on the beach. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…’
She was looking at George, talking to him, but the replies kept coming from his daughter, stage left, and Annie shook her head just once, lifted a hand to silence the girl, waiting for him to answer her question.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I’M AFRAID it’s your bad luck that my daughter answered your call,’ George replied, not bothering to either confirm or deny it. ‘If I’d got to the phone first I’d have told you to ring someone else.’
‘I see. So why didn’t you simply call another garage and arrange for them to pick me up?’ Annie asked, genuinely puzzled.
‘It would have taken too long and, since you were on your own…’ He let it go.
She didn’t.
‘Oh, I see. You’re a gentleman beach bum?’
‘Don’t count on it,’ he replied.
No. She wouldn’t do that, but he appeared to have a conscience and she could work with that.
She’d had years of experience in parting millionaires from their money in a good cause and this seemed like a very good moment to put what she’d learned to use on her own behalf.
‘It’s a pity your concern doesn’t stretch as far as fixing my car.’ Since his only response was to remove his jacket and hang it over the back of a chair, the clearest statement that he was going nowhere, she continued. ‘So, George…’ use his name, imply that they were friends ‘…having brought me here under false pretences, what do you suggest I do now?’
‘I suggest you finish your tea, Annie…’ and the way he emphasized her name suggested he knew exactly what game she was playing ‘…then I suggest you call a taxi.’
Well, that didn’t go as well as she’d hoped.
‘I thought the deal was that you were going to run me there,’ she reminded him.
‘It’s been a long day. You’ll find a directory by the phone. It’s through there. In the hall,’ he added, just in case she was labouring under the misapprehension that he would do it for her. Then, having glanced at the cup of instant coffee and the delicate china cups she’d laid out, he took a large mug—one that she’d just washed—from the rack over the sink and filled it with tea.
Annie had been raised to be a lady and her first reaction, even under these trying circumstances, was to apologise for being a nuisance.
There had been a moment, right after that lorry had borne down on her out of the dark and she’d thought her last moment had come, when the temptation to accept defeat had very nearly got the better of her.
Shivering with shock at her close brush with eternity as much as the cold, it would have been so easy to put in the call that would bring a chauffeurdriven limousine to pick her up, return her home with nothing but a very bad haircut and a lecture on irresponsibility from her grandfather to show for her adventure.
But she’d wanted reality and that meant dealing with the rough as well as the smooth. Breaking down on a dark country road was no fun, but Lydia wouldn’t have been able to walk away, leave someone else to pick up the pieces. She’d have to deal with the mechanic who’d responded to her call, no matter how unwillingly. How lacking in the ethos of customer service.
Lydia, she was absolutely certain, wouldn’t apologise to him for expecting him to do his job, but demand he got on with it.
She could do no less.
‘I’m sorry,’ she began, but she wasn’t apologising for being a nuisance. Far from it. Instead, she picked up her tea and polite as you please, went on. ‘I’m afraid that is quite unacceptable. When you responded to my call you entered into a contract and I insist that you honour it.’
George Saxon paused in the act of spooning sugar into his tea and glanced up at her from beneath a lick of dark hair that had slid across his forehead.
‘Is that right?’ he asked.
He didn’t sound particularly impressed.
‘Under the terms of the Goods and Services Act,’ she added, with the poise of a woman for whom addressing a room full of strangers was an everyday occurrence, ‘nineteen eighty-three.’ The Act was real enough, even if she’d made up the date. The trick was to look as if you knew what you were talking about and a date—even if it was the first one that came into her head—added veracity to even the most outrageous statement.
This time he did smile and deep creases bracketed his face, his mouth, fanned out around those slate eyes. Maybe not just the sun, then…
‘You just made that up, Annie Rowland,’ he said, calling her bluff.
She pushed up the spectacles that kept sliding down her nose and smiled right back.
‘I’ll just wait here while you go to the local library and check,’ she said, lowering herself into the unoccupied Morris chair. ‘Unless you have a copy?’ Balancing the saucer in one hand, she used the other to pick up her tea and sip it. ‘Although, since you’re clearly unfamiliar with the legislation, I’m assuming that you don’t.’
‘The library is closed until tomorrow morning,’ he pointed out.
‘They don’t have late-night opening? How inconvenient for you. Never mind, I can wait.’ Then added, ‘Or you could just save time and fix my car.’
George had known the minute Annie Ro-o-owland had blundered into him, falling into his arms as if she was made to fit, that he was in trouble. Then she’d looked at him through the rearview mirror of the truck with those big blue eyes and he’d been certain of it. And here, in the light of his mother’s kitchen, they had double the impact.
They were not just large, but were the mesmerizing colour of a bluebell wood in April, framed by long dark lashes and perfectly groomed brows that were totally at odds with that appalling haircut. At odds with those horrible spectacles which continually slipped down her nose as if they were too big for her face…
As he stared at her, the certainty that he’d seen her somewhere before tugging at his memory, she used one finger to push them back up and he knew without doubt that they were nothing more than a screen for her to hide behind.
Everything about her was wrong.
Her car, bottom of range even when new, was well past its best, her hair was a nightmare and her clothes were chain-store basics but her scent, so faint that he knew she’d sprayed it on warm skin hours ago, probably after her morning shower, was the real one-thousand-dollar-an-ounce deal.
And then there was her voice.
No one spoke like that unless they were born to it. Not even twenty-five thousand pounds a year at Dower House could buy that true-blue aristocratic accent, a fact he knew to his cost.
He stirred his tea, took a sip, making her wait while he thought about his next move.
‘I’ll organise a rental for you while it’s being fixed,’ he offered finally. Experience had taught him that, where women were concerned, money was the easiest way to make a problem go away. But first he’d see how far being helpful would get him. ‘If that would make things easier for you?’
She carefully replaced the delicate bone china cup on its saucer. ‘I’m sorry, George. I’m afraid that’s out of the question.’
It was like a chess game, he thought. Move and countermove. And everything about her—the voice, the poise—suggested that she was used to playing the Queen.
Tough. He wasn’t about to be her pawn. He might be lumbered with Mike Jackson’s Bentley—he couldn’t offload a specialist job like that at short notice as his father well knew—but he wasn’t about to take on something that any reasonably competent mechanic could handle.
Maybe if she took off her glasses…
‘As a gesture of goodwill, recognising that you have been put to unnecessary inconvenience,’ he said, catching himself—this was not the moment to allow himself to be distracted by a pair of blue eyes, pale flawless skin, scent that aroused an instant go-to-hell response. He didn’t do ‘instant’. It would have to be money. ‘I would be prepared to pay any reasonable out-of-pocket expenses.’
Check.
He didn’t care how much it cost to get her and her eyes out of the garage, out of his mother’s kitchen, out of his hair. Just as long as she went.
‘That’s a most generous offer,’ she replied. ‘Unfortunately, I can’t accept. The problem isn’t money, you see, but my driving licence.’
‘Oh?’ Then, ‘You do have a valid licence?’
If she was driving without one all bets were off. He could ground his daughter for her reckless behaviour—maybe—but Annie Rowland would be out of here faster than he could call the police.
But she wasn’t in the least bit put out by his suggestion that she was breaking the law.
‘I do have a driving licence,’ she replied, cool as you like. ‘And, in case you’re wondering, it’s as clean as the day it was issued. But I’m afraid I left it at home. In my other bag.’ She shrugged. ‘You know how it is.’ Then, looking at him as if she’d only just noticed that he was a man, she smiled and said, ‘Oh, no. I don’t suppose you do. All a man has to do is pick up his wallet and he has everything he needs right there in his jacket pocket.’
He refused to indulge the little niggle that wanted to know whose wallet, what man…
‘And where, exactly, is home?’ he asked, trying not to look at her hand and failing. She wasn’t wearing a ring but that meant nothing.
‘London.’
‘London is a big place.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘It is.’ Then, without indulging his curiosity about which part of London, ‘You must know that no one will rent me a car without it. My licence.’
Unfortunately, he did.
Checkmate.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Xandra, who’d been watching this exchange with growing impatience, said, ‘If you won’t fix Annie’s car, I’ll do it myself.’ She put down her cup and headed for the door. ‘I’ll make a start right now.’
‘Shouldn’t you be thinking about your grandmother?’ he snapped before she reached it. ‘I’m sure she’d appreciate a hot meal when she gets back from the hospital. Or are you so lost to selfishness that you expect her to cook for you?’
‘She doesn’t…’ Then, unexpectedly curbing her tongue, she said, ‘I’m not the selfish one around here.’
Annie, aware that in this battle of wits Xandra was her ally, cleared her throat. ‘Why don’t I get supper?’ she offered.
They both turned to stare at her.
‘Why would you do that?’ George Saxon demanded.
‘Because I want my car fixed?’
‘You won’t get a better offer,’ Xandra declared, leaping in before her father could turn down her somewhat rash offer. ‘My limit is baked beans on toast. I’m sure Annie can do better than that,’ she said, throwing a pleading glance in her direction.
‘Can you?’ he demanded.
‘Do better than baked beans on toast?’ she repeated. ‘Actually, that won’t be…’ She broke off, distracted by the wild signals Xandra was making behind her father’s back. As he turned to see what had caught her attention she went on. ‘Difficult. Not at all.’
He gave her a long look through narrowed eyes, clearly aware that he’d missed something. Then continued to look at her as if there was something about her that bothered him.
She knew just how he felt.
The way he looked at her bothered her to bits, she thought, using her forefinger to push the ‘prop’ spectacles up her nose. They would keep sliding down, making it easier to look over them than through them, which made wearing them utterly pointless.
‘How long do you think it’ll take?’ she asked, not sure who she was attempting to distract. George or herself.
He continued to stare for perhaps another ten seconds—clearly not a man to be easily distracted—before he shrugged and said, ‘It depends what else we find. Your car is not exactly in the first flush. Once something major happens it tends to have a knock-on effect. You’re touring, you say?’
She nodded. ‘That was the plan. Shropshire, Cheshire, maybe. A little sightseeing. A little shopping.’
‘There aren’t enough sights, enough shops in London?’ he enquired, an edge to his voice that suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced.
‘Oh, well…’ She matched his shrug and raised him a smile. ‘You know what they say about a change.’
‘Being as good as a rest?’ He sounded doubtful. ‘This isn’t a great time of year to break down, especially if you’re stranded miles from anywhere,’ he pointed out.
He didn’t bother to match her smile.
‘It’s never a good time for that, George.’
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Liz Fielding
Christmas Angel
for the
Billionaire
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u26b3c6a4-91ed-59f7-aa89-367baf9fad12)
Title Page (#ubbbc1d0d-03f8-5a3f-9fe1-bc5877ca6b61)
About the Author (#u1b544e83-1e32-59ed-b171-19940858566d)
PROLOGUE (#ue9153c0f-af4b-50a1-86fc-b4be0d9f7f20)
CHAPTER ONE (#u34ed1150-ea8a-504d-b0bf-d21d04b0d764)
CHAPTER TWO (#uda0c9c92-93c5-5a48-9871-b94249e60025)
CHAPTER THREE (#u5870ecb1-be33-55c1-baf9-7891f6a8164a)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
A CHRISTMAS TRADITION (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days mostly leaves her pen to do the travelling. When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors, and spends a lot of time wondering ‘What if…?’ For news of upcoming books—and to sign up for her occasional newsletter—visit Liz’s website at www.lizfielding.com
PROLOGUE
Daily Chronicle, 19th December, 1988
MARQUESS AND WIFE SLAIN ON CHARITY MISSION
The Marquess and Marchioness of St Ives, whose fairy-tale romance captured the hearts of the nation, were slain yesterday by rebels who opened fire on their vehicle as they approached a refugee camp in the war-torn region of Mishona. Their driver and a local woman who worked for the medical charity Susie’s Friends also died in the attack.
HM the Queen sent a message of sympathy to the Duke of Oldfield, the widowed father of the Marquess, and to the slaughtered couple’s six-year-old daughter, Lady Roseanne Napier.
The Marchioness of St Ives, Lady Susanne Napier, who overcame early hardships to train as a doctor, founded the international emergency charity with her husband shortly after their marriage.
Daily Chronicle, 24th December, 1988
WE MUST ALL BE HER FAMILY NOW…
Six-year-old Lady Roseanne Napier held her grandfather’s hand as the remains of her slain mother and father were laid to rest in the family vault yesterday afternoon. In his oration, praising their high ideals, the grieving Duke said, ‘We must all be her family now…’
Daily Chronicle, 18th December, 1998
A PERFECT ANGEL…
Today, on the tenth anniversary of the slaying of her parents while helping to co-ordinate relief in warravished Mishona, Lady Rose Napier opened Susanne House, a children’s hospice named to honour her mother. After unveiling a plaque, Lady Rose met the brave children who are being cared for at Susanne House and talked to their parents. ‘She was so caring, so thoughtful for someone so young,’one of the nurses said. ‘A perfect angel. Her mother would have been so proud of her.’
Her mother isn’t here to tell her that, so we are saying it for her.
We are all proud of you, Lady Rose.
CHAPTER ONE
ANNIE smothered a yawn. The room was hot, the lingering scent of food nauseating and all she wanted to do was lay her head on the table in front of her, close her eyes and switch off.
If only.
There was a visit to a hospital, then three hours of Wagner at a charity gala to endure before she could even think about sleep. And even then, no matter how tired she was, thinking about it was as close as she would get.
She’d tried it all. Soothing baths, a lavender pillow, every kind of relaxation technique without success. But calming her mind wasn’t the problem.
It wasn’t the fact that it was swirling with all the things she needed to remember that was keeping her awake. She had an efficient personal assistant to take care of every single detail of her life and ensure that she was in the right place at the right time. A speech writer to put carefully chosen words into her mouth when she got there. A style consultant whose job it was to ensure that whenever she appeared in public she made the front page.
That was the problem.
There was absolutely nothing in her mind to swirl around. It was empty. Like her life.
In just under a minute she was going to have to stand up and talk to these amazing people who had put themselves on the line to alleviate suffering in the world.
They had come to see her, listen to her inspire them to even greater efforts. And her presence ensured that the press was here too, which meant that the work they did would be noticed, reported.
Maybe.
Her hat, a rich green velvet and feather folly perched at a saucy angle over her right eye would probably garner more column inches than the charity she was here to support.
She was doing more for magazine and newspaper circulation than she was for the medical teams, the search units, pilots, drivers, communications people who dropped everything at a moment’s notice, risking their lives to help victims of war, famine, disaster—a point she’d made to her grandfather more than once.
A pragmatist, he had dismissed her concerns, reminding her that it was a symbiotic relationship and everyone would benefit from her appearance, including the British fashion industry.
It didn’t help that he was right.
She wanted to do more, be more than a cover girl, a fashion icon. Her parents had been out there, on the front line, picking up the pieces of ruined lives and she had planned to follow in their footsteps.
She stopped the thought. Publicity was the only gift she had and she had better do it right but, as she took her place at the lectern and a wave of applause hit her, a long silent scream invaded the emptiness inside her head.
Noooooo…
‘Friends…’ she began when the noise subsided. She paused, looked around her, found faces in the audience she recognised, people her parents had known. Took a breath, dug deep, smiled. ‘I hope I’ve earned the right to call you that…’
She had been just eighteen years old when, at her grandfather’s urging, she’d accepted an invitation to become patron of Susie’s Friends. A small consolation for the loss of her dream of following her mother into medicine.
All that had ended when, at the age of sixteen, a photograph of her holding the hand of a dying child had turned her, overnight, from a sheltered, protected teen into an iconic image and her grandfather had laid out the bald facts for her.
How impossible it was. How her fellow students, patients even, would be harassed, bribed by the press for gossip about her because she was now public property. Then he’d consoled her with the fact that this way she could do so much more for the causes her mother had espoused.
Ten years on, more than fifty charities had claimed her as a patron. How many smiles, handshakes? Charity galas, first nights?
How many children’s hands had she held, how many babies had she cradled?
None of them her own.
She had seen herself described as the ‘most loved woman in Britain’, but living in an isolation bubble, sheltered, protected from suffering the same fate as her parents, it was a love that never came close enough to touch.
But the media was a hungry beast that had to be fed and it was, apparently, time to move the story on. Time for a husband and children to round out the image. And, being her grandfather, he wasn’t prepared to leave anything that important to chance.
Or to her.
Heaven forbid there should be anything as messy as her own father’s passionate romance with a totally unsuitable woman, one whose ideals had ended up getting them both killed.
Instead, he’d found the perfect candidate in Rupert Devenish, Viscount Earley, easing him into her life so subtly that she’d barely noticed. Titled, rich and almost too good-looking to be true, he was so eligible that if she’d gone to the ‘ideal husband’ store and picked him off the shelf he couldn’t be more perfect.
So perfect, in fact, that unless she was extremely careful, six months from now she’d find herself with a ring on her finger and in a year she’d be on every front page, every magazine cover, wearing the ‘fairy-tale’ dress. The very thought of it weighed like a lump of lead somewhere in the region of her heart. Trapped, with nowhere to turn, she felt as if the glittering chandeliers were slowly descending to crush her.
She dug her nails into her palm to concentrate her mind, took a sip of water, looked around at all the familiar faces and, ignoring the carefully worded speech that had been written for her, she talked to them about her parents, about ideals, about sacrifice, her words coming straight from the heart.
An hour later it was over and she turned to the hotel manager as he escorted her to the door. ‘Another wonderful lunch, Mr Gordon. How is your little girl?’
‘Much improved, thank you, Lady Rose. She was so thrilled with the books you sent her.’
‘She wrote me the sweetest note.’ She glanced at the single blush-pink rose she was holding.
She yearned to be offered, just once, something outrageous in purple or orange, but this variety of rose had been named for her and part of the proceeds of every sale went to Susanne House. To have offered her anything else would have been unthinkable.
‘Will you give her this from me?’ she said, offering him the rose.
‘Madam,’ he said, pink with pleasure as he took it and Annie felt a sudden urge to hug the man. Instead, she let her hand rest briefly on his arm before she turned to join Rupert, who was already at the door, impatient to be away.
Turned and came face to face with herself.
Or at least a very close facsimile.
A look in one of the mirrors that lined the walls would have shown two tall, slender young women, each with pale gold hair worn up in the same elegant twist, each with harebell-blue eyes.
Annie had been aware of her double’s existence for years. Had seen photographs in magazines and newspapers, courtesy of the cuttings agency that supplied clippings of any print article that contained her name. She’d assumed that the amazing likeness had been aided by photographic manipulation but it wasn’t so. It was almost like looking in the mirror.
For a moment they both froze. Annie, more experienced in dealing with the awkward moment, putting people at their ease, was the first to move.
‘I know the face,’ she said, feeling for the woman—it wasn’t often a professional ‘lookalike’ came face to face with the real thing. With a smile, she added, ‘But I’m afraid the name escapes me.’
Her double, doing a remarkable job of holding her poise under the circumstances, said, ‘Lydia, madam. Lydia Young.’ But, as she took her hand, Annie felt it shaking. ‘I’m s-so sorry. I promise this wasn’t planned. I had no idea you’d be here.’
‘Please, it’s not a problem.’ Then, intrigued, ‘Do you—or do I mean I?—have an engagement here?’
‘Had. A product launch.’ Lydia gave an awkward little shrug as she coloured up. ‘A new variety of tea.’
‘I do hope it’s good,’ Annie replied, ‘if I’m endorsing it.’
‘Well, it’s expensive,’ Lydia said, relaxing sufficiently to smile back. Then, ‘I’ll just go and sit down behind that pillar for ten minutes, shall I? While I’m sure the photographers out there would enjoy it if we left together, my clients didn’t pay me anywhere near enough to give them that kind of publicity.’
‘It would rather spoil the illusion if we were seen together,’ Annie agreed. About to walk on, something stopped her. ‘As a matter of interest, Lydia, how much do you charge for being me?’ she asked. ‘Just in case I ever decide to take a day off.’
‘No charge for you, Lady Rose,’ she replied, handing her the rose that she was, inevitably, carrying as she sank into a very brief curtsey. ‘Just give me a call. Any time.’
For a moment they looked at one another, then Annie sniffed the rose and said, ‘They don’t have much character, do they? No scent, no thorns…’
‘Well, it’s November. I imagine they’ve been forced under glass.’
Something they had in common, Annie thought.
She didn’t have much character either, just a carefully manufactured image as the nation’s ‘angel’, ‘sweetheart’.
Rupert, already through the door, looked back to see what was keeping her and, apparently confident enough to display a little impatience, said, ‘Rose, we’re running late…’
They both glanced in his direction, then Lydia looked at her and lifted a brow in a ‘dump the jerk’ look that exactly mirrored her own thoughts.
‘I don’t suppose you fancy three hours of Wagner this evening?’ she asked but, even before Lydia could reply, she shook her head. ‘Just kidding. I wouldn’t wish that on you.’
‘I meant what I said.’ And Lydia, taking a card from the small clutch bag she was carrying, offered it to her. ‘Call me. Any time.’
Three weeks later, as speculation in the press that she was about to announce her engagement reached fever-pitch, Annie took out Lydia’s card and dialled the number.
‘Lydia Young…’
‘Did you mean it?’ she asked.
George Saxon, bare feet propped on the deck rail of his California beach house, laptop on his knees, gave up on the problem that had been eluding him for weeks and surfed idly through the headlines of the London newspapers.
His eye was caught by the picture of a couple leaving some gala. She was one of those tall patrician women, pale blonde hair swept up off her neck, her fabulously expensive gown cut low to reveal hollows in her shoulders even deeper than those in her cheeks.
But it wasn’t her dress or the fact that she’d so obviously starved herself to get into it that had caught and held his attention. It was her eyes.
Her mouth was smiling for the camera, but her eyes, large, blue, seemed to be looking straight at him, sending him a silent appeal for help.
He clicked swiftly back to the program he’d been working on. Sometimes switching in and out of a problem cleared the blockage but this one was stubborn, which was why he’d left his Chicago office, lakeside apartment. Escaping the frantic pre-Christmas party atmosphere for the peace—and warmth—of the beach.
Behind him, inside the house, the phone began to ring. It would be his accountant, or his lawyer, or his office but success had insulated him from the need to jump when the phone rang and he left it for the machine to pick up. There was nothing, no one—
‘George? It’s your dad…’
But, then again, there were exceptions to every rule.
Tossing a holdall onto the back seat of the little red car that was Lydia’s proudest possession, Annie settled herself behind the wheel and ran her hands over the steering wheel as if to reassure herself that it was real.
That she’d escaped…
Three hours ago, Lady Rose Napier had walked into a London hotel without her unshakeable escort—the annual Pink Ribbon Lunch was a ladies-only occasion. Two hours later, Lydia had walked out in her place. And ten minutes ago she’d left the same hotel completely unnoticed.
By now Lydia would be on board a private jet, heading for a week of total luxury at Bab el Sama, the holiday home of her friend Lucy al-Khatib.
Once there, all she had to do was put in an occasional appearance on the terrace or the beach for the paparazzi who, after the sudden rash of ‘Wedding Bells?’ headlines, would no doubt be sitting offshore in small boats, long-range cameras at the ready, hoping to catch her in flagrante in this private ‘love-nest’ with Rupert.
She hoped they’d packed seasick pills along with their sunscreen since they were going to have a very long wait.
And she grinned. She’d told her grandfather that she needed time on her own to consider her future. Not true. She wasn’t going to waste one precious second of the time that Lydia—bless her heart—had given her thinking about Rupert Devenish.
She had just a week in which to be anonymous, to step outside the hothouse environment in which she’d lived since her parents had been killed. To touch reality as they had done. Be herself. Nothing planned, nothing organised. Just take life as it came.
She adjusted the rear-view mirror to check her appearance. She’d debated whether to go with a wig or colour her hair but, having tried a wig—it was amazing what you could buy on the Internet—and realising that living in it 24/7 was not for her, she’d decided to go for a temporary change of hair colour, darkening it a little with the temporary rinse Lydia had provided.
But that would have taken time and, instead, in an act of pure rebellion, of liberation, she’d hacked it short with a pair of nail scissors. When she’d stopped, the short, spiky result was so shocking that she’d been grateful for the woolly hat Lydia had provided to cover it.
She pulled it down over her ears, hoping that Lydia, forced to follow her style, would forgive her. Pushed the heavy-framed ‘prop’ spectacles up her nose. And grinned. The sense of freedom was giddying and, if she was honest, a little frightening. She’d never been completely on her own before and, shivering a little, she turned on the heater.
‘Not frightening,’ she said out loud as she eased out of the parking bay and headed for the exit. ‘Challenging.’ And, reaching the barrier, she encountered her first challenge.
Lydia had left the ticket on the dashboard for her and she stuck it in the machine, expecting the barrier to lift. The machine spat it back out.
As she tried it the other way, with the same result, there was a series of impatient toots from the tailback building up behind her.
So much for invisibility.
She’d been on her own for not much more than an hour and already she was the centre of attention…
‘What’s your problem, lady?’
Annie froze but the ‘Rose’ never came and she finally looked up to find a car park attendant, a Santa Claus hat tugged down to his ears against the cold, glaring at her.
Apparently he’d used the word ‘lady’ not as a title, but as something barely short of an insult and, like his sour expression, it didn’t quite match the ‘ho, ho, ho’ of the hat.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
‘Oh. Um…’ Concentrate! ‘I put the ticket in, but nothing happened.’
‘Have you paid?’
‘Paid?’ she asked. ‘Where?’
He sighed. ‘Can’t you read? There’s a notice ten feet high at the entrance.’ Then, since she was still frowning, he said, very slowly, ‘You have to pay before you leave. Over there.’ She looked around, saw a machine, then, as the hooting became more insistent, ‘In your own time,’ he added sarcastically.
And Bah! Humbug…to you, she thought as she grabbed her bag from the car and sprinted to the nearest machine, read the instructions, fed in the ticket and then the amount indicated with shaking fingers.
She returned to the car, calling, ‘Sorry, sorry…’ to the people she’d held up before flinging herself back into the car and finally escaping.
Moments later, she was just one of thousands of drivers battling through traffic swollen by Christmas shoppers and visitors who’d come up to town to see the lights.
Anonymous, invisible, she removed the unnecessary spectacles, dropping them on the passenger seat, then headed west out of London.
She made good time but the pale blue winter sky was tinged with pink, the trees black against the horizon as she reached the junction for Maybridge. A pretty town with excellent shops, a popular riverside area, it was not too big, not too small. As good a place as any to begin her adventure and she headed for the ring road and the anonymous motel she’d found on the Internet.
Somewhere to spend the night and decide what she was going to do with her brief moment of freedom.
George Saxon’s jaw was rigid as he kept his silence.
‘No one else can do it,’ his father insisted.
A nurse appeared, checked the drip. ‘I need to make Mr Saxon comfortable,’ she said. Then, with a pointed look at him, ‘Why don’t you take your mother home? She’s been here all day.’
‘No, I’ll stay.’ She took his father’s hand, squeezed it. ‘I’ll be back in a little while.’
His father ignored her, instead grabbing his wrist as he made a move.
‘Tell me you’ll do it!’
‘Don’t fret,’ his mother said soothingly. ‘You can leave George to sort things out at the garage. He won’t let you down.’
She looked pleadingly across the bed at him, silently imploring him to back her up.
‘Of course he’ll let me down,’ his father said before he could speak. ‘He never could stand getting his hands dirty.’
‘Enough!’ the nurse said and, not waiting for his mother, George walked from the room.
She caught up with him in the family room. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t! Don’t apologise for him.’ Then, pouring her a cup of tea from one of the flasks on the trolley, ‘You do realise that he’s not going to be able to carry on like this?’
‘Please, George…’ she said.
Please, George…
Those two words had been the soundtrack to his childhood, his adolescence.
‘I’ll sort out what needs to be done,’ he said. ‘But maybe it’s time for that little place by the sea?’ he suggested, hoping to get her to see that there was an upside to this.
She shook her head. ‘He’d be dead within a year.’
‘He’ll be dead anyway if he carries on.’ Then, because he knew he was only distressing his mother, he said, ‘Will you be okay here on your own? Have you had anything to eat?’
‘I’ll get myself something if I’m hungry,’ she said, refusing to be fussed over. Then, her hand on his arm, ‘I’m so grateful to you for coming home. Your dad won’t tell you himself…’ She gave an awkward little shrug. ‘I don’t have to tell you how stubborn he can be. But he’s glad to see you.’
The traffic was building up to rush-hour level by the time Annie reached the far side of Maybridge. Unused to driving in heavy traffic, confused by the signs, she missed the exit for the motel, a fact she only realised when she passed it, seeing its lights blazing.
Letting slip a word she’d never used before, she took the next exit and then, rather than retracing her route using the ring road, she turned left, certain that it would lead her back to the motel. Fifteen minutes later, in an unlit country lane that had meandered off in totally the wrong direction, she admitted defeat and, as her headlights picked up the gateway to a field, she pulled over.
She found Reverse, swung the wheel and backed in. There was an unexpectedly sharp dip and the rear wheels left the tarmac with a hard bump, jolting the underside of the car.
Annie took a deep breath, told herself that it was nothing, then, having gathered herself, she turned the steering wheel in the right direction and applied a little pressure to the accelerator.
The only response was a horrible noise.
George sat for a moment looking up at the sign, George Saxon and Son, above the garage workshop. It was only when he climbed from the car that he noticed the light still burning, no doubt forgotten in the panic when his father had collapsed.
Using the keys his mother had given him, he unlocked the side door. Only two of the bays were occupied.
The nearest held the vintage Bentley that his father was in such a state about. Beautiful, arcane, it was in constant use as a wedding car and the brake linings needed replacing.
As he reached for the light switch he heard the familiar clang of a spanner hitting concrete, a muffled curse.
‘Hello?’
There was no response and, walking around the Bentley, he discovered a pair of feet encased in expensive sports shoes, jiggling as if in time to music, sticking out from beneath the bonnet.
He didn’t waste his breath trying to compete with whatever the owner of the feet was listening to, but instead he tapped one of them lightly with the toe of his shoe.
The movement stopped.
Then a pair of apparently endless, overall-clad legs slid from beneath the car, followed by a slender body. Finally a girl’s face appeared.
‘Alexandra?’
‘George?’ she replied, mocking his disbelief with pure sarcasm. ‘Gran told me you were coming but I didn’t actually believe her.’
He was tempted to ask her why not, but instead went for the big one.
‘What are you doing here?’ And, more to the point, why hadn’t his mother warned him that his daughter was there when she’d given him her keys?
‘Mum’s away on honeymoon with husband number three,’ she replied, as if that explained everything. ‘Where else would I go?’ Then, apparently realising that lying on her back she was at something of a disadvantage, she put her feet flat on the concrete and rose in one fluid, effortless movement that made him feel old.
‘And these days everyone calls me Xandra.’
‘Xandra,’ he repeated without comment. She’d been named, without reference to him, after her maternal grandmother, a woman who’d wanted him put up against a wall and shot for despoiling her little princess. It was probably just as well that at the time he’d been too numb with shock to laugh.
Indicating his approval, however, would almost certainly cause her to change back. Nothing he did was ever right. He’d tried so hard, loved her so much, but it had always been a battle between them. And, much as he’d have liked to blame her mother for that, he knew it wasn’t her fault. He simply had no idea how to be a dad. The kind that a little girl would smile at, run to.
‘I have no interest in your mother’s whereabouts,’ he said. ‘I want to know why you’re here instead of at school?’
She lifted her shoulders in an insolent shrug. ‘I’ve been suspended.’
‘Suspended?’
‘Indefinitely.’ Then with a second, epic, I-really-couldn’t-care-less shrug, ‘Until after Christmas, anyway. Not that it matters. I wouldn’t go back if they paid me.’
‘Unlikely, I’d have said.’
‘If you offered to build them a new science lab I bet they’d be keen enough.’
‘In that case I’d be the one paying them to take you back,’ he pointed out. ‘What has your mother done about it?’
‘Nothing. I told you. She’s lying on a beach somewhere. With her phone switched off.’
‘You could have called me.’
‘And what? You’d have dropped everything and rushed across the Atlantic to play daddy? Who knew you cared?’
He clenched his teeth. He was his father all over again. Incapable of forming a bond, making contact with this child who’d nearly destroyed his life. Who, from the moment she’d been grudgingly placed in his arms, had claimed his heart.
He would have done anything for her, died for her if need be. Anything but give up the dream he’d fought tooth and nail to achieve.
All the money in the world, the house his ex-wife had chosen, the expensive education—nothing he’d done had countered that perceived desertion.
‘Let’s pretend for a moment that I do,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ She coloured slightly. ‘Nothing much.’ He waited. ‘I hot-wired the head’s car and took it for a spin, that’s all.’
Hot-wired…
Apparently taking his shocked silence as encouragement to continue, she said, ‘Honestly. Who’d have thought the Warthog would have made such a fuss?’
‘You’re not old enough to drive!’ Then, because she’d grown so fast, was almost a woman, ‘Are you?’
She just raised her eyebrows, leaving him to work it out for himself. He was right. He’d been nineteen when she was born, which meant that his daughter wouldn’t be seventeen until next May. It would be six months before she could even apply for a licence.
‘You stole a car, drove it without a licence, without insurance?’ He somehow managed to keep his voice neutral. ‘That’s your idea of “nothing much”?’
He didn’t bother asking who’d taught her to drive. That would be the same person who’d given him an old banger and let him loose in the field out back as soon as his feet touched the pedals. Driving was in the Saxon blood, according to his father, and engine oil ran through their veins.
But, since she’d hot-wired Mrs Warburton’s car, clearly driving wasn’t all her grandfather had taught her.
‘What were you doing under the Bentley?’ he demanded as a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature ran through him.
‘Just checking it out. It needs new brake linings…’ The phone began to ring. With the slightest of shrugs, she leaned around him, unhooked it from the wall and said, ‘George Saxon and Granddaughter…’
What?
‘Where are you?’ she asked, reaching for a pen. ‘Are you on your own…? Okay, stay with the car—’
George Saxon and Granddaughter…
Shock slowed him down and as he moved to wrest the phone from her she leaned back out of his reach.
‘—we’ll be with you in ten minutes.’ She replaced the receiver. ‘A lone woman broken down on the Longbourne Road,’ she said. ‘I told her we’ll pick her up.’
‘I heard what you said. Just how do you propose to do that?’ he demanded furiously.
‘Get in the tow-truck,’ she suggested, ‘drive down the road…’
‘There’s no one here to deal with a breakdown.’
‘You’re here. I’m here. Granddad says I’m as good as you were with an engine.’
If she thought that would make him feel better, she would have to think again.
‘Call her back,’ he said, pulling down the local directory. ‘Tell her we’ll find someone else to help her.’
‘I didn’t take her number.’
‘It doesn’t matter. She won’t care who turns up so long as someone does,’ he said, punching in the number of another garage. It had rung just twice when he heard the clunk as a truck door was slammed shut. On the third ring he heard it start.
He turned around as a voice in his ear said, ‘Longbourne Motors. How can I…’
The personnel door was wide open and, as he watched, the headlights of the pick-up truck pierced the dark.
‘Sorry,’ he said, dropping the phone and racing after his daughter, wrenching open the cab door as it began to move. ‘Turn it off!’
She began to move as he reached for the keys.
‘Alexandra! Don’t you dare!’ He hung onto the door, walking quickly alongside the truck as she moved across the forecourt.
‘It’s Granddad’s business,’ she said, speeding up a little, forcing him to run or let go. He ran. ‘I’m not going to let you shut it down.’ Then, having made her point, she eased off the accelerator until the truck rolled to a halt before turning to challenge him. ‘I love cars, engines. I’m going to run this place, be a rally driver—’
‘What?’
‘Granddad’s going to sponsor me.’
‘You’re sixteen,’ he said, not sure whether he was more horrified that she wanted to race cars or fix them. ‘You don’t know what you want.’
Even as he said the words, he heard his father’s voice. ‘You’re thirteen, boy. Your head is full of nonsense. You don’t know what you want…’
He’d gone on saying it to him even when he was filling in forms, applying for university places, knowing that he’d get no financial backing, that he’d have to support himself every step of the way.
Even when his ‘nonsense’ was being installed in every new engine manufactured throughout the world, his father had still been telling him he was wrong…
‘Move over,’ he said.
Xandra clung stubbornly to the steering wheel. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Since you’ve already kept a lone woman waiting in a dark country lane for five minutes longer than necessary, I haven’t got much choice. I’m going to let you pick her up.’
‘Me?’
‘You. But you’ve already committed enough motoring offences for one week, so I’ll drive the truck.’
CHAPTER TWO
ANNIE saw the tow-truck, yellow light flashing on the roof of the cab, looming out of the dark, and sighed with relief as it pulled up just ahead of her broken-down car.
After a lorry, driving much too fast along the narrow country lane, had missed the front of the car by inches, she’d scrambled out and was standing with her back pressed against the gate, shivering with the cold.
The driver jumped down and swung a powerful torch over and around the car, and she threw up an arm to shield her eyes from the light as he found her.
‘George Saxon,’ her knight errant said, lowering the torch a little. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘Y-y-yes,’ she managed through chattering teeth. She couldn’t see his face behind the light but his voice had a touch of impatience that wasn’t exactly what she’d hoped for. ‘No thanks to a lorry driver who nearly took the front off the car.’
‘You should have switched on the hazard warning lights,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘Those sidelights are useless.’
‘If he’d been driving within the speed limit, he’d have seen me,’ she replied, less than pleased at the suggestion that it was her own fault that she’d nearly been killed.
‘There is no speed limit on this road other than the national limit. That’s seventy miles an hour,’ he added, in case she didn’t know.
‘I saw the signs. Foolishly, perhaps, I assumed that it was the upper limit, not an instruction,’ she snapped right back.
‘True,’ he agreed, ‘but just because other people behave stupidly it doesn’t mean you have to join in.’
First the car park attendant and now the garage mechanic. Irritable men talking to her as if she had dimwit tattooed across her forehead was getting tiresome.
Although, considering she could be relaxing in the warmth and comfort of Bab el Sama instead of freezing her socks off in an English country lane in December, they might just have a point.
‘So,’ he asked, gesturing at the car with the torch, ‘what’s the problem?’
‘I thought it was your job to tell me that,’ she replied, deciding she’d taken enough male insolence for one day.
‘Okaaay…’
Back-lit by the bright yellow hazard light swinging around on top of the tow-truck, she couldn’t make out more than the bulk of him but she had a strong sense of a man hanging onto his temper by a thread.
‘Let’s start with the basics,’ he said, making an effort. ‘Have you run out of petrol?’
‘What kind of fool do you take me for?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to establish,’ he replied with all the long-suffering patience of a man faced with every conceivable kind of a fool. Then, with a touch more grace, ‘Maybe you should just tell me what happened and we’ll take it from there.’
That was close enough to a truce to bring her from the safety of the gate and through teeth that were chattering with the cold—or maybe delayed shock, that lorry had been very close—she said, ‘I t-took the wrong road and t-tried to—’
‘To’ turned into a yelp as she caught her foot in a rut and was flung forward, hands outstretched, as she grabbed for anything to save herself. What she got was soft brushed leather and George Saxon, who didn’t budge as she cannoned into him but, steady as a rock, caught her, then held her as she struggled to catch her breath.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked after a moment.
With her cheek, her nose and her hands pressed against his chest, she was in no position to answer.
But with his breath warm against her skin, his hands holding her safe, there wasn’t a great deal wrong that she could think of.
Except, of course, all of the above.
She couldn’t remember ever being quite this close to a man she didn’t know, so what she was feeling—and whether ‘okay’ covered it—she couldn’t begin to say. She was still trying to formulate some kind of response when he moved back slightly, presumably so that he could check for himself.
‘I think so,’ she said quickly, getting a grip on her wits. She even managed to ease back a little herself, although she didn’t actually let go until she’d put a little weight on her ankle to test it.
There didn’t appear to be any damage but she decided not to rush it.
‘I’m in better shape than the car, anyway.’
He continued to look at her, not with the deferential respect she was used to, but in a way that made her feel exposed, vulnerable and, belatedly, she let go of his jacket, straightened the spectacles that had slipped sideways.
‘It was d-dark,’ she stuttered—stuttered? ‘And when I backed into the gate there was a bit more of a d-drop than I expected.’ Then, realising how feeble that sounded, ‘Quite a lot more of a drop, actually. This field entrance is very badly maintained,’ she added, doing her best to distance herself from the scent of leather warmed by a man’s body. From the feel of his chest beneath it, his solid shoulders. The touch of strong hands.
And in the process managed to sound like a rather pompous and disapproving dowager duchess.
‘Good enough for a tractor,’ he replied, dropping those capable hands and taking a step back. Leaving a cold space between them. ‘The farmer isn’t in the business of providing turning places for women who can’t read a map.’
‘I…’ On the point of saying that she hadn’t looked at a map, she thought better of it. He already thought she was a fool and there was nothing to be gained from confirming his first impression. ‘No. Well…’ She’d have taken a step back herself if she hadn’t been afraid her foot would find another rut and this time do some real damage. ‘I banged the underside of the car on something as I went down. When I tried to drive away it made a terrible noise and…’ She shrugged.
‘And what?’ he persisted.
‘And nothing,’ she snapped. Good grief, did he want it spelling out in words of one syllable? ‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’ Then, rubbing her hands over her sleeves, ‘Can you fix it?’
‘Not here.’
‘Oh.’
‘Come on,’ he said and, apparently taking heed of her comments about the state of the ground, he took her arm and supported her back onto the safety of the tarmac before opening the rear door of the truck’s cab. ‘You’d better get out of harm’s way while we load her up.’
As the courtesy light came on, bathing them both in light, Annie saw more of him. The brushed leather bomber jacket topping long legs clad not, as she’d expected, in overalls, but a pair of well-cut light-coloured trousers. And, instead of work boots, he was wearing expensive-looking loafers. Clearly, George Saxon hadn’t had the slightest intention of doing anything at the side of the road.
Her face must have betrayed exactly what she was thinking because he waved his torch over a tall but slight figure in dark overalls who was already attaching a line to her car.
‘She’s the mechanic,’ he said with a sardonic edge to his voice. His face, all dark shadows as the powerful overhead light swung in the darkness, matched his tone perfectly. ‘I’m just along for the ride.’
She? Annie thought as, looking behind her, he called out, ‘How are you doing back there?’
‘Two minutes…’
The voice was indeed that of a girl. Young and more than a little breathless and Annie, glancing back as she reached for the grab rail to haul herself up into the cab, could see that she was struggling.
‘I think she could do with some help,’ she said.
George regarded this tiresome female who’d been wished on him by his daughter with irritation.
‘I’m just the driver,’ he said. Then, offering her the torch, ‘But don’t let me stop you from pitching in and giving her a hand.’
‘It’s okay,’ Xandra called before she could take it from him. ‘I’ve got it.’
He shrugged. ‘It seems you were worrying about nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked, calling back to Xandra while never taking her eyes off him. It was a look that reminded him of Miss Henderson, a teacher who had been able to quell a class of unruly kids with a glance. Maybe it was the woolly hat and horn-rimmed glasses.
Although he had to admit that Miss Henderson had lacked the fine bone structure and, all chalk and old books, had never smelt anywhere near as good.
‘I’m done,’ Xandra called.
‘Happy?’ he enquired.
The woman held the look for one long moment before she gave him a cool nod and climbed up into the cab, leaving him to close the door behind her as if she were royalty.
‘Your servant, ma’am,’ he muttered as he went back to see how Xandra was doing.
‘Why on earth did you say that to her?’ she hissed as he checked the coupling.
He wasn’t entirely sure. Other than the fact that Miss Henderson was the only woman he’d ever known who could cut his cocky ten-year-old self down to size with a glance.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, pretending he hadn’t heard.
Back in the cab, he started the engine and began to winch the car up onto the trailer but, when he glanced up to check the road, his passenger’s eyes, huge behind the lenses, seemed to fill the rear-view mirror.
‘Can we drop you somewhere?’ he asked as Xandra climbed in beside him. Eager to be rid of her so that he could drop the car off at Longbourne Motors.
That took the starch right out of her look.
‘What? No…I can’t go on without my car…’
‘It’s not going anywhere tonight. You don’t live locally?’ he asked.
‘No. I’m…I’m on holiday. Touring.’
‘On your own? In December?’
‘Is there something wrong with that?’
A whole lot, in his opinion, but it was none of his business. ‘Whatever turns you on,’ he said, ‘although Maybridge in winter wouldn’t be my idea of a good time.’
‘Lots of people come for the Christmas market,’ Xandra said. ‘It’s this weekend. I’m going.’
All this and Christmas too. How much worse could it get? he thought before turning to Xandra and saying, ‘You aren’t going anywhere. You’re grounded.’ Then, without looking in the mirror, he said, ‘Where are you staying tonight?’
‘I’m not booked in anywhere. I was heading for the motel on the ring road.’
‘We’d have to go all the way to the motorway roundabout to get there from here,’ Xandra said before he could say a word, no doubt guessing his intention of dropping the car off at Longbourne Motors. ‘Much easier to run the lady back to the motel through the village once we have a better idea of how long it will take to fix her car.’
She didn’t wait for an answer, instead turning to introduce herself to their passenger. ‘I’m sorry, I’m Xandra Saxon,’ she said, but she was safe enough. This wasn’t an argument he planned on having in front of a stranger.
Annie relaxed a little as George Saxon took his eyes off her and smiled at the girl beside him, who was turning into something of an ally.
‘Hello, Xandra. I’m R-Ro…’
The word began to roll off her tongue before she remembered that she wasn’t Rose Napier.
‘Ro-o-owland,’ she stuttered out, grabbing for the first name that came into her head. Nanny Rowland…‘Annie Rowland,’ she said, more confidently.
Lydia had suggested she borrow her name but she’d decided that it would be safer to stick with something familiar. Annie had been her mother’s pet name for her but, since her grandfather disapproved of it, no one other than members of the household staff who’d known her since her mother was alive had ever used it. In the stress of the moment, though, the practised response had gone clean out of her head and she’d slipped into her standard introduction.
‘Ro-o-owland?’ George Saxon, repeating the name with every nuance of hesitation, looked up at the rear-view mirror and held her gaze.
‘Annie will do just fine,’ she said, then, realising that man and girl had the same name, she turned to Xandra. ‘You’re related?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ she replied in that throwaway, couldn’t-care-less manner that the young used when something was truly, desperately important. ‘My mother has made a career of getting married. George was the first in line, with a shotgun to his back if the date on my birth certificate is anything—’
‘Buckle up, Xandra,’ he said, cutting her off.
He was her father? But she wasn’t, it would appear, daddy’s little girl if the tension between them was anything to judge by.
But what did she know about the relationship between father and daughter? All she remembered was the joy of her father’s presence, feeling safe in his arms. If he’d lived would she have been a difficult teen?
The one thing she wouldn’t have been was isolated, wrapped in cotton wool by a grandfather afraid for her safety. She’d have gone to school, mixed with girls—and boys—her own age. Would have fallen in and out of love without the eyes of the entire country on her. Would never have stepped into the spotlight only to discover, too late, that she was unable to escape its glare.
‘Are you warm enough back there?’ George Saxon asked.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
The heater was efficient and despite his lack of charm, he hadn’t fumbled when she’d fallen into his arms. On the contrary. He’d been a rock and she felt safe enough in the back of his truck. A lot safer than she’d felt in his arms. But of course this was her natural place in the world. Sitting in the back with some man up front in the driving seat. In control.
Everything she’d hoped to escape from, she reminded herself, her gaze fixed on the man who was in control at the moment. Or at least the back of his head.
Over the years she had become something of a connoisseur of the back of the male head. The masculine neck. All those chauffeurs, bodyguards…
George Saxon’s neck would stand comparison with the best, she decided. Strong, straight with thick dark hair expertly cut to exactly the right length. His shoulders, encased in the soft tan leather of his jacket, would take some beating too. It was a pity his manners didn’t match them.
Or was she missing the point?
Rupert’s perfect manners made her teeth ache to say or do something utterly outrageous just to get a reaction, but George Saxon’s hands, like his eyes, had been anything but polite.
They’d been assured, confident, brazen even. She could still feel the imprint of his thumbs against her breasts where his hands had gripped her as she’d fallen; none of that Dresden shepherdess nonsense for him. And his insolence as he’d offered her the torch had sent an elemental shiver of awareness running up her spine that had precious little to do with the cold that had seeped deep into her bones.
He might not be a gentleman, but he was real—dangerously so—and, whatever else he made her feel, it certainly wasn’t desperation.
Annie didn’t have time to dwell on what exactly he did make her feel before he swung the truck off the road and turned onto the forecourt of a large garage with a sign across the workshop that read, George Saxon and Son.
Faded and peeling, neglected, it didn’t match the man, she thought as he backed up to one of the bays. He might be a little short on charm but he had an animal vitality that sent a charge of awareness running through her.
Xandra jumped down and opened the doors and then, once he’d backed her car in, she uncoupled it, he said, ‘There’s a customer waiting room at the far end. You’ll find a machine for drinks.’ Dismissed, she climbed down from the truck and walked away. ‘Annie!’
She stopped. It was, she discovered, easy to be charming when everyone treated you with respect but she had to take a deep breath before she turned, very carefully, to face him.
‘Mr Saxon?’ she responded politely.
‘Shut the damn door!’
She blinked.
No one had ever raised their voice to her. Spoken to her in that way.
‘In your own time,’ he said when she didn’t move.
Used to having doors opened for her, stepping out of a car without so much as a backward glance, she hadn’t even thought about it.
She wanted to be ordinary, she reminded herself. To be treated like an ordinary woman. Clearly, it was going to be an education.
She walked back, closed the door, but if she’d expected the courtesy of a thank you she would have been disappointed.
Always a fast learner, she hadn’t held her breath.
‘Take no notice of George,’ Xandra said as he drove away to park the truck. ‘He doesn’t want to be here so he’s taking it out on you.’
‘Doesn’t…? Why not? Isn’t he the “and Son”?’
She laughed, but not with any real mirth. ‘Wrong generation. The “and Son” above the garage is my granddad but he’s in hospital. A heart attack.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. How is he?’
‘Not well enough to run the garage until I can take over,’ she said. Then, blinking back something that looked very much like a tear, she shrugged, lifted her head. ‘Sorry. Family business.’ She flicked a switch that activated the hoist. ‘I’ll take a look at your car.’
Annie, confused by the tensions, wishing she could do something too, but realising that she’d been dismissed—and that was new, as well—said, ‘Your father mentioned a waiting room?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. It’ll be freezing in there and the drinks machine hasn’t worked in ages.’ Xandra fished a key out of her pocket. ‘Go inside where it’s warm,’ she said, handing it to her. ‘Make yourself at home. There’s tea and coffee by the kettle, milk in the fridge.’ Xandra watched the car as it rose slowly above them, then, realising that she hadn’t moved, said, ‘Don’t worry. It won’t take long to find the problem.’
‘Are you quite sure?’ she asked.
‘I may be young but I know what I’m doing.’
‘Yes…’ Well, maybe. ‘I meant about letting myself in.’
‘Gran would invite you in herself if she were here,’ she said as her father rejoined them.
In the bright strip light his face had lost the dangerous shadows, but it still had a raw quality. There was no softness to mitigate hard bone other than a full lower lip that oozed sensuality and only served to increase her sense of danger.
‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ he said.
‘I’m going…’ She cleared her throat. ‘Can I make something for either of you?’ she offered.
He frowned.
She lifted her hand and dangled the door key. ‘Tea? Coffee?’
For a moment she thought he was going to tell her to stay on her own side of the counter—maybe she was giving him the opportunity—but after a moment he shrugged and said, ‘Coffee. If there is any.’
‘Xandra?’
‘Whatever,’ she said, as she ducked beneath the hoist, clearly more interested in the car than in anything she had to say and Annie walked quickly across the yard, through a gate and up a well-lit path to the rear of a long, low stone-built house and let herself in through the back door.
The mud room was little more than a repository for boots and working clothes, a place to wash off the workplace dirt, but as she walked into the kitchen she was wrapped in the heat being belted out by an ancient solid fuel stove.
Now this was familiar, she thought, relaxing as she crossed to the sink, filled the kettle and set it on the hob to boil.
This room, so much more than a kitchen, was typical of the farmhouses at King’s Lacey, her grandfather’s Warwickshire estate.
Her last memory of her father was being taken to visit the tenants before he’d gone away for the last time. She’d been given brightly coloured fizzy pop and mince pies while he’d talked to people he’d known since his boyhood, asking about their children and grandchildren, discussing the price of feedstuff, grain. She’d played with kittens, fed the chickens, been given fresh eggs to take home for her tea. Been a child.
She ran her hand over the large, scrubbed-top table, looked at the wide dresser, laden with crockery and piled up with paperwork. Blinked back the tear that caught her by surprise before turning to a couple of Morris armchairs, the leather seats scuffed and worn, the wooden arms rubbed with wear, one of them occupied by a large ginger cat.
A rack filled with copies of motoring magazines stood beside one, a bag stuffed with knitting beside the other. There was a dog basket by the Aga, but no sign of its owner.
She let the cat sniff her fingers before rubbing it behind the ear, starting up a deep purr. Comfortable, it was the complete opposite of the state-of-the-art kitchen in her London home. Caught in a nineteen-fifties time warp, the only concession to modernity here was a large refrigerator, its cream enamel surface chipped with age, and a small television set tucked away on a shelf unit built beside the chimney breast.
The old butler’s sink, filled with dishes that were no doubt waiting for Xandra’s attention—George Saxon didn’t look the kind of man who was familiar with a dish mop—suggested that the age of the dishwasher had not yet reached the Saxon household.
She didn’t have a lot of time to spare for basic household chores these days, but there had been a time, long ago, when she had been allowed to stand on a chair and wash dishes, help cook when she was making cakes and, even now, once in a while, when they were in the country, she escaped to the comfort of her childhood kitchen, although only at night, when the staff were gone.
She wasn’t a child any more and her presence was an intrusion on their space.
Here, though, she was no one and she peeled off the woolly hat and fluffed up her short hair, enjoying the lightness of it. Then she hung her padded jacket on one of the pegs in the mud room before hunting out a pair of rubber gloves and pitching in.
Washing up was as ordinary as it got and she was grinning by the time she’d cleared the decks. It wasn’t what she’d imagined she’d be doing this evening, but it certainly fulfilled the parameters of the adventure.
By the time she heard the back door open, the dishes were draining on the rack above the sink and she’d made a large pot of tea for herself and Xandra, and a cup of instant coffee for George.
‘Oh…’ Xandra came to an abrupt halt at the kitchen door as she saw the table on which she was laying out cups and saucers. ‘I usually just bung a teabag in a mug,’ she said. Then, glancing guiltily at the sink, her eyes widened further. ‘You’ve done the washing-up…’
‘Well, you did tell me to make myself at home,’ Annie said, deadpan.
It took Xandra a moment but then she grinned. ‘You’re a brick. I was going to do it before Gran got home.’
A brick? No one had ever called her that before.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she replied, pouring tea while Xandra washed her hands at the sink. ‘Your gran is at the hospital with your grandfather, I imagine?’
Before Xandra could answer, George Saxon followed her into the kitchen, bringing with him a metallic blast of cold air.
He came to an abrupt halt, staring at her for a moment. Or, rather, she thought, her hair, and she belatedly wished she’d kept her hat on, but it was too late for that.
‘Has she told you?’ he demanded, finally tearing his gaze away from what she knew must look an absolute fright.
‘Told me what?’ she asked him.
‘That you’ve broken your crankshaft.’
‘No,’ she said, swiftly tiring of the novelty of his rudeness. A gentleman would have ignored the fact that she was having a seriously bad hair day rather than staring at the disaster in undisguised horror. ‘I gave my ankle a bit of a jolt in that pothole but, unless things have changed since I studied anatomy, I don’t believe that I have a crankshaft.’
Xandra snorted tea down her nose as she laughed, earning herself a quelling look from her father.
‘You’ve broken the crankshaft that drives the wheels of your car,’ he said heavily, quashing any thought she might have of joining in. ‘It’ll have to be replaced.’
‘If I knew what a crankshaft was,’ she replied, ‘I suspect that I’d be worried. How long will it take?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll have to ring around in the morning and see if there’s anyone who can deal with it as an emergency.’
Annie heard what he said but even when she ran through it again it still made no sense.
‘Why?’ she asked finally.
He had the nerve to turn a pair of slate-grey eyes on her and regard her as if her wits had gone begging.
‘I assume you want it repaired?’
‘Of course I want it repaired. That’s why I called you. You’re a garage. You fix cars. So fix it.’
‘I’m sorry but that’s impossible.’
‘You don’t sound sorry.’
‘He isn’t. While Granddad’s lying helpless in hospital he’s going to shut down a garage that’s been in the family for nearly a hundred years.’
‘Are you?’ she asked, keeping her gaze fixed firmly on him. ‘That doesn’t sound very sporting.’
He looked right back and she could see a pale fan of lines around his eyes that in anyone else she’d have thought were laughter lines.
‘He flew all the way from California for that very purpose,’ his daughter said when he didn’t bother to answer.
‘California?’ Well, that certainly explained the lines around his eyes. Screwing them up against the sun rather than an excess of good humour. ‘How interesting. What do you do in California, Mr Saxon?’
Her life consisted of asking polite questions, drawing people out of their shell, showing an interest. She had responded with her ‘Lady Rose’ voice and she’d have liked to pretend that this was merely habit rather than genuine interest, but that would be a big fat fib. There was something about George Saxon that aroused a lot more than polite interest in her maidenly breast.
His raised eyebrow suggested that what he did in the US was none of her business and he was undoubtedly right, but his daughter was happy to fill the gap.
‘According to my mother,’ she said, ‘George is a beach bum.’
At this point ‘Lady Rose’ would have smiled politely and moved on. Annie didn’t have to do that.
‘Is your mother right?’ she asked.
‘He doesn’t go to work unless he feels like it. Lives on the beach. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…’
She was looking at George, talking to him, but the replies kept coming from his daughter, stage left, and Annie shook her head just once, lifted a hand to silence the girl, waiting for him to answer her question.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I’M AFRAID it’s your bad luck that my daughter answered your call,’ George replied, not bothering to either confirm or deny it. ‘If I’d got to the phone first I’d have told you to ring someone else.’
‘I see. So why didn’t you simply call another garage and arrange for them to pick me up?’ Annie asked, genuinely puzzled.
‘It would have taken too long and, since you were on your own…’ He let it go.
She didn’t.
‘Oh, I see. You’re a gentleman beach bum?’
‘Don’t count on it,’ he replied.
No. She wouldn’t do that, but he appeared to have a conscience and she could work with that.
She’d had years of experience in parting millionaires from their money in a good cause and this seemed like a very good moment to put what she’d learned to use on her own behalf.
‘It’s a pity your concern doesn’t stretch as far as fixing my car.’ Since his only response was to remove his jacket and hang it over the back of a chair, the clearest statement that he was going nowhere, she continued. ‘So, George…’ use his name, imply that they were friends ‘…having brought me here under false pretences, what do you suggest I do now?’
‘I suggest you finish your tea, Annie…’ and the way he emphasized her name suggested he knew exactly what game she was playing ‘…then I suggest you call a taxi.’
Well, that didn’t go as well as she’d hoped.
‘I thought the deal was that you were going to run me there,’ she reminded him.
‘It’s been a long day. You’ll find a directory by the phone. It’s through there. In the hall,’ he added, just in case she was labouring under the misapprehension that he would do it for her. Then, having glanced at the cup of instant coffee and the delicate china cups she’d laid out, he took a large mug—one that she’d just washed—from the rack over the sink and filled it with tea.
Annie had been raised to be a lady and her first reaction, even under these trying circumstances, was to apologise for being a nuisance.
There had been a moment, right after that lorry had borne down on her out of the dark and she’d thought her last moment had come, when the temptation to accept defeat had very nearly got the better of her.
Shivering with shock at her close brush with eternity as much as the cold, it would have been so easy to put in the call that would bring a chauffeurdriven limousine to pick her up, return her home with nothing but a very bad haircut and a lecture on irresponsibility from her grandfather to show for her adventure.
But she’d wanted reality and that meant dealing with the rough as well as the smooth. Breaking down on a dark country road was no fun, but Lydia wouldn’t have been able to walk away, leave someone else to pick up the pieces. She’d have to deal with the mechanic who’d responded to her call, no matter how unwillingly. How lacking in the ethos of customer service.
Lydia, she was absolutely certain, wouldn’t apologise to him for expecting him to do his job, but demand he got on with it.
She could do no less.
‘I’m sorry,’ she began, but she wasn’t apologising for being a nuisance. Far from it. Instead, she picked up her tea and polite as you please, went on. ‘I’m afraid that is quite unacceptable. When you responded to my call you entered into a contract and I insist that you honour it.’
George Saxon paused in the act of spooning sugar into his tea and glanced up at her from beneath a lick of dark hair that had slid across his forehead.
‘Is that right?’ he asked.
He didn’t sound particularly impressed.
‘Under the terms of the Goods and Services Act,’ she added, with the poise of a woman for whom addressing a room full of strangers was an everyday occurrence, ‘nineteen eighty-three.’ The Act was real enough, even if she’d made up the date. The trick was to look as if you knew what you were talking about and a date—even if it was the first one that came into her head—added veracity to even the most outrageous statement.
This time he did smile and deep creases bracketed his face, his mouth, fanned out around those slate eyes. Maybe not just the sun, then…
‘You just made that up, Annie Rowland,’ he said, calling her bluff.
She pushed up the spectacles that kept sliding down her nose and smiled right back.
‘I’ll just wait here while you go to the local library and check,’ she said, lowering herself into the unoccupied Morris chair. ‘Unless you have a copy?’ Balancing the saucer in one hand, she used the other to pick up her tea and sip it. ‘Although, since you’re clearly unfamiliar with the legislation, I’m assuming that you don’t.’
‘The library is closed until tomorrow morning,’ he pointed out.
‘They don’t have late-night opening? How inconvenient for you. Never mind, I can wait.’ Then added, ‘Or you could just save time and fix my car.’
George had known the minute Annie Ro-o-owland had blundered into him, falling into his arms as if she was made to fit, that he was in trouble. Then she’d looked at him through the rearview mirror of the truck with those big blue eyes and he’d been certain of it. And here, in the light of his mother’s kitchen, they had double the impact.
They were not just large, but were the mesmerizing colour of a bluebell wood in April, framed by long dark lashes and perfectly groomed brows that were totally at odds with that appalling haircut. At odds with those horrible spectacles which continually slipped down her nose as if they were too big for her face…
As he stared at her, the certainty that he’d seen her somewhere before tugging at his memory, she used one finger to push them back up and he knew without doubt that they were nothing more than a screen for her to hide behind.
Everything about her was wrong.
Her car, bottom of range even when new, was well past its best, her hair was a nightmare and her clothes were chain-store basics but her scent, so faint that he knew she’d sprayed it on warm skin hours ago, probably after her morning shower, was the real one-thousand-dollar-an-ounce deal.
And then there was her voice.
No one spoke like that unless they were born to it. Not even twenty-five thousand pounds a year at Dower House could buy that true-blue aristocratic accent, a fact he knew to his cost.
He stirred his tea, took a sip, making her wait while he thought about his next move.
‘I’ll organise a rental for you while it’s being fixed,’ he offered finally. Experience had taught him that, where women were concerned, money was the easiest way to make a problem go away. But first he’d see how far being helpful would get him. ‘If that would make things easier for you?’
She carefully replaced the delicate bone china cup on its saucer. ‘I’m sorry, George. I’m afraid that’s out of the question.’
It was like a chess game, he thought. Move and countermove. And everything about her—the voice, the poise—suggested that she was used to playing the Queen.
Tough. He wasn’t about to be her pawn. He might be lumbered with Mike Jackson’s Bentley—he couldn’t offload a specialist job like that at short notice as his father well knew—but he wasn’t about to take on something that any reasonably competent mechanic could handle.
Maybe if she took off her glasses…
‘As a gesture of goodwill, recognising that you have been put to unnecessary inconvenience,’ he said, catching himself—this was not the moment to allow himself to be distracted by a pair of blue eyes, pale flawless skin, scent that aroused an instant go-to-hell response. He didn’t do ‘instant’. It would have to be money. ‘I would be prepared to pay any reasonable out-of-pocket expenses.’
Check.
He didn’t care how much it cost to get her and her eyes out of the garage, out of his mother’s kitchen, out of his hair. Just as long as she went.
‘That’s a most generous offer,’ she replied. ‘Unfortunately, I can’t accept. The problem isn’t money, you see, but my driving licence.’
‘Oh?’ Then, ‘You do have a valid licence?’
If she was driving without one all bets were off. He could ground his daughter for her reckless behaviour—maybe—but Annie Rowland would be out of here faster than he could call the police.
But she wasn’t in the least bit put out by his suggestion that she was breaking the law.
‘I do have a driving licence,’ she replied, cool as you like. ‘And, in case you’re wondering, it’s as clean as the day it was issued. But I’m afraid I left it at home. In my other bag.’ She shrugged. ‘You know how it is.’ Then, looking at him as if she’d only just noticed that he was a man, she smiled and said, ‘Oh, no. I don’t suppose you do. All a man has to do is pick up his wallet and he has everything he needs right there in his jacket pocket.’
He refused to indulge the little niggle that wanted to know whose wallet, what man…
‘And where, exactly, is home?’ he asked, trying not to look at her hand and failing. She wasn’t wearing a ring but that meant nothing.
‘London.’
‘London is a big place.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘It is.’ Then, without indulging his curiosity about which part of London, ‘You must know that no one will rent me a car without it. My licence.’
Unfortunately, he did.
Checkmate.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Xandra, who’d been watching this exchange with growing impatience, said, ‘If you won’t fix Annie’s car, I’ll do it myself.’ She put down her cup and headed for the door. ‘I’ll make a start right now.’
‘Shouldn’t you be thinking about your grandmother?’ he snapped before she reached it. ‘I’m sure she’d appreciate a hot meal when she gets back from the hospital. Or are you so lost to selfishness that you expect her to cook for you?’
‘She doesn’t…’ Then, unexpectedly curbing her tongue, she said, ‘I’m not the selfish one around here.’
Annie, aware that in this battle of wits Xandra was her ally, cleared her throat. ‘Why don’t I get supper?’ she offered.
They both turned to stare at her.
‘Why would you do that?’ George Saxon demanded.
‘Because I want my car fixed?’
‘You won’t get a better offer,’ Xandra declared, leaping in before her father could turn down her somewhat rash offer. ‘My limit is baked beans on toast. I’m sure Annie can do better than that,’ she said, throwing a pleading glance in her direction.
‘Can you?’ he demanded.
‘Do better than baked beans on toast?’ she repeated. ‘Actually, that won’t be…’ She broke off, distracted by the wild signals Xandra was making behind her father’s back. As he turned to see what had caught her attention she went on. ‘Difficult. Not at all.’
He gave her a long look through narrowed eyes, clearly aware that he’d missed something. Then continued to look at her as if there was something about her that bothered him.
She knew just how he felt.
The way he looked at her bothered her to bits, she thought, using her forefinger to push the ‘prop’ spectacles up her nose. They would keep sliding down, making it easier to look over them than through them, which made wearing them utterly pointless.
‘How long do you think it’ll take?’ she asked, not sure who she was attempting to distract. George or herself.
He continued to stare for perhaps another ten seconds—clearly not a man to be easily distracted—before he shrugged and said, ‘It depends what else we find. Your car is not exactly in the first flush. Once something major happens it tends to have a knock-on effect. You’re touring, you say?’
She nodded. ‘That was the plan. Shropshire, Cheshire, maybe. A little sightseeing. A little shopping.’
‘There aren’t enough sights, enough shops in London?’ he enquired, an edge to his voice that suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced.
‘Oh, well…’ She matched his shrug and raised him a smile. ‘You know what they say about a change.’
‘Being as good as a rest?’ He sounded doubtful. ‘This isn’t a great time of year to break down, especially if you’re stranded miles from anywhere,’ he pointed out.
He didn’t bother to match her smile.
‘It’s never a good time for that, George.’
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Liz Fielding
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Christmas Angel for the Billionaire, электронная книга автора Liz Fielding на английском языке, в жанре современные любовные романы